The Long Way Home 5.15.26

Do you ever notice how podcasters, cable news commentators, politicians, and other agitators make some absurd, illogical, or false statement, followed by, “I’m just asking questions?” What a cop out. For losers like me who pay attention to those scoundrels, we consider them to be “JAQing off” (Just Asking Questions). Trouble is, their loyal followers simply assert the same BS and engage in their own JAQing off. 

To gain clicks and followers and get the rest of us pissed off, they avoid the burden of proof and hide from facing accusations of spreading misinformation. By ending with "I’m just asking the question," a podcaster, talking head, or politician thinks they can sidestep a challenging backlash. If you get the chance to question or correct them, they can pivot to, "Why are you so defensive? I didn't say it was true, I just asked if it was possible!"

We, the people, have probably practiced this diversion since the beginning of time. It worked to an extent when we were kids who got into a spot of trouble. So I’m just JAQing here, why do we put up with it from adults? 

Yes, I’m just asking the question.

Now, I have a few questions of my own. I’m pretty sure they aren’t misinformation, but feel free to engage in a bit of challenging backlash.

Almost three-fourths of adult Americans are in the Overweight and Obese categories according to the Centers for Disease Control and the World Health Organization. As a septuagenarian in that majority, my question is, why haven’t all the profit-making weight loss programs, books, and videos failed to make a dent in how many overweight people there are? This pattern of widespread issues despite countless solutions repeats across areas like anxiety and workplace dissatisfaction.

As a skinny kid, with a dad whose nickname was Fats from childhood, I still never thought much about my weight. By my late 20s, though, I found myself buying pants with longer waistbands, likely because of too many butter-soaked popovers and too much beer. 

So I searched far and wide for a way to lose about 30 pounds and found a for-profit “medical” tactic that promised results. It required a daily visit to a storefront clinic to get on the scale and see if my weight was coming off, whilst peeing on a strip of paper to make sure that I had evidence I was throwing off ketones. My daily diet was restricted to 800 calories, if you can imagine that for a young man. I also played racquetball daily (remember when that was a thing to keep from getting handball bruises?). With 800 calories and five days a week of racquetball, I lost 30 pounds and a few hundred dollars for the “medical” help in less than a month.

The weight stayed off for a year or two, but butter-soaked popovers and alcohol gradually put it back on.

So my statement, and I’m JAQing if you want to challenge me, the weight reduction money-making fads like Weight Watchers, diets like Atkins, and Caveman, and now pills like Ozempic have made no reduction in obesity overall. More than 1,000 new diet and weight loss books are published in the U.S. each year, and they don’t seem to do any more than make money for publishers, speakers, and seminar givers. 

In a similar vein, Americans report a far higher level of anxiety today than they did a quarter century ago. Estimates of Generalized Anxiety Disorder (GAD) were around 3% in the early 2000s. Today, about 19% of adults are diagnosed with an anxiety disorder each year.

Although books published in the self-help genre jumped from fewer than 4,000 a year at the turn of the century to about 85,000 titles annually by 2020, add in the large number of so-called retreats and seminars, and you might conclude that those books and presentations have not been effective in reducing anxiety.

Roughly half of all workers today are dissatisfied with their managers, a figure that has remained relatively consistent for three decades. It’s estimated that more than 10,000 books focused on leadership/management are published each year, yet they don’t seem to make a dent in the number of dissatisfied workers. Throw in the number of management seminars, “team” meetings, and TED Talks, and you have to wonder how effective these investments really are. 

Remember, I’m just asking. 

The persistent issues of excess weight, anxiety, and bad management may not be solvable through external programs alone. Lasting solutions require both individual commitment and action, rather than reliance on quick fixes. The old pick yourself up by the bootstraps philosophy. So, just asking here, if we stop buying the books and stop listening to the "scoundrels," what would we do with all that extra time and money?