Jaber Borran

Category: Society

  • Not Just a Right, But Also a Responsibility

    To those friends of mine who did not listen to their wiser friends and voted for a lunatic communist Marxist in 2024: I kept telling you that voting is not just a right, but also a responsibility, but you laughed at me and told me things like: “what else? now I am responsible for what…

  • Bias Blinds

    Sometimes ago, a friend of mine expressed, with awe and astonishment, that during the Iranian uprising of 2009, he had witnessed very smart and knowledgeable colleagues support Ahmadinejad. And wondered how it would be possible for someone capable of solving very complex problems in their field of expertise, to not see through the deceptions and…

  • You Die, So That I Can Dance!

    Losses are difficult. I don’t have any children and I don’t claim to understand how difficult it can be to lose your child. I don’t mean to be insensitive, or draw any inappropriate parallels or comparisons either. But we have lost two dog boys. And I have felt the physical pain of sadness (yes, physical…

  • Minimum Wages

    My rather extreme liberal political and socio-economic leanings are no secret. But, like most others, I have very close friends with vast amounts of knowledge on different subjects and impeccable critical thinking abilities in their professional field, but somehow obsessed with the following two things: And, in recent years, this obsession has gone insofar as…

  • The Gold Card

    The Trump “Gold Card,” a new, fast-track U.S. residency program is finally launched. It allows wealthy foreigners to “gift” $1 million (or $2 million for corporations) to the government for expedited permanent residency and a path to citizenship. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick stated the program aims to attract “top of the best” immigrants who significantly…

  • Cruelty Is the Point, Not a Side Effect

    USDA emailed grocery stores around the country telling them not to offer special discounts or deals to SNAP recipients amid the freeze, warning that doing so would violate the program’s “Equal Treatment Rule.” That rule requires stores to sell eligible food items to SNAP-EBT customers at the same prices and under the same conditions as…

  • A Ponzi Scheme, or an Insurance Policy?

    So the genius billionaire co-president believes that the Social Security Program is “the biggest Ponzi scheme of all time.” Actually, I take it back. While he may not be as smart as many believe he is, I don’t think he is as dumb as he pretends to be either. I am fairly confident that he…

  • A Democracy in Peril

    The minimum requirement for a democracy to function is that, at every election, each individual voter is able to correctly identify and vote for a person/party whose policies protects that individual’s own interests. Ideally, each individual would be able to determine what is in the best interest of the entire society, and would vote based…

  • Lack of Dialogue, and Extreme Polarization

    I don’t know when sentences like the following started becoming fashion statements: These days, many seem to be taking pride on not talking about political and socioeconomic issues of their societies, and instead talking about sports and celebrities. Not that anything is wrong with talking about sports and celebrities; but I just wonder how “not…

  • Ignorance is Bliss (2)

    My previous post on this topic focused on Trump’s nominations for critical cabinet and other positions in the executive branch. But I didn’t want to miss this opportunity to point out that the expression in the title applies to many other situations as well, one of which relates to a recent and unfortunate encounter I…