When the donut shop on South Main Street opened, I gave it a year at most. In the nearly thirty years we’ve lived here, I’ve seen two donut shops and three bakeries open… and close. After close to ten years, the donut shop is going stronger than ever. It’s open from six in the morning until two in the afternoon.

How did it manage when so many others failed? I’m guessing, but it has several factors going for it. First, its donuts are by far the best in town. Second, it’s open every day of the week. Third, it has a drive-up window that’s relatively easy to access. Fourth, it serves a range of coffee, tea, and smoothie beverages, and fifth, it has a range of baked pastry-type sandwiches [I don’t know how else to describe them] for lunch.

The donuts are slightly more expensive than any others in town, roughly ten percent more.

There is one thing that bothers me, though. Given my schedule, or my wife’s, we’re almost never free to visit the donut shop until it’s close to closing time, and by then, the shop is almost always out of glazed donuts – my wife’s favorite. There are old-fashioned plain and old-fashioned glazed donuts, and chocolate iced donuts, and plenty of glazed donut holes, but no glazed donuts.

Now, the owner has been successful, when so many have failed. So who am I to suggest change?

At the same time, if he’s always out of glazed donuts by one o’clock, and he has left-over donut holes, wouldn’t it make more sense – and dollars – to bake a few more glazed donuts?

Then, maybe he does, and I have the misfortune only to show up when there aren’t any left. And that’s the danger of relying too heavily on personal and anecdotal information.

In the May issue of The Atlantic, entitled “How Social Media Made America Stupid,” Jonathan Haidt offers a critical and provocative insight into how and why the United States has become so “stupid” and politically polarized. Personally, I feel that he doesn’t make the complete case for stupidity, since he seems to ignore the impacts social media has on concentration, depth of knowledge, and other factors, but his analysis of the cause of political polarization is spot on.

In the case of political polarization, there are two main factors. One is, predictably, social media. The other is the nature of group dynamics.

Social media, and features like “share,” “like,” and “retweet,” especially on Facebook and Twitter, allow users to make their views known, and given the algorithms and human nature, particularly negative feelings, which Haidt calls “social darts.” These social darts impact human behavior. When someone is vilified on social media, justly or unjustly, the economic and societal impact can be profound.

Those most active on social media are the most “progressive” liberals, followed by the activist ultra-conservatives. No other groups come close.

Why the social dart mechanism creates political polarization results from group dynamics. Those generally on the left, for example, pay far more attention to the views of those who share many of the same beliefs, usually but not always Democrats, and moderate Democrats who oppose almost any aspect of the “woke” agenda of the progressives can be and are often targeted by the “progressive” liberals.

Republicans largely ignore liberal social darts, except to mock them, but are fearful of expressing views, even views previously expressed by noted Republicans, that would get them vilified as RINOs [Republicans In Name Only].

As a result, the greatest impact of social darts falls within social groups, and because the most active “social darters” are the extremists on both sides, those social darts have the impact of silencing dissenters who in the past have exercised a moderating influence.

Add to that the fact that social media, because of its very structure, oversimplifies complex issues, and the result is that both the “left” and the “right” have become more and more dominated by the simplistic extremes.

In short, no matter how much you blame the other “side,” the real problem lies within your side.

There’s been a certain amount of commentary about “understanding” Putin.

Most of the world understands him quite well. He wants to re-create an authoritarian empire that never worked all that well and couldn’t really be supported by the fifth-rate economy that was all that the Russian political structure would allow.

He’ll also kill or incarcerate anyone who he thinks is a threat, and he’ll try to smash anything that he can if he believes that it stands in his way, just like the overgrown petulant child he is – if an intelligent, ruthless, scheming, and merciless child. Ukraine is just the latest example.

Although authoritarian societies can mass and direct concentrated forces in ways difficult for freer market-based economies, that concentration is inefficient and stifles economic growth and development. That’s one reason why both Russia and China work hard at stealing information and ideas from other nations, particularly the U.S. It’s also why Russia can’t, for example, build sufficient numbers of both military and civilian aircraft, or why it’s actually reliant upon U.S. oil production technology and equipment, and why Russian exports are predominantly either natural resources or agricultural products.

Vlad the invader either doesn’t understand or doesn’t want to accept the fact that comparatively freer market-based economies can out-produce and out-engineer command-and-control societies, even while we “waste” incredible amounts of resources on goods and services others would term frivolous.

The current Chinese leadership certainly does understand the economic limitations of command-and-control governments, which is why that leadership is attempting to create a system of “controlled capitalism.”

But because Putin isn’t about to even try to follow that path, he’ll bleed the Russian people dry in pursuit of his goals. Over the long run, he can’t compete against freer societies, except by destroying them. The problem is that, while he can’t “win” in the long run, right now he can create extreme atrocities and destruction, and with his nuclear arsenal, in the short run, he could make everyone lose.

As a world, several decades ago, we reached the position where the weapons systems we have developed can easily destroy all human civilization and wipe out all but a small fraction of the human race… and possibly all of it. The planet will endure and possibly even recover, over eons, from such destruction, but at a terrible cost.

For the last few decades, the world powers have managed not to unleash such destruction, but now we’re closer to that possibility than ever before. So what has changed?

The idea that mutual assured destruction would avert nuclear calamity rests on a fundamental assumption – that no political leader wants to destroy the world, because such destruction would result in self-annihilation. There’s a sub-assumption behind that premise, which is that political leaders will act rationally, but what’s rational to most people isn’t necessarily rational to those with extremist beliefs.

“Give me liberty or give me death” is a powerful statement, but what about Vladimir Putin’s attitude of, “If you interfere with my attack on Ukraine, I will loose nuclear fury,” and possibly destroy civilization?

Yet the Ukrainians are fighting for freedom, for their liberty, and most likely tens of thousands have already died, just to remain free of Russian control. But if the United States enters that conflict militarily, Putin might well use nuclear weapons. If the U.S. provides defensive weapons that allow Ukraine to force the Russians from Ukraine, or even force a stalemate, might not Putin issue the same threat?

Putin is capable of using tactical nuclear devices. The question is whether he is willing to use them. If he does, then what? If the U.S. replies in kind, so will Putin. And if Europe and the U.S. back down, what happens if he goes after Poland or Finland next?

Once again, the world is faced with a leader who wants to force oppression on others, leading a people unwilling to remove him…but Hitler didn’t have nuclear weapons.

The other evening, I attended a university opera program featuring two Puccini one-act operas. After the production was over, the Dean of the College of Performing Arts spoke to the Director of the Voice and Opera program. Her remarks were largely about the female leads, talking about how talented and impressive they were.

As I’ve mentioned some time back, this sort of talk infuriates me, especially from someone who should know better.

Why? Because the two leading singers she mentioned came to the university several years ago with nice but hardly outstanding voices. The head of the voice area worked with them, and many other students, over that period. They didn’t come as stars, as most singers don’t. It took time and effort and the expertise of the voice professor and others to bring out the best in their voices, but all the dean could rave about was their “talent.”

Singing that well isn’t just talent. It requires not only hard effort on the part of the student but a good technical and artistic voice professor to develop that “star” quality. It requires good accompanists and instruction beyond the mechanics of singing. But that effort by faculty is seldom if ever recognized. It’s as though such “stars” arrived at the university as stars.

This lack of understanding is hardly new. I’ve watched it for nearly thirty years at the university, but it’s not just here. It permeates American culture. The students did it all. The actors or actresses did it all. The athletes did it all.

Behind every “star” is a plethora of individuals who contributed to that “stardom.”

Society isn’t built on stars; it’s built on the people who developed them and who continue to support them. Stars – or billionaires – wouldn’t be possible without that support, and the excessive praise of talent and stardom is just another factor behind the current social unrest and discontent.