Minneapolis Burning

Never forget what Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frye said in 2020 after protesters burned the 3rd Precinct down:

"What we’ve seen over the last two days and the emotion-ridden conflict over last night is the result of so much built-up anger and sadness. Anger and sadness that has been ingrained in our Black community, not just because of five minutes of horror, but 400 years."

He added that the collective grief and anger were "not only understandable, it's right"

Empathy Weaponized

Written by Jerry Wheeler, LMHC, NCC. 

It comes from his essay titled "Weaponized Empathy", which was published on his Substack newsletter on February 1, 2026. In the piece, Wheeler explores how evolutionary biology, modern media, and political messaging interact with the human nervous system, arguing that psychological traits like empathy can be systematically exploited to bypass logic and create sudden political urgency.

Not rational fear—the kind you’d expect in war or when facing a wild animal—but fear of imagined conditions, abstract threats, and constructed enemies. 

This is sadistic, malevolent manipulation by political sociopaths in pursuit of power. That manipulation works because there are millions of people who have undergone arrested adulthood, and many more who, despite being chronologically adult, lack the ability to recognize or regulate their emotions well enough to engage in reasoned conversation. They retain adolescent emotional reactivity while being granted adult moral authority.

Compassion is different. Compassion recognizes suffering while maintaining psychological distance. Instead of activating distress circuits, it engages regulatory systems in the brain. The result is calm focus, preserved judgment, and sustained motivation to help. Empathy floods. Compassion steadies. Modern political messaging overwhelmingly aims for empathy, not compassion, because empathy creates urgency while compassion preserves clarity.

Flooded minds don’t ask about incentives, second-order effects, or long-term consequences. They ask a single question: how do we stop this feeling right now? That’s when urgency and moral absolutism enter. Action must be immediate. Hesitation becomes cruelty, nuance becomes complicity and deliberation is replaced by moral pressure.

This is where arrested adulthood becomes politically useful. People who never fully developed emotional regulation respond to distress the way children do: urgently, absolutely, and without proportional reasoning. Their feelings become their facts.

Empathy without regulation becomes hysteria and regulation without concern becomes cruelty.

Every issue is framed as an emergency. Every disagreement becomes a referendum on virtue. Modern politics favors this because emotionally flooded populations are easier to mobilize, easier to shame, and easier to steer.

College Tuition in the Age of Inclusiveness.

Was shocked to see that tuition at my Ala Mater, Gustavus Adolphus College this year was a whopping $73K per year. I attended and got degrees from both Gustavus (family legacy & St. Peter connection) and South Dakota State University. Back then tuition at GAC was $4,300 and $2,000 of that was paid in grants. SDSU was like $1,200 a semster in 1983. If you truly want to be "inclusive" denizens, of higher education, maybe work on the those tuition costs!

State schools give you the exact same curriculum in core class offerings at half the cost, and even they are too expensive.

I worked for 34 years as a Manufacturing, Control Systems and Automation Engineer at companies like Excel Energy, 3M, BF Goodrich Aerospace and Rosemount Engineering. We used "Six-Sigma" and "Lean Manufacturing" concepts (value stream mapping, 5-why, etc.) to reduce waste and increase value.

Today's educational institutions need to seriously look at reducing cost and adding value and GETTING RID OF WASTE. Hopefully, you as school presidents will engage in some serious thought and then ACTION (and not just touring around asking for opinions -- you should have the experience to make those tough choices and good decisions based on what you already know and have learned in the past) to make college education more affordable for average income, in-state (Minnesota) students.

Ownership of the Black Hills

The Sioux moved into the Black Hills area in 1765 after getting beat in battle and displaced from Minnesota by the Ojibway. So, they held the Black Hills area for a little over 100 years. The original residents were the Arikaree and many other indigenous tribes (including the Cheyenne), before the Sioux displaced them. Ownership in any land is temporary and fleeting, any any claims to eternal ownership are folly.

The Lakota are from Minnesota and were displaced from there by the Ojibway in 1765. They chased the Arikaree out of the Black Hills who lived there before them. They only lived in the Black Hills for 100 years before Custer discovered gold there in 1865. They don't own the Black Hills and never will.

Flyfishing - The Madison and Other Romantic Passing Fads.

Don't even try. Its a lifelong pursuit, not a passing fad hobby. 

Fly casting, entemology, expense, technical complexity, equipment cost and complexity.  Forget it. 

You will never achieve efficiency much less mastery.

Protectionism

 Of course you want reparations! That's the new "american way". I was thrilled and and proponent of the tariffs to support American manufacturing, having been an engineer in manufacturing plants for the last 40 years. 

I've lived though Clinton's NAFTA disaster in the 90's, supply chains misguided global outsourcing in the 2000's, and the list goes on. It's not "Protectionism" -- it's recognizing your key competencies and sticking to them. American engineering and American manufacturing has always been a factor in making our country great. 

I remember personally building a manufacturing cell in the late 80's that was to be placed in Bejing China. We spent countless hours dealing with remote manufacturing in a foreign country. For what? Cheaper labor rates with a workforce that didn't share our commitment or priorities. Then, Tiananmen Square happened and the Chinese government decided that all the equipment we sent over there was now their property. 

It's easy to be an "arm-chair" economist spouting anti-Protectionist rhetoric. Unfortunately, you and those like you perhaps don't see or understand what makes America unique and great.

A knee jerk reaction to any thing done by the current administration. Enlighten me why the compulsive need for "broad-based " reinvestment? Fake argument. The tariffs intent is to stimulate reinvestment by domestic corporations in manufacturing in the United States.  It's as simple as that. Any other argument is just pseudo academic blowing of your own gaslit smoke. Sorry you can't get past the whole Trump Derangement Syndrome triggered psychosis.

Democratic Socialism

Excessive liberal virtue signaling to compensate for their passive-agressive need to feel superior that is fueled by deep seated white angst shame created by liberal media.

"The vocabulary of the political left is fascinating. For example, it is considered to be 'materialistic' and 'greedy' to want to keep what you have earned. But it is 'idealistic' to want to take away what someone else has earned and spend it for your own political benefit or to feel good about yourself" (virtue signaling) ~ Thomas Sowell

The Liberal Leftist Bible is "The Antifa Handbook" written by Mark Bray, a faculty member at Rutgers University that was suspended for his radical woke ideology. 

That book is the "How" for modern Leftist ideology. That's why your benevolent Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison likes to be photographed with it with his patented "smirk". 

"The Communist Manifesto" is the "Why". 

If you're a so-called Democratic Socialist and don't think you embrace communist ideals, you're a pawn that doesn't know where the world's elite are leading you. Their motto is "You will own nothing, and be happy for it". Just ask Klaus Schwab of the world economic forum. He coined that phrase. He also advocated that the masses should learn to eat bugs. 

Your entire Minneapolis City Council is Socialist-Communist for God's sakes (5 are Democratic-socialists, 2 are outright Communists)!

In Minnesota, this is evident by the excessive liberal virtue signaling. And bon apetit on the bug eating!

Most liberals dont read those books, but their masters do. You see, they pick your pet cause, be it lbgtq because you have a gay child, or immigrant because you have an undocumented neighbor you like, or you're  an illegal that wants free stuff, or you have daddy issues and want the government to "take care or you". Or, you like to smoke weed and support legalization of marijuana The list goes on and on, but typically you are really only interested in your single-minded cause. The media and your leaders promote paranoia about those individual causes and advocate division. Eventually, you become radicalized and obsessed with that one driving issue. Blinders ensue on all other liberal nonsense. Where is this approach detailed? The Antifa Handbook. But i didnt read that you exclaim! No but your masters did for you. You are a puppet, but you think you are a noble change maker. Socialist doctrine is as old as the last century. Progressivism is a tired old joke.