Every year from about age eleven, I bought the World Almanac of Facts each year as soon as it came out. I wore it out, too. In 1953 I could tell you that the area of the United States was 3,022,387 square miles.

Also in 1953 I got my first Amateur Radio license. Hams were the first geeks. I wonder how many people know that in the first years of its existence, Radio Shack was entirely a ham radio term which referred to the shack in which we had our stations? Though in fact few of us could afford a shack or the equipment to fill it.

I no longer have a ham license or a World Almanac. The world has moved on. If you needed facts back then, you used your Almanac, your out-of-date encyclopedia, or a trip to the library. Because of this factual errors were a major problem, even in everyday conversation.

ACCEPTED factual errors, like “Modern anthropologists have proved that all races are equal in inherited abilities.” Only those with newspapers or pull with the FCC could contradict that kind of thing. “Roosevelt ended the Depression with the New Deal” was the kind of thing the much-worshiped Edward R. Murrow would say. And though every economist knew the Depression was sill in fill swing in 1939, no one had any INCENTIVE to make it public.

Big media HATE the Internet. They are just now being forced to recognize the blogs and the twitter.

It certainly wasn’t “twitter” when Edward R. Murrow or Walter Cronkite or their thousands of acolytes pronounced it. It was Opinion back then. Does anyone now remember the sour faces News Commentators had when they would talk about cable networks or even Internet sites like Drudge daring to say what THEY thought?

The new media have DESTROYED the anti-gun mindset. I remember in the 1960s when the skyrocketing crime rate was mentioned, there was not even a pause for transition. All the Official Commentators would say, “We are TRYING to pass gun control legislation.” No other means of dealing with crime was even MENTIONED back then in the national media.

This is why it is so easy to be hopeless today. No one REMEMBERS these changes.

Rule One: You can’t PLAN if you don’t REMEMBER.

No one remembers that for 30 years, until 1964, the maximum income tax rate was NINETY-ONE PERCENT. Walter Cronkite types made it perfectly clear that anyone who opposed this was an agent for the plutocracy.

Naturally the plutocracy never paid 91%. Professional boxers or people who struck it rich paid it, and damned few of THEM. But this was not part of Opinion. There was no way to disagree. When Opinion stood for something crazy, there was nowhere to call it crazy.

Now there is. And the Opinion I remember so well has been cut to pieces. I remember very well when rent control was inevitable, and New York had led the way. Now it is a question of when New York will get rid of it, despite the Media Elite Center people who depend on it.

In the 1950s and 60s , the entire United States between New York and San Francisco was OPENLY known as “flyover country.” They were just people who had not yet caught up with Opinion. Now those who regularly called it “flyover country” deny they ever heard of the term.

They still try to dismiss opinion with a haughty attitude, but fewer people listen to them every day. It is a new age, a new age we are working in on BUGS. We can plan because we REMEMBER.