Asking questions...hmmm...what's wrong with me? Well, let's see...

   Socrates (source: Jastrow, Wiki Commons, public domain)

Here in the Magyarország I have this Leftist friend who's always on me about Trump, or private enterprise (she has a Charles Dickensish view of Capitalists), or Global Warming. Oh, she's a great person and lot's of fun, and enjoys the needling, which I'm glad to get because few people will engage me.

So we've been having some hot weather here, and it actually got up to 100 F for a bit. She emailed just as the weather was beginning to change yesterday, "Hot enough for ya?" That's basically chanting the refrain, "Global Warming! Global Warming!" And she's strongly suggested I’m blind to reality. So I emailed her this link:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_heat_waves (My own grandmother, my mother's mother, Katherine Fannan Tracy, died in the July, 1934 heatwave there in Columbus.)

Anyway, guess what? Now, within about 6 hours, it went from 95F to about 73F (23 C), which is what it is right now at noonish on Monday. So we went from a classic August to mid-October overnight. (Isn't that so like Ohio weather? Ohio Weather Saying, "If you don't like the weather, just wait it bit; it'll change.") Of course, it's all about what is climate and what is weather. But that's a bit too nuanced for some.

I bet if I email her now, she'll chant, "Climate change! Climate change!"

   Palermo Socrates (Wilson Delgado - Own work; offered for pubic domain)

So what's wrong with me? Why can't I just believe my "betters"?

• Oh, we have to elect Felonia von Pantsuit prez because Trump is a crook.
• That Obama was "the smartest man ever to be president" but somehow he would never let his grade transcripts be published.
• That we just have to accept tens of millions of poor, uneducated Meso-Americanos into the U.S. and tens of millions of poor, uneducated, 20-somethings in age Muslim males into Europe (all that while technology is widely expected to climate tens of millions of both white collar and blue collar jobs in the "developed" countries).

Etc.

Or...

• Why do I believe unborn babies are human with the right to life or that no one has a right to off himself when he feels like it?
• Why don't I believe Bergoglio is the Second Coming and Robert Mueller is unbiased?
• That Trump is the Devil and Obama walks on water?
• That the Vatican II Reformata Eucharistic service is better than the Rite of Saint Gregory the Great?
• That it was right to "silent coup" Nixon out of the White House but to leave LBJ in office crucifying us with his micro-managed Vietnam War because Lyndon used the FBI to do what Nixon's people hired "the Plumbers" to do?
• Or for that two men (or three women or whatever combo) can "marry" one another or that Bruce Jenner is now a "woman"?

Etc, etc., ad nauseum.

What's wrong with me?

This is: I learned the central lesson of my old friend Socrates too well. "The unexamined life isn't worth living." That's my problem. That, and his teaching (and the ancient Jewish teaching) that reality is objectively real, and not illusion, or "maya", as the Buddhist claim: from Wikipedia: Māyā is also a spiritual concept connoting "that which exists, but is constantly changing and thus is spiritually unreal", and the "power or the principle that conceals the true character of spiritual reality".).

Trust me, it was worth learning.

 An Préachán