(The content of this series of articles has been taken from my 1982 book “Civilization.” Even back then, I was warning my readers about the role the banks would play in the inevitable economic collapse of this country. Here’s more of what I said 27 years ago …)
Much like the black holes of the far reaches of outer space, which ravenously suck in all matter that comes their way, there are black holes in the financial markets that can make capital vanish without a trace. Unlike their counterparts in interstellar space, however, Capital Black Holes can occasionally be persuaded to release their prey. Read Full Article
(The content of this series of articles has been taken from my 1982 book “Civilization.” As you will see, I pretty much could have written the exact same articles today. While I was a bit off on a few things-particularly with regard to my belief that the economic chaos we are now witnessing would happen much sooner than it did-my take on the big picture was, unfortunately, pretty accurate. Here it was I said back then …)
Notwithstanding Ronald Reagan’s tough talk, and contrary to daily media reports about how the plight of “the poor” has worsened under his administration, there have been no meaningful cutbacks in federal handouts since Reagan took office. Quite the opposite, in fact: Today, the federal deficit is expanding almost exponentially. Read Full Article
After my son made his comment about bringing his “nines” to school (in reference to his basketball shoes), his two tormentors gleefully started yelling, “Andrew said he’s going to bring a Glock 9 to school!”
The teacher, notwithstanding the fact that she knew full well that these two miscreants taunted my son relentlessly every day, told the boys to go to the principal’s office and report the incident. And, of course, they did so with great enthusiasm. Read Full Article
I recently received this disturbing e-mail from a reader:
My 16-year-old son hung himself 90 days ago because the school principal threatened him for violating a rule he didn’t break, said that “the cops are getting involved,” that “this is gonna be big,” etc. – a lot of threats.
I had to pick him up and take him home, then had to go back to work. My son hung himself four hours later, before I came home. I cut him down and started CPR before help arrived.
Now, the school says they have no records of that day and won’t produce them. Tox screening showed no use of drugs or alcohol, yet the school has led people to believe the incident was drug related.
My lawyer doubts we can do anything. What should I do? My son and I were best friends, and he even mentioned that in the note he left. Please offer me some advice on how to deal with this. – S.B.
S.B., your story not only saddened me, it brought back old memories and made me see red. I am all too familiar with this kind of terror being wreaked upon students by teachers and principals. While I don’t have any firsthand knowledge of the facts in your case, based on my own experience, I would be inclined to believe your son’s side of the story without even having known him.
While pundits and politicians continue to brainwash the public with blather about how heroic “our” teachers are, I stand firm with John Stossel on the subject: Both teachers’ unions and public schools should be abolished. They are the biggest terrorist threat in America, because they harm children every single day.
While there are certainly teachers who are both well-educated and well-meaning -and who make a sincere effort to help, rather than hurt, children – they are most decidedly in the minority.
Over the years, I’ve received many e-mails from teachers and ex-teachers who have a genuine loathing for the National Education Association (NEA) – which is, in reality, nothing more than a professional lobbying organization for teachers who ruin the lives of millions of children. Their motto should be “No Child Left Unscarred.”
As to principals, I have clearly expressed my views on their ilk in previous articles, particularly in my article “The School Principle/Principal Problem” (The Cho Factor, Part XV). As I said in that article, I had many meetings with principals over the years with regard to bullying and other outrageous behavior by teachers, and, without exception, they tenaciously defended the teachers in question.
In a perfect world, every school board would make it clear to the principal that he works for, and is answerable to, the parents of his students. In other words, the principal would understand that he is not there to defend the teachers. But with the professional vote-buyers who are now at the controls in Washington, bad teachers, bad principals, and bad schools are certain to remain untouchable for a long time to come.
S.B.’s story resonated strongly with me because of a similar incident that occurred when my son was in middle school. He has a particular kind of “learning issue” that made him vulnerable to both student and teacher bullies. (This is a sensitive subject, so I want to guard my words carefully. You’ll have to do some reading between the lines.)
My son had the “misfortune” of being the kind of kid who was, and still is, exceptionally kind and nice to everyone, very well mannered, and always anxious to please. His gullibility and naiveté, along with being one of the smallest kids in his class, made him a delectable target for bullies – of both the student and teacher varieties.
There were a number of eminently bad kids who teased and bullied my son day in and day out. And why not? They never got punished for it! If there are no consequences to a bully’s actions, the message is clear: “The victim is fair game.”
On this particular day, two of the punks who constantly gave my son grief, knowing how much pride he took in his basketball skills, started taunting him about how they could beat him in basketball. As usual, they wouldn’t let up, and, as usual, he took the bait and exchanged words with them. It’s not easy to teach a twelve-year-old to ignore obnoxious kids who are trying to provoke you.
At one point in the back-and-forth gibberish, my son pointed to his shoes and said, “I’ll bring my nines to school tomorrow, and we’ll see how good you are.” (Note: He wore size 9 basketball shoes.) What happened from that point on was like something out of an NEA training film, the kind of thing that has resulted in many students ending up like S.B.’s son … and has brought out the worst in disturbed young people like Virginia Tech shooter Seung-Hui Cho.
The rest of the story continues in Part XXXIV of this article …
I recently received this disturbing e-mail from a reader:
My 16-year-old son hung himself 90 days ago because the school principal threatened him for violating a rule he didn’t break, said that “the cops are getting involved,” that “this is gonna be big,” etc. – a lot of threats.
I had to pick him up and take him home, then had to go back to work. My son hung himself four hours later, before I came home. I cut him down and started CPR before help arrived. Read Full Article
As I watched Barack Obama do his Jesus imitations in Tampa and Elkhart, I recalled something Jonah Goldberg wrote in his book Liberal Fascism. If you have a pulse and have not yet sipped the Obama-Aid, this should get your attention:
Today the liberal left’s version of the 1960s makes about as much sense as it does to remember Hitler as the “man of peace” described by Neville Chamberlain. In its passion and pursuits, the New Left was little more than an Americanized updating of what we’ve come to call the European Old Right. From Easy Rider to JFK, Hollywood has been telling us that if only the forces of reaction hadn’t killed their Horst Wessels, we would today be living in a better, more just, and more open-minded country. [RJR note: Horst Wessels was a ruthless young leader in the Nazi movement who was murdered at the age of twenty-two and subsequently immortalized by the Nazis.] And if only we could rekindle the hope and ambition of those early radicals, “what might have been” will turn into “what could still be.” This is the vital lie of the left. Western civilization was saved when the barbarians were defeated, at least temporarily, in the 1970s. We should be not only grateful for our slender victory but vigilant in securing it for posterity. Read Full Article
As usual, the media is in ga-ga land as the Obamacrats tighten their grip around the throats of American serfs. While it’s tempting to write off the far-left power holders as fools or, perhaps, utopian dreamers, that would be a mistake. They are neither. They know exactly what they’re doing.
The objective of the Obamacrats is the same as that of every revolutionary group throughout history: to mesmerize the masses into ceding more and more power to them, ultimately resulting in a liberal fascist dictatorship. Amazingly, almost no one in the media seems to fully understand this, with the possible exception of Glenn Beck.
However, I do believe that Laura Ingraham, Michelle (The Magnificent) Malkin, and a number of other Fox TV contributors and guests (primarily on Beck’s show) are finally starting to zero in on the end game of the Obamacrats. Even Sean Hannity has crossed over some taboo lines by openly calling BHO a liar and referring to his agenda as socialist, but he still has a way to go.
BHO, Pelosi, Reid, Frank, Dodd, and other leading members of Crime Inc. know full well that their first “stimulus package” has zero chance of improving the economy over the long term (and very little chance in the short term). Which is precisely what they want, because they believe that the destructive results of their massive wealth-transfer program will accelerate their true agenda.
The agenda I’m talking about is nothing less than absolute dictatorial power. What they hope their new spending bill (euphemistically referred to as a “rescue package”) will accomplish is to get enough voters addicted to government “benefits” to assure a permanent majority for themselves.
You may have noticed that, two paragraphs up, I said “their first stimulus package.” That’s because, as it becomes ever more clear that their original, phony stimulus package has actually made the economy worse, there will be many more government-spending packages waiting in the wings.
That’s right – I said many more. That first trillion dollars is but a small down payment on what is to come. Trillions of paper dollars will overwhelm our economy over the next four years, and almost certainly lead to the total destruction of the U.S. currency.
As BHO continues to hold town hall meetings in carefully selected, economically depressed areas-campaigning as though he were still running for president-more and more people will come to see him as the Money Messiah … a newer, slicker version of Rev. Ike. When that woman in one of BHO’s town hall audiences related her tale of woe to him and he warmly embraced her, it was like watching Jesus touch a blind man on the forehead to bestow upon him the gift of sight.
Give the man credit. He learned well from the Clintons, who are still gnashing their teeth over not having taken the slippery young upstart seriously early on. If you aspire to power, you have to be shameless – a trait BHO exudes. Theatrics must become a part of who you are.
Sure, you may know you’re lying, but to play in the big leagues with people as talented as the Clintons, you have to be comfortable with your lies. The lies have to become an integral part of your moral fiber. Otherwise, you won’t be able to tell them with panache. BHO has the panache of a high-level confidence man who painlessly relieves elderly women of their expensive jewelry.
In Part II of this article, we’ll take a look at what Glenn Beck, Jonah Goldberg, and one of the most notorious socialists in American history have to say about all this.
As I pointed out in Part I of this article, Obama’s solution for the current economic tsunami is more government spending in the form of bailouts, a massive trillion-dollar economic stimulus package, and “tax cuts” offered to people who never paid taxes in the first place.
What is interesting about this is that it proves we have once again elected a president who is either ignorant of, or oblivious to, the United States Constitution. Nothing in the Constitution authorizes this kind of government intervention in the economy. Which means that Obama’s entire economic game plan is not only unworkable, it’s unconstitutional.
Now, as promised, let me give you my version of an economic stimulus plan that makes sense. Read Full Article
Now that Barack Obama is in the Oval Office, it would seem like an ideal time to talk about the greatest challenge facing his new administration – the triple whammy of economic meltdown, credit crisis, and a crisis of consumer confidence. All of them have combined to create the “Perfect Storm” – what appears, to a small businessman like me, to be The Great Depression, Part II.
Obama believes that the way to get out of an economic toxic disaster caused by too much government spending and debt is to spend more and go further into debt. Interesting logic. Read Full Article
At the end of Part I of this article, I said I would address the question of whether BHO is right when he says that Americans gave him a mandate to pursue his socialist agenda. Did you give BHO a mandate? I didn’t. And, the fact is, neither did a majority of the population. Allow me to explain:
Roughly 52 percent of the approximately 133 million people who voted in the presidential election cast their votes for BHO. Sounds good … except for one little fact that politicians choose to ignore: Only 56.8 percent of the approximately 231 million eligible voters actually voted. Which means that slightly more than 70 percent of the voter-eligible populace did not vote for BHO.
So, as difficult as it may be for the tingle-legged, logic-challenged among us to accept, in the United States of America, it is, in fact, the minority who rules the majority. In the case of BHO, roughly 70 percent of eligible voters voted for other candidates or chose not to vote at all (a.k.a. “refusing to vote for the lesser of two evils”).
Thus, as in every election, it is those who voted against the winning candidate, along with those who chose not to vote for anyone, who actually formed the majority. Which means that more than two-thirds Americans are now being ruled by a socialist for whom less than one-third of eligible voters voted for.
In truth, then, “mandate of the people” really means mandate of a small minority of people whose candidates are elected. Hardly what a schoolchild envisions when he is taught about “majority rule.”
The belief that “the people have chosen” is, pure and simple, a myth. What in fact takes place in an election is that two candidates, who have been selected by a small group of politically active people, are propped up before the citizenry, and a minority of citizens then elect one of them to rule everyone — including the majority that didn’t vote for him/her.
As a side note, I should also point out that not only does the majority not rule, but the day-to-day ruling, where the worst violations of natural rights occur, is carried out by people in regulatory agencies who are not even elected to their offices. What happens is that those who are elected by a minority of the population turn around and dole out draconian power to non-elected bureaucrats who do not have to answer to voters — and who are almost impossible to remove from their jobs.
Thus, democracy’s main attraction from government’s standpoint is that it gives the illusion of consent. People, through mind-numbing slogans and mind twisting logic, are led to believe that government represents them, thus they feel content. But, as Alvin Toffler pointed out nearly thirty years ago, letting people vote every few years is the equivalent of throwing them a piece of raw meat. Once the election charade is over, they once again realize that they have virtually no power.
When a “democratic” government does an efficient job of maintaining this illusion, the reward can be a power seeker’s dream: the enthusiastic support of a large percentage of the people who are ruled.
The one glimmer of hope is that I believe more and more people are recognizing that “government by the people” has come to mean government by those in power. As just one example, at the same time that unemployment in the private sector has risen dramatically, government jobs have actually increased.
Enough! I’m happy to say that I have a solution to all this, and it’s 100 percent guaranteed to work — for those who are willing to work. The solution is simple: The most powerful stimulus we need from Washington right now is for the government to do nothing. That’s right, nothing!
If there were no bailouts, no spending packages, no new regulations … if government would just get out of the way and stick to the job that we, the people, hired it to do — protect our lives and property — the economy would explode overnight.
But, of course, that isn’t going to happen. Why? Because, in the end, enough shameless Republicans will capitulate. Oh, they’ll make it sound as though they got big concessions from the Democrats, but the final package will still be a political rape of Mr. and Mrs. America.
The reason the Republican Party is on the verge of extinction is because, in the end, a majority of Republicans give in to the intimidation tactics of the left. And the euphemism that most intimidates them is when they are admonished to “reach across the aisle.” The only problem with reaching across the aisle is that the reaching is, for the most part, one-way — right to left.
Compromise sounds like a wonderful virtue until you examine it more closely. How do you compromise between moral and immoral? Between responsible and irresponsible? Between freedom and slavery?
In the real world of politics, compromise is but a euphemism for liberalism … liberalism is a euphemism for Marxism … and Marxism is a euphemism for totalitarian rule. And that is precisely what the liberal fascists (to borrow from the title of Jonah Goldberg’s book) in D.C. are after — total, fascistic rule.
I find it kind of amazing that there are so few conservatives in Congress who are willing to stand up to this threat — a threat that promises to extinguish the centerpiece of the American Dream: liberty.
For all the reasons I’ve previously written about, I expected BHO to move fast to implement his socialist agenda once he got in office. But I didn’t expect him to be as brazen about it as he has been.
And yet, I shouldn’t be surprised, because the man has enormous confidence in his capacity to mesmerize the flock. BHO’s great strength lies in his ability to make a large segment of the population get “a thrill up their leg.” While Adolf Hitler was a more dynamic orator, BHO is a master dispenser of tranquilizers.
Watching him speak to the choir of House Democrats at their annual retreat in Williamsburg, Virginia, I found myself thinking, “Gee, what a nice young man.” Yikes! When I regained consciousness, I almost felt a tingle go up my leg … or was it a tinkle going down my leg?
I was so mesmerized that the thought crossed my mind that perhaps it was time to start buying some Bolshevik memorabilia for my recreation room. Yep, he had me pretty sedated – and I’m a died-in-the-wool conservative-leaning libertarian!
Then, from out of nowhere, the world’s greatest Kool-Aid salesman admonished Congress (i.e., Republicans) to “set aside the gamesmanship in this town and get something done.” Translation: “Stop following your conscience and support my socialist agenda.” Finally, the ever-slick, ever-smooth BHO had blown his cool – and his cover. The bipartisan mask was finally showing some cracks in it.
He then followed up that little snippet with a series of other angry, snide remarks, one of the best of which was, “I found this deficit when I showed up.” And he’s right about that. A pox on the houses of George Bush and Congress for violating the Constitution and bankrupting the nation. But when someone leaves a pile of cow dung on the floor of the Oval Office, the solution isn’t to make the pile bigger.
“We’re not going to get relief by turning back to the very same policies that in eight short years doubled the national debt and threw our economy into a tailspin,” BHO told the House Democrats. “We can’t embrace the losing formula that offers more tax cuts as the only answer to every problem we face.”
And, once again, he was right … partially, that is. He’s right that George Bush and the Congress ran up huge deficits through a drunken orgy of spending. But he’s wrong about the tax cuts. The tax cuts are the part that saved us from an even worse financial crisis than the one we now find ourselves in.
So, what is BHO’s solution? More government spending – far more spending than ever before in our country’s history. Referring to complaints about spending levels in the suicide package now being debated by Congress, BHO said, “Then you get the argument, ‘Well, this is not a stimulus bill. This is a spending bill.’ What do you think a stimulus is? That’s the whole point.”
Very cute … very clever. But what BHO and other big-government advocates don’t understand is that their basic premises are wrong. Their first invalid premise is that government has the moral and/or Constitutional authority to spend your money without your consent. Their second invalid premise is that government spending will “stimulate” the economy.
BHO is, of course, wrong on both counts. That the government has no right to spend your money against your will is morally self-evident, and it certainly is clear that it is constitutionally out of bounds. Yet, those on the left belittle people who oppose them in their illegal pursuits by calling them “obstructionists,” among other things.
Recently, even nice-guy Governor Ed Rendell of Pennsylvania said, “The Republicans should get off this identity kick and get behind the president. We have to come together for the good of the country.” That’s right, forget your identity and support the socialists’ cause instead of sticking to your belief in freedom and the moral sanctity of a capitalistic society.
But morals aside (which is the way collectivists like to approach things), the fact is that government spending does not stimulate the economy. Whether the government taxes, borrows, or prints, its actions always have a negative impact on the country. Only spending by individuals and companies can stimulate the economy.
Finally, BHO reminded his choir in Williamsburg that the American people had “already made their choice in the election.” And they had … at least those who voted. They chose tingling legs over reason and reality. They chose to vote against the most embarrassing Republican presidential candidate of our time. They chose to vote for what they believed was the lesser of two evils. And, yes, many chose white guilt over moral substance.
So, in BHO’s mind, he has a mandate to pursue his socialist agenda – though I think he may now be wondering about that. Millions of foolish, middle-of-the-road voters who gave him a relatively narrow margin of victory (52 percent to 46 percent – just 3 percentage points above a tie!) are now becoming angry – much sooner, quite frankly, than I expected.
And millions more are sure to become even more angry in the months ahead as they come out of their Kool-Aid stupor and realize that the change they are witnessing is not the change they thought they could believe in. They’ll be asking themselves things like: “Yes we can what?” “What kind of new beginning?” “Change America how?”
So, is BHO right when he says that “the people have chosen?” In Part II of this article, I’ll address that question by setting the record straight, once and for all, on the Orwellian notion of “mandate” that politicians so love to bandy about.
As I said at the end of Part I of this article, Dr. Richard Restak, author of The New Brain, maintains that a transformation of the brain can be achieved through sheer determination. Which begs the question: What if your brain isn’t wired to be determined?
This is where one’s experiences and environment come into play. For example, notwithstanding imbecilic arguments to the contrary, what you see and hear around you (such as in movies and on television) has a huge impact on how and what you think about all day long. When people – and children, in particular – see violence, “alternative lifestyles,” and explicit sex on the screen, or hear it by listening to rap-crap, the power of suggestion is planted with each repetition.
So-called intelligence is plastic, because scientific research has shown that experiences cause neuronal circuits to form and become more dense. Therefore, no matter what your age, the more you exercise your brain, the higher the density of the neurons in your frontal cortex – which makes you more “intelligent.” (“General intelligence” is believed to be directly related to the amount of gray matter in the frontal lobes of the brain.)
You and I have heard this repeatedly phrased in laymen’s terms as “Use it or lose it.” The less I write, the more difficult writing becomes. The more I write, the more easily the words fly off the keyboard. From whence comes the definition of a writer as: “A writer is someone who writes. Not now and then, but every day.” The substance of this philosophy is true whatever your profession may be.
The corollary to the “C” Student/”A” Student Theory might well be stated as: In a majority of cases, a student with “A” intelligence who is unwilling to put forth a reasonable amount of effort is likely to achieve “C” results. To me, then, intelligence has more to do with how close you come to performing at your maximum capacity than it does with IQ.
Finally, it’s important to recognize that native intelligence is not nearly as important as such traits as social skills, the ability to persuade, and the willingness to take action. Our universities are overflowing with top-heavy frontal-cortex types who would surely be lost in the real world (i.e., the world beyond the ivy-covered gates guarding a weird mixture of academic pinheads and illiterate semi-pro athletes).
There’s no question that whoever came up with the term “personal best” definitely was on to something. It’s not what you have, but what you do with what you have. No matter how old you are, no matter what your financial condition may be, and no matter how many bad experiences you may have had in your past, it’s never too late to become “smarter.”
You should make a conscious and continuous effort to push your plastic brain to the limit – and beyond – until the day you breathe your last breath. The human brain is the most powerful collection of atoms on earth, but it requires constant exercise.
And what if you’re not motivated to exercise your brain? Good news: You possess an all-powerful trait known as “free will.” Because of free will, you can force yourself to take action, and that action will get the atoms in your plastic brain vibrating at ever-higher rates of speed. And that, in turn, will produce motivation. I guarantee it.
Cognitive science is the study of the brain mechanisms responsible for an individual’s thoughts, moods, decisions, and actions. Cognition refers to everything that takes place in an individual’s brain that helps him understand the world around him. To accomplish such an understanding involves such mental processes as concentration, memory, conceptualization, creativity, and emotions.
In his book The New Brain, Dr. Richard Restak uses the term “plasticity of the new brain” to refer to the capacity of the brain to transform itself. This is an incredibly exciting notion, and one that has endless positive ramifications.
Until recently, it was generally believed that the brain’s plasticity peaked out at young adulthood, if not earlier. But researchers now believe the brain is subject to transformation throughout life, which is why Restak appropriately refers to it as a “lifetime work in progress.”
Now that I’ve become a born-again behavioral modificationist, this makes perfect sense to me. When I was a Freudian laymanologist, I assumed that genetics and childhood experiences set everything in stone. It wasn’t until the headmaster at my son’s school told me that he had based his entire career on his belief in behavioral modification that I allowed myself to consider its merits.
That, in turn, led to my reading Reality Therapy, which I wrote about in a previous two-part article. The essence of that book is that no matter what happened to you in your childhood, no amount of rehashing the past can ever change it. On the other hand, by focusing on being a responsible adult today, you can change the way you feel about yourself, and about life, in the present.
Thus, whether you want to learn a foreign language, how to play tennis, or the techniques for writing good ad copy, you first have to make changes in your brain. And the key to making such changes is repetition, which I have written about many times in the past.
Repetition makes repeated impressions on your brain, but there’s a catch: If the repetitions are wrong (e.g., swinging a golf club incorrectly), you are not going to excel at the skill you have targeted. From whence comes the worn-out but true observation that only an insane person would continue to repeat the same thing over and over again and expect to achieve different results.
Which brings yet another question to the fore: If you continue to get negative results, should you invoke persistence … or is it more sane just to give up and move on to something else? The answer is that you definitely should be persistent, but, based on what you have learned through your experiences, you should try a different methodology.
Restak’s main point is that regardless of how much of success is due to genetics and how much is due to practice, the level of success one achieves is based on the plasticity of the brain. My take on this can be summed up in what I call the “C” Student/”A” Student Theory, which something that seems self-evident to me: In a majority of cases, a student with “C” intelligence who is willing to put forth the required effort can achieve “A” results.
I know this from firsthand experience, because I went from a 0.8 average in college to a 4.0 after a stint in the army. My military experience was so unpleasant that it made an indelible impression on my brain, which in turn caused me to become highly motivated to get good grades.
In other words, my brain’s plasticity made it possible for me to transform my view of the world. It was a cerebral transformation that opened my eyes to the reality that there is more to life than girls, booze, and playing poker. Once I redirected my energy from such trivial pursuits to studying every waking moment that I wasn’t in class, I was able to achieve “A’s” – even in such difficult subjects as physics and organic chemistry.
The plasticity of the brain is why you can accomplish great things without being born with superior intelligence or natural talent. And Dr. Restak maintains that a transformation of the brain can be achieved by sheer determination.
Fair enough, but that begs the question: What if your brain isn’t wired to be determined? We’ll take a look at the answer to that question in Part II of this article.
Ladies and gentlemen, we have sold out. We have sold our souls to the devil … and the devil is big government. Obama doesn’t want to help you – he wants you to desperately crave the government’s help.
He wants you to feel hopeless, helpless, aimless, and clueless, and thereby dependent on government to survive. He wants to slip socialism by you and destroy capitalism while we’re in crisis – while you’re scared and weak – and he hopes you won’t even notice. Not as long as he sends you a check, takes over your bank, protects your mortgage (even if he has to ask government to break the legal contract), educates your children at government-run schools, and gives you a job. Read Full Article
We witness misery every day on our television screens, but when John Travolta’s son died, it pained me in a special way. I could relate to that great photograph of the two of them, nose to nose. You could see how much he loved that boy.
It was just another reminder of one of life’s harshest realities: No one, no matter how rich or famous, escapes the tragedies inherent in human existence. The only thing different about tragedy in the life of a high-profile person is that it feels close to home to the rest of us. That’s because, in a vicarious way, we feel like we know that individual on a personal level. Read Full Article
