Jason Fagan

Absurdities of the week Why would those undocumented protestors now shutting down the 101 in Los Angeles burn the flag of the country in which they are demanding to remain—while waving the flag of the nation to which they apparently have no desire to return? Why here at home do we arrest drug dealers and kingpins for fueling mass opioid addictions, but, in the case of foreign-supplied drugs, claim American addicts are the real problem, but not Mexico and China, which deliberately help to supply, process, or disguise fentanyl to send across an open border- a drug which over the last decade they know has killed more Americans than all Americans killed in our 20th- and 21st-century wars? Why would not Mexico and Canada after years of either laxity or complicity simply not police their side of the borders and stop illegal exits and thus also reduce the supply of lethal drugs entering the U.S. while helping to reduce a bit their massive trade surpluses with the U.S.— over $160 billion in the case of Mexico and $50 billion with Canada—rather than vent over the unfairness of the U.S. seeking some belated and partial symmetry? Was NAFTA designed to smooth out trade imbalances or radically increase them? Why are we to sympathize with those grandees now forced to leave the FBI, or with retired intelligence authorities who knowingly signed a false letter to warp an election and thus are losing their security clearances—when just a few years ago they did their  best to weaponize and politicize hallowed intelligence and investigatory agencies? Should we not care more about restoring the lost reputations of agencies than the feelings of those who helped destroy them? Why is it legitimate for Los Angeles city and county agencies or the FAA for years to boast about the decisive role of DEI in their hiring, promotion, and retention, but suddenly it becomes illegitimate to even  question whether such emphases had the effect of diminishing meritocracy and with it life-saving effectiveness? Who are the real illiberal and the culpable— those throughout history who privilege  race, sex, and sexual orientation as essential prerequisites or those who see them as incidental not essential to our individual characters and identities?