All posts by Prudence Leadbetter

Governance, Representation, Trump

IMPEACHY

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Impeachment.  An ugly term, certainly, but one so frivolously cast that it’s meaning and impact are widely misunderstood.  To impeach  means to indict.  “Well, like, ‘Duhh’ man.  What am I supposed to think, now?”

In simple terms, an indictment is just a charge levied against an individual, that is agreed to by a selected panel of citizens sworn to listen without bias to evidence supporting the charge, and to vote their consciences according to the applicable laws pertaining to the crime that the charge alleges.  How’s that?  Still a little unclear?  Perhaps an example will help.

A small business owner is awakened at night by a call from police informing him that there was a “break-in” at his building.  He throws on some clothes and rushes to his business to observe that, in fact, (real, or “solid” evidence) a windows was jimmied somehow, and other damage done to the window frame and to objects and materials inside the building.  There are no clear fingerprints or blood drops or other identifying foreign matter that could immediately identify  who did the observed damage.  A search is performed to see if something were stolen, and a police report filled out.

Eventually a person is arrested during a similar break-in, and the state, through the District Attorney’s office, brings him before a Grand Jury composed of that select panel of sworn citizens, and the charges are presented, including such evidence as has been gathered.  That evidence may be circumstantial or it may be direct evidence such as eye-witness accounts of the commission of the crime, or of the sale of items stolen from break-in victims, or even testimony from people who heard the accused talking about committing the crimes.  That panel, the Grand Jury, “hands up” an indictment  to the District Attorney, who will become the prosecutor  in the trial of the accused, and he or she files the case with the appropriate court.  The accused will be represented by his defense attorney, whom he has hired or whom the court (the state) has provided to him at taxpayer expense.  This is called “Due Process” in the United States.

Following a “just” trial according to the rules of jurisprudence, the accused, if convicted, may still appeal his conviction on various technicalities, including poor legal representation.

What has any of this to do with the impeachment show we are anticipating, now?

“Impeach” was a cry hurled toward Trump and toward anyone who would broadcast it, even before the brash, vulgar, non-Washington-molded President-elect was inaugurated.  “For what?” would be the response from his supporters.  “For “collusion” with Russians!”

That the charges  hurled against Trump were mirror images of the actions of the Clinton Campaign, the Clinton-dominated Democratic National Committee, AND of the nefarious elements of the F.B.I. and C.I.A. and of the Obama administration, itself, in no way mitigated the inflammatory calls for impeachment  that were hurled by politicians and elected office-holders throughout, so far, his first term as President.  Barely had the dust settled from the utter collapse of the collusion with Russians  construct, but new, nebulous charges have been leveled that are purported to justify… wait for it, impeachment!

The new charges stem from a phone call President Trump made to the new President of Ukraine in July of 2019.  Ostensibly, and it is strictly subjective, Trump threatened to withhold already approved military assistance unless President Zelenskey investigated apparent influence peddling by Joe Biden while Vice-President in the Obama administration.  So far, at least, there is no proof that a so-called, “quid pro quo” was actually required, but that is the crux of the impeachment  cries.  Mr. Trump deserves some recognition for not folding before the onslaught.

But, it may be instructive to consider the alleged “crime” of demanding something from the government of Ukraine in some sort of exchange for American largesse.

Ukraine has long been considered corrupt, inasmuch that numerous officials enrich themselves at the expense of the citizenry, including bribery to get anything actually done, including, amazingly, defending the integrity of the nation against Russian incursion and encouragement of civil war on behalf of the supposedly ethnic Russian minority.  The U. S. stood still while Russia separated Crimea from Ukraine, and virtually still as irregular Russian insurgents created a nearly autonomous region around Donetsk.  President Trump has finally begun to send armaments to Kiev for defensive purposes against the restive Russians.

Ukraine has last been independent for fewer than 30 years.  Upon the breakup of the Soviet Union, the new Republic of Ukraine inherited a bureaucracy of corrupt officials and apparatchiks  whose prior graft was tiny compared to the opportunities under a more open-market, open-for-business environment.  But Ukraine is also an example of the most unholy alliances our own government has made with international socialist organizations who, for 30 years have been undermining governments to install socialists.  George Soros is at the center of those efforts and our own tax monies have been funneled to his groups in multiple countries (Egypt, Macedonia, Ukraine, Chile, Somalia, Libya, and… wait for it, the United States!)

Bit by bit, President Trump and the relative handful of honest patriots who serve with him, have exposed the wholly un-American efforts of those who agree with international socialism and who actively support it with every form of subterfuge and disingenuousness true Americans can only imagine.  Mr. Obama was the most blatant socialist, ne’ communist, we have ever elected… and Mr. Trump is the antidote to his two terms of American decline.  Joe Biden thoroughly agrees with Obama’s work and his missions to Ukraine as Vice President, where Soros and U. S. efforts had taught young socialists how to topple a government in 2014, are perfectly legitimate areas of inquiry for an America-first president to follow.

The shady-looking insertion of Hunter Biden, a sketchy individual in his own right, into a corrupt gas company spawned by a corrupt Ukrainian oligarchy, in a country into which the U. S. was poised to pour several hundred millions of taxpayer monies, made the need to obtain some sort of clarity that the money wasn’t an example of good money after bad, a virtual duty.  The parallel issues of “Crowdstrike” actions to interfere with the 2016 elections simply accentuated the need to encourage the eradication of corruption before more money were turned over.  If Trump had NOT asked for a “quid pro quo” he should be judged a fool.

Now there is a form of “grand jury” attempting to , quite unfairly it appears, assess “evidence” against the accused President.  There isn’t much to the process so far that adheres to what we enjoy as “due process” in the matters of indictment and prosecution.  To date there has not been described a crime for the “grand jury” to evaluate the nature of any evidence for, yet they struggle onward, certain that the unpleasant America-firster, Donald Trump, is guilty of something – if not everything.

Eventually, and probably just as interest in the “historic” impeachment inquiry begins to fall off, the House of Representatives, that august and impartial grand jury, will vote to “impeach,” as in, they will “hand up” an indictment.  But the hand-up goes not to a prosecutor but to the Senate.  There a “trial” will be held, presided over by the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, John Roberts.  The once and future “grand jury” will take the responsibility of “prosecutor,” having filled the role of persecutor for three years to no avail.  They will employ various attorneys to make the House’s case in the Senate.  Should be a great show.

Culture, Family

A Universal Question

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We had take-out from Chipotle’s tonight.  It’s pretty good, although hard to take home without it’s becoming cold, but still tasty.  I went out of my way a few miles to get it, even though I nearly pass one on my normal way home.  When I arrived the place was packed, unusually so – extraordinarily unusually so – for a weeknight at this particular mall full of restaurants.

They were hosting a fundraiser for a five-time cancer victim who had been on the local swim team in high school, in between cancer battles, and who has made nothing but friends in her first twenty five years on Earth.  The swim team was sponsoring the event during which, for several hours, Chipotle would donate not five or ten or fifteen percent of revenues from identified supporters, but an astronomical thirty-three percent thereof.  By the time I left the wonderfully noisy establishment, the line had expanded from the long one I waited in, to one that extended through the double doors.  I had tears in my eyes.

The ultimate beneficiary is a granddaughter.  But that isn’t the topic… not really.

I work in a small city beset with every social ill, discomfort, and disruption there is, from drug abuse to gangs to illegal entrants on welfare.  Yet it has its own vitality, too, with hundreds of small businesses, including several that expedite everything from cars and furniture to cash back to the “home” countries.  Driving along the best route to the Chipotle restaurant I passed blocks that once were nearly pure Italian, now nearly pure “Hispanic,” although none of the residents come, actually, from Spain.

Looking at the myriad signs hanging from brackets or otherwise affixed to the storefronts, I was struck by all the forces, factors, influences and opportunities to create something, that had come together to form the human consciousness that had created this or that sign in particular.  And for that matter, that had created the things on display in the windows, or the very windows or the cars parked in front.  In the boundless (we think) Universe of planets and places of every shape and kind, how insignificant and majestic each of those creations are.  Why are they what they are?

Across the street were new apartment blocks of certain size and shape, in certain colors chosen from millions of colors, made of materials natural and invented, but made – created, by people, whose purpose and motivation may have been garnering money, another human invention, but whose product, however important to the net occupants, is, in the grand scheme of things, so infinitesimally tiny as to be invisible, which is not to say, meaningless.  One can rightfully assume, I believe, that every human-conceived and created thing or, I suppose, idea, is meaningful.  Indeed every thing  is or was meaningful in a large manner at some time, and the fact that no one we can find remembers its large meaning in no way detracts from its infinitesimal and utter importance.

How is it that we mere specks of tissue on this planetary mote have found within ourselves the need and the ability to create things?  How is it that we have invested so much of our cosmically virtual instants of life to the work of creating things, but even more astonishing, to devise ways and means to care about one another… like the five-time cancer patient who has created of herself, in spite of constant physical attacks on her tiny body, a teacher to children?

That so large a fraction of our blinks of time is spent creating ways to comfort ourselves and our children, is logical and to be expected, one would think; but, how is another such large fraction of our time consumed by caring for others, unrelated, most likely and unmet, even more likely?  Chemistry?  Cosmic rays?  Hmmnh.  What is the point?

Many of us human specks think there is no point.  To they who agree, apparently one should have as much fun as possible, as much sex as possible, own as many things as possible, be they items for sale behind that singular window in the building built as it was with the certain kind of sign saying what it says on the street where I passed, or the painted apartment blocks with unknown people in them… unknown at least to me.  If the things one owns happen to bring the owner more fun and more sex, then he or she has hit “life’s lottery,” making him or her “lucky” despite the impossibility of luck as a force working on the dust-mote of a planet we call home, else there would be something larger than our atoms and selfishness.

The house a semi-handyman lives in is full of things that he has made or perhaps modified or built because of need or artistry.  They are pleasing to him, for a hundred reasons, perhaps even to impress his wife or mate.  Oftentimes they were argued about in the concept, but he still “did” them, sometimes to praise.  But, why?  Why could not things have simply stayed the same?  Someone else crafted them as they were, or damaged them to leave them so.  Barring concerns of safety or comfort, why not leave them alone, tan instead of green, yellowish instead of rose, blue instead of stained and polished wood?  Whence came the compulsion, by anyone, to change them, all those things?

There may be, a billion stars away, a planet with what we call astronomers looking through what we call telescopes and barely detecting the changes in brilliance of our little star as we circle across its disk of light.  If a little more “advanced” than we they may have detected radio signals or nuclear blasts on our little speck and feel compelled, somehow, to let us know they know.  We will.  What would it matter, the color of my house or socks or fingernails, to any of those distant, distant cousins?  Or, to us, theirs?  But they and we, matter above all of our respective, awakened histories, to one another.  Interesting, that.

Where does freedom live?  Is there some reason, aside from novels and movies, both strange aspects of humanity, to believe that only planet-wide, homogenous people could ever advance sufficiently to contact other life?  Isn’t science most properly an affirmation of freedom?  Freedom to wonder, investigate, experiment and explore?  Freedom to challenge “truths” and to postulate new ones?  A billion stars away, would the search for us be a scientific endeavor or a military one?

Or, as many appear to believe, increasingly over many decades, is freedom, the essence of individuality, an impediment to “progress?”  If it is snuffed out on our Earth-speck, will the Universe care?  Or is freedom a blip in the history of humanity, otherwise destined to be controlled by more powerful elites, inexorably planet-wide?  How is it that humans evolved to invent democracy and the concept of republicanism?  Cellular luck?  Not possible if there are no philosophical forces, like “luck,” operating outside of simple existence.  Did biochemistry produce democracy?  Or a nation founded on self-government and limited central powers?

And if “freedom,” the inherent rights of individuals to both succeed or fail, were to be snuffed out on the tiny mote of matter we call Earth, would it matter to our brothers on that other speck a billion suns away?  Would it matter here?

Culture, Economics, Education, Foreign Policy, Governance, Representation, Trump

HATE TRUMPS REALITY

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Two world-changing events occurred in 2016: the U. K. vote to leave the European Union… and the election of Donald Trump to the U. S. presidency.  There are many parallels, both in the respective happenings and in their aftermaths.  Both events have exposed flaws in the collectivist trends both nations were in the midst of.  Both nations have experienced hate-filled political discourse ever since.

The “UK” – Britain – had taken an economic step away from sovereignty when it joined the “European Community” in1973, and reinforced the decision by referendum two years later.  After the Maastricht Treaty in 1992, Britain took a political step away from sovereignty, as well.  Now the European Union, The “EU” placed controls and limitations on member “states” regarding citizenship, borders, immigration and judicial decisions, with the avowed intention of forming a “United States of Europe” and subverting cultural distinctions and national rights.  Britain has always been restive about the changes to its sovereignty, and public pressure and petitioning finally caused Parliament to create the referendum, yes or no, on leaving  the EU: the so-called “Brexit.”

What is interesting is the emergence of hatred as a dominant British political tool, more than even during existential threats of war over Britain’s lengthy warring history.  Per usual, all of what Brits call “hooliganism” is laid at the feet of “ultra-right-wingers,” who, apparently, are too stupid to recognize the wonderful future that’s possible with globalization.  If anyone objects vociferously to the slippery amalgamation into an ephemeral United States of Europe, he or she is pigeon-holed as a “right-winger” and not worthy of considered attention.

In other words, “nationalism” may be viewed only through the lens of Nazism and racism and all the other “isms” leftists use to end debates.  The benefits of national competitiveness in the elevation of living standards of every sort, is carelessly conflated with government’s benign intentions and centralized economic control.  Individual liberty is the first victim of centralization. The unholy alliance of history-ignorant education and a leftist press have proven useful in the imposition of this theory.

A similar effect has clearly been evidenced in the rise of Donald Trump.  With calls for his impeachment even before his inauguration, there is no surprise that his political opponents are clamoring ever louder for impeachment, now.  The only thing missing is an impeachable offense, but they’ll construct one or hire a contractor to create one for them.  Why not win at the ballot box by putting the efforts at impeachment to work building an electoral coalition?  That’s a good but separate question.

Why the hate across academia and liberal-leftist “communities?”  From Antifa on up, the degree of hatred for Mr. Trump and his supporters is indicative of tremendous fear: fear of losing something so dearly held that nothing is too extreme to defend it… even if that means disrupting democratic republicanism and the Constitution, itself.  What could that be?  That is the question, and a larger question in the U. S. than in the U. K.

Do leftists simply hate all non-leftists?  Maybe… they don’t like us, certainly, and think we are stupid for not appreciating their view of history’s inevitable direction.  But, hatred?  Takes a lot of energy to hate, maybe that’s why they aren’t very cheerful.  It could be that they have plans to facilitate the supposedly inevitable direction of human activity (and serfdom) and that those plans are so important that they must destroy everyone who opposes – even by disagreeing with – the idea of a universally socialist future.

Is it as simple as just hating Trump, the man?  He has lived a very exposed life and, until deciding to run for president, he enjoyed the benefits of wealth and acceptance in the elite circles of power and influence open to those who appear to not oppose the leftist vision.  You might say he exploited those benefits.  While not a perfect husband, he has been a good father by all measures, and treats his ex-wives gently.  Evidently he married more of his female affair partners than John F. Kennedy did his.  He has never had any questionable deaths connected to him or his companies, and no one has had to “take the rap” for him.  Is he a sweetheart?  No.  He’s rather ruthless in business… a requirement in the kinds of businesses he has worked in.  He’s a scrapper, willing to fight back when politically punched.  He seems quite patriotic.  What’s to actually hate so vehemently?

Trump must be a threat to something held very dear by all of those who have reared up to stop his presidency.  The measure of his enemies helps us size up the President, no longer simply Mr. Trump.  Trump’s life and past business successes and failures, did not include diplomatic niceties, euphemistic half-truths and pretend alliances.  Trump, himself, has never tried to present himself very differently than he actually is: brash, defensive, crude and vulgar at times.

He is vulnerable, politically, mainly from being a braggart, from which he slides in and out of embellishing the truth, even small truths.  Unlike people in ordinary life, many of whom have the same bad habit of embellishing stories, but for whom it doesn’t make much difference, Trump’s overstatements are described only as lies.  Others’ families and acquaintances recognize the habit and live – or work – around it.  It may even be a source of humor.

In the position of U. S. President there is no room for it… none, we’re told.

People want to hear the lies they expect.  They want to hear about “diplomacy” and “budget cuts” and “working-class” families like Teamsters, and about “working families” with indefinable careers, and the great favorite, “investments” in the future or in our children.  Another whopper we like to hear is “religious freedom.”  While more liberal leaders are expected to purvey “white” lies that keep America happy and keep secret the daunting business of the executive branch, Trump is pilloried for overstating, he is the worst liar in American history, after all.

Trump’s election, though, has interfered with our worldwide economic position, our military standing, the sanctity of our national borders, our ability to complete or repair relations with many nations, and with our ability to conduct domestic business.  Why?  Because of something Trump has done?  Some action that has hurt our standing everywhere?  That doesn’t seem like the Prudent answer.

Hatred of Trump, the man, is the damaging cause.  Hatred, stirred by certain leaders in the Democrat party, and continuously stirred up by them, to a degree pushed by international socialists, is the hammer that has been pounding the U. S. domestically and internationally since before he was elected!  Hatred.  Political action founded on hatred.  Trump has awakened and exposed the essential fraud of the socialist, administrative, “deep” state – the statist monster of socialist dreams and the ultimate threat to our constitutional form of government.

When has this phenomenon ever been seen in the United States?
Leading up to and during the second Civil War. Now we are entering the fourth. 

Widespread hatred, particularly violent hatred like that exercised by so-called “antifa” gangs, is a symptom of civic breakdown.  Political leaders are the very people whom we hire to subdue these effects of social dissatisfaction, or hopelessness, yet many are foregoing their responsibilities or actually encouraging the breakdown.

There are many threats to freedom, the greatest of which from outside, is China.  They have permanent interests from which they do not deviate.  One of those is to achieve dominance over the United States – everything else is secondary.  Yet we, U. S. citizens  AND our so-called representatives, are allowing Chinese interests to dominate us internally! Who voted for Nike?  Politicians on both sides are profiting mightily – and in cash – from connections to Chinese companies.  We keep re-electing them.  Trump is trying to stand up to the Chinese and receives bitter domestic resistance for trying.  You just can’t gore a single ox, anymore.

Meanwhile, we are doing our best to ignore history, these past few decades, and many seem determined to undermine the American idea from within.  A world that is still fundamentally not-free, and dominated by soulless international bankers, is in no way the place for the end of national identities, to be replaced with global socialism – for “climate” reasons or any other.  It seems more than Prudent, now – today, to defend and strengthen our Constitutional, democratically-elected republican form of government.

Economics, Education, Governance, Immigration, Responsibility

The Eve of Destruction

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It is easy to hate and it is difficult to love. This is how the whole scheme of things works. All good things are difficult to achieve; and bad things are very easy to get. – Confucius

History has shown that political power gained through the marshaling of hate is usually hard to maintain, and always destructive – never constructive.  The only path toward maintaining hate-based power is to identify a very large set of enemies whom hate-leaders can paint as hate-worthy, and more: threats to the peace and prosperity of the “oppressed” in-group said leaders wish to control.  It is Prudent to recognize the “hate-ees” in order to defend against the hat-ers.

Despite being consistently accused by the leftist hate leaders, of employing hate themselves, most of the hated are best described as traditionalists.  Let’s consider how the process has developed.  One large group that is cast as hateful are those of us who believe strictly in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution it spawned.  By nearly direct implication that group is nearly congruent with Christian, or Judeo-Christian belief structures.  In other words, Biblical morality is at least professed by most of those who also believe in the founding principles of the United States.  It’s no surprise, but tangent to our point.

Since Roe v. Wade the power of litigation and crafty parsing of words and phrases whose usage has obviously changed since the Federalist Papers were written – a special aspect of redefining words and meanings to control the argument – has well-served those who don’t believe in the moral structure and personal responsibility imposed by “free will,” also called “individual sovereignty.”  Socialism fills their wants, not a constitutional republic.  Unfortunately the defense of tradition now has two, new, giant weapons arrayed against it: 1) Social media; and, 2) Ignorance.

Social media allow for near-instant sharing, or spreading, of ideas… not to be confused with truth, reality and intelligence.  It spreads the last three, too, but those are not dangerous to honest people.  But ideas – “memes” in the current parlance – can be shared very quickly without filters of contemplation, research or understanding, a perfect condition for hatreds.  One person offended can rapidly become thousands and tens of thousands: a political force for the elected dishonest to take advantage of.  Social media and the handiness of cell-phones and their video cameras do great and instant damage to public discourse and the once great “free press.”  Further, it has provided for the concentration of information into the hands and biases of fewer than 100 people, of whom traditionalists – conservatives – are both suspicious and skeptical.  No system of individual liberty can stand for long without the free flow, and publication, of ideas.  An algorithm here, an algorithm there, and pretty soon we’re talking about real mind control.  The thought-police are standing by.  What will happen when governors are elected (thereby) who agree with defining conservative ideas and tradition, itself, as hate speech?

Ignorance is mostly of history and of the lessons of history, although ignorance of, say, climate science is also a large part of how socialism has gained fresh currency among young people in the United States, of all places.  We the people, who shucked off monarchy to establish freedom as a founding principle, are the last people on earth who should find socialism attractive; socialism is the same as monarchy, except that the party is the monarch, of which the chairman is the King.  What do children growing up in the United States have to do with socialism?  Ignorance: the only soil  in which socialism can grow.

Socialists, inherent enemies of individualism, not only purvey ignorance of history, they live on it like parasites.  They play a long game, beginning with dominance of education – their barely employable graduates are the result, and they all seem to prefer socialism over free enterprise and private property.  Bereft of ways to earn enough to live like people on TV… or down the street, they find it easy to blame traditionalists for their ill fortunes and to demand recompense for attempting to follow fortunate people’s rules.  “Forgive my debt,” they say, and leading (following) politicians proclaim that ‘meme’ from the rooftops.  If, as tradition and (un)common sense dictate, one disagrees with that demand, one is transformed into a hater and, probably, a racist… whatever “racist” even means, any longer.

Sexual traditionalists are also accused of bigotry, hatred, homophobia and theocracy.  Simply declaring support for “traditional” marriage can cause boycotts of one’s business and disavowal by political leaders and even by municipal governments, such that one’s business may not locate a branch within a jurisdiction because of “hate speech” by the owner.  The facts and truths associated with said “hate speech” have no bearing, as is often the case with marshaled hatreds.  It is not the truth that stirs crowds and gangs – hatred motivates in the vacuum of ignorance.  By increasing ignorance, certain people fertilize the soil where hatred grows.

All in all, the Prudent observer can conclude that those on the left end of the political spectrum are more involved than are rightists, with hate and accusations of hate.  Inevitably, of late, attempts to engage leftists in substantive discussions of (pick one) immigration, education, health care, energy, climate, gender, religion, any of the Bill of Rights, trade, economics, the Constitution, America, Mexico, South America, colonialism, Democrats, Republicans, Trump, Obama, housing or farming, and a few other topics, results in accusations of (pick one) White Supremacy, Nazism, Fascism, racism, homophobia, misogyny, Islamophobia, or hatred.

Those on the right, it appears, tend to laugh at much of the above, or shake their heads and lament the poor state of education that enables other Americans to believe the things professed.  Conservatives and “traditionalists” are always on the defensive; leftist haters are always the attackers, and have the advantage.  To what end?

And, finally, will traditionalists, defenders of the Constitution, propriety and reason, manage to hold back leftist destruction?  Will we return to secure borders, for example?  Will reality regain sway on college campuses?  Will the federal budget ever be cut?  Will “public” education be made to include appropriate American history content, reading of books, basic math and writing skills, possibly cursive writing (so that older documents may be read), and the Constitution?  Will the subject and science of gender return to reality?  Will honor, duty, commitment and personal responsibility return to primacy in interpersonal relationships?  Will the administrative, largely hidden and secretive state apparatus be made more open and honest?  Will the three branches of the federal government return to their Constitutional bounds and purviews?  Will honesty be restored as the operating public and private philosophy?  Will e pluribus unum regain its primacy as the true “American Dream?

Culture, Economics, Education, Obama, Trump

RATIONAL ENDS

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Antifa thugs with weapons and masks claim to right the wrongs of "fascists", mistakenly named as far-rightists.

One can understand why liberals and other proto-socialists feared George W. Bush.  He had developed himself into a patriotic, empathetic and religious man, shucking the follies of his youth and the excesses of inherited power… for the most part.  Growing up in the shadow of powerful and successful (read: wealthy) people, going back several generations, creates a different mindset and outward view from those of most of us.  The Bush dynasty developed from good fortune and good genes, and, perhaps, some good luck, but no family with the political impact of the Bushes could have had its hand on the levers of wealth and power for so long without ruthless application of power and influence.

But “W” is/was a little different, more empathetic, stemming from his “kinder, gentler” father, George H. W. Bush, and from his newfound humility.  Unfortunately, after the 9-11 attacks, “W” also wanted to change the world, exporting and delivering democratic republicanism to other peoples who were not, in themselves, prepared to believe in it.  Still, more than most who ascend to the presidency, “W” remained fairly honest, believing in what he was doing, however wrong-headed.  Not a bad guy, all things considered, but not a particularly successful leader of the free world, let alone of the United States.  The hatred of him was just as wrong-headed, but some of the fears were rational.

The left was more than ready for a change and with some ruthless interventions, able to ride a wave of window dressing and socialism into the White House with Barack Obama.  Republicans in general didn’t trust him or ANY of his ideas, while those in congress tended to give him what he wanted for appointments and budgets, despite uniform hostility to the mis-named Affordable Care Act.  They couldn’t even make hay from his wild failures internationally and the mis-feasance / malfeasance of his Secretary of State… not even from his demilitarization of the armed forces, socially and financially.  He completed two terms, by the end of which he had virtually decimated the Democrat Party.

Still, Obama accomplished much of what he promised to do, starting with the destruction of compromise with Republicans.  “We won,” he would say.  Policy discussions with Republicans were few and fruitless, if not more derogation than debate.  The liberal press learned that access came from right-thinking (left-thinking), not honesty and, indeed, many government types were finding jobs with networks and relatives of powerful network types were finding jobs in the administration – altogether too cozy a relationship and bearing no relationship to the term: Free Press.  From 8 years of besmirching “W” Bush at every turn, the left-leaning, Obama-approving press learned that fawning coverage of Obama was a ticket to better ratings.

For the average listener/reader/watcher, the Obama administration was the opportunity to espouse socialism and so-called “multi-culturalism.”  Suddenly, finally, it became okay to proclaim alternatives to and opposition towards… umm, actually, more like hatred  towards the institutions and standards of “American” culture.  Everything that was influenced by the Bible, Christianity and English common law, was fair game for leftist, communists, socialists, atheists and anti-U.S. activists of every stripe, many of whom had been lurking in public education for years.  College campuses are full of their weak-kneed and malleable products, now.

Oddly, crony capitalism expanded under Obama, that erstwhile social warrior, as have monopolies, due in large part to the digitization of information and the intellectual laziness of large swaths of the population, particularly educators.  Given free rein to proselytize leftward, weaker teachers at all levels literally graded on right-thinking (left-thinking) rather than on true intellectual curiosity, balanced inquiry, research and expansion of knowledge.  Indebted graduates and drop-outs emerge committed to ideas untested and unchallenged.  Some professors, reduced to tears and seclusion after Hillary’s electoral loss, have never recovered, except to hate the current president and to entertain ways to undo some parts of the Constitution so that such defeat may never recur.

The “politics of personal destruction” first named during the early Clinton era, has become just “politics.”  Since The Loss, the only path to power appears to be one that climbs over destruction of opponents, at least for Democrats, and not one paved with better ideas, policies and uplift.  As with all socialist movements, uninvolved people are also destroyed, at least in spirit, in order to create a more perfect world, free of merit and everything else that works for the majority of people.  Inevitably, the controlling elite minority (also very wealthy) will self-identify and new rules will prevent anyone else from gaining “unfair” advantage in society.  Those who “cling” to quaint ideas of individual sovereignty, self-protection, private property, unlicensed enterprise and the Electoral College, will be clearly spotlighted as the reason for others’ failure to achieve, and further restricted to make things even more fair.  A final solution for their uppity independence will pass both houses.

Now, too, politics includes the Orwellian “Antifa” gangs.  Somehow, and for obscure political reasons never explained, various municipal governments tolerate lawlessness as if it were actually “anti-fascist” in its purposes.  Who wants “fascism” in their warmly welcoming and inclusive cities?  The thing of it is that “antifa” employs the tactics of classical fascism!  Huh.  The terrible “fascists” whose heads they try to crack consist of people who believe, basically, in the U. S. Constitution, and there is the crux of modern politics: Constitutionalism and the enumerated and implied rights guaranteed thereunder, is being vilified as “fascism,” an extraordinary twist of language and logic.  Our “free press” supports this dichotomous hatred of the country whose Constitution protects them.

The other “new” element of politics in 2019 is a mix-up of anti-legality and anti-Americanism, if not anti-Americans.  The hot words are “illegal alien” or, more accurately: “illegal entrant.”  One party has invested political capital, much heat, anger and historic blindness on behalf of open borders, unrestricted illegal entry and loose, extra-legal asylum/refugee processes.  The net effect of it all is to flood the nation with aliens who are neither committed to earn citizenship or even to learn English, rather to steal from Americans – through government agencies who willingly participate in lawlessness – in order to “share the American Dream” or other phrases of equally opposite meaning.  That there is a political party gaining support on this basis ought to trouble all of us.

It seems within the realm of Prudence to doubt the true motives of the Democrat party and its best-known leaders.  This is no testament to the righteousness of Republicans, but the rapid leftward skid of Democrats is unparalleled in American history.  Since Roe v. Wade the defense of abortion has become more than a mere knife in the heart of Life, itself, morphing into a virtual sacrament that Democrats must receive to stay in the party.  Death to unborn children, unborn Americans.  It has served its second purpose well, the delegitimizing of religion, most specifically Christianity: the death of America, itself.  In leftist hands abortion has been the sharp wedge for breaking the bonds of our federation of states and to break the bonds of freedom, as well.

Some 61 Million Americans have been denied the Right to Life, mainly for convenience.  Some millions of them would have grown up to love this nation and its exceptional purposes.  They’d have grown and loved and learned and married and taught their children to take care of themselves and their families and their country.  Perhaps that is the threat those babies represented – a threat so grievous that they had to be eliminated before they threatened the final solution for our aberrant Constitutionally limited  democratic republic, Land of the Free.

Simple abortion has itself morphed into infanticide while illegal entrants are encouraged to sneak in to the country in order to have their babies become U. S. citizens as if by magic.  There is magic afoot in abortion on demand: black magic that makes murder the day before birth a right; and for babies who insist on living through abortion procedures, quiet termination in HOSPITALS at the hands of doctors and proto-parents who simply don’t want to take the baby home.  Are these children not U. S. citizens by virtue of birthright?  How is it that these citizens have not been murdered by willful neglect?  Magic most foul, and the hallmark of Democrats – the Party of Death.

Culture, Economics, Governance, Health Care

FOR THE HEALTH OF IT

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A patients view of the doctors, just before going into surgery.

Few topics or “matters” matter as much or generate as much discussion and political malfeasance as health care, and not really “care,” but coverage.  Coverage is where the “easy” money is.  “Coverage” is like a giant public works construction project: easy to skim from.  It’s virtually impossible to get any graft – or campaign contributions – from individual medical procedures, but insurance conglomerates and hospital corporations and the pharmaceutical industry are deep wells for craven politicians.  Consequently, those same politicians are willing to expose the federal budget and debt creation to the medical “field” to the benefit of all, and even of patients sometimes.

Money, money, money.  About one-sixth of the U. S. economy is tied to “health care,” but a much smaller fraction is tied to CARE, itself.  These are huge industries with gigantic advertising, promotion and bribery budgets.  The ever-pure United States calls those filthy bribes  campaign contributions… or, they might be “donations” to colleges and universities for research and production of new doctors who, coincidentally, will be fully committed to pharmaceuticals, chemotherapies, surgery and maintenance for life – or death.  It’s all expensive.

Cancer is one of the cash cows of medicine: the big shibboleth in human caring and willingness to help others.  People fear it, and rightly so.  Breast cancer is a powerful subset, and so is pediatric cancer.  We love kids and care about their health more than for any older group.  Kids are helpless and pathetic; humans feel these things and sacrifice to raise them from complete dependency, to minimal independence, to experimental independence, to sports and education and personality development and, one day, separation into adult-hood.  We hate any interruption to these things and sacrifice to facilitate the stages of normal childhood.  Cancer is a Hell of an interrupter and we want to pay to stop it.  And we do.

Billions of dollars have been raised by the American Cancer Society, for example, and they claim a 79% rate of actual cancer expenditures: mostly for research, but a large amount is for “soft” expenses that help those who are in treatment and their families, and other non-care, non-research uses.  A big pile goes to run the Society, of course.  To its credit, A.C.S. does a lot of good along the paths it sees fit, and it’s much more efficient than the federal government, a low bar.  Sadly, despite its widespread use of children to raise its millions (Relay for Life, anyone?), only a small percentage of ACS dollars are employed to solve pediatric cancers.

In one case Prudence knows well, a 6-year-old girl survived neuroblastoma after much chemo, operations, stem-cell harvests and replacements only to fight through it again 4 years later, with more of many of the same poisons that forced the cancer to retreat the first time.  Five years later, more chemotherapy to force a third retreat.  “A miracle,” her family declared.  3 years later osteosarcoma attacked her right tibia, part of which was removed with cadaver bone up to the knee.  More chemo – same crap as earlier times, same poison to push the cancer back.  College and Masters degrees completed, 6 years later the fifth attack and fifth battle with cancer, now in the thoracic cavity pressing on the lung.  The bone cancer was a not rare reaction to earlier treatments; the chest problem a recurrence of the bone cancer, by genus.  Same poisons prescribed and administered, except she was unable to tolerate any more of it.  Twenty years of treatment, constant news about this and that breakthrough therapy, DNA, customized immunology, yada, yada, yada… same attempts to kill the cancer a little faster than the patient.

When the young woman with the lengthy, miraculous, cancer survival history heard what kind of poisons they were planning to pump directly into her bloodstream, she naturally pointed out that it was the same crap she’d received the last time!  Was there nothing better?  Newer?  Apparently not.  Bring us your sick children and we will poison them for you in the hope that the cancer cells will die first and we can hold your child back from the brink of death.

Medical students arrive at medical school with science knowledge
–at least biology, maybe chemistry – ready to be taught some skills, mostly about using and understanding the data produced by wonderful diagnostic electronics, and about the latest in pharmacological weapons to counteract natural biological weaknesses, failures, breakdowns, related pains and mental/emotional discords and incongruities.  There is a lot to learn.  If surgery is the interest, there is a lot of practice.  Students develop likes and dislikes that lead them to one specialty or another, or, for many, general health and well-being such as “family” doctors ought to know.   Some of these general practitioners are really “internists” who understand “internal medicine” as distinct from “external medicine,” one supposes.

In any case, new doctors are taught according to fairly rigid protocols and traditions by people whose adherence to standards is well known… and respected.  Indeed, it is only by proving one’s own adherence to those standards that a doctor will be licensed or safe when sued.  “Recognized” standards, “current” protocols, “best” practices – those are the only defense a doctor has.  Where is the profit for leaving medical orthodoxy?

Does this mean that “doctors” or “big pharma” are blocking the introduction of miracle cures that an obscure researcher somewhere has developed because traditional medicine would not?  Well, “yes,” and “no.”  I think, or at least hope fervently, that the answer is “yes” although there is no intent to do so; and that the answer is “no” because there is no intent to do so.  But, the inhibition of new ideas is almost inevitable.  Thankfully it is not impossible and progress does get made, inventions are developed and made marketable – and trustworthy – and new drugs are eventually approved.  So, what’s the problem?

The problem is that the new drugs are rarely giant steps – sometimes they are, but not  often.  This is because most research is built on previous success and lines of inquiry and wide departure from the reservation is not very likely – it doesn’t get funded.  Pharmaceutical manufacturers are looking for sure things.  Often the greatest advances are side-effects of drugs, new and old, that coincidentally prove beneficial elsewhere.  More power to them.

Similar effects produce medical technology like, for popular example, knee replacements and hip replacements.  Now very reliable and long-lasting, such replacements are commonplace, almost to the exclusion of alternatives.  Could the damage and erosion of joints be prevented?  In most cases.  Are there nutritional preventions that are still regarded as anecdotes, not science?  Absolutely.  Do you suppose that part of every knee replacement is dedicated to learning how to prevent knee replacements?  Well, no.

Americans, and most residents of highly developed countries, eat themselves to death, drink and drug themselves to death, smoke themselves to death, fertilize and pesticide ourselves to death, and so on.  For all of our health clubs, gyms and YMCA’s, Americans tend, on average, to not take very good care of the bodies we are born with and, now that parts can be replaced by our remarkable “repair, replace and maintain” medicine, there seem to be fewer reasons to worry about the consequences of ice cream, sodas and cheese-burgers and lack of basic exercise regimens.  We are told 8 times every half-hour by our flat-screens that we need never suffer from aches, pains, discomforts, anxieties or depressions.  There are pills for each of these maladies.  In fact, there are separate analgesics for shoulder pains, neck pains, knee and foot pains, back pains, headaches, migraines and insufficient sleep.  People who have allowed apnea to intrude on their ability to sleep can get a C-Pap device to counteract it.  What’s to worry?

What do all of these OTC chemicals do to us?  Some of the long-term effects are known, not the least of which is liver damage, but it’s slow, virtually unnoticeable, until it isn’t – kind of like moderate smoking.

Sugar and alcohol also have cumulative effects, if not simple diabetes, then an acidification of body chemistry that weakens the immune response to invaders.  Too much gluten, perhaps?  The American diet is awash in wheat and wheat proteins, right down to canned tunafish (only one brand is clean).  Tunafish?  And lots of other products: vinegar, puddings, many candies, gravies, prepared foods of all kinds include wheat starch, “hydrolyzed vegetable protein” and on and on.  Many people know they are allergic to gluten, far more do not… know, that is.  Skin problems, digestive problems, immune problems and, of course, weight problems, stem in large part from too much wheat in our diets.  The body tends to become allergic in the presence of too much of the same thing – often the food you like the best, as well.  But, that’s no problem!  There are multiple crèmes and pills to fight off the effects of our odd diets, so many, in fact, that they must be profitable enough to purchase TV advertising nationwide.  Do you ever wonder if every prescription for these somewhat dangerous drugs includes a small amount of money to fund prevention of gluten intolerances?  Nahh.  Bread, cake, doughnuts, fried clams, stuffing, ice cream, mayonnaise, salad dressings, sub-rolls, pita, crackers and… and… whatever, are too tasty to forego and, besides, “they” have things for that.

When Dwight Eisenhower left the presidency he warned America about the encroaching power of the “military-industrial complex.”  Rightly so, although that sloppy circle of funding and influence has managed to keep the country fairly safe in an uncontrollable world.  One can almost hear the words of a true outsider warning us against the “medical-industrial complex,” although almost no one would listen.  On the edge of Boston and Brookline there is a street called Longwood Avenue where hospitals have grown into connected proximity.  It’s starting to look like Las Vegas.

The insertion of politics into health care really got moving with the “Great Society” in the mid 1960’s.  It hasn’t been all good despite the public intentions of the socialists who caused the Great Society to be codified.  Today federal funds feed into the insatiable maw of modern medicine, and to help it along, every Congress adds new mandates for care and coverage.  Combined with the primacy of welfare (federalized at the same time) the general interface with patients has trended to impersonal, if not de-personalized, care.  The vision for health care is still greater impersonality, robotics and, again, health orthodoxy that satisfies… umm, well, the federal government, and “averages.”

No one is going to stop the money.  If we have to borrow from our 5th descendent generation, by God, we’ll do it!  No one who needs a new hip, rich or poor, will be denied one!  What?  Do we want to have a society where there is one level of care for the wealthy and another for the poor?  With enough agitation and politics anything that needs a licensed medico to accomplish will be funded.  Trans-gender mutilations?  Where’s the checkbook?  Prudence would advise that there is not enough money, or desks for nameless bureaucrats to sit behind, to provide all the repairs and drugs that are known, to every person who thinks he or she needs them.  Maybe robots will provide more even-handed care and cost less than humans.  Not so far.

Economics

A Degree of Economics

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Everything so new and fresh

Prudence has successfully resisted the temptation to counter the many ignorant statements uttered by the impressively ignorant Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, of late an elected representative in the U. S. House of Representatives.  She has a college degree… in economics.

One recent evening she purported to explain – obviously only to those more ignorant than herself – what “capitalism” is.  In the process she confused it with “free-market economy,” and then jumped to explaining how one might have a “mixed” economy where the “state” doesn’t own the means of production but “workers’ cooperatives” do.  Neither the origins of the means of production that workers’ cooperatives will “own,” nor the means of managing their cooperative labor, were revealed during her explanation.

To the likes of Ms. Cortez the Marxist concept of capitalism is not a solution to the human condition, but the cause of suffering and injustice.  Unfortunately, modern capitalists are proving many of Marx’s theories.  Thanks to the vapid connivance of ostensibly democratically elected governments (crony-capitalism), international banks virtually direct public policy and national economic decision-making.  Most “workers” – wage-earners, are relatively comfortable and not about to revolt against anonymous masters, but not all.  The obscene concentrations of economic and productive power run the risk of collapsing the edifices of international capitalism.  There’s plenty for social justice warriors to despise.

On the other hand… socialism cannot destroy debt – only productive surplus does and can do that.  It is not possible, at least human nature will not allow, a financially complex society to grow without practical amounts of debt.  Not to be pejorative, “debt” is merely paying for a product or “good” over time.  No, that sounds too simple.  “Debt” is only true and practical when a financing agent has judged a borrower likely to pay back the loaned cash with interest, oftentimes with the financier holding a chattel interest in the good for which it has loaned the purchase price, because of two factors: 1) The financed “good,” or product or house or car or medical procedure has sufficient desirability, utility or comfort value for the borrower as to make its value or worth obvious (and its potential loss undesirable enough) and valued by the borrower; and 2) The borrower or beneficiary of the good’s utility or comfort is, by test of available income over time, able to make periodic payments on a timely, contracted (promised) basis.

In the ideal case, then, debt is simply a tool that is “rented,” as it were, the value of which is clear enough to cause timely, interest-bearing, repayment.  The manufacturer of the good (debt properly employed should always, as in every single time, be employed to facilitate the transfer of a “hard, or manufactured, good” and not a temporary expense) obtains immediate payment, enabling additional future manufacture, while the customer of the good obtains the use and facility of the good immediately upon need when it may be too costly to afford a single cash exchange for it.

Much is misunderstood about “productive surplus.”  It’s “margin,” which is to say, revenue that exceeds the cost of manufacture.  “Oh, well, that’s profit for a capitalist,” some will say, “and you shouldn’t “overcharge” poorer customers or else you should share it with your exploited workers.”  But margin isn’t simply “profit,” and the “exploited” workers are paid according to their productive capacity and value to the production of the goods the manufacturer makes and sells.  Margin provides “working capital;” what does it actually do?

Working capital means cash in the bank, and it serves to improve efficiency within the manufacturer’s operations by enabling investment in better manufacturing equipment, often by being committed to pay off equipment acquisition debt, which shifts that portion of margin to cost-of-goods but which can reduce the costs elsewhere with more productive equipment (which is also a good result for the people who make that new equipment).  Working capital enables the company to train its workers to higher skill levels and greater productivity, yielding higher pay.  It also enables the company to hire more employees as production increases and, let’s hope, quality and sales also increase.

Productive surplus destroys debt; it’s the only engine that can.  In the presence of productive surplus, debt is a useful and valuable tool for growth and for improving overall living standards.  But what happens to “profits?”

Profits belong to shareholders, who are, in fact, the owners of the company.  Socialists feel as though no one person or small group should “own” a means of production, but that it should automatically “belong to” or be controlled by, the workers, to whom all the profits should be distributed.  History, the bane of socialists’ existence, teaches that humans are good at some things, bad at others, and one of those “others” is collective decision-making or, the corollary, collective self-leadership, an oxymoron that socialists insist on believing in.  Let’s start at the beginning.

A person has an idea for a widget/product/thingy that other people will want to have because it makes, ummm… it makes baking cakes, breads and muffins easier and more efficient with fewer bad results.  The person has no factory but he (let’s say it’s a he) learned in trade school (paid for from taxes that derive from profits) how to work with metal as well as how to apply himself to a problem and how to concentrate and to research the things he doesn’t know.  First he figures that being able to have a baking oven that has even, steady heat would lead to uniformly baked goods, so he tries various kinds of pipes and shapes and pressures to provide even gas flames that won’t make hot spots within the oven.  Aha!  He gets it and finds a way to generate even heat, cobbles together a metal stove and burns his first cake to a crisp, as the whole oven became a hot-spot.  Hmmmnn.

Our inventor/entrepreneur realizes he must regulate the heat to achieve one temperature and hold it there within very narrow limits…   The process goes on for weeks and months, absorbing every spare hour and weekend until he has a metal box of a specific shape with special gas burners, elaborate temperature sensors and controls, insulation and directions for installation, use and cleaning.  But he has just the one.  If he sells it for more than it costs to make he’ll have a brief profit but it takes so long for him to make just one that he’ll go hungry before he can get the next pulse of “profits” from selling the second one, assuming that he quits his 9 to 5 job and works on the oven business full time.

He has some savings that he has been slowly accumulating to provide for his family if something happened to him, and he’s been careful to leave them intact.  His idea is good and he’s proven that it’s the best oven design potentially on the market.  How to get it there?  He needs capital, of which he has only a little.  He and his wife decide to take the risk, pledging their savings and their house(!) to secure a loan that will allow for several key things needed for producing 10 ovens per week, and selling them, at a margin that will allow for repaying the loan with interest (which employs people at the bank), insuring against the risks and liabilities manufacturers face, making payroll (and benefits!) for the 5 people they must hire to make and market the ovens (including payroll for himself, the owner/inventor, and to invest in an inventory of parts and gizmos needed to assemble ovens such that orders for ovens can be filled promptly.  And, oh, yes, they have to lease some suitable – or nearly suitable – space for manufacturing and testing, on which there is a large deposit.  Everything is at stake.

With much struggle and worried nights things get done.  The first 10 ovens are produced, tested and packaged for shipping.  The sales “department” of one former kitchenware sales rep, has secured an order for 4 of them, one of which is to a small mom-and-pop bakery not far away.  The owner/inventor goes to their small shop, attached to their house, to oversee installation by the plumber/gas-fitter, and personally teaches the operation to the new owners, who took a risk of buying an expensive new oven based on its description and manufacturer’s test results.  They agree to let the inventor/capitalist advertise their success with it – for a fee.  It performs as advertised and they start to do more business thanks to the creative new pastries their new oven bakes to perfection (damn those wood-fired stone ovens).

Well, the advertising kicks in and the sales department manages to sell the rest of the first ten and the next ten and things start humming at the “Great Perfection Oven Company.”  Soon, a major catalog sales company makes an offer to carry the oven at a discount to them which, if they can prepay for a certain number and sell at least 10 a month, the harried owner/inventor agrees to provide, even though he’ll make less margin per oven.  The advantage is that with that new revenue he can afford two more production employees and more leased space and increased advertising.  And on it goes…

Within a couple of years he and his wife celebrate the pay-off of the first loan that had put their house and savings at risk.  The business has grown to employ 40 employees and a large commercial bakery has approached them with a request for a production-size version of the “Perfection Oven” with its now-patented gas burners (patenting cost over $30,000) and the inventor/owner commences to design just such an oven which will require more manufacturing equipment and changes to one of their production lines… and so on.

Ms. Ocasio-Socialist, do you think he doesn’t “own” this business?  He and his wife are the only share-holders.  Do you know what else “margin” dollars must do?  They have to provide long-term benefits like pension contributions to trusted, valued employees: the ones who help the company succeed and be profitable.  They have to create a reserve fund in case other threats to the company materialize, cutting into profits, challenging its patents, creating knock-offs and look-alike ovens that sap Perfection Oven sales and margins, as well as changes in tax laws or state-mandated benefits, paid leave laws and new health-care coverages… not to mention changes in OSHA and EPA regulations that could hamper production or require costly new changes to production facilities, unionization, higher fuel costs for delivery of both raw materials and finished goods (ovens).  Lots of future risks that must be insured against, sometimes with simple cash reserves.  THEN there are profits.

Ms. Cortez, do you, with your costly economics degree, understand any of this?

Governance, Representation, Responsibility, Trump

votes to whiplashes

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It is not generally Prudent to try to discern historical meaning from quite current events, although the Mueller persecution of the Presidency has been extant long enough to make even some historical judgments without presuming too much.  That Robert Mueller is a career creature of the federal law-enforcement bureaucracy, goes with saying.  Ronald Reagan first appointed him an acting and then actual U. S. Attorney for Massachusetts;  George Bush the elder appointed him and so did Clinton, Bush the younger and even Obama, several positions needing Senate confirmation, including Director of the FBI, a job he held for 11 years.

Mueller is a decorated Viet-Nam veteran and recipient of the Purple Heart, but all of his various public services have not been so honorable.  While in Boston as an Assistant U. S. Attorney in the mid ‘80’s and again when in charge of the FBI in the 2000’s, for example, Mueller ignored, in fact fought, an opportunity to right a criminal wrong perpetrated by the FBI itself in the 1960’s, that left 4 men in prison for a murder they did not commit.  That miscarriage eventually cost taxpayers tens of $Millions in payments to the innocent men’s families.  Mueller’s loyalty was not, then, to the law, but to protecting crooked FBI agents and the FBI itself, from having that rotten, criminal scandal exposed.

Armed with such evidence people should be better prepared to ascribe value to the “work” Mueller has ostensibly done since his appointment as “Special Counsel” in charge of investigating NOT collusion with Russia, particularly, but investigating all related matters, a barn door wide enough to protect the entire Department of Justice.  That Mueller hates Trump is easily discerned, that he was not in charge of his own investigation wasn’t clear until he tried to testify to two Congressional committees.

Mueller, as honorable as he may have been before he got into the DOJ, got his special-counsel appointment based on two different persona:  Robert Mueller, registered Republican, former FBI Director, decorated Vet, well liked in establishment circles, and Robert Mueller deep insider, defender of the “craft” and its practitioners, manipulable loyalist whose titular presence allowed for a hyperpartisan army of Democrat… no, Clinton sycophants… who would attempt the coup Clinton couldn’t pull off.

When Mueller attempted his committee “testimony” in July, it became clear that he had only cursory understanding of the “Mueller” Report and probably didn’t write much, if any, of it.  The grand circumnavigation of Russian collusion, initiated by a hoax, perpetuated by fraudsters with badges for more than 2 years, exposed that the ostensible “head” of the crucial probe was, himself, a hoax, clearly in place for reasons other than guiding a detailed investigation into possibly impeachable crimes.  The great “apolitician” was there for hateful politics.  One of his reputations was damaged.

Trump is an imperfect man – imperfect human.  One need not delve into scripture to grasp that everyone over the age of, maybe, 8 or 9, is imperfect.  Newborns and infants and toddlers, one might call perfect; they are not yet responsible for their actions and reactions.  Still, somewhere around age minus 3 months, parents, especially mothers, but others as well, begin to impart their own views of humanity, love, relationship, truth, justice and revenge, to their gestating innocent. 

The wonderful Michael Johnson song, “There is a Breeze,” includes this prescient phrase:
There Is A Breeze, Michael Johnson, 1973

“You have got to be taught before it’s too late, Before you are six, or seven or eight, To hate all the people your relatives hate…”

… even if the people they hate are themselves.

Mueller seems to hate Trump, and the people he served as Special Counsel all hate him, too.  It isn’t Prudent to construct a governing philosophy based on hate, but those who hate Trump are committed to carefully teaching everyone, everywhere, to hate him.  So far they have failed, but not for lack of trying.

Trump contains and exhibits many good qualities, woven among his flaws, as do we all.  Those who await a perfect person to become President of these United States will die waiting.  They seem obsessed with proving that anyone who gains power under a different philosophy than theirs, must be proven flawed – their flaws magnified to frightening proportions as proof that he, or she, is unfit to have elector-granted power.  Well, then, it becomes clear that everyone who voted for the flawed victor is also flawed and not worth conversation, let alone compromise.  It is a corrosive, dangerous path to tread.

Mueller is caught up in this, diverted from retirement by his loyalty to the deep state: the cadres of smarter-than-average functionaries and true-believers who know that the self-perpetuating structure of control and confiscation that largely subsumes individual sovereignty and electoral “choice,” is by far the rightest possible way to govern, as far removed from religion and independence as possible.  It is like a sickness, an infection, except that the patient believes himself more well than the caregivers who feed and clothe him – and her.

Eventually the “deep” state, having consumed all the wealth obtained while hiding, will have to convert votes to whiplashes as those fabled “sovereign citizens” recognize the horrible hoax of the administrative state and refuse to support it in the style for which it is designed, and the socialism within rears up and stands astride America publicly.  There are hints of this from the socialist left, here in 2019, and the great Robert Mueller has assisted to the best of his ability, following the instructions from the other swells to whom he is most loyal.  Republican, shmepublican… thanks a lot, Mr. Mueller.

Economics, Education, Family, Race

The Bad Old Days

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It is an interesting “fad,” we might call it, to portray every event in history from the viewpoint of the most “woke” or radical perspectives fostered and pandered-to by today’s politicians.  It doesn’t seem to be helpful in terms of increasing knowledge or of increasing understanding of the past.  But it has, in the span of 20 years or so, become commonplace.  Every example of this new ignorance  need not be brought before the bar of reason for the student of history to still be able to ask, “why?”

If we accept the premise that schools are the imparters of truth, then it follows that they should be the bastions of truth, as well.  Interesting word, ‘bastion.’  It means a projection from a defensive wall that affords more effective firing angles against attackers, and it also means “bulwark.”  A bulwark is a person, or a thing, that is the immovable defense of the fort or castle.  In the battle of ideas, persons in the school or education business, are obligated  by their office in society – the official role to which they are committed and for which they are well-compensated – to be the bulwarks against UN-truth and lies.

In that regard, their best success derives from having taught students to both find truth and to recognize it when it appears… or disappears.

Parents consign their children to schools in order for them to learn truths and to learn about truth.  Human beings entrusted with imparting truth to children of any age, are sorely tested to not convey opinions or beliefs they hold that cannot be demonstrated to be true.  One might think – and parents might hope – that a mechanism exists to remove teachers who cannot help but taint truth with their opinions.  That the opposite mechanism exists should give us pause.  Short of severe debauchery or criminal acts, it is nearly impossible to pry a teacher loose from his or her tenured security.  What are they teaching?

Let’s look at a simple event that has caused news stories in recent years;  the landing of the “pilgrims” in Massachusetts Bay, ostensibly at what we know as Plymouth, named for Plymouth, England.  To get to Plymouth the so-called Pilgrims had to endure privations and tribulations that we, today, in our land of too much food and electricity, cannot conceive of.  We lose our cool when another car blocks us or cuts in front of us.  Imagine uprooting your family and leaving the place of your birth and generations of customs and history, to sign on to a corporate adventure to the “New World,” about which little is known.  Your first ship proves unseaworthy and you limp back to port until another can be obtained and hired to your purposes.

You are unable to carry with you more than a small trunk’s worth of tools and possessions.  On your little ship there are no bathrooms, no showers, salted fish and beef to eat, no fresh vegetables, no toothpaste or toilet paper.  Privacy is virtually non-existent, you know nothing of germs or disease except that the latter is common.  Childbirth is among the deadliest of burdens for women.  For years you have planned and hoped for a better life upon reaching the distant unknown shore, and after the final two months at sea you are deposited on the shore, far off from your intended destination, now forced to fend for yourselves from the ground up, in fact, building shelters, foraging for wildlife and wild fruits or berries to try to store enough food for the imminent winter which will be much harsher than what you have been used to, particularly since your delay in leaving England left you in the New World in October, rather than in May or June. 

Among your beliefs is deep religious faith in God, bolstered by frequent prayer, but He isn’t cushioning any blows or revealing hidden stores of healthy food.  Many of you die in that first winter, yet faith and incredible work see you through.  Eventually relations with natives, whom you believe to be “savages,” keep you from dying out altogether and your duties as profitable fur trappers can commence.

Accidentally, in total ignorance, you have brought germs that infect the native people, germs against which they have no defense.   You have brought another disease, economics, including concepts of private property, fences and stockades, and guns and swords of steel to defend them.  You believe that God has blessed you with a new land over which you have every right to take dominion.  History records the clash of beliefs and its outcome.

To this Prudent observer, descended from those Pilgrims and others who followed soon after, the story of immense courage and faith, regardless of what we may, today, think of that faith, is a bit heroic.  Courage in the face of danger is one of humankind’s abiding virtues and is worthy of honor and emulation, but what is more frequently discussed, even abetted by public entities, is the awfulness of the Pilgrims and all of their virtues and beliefs, since it turned out badly for the natives.   The thanks offered prayerfully to God, for the salvation of the tiny colony, must now be denigrated because of those germs and the new ideas the colonists held dear.

The strength of the underdog fighter who wins against all odds, must be hated because, we have since learned, he once flipped the bird to another driver and… it was a woman!  There will never be a good reason to train the way he did, or learn the tactics that he used to win, not ever will there be a reason to mention his name or take his picture.  Everything must be expunged.

And so education has purged itself of the role of Christianity in the creation and final founding of the United States.  Since many teachers and professors, now, are so sure that belief in the Bible’s teachings is superstition, they cannot bring themselves to learn how it is woven into the fabric of America, and certainly not to teach about it.  Is it all just economics?  That was Marx’s view; we certainly must teach about that.  So, is the “new” narrative about where America came from the same as “truth?”  It would seem Prudent to judge that it is a half-truth at best.  Does that fulfill the essential requirement that educational institutions… and functions… be the defenders and imparters of truth?  If not, what are they?  What are they being paid to do, if not impart truth?

Christopher Columbus was nothing if not unusually brave.  It took unusual courage to set sail beyond the sight of land, not knowing how far it was to reach another shore.  It was a struggle for him to obtain not one, but 3 crews to follow him on his undefined journey.  When he landed he was thousands of miles from where he thought he must be.  His mission was financed by the newly victorious, fused monarchies of Ferdinand and Isabella, who defeated the Moors just one day before granting Columbus the support he needed.

They needed gold, which the “indies” reportedly had, and some other valuables Columbus’ crewmates and soldiers might come across.  No one on earth had knowledge of germs, viruses or infections.  No one.  The Spaniards were simple thieves who believed non-Europeans, non-Catholic non-Europeans most particularly, were “savages.”  In other words, Spaniards, like French, British, Italian, Dutch and other explorers… Portuguese, were brought up to believe that because of their relative enlightenment, manufactures, printing, marriage, courts, police, and religion, they were superior to savages wherever they found them.  The Spaniards were fulfilling the charge of their King and Queen, whose authority came from God.  There was no better work they could do.  Not so simple, perhaps.

Today Columbus is vilified, as if current hot feelings might improve Columbus’ own attitudes, causing him and all of his crewmates who had just risked their lives on their mission to the “Indies,” to renounce every belief they held and their faith, and to switch to social services for the savages they had found, perhaps teaching them how to forge iron and smelt bronze, and to build better huts and grow more crops.  The next expedition could teach them to read the Bible and raise their children.

Many teachers seem consumed by the estimates of decimation brought about by European diseases thanks to Columbus’ discovering the new world.  Rather than recognize the essential sacrifice and bravery of mariners of Columbus’ day, along with the unintended consequences of the intercontinental movement of peoples, educators convinced of the evil intent of all white-skinned peoples, pummel their students with the evils initiated by white Europeans.  Increasingly liberal teachers twist the views of their students such that whites begin to hate themselves and question not only bad actions of the past, but even ideas and philosophies generated by people whose skin is not brown.

This immediately translates into hatred of America and the ideas that created it; it also validates hatreds the racialist hate-mongers are encouraging non-stop in black communities.  Neither trend is healthy for our nation, our future progress or our steady destruction of disease and poverty.  It’s stupid, essentially.  Shame on us.

This same poisoned outlook has been seized upon by socialists now to fuel their never-ending struggle to destroy individual freedom, a goal that may only be achieved by destroying America.  They must destroy Christianity, too, since many white people believe in it.

Can the descendants of slave owners atone not only for the sins of their ancestors but for the sins of their ancestors’ ancestors’ ancestors?  No, never.  The actions of the past still remain no matter what is done, now.  Can the descendants of slaves (which are virtually all of us depending on how many ancestries we include) receive some kind of justice for the sufferings of their ancestors?  No, the suffering will have still happened.  Is that suffering the reason some brown-skinned people are economically behind the curve today?  Or educationally?  No.

Up until the “Great Society,” which federalized welfare has purchased the votes of blacks for generations, the suffering of slaves had created a great strengthening of their descendants.  “We shall overcome” had genuine meaning and blacks were overcoming and gaining economic power faster than their white “oppressors.”  But when hate became a tax-funded industry, black progress not only slowed, but reversed.  And still they excel… in virtually every field, yet more also fail, convinced by their hate-filled leaders that life is unfair because of (pick all that apply) whites, Christians, police, schools, businesses, Republicans, slavery, Columbus, NASA, Trump.  What a waste, however enrichening it is for some.

Education, Family, Sex

WHY A RAINBOW?

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Carlisle, Massachusetts

In many cities, towns, villages and hamlets, churches and synagogues display some form of rainbow flags.  If the congregation and pastor is really “woke,” the top color stripe is black; otherwise ‘red and orange, green and blue, shining yellow, purple, too…’ is enough to advertise how welcoming that church and congregation is to, well, any one.  It is a friendly intention, throwing wide the arms of, umm… it’s not clear, Christianity(?)… to the world. 

Among Christianity’s strengths is its history of reformation.  The best known is the protestant reformation of Martin Luther.  His 95 Theses exposed the sloppiness and politicization of the Catholic Church, it’s corruption and ties to wealthy bankers and corrupt royal families.  There followed a reformation of Christianity, but not of the Catholic Church, particularly.  The world forced “the Church” to adapt, but it always appeared to follow, not lead.  Despite its self-proclaimed heritage direct from Simon Peter, Holy Mother Church retained its worldly flaws and intrigues, descending into sexuality most foul, ruining thousands of lives and families.  It appears incapable of reforming itself.

Rampant homosexuality and pedophilia has caused a reformation never intended, where droves of the faithful washed their hands and feet of the Church, losing trust in the priesthood.  The written and spoken liturgy and the artful back-story Catholics have recited and agreed with for centuries is still the same, but the trust is different.  Despite its self-immolation of recent decades, the Catholic Church is still a pillar of Western civilization – worth our defending.  One hopes the Church will come clean and preach the truth; its power to do and to guide good, is still immense.  It is incapable of defending Christianity, itself, just now, especially in the face of Islam and other anti-Christian forces arrayed against it.  Catholic parishes don’t need to fly the rainbow banner.

“Protestantism” reforms itself by subdividing.  Each new sect, even each new congregation within some sects, keys in on certain tenets of the Bible as the best lessons to learn for how to live a “Christian” life, raise your children and increase charity in the world.  To the degree that each is honestly led, each has a divine function to fulfill.  Everyone is not at the same point in their evolution – evolution of the soul, that is – and each will find the teacher whose teaching he or she is ready to receive.  Each should also be ready to move upwards when it is time for a more profound teacher along the path toward truth.

Lately, however, Protestants are racing to not be the exception in the Rainbow Revolution.  Every church has one: Methodists, Presbyterians, Congregationalists, Episcopalians, United Churches of Christ, liberal Baptists, even a handful of reform Synagogues.  Jehovah’s Witnesses and Seventh Day Adventists appear immune to the blandishments of Rainbows, as are Quakers.  The latter three are not caught up with filling the pews for no reason or for any reason.

If the Rainbow symbol were created to bring more people into adherence to Divine Law, it would be a wonderful, actual, reformation.  Church “Reform” ought to improve human distillation of the Word insofar as we have tried to learn and understand it.  If a widespread movement serves, instead, to DEform churches and their ability to spread the Word, then Christians ought to question it, starting with ministers, preachers, priests, rabbis, bishops and deacons. That’s not happening… not that a Prudent observer can detect.

What do interested people believe that banner says?

The first and primary message, beyond all claims of “inclusivity” or unity with those discriminated against racially, is that same-sex activities are equally valid to those of heterosexuals.  Every other meaning of the other 5, 6 or 7 colors, occasionally adding white, is simply claiming identity with every use and delight in the ‘rainbow,’ particularly for children.  If unicorns are made happy by rainbows then so are we, so to speak.  The rainbow flag, originally a symbol of racial inclusiveness, from the late fifties and sixties, is a clever appropriation of thoughtless human sympathies for the unhappy.

Consequently, the banner has become ubiquitous during “Pride” month, which is not ever a celebration of the Word of God, nor does it reflect prayerful meditation on the innate beauty of God’s creation of humankind.  It is a collective demand… against heterosexuality, since true gays and lesbians will never enjoy it or the incredible joy of motherhood and fatherhood and of the nurturing of offspring; and against God and anyone who claims to speak for Him.  The demand translates, both for other humans and for ecclesiastics, that non-heterosexuals deserve both attention and respect based on their different sexuality, unusual emotions and desires, and discordant habits.  Imagine: a group of humans who are not happy with their emotional make-up, so much so that they will flaunt their intention and practice of breaking… no, denigrating, religious dogma and, to the faithful, the Holy Word of God. 

In the chance of there being a God, sneering at His Law and rules for righteousness is a very arrogant move, a Prudent observer might think.  Unfortunately, economics being what they are, churches have been tempering their messages for decades, hoping to fill the pews with charitable attendees.  That is a path along which it is virtually impossible to reverse direction.  Accepting the rainbow flag as a church’s statement of acceptance is to ignore the shift that has occurred in the legal status of the self-proclaimed “LGBTQ” “community.”

One might Prudently inquire of a member of a rainbow-endowed church… or even of a clergy-person, just what he or she means to say with the flag.  Without a doubt the answer would include something about “anti-discrimination” or “inclusiveness” and “all are God’s children,’ and the like.  None would suggest that they displayed the flag with the message that 1) Christians must forsake scripture so that non-heterosexuals won’t feel challenged in their pleasures or beliefs; and 2) By extension, all laws and customs that follow the inherent message of Judeo-Christian scripture regarding same-sex relations and sex activities, must be set aside by law, no matter the damage to our society or civilization.  No, no, no.  “We love everyone,” they might say.

Yet, somehow, their love does not seem to extend to everyone’s beliefs in equal measure.  That is, they have no banners celebrating the strictures and scriptures of the Word of God that underlies the very existence of their church, physically and spiritually.  Adding the rainbow banner to the physical existence of their church would indicate that what the followers of that banner believe is not only equal to the beliefs that built and maintain the church, physically and congregationally, but, to some degree, greater than those of the founders of that church.  “Oh, no,” comes the distressed reply, “we are simply saying they are welcome no matter what they believe right now.  The magic of Christianity will infuse their hearts and cause them to renounce their forbidden practices and join more fully with our beliefs!”  Okaaaay.

That last is a Prudent speculation but doesn’t actually work out in fact.  In fact, the presence of the rainbow flag acknowledges that non-heterosexuals are consistently demanding full “equality” with religious heterosexuals, including full marriage equality, as one example.  Resignedly, most “rainbowed” churches advertise their willingness to perform, and therefore endorse, same-sex “marriages.”  This is a public replacement of parts of scripture that undergirded the creation of their churchly existences.  At this point, parishioners and clerics alike are advertising their desire to accept emotions felt by non-heterosexuals as equal  or even superior  to their previously revered scriptures, teachings and beliefs.  Extraordinary.  By erecting the rainbow banner, all of these have foresworn their existence as churches, in favor of a new existence as social or fraternal clubs, of whose continued existence the countdown to disappearance has begun.  For shame.

Much the same is happening in secular circles, and in government.  Secular society is being forced, jump by jump, to accept a new basis of family, of children and of life’s purposes.  Government, much like churches seeking contributions in their collection plates, is racing to get in front of this heritage-replacing movement so that it might consider itself still the leader of society (in the persons of craven politicians).  Consequently we have commenced to codify the self-declared feelings of non-heterosexuals such that public education and personal privacy have been transformed in the space of two decades, to the point where individuals may be punished by severe professional and economic loss for failing to treat self-declared feelings, even self-declared sexual identities  as the equal of reality.  This is a dangerous weapon aimed at rationality, heretofore the glue of our cooperative society.

Creating laws that grant or reveal new civil rights that can change on an individual basis at individual whim, is extremely sketchy.  Punishing people for failing to respond according to some shifting, individually prescribed way, to the individual declarations of unproveable personal feelings, marks the descent into anarchy, and the end of reason, as well as the end of social cohesiveness: the tyranny of a tiny minority over the vast majority, backed by police powers.  May God save us from folly.