All posts by Bob Wescott

Family, Health Care

THe Allison Effect

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We wished Allison Paige Hawkes Godspeed, yesterday.  Pollard’s Funeral Home, Methuen, Massachusetts, U. S. A., planet Earth, Milky Way, was very good to our family and to all who came to commiserate with us and to celebrate the wonderful and wonder-filled life of Allie Hawkes.  She passed on Sunday, the sixth of December, less than a week ago.  It was  just after 8 in the morning.  Her mother held her as she slept.  She stirred enough to struggle to tell Christen that she loved her.  Christen had her hand upon Allie’s heart as she left the painful, cancerous bonds of Earth.  There could be no better way to finish one’s journey.

We compiled our photos, and Allie’s, and all the newspaper articles that Christen had saved.  There were thousands of the former, dozens of the latter, and millions of memories.  Christen, Allie’s dad, Gavin Hawkes, her sister-in-law, Kim Andon (brother Joe Wescott’s wife for 20+ years), Kim’s daughter, Sarah, “Grammie” Gretchen Wescott and I, her “Grampa” Bob, sorted and printed and distilled hundreds of photo’s to display during funeral services.  Allie’s girlfriends created yet another “photo-board.”  We were researching someone known more by others than by us; the breadth and depth of her people-rich life was, in part, news to all of us, even to her most-connected mother, Christen.

During Allie’s brief life, many days, weeks and months were consumed by cancer treatments and effects.  Virtually all of those hours were shared, in person, by the world’s greatest mother.  Christen became Allie’s primary nurse and watchful angel, more than once conveying the instructions of physicians and the applications of potent drugs, more accurately than nurses, themselves, remembered.  Allie and her mother built a bond of mother-daughter love that is rare.  Christen had not a burden, but an opportunity to do more mothering than most mothers have.  We all tried to be involved, but it was truly a matter of learning from Christen what Allie had just gone through or, thankfully, what she had just done.  She was a do-er, most effectively as a creator of friends.

At the funeral home most of the three families gathered to greet the hundreds of friends on whom Allie had left her impact.  She didn’t have any casual friends, it seemed, but hundreds of good ones.  They, and we, all felt a loss when her light faded out.  Indeed, as her Camp Otter, YMCA, Wheelock, Marsh School, Methuen High and, so heartbreakingly, many of her nurses from the Floating Hospital, Children’s Hospital and Dana Farber explained, she was nowhere “just” another student, another friend or another patient.  The “Allison Effect” is large on everyone she knew. 

Ostensibly, funeral preparations included having her cousin, Sarah Wescott, speak about her lifetime friend.  Sarah worked hard to get her words and feelings exactly as she wished to express them.  I, Grampa Bob, was also going to say a few words, and though mine were not written in advance, I too had prepared what I wanted to say.  In fact, my erstwhile comments were much modified as the afternoon of meeting so many of those who also loved Allie Hawkes.  They changed what I knew about my granddaughter.  So, I want to share what I had decided to say Friday evening, though could not.

Good evening and thank you all for sharing your love for Allie Hawkes.  Before she died I thought I knew her pretty well.  You, all, have told me so much more about her; culling the hundreds and hundreds of photos she and others took of the many places she went and events she attended, has made her even more wondrous in my heart and my memories so much richer.

When she was first diagnosed my first reaction was to tell her mother that she would be okay, and I believed it.  For the following 19 years that belief was justified as she beat cancer back again, again and again… until she could not.  My second reaction, as I would walk each morning, was to pray for a miracle essentially every day, and often, twice a day.  I was trying to tell God what the correct miracle for Him to effect was, and exactly when to manifest it.  I realize that a lot of our prayers are like that: giving God and Jesus instructions… as if we knew.

What I should have prayed for is mercy and understanding.

Each time our relatively crude medical tools brought her back to remission my conviction that I was issuing the correct instructions was reinforced.  Every time cancer came back, I would feel that my miracle-instructions were flawed, somehow, or not specific enough, and I would redouble my efforts and word my supplications to be much more specific as to what I wanted God to do.  I hope that what I did helped Allie in some way.  I know that as the end approached she became more of a believer, ready to pass through that awesome door alone, always part of my prayers.

So, I had been praying for a miracle for most of her life rather blindly, it turns out.  But I recognize, now, that the miracle was right here with us, all along.

Politics 2018, Taxation

Happy Days Are Here Again

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The soft-head-long rush to legalize “pot” reveals a gigantic weakness shared across institutional and political leaders of every stripe. Much of the “leadership” each claims on this “complex” subject is craven followership, at best. At worst, and fairly common among political types, is the abject desire for money, regardless of source. “Drug Money” is perfectly good for society if the definition of mind-altering, stupefying drugs can be changed sufficiently as to make everyone believe a new thing. After all, the beautiful new taxes that may be collected will provide all of these “goods”:

1) We’ll pretend to give some to education, proving that official endorsement of brain-altering and brain-retarding substances will help children – not hurt them, no, no, no. There will be an age limit on their sale, too… see?

2) Some of the funds will be diverted to imaginary drug-treatment programs which will HELP the tiny minority of human brains that may be negatively affected – and there is no proof of this effect, but just in case – so that’s a new benefit legal drug sales will enable… see?

3) The funds will also go to repair our crumbling infrastructure, which will save lives and create good-paying, campaign-enhancing union construction jobs. This will make our roads and bridges safer, especially since drug-users will not be allowed to work on these vital projects when there are still some drugs in their system, no, no, no.

4) Experimenting kiddos who are caught with some marijuana won’t have a black star on their records that might interfere with their parents’ plans for their college careers – not just for one little mistake – so unfair, laws be damned. Besides, they’ll be 18 years old in college and a little pot won’t be able to hurt their brains a bit, there is absolutely no proof of that if someone told you otherwise, and who doesn’t need to relax now and then under the tremendous pressures of college, for Pete’s sake?

5) Finally, the corrupt racketeers in our many statehouses will no longer be perceived as mean, nor will their jack-booted police minions, who will now spend their valuable time chasing REAL criminals (unless they are illegal entrants) and we’ll all be safer. Safer!

Well, that’s all certainly a win-win-win-win-win. What possible reason was there for not doing this, decades ago?

The sixth great “good” has been described as “getting pot out of the hands of criminals,” which actually doesn’t happen, it turns out, and, even better from the glazed viewpoints of congenital regulatory types, “we’ll finally be able to regulate its purity and safety so that buyers won’t be getting other drugs mixed in with their legal pot.” That’s a big one.

What is equally as large a benefit in the eyes of pot buyers, is that legal growing has quickly facilitated development of much, much, much stronger variants of marijuana, and has permitted – wait for it – edibles(!). There are pot cookies, brownies, cakes, cake mixes, crackers, breads, gummy-bears (gummy bears?) and other candies, none of which will be sold to minors, not ever, no, no, no.

Nor will pregnant moms ever, ever use pot… except medicinally, of course, because just like there isn’t any evidence of pot harming anyone, ever, it certainly can’t harm the developing brain of a fetus. Besides, pot is far less dangerous than cocaine or heroin, so shove it. And, everyone knows it’s far less dangerous than (shudder) alcohol. Goodness gracious, look at all the drunk driving and people dying from cirrhosis and flying into angry outbursts when they’re drunk! You never hear of a cannabis user getting angry or, worse, hitting someone, no, no, no.

Just because that unfortunate David Njuguna fellow blacked out after enjoying his medical marijuana, and then murdered state trooper, Thomas Clardy – left his wife and 6 kids – on the Mass Pike, it certainly wasn’t the fault of the marijuana, no, no, no. The driver did it: he must have been taking other “medications” at the same time and made a bad choice to drive. Too bad he didn’t use a gun to kill the trooper; the gun would have done it, in that case. Only THC was found in his blood samples.

Did you know that George Washington grew “hemp” to make ropes and other products? So, shove it.

There used to be a fairly simple marijuana landscape: marijuana and hashish, which was stronger. Different sources of marijuana offered variations in how high a smoker could get, although some of that was marketing myth. Still, Hawaiian pot was better than mainland-grown, which was perhaps a little better than Mexican stuff, except that the Mexicans could flood the market and the damned narcs kept local weed in short supply.

Hashish was like living on the wild side, and if you smoked it the right way, could really separate a person from reality. “Assassin” derives from hash user: “hashishim.” Many assassination jobs were suicide missions and required that the perpetrator was not “himself,” as it were. “Pot” today is in a whole different realm.

Controlled cultivation has rendered some 120 strains of marijuana, most are 4 times stronger in THC concentration (the psychoactive chemical) than the weeds of even 15 years ago. It’s like trading a “beer” for four vodka nips and figuring that you’ve drunk LESS, since 4 nips don’t even fill half a beer glass. Yeah, well, better pot means you don’t smoke as much, man… so shove it. Besides, we don’t have to smoke it anymore, they’ve got tabs that dissolve under your tongue and they’re 80% pure THC, so shove it. And alcohol is way worse than pot, man, so your example isn’t worth… ahh, some bad dope, like.

In the interest of public health the many, many health agencies, the surgeon General, no less, and lots of PSA’s and subway posters have slowly driven down the number of TOBACCO smokers in the U. S., to the point that catching a whiff of smoke is uncommon, and all restaurants are now smoke-free as are most bars and lounges. By all measures the anti-smoking campaign has been a huge success, aided, no doubt, by the $3, $5, or $9 per-pack taxes and the billions of other dollars extorted from tobacco companies over the past 25 years. Those taxes were for health coverage for children, for goodness’ sake, and helped fund… well, education and infrastructure projects and, umm, ahh… oh! Helped fund anti-smoking campaigns of course.

However, with the significant decline in smoking there has been a dangerous decline in crucial revenues for childrens’ health coverage and stuff. Did you know that State Police officers can cash in unused sick days when they retire? Regardless, states were carefully spending their tobacco windfalls and simultaneously decriminalizing marijuana use: smokers are smokers, some we like, some we don’t, and there is no campaign we thrifty state managers can foresee that is going to reduce the number of pot smokers. Besides, all that tax revenue that legal pot produces will go to education, crumbling infrastructure, children’s health care and permanent housing for the homeless. Stop pot smoking? Over our dead bodies.

THC is readily absorbed by fat cells, which doesn’t make a lick of sense to a pot smoker but it’s true, and the largest, diet-proof pile of fat cells is a human brain. Funny. And it’s also a fact that purging toxins from brain cells is very difficult to do, since the nature of the body is to breakdown every fat cell it can find (if a person eats a low-carb diet and forces the body to shrink a little) EXCEPT brain cells. They tend to live long and die slowly and even, recent research shows, replace themselves, even building new neural pathways and synapses if properly stimulated. The disruption to brain development in youngsters who use pot is well known, especially in the realms of short-term memory, initiative, sports abilities and other things a growing child hopes to have.

It is not yet accepted that cannabis in the bloodstreams of older or elder humans will have any effect on healthy brain cells or on the new cells trying to grow. God forbid it has anything to do with Alzheimers, or the acceleration of Alzheimers. Let’s hope not as both become more widespread. May God also forbid any effect on the incidence of autism.

Ohh, sorry. For a few sentences I went off track there, imagining bad side effects from the barely researched impact of the broad array of THC and other marijuana chemicals’ concentrations in the incredible, balanced biologies that enable human existence, development, survival and procreation. Glad I caught myself. There’s just no way potently psychoactive drugs have some “lasting effects” on human brains. Besides, with Suri, Alexa and what’s-her-name, plus GPS satellites talking through every phone and car, people don’t really need to remember all that much… or even learn it in the first place. So, shove it.

Back to brains: THC likes being in brains and the owners of the brains like its being there, too. The most active part of pot attaches to the same receptors as does heroin and fentanyl, but it’s not as strong. You may have gone by a billboard here and there that proclaims fewer opioid deaths in states with legal marijuana. There’s no direct connection between the two conditions, but like every other pot-related argument, the slightest case for justification (“alcohol is way worse, man” and “pot’s therapeutic”) is pure gold, the mountain of evidence of personal destruction ain’t worth… ahh, some bad dope, like.

Everything we ingest, however, has the potential of causing changes to our bodies. Some are foods, some are pharmaceuticals, some are pollutants, some are poisons. Some make us stupid in ways we find enjoyable; some cause us to forget or ignore our problems real and imagined; some, we think, make sexual relations more likely. Whatever, all of them have long-term effects.

Some are addictive. Pot users know that addiction is bad so they swear up and down that pot doesn’t “cause” addiction. Maybe we can pretend that, but regular users know fellow tokers who never miss an opportunity to get a “hit.” Pot may not “cause” addiction but, like so many, many substances, starting with sugar and caffeine, pot can create withdrawal discomfort when there isn’t a fresh infusion at an appropriate time. Users will go to a lot of trouble and, flailing governments hope, expense, to resolve their withdrawal anxieties. “Medical” marijuana can relieve anxiety. Call it what you will.

That terrible scourge, alcohol, is mildly psychoactive, much less so than original pot and way, way less so than the modern types. Still, ethanol can “teach” the brain to cause a lot of strange actions and reactions, hallucinations and psychoses, while it chemically damages cells in livers, kidneys, throats, blood vessels, hearts and other places. A certain fraction of humans is very susceptible to becoming addicted to alcohol, but many more can make themselves alcoholics if they work at it. Sugar can do the same to lesser degrees; heroin is fairly quick to train the brain to “need” it; cocaine in some forms needs but a single “hit” to turn on debilitating cravings. Pot, however, stands alone in its ability to interfere with dopamine receptors, like all psychoactives, and NEVER create dependency, no, no, no.

Like heroin and cocaine, THC affects many areas of the brain and consciousness, memory difficulties perhaps the best known (hypothalamus). But it also distorts time awareness, key to vast tracts of decision-making, not least of which may prove to be was there a car entering the intersection from the right just now or was that earlier? Otherwise, pot is much like alcohol in terms of motor skills, psychoses and lethargy, but waaay better than booze, as everyone knows, and you don’t wet your pants as much.

Like so many activities rapacious governments legalize for money, the comparison of this one with the stupid laws, and their poor enforcement, against stupid uses of alcohol is sufficient justification if the money and votes are there. Maybe pot doesn’t make a person as stupid as booze… observers of a side-by-side test of stupidness would be hard-pressed to choose a “winner.” However, alcohol can be metabolized while much of marijuana cannot; alcohol flushes from the system renally, much of pot does not, staying in fat cells for days and weeks somewhat cumulatively. From the clarion viewpoint of a pot user, on the other hand, the winner is obvious and that’s where the money is. And, from the corrupt viewpoint of government and wealth-seeking former politicians, two stupids make a lot of money.

Some smokers we like, some we don’t.
Curious? https://americanaddictioncenters.org/central-nervous-system/

Culture

Strangers in a Strange Land

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The United States is in a strange place, and rather suddenly it seems. Prudence instructs that our disenchantments are the result of a fourth “civil war” and no less. Our first was the “American Revolution” in which we effectively seceded from England. Indeed, the fact that we so eloquently justified our right to do so left those states that seceded from the Union in the second Civil War, convinced of their right to do the same when they judged that their government had become tyrannical, too.

Our third civil war followed World War One and the foolish financing that led to the second president Roosevelt. His “New Deal” changed the nature of U. S. citizens’ relationship to government and he expanded that socialist framework to a global vision for every nation and people in a platform he called the “Four Freedoms.” Along with the freedoms of speech and worship he proclaimed freedoms from “want” and from “fear.” It was heady stuff for an administration whose policies had failed to cure a decade of depression, by January of 1941. Roosevelt was justifying a new world order and a global “United Nations” that would somehow enforce the American-inspired four freedoms. The United States was “neutral” in the face of the “gathering storm” in Europe and F. D. R. wanted us to straighten things out for everyone by changing that stance.

And there’s nothing like a good war to strengthen one’s industries – if one is lucky enough to not risk being bombed to rubble. The U. S. that emerged from World War Two was a vastly different place, sporting a new consciousness about its essential, police-like and perpetually meddlesome role on the planet. What Hitler, Tojo and Mussolini desired by starting WW II, the United States achieved by winning it: global dominance. And it’s expensive.

Like Vietnam, our next war may be lost at home. Despite our winning every significant battle and thousands of small ones, Americans were told we were suffering embarrassing defeats and doing little else but burning children with napalm. The narrative of the war was not one of incredible victories by the toughest of soldiers, but was controlled by America-lasters who wanted us out of it, and they got their wish. Which is not to gloss over the fact that, Vietnam was the dirtiest war we’ve ever fought and possible the most corrupt. The flow of heroin, primarily, increased phenomenally, facilitated by our own military operations and the CIA. It meshed perfectly with our fourth civil war, watched, voted for and barely resisted through the sixties, the consequences of which are now eroding our innate strength as a nation and as a culture.

It took 100 years for our first civil war to manifest in people’s hearts; 84 years to manifest a second, the Civil War; about 70 years for the socialist civil war to start; and only 25 years for the fourth: sex, drugs and rock’n’roll. It has been fifty years since then. Fifty years of gaseous economics, destruction of religion, derelict government and near severance from our own history – thank you, educators. Is there a fifth civil war coming? Where there will be another upsetting of social order? Will we become stronger? More licentious? Purer of heart and strong in character? Will we clean up marriage and families? Strongly encourage two-parent families having seen the failure of core social groups with single or government-parent families?

Or will we slide farther and farther away from what America means, into a drug-addled globalism where “America” was but a chapter of diversion from global tyranny? Or, maybe we’ll clean up pornography… ehh, probably not. We’ll tax it.

Culture, Politics 2017

The Erosion of Reason

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My neighbor and I took a break from cleaning up after some big winds and began discussing, somehow, the removal of statues “celebrating” people who “fought for slavery,” a process he seemed to be in favor of. My neighbor is a truly fine person, doing an excellent job of raising his children, including the wisdom of involving them with a church, actually the same building I grew up in, but which is caught up in a new popularization of biblical lessons that is inherently “liberal” in the modern American sense.

In any case, the message from today’s pulpit supports the end of slavery, and supports being nice to everyone, which last doesn’t jibe with my understanding of the Bible, but feels good and seems harmless. It is apparently deeply sympathetic to the current effort to remove statues of Confederate war heroes, for which there is a certain, odd logic.

Unfortunately, in Prudence’ view, the current agitation about these historic relics has less to do about “slavery” and more to do with current anti-Americanism, if not Communism, or “anti-culturalism” in the worst ways. This is an unfortunate usurpation of God’s lawful right to guide human beings.

The failure of American politics is outpictured in the wave of “offense” that stems from everything and anything the founders of the American engine believed in, whether good or bad. The tiniest drop of currently-defined “badness” taints the entire kettle, all the way back to Columbus and probably further. We can never lose sight of the fact that when Ooog fashioned the first flint scraping tool he smelled pretty bad and ate meat and cared not a whit about global warming.

A church… not “a” church, I would say, but THE church in Alexandria where George Washington worshipped, and where Robert E. Lee did as well, has “decided” to remove the plaques referencing both men’s attendance since they are mounted next to the altar and very visible. Eventually they’ll find a “suitably prominent” alternate location for them. This is being done in reaction… reaction, to the current wave of rabid offense-taking. Anything remotely connected to slavery – and some connections are pretty tenuous – apparently deserves a new round of hatred by Millennials, primarily, who have learned politicians and other public personages are so obsequious and weak-kneed as to trip over themselves while attempting to disapprove of the latest discovery of “offense” even more than the muddle-headed mobs have claimed to do.

This isn’t really “liberalism” although liberals appear to support the movement for a couple of reasons: 1) It fits with their overall desire to manipulate society toward a “new” world that may be defined by social theories and not by history; and, 2) Conservatives and Constitutionalists don’t like it.

What is the end-game for anti-cultural, anti-history agitation? Of equal interest: who finances “antifa” and other anti-American groups? Well, George Soros, for many. Soros, a former Jew who helped the Nazis and denied his Jewishness to save himself, provides copious financial support to a dozen “anti-facist” “protest” or “resistance” groups. Indeed, with his money, such groups recruit AND PAY discontented and mostly unemployed young men and women to protest for $15 an hour. What foul rot.

We cannot stifle this man or his anti-Americanism, for our own Constitution prevents government intervention. Or, perhaps it doesn’t. Perhaps Soros, that warm and loving backer of so many liberal and Democrat causes and candidates, should be seen as an enemy combatant, fomenting revolution, terrorism and riots. We have ways to engineer change in the United States, and his are not part of them. Unfortunately the embedded fascists… er, liberals, at all levels of federal bureaucracy have remained uninterested in exposing his influence and danger: he’s simply a Democrat “donor.”

Sometimes in order to grow and truly progress an individual must acknowledge and expose a personal flaw or endangerment; or a family must expose a criminal or addicted or predatory son, daughter, cousin or uncle, in order to “come clean,” as it were and begin dealing with the “infection” and to heal from it. And, sometimes, a nation must renounce, denounce and expunge a rotting threat like slavery and secession, racism, the Ku Klux Klan and the like, communism and its traitors after World War II, and, I observe, the incestuous poison of anti-Constitutionalism, anti-Americanism and anti-Heritage enemies, both home-grown and loosely invited in. For it is they who find only fault in our system and who ignore, if not hate, the majesty of the American idea – like Soros.

Drawn to this newly muscular anti-Americanism/anti-culturalism, which is to say, anti-Christian-ism (or aggressive atheism for many), are modern surrealist movements, like homosexuality, trans-genderism, socialism, and various flavors of anti-capitalist racialisms. These are they who have grown up without Western or Indo-European philosophical understanding, reaching adulthood with no capacity for self-control or economic responsibility. Every form of mental or pleasurable distraction comprises their waking hours. The business of making or keeping America strong is the worry of others; the excitement of joining mobs who revel in America’s problems is the concern of Soros’ type of minions.

Amidst this, our fourth civil war, churches and other institutions (like SCHOOLS) get caught up in pleasing the loudest, angriest movements – especially those undercutting fundamental social strengths. Some churches fear irrelevance and now display the “rainbow” welcome signs and banners. Despite the warmth and caring Christians try to convey with the new messaging, they have, in my view, fallen prey to leftist surreality.

The message of the Bible is not to “tolerate” everything; it also is not to kill those whose actions are intolerable. But Christians are instructed to live and act in certain ways. Compassion is not tolerance and vice-versa. Christians are encouraged to tell the Story and to teach the Word, and the Word doesn’t encourage acceptance of unusual acts and lifestyles while it does encourage the strengths and habits that make for strong families and societies that can create more Christians. The Word itself serves the world well – every flaw and interpretation that humans inject into Biblical lessons, and the political organizations that grow from them, should logically not be allowed to impugn the Word.

The rainbow philosophy is antithetical. Many churches have succumbed to it in some sort of conjunction with purely political forces for whom every vote is equivalent regardless of motivation. For churches, it seems to me, every motivation is not equivalent and “Christian” clergy have an obligation to make that clear: it’s not a political rainbow – it’s a clear white light.

Ultimately, the forces who have won the battle of the rainbow-welcomes across society and our legislatures, are intent on dissolving the hold of Christianity and the Judeo-Christian ethic that underpins “Western” culture. The dissolution of the family and a separation from history are their most powerful tools. They rely on ignorance as they replace age-old truths with newly minted unrealities, some of which have actually generated laws governing the majority. It’s weird and worth resisting.

Economics, Governance

A Few Words on Capitalism – Part 2

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Free-enterprise productive surplus is the antithesis… no, the ANTIDOTE, to tyranny. That is, if it shares across all populations. Capitalism without reason is merely a new tyranny; capitalism wisely checked against excessive accumulation of productive power, is the greatest elevator of the human condition yet devised. To do such wise checking, however, wise governors are required.

The foundation of the American experiment has been that of a democratic REPUBLIC wherein representatives of numbers of citizens and of the several states (House and Senate, respectively) ought to be those most trusted by the citizenry to REPRESENT their interests, among which are national security; defense and sanctity of borders, coasts and harbors; honest and unbiased court officers; equal application of the laws – civil and criminal; honest and careful expenditure of tax and other revenues; fair and honest taxation such that all citizens share a portion of the cost of government, courts and defense; domestic safety (“tranquility”) and sound money. All of these reasons for creating government are at varying levels of failure.

Unlike capitalism, itself, governments quickly devolve into somewhat self-serving entities, enriching those who work in government at the expense of citizen-tax-payers, generally rewarding and celebrating degrees of failure. Capitalism quickly roots out failure and assigns its productive capital to enterprise that is more likely to succeed (in terms of generating profit) and as a result, be able to destroy debt. If only government could do the same.

One of the overarching themes of the Federalist papers was avoidance of the concentration of power. Legislative power was to be granted democratically, and kept separate from Executive power and from Judicial power. Judicial power, itself, was to be carefully delineated and separate: “independent of” either Executive or Legislative power. The executive was designed to be subordinate to the Legislative, although with unique powers and authorities, and democratically selected by voters in the several states wholly separately from election of the Legislative representatives.

Another Federalist theme – caveat – is that governments cannot be trusted to reform themselves, leaving that burden to an educated CITIZENRY, by ballot, presumably, but also, as clearly stated in the Declaration of Independence, by the inherent right to throw off government whose failures render it tyrannical, and replace it with one better suited to the general welfare of the citizens FROM WHOM IT DERIVES ITS POWERS.

So citizens, educated about the Constitution and all founding documents, are, like capitalist CUSTOMERS, important to the success of both government and capitalism. Capitalist customers seeking to purchase a new, larger flat-screen TV will seek information and reviews, compare specifications and read the guarantees before looking for the best price offered by a half-dozen sources.

If only we would exercise our roles as citizens holding ultimate power over our governors, with the same diligence. Indeed, we know more about our next auto purchase than we do about our next medical procedure, and more about the auto dealer than about the hospital, clinic or medical group that will provide it. Now we think entrusting a government that fails to operate EVEN ITSELF honestly and fairly, with ultimate decisions over our health and life-span, will somehow make sense, albeit in an alternate universe.

It is high time we stop denigrating our innate capitalist sense and teach our children to apply it to every aspect of life in the United States – not least of which is which governor or government we should “buy.” Capitalism, as a means of analysis and judgment, holds the key to not only wise use of resources, but also to the wise recruitment of competent managers and governors of our largest enterprise of all.

That government has become nearly an opponent of free-enterprise and the fundamental right to private property and the fruits of one’s labors, is demonstrated by the existence of rapidly growing current deficits approaching $20 Trillion. That debt has accumulated, supposedly, by our “representatives,” on our behalf. So has the dramatic loss of value of our “dollar,” now a mere instrument of confidence. For shame. Capitalists arise!

Economics, Governance, Representation, Responsibility

A Few Words on Capitalism – Part 1

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Every one of us is a “capitalist.” This, in the sense that we all strive to obtain as much safety, comfort, material goods and security for old age, as we possibly can for the least amount of effort necessary. It doesn’t matter for whom we vote. Many of us simply want to be free TO acquire what we need; others wish to be free OF the need to acquire. In both philosophies we are attempting to gain with minimum effort.
But that’s not the whole story, is it?

Every person is motivated to act differently. We all have our own “profits” that cause us to expend MORE than minimal effort necessary to take care of ourselves and our family. Some are motivated to gain as much as possible in terms of material goods and “wealth.” Some want to be charitable and will work more than necessary so as to give to others. Some are motivated by artistic expression, drama, music or writing. Some by the gaining of power over others, one way or the other. Many profits.

The invention of money both simplified and complicated capitalism. For some, in twisted ways, the accumulation of money, itself, became their “profit.” Such people are able to “buy” the necessities for which others strive, but they are also consumed by numbers and the quantities of money they represent. They have different fears and joys than “regular” people. Unfortunately, they come to realize that they can also “buy” power – influencing government-types to protect their accumulated wealth.

Government types come from those for whom “profit” means power over others, over “public policy” and over taxation and, unfortunately, over “public” budgeting. Tapping into the “profits” of others, familial, financial and charitable, provides the most ways to acquire at minimal effort for those so motivated. They concentrate in governments. Almost inevitably and partly because much of their effort is arcane, they come to believe in their own mental superiority over “regular” people whose concerns are familial, local and unobtrusive.

Meanwhile, capitalism, which in the U. S., OUGHT TO MEAN the right to own private property, and by extension, the right to own the fruits of one’s labors, carries on, inherent in every person. It is human nature.
Some aspects of human nature can, if unchecked by society and hence by government, cause damage and destruction to that society. Many control-worthy human aspects are checked by “agreement.” That is, members of society “agree” that murder, rape, theft, fraud and other forms of false witness, greed, sloth and envy, are to be controlled through various codified sanctions. Lately the list has grown to include littering of various degrees, like pollution, and, in an extraordinary reversal, discrimination against sexual oddities, a change that has led to “intolerance” becoming a worse social transgression than some actual crimes. Western societies must now “tolerate,” if not celebrate, anti-capitalist “lifestyles” that include essentially welfare careers. These things actually threaten the social order and every other right protected by the Constitution, our fundamental social agreement.

A tremendous strength in American capitalism has been the high integrity of our contracts, both with one another and with our governments. This phenomenon makes modern trade possible as well as the millions of debt contracts that describe modern economics. But today, we ignorantly embrace a new form of socialism based on twisted concepts of “social justice,” which intends, fundamentally, to cause guilt-ridden government types to alter the underlying concepts of private property, and to discard natural human capitalism. This need not be an inevitable slide toward the only economic future possible.

It is a slide the basis of which is ignorance, willful and otherwise. It is a slide that attempts, as all socialist plans inevitably do, to replace human nature with a government-directed one. While there may exist the technical possibility of directing every person’s life and economic decisions, governance based thereon cannot prevail. It devolves into tyranny or revolution, perhaps to a new tyranny or, once in a great, great while, into a new form of governance based on self-discipline and personal sovereignty, one in which the governed grant their governors limited powers, and where the tyranny of the majority is carefully sanctioned and where tyranny of the minority is unheard of.

Inherent in a government based on individual freedom and personal responsibility are the concepts of private property and ownership of the fruits of one’s labor: essential free-enterprise.

Capitalism gets fully mucked up when it is politicized, which is to say when limited governments attempt to create economic “fairness.” It seems that no “free” economic and democratic system can refrain from favoring certain industries in return for maintaining power for those who are already “in” government. Much of the favoring is done to “make things fair” or to “level the playing field,” but almost without exception, the net effects are to limit competition for those industries and to limit competition for those in power. These are tendencies that a wise and educated citizenry would create institutions in society and government to carefully limit, if not make impossible. In our growing ignorance we are failing at this essential part of citizenship.

A great strength of capitalism is that it doesn’t reward failure… it replaces it with something that can succeed, success measured in profitability and ability to destroy debt. In this is a lesson for all with eyes to see and ears to hear. Among our people, however, those who get the message are now considered hateful while those who refuse to see or hear are empowered, or re-elected. Ours is fast becoming a system hobbled by the removal of the pillars of individual freedom and personal responsibility. We are rewarding failure.

Immediately this statement will be attacked with charges of cruelty, but this stems from ignorance, which is to say, it’s a charge leveled by those who, for whatever personal profit, IGNORE the distinction between those who are capable and willfully refusing to take responsibility for themselves, and those who are incapable and needful of charity and public support.

The greatest value of capitalist profitability is the creation of surplus – productive surplus – of which a portion may be used to care for those who cannot care for themselves. The greatest flaw in capitalism’s opponents is their creation of and acceptance of a thousand reasons why individuals may be grouped among those who cannot care for themselves. They unfortunately become codified and form a malevolent inhibitor of success. And here we are.

Economics, Education, Race

Government by Unreality

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We are truly vexed in this, our great, open, rich, cruel, loving and generous country with our $20 Trillion debt, by social and civic problems of our own making. Whole industries are comprised of complaining and hating perceived groups of people unfairly imposing problems and then unfairly benefiting from them. Not much money seems to flow toward the loving business, but various dolled-up hatreds are profitable.

Some hatreds are aimed at Republicans, for no specific reason other than party affiliation; some are aimed at Democrats for the same reason. Both of those groups seem to have the same goals of expanding welfare, growing government and raising the debt ceiling. Neither is trying to seriously fight the LGBTQW revolution, although one side obtains money by claiming the other side hates LGBTQW “victims.” But aside from a lot of posturing, little honest change is proposed by either party, whether in power or out, although there’s plenty of the opposite.

When erstwhile Republicans and various independents and conservative-leaning parents elected a hard-to-fathom or mollify President Trump who thought he had the balls to actually change SOMETHING, leftists and others wedded to the status-quo ante began raising gobs of cash from fellow travelers and bird-brains who actually do hate HIM. Most of the money comes from people who hate haters. Those same hate bigots – people who pre-judge their neighbors as somehow flawed, just as much. In fact, they are able to spot bigots from quite a distance, especially if they are wearing one of those stupid red hats… or deign to vote for Republicans.

There has been some change, but nothing so dramatic as to let Constitutionalists relax.

In our hubris, we, Americans, a large minority of us at any rate, are convinced that normal laws of economics and well-established human nature no longer apply to us. Through our elected representatives we have become convinced that we can borrow a richer life, today, from our great grandchildren to whom and for which we’ll never answer.

We also believe that our enjoyment of freedom and wealth is somewhat automatic and somehow deserved. We are so happy with it and it’s easy accessibility, and being suspicious of our governors and bosses, we’re determined to share it with anyone those governors and bosses don’t like – just to get even. Why should we be so selfish as to keep America to ourselves? This misunderstanding leads us to fight against any standards or limits, like anachronistic borders, that those cruel governors want to maintain.

Freedom is some sort of gift, leftists say, provided to us by government, the source of all that’s good. If you aren’t as free as you’d like, more government will fix it. They don’t want to be limited by those Christian haters, especially the ones actually in churches… you know the ones, in their black suits and robes who read the “Bahh-bull,” for Heaven’s sake. The basis of Western civilization has no connection to today’s disconnected leftists. “Thanks, God,” they say, “thy system was far from perfect so we’ll take it from here. Call me, we’ll do a funeral.”

It’s the perfect statement of non-responsibility, which is the leftist, group-identity outlook. Whatever group we can burden you with is the reason things have gone the way they have for you – even if we don’t really know how things have gone for you. If you’re black (the best group ever invented, thank you, Lord, for giving them different skin; it helps a lot) then all sorts of causes for your victimized life can be proclaimed. Don’t y’all worry about finding justice in this White-privileged world, we are here to help the helpless. Take this check and be sure to put yourselves in POWER on election day.

To live a political existence on the basis of resentment of White people, is to, eventually, be subsumed by hatred. Evidence of this effect is everywhere poor, or “disadvantaged” blacks and other minorities are concentrated: ghettos. Surrounded by others who feel cheated out of their fair shares, and further surrounded by more richly “advantaged” Whites, ghetto residents become hateful, regardless of EBT cards, free health care and food subsidies. Welfare becomes merely a down-payment on justice.

It should be obvious, had education done its job, that government cannot create or impose justice on a social system; but, it can adjudicate injustice. In other words, if laws are made clearly and succinctly, the failure of some one or of several some-ones to treat another person or group of several persons fairly under the law, then government can ascertain appropriate charges for failing to act legally toward another or toward others, and prosecute illegal actors for their failing and impose penalty or restitution to those so treated.

What government should never do is create crimes out of feelings, or stretch clear laws into fuzziness about things people feel are unfair. This includes creating laws to cover self-declared conditions for which there is no empirical, quantifiable proof. Unfortunately, this includes special laws concerning homosexuality, sexual indecision or confusion, and mis-named trans-genderism. It should also not provide special legal strictures based on race. Rather, law is intended for, and only fair if applied to, sanctioning individuals or legal constructs like corporations when those persons/entities act outside of clear laws that are applicable to everyone of the members of society. We as a people or nation, create immense structures of unfairness and unreality when we attempt to legislate based on feelings and political unhappiness.

This old observer suggests that mankind’s worst circumstances result from acceptance of – even codification of – unreal, baseless claims and beliefs. For some this is religion, and many examples of severe warfare between religious groups or sects, can be cited. For shame. But there are other incredible murderers, like Hitler, for whom occult religious stories justified warfare on a global scale. Coupled with hatred of a group for unreal reasons, it formed an upheaval from which we still suffer, almost 80 years later. Unreality made “real.”

Communism is much the same. Not so much riven by group hate, Communists hate individuality and freedom. It is more economic than philosophical, and even more deadly than hatred. Power, of course is the currency of socialism of all stripes. For Communists there are only two groups: the official Party and, economically, everyone else. Resistance to being part of the nationwide serfdom into which Communism inevitably devolves, yields starvation or the gulag. Venezuela is an obvious current example of Communism’s “promise.”

Communism is based on unreality although its effects are brutally real. It believes in a different human nature than what is in fact reality. We are on this same path in the United States, evidenced not the least by our world-threatening debt.

Yet on we stumble, electing and re-electing people who don’t like America or the ideas that created it because the people who crafted it were white or owned slaves in a slave-owning society, or picked their nose in public. They are blind to the fact that these were the men who built a ladder to get us out of slavery and a thousand other unfairnesses. And so we are locked into hatred and failure and inability to govern while anguishing over millionaires taking the knee at football games, another example of trying to “govern” based on unreality.

Unreality as the basis for action is the same as dishonesty, well-stated by Mark Twain: “It’s not what you don’t know that’s the problem; it’s what you do know that just ain’t so.”

Education, Guns, Right?, Politics 2017

It Won’t Stay in ‘Vegas

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The atrocious murdering took barely ten minutes. It is very likely that not one person who was killed or wounded one Sunday afternoon in Las Vegas, knew the man we are told was their killer. Ostensibly Stephen Paddock had been accumulating weapons for “years.” He sent his “girlfriend” back to her native Phillipines two weeks ahead of the carnage he was planning, and then wired her money. He may have been trying to set up a shooting a week or more earlier but couldn’t obtain the rooms he needed for his desired perch. So, it’s possible that all of the weapons, volumes of ammunition and loaded clips, and other preparations were solely the work of one secretive, virtually unknown man. Maybe.

The current profile of Paddock indicates that he wanted to shoot at country music fans. On the other hand, he was a Democrat. Does that paint him with a group identity that explains anything? He owned guns – like 50 to 80 million other Americans. That makes him part of the American “gun culture.” It hasn’t been reported whether he owns a power drill or handsaw, or possibly a router, like 50 million other Americans, so it’s not clear whether Paddock was part of the “power tool” culture. However, he must, must, be placed in a hated group and “gun owners” will do perfectly.

One reporter has already been fired for stating that country music fans were likely “Republican gun-toters” who deserved no sympathy. She made the mistake of stating how rabid leftists feel, and that’s a political no-no.

Legal gun owners woke up Monday, October 2nd to find that they were all potential murderers, kept from shooting up public gatherings, nightclubs, elementary schools and churches only by the thinnest of membranes between sanity and insanity. Who knew? Paddock had prepared his “blind” to be relatively immune from armed response. Most of these kinds of attacks place the shooter(s) at the scene where, in good likelihood, armed targets could have shot back.

What liberals never consider, and gun owners fail to proclaim, is that every year in the united States, more than 800,000 times (not every instance makes the papers), a private gun owner stops a crime or a criminal, usually with NO shots fired. In many instances, a non gun-owner overpowers an armed criminal and wrests a weapon from his hands and subdues him. Eight hundred thousand (some estimates are well over a million) are a lot of incidents. Essentially, open America could not maintain a civil society without private gun ownership. Oh, the horror.

The alternative is a police state. Thoughtful people should realize that they do not really want to live in a nation that will confiscate private property that is deemed undesireable by the government! Some think that that same government will somehow add to “freedom” by limiting it… so long as the limits are placed on the “group” they don’t like. Those same accuse President Trump of being “Hitler,” when the exact opposite is the case. Those who want the government to have more power to regulate this or that disapproved group, are playing the game that Germans played as Jews and Slavic peoples were systematically rounded up, stolen-from and finally eliminated in camps. Oh, the ignorance.

It should be clearer, by now, that individual freedom is the most precious of jewels, yet faced with freedom’s challenges, leftists are quick to trade it away for shifting quantities of safety and even for convenience. For shame. While a crude freedom, the ability to self-defend is excruciatingly fundamental to individual freedom. Yet the first reaction of socialists and communists of every stripe (stay mindful of the fact that Hitler, that old ultra-left socialist, disarmed Germans, too) is to limit this fundamental freedom.

In the United States, with supposedly universal public education, the most costly in the world, the lessons of history and the majesty of the ideas of America, ought to be fully appreciated. But, on balance, it appears that the rest of the world appreciates our exceptional promise of individual freedom, far better than we do, ourselves.

Freedom is a tremendous threat to socialist, controller types: those who naturally gravitate toward governments everywhere, especially bureaucrats who, never neutral, impose increasing structure and regulation on populations. By establishing itself merely as well as was done in 1776, the idea that created “America” out of disparate colonies has forever drawn enemies and subversion, and lately, outright attacks.

None of that speaks directly to Stephen Paddock’s craziness, but to the distinctly divided reactions to it. The “Left” immediately wants to restrict everyone’s rights to, theoretically, prevent future murders, mass and otherwise; the “Right” wants to enforce existing laws and employ better methods to inhibit crazy people and proto-criminals from obtaining or using weapons, including strict sanctions on less-murderous misuse of weapons. We can’t make the wild actions of one deranged screwball into a pattern that justifies attacking our rights.

What we can do is share information to identify unusual purchasing and collection patterns that might identify individuals who are potential threats. But we must guard our Fourth Amendment rights. The visceral urge to control people in order that they’ll be “safe,” cannot be allowed to subvert our privacy and personal sovereignty. Paddock was a monster and he’s now dead. Let’s not destroy our freedom because of him. Far, far more people are killed by handguns involved in gang and drug activities, almost every month.

We don’t count the innocents aborted by the tens of thousands.

Education, Politics 2017, Race

Antifa, Socialism and the Garden of Eden

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Americans, citizens at least, owe it to ourselves… indeed we are OBLIGATED… to obtain the truth about “antifa” and other culture-threatening, community-threatening militaristic “organizations.” Our media and other institutions are failing miserably to challenge their premises or their statements of justification for breaking laws and heads at will. The place to start is the money. It was costly to bus the “Anti-KKK” protestors into Charlottesville. There were 3 or 4 big buses that dropped off the “antifa” group and then left the downtown straight away. Witnesses state that whites with “KKK” Tee-Shirts(!) arrived on those same buses.

I don’t think I know anyone in the KKK, never saw a march of the KKK, never heard a KKK speech. But it’s clear that actual and former members have done their best to hide any association with the truly white-supremacist organization. This begs the question: Who the Hell would want to wear a “KKK” T-shirt? The only advantages to doing so would be 1) to avoid having your own team bonk you during a fight, and 2) to show up clearly in videos and on TV. It is no more likely that one would arrange for such T-shirts to be printed on the morning of a “Unite the Right” rally, than that he or she would obtain the PERMIT for the rally on that same morning.

There was something rotten in Charlottesville. The self-named “antifa” so-called “protesters,” are literally paid to create conflict. Evidence indicates that some of the “right-wing” rally-ers were also part of the paid actors sent to Charlottesville. Why? Who, really, is served by conflicts that rub old, old racial hatreds raw? What is the true intent and what is the inadvertent intent of these cynical displays?

The United States was formed as it was formed. The intense courage of isolated settlers is unimaginable to soft Americans today. The people who chose to come here were who they were. They were raised in a different time and culture and they grew up to believe what they believed. And, here’s a news flash: Not a single one of them came here out of hatred, or with the intention of making “Indians,” who they believed were pagan savages, sick. Not one. And they were all quite religious – Christians of their time, motivated by the need to atone for sins and to sacrifice for others and for the future. That’s why the “invasion” took root and survived. We can go back further and recognize that Christoforo Colombo had no intention of hurting people and was impressively courageous as well. He, and his crew, and his Spanish sponsors, and his home city and the rest of Europe believed what they believed. They had no benefit of the past 520 years of experience.

What profit is there to “hate” them now? Why isn’t Spain hated MORE than the United States? Why isn’t England hated for slavery? The real target of conflict is to decouple the ideas of America from the future. It’s not new.

The first and most effective way to confuse a population that believes it’s “free” and even “sovereign,” is to dis-educate its children. That is, purposely don’t teach them their nation’s history, both “good” and “bad.” Just teach about how bad things were done by “heroes.” Then skip over the courageous and pioneering steps taken in face of extraordinary odds. Concentrate on movie stars, sports figures, and popular opponents of the basic structures and institutions of their culture and heritage.

Fundamental to dis-education in the United States is ignorance of, or ignoring of, the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. Added ignorance of the Articles of Confederation and the Northwest Ordinance will also be valuable in separating citizens from ageless philosophies and truths that underlie our exceptional nation. The trouble with all of these ideas so documented is that they tell us that we are free NOT because of being subjects of a governor or government, but because of our CREATOR. That is the greatest threat to secular power structures.

The allegorical story of the Garden of Eden reveals the conflict in the most basic terms. Adam and Eve are created and blessed with everything they need for a bountiful life – the “thesis.” The metaphorical serpent provides an “anti-thesis” regarding the denial to Adam and Eve of the “fruits” of the “Tree of Knowledge.” Whereas God warned that “eating” of that particular tree’s fruits would cause them to “die,” the “Serpent” tells Eve that she and Adam could be as wise as God and that surely, they would not actually die.

Eve and Adam eat of the forbidden fruit, realize forbidden knowledge and God promises them great travails in life and bans them from His bountiful Garden of life. The “synthesis” is in place, slightly toward the secular and away from the original “thesis,” theos – God. They weren’t killed, but for ever after, Life will be the Death of them. This is how Socialism/Secularism spreads its sticky ideas. The thesis is always closest to our Creator’s original premise; the antithesis is always a little farther away from that and toward totally human control of life and history. This brings us to ever-larger segments of populations dependent upon human government, and less and less responsible for the consequences of their actions, or “sins.” Now we are politically agitated over publicly financed abortion as some sort of Constitutional right.

“Antifa” is but the tip of yet another antithetical spear, serving totally secular, financially dictatorial masters who wish to separate mankind from concepts of freedom and individual sovereignty. Not everyone is willing to be so separated, and they are the distinct targets of antithesis. Anything that teaches youth about the thesis, and about lessons learned in defense of the thesis, must be torn down or covered with tarpaulins.

Health Care

How Many Nurses Can Fit…?

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We had a disturbing survey call the other night, all about nurses and how many patients each nurse should be caring for at one time. The Massachusetts Nurses Association has obtained enough signatures to place a ballot question for the November, 2018 election.

The gist of the question is whether the Commonwealth of Massachusetts shall create or expand an agency that monitors nursing staffing levels in order to enforce certain ratios of nurses to patients. The mechanism of enforcement would be $25,000 fines for each instance of “failing” to maintain nursing levels that are satisfactory to nurses(!).

Arguments in favor run the gamut of every negative consequence of inadequate nursing levels. Further strictures in the proposed law demand that nurse staffing levels be brought into conformity with the nurse-association-prescribed nurse-patients ratios without reducing other staffing levels as for maintenance or food-service departments. This, naturally, would increase hospital costs per patient-hour and of health care generally. Still, the over-arching deep concern for everything patient-related causes the M. N. A. to forge ahead despite the cost implications.

Some of the nurses’ arguments are valid. Patient outcomes are better with adequate nursing attentiveness. Sometimes this means simple numbers of nurses, but not always. Poor outcomes often result from poor administration or administrative requirements – requirements that sheer numbers won’t correct.

This is essentially a pro-union effort at the ballot box, sponsored by about 25% of nurses, hoping to increase the numbers of nurses (and union dues-paying members), but it threatens exactly what they hope to “improve.” First, if it passes and hospitals are forced to add nurses, the average pay is going to decline. This is not hard to understand. The only alternative to that likely outcome is the threat of nurses’ strikes for higher pay, and this is, like all union initiatives, the fundamental bargain – read: threat.

Neither care quality nor care cost will come in to alignment with patient desires until patients, themselves, return to the position of customer. Customers do some research on what they are going to buy. They are able to check out Consumer Reports, for example, where experts have done the research for them. They can visit different sources for the same products and services before choosing one to buy from.

In truth, people know more about their next car or flat-screen television than they do about their next medical procedure, the likely providers involved or even about their own doctor(!), never mind the amount of nursing attention they might receive. Maybe if patients – or a trusted advisor – knew enough about health providers and institutions to make rational judgments about which provides the best balance of nursing care, cost and outcomes, cost would come down, nurses would not be overworked and patients would be best served.

Asking the government and its politicians to make and enforce more rules about how to make patients well (ostensibly) is not an answer or even a good question. Restore the concept of “customer” to potential patients, in place of “entitled victim.”

As for nurses, the last thing we need is for skilled professionals to be relegated to average “service-unit” status for bargaining purposes, leaving neither room for excellence nor sanctions for failure.