White Folks State

 So, off we go into the Netherworld of 2022. So far, it all looks . . . well, a tad grim. So far, I keep seeing stories in the news about people we know, or at least know the name, and they have died. And I began thinking. Huh, so one of the side effects of growing old successfully is that more and more people die around you.  Or maybe you just notice those folks who are croaking.  Now, to be fair, for every Sidney Poitier, there is a Judi Dench.  Yeah, that lass is still with us and still working, despite her (successful) advanced age.

So, there’s that.

But then, still speaking of aging, there is that place called America, well technically the United States of America.  And it is now technically coming on 246 years old.  Now that would be really old for a fart like me. But just maybe middle aged for a country.  See the problem with countries is that, instead of dying like good, decent humans, countries tend to just fail, but not technically die.  And sometimes, it’s hard to tell if they have failed, or they have some terminally awful condition . . . you know, like Russia, or Brazil.  See countries fail by some definitions, when they no longer care about their human population at large. Instead, they care only about a few folks who sit at the top of their population heap.  Or I guess if you look at Nazi Germany, that country cared about most of their human population, except some—their Jews for example.  In Russia, there is no select population, only a select cadre of Russians who decided that only they should be able to make decisions about the present and future operation of the country, you know, sort of like in absolute monarchies.  And if the ordinary folks no longer have any ability to intervene, then you have a failed state, if not a dead one.

So, where is the United States of America, at the ripe old age of 246?? Well, we haven’t yet made up our collective minds, but a consensus is forming that we really would prefer living in an autocratic state under an idiot chieftain, if not absolute monarch. I imagine that, at least technically, The Donald would prefer being an absolute monarch to being a functioning president.  Whereas Joe still thinks being a President is nifty, despite all its problems.

And there you have it. We still haven’t made up our minds. But there is a very large population group, humans all, who think we should be an absolute monarchy. Course, they haven’t really thought that one through. See, what they really want is the get rid of those troublesome folks, called Democrats, you know, those people who seem to think that folks of color, or who speak a different language should be able to help determine the future of the country. See they really want only people like them—white, varying education levels, lots of pent-up hate, to be in charge.  And they don’t really care how that happens. If those other folks have to croak, then so be it.

Now, if that wannabee white group comprised, say, 10% of the population, then we wouldn’t even be discussing a “Failed-Dead State”. No, that would be Situation Normal.  The way Evolution works is that evil populations emerge all the time. That’s how evolution works. You take the good with the bad. But in, say, 1930s Germany, the bad population overtook the good, they elevated a dude named Adolph Hitler to power because they agreed with his declaration that Jews were the source of all Germany’s problems, and that the only path forward was to rid the state of all its Jews.  See, that’s one definition of evil.  Now that changed over time (and a war) and evolution produced a more reasonable collection of humans in Germany and they eventually got rid of their haters. And we here in the United States of America helped them to change their minds.

But this White thing has never gone away anywhere in the world. Wherever large populations of White folks live, those folks seem to have adopted a personality trait to the effect that White folks are just naturally better than folks of color.  And so, they should always be in charge. And whenever that situation is threatened, the White folks just sit up and start banging heads.  See January 6^th, 2021 in Washington, DC as the latest example.

But we got past that little dust-up and sort of returned to normal, except not really. Mainly, the White Dude who wants to be King here, has never gotten over being rejected as Absolute Monarch, and he blames that loss to folks of color and White folks who cater to folks of color.  And that Dude, sometimes known as The Donald of Trump, has decided that his people should act to throw out the current folks in charge, by any means necessary.  And, his serfs, aka the Republican Party, have taken him seriously and spend now all of their time on devising ways to rid the Nation of the current folks in charge, again, by any means necessary.

And so, whereas we used to have our rulers arguing with each other about how best to secure the safety of the nation from foreign powers, or how best to secure a vibrant economy, now our rulers divide themselves into two isolated camps who rarely speak with one another. And the camp formerly known as republicans, stays busy figuring out how to arm its population, so as to secure its future power base.

And so the game begins in this year of 2022. Will this year be known as the year America failed, or the year a Coup d’état was prevented? That question is being debated by many, and no answer has yet emerged. Many thinking folks lean towards the failed state ending, although not yet conclusively.

And so we continue. The pandemic continues unhindered by current republican politicians, who seem not to mind having their populations sicken and die.  And Climate change continues unhindered by republican moneyed folks. And finally our political system continues sickening and headed towards dying by republicans who prefer a failed state to a multicolored one.

So, Stay Tuned folks. This Station will try to continue thinking about the relative state of health of both the author, and his Nation State.  Ta Ta for now.

 

The Numbers Game

2021 . . . 2022 . . . what do the numbers mean? They really only have significance to the individual, and then only some of the time.

1865 – GM Inglis was born somewhere in Scotland, maybe Edinburgh.

1899 – Daisy Elizabeth Inglis was born in Brooklyn to become part of the Inglis clan living in America

1934 – Daisy gives birth to a young lad, Richard Eugene by name, somewhere in Brooklyn also.

1935 – Carol Kathleen Foreman pops out into this world and her mom and dad, Kathleen and Robert decide she is a keeper, and they will love her forever.

1955 – Carol and Richard decide at very tender ages, to forge a permanent union of two souls.

1956 – Carol gives birth to a tiny baby, who is then named Karen Lee, rather than, say, 56. The little baby decides later she wants a new name, and so she decides to change her assigned name to Kailia.

1959 – Carol gives birth to another tiny baby, this one named Kathleen. She thinks her name is fine, thanks.

1966 – Hold on folks, Carol has decided to give birth to a third tiny baby, and that baby will be known as Erika Anu.

And then the list of tiny babies born into the world continues, amidst continued changes in those funny numbers. The numbers are called “Years” for some reason. Humans decided a while back to break up time into segments and then label all the segments—Seconds, minutes, hours, days, weeks, months, years, decades, centuries, millennia and on and on. We humans use these segments to mark the thing we call our lives. See, because we tend not to live forever, we assign segment markers to our lives, and to the events in our lives.  Those markers are supposed to signify importance of some kind, and we are allowed to use the segments to signify the goodness or other in our lives. As in, “Goodness, he just turned One, and he is walking already”. Or, “Harry is only four, but he talks like he is already 9 or 10.” Or, “Oh, My, Josie has turned 21, so she can legally drink alcohol”.

And then as humans acquire larger numbers concerning their lives, we begin to think of them as ageless (or, really as old), as in “wow, he just turned 80. He is looking great, but that’s really old”.

And then, we also assign meaning to the periods in which we live, as in “The roaring (19) Twenties”. Or, “wow, the (19) thirties were really a drag. Everyone was poor, and then we entered that War”.

We worked, raised kids, and became educated, changed jobs, all while counting numbers — remember 1969? Yeah, that’s when we moved to DC. Somehow, those “19” something years seemed important and even meaningful, mainly because things happened to change our lives, and we assigned a number to them.

And then we zoomed past a final decade and suddenly we were into a new Millennium.  See, we had never used that term before. Now 2000 seemed uneventful, just another year, albeit in a different millennium.  Then we hit 2001, and that seemed different. Why? Well because we had a kind of weird film by that name, yeah that 2001.  And that film, which was actually produced in 1968 (the year we returned to America from our four-year life in India) described wholly new kinds of experiences.  Now to be fair, we had already experienced space travel, when in 1969 (remember 1969?) we landed someone on the moon.  But that limited space travel seemed more exotic somehow that that pictured in 2001.

But 2001 . . . wow. We had actually entered a new millennium. It was different somehow from that change when we entered the 20^th century, although to be fair, I was not here, so I really do not know how folks felt as we entered the 20^th century.  I know my mum was born in that 19^th century place and then moved smartly into our 20^th century.  And here’s the crux of it. See I identify myself as being a creature of that 20th century.  Yeah, I know that I have been alive through now 21 years of this new century, so I’m sort of like my mum in 1920.  I wonder how she felt in those roaring 20s. Goodness, she was footloose and fancy-free.

But 2020?  Or, worse yet, 2022?? Do those numbers raise anything interesting in your minds? Well, maybe 2020 represents a dark period in America, unlike its predecessor, 1920. 2020 represents the first (happily unsuccessful) attempted coup d’état on the American Republic.  Yeah, Republicans, under the leadership of Donald Trump, a President headed out to pasture, decided that they really did not like Democracy, preferring instead a system whereby republicans simply decide who our leaders will be. Yeah, so maybe this second decade of the 21^st century represents the beginning of a dark period in America and maybe even the world, a period we might call Anarchy.  And so maybe this 21^st century will represent to future historians the beginning of the end of our world.  Yeah, the destruction of the American Experiment, a Global Pandemic in which much of the world simply dies, followed by Climate change that causes much of the rest of our world to fall apart, perhaps returning it to its pre-human state, when hummingbirds ruled their world.

And then maybe numbers cease.  They were fun in that 20^th century, at least until 1980, that day the Music died.  But maybe now the hummingbirds will decide what we should call this 21^st century. Yeah, they’re nice dudes, and even some fun. And how much worse could they be than Donald Trump? So, move aside humans, by choosing Donald Trump, you signaled that you were no longer interested in preserving our world of numbers and counting things.  Instead, idiocy was preferred. So, now the hummingbirds have decided to take over, before we complete the destruction.  And maybe they have been in contact with those Aliens who have been wandering around waiting for us to leave.  I wonder if the Aliens speak Hummingbird?

So, let’s see what happens next. I understand that, instead of using numbers, this second decade of our new millennium will be known as Hummingbirdiana. Nice huh??

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.