Welcome to 2022

Tis the season, Ho Ho Ho.  So, says Mr. Manchin, who thinks we cannot afford to give low-income parents some more money, because they would just spend it on drugs. Well, you know how those low-income folks are. Give’m a few bucks and they are off on yet another MaryJane binge.  And, although we can seemingly afford ¾ of a Trillion dollars to give our Military more hardware, we surely cannot afford to repair our broken infrastructure. Wouldn’t Ike (he who built the Interstate highway system) be pleased with Joe?  Bet old Manchin would like to reduce the tax rates on himself and his super rich buds.

Now how, pray tell, did the likes of Joe Manchin ever attract the votes of working-class folks in his home state of West Virginia?  Yeah, all those coal miners must really love Joe.  I assume they are the same middle to lower class folks who insist on supporting Donald Trump.

And therein lies the dilemma of 21^st century America, that formerly strong, even powerful, nation that is currently breaking apart.  If we continue on our present course, The United States of America may well disintegrate into a dozen or more pretend states, states that owe no allegiance to Washington.  But to whom do those pretend states owe any allegiance? Well, all I can figure is that the folks who reside within these separatist states, like anyone who pretends to hate the “centralists” in Washington.  In particular, they seem to really get off on anyone who lies to them, promising them a wondrous future.

I imagine that people like Joe Manchin, Marjorie Taylor Greene (of Jewish Space Laser fame), Mitch McConnell . . . you know that crowd beloved by Fox News, seem to the folks who now vote in these separatist states as the saviors of their country (you know, West Virginia). Their money will no longer flow to fund abortions, or those awful public schools, or to people on welfare, or especially to the awful immigrants invading our country from the South.  Instead their money will go to expand the mines, create bigger prisons for the illegals, maybe even fund some private religious schools.

And the folks now governing, like Joe Biden and Kamala Harris? Well, those people are now defined as “The Problem”. I mean, Joe once agreed to actually work for a Black Man, that Obama creature who we all know was born in Kenya and ruled illegally, followed by Joe who stole the election away from Trump.  And who did Joe pick for the Number Two position—a WOMAN for God’s sake. And SHE only listens to creatures like that AOC, after which she poisons Joe’s mind with drivel from the Far Left.

And so, the only thing left to do is to oppose everything Joe and his criminal gang want to do. If Joe Biden is proposing something, it must be opposed by the forces of Fox News.  And on and on it goes.  I imagine, should Manchin actually lose an election in his separatist state, Fox News has already agreed to hire him. Maybe he can replace that Christ Wallace traitor.

And so, day by day, America continues to fracture, with armed insurrectionists working each day to separate white lower and middle class voters from the rest of the Nation. Whether we reach another 1860 is still a real possibility, given the heavily armed nature of the ultra-right wing in our poor benighted country.  Maybe in retrospect, 2021 will begin to look like the last days of a still rational America.

Welcome to 2022.

I will have to see how the coming year shapes up, before I determine whether I will be able to continue writing my drivel that poses for a blog.  We have an election of sorts arriving near the end of 2022. And although it is not a biggie presidential thingie, it may well be even more important, by defining who controls life at the state and local levels. It is at those levels that voting rights are currently being corrupted by republicans. If the state and local votes swing in their favor, then it may really be all over for America.

So, People of America, regardless of your pretend political affiliation, it is all up to you now. If you really do like the Joe Manchin’s and Mitch McConnell’s of this world, and you want to continue hearing from Taylor-Green, Boebert, et al, then vote away.  If you think those idiot-malenfants supported by Fox News, will actually destroy America, then you better attend the elections, and vote for the other folks. It’s really all up to you. So, welcome to 2022 Americans. This may be your last chance to call yourselves Americans. 

Social Media & Guns

 I have been listening to reports of outrage against Instagram, because of its adverse effects on teenage girls.  And the outrage seems widespread and fierce. Instagram, it turns out, is singlehandedly responsible for the angst felt by all teenage girls, which evidently is pervasive. Teenage girls everywhere are being body-shamed daily, and all because of Instagram.  Here’s one report:

“Thirty-two percent of teen girls said that when they felt bad about their bodies, Instagram made them feel worse,” as The Wall Street Journal reported. (Ms. Haugen provided internal documents to The Journal from Facebook, which owns Instagram.)

What exactly are we talking about here? Say you’re a 13-year-old girl who is beginning to feel anxious about your appearance, who has followed some diet influencers online. Instagram’s algorithm might suggest more extreme dieting accounts with names such as “Eternally starved,” “I have to be thin” and “I want to be perfect.”

In an interview with “60 Minutes,” Ms. Haugen called this “tragic.” “As these young women begin to consume this eating disorder content, they get more and more depressed,” she said. “It actually makes them use the app more. And so they end up in this feedback cycle where they hate their bodies more and more.”

So, see, it’s all the fault of Instagram. Teenage girls and their parents simply cannot cope and are incapable of fighting off this awful social media mess called Instagram.  I now realize that teenage girls have literally no control over their bodies, are deeply ashamed of those bodies and are incapable of resisting the lures of this social media technology that has been designed expressly to make them feel worse about their shameful bodies.

So, of course the parents and their daughters are outraged that Mark Zuckerberg refuses to take any meaningful action to lessen the damage being done by Instagram.  Here, from a Manchester Guardian article on a new bill being introduced by the British government to regulate the social media empire:

“. . . a key feature of the online safety bill will be its provisions on regulating the algorithms that constantly tailor and tweak what you view according to your perceived needs and tastes – and can push teenage girls into that vortex of esteem-damaging content. “There is a lot to be done about algorithms and AI [artificial intelligence].”

Beeban Kidron, the crossbench peer who sits on the joint committee into the online safety bill and was behind the recent introduction of a children’s privacy code, says Ofcom, the UK communications watchdog, will have a vital role in scrutinising algorithms.

“The value in algorithmic oversight for regulators, is that the decisions that tech companies make will become transparent, including decisions like FB took to allow Instagram to target teenage girls with images and features that ended in anxiety, depression and suicidal thoughts. Algorithmic oversight is the key to society wrestling back some control.”

A spokesperson for the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport says the bill will address those concerns. “As part of their duty of care, companies will need to mitigate the risks of their algorithms promoting illegal or harmful content, particularly to children. Ofcom will have a range of powers to ensure they do this, including the ability to request information and enter companies’ premises to access data and equipment.”

Apparently, all social media sites use algorithms to tweak what you see, based on what you seem to like. So, if you keep “liking” postings by Nazi’s, social media sites like Facebook will expand the amount of content you see from prominent republicans and gasbags like Marjorie Taylor Green, or Matt Gaetz.  On Instagram, the algorithms expand content that includes pictures and other media content that plays into a teenage girl’s interest in diminishing her own personal value, especially as that relates to her personal body image.  Evidently teens themselves and their parents are either incapable or unwilling to turn off harmful content. So, in this case, the government is intervening to regulate the algorithms processes, so as to reduce the damage being done to teens’ self interests.

Now, throughout this whole argument, what I see is a shifting of the blame for damage being done to teen girls to Zuckerberg et al.  Parents and the girls evidently lack any tools to control their behavior, and so none of this is their fault.  I don’t know, but I begin to detect a problem here.

And then we switch tracks to guns. Think Mr. Rittenhouse. He obtains illegally an automatic weapon that would normally be reserved for use in wars in places like Afghanistan. Then, with his mom’s permission, he travels across state lines to participate in a riot, with the aim of “protecting” private business interests. In the course of doing that, he manages to shoot three people, killing two. And not only does he get acquitted in a court of law, by a jury of his peers, but he then is elevated to honorific status by republican legislators, who wish to treat him as a person of good moral character, who acted completely ethically in protecting American private business from the predations of an unruly mob, one which our official law and order folks were incapable of constraining. No, it really required an illegally armed 17 year old to contain the mob.

And then we have another young kid, who arms himself, walks into a school and shoots his teenage school comrades.  He had been removed from his classroom earlier because of some of his writings about guns. His parents were contacted, they came to school, but they refused to take the boy home with them, leaving him to his own devices at school, after which he proceeded to shoot up the school.

This awful incident is but one of too many school shootings and other mass shooting events in this pseudo-civilized nation we call America. And I continue to await the cries of greater regulatory/legal controls over the NRA, the gun lobby and the whole issue of gun purchasing and ownership.  No, instead we roar our discontent about social media places like Instagram that promotes body shaming of teenage girls. Parents and teenage girls apparently play no role in this outrage. But on guns? Heavens, we cannot regulate guns. There’s that Holy second amendment thing. We cannot regulate guns, or gun carnage, but we certainly can and should regulate social media sites that damage teenage girls’ self-esteem.

What a place in which we live.

The End of America?

 A friend from Australia is currently writing a book about America. He refers to our plight as an “Enigma”.

He has both lived and worked here, although not for many years. He lived here when we still seemed a viable Nation, even a reasonable place to call home.  But now, he sees our flaws eating away at our very core, and he fears for the future viability of this place we call America. He is hoping that there are solutions for our problems, although he hasn’t yet reached that section in his book.

I have been thinking of the same subject for some time now, but really ever since Donald Trump appeared within the room we call home.  The trouble is that the problems I detect in our nation now seem so profound and so large that I fear we have passed by any chance of a solution.  What I see and now imagine is a continued fracturing of our society to a point at which recovery is no longer available. And I don’t know what happens at that stage. I suppose the most likely outcome is an autocracy. Someone comes along—think someone of the ilk of Donald Trump, or Greg Abbott, or Ron DeSantis, or even that idiot-malenfant Josh Hawley. That someone doesn’t have to be particularly smart. He only needs to appeal to the very large horde of right wing horror tales we now house in this country, stupid to the core and heavily armed.

The “not very smart thing” is, I think, of recent origin, if we can count Ronald Reagan as being included within the “recent origin” period.  I grew up during the 1930s and 1940s in New York City.  I only remember FDR as our very first US President.  The apparent idiot before him, Herbert Hoover is not really on my memory radar screen. From Wikipedia, “ . . . Hoover is often regarded as a below-average U.S. president, and most polls of historians and political scientists rank him in the bottom third overall.” But I remember Hoover, a Stanford graduate, from the “Hoover Tower” at Stanford, widely known on campus as “Hoover’s Last Erection”.

FDR, after all, was the President who guided the Nation out of that Great Depression, which Hoover largely seemed to have ignored, assuming it would go away all by itself.  FDR, instead, actually took action, to invest in America, helping to arrest that Depression, just prior to ending it for good with our entry into World War II.

But if FDR was my earliest memory of a President, certainly my first memory of an idiot President has to be Ronald Reagan, or St. Ronald of Reagan as I now like to call him.  I worked briefly in the Government during his Presidency, leaving after six years when I feared going braindead.  Reagan really did seem . . . hmm . . .  perhaps of “less than normal intelligence”.  He really did not seem to know what he was doing most of the time. Plus he surrounded himself with people of questionable intellect and dubious ethical standards.  But that’s just my opinion, and what do I know?

But after Reagan, we elected, sort of, George W. Bush. If ever an election was “flawed” it was that one, in which the Supreme Court elevated him to the Presidency. And had the voting in Florida not been so flawed, the Court would never have been able to intervene, and we would have had Al Gore as President.  Bush, or “Shrub” as Molly Ivins crowned him in her book, “Shrub: The Short But Happy Political Life of George W. Bush”.  Shrub was out of touch most of the time with the effects of his decisions on Americans.  He may have had a diminished intellect, or it might be that he simply didn’t care.

But then we elected Donald J. Trump. And we thereby elected someone who incorporated simultaneously all of the flaws of all of our most deeply flawed presidents into one human, well perhaps one pseudo-human.   I think that Donald Trump could be explained as a reaction by the Stupid People of America to our elevation of Barack Obama to the Presidency. While perhaps normally they don’t bother voting, they came out in droves this time. Think on this a bit. First America elected our first African-American to the Presidency, not once but twice. Now, to be fair, President Obama was born in Hawaii, attended Columbia University as an undergraduate and then received his doctorate in Laws (JD) from Harvard. He did pretty well as a president, even elevating our standing internationally. So, just imagine what that meant to that population of undereducated white dudes who vaguely identified as republican—a Black man as President, and not just for one term, but two.

And then, the Democrats had the nerve to nominate a woman for heaven’s sake, Hillary Clinton, as their candidate for president in 2016. Well, that was just too much, so the undereducated dudes and dudettes came out in large numbers, along with their normal republican voters to elect the perfect opposite as their candidate. Donald J. Trump, a man who hardly seems able to read, speaks like an uneducated six year old, with perhaps the same education level (apologies to all normal six-year olds). In addition to his lack of fluency in intelligent thought, The Donald seems to be a racist, a misogynist,  anti-LGBTQ, and someone who has failed at virtually every endeavor he has ever attempted, from businesses (six bankruptcies) to marriage (three unsuccessful and counting).  And as President, he failed again. He seems to have nearly destroyed our reputation globally, except perhaps with his Russian friends, and, when confronted with perhaps the worst pandemic since the 1918 flu, he ran away and hid, so he could suck his thumb in peace, making believe it was not happening.  Meanwhile people were dying all around him. Happily, our public health folks still had working brains, and our pharmaceutical companies were ready, willing and able to take on the challenge of a new and deadly virus. They came through in amazing fashion, producing effective vaccines in record times, despite the best interests of the Donald in just ignoring the whole thing.

And so, his performance was so awful that even his racist, thoughtless white dudes could not bring home a second victory, and Joe Biden and Kamala Harris took over the reins of government, despite the best intentions of The Donald and his tribe of ne’er-do-wells on January 6^th. We are still working through the gigantic mess they all created in their attack on America that day. That they failed we can applaud. That they are all traitors to a person we can only sigh and say, “Thank God those traitors failed”.

But, though they failed on that day, they have not gone away.  In fact, they now seem perhaps better organized, by virtue of having taken over the entire Republican Party. Yes, the party of Dwight Eisenhower, and even St. Ronald of Reagan, has now been taken over by the forces of Donald Trump.

And there we are. Yes, Joe Biden is still our president. And he and Kamala are trying their hardest to at least address, if not resolve the many problems facing our nation. The pandemic keeps interfering, but mainly the now defunct republican party (we really need a new name for that party), assisted by some errant democrats (think Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema) are managing to get in the way of making any serious progress on the President’s very large agenda.  And his agenda really is quite large. It includes:

·         Voting rights: Americans on the right, i.e., republicans, really hate it when folks actually vote. So, they are busily working away on gerrymandering every voting district they control, and passing laws and regulations that inhibit people of color from voting. Biden is trying to fix that via his voting bill that seems to be going nowhere.

·         Climate change: Joe joined the most recent Climate Summit, but his America seems barely concerned. Despite all the evidence that our planet is burning down and engulfed in catastrophic rainstorms, the US and, really, other industrialized nations, seem barely aware, but not yet ready to move aggressively to repair the damage, even if it is still repairable.

·         Infrastructure renewal: years of neglect has placed our basic infrastructure at risk of failing—Roads, bridges, even buildings seem ready to fall down around us. Biden’s infrastructure bill is aimed at making a healthy start on correcting some of our problems.

·         Health care for all Americans: this one is, to me, beyond any rational understanding. America now has perhaps the worst health care system on the planet. It is hugely expensive, and manages to miss many of the people who most need care. Yet, large numbers of people are oblivious, or outright oppose large scale government intervention. Biden is trying to move in the direction of some improvements, but really we need to have a single payer, government operated system like most of the rest of the civilized world.

·         Supreme Court Restoration: Donald Trump managed to get three appointments to this hugely important part of our government. Of the 816 active judges serving across the three main tiers of the federal court system: the Supreme Court, 13 regional appeals courts and 91 district courts governed by Article III of the U.S. Constitution, Trump appointed 28% of those judges. That includes three of the nine sitting Supreme Court justices, 30% of the nation’s active appeals court judges and 27% of active district court judges. It remains unclear what it is Biden can do to correct the current right wing bias on the highest court, although there has been talk of widening the bench by adding three additional justices.  But Trump may have destroyed the utility of our Supreme Court.

·         Defeating the Pandemic: Hard to know what Biden can do here, since we have vaccines that seem to work. Mainly, some segment of the American public is intent on allowing the virus and its variants to continue to spread, by virtue of their unwillingness to become vaccinated. See, vaccinations make you part of the solution, rather than part of the problem.  We’re old, so this pandemic may never go away in our now limited lifetimes.

·         Restoring our role in the world: This feat is not subject to devising clever legislation. Mainly, it is acting in such a way that the rest of the world does not think you are a complete idiot (see Donald Trump). Trump helped to destroy much of our reputation. Biden is trying to rebuild our relationships, but they are always difficult, fragile, and subject to change from both within and without.

·         Defeating racism by electing anti-racists: it is unclear how Biden can go about dealing with our Nation’s fundamental racism.  Basically, from what I am able to understand, Trump let all of our racists out of their respective closets, and now they are armed and dangerous.  I assume the same people who stormed the Capitol on January 6^th are also within the racist camp. But as long as the opposition party, whatever we decide to call it, remains firmly in the racist camp, I fail to see what Biden can do legally. But these folks can basically continue disrupting our Nation, through their armed demonstrations to the point that another Civil War becomes likely.  Electing more folks who are basically anti-racist seems the most likely course of action, but that requires the American people to recognize the dangers of racism and the fragile nature of our republic at present.

·         Oh there’s more, but that would do for a while.

Here again, as in the past, the best we can do as a people is to vote. Something we tend to ignore is voting for state and local offices, but we need to understand that great damage is being done to our republic at those levels.  We tend often to pay more attention to elections when they are big, and more glamorous national events.  But we should understand that gerrymandering takes place because of state and local office holders from one party bending the rules so as to enhance their own power.  So, we need to pay attention and to vote at every election, but especially at the state and local affairs. It is at those levels that grievous damage has been done to our nation.

We should be clear. Republicans at every level seem to have given up all ethical and moral principles. We should understand that politics in general is not especially ethical or moral by definition. But republicans have taken this to a new level of depravity.  I do not understand why this has happened. It is as though Donald Trump allowed all the awful people in our Land out of their closets and now they are yelling to be heard, and waving their guns in case we don’t listen. There are enough of them to bring down our entire Nation, or to cause it to fracture into parts no longer capable of being reassembled.

So, we need to vote.

We need to pass new legislation controlling guns in this country. Fewer guns delivers greater safety.

We need to pass new legislation to move our nation away from carbon fuels. If we don’t destroy ourselves, our climate may well destroy our planet. Climate change is happening and our climate does not care about republican or Democratic politics.

We need to elect more anti-racists, because racism is a highly destructive plague in our Land.

We need to begin scaling back our military, and reducing the number of military engagements. Basically, the greater the number of military engagements, the greater is the chance that one will go awry and the big weapons will be let loose. Then all is lost.

Organized religion, while rejected by large numbers of Americans, is also embraced by equally large numbers. And organized religion can and does do great harm, even while also doing some good. Religion is mainly about power and power in the hands of humans generally (not merely Americans) produces many evils.  It is not clear to me how we resolve the problems caused by religious forces. They are dangerous and must be controlled, but the means is by no means clear to me.

Money remains the source of great evils in our world and America is not exempt. We pursue money and those pursuits lead often to great evils. Unequal distribution of America’s money is now so extreme that, by itself, it threatens to destroy our entire systems of government and social structures.  We need to devise tax structures to reduce basic income inequalities, and to reduce the amount of tax cheating that is now practiced within our country. 

Politics is perhaps little more than a reflection of the divisions created in our Land by the issues mentioned above. That we are fractured, as perhaps never before as great since perhaps the Civil War, is a frightening prospect. We could indeed come undone and revert to shooting at one another as we did in the 1860s.  How we fix this problem through politics is entirely unclear to me, except perhaps by electing people to power who are basically ethical creatures. 

Social Media now promotes divisions and fosters the hatreds that are such a prominent part of our landscape. Social media, we must remember, is not simply the availability of technology as a means of communicating globally with one another. Social media is a set of technology systems that are all owned by individuals or corporations, e.g., Rupert Murdoch. Too many of those individuals are now actively deploying their social media technologies to forge and then control power sources—collections of peoples and institutions that can manipulate large population groups in America, but also globally.  The New York Times, and The Daily News never had the same power as these media. Social media seems bent on destroying America from within. It needs to be regulated, much the way we regulate banks and other potentially destructive institutions. 

Sadly, we are a fractured country, which matters only because we are also a very large, wealthy and heavily armed country. So, our demise affects the entire globe and could lead to the ultimate destruction of this globe, the only one we current have. Unless we, the People,  can regain control of our own systems of communication and governance, and begin to shed the wholly destructive influences of both religion and amoral business owners (think Rupert Murdoch) both America and perhaps the world at large may be at risk of dissolving into a world of chaos.

Again, voting is our most productive course of action. But we now need to think beyond ourselves to a larger vision. We can no longer ignore the garbage spewing from the mouths of ignoramuses like Marjorie Taylor Greene, Josh Hawley or that Boebert creature.  They are bent on destruction. We need to rid our land of their influence, but through peaceful means. If we are to remain a country in which we can raise our children and grandchildren in peace and love, we need to act accordingly. Shooting people is simply not the answer. That is why they make voting booths.

So, folks, it’s our country. Let’s act like we wish to continue.

Getting Old

 

OK, so in exactly 20 days, I will be 87. Think of that . . . 87. Both my Grans went before their 82^nd. My mum left our world when she was about 80, but she had actually departed a year or two earlier due to dementia. When I last sat down and shared a meal with her, she no longer knew who I was.  My Father?? Who knows? I lost contact with him when I was about 11, when he left our home because our heating system failed and he assumed his two children, aged 11 and 14 could cope without him. So, who cares how old he was when he finally croaked?

So, what does it mean to be nearing 87?

Well, it’s interesting. My memory seems fine, oh except for those times when I go into a room and then have no idea why I came into the room. I was looking for what again?? But other than that, my brain seems OK.  I can still remember what day it is and who that lovely young woman is in the bed next to me at night.  I still recognize my kids and grandkids and my neighbors, so that’s a good thing. Oh, and I still recognize our koi’s, Harriet, Nick and Nora whenever I see them under the net currently over our pond to protect it from those nasty pin oak leaves. Oh, and that naughty tree has just begun to fight.

I continue to understand that our Nation suffered almost a complete mental breakdown in 2016 when we elected arguably the worst human being on the planet to the presidency. Happily, we recovered enough of our brain function to throw him out of office in 2020. But, he’s like COVID. Once we let him out into the open, he simply won’t go away. And speaking of him refusing to go away, his entourage has apparently adopted a model whereby they do not recognize who loves Trump and who hates him.  Now, I haven’t voted for a republican since 1952—Ike.  Yeah, ever since then, it’s been a very long chain of votes for democratic candidates for President.  Now, to be fair, about ten years ago, we re-registered as “Independents” to accommodate our desire to vote against a particular local republican candidate for a local office. And then we just never changed back. So, we are officially Independents, and that seems OK.

But apparently, the Trumpies imagine that we are now republicans in spirit if not fact. So, despite his loss in 2020, the Trumpies continue to push his (long lost) case for political legitimacy. I guess they insist that he is going to run again in 2024. So, they have some kind of campaign office. And every day, they send me 10-12 text messages, either asking me for money, or asking me to join some Trumpish entity, or swear allegiance to a Trump cause.  That’s EVERY DAY—10-12 text messages. So I designate each text as SPAM and then delete it. And I receive also maybe 4-5 e-mails each day from them, each of which is configured so as to make it into my Junk Mail file, all of which are deleted daily.

Now I don’t read any of these messages—NONE. But how did they possibly get the idea that I might even dream of supporting this cretin? I mean, I think I am very close to the bottom in terms of people on our planet who would vote for Trump.  I suppose if Vlad Putin suddenly appeared on a ballot here, opposite Trump, I might choose Trump, but even then I am unsure.

And when I ask, how incompetent his supporters have to be to text me 10-12 times per day, I have to remember that I receive perhaps 10-15 telephone calls on my mobile every day from people trying to scam me. If they aren’t on my contact list, I never answer the phone.  But the scammers continue to exist, sort of like the Trump supporters. I call them all our Nightmares in our Land.

But on a happier note, a jury convicted the cretins who murdered Ahmaud Arbery.  If you recall, that young man, who happened to be Black, was jogging in a neighborhood not his own (how many times have I done that? Oh every time I jogged) when this cretinous pseudohuman decided that, because he was Black, he should not be entering the neighborhood of cretins. And so, with the help of two other cretins, they arranged to shoot Mr. Arbery dead. Now normally, white humans shooting Black humans receive no penalty. Evidently jogging While Black is a crime everywhere, and the jogger is fair game. But somehow, this particular jury decided that Jogging While Black is not technically a crime, and so they convicted the assailants of murder. Wow, finally some good news after that awful Rittenhouse verdict.

And so, our world goes on its merry and somewhat deranged pathway called America. And I give some thanks for this small measure of civility.

But did you know that Tony Bennett is 95, still sings (thanks Lady Gaga) and refuses to recognize that he has dementia? Way to go Tony.

OK, folks, stay safe, be sure to catch that Beatles retrospective, shop local for Christmas, and let us hope this latest variant Omicron stays out of our way.

Ta Ta folks.

Perils

 I am beginning to think that maybe we really are approaching some kind of cataclysm, like a cliff over which we are all driving—think Thelma and Louise.  Why?

Well, first we have this Pandemic thingie. Normally, a thing like COVID would be treated as a blow to humanity, but one that we would fight using science, defeat, like polio, or small pox, and then move on.  But now this awful disease has turned into a Political War, with one side trying unsuccessfully to use science to encourage/force people to adopt the cure, while another side uses conspiracy theories and false claims to freedom and liberty to reject the cures. Why false? Well, by agreeing to live in a civilized democracy, we all agree to live by rules of law. Such rules are adopted so as to prevent one person from harming other persons by reckless actions.  We have never agreed that, by living in the American system of democratic governance, everyone is free to act in any way they choose, regardless of the consequences.  Quite the contrary.  We agree to be restrained to protect others.  We agree to abide by auto speed limits, and to use a variety of driving habits so as to reduce traffic hazards. We agree to adopt many rules of personal behavior to protect others. While we allow people (perhaps foolishly) to own firearms, we also agree that we will use such firearms in responsible ways, so that innocents do not become injured or worse by irresponsible gun actions.

Yet, despite the abundance of protective laws and regulations, a group of Americans has decided that public health protective measures do not apply to them.  They opt for “Freedom”, or perhaps “Liberty” instead of common sense science-based measures intended to reduce the threat of this pandemic spreading to others.  Apparently, their reluctance is based on rejection of science, with no science base on their side.  I assume, because such diseases as COVID 19, are silent, and never announce their presence, that they are assumed to be missing whenever one of the anti-vaxxers enters the room. The virus apparently would simply never dare to presume on their presence, and thus they will always remain safe. The fact that they might still transmit the virus to others is apparently irrelevant to their deliberations.  Or, more simply, they do not care whether they transmit this deadly virus to others. THEY DO NOT CARE.  I see little difference to perhaps driving through crowded streets at 80-90 miles per hour, with no regard to other traffic or humans in the streets—NO DIFFERENCE.

It is bizarre that, more than 18 months after we began producing and distributing an apparently safe and effective vaccine, we are still in the 70 percent range of people who have been treated.  I can only assume that, now that the FDA has released the vaccine for distribution to children, we will see the same lack of compliance on the part of parents. They will assume their children are also immune. That some, perhaps many of their children will suffer the same fate as adults is apparently beyond their ken. Yet, somehow the actual statistics—FACTS- escape their attention. To date, we have nearly 46 million cases, and 745,000 deaths. These data are either disbelieved, or more likely just ignored.  Think of Smallpox. Consulting Wikipedia, we find the following:

“During the 20th century, it is estimated that smallpox was responsible for 300–500 million deaths. In the early 1950s an estimated 50 million cases of smallpox occurred in the world each year. As recently as 1967, the World Health Organization estimated that 15 million people contracted the disease and that two million died in that year. After successful vaccination campaigns throughout the 19th and 20th centuries, the WHO certified the global eradication of smallpox in December 1979. Smallpox is one of two infectious diseases to have been eradicated, the other being rinderpest, which was declared eradicated in 2011.”

And then, remember polio? That was such fun growing up in the 1930s-1950s. Again, from Wiki:

“The history of polio (poliomyelitis) infections began during prehistory. Although major polio epidemics were unknown before the 20th century, the disease has caused paralysis and death for much of human history. Over millennia, polio survived quietly as an endemic pathogen until the 1900s when major epidemics began to occur in Europe. Soon after, widespread epidemics appeared in the United States. By 1910, frequent epidemics became regular events throughout the developed world primarily in cities during the summer months. At its peak in the 1940s and 1950s, polio would paralyze or kill over half a million people worldwide every year.

The fear and the collective response to these epidemics would give rise to extraordinary public reaction and mobilization spurring the development of new methods to prevent and treat the disease and revolutionizing medical philanthropy. Although the development of two polio vaccines has eliminated wild poliomyelitis in all but two countries (Afghanistan and Pakistan),^[3][4] the legacy of poliomyelitis remains in the development of modern rehabilitation therapy and in the rise of disability rights movements worldwide.”

Ahhh, yeah, remember those iron lungs? Such fun weren’t they?

And so, apparently we Americans have learned nothing from the history of diseases. The immortals of our world, narcissists all, continue to ignore even common-sense rules of behavior. And I remain in awe of how we reached this position of sheer stupidity in America.

And then we have American politics, which now begins to resemble politics in places and times such as the 1930s Germany.  Exactly how we moved from World War II to a presence in which we seem to be supporting the equivalent of the wrong side in that conflict is entirely unclear to me.  Remember please that Donald Trump arose within a family in which daddy was likely a Nazi supporter. So he comes by his racism, misogyny, corruption and all around air of “I am superior to all other mortal beings” honestly. But exactly what happened to the rest of the Republican Party is unfathomable.  Apparently, all of the leadership of the Republican Party comes from the fringe of that party, that part of the GOP that is essentially anti-Democratic/autocratic. None of them seems to believe in the rules of democracy, as we have defined them over the past two hundred years. Instead, they seem to be heading towards a future America led by an autocrat, with a small group of leaders beneath the autocrat. One might define such a system as a pseudo-monarchy. Note that such systems morph over time from semi-democratic to completely autocratic. Remember, Hitler was actually elected by the people of Germany, as was Mussolini, as was Vlad Putin.  Note it may well be the case that more Americans now no longer want a democratic system precisely because it is changeable and produces uncertain political leaders.  It may also be the case that many Americans have been polarized by social media and far right pseudo-news to a stage at which they no longer believe in democracy.  Remember that autocracies are simpler. People no longer have to think, because their leaders do all the thinking for them.  I fear that is our future, and the America I have known for my now almost 87 years may be coming to an end.  I am now too old to consider moving/migrating to another more enlightened nation—New Zealand anyone? But were I 30 again, I think I would be seriously contemplating such a move.

Choices

 I am beginning to get really depressed. Not about this unending pandemic. No, we got our two Pfizer shots and then our third booster, and yes we wear masks when we go into a store—any store.  And yes, the anti-vaxxers and anti-maskers annoy me a lot. But I write that off to stupidity, and then get on with my day.

No, it is this beginning surge of articles by people I respect about the Biden presidency, and how it seems to be losing ground because he seems unable to deliver the really big changes he promised.  They are talking about how Biden is losing his favorability ratings. He apparently has descended from his high marks and is now continuing to lose ratings.  But, knowing how fickle is the American public vis-à-vis presidential approval ratings, I don’t pay much heed. No, these authors then go on to discuss these lower ratings in the context of the 2022 and 2024 elections. Now, mind you, Biden has only been President  since January 2021, some 9-10 months.  And already we are discussing how Donald Trump could defeat Biden in an election? Talk about depressing?

First, we should acknowledge that Biden’s first few months has been a mixed bag. He has succeeded in moving us in the right direction on the pandemic. But we also need to understand that the extreme right wing has been encouraging an anti-everything regarding pandemic solutions. No masks, no vaccinations, including from leaders who have in fact been vaccinated – see Gov. Abbott.  So, rather than the nation pulling together to defeat this pandemic, the nation has been tearing itself apart so as to defeat pandemic solutions.  And why? Well, from what I can see, this anti-solution group is all about defeating Biden AT ANY COST to the nation. If Biden succeeds in defeating the COVID nightmare, then the public will credit him. The ANTI forces cannot tolerate any win, regardless of the effects on the Nation of his defeat in that arena.  If more people die, so be it. That will be on Biden’s head.

And then there are the legislative actions needed to literally prevent our nation from falling into insolvency. Mitch McConnell seemingly caved temporarily to suspend for a few months the uncertainty regarding the Nation’s debt ceiling.  But this leader of the Far Right in America (there is no longer any republican responsible Middle-Right faction) continues to oppose. That group, to the extent it exists at all, no longer speaks in Congress or to the American people. They have ceded all conversations between republicans and the public to the Far Right—that faction whose sole purpose is defeating Biden on any initiative, again regardless of the cost to America.  We no longer have two responsible political parties. We have the Democrats, and a Far Right faction that seeks to overthrow democracy in America.  Their primary goal is defeating Biden’s initiatives—all of them. But they also are working actively at all levels of government to eliminate free and fair elections. They are working locally and at the state level to Gerrymander voting districts to eliminate or minimize the number of people who might vote for democrats. They are also at least examining the possibility of using the states to decertify election results, using the electoral college system to eliminate actual voter choices by refusing to certify the election results—you know that process Trump tried to use overthrow the election of 2020 (the results of which he/they still dispute).

And all of the legislative initiatives Democrats are seeking—to provide economic assistance to lower income people affected by the Pandemic, to at least begin to combat Climate Change, to rebuild the Nation’s infrastructure, and to change the tax code so that the ultra-rich would pay their fair share of taxes. These and so many other initiatives that seek to improve the lives of Americans are being denied by the Far Right, beginning, but not ending with McConnell.

And so my depression is setting in. I am feeling like it is 1942 all over again, only instead of Americans all pulling together as a unified Nation, we are actively debating the virtues of Nazism in the East and the threat posed by the Japanese Empire in the West.  And maybe even how we should probably not be sending troops anywhere—not our problem don’t you know.

And meanwhile, the public continues to roar their approval of Donald Trump as he runs around the country rallying his troops ahead of his 2024 candidacy, and, more especially the 2022 Congressional elections. Really people???? You continue to support Donald Trump, who seems even crazier and less competent, if that is possible, than he was when he was actually in office??? Really???  I should note here that I continue to receive 10-12 text messages every day from a Trump campaign entity seeking money—EVERY DAY!  And I am perhaps the least likely human on the planet to donate to Donald Trump. But what does that say about their campaign? That they have so many donors they continue to expand their list so as to overwhelm the Nation?

I seriously believe our Nation is on the edge of either another Civil War (with actual guns and shooting), or maybe simply coming apart as a democratic system of government.  Maybe we are collapsing into a heap of dysfunctional state entities, or maybe just collectives of like-minded activists, and we no longer believe in America—that shining Vista on the Hill. And that is depressing at the least. I keep hoping that Americans, even those who disagree with Joe Biden, will begin to understand that Biden wants to help America continue to exist as a democracy, and wishes its people to survive and prosper. Maybe that is no longer possible, but I keep hoping . . .

“Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.

"Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she
With silent lips. "Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"

Life: Control It

Gee, Facebook does nothing to alter its behavior if it might get in the way of its profits? And we didn’t know that? Facebook is a for-profit corporate entity. It’s what they do.  Maybe folks haven’t been paying attention, but it turns out that commercial firms, which are legal entities owned by rich dudes, or dudes hoping to become rich, actually consider profits more important than morality. Huh, who knew?

Oh and then there’s that cute story about the Church’s involvement in ignoring/covering up the abuse of hundreds of thousands of kids by church officials. Why would they do that?? Well, church profits and church control over humans. Turns out that churches are no more moral than commercial entities.  If action might affect either profits or control, then church officials see no evil, hear no evil.

We humans seem not to understand the role of money in our universe. AND, that role is growing not becoming moderated. Apparently, since nobody ever wishes to entertain the idea of controlling the influence of money, then money continues to grow in influence.  This latest thing about folks parking their money in tax havens, now in places like South Dakota instead of far-off places, only convinces me that we have ALL BUT GIVEN UP ON CONTROLLING MONEY. It controls us apparently.

So, when people get all uppity about Mark Zuckerberg being unwilling to control the nasties on Facebook, et al, because that might interfere with his money-making, I’m sorry, but it makes me laugh a bit.  And apparently Instagram, yet another of Zuckies’ creations, is proving to be hostile to teenage girls.  And everyone is up in arms. Goodness, teenaged girls coming acropper of a social media site that publishes nasty stuff about them. Uhhh, did they ever consider dropping out of that social media site???  Or did their parents ever consider exerting some parental controls over their teenager use of social media? Well, no, that’s all on Mark Zuckerberg. He should be controlling his sites such that they don’t make teenage girls do nasty things to their teenaged girlfriends.  Wow, I never realized Zuckerberg had such power that he could control teenage girls.

Yes, social media sites are potentially dangerous, both to teenaged girls, but also, frankly, to everyone who uses them.  Yes, we have Nazi’s using social media to bad ends (see republican party). Oh and then we have perverted individuals who wish to scam you in some way. They might use Facebook, but there are so many ways we communicate that the scammers of the world have an open field. My wife got a text message, telling her that Person X (someone known to me) had sent her this link. And she was supposed to click on that link. Now who should control that text communique? Shouldn’t the phone company (e.g., Spectrum, or Verizon) be monitoring such texts to assure that they are real? No?? How come? Oh, you mean, it’s up to us to control what we do—to click or not to click, that is the question  . . .

Oh, and then who should control the Trumpies (or their surrogates) who send me 10-12 text messages each day, asking me to join them at a rally, or oh, by the way, how about sending them $25? Me, asking Me, to send money to Trump? Maybe the least likely human on the planet to send Trump money???

So, why doesn’t Verizon, or Spectrum control who sends me such idiotic text messages?  Oh, cuz they expect me to censor my own text messages?

So, yeah, it would be nice if teenaged girls didn’t have to put up with all this social media crap, especially the nastier stuff aimed at making them feel like total POS. It would be nicer yet if the world didn’t contain so many nasty little idiot-malenfants. But apparently it is not to be. If God created all these idiots, then how incompetent is she??? Nope more evidence, as though we needed more,  for Darwin at work here. It does make me wonder actually, why Darwin seems to be so hard at work creating so many total cretins in America. How did we turn into a country of human-haters?  I mean, people actually still support Donald Trump??? Really??? Darwin, you’re really a badass.

And then I was drawn to thinking again about one of my favorite theories: that Nothing Follows Death. See, when we take our last breath, and that light goes out, we don’t know it, cuz nothing follows something. And, you might think, that’s awful right? Yeah, no bus to the heavenly gates, nope. Nothing. We just zero out, almost as though we never existed. Awful, huh?

Well, but stop to consider. We are all stuff that arrived out of nowhere. Yep, first there was nothing. Then suddenly a creature arrived, breathing, and eventually yelling for food and a clean diaper.  See, out of nothing came something. And we are in charge of how that something turns out, and whether that’s a good thing or a bad thing for the rest of humanity.  So think on that before you do something good or bad for humanity.  Sniff the flowers, check out that bumble bee who is wandering around your flowers. Oh, and do talk to your teenaged daughter about the dangers of social media—it’s worse than trying to cross a crowded street in Manhattan, and you talk to her about that, right?  So, remember, you both suddenly appeared out of literally nowhere, and you will eventually return to nowhere. So, all you have is this thing we call life, the here and now. Act like it matters, even if only briefly. Act like you can exercise some control over that life. And smile. You look much nicer that way.

LIFE

What is life anyway? It occurs to me, as I prepare our morning cappuccinos, that life is really just tiny gestures, millions of them perhaps, but then it’s gone.  You place a spoonful of ground espresso coffee in the little container, place that container in its proper place in the espresso machine, then turn the dial to the correct mode, and a nice espresso stream flows from the machine into the little cup. And then you turn off the stream just as the coffee reaches the top.  Then you remove the little container and empty its contents of wet espresso coffee. Next, you go to the fridge and pour a little bit of fat-free milk into a small container and bring it over to the espresso machine, where you bring the milk to a foam using a small wand in the machine. Then into each cup of espresso, a layer of milk foam is placed on top, followed by a little bit of cinnamon, and a hint of raw sugar. And there you have another wonderful cappuccino, which you hand to your wonderful wife, and you both clink and say, “to us”.  And then you consume the cappuccino, sipping slowly so as to gather all the aroma and taste available. And there is yet another tiny gesture, one of millions as you wander through your life. 

And your life is filled with such tiny gestures. It is in fact what life is all about. We think of life as grand gestures, doing good things for humanity. And some of us have included within our lives just such gestures.  But mainly, our lives are simply collections of the tiny things. And, so I was thinking, one day I will cease to be, and I will no longer carry out these tiny gestures, not to mention the grand ones.  No, I will no longer scratch the top of my cat’s head, or rub my eye, because it is itching, or partake of a glass of wine, or even a glass of water.  And you are unaware that you can no longer partake of these tiny gestures, because your 40 -50 million minutes of life have run out. And a little switch in your brain has simply turned off.  And because you no longer have a functioning brain, you no longer actually exist.  It is as though you were never here, alive and laughing.

But because your entire life is composed of these tiny gestures, perhaps it might be worthwhile to at least be more aware of them.  You see, there is no actual counter in life, no one to tell you, “OK, it’s all over, and now you’re done.” Some people are indeed aware that their life may be ending soon, especially those folks who are afflicted with a cancer, or some other life-ending disease, or those who have been grievously injured and know it is a matter of moments. But most of us don’t know, even those of us who are seriously old—how old is that? Your choice, you decide how old is “seriously old”.

But it is the “paying attention” thing I am drawn to thinking about, now that I am approaching my 87^th year on this planet.  Maybe it’s that COVID thing. COVID tends to focus the mind, but mainly only if one contracts COVID. Otherwise, it is merely a distraction.  I find myself going through my work-free day, doing roughly similar things and ending eating dinner and watching British mysteries on TV, day after day. Sometimes, when I awaken for a new day, I have to focus to be sure which day of the week it is.

Now, to be fair, were I still a working class dude, I would be more aware of each day, and would in fact have at least some differences in my chore list each day.  I mean, my goodness, I had to routinely board airplanes, attend meetings in strange towns, call folks to obtain information, or maybe even begin or continue writing some treatise for a client.  But, to be fair, each of those were also small gestures in this grand place we call Planet Earth.  Now, a nice walk along Union Street seems enough of a chore for the day, and that involves dozens of little gestures, called walking and observing.

And as I move along the pathway that is Union Street in our little village, watching for cars as I cross streets, avoiding oncoming pedestrians by walking out into the street, because none of us is wearing a mask, I often begin thinking of other little things and how little good things have been turning into big bad things.  See, I’m focusing. And what are those little things? Well, I was thinking about money, and how money is both a good thing and a really horrible thing.  Think of the invention of money. Initially I am thinking that humans simply traded things. “Let’s see, how about if I give you six tomatoes and you give me six ears of corn?  OK?”  And then the dude with the six ears of corn had to think.  Was that an even trade? Enter MONEY!  Now money seems a simple enough concept. But, as with many seemingly simple ideas, the invention of money involved hundreds of years, and many brains, now long gone, to actually lead us to our current approach.  I looked up the invention of money, and discovered among the many explanations, a few that bear insightful witness to its origins.  The one I might recommend can be found at:

The Functions of Money - The Human Journey

Looking at the origins, as defined in that article, it seems pretty clear that a simple idea, “how many tomatoes equals six ears of corn?”, has now been translated into a monstrously complex system of ideas.  So, money now seems to be a BIG THING.  But not only is Money Big, perhaps because of its complexities, it has also transformed from a simple good idea, into a complex Evil System so corrupt that it now beggars belief.  And our world now seems consumed by this thing we call Money. It now affects everything we do—all the things both big and little now seem at least affected by this Money thing.  And while there are wondrous things done with money, that concept seems more often negative than positive.  And because the acquisition of money is something we all wish for, most of us never acquire the skills or the understanding of money acquisition, so that we spend much of our lives skipping past, or simply ignoring all those little things, because we are preoccupied with this thing called money, and our relative lack thereof.

But we need to understand that, when we enter that dark period where the switch of life is turned off, money will not allow us to escape. No, everyone is dissolved in the same way, although the monied set perhaps leave life with more luxury. Still, they are gone also, and with it, their relative understanding of LIFE and its little gestures—those things of which LIFE is composed.

So, tomorrow, perhaps we all need to pay attention more to LIFE’s little gestures.  As we open our eyes in the morning, look around. Observe your surroundings. Look at that person with whom you occupy your life, if you are so lucky. When they open their eyes, look into those eyes, and smile at that person.  Try to remember as your day progresses the tiny things that consume your day.  Let LIFE into your life. Yes, we all must pay attention to other things like money. But mainly, try to remember the tiny pieces of beauty that arrive each day into your life. A smile, a kind gesture, a wandering butterfly, the sunlight streaming into your window. Notice, and smile. Because that is called LIFE.