The older I get, the less I believe. If there were such a thing as a Believer Quotient, a BQ as in IQ, I would have, on most subjects, an ever-descending score.

Years ago, I believed in a vast array of professional people. My BQ for politicians, journalists, pill makers, advertisers, doctors, teachers, rabbis, priests, ministers, generals, policemen, college professors, and other traditional authority figures was quite high. It was also high for milk, salt, steaks, liver, butter, cream, peanuts, white bread, fried items, and a long menu of foods my mother deemed essential for a growing boy.

Actually my BQ for my mother’s and father’s advice on most subjects was very very high. Of all losses on my BQ over time the advice of my parents has declined little over the years. Perhaps it was because they gave me so little advice. They never helped me with my homework, nor was it expected. Nor did they proffer advice on the most intimate of subjects about the birds and the bees. My father would have been too embarrassed to broach the subject and my mother would consider such a discussion in the same category as a dirty joke.

I knew, of course, without ever being prompted or told so repeatedly that I was a loved child, which probably saved me thousands of dollars in therapy expenses. I knew, too, that anything I chose to do with my life that was not destructive to my health or welfare would be okay with them. I sensed that they expected me to do pretty well in life and I think I didn’t let them down. My BQ for my parents would figure today at a hefty 95%.
In general, my BQ for advertisements during my formative years was pretty high. I believed that eating Wheaties for breakfast would make me a champion and that more doctors and celebrities like Ronald Reagan chose Chesterfields and that Johnny was calling us all to smoke Philip Morris and that smokers might indeed walk a mile for a Camel. My BQ for that dangerous stupidity went minus forty years ago.

If one were to judge my BQ for advertisements in general, an observation of my use of the mute button on my TV remote will give one some idea of the extent of my skepticism.

As for politicians, I was a depression baby and believed every word I heard from Franklin Delano Roosevelt. He was the only President I knew for more than 12 of my most formative years and I believed him implicitly. History has not been kind to his legacy, but it would be difficult to shake my belief in him. Despite the rise in his negatives I still give him a 90% BQ.

For politicians it has been downhill from there, an ever-declining spiral. I lived in Washington for more than thirty years, knew many politicians and worked in local, state and national campaigns. I watched and helped make the political sausage. Actually, I used to have a fairly high BQ when the Congress was run by Lyndon Johnson and Sam Rayburn. It was high when Harry Truman was President and continued under Eisenhower. Sometime around the late Sixties it began to slip precipitously, although there was some rejuvenation when Reagan became President.

After the days of Johnson and Carter in the White House I was beginning to have serious second thoughts. I think my political BQ dropped to around 50%, then bounced with Reagan to about 60%, dropped again with Clinton to a solid 25% based almost entirely on his contorted definition of oral sex not being sex. I give Bush a BQ of about 50% and have hit a low point with our present occupant of the White House. I think it’s gone to around about 30% now, but that may be because his campaign promises and unrealistic pandering were so blatantly impossible to accomplish that his governing seems inept and clueless. Nevertheless, I will keep an open mind.

As for Congress, their members appear so pitifully petty, partisan and incompetent that I cannot find any reason to bring my Congressional BQ to more than 10%. And considering the corrupt practices employed on the health care bill, I think I might be giving them a higher BQ than they deserve.

Journalists, too, have suffered a disastrous decline in BQ. I used to believe strongly in the reporting of journalists such as Walter Cronkite and Walter Lippmann. Indeed, I used to have a high BQ in the newspapers and TV I read or saw earlier in my life, especially The New York Times. I truly felt I was getting all the news that was fit to print. I also read the late New York Herald Tribune and generally believed what it reported and did not feel manipulated by hidden agendas. In those days, I’d put my BQ for the Times and the Tribune at a cool 90%.

My BQ today for The New York Times and for most, but not all, journalists has bottomed out at about 25%. I can spot their personal and political agendas in a New York minute. Their agendas are so blatant and transparent that I often marvel at their self-righteousness. Their criticism of the personal agendas of others is almost laughable. I would insist that they reveal their book contracts and other outside income spigots before criticizing the hidden agendas of others. Even those who reveal and promote their outside enterprises seem smarmy and sinister. This goes for the left, right and middle.

My BQ for doctors is beginning to decline. The family doctor who came to my house with his black medical bag in tow brought with him a BQ of 100%. Although I do admire their willingness, sincerity and inherent idealism, I think doctors today are so buffeted by Government fiat, overworked and underpaid, that events have transpired to bring their BQ down by half, say about 50%, most of it not their fault. The pill pushing industry insults our intelligence with their television ads urging us to “tell our doctor” about their latest pill when I always believed that it was our doctor who was supposed to tell us what drugs were good for us.

As for foods, I know from my advertising days that the foods you see on TV are doctored by experts to make them look photogenic, although those in the TV studios know these foods are inedible. Warnings abound about various foods that are hazardous to our health like fats that clog our arteries, fruit grown in countries with lax laws, and preservative chemicals that saturate foods to give them longer shelf lives.

My BQ for food products is down about half from when I was a kid and ate my fill of frankfurters, hamburgers, steak, liver, creamy milk, excessive sugar in food and candy and lots and lots of salty stuff. My BQ for food in general might be down by half, but boy do I miss all those great foods of bygone days. Statistics attest to the fact that we are living longer and many experts believe that we do partly because we avoid all those food items that are bad for us. I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt and, on second thought, raise their BQ to 60%.

Actually my BQ for food advice from nutritionists and cardiologists about exercise as a factor has actually increased with each passing year. I know it sounds like a paradox as I meet people in their nineties who imbibe all the no-nos and survive robustly, some into their hundreds. My BQ for so-called healthy foods is about 75% but I do hope that someday, scientists will come up with indisputable evidence that red meat, vegetables like creamed spinach, salty snacks, sugared candy and very very modest exercise are actually longevity enhancing.

In areas inhabited by military people, my BQ might be suspect, but having participated in at least one of the many wars in my lifetime, my BQ has declined somewhat largely because of the restrictions required by our military whose efficiency is inhibited by political considerations in our recent wars. My BQ for Eisenhower and Marshall was 100% until I delved somewhat deeper into the history and military mistakes of that good war.

Nevertheless I maintain a BQ of 75% of military leaders, down from 100%. As for our combat soldiers I have always maintained a solid BQ of 100%.

I admit to being somewhat conflicted about my BQ in the matter of theologians. As a child, I gave my guys, the Rabbis, a BQ of 100%, but less for those of other faiths. In those days tolerance was the watchword and I might have felt some guilt about judging them a few clicks lesser on my BQ scale. As a group, their BQs have gone down by 50% over the years although I will always hold out the possibility that they may have it right and I am admittedly too frightened to give them a lesser score. On the matter of Imam’s, I’ll pass on that one since the reward of 70 virgins in heaven seems more of a giant headache than something to be desired.

As for college Professors, I used to have a very high BQ for most of them, certainly for those that inspired me by their dedication and personal influence on my own life. Because so many of them have been corrupted by political agendas and the desire for celebrity, I give them an aggregate BQ of 60%.

I could, of course, go on and on, but I’m certain the reader gets the point. Having seen, as they say, déjà vu all over again, my skepticism, like my wrinkles, is well earned. I have discovered that a lifetime of keen and deliberate observation increases one’s ability to see through all the bullshit and does, indeed, increase the accuracy of my BQ scores.

Oh yes, for my fantasy life and my happier dreams, I give them a 100% BQ.