Category Archives: Politics 2017

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.

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.

Culture, Education, Politics 2017, Trump

An American Prescription

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We are at a crossroad in history.  One might say that we are always at a crossroad, but from time to time there is a confluence of forces that literally force decisions on nations and people that will significantly change their paths – and the paths of other nations – into the future.  And here we are.  What are the forces that have come, or are coming together to force big change, none of which is good?

First is militant Islam.  Islam and everyone else have been in conflict since Muhammad was marrying a 9-year-old.  Without parsing every conflicting and convenient verse of the Q’uran, the message of Islam is that everyone must be Muslim, one way or the other – the “other” being force.  This has become twisted, especially since the influence of Nazism, into honoring those who kill themselves to defeat the “enemies of Allah.”  This includes even children and grandchildren.  Muslim political leaders arrange for pensions to be paid to the parents of suicidal “heroes,” often from monies received from the United States(!), as tribute for their “martyrdom.”

There is no possibility of negotiation or compromise with people who believe such things, except that Westerners – Christians in particular – relinquish part of their own beliefs and sense of abhorrence.

The history of relations with strictly Muslim countries is one of slow, steady loss for their opponents, which is to say, us.  The question is whether we have lost enough to be at a point of unrecoverability.  The second condition that forms this point of historic crossroad is nuclear proliferation.

For the only nation to actually kill a few hundred thousand people (both quickly and slowly) with nuclear ordnance, the United States has been just about the worst player in the field of preventing the spread of nukes.  The recent “agreement” with Iranian mullahs, negotiated by the great statesman, John Forbes Kerry, at the behest of international genius, Barack Hussein Obama (the only person who really knows, who ever stated that he, B. H. Obama, was born in Kenya) was a colossal retreat on every front the mullahs thought of, and then an even larger retreat on some fronts they hadn’t thought of but which were conveniently placed before them by the aforementioned duet of American foreign relations braniacs.  The result is the acceleration of Iran’s terrorism operations, deeper involvement in Syria’s civil war, alliance with Russia and, just to add some fun to the world’s troubles, guaranteed development of nuclear-tipped ICBMs.  A legacy of accomplishment.

The rush by North Korea to also field nuclear ICBMs is not a coincidence to the Iranian effort, they are joined at the rectum, passing their crap between them – another legacy of accomplishment for American anti-proliferationists, going back decades.

And so we have two key forces: militant Islam and nuclear weapons.  What’s the third?

The third force is China.  Whether the 21st will be a Chinese century is the immediate result of choosing wrongly which way to turn at the crossroad we are facing.  China has its problems, including potentially severe economic ones, but it does not hesitate to expand its military influence in dramatic ways, including creating islands that it now claims are its territory because it has placed military installations on them.  And, China is the best thief in the world in terms of intellectual property, keeping itself abreast of nearly every U. S. military innovation by stealing every secret we haven’t had the courtesy to hand to them.

China perceives itself as the natural next world hegemon, and simply waits as the U. S. self-destructs in the face of militant Islam and the internal forces we have arrayed against ourselves.

We, ourselves, the nation of the United States of America, representing the decline and fall of Western, Judeo-Christian civilization, comprise the multi-faceted FOURTH force.  It will not please liberals and their lefty, anti-freedom, anti-capitalism friends to hear the prescription for keeping America on top in the global pecking order.

America is destroying itself and its ability to lead the world.  There are many symptoms of this self-destruction, but we do not heed their warnings.  Here are some examples:

  • $20 Trillion in current debt and a hundred $Trillion or so in impossible obligations;
  • 40+% of budgets committed to welfare;
  • Dysfunctional education that has effectively separated Americans from their own history;
  • Dissolution of the social order, distrust of civil authority, fomented racial tensions and breakdown of urban cores;
  • Secularization and separation from, even embarrassment towards Christian religious faith and morals;
  • Rampant drug assault on young people with inconsistent actions to prevent their entry and production;
  • Legalization of a hundred strains of potent marijuana on the premise of tax revenue and official lies about “medical” and “recreational” marijuana;
  • Pollution of electronic media with unbridled pornography and destructive, dishonest “entertainment” contributing to the breakdown of moral institutional influence;
  • Legalized and subsidized abortion;
  • Nearly complete reversal of the role and place of the U. S. Constitution and the ideas of America;
  • Dissolution of marriage, the meaning of marriage and the basic responsibilities of family commitment and child-rearing.

We could talk for hours about all the cultural declines we can see all around us, so many of which weaken our people in terms of mental and physical toughness in the face of potential hardships we will inevitably face.  Science notwithstanding, Americans in great numbers believe there will never be another depression, or even severe inflation; they believe that the weather they like can be guaranteed politically, believe it or not; they believe they can matriculate with barely a glimpse of history, study of founding documents and philosophies, or of the reasons behind major events; they believe there are pills that will a) make them smart, 2)keep them fit with rock-hard abs, 3) make them attractive to beautiful partners, 4) change their birth gender.  These are they who think that criminal illegal entrants strengthen the economy and the nation, that drugs can be legalized to the benefit of government without damaging users, that single-payer health-care will improve quality and lower costs without fascist death panels.  Talk about Dreamers.

What is/are the prescription(s)?  There isn’t room or time to list the hundreds needed, but Prudence indicates that these 4 will make the fastest, surest differences:

  1. Facilitate church-run schools.
  2. Qualification of voters prior to elections.
  3. Charterization – non-union – of public schools.
  4. Nationalizing the Federal Reserve.

America is worth saving; the world depends upon it.  Perhaps the worst thing we could do is pursue removal of a legally elected president no matter how much you may hate him.

Culture, Governance, Politics 2017, Responsibility, Trump

The New Tyranny

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Everyone decided to chide President Trump for privately describing New Hampshire as a “drug-infested den.” Oh, the horror! Why, there are genuinely nice people living in New Hampshire; how could he say such a derogatory thing about them?

Well, he didn’t, of course, and the release of the content of that conversation was a crime, but who cares if discomfiting Trump is the possible result. Let’s use our brains, now, and realize that the point Trump made was that even in New Hampshire, for more than 200 years the veritable definition of good, clean living, based on religious morals and flinty work ethic, the corruption of drugs had penetrated every town and city, and was destroying the heritage of “New-Hampshire-ness” with little to stop it.

It is no wonder that closing the southern border is taken so seriously by Trump and many others. The worst flow of drugs into our nation – and into New Hampshire – begins in Mexico and points further south. Making it harder to get drugs into the country is a good thing. I’m pretty sure of that, but why?

First, let’s stipulate that human beings are remarkable products of evolution and more. The “more” is best described as a foundation of religiously sourced and codified morals. Whether you choose to accept any religious “truths” or are an affirmed atheist, it is clear that the hundreds of religious histories and traditions on Earth have brought us to a fairly honest and moral civilization, capable of correcting and perfecting itself. One of our greatest mores is that we call “freedom.”

We may think freedom is inherent, but it really is intensely fragile, is it not? Historically, since the organization of city-states, freedom has been merely forms of servitude, some quite oppressive. In fact, the age of kingdoms, kings and subjects, or warlords and serf-protectees, was marked by various forms of tyranny. Granted, some was less benign than others, and the basis of great folk-tales. Robin of Locksley and his Merry Men describes the battle for freedom from oppressive taxation and government incompetence – I didn’t invent that irony.

Anyway, back to drugs. None of our heroes in the perpetual fight for freedom, is also described as drug-addled. Indeed, much effort today is described as helping addicts to achieve freedom FROM drugs. So, it seems logical, a free people, ever jealous of their freedom from tyranny, must, by definition, be drug-free as well. Keeping drugs out of America is the logical path to follow IF, and only IF, a leader of Americans is attempting to keep them free. Now we need to look at the headlong rush by various governments within America to actually PROFIT from the cultivation and sale of drugs to their free citizens.

A large element of states’ argument FOR drug legalization, is that it costs too much to enforce laws against marijuana and, besides, isn’t the use of drugs an exercise of the very freedoms governments are supposed to protect? Well, no, not at all, but we seem to have talked ourselves into this twist of “freedom.”

Free people are also responsible for the defense of freedom. This is called citizenship. That is, as we grant powers to an organizing and defensive government, limited by a Constitution that we the people approved of, we also assume an obligation to ourselves, our children and all of future history, to defend those freedoms that government was constituted to PROTECT. That is, by all logic, we are FREE to be FREE, but not free to enslave ourselves, as we do in the grip of drugs.

Oh, come on, you say, pot is no worse than alcohol! Well, perhaps not, that’s arguable, what with alcohol being metabolize-able and being only ingestible and not smoke-able. Too-heavy ingestion of alcohol will kill liver and other cells and disrupt neural communications for some time, until naturally removed from the body. The same could be said about marijuana, except that the danger is directly to the lungs, about 20 times that of tobacco cigarettes. The body does expel a lot of the elements of marijuana smoke, but does a poor job of removing THC, tetra-hydra-cannabinol. THC has the friendly quality of being easily absorbed into fat cells.

Fat cells are found all over the body but one of the greatest concentrations is the brain. This is good because fat cells are hardy and relatively long-lived, but it’s also a liability when exposed to certain toxins like… well, THC. THC tends to store in fat cells – not only brain cells – which is why it’s a risk for lactating mothers to smoke pot, but it is a “freedom,” right? Back to brain cells.

THC stores in brain cells and surreptitiously clogs up the intricate, microscopically tiny connections that enable complex thoughts and memory. “Maybe for real pot-heads, but not me,” you say, “I hold down a job and have no problems smoking pot for relaxation on weekends and once in a while other times. No problem at all… did I say that already?”

From the standpoint of defending freedom, however, the softening and dulling of voters’ intellects is perfect ground for planting illogical political distinctions, thereby guiding voting patterns in the direction most beneficial for those in power. Faced with a population clamoring for “freedom” from pot-related criminal records, all the Sheriff of Nottingham had to do was come out in favor of legalizing pot and his hold on POWER would have been unshakable. Populist “Robin Hoods” could dash themselves against that rock to no avail. Look around us – it’s what we have, now.

Even better than political strength, our state budgets are overspent and there are “revenue short-falls.” Actually, there are “spending long-rises,” but the important thing is that potheads will buy the stuff and pay the taxes so that we, your most-benevolent governors can take care of the children. You wouldn’t deny us that heartfelt mission, would you? You right-wing fascist bastard? After all, taxes on tobacco have declined dangerously and we have so many vital needs that only government can take care of – you see that don’t you?

And we bought into this. We accepted, first, that medical marijuana was medical. That’s a good one. You could get it at CVS if that were true, but, if they’ll buy that they’ll buy anything. They’ll even accept that the pay of legislators is somehow related to the incomes of corporate giants. Let’s test that by voting ourselves 60% raises and see what happens…

This in no way belies the fact that there are medical values to some marijuana components. There are medical values to lots of plants and thank God we have discovered those we have. It doesn’t mean that addling our intellects is a goal of a free people, does it? And so we argue about how high the taxes should be now that legalization has been voted-for, with the murder by a pot-stupefied driver with a medical marijuana prescription, of a State Trooper, a mere hiccup in the process. Pot is so benign, in fact, we should recommend it to heroin addicts to help them get off of the “real” drugs.

It has been a big, long-term sale, and we bought it.

Maybe if Trump simply tried a few tokes he could stop hassling druggies, damned right-wing fascist bastard.

Voting for pot legalization is a lot like voting for socialism, the other lie of non-responsibility. “Hey, man, it’s like, a free country, man, and health care is a right, not a privilege, man.” And not a responsibility? Next you’ll be telling us that you’re entitled to your freedoms and the government better make sure you keep ‘em, man. If it doesn’t then you’re voting for whoever is in favor of legalizing pot everywhere. Did you know that George Washington made rope out of hemp?

Economics, Education, Politics 2017, Responsibility, Transportation

A Home on the Beach

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As the popular sport of denigrating Christianity has flourished, the new religion of “climate change” has gained thousands of new acolytes. Of course, “climate change” is science as opposed to faith-based mumbo-jumbo. You religious nuts have to come in to the 21st Century. Maybe. Hold the door, please.

Climate change is one of the few constants in the life of the earth. Ice ages, warming periods, volcanoes, comets, tides, gravity, planetary magnetic fields – these things have been present quite variably for billions of years. Well, yeah, but… but pollution, man… pollution has been present for like, since the atom bomb, man. What about that, dude?

Valid point, but pollution, too, has come and gone many times. We are considering only pollution that affects things WE have experienced. We, in our hubris, see this brief period since Biblical times or, more pointedly, since Columbus, say, as what is normal and the only way the world should be forever. Maybe, but an impossibility with or without the befouling presence of humans, especially white ones; they are the worst.

Earth changes in ways and for reasons we cannot affect, effect or fully understand. We may have some ephemeral effects right now, but they get taken care of through cyclical processes fairly well, although not perfectly, God knows… except for jet aircraft and a handful of other egregious assaults on the biosphere that we can fix if we develop a mind to. Surface weather cleans up a lot of our sloppiness, and we are technologically obviating some of our worst ideas. Economics helps.

Self-driving cars are a good example. Again, hubris and greed are driving current approaches, but we’ll get it right without too many deaths, one hopes. Once a standard is set requiring cars to “talk” to each other, real progress will be made. The problem with “autonomous” vehicles is autonomy: attempting to have every car have all the abilities to detect, control or react to every variable in traffic, pedestrians and weather – and weird roads. Can’t be done. However, if every car knew what every other vehicle within, say 100 yards were doing – direction, speed, acceleration – then traffic could automatically adjust itself so that it would never have to stop, including at intersections! Add a few sensors at intersections, on-ramps and the like, and “self-driving” cars will begin to resolve one of the worst pollution generators on the planet: personal, independent, ready-at-a-whim, expensive, heavy, inefficient cars.

And save lives. Imagine commuting without driving your own car. An electric “AV” (autonomous vehicle) or “SDC” picks you up along with 3 others going to the same concentrated economic zone, all independently arranged with phone apps. You work on your laptop, play cards, text or eat breakfast perfectly safely. Your SDC moves steadily forward cutting commuting time by a third or a half, then drops each “ride-pooler” at his or her work and goes off for the rest of the day to do some other tasks, including plugging itself in for an hour or so. At the prescribed times it picks up its riders (who may or may not be the same 4 based on workday schedules) and takes them home. Highways are less congested, traffic flow is uninterrupted (thanks to MDV’s [manually driven vehicles] also communicating with vehicles within that 100 yards), and billions of gallons of gas are left unburned. Cool.

Plus, thousands of acres of parking lots are made superfluous and may be “de-paved” and otherwise made better use of. Public transportation, that perennial, government, unionized cesspool of constant losses and shortfalls, will finally be in a form that works and a lot of crappy trains, trolleys and buses can be eliminated. SDC’s can go where people need to go when they need to go there, resulting in actual use. A lot of people will simply stop owning personal cars that sit idle 93% of the time.

As for jet travel, that’s different. Still, large fractions of it can be obviated with superior “ground” transport systems. Monorail transports in busy corridors, even up to 1,000 miles, can eliminate thousands of short-haul jet flights. Jets, after all, dump their exhaust at 35,000 feet, beyond where normal weather will help remove it. Surface transit at 300 miles an hour, or close to it, will compete effectively on trips up to 3 hours or so – possible up to 1000 miles. Trips from 150 to 500 miles would be a breeze, and more comfortable… and electric. Clean.

Elon Musk’s batteries are going to help, but we’ll have to resolve our UN-scientific fears of nuclear power to finally clean up our planet. It’ll happen… has to. Neither solar nor wind can carry the load in the next couple of generations and we seem to want to clean things up right now – nuclear.

At the same time, maybe we can devise solar-powered robot vessels to clean up our preposterous gyre of garbage in the pacific. Container-ship companies can pay for them. We have to become serious about not despoiling our home. Clean air, clean land, clean water – all valid and viable goals. Climate change will slowly correct to the only extent that it can. What does that mean?

To whatever, unquantifiable degree that human activity has caused a change in Earth’s average temperature, it has taken a long time. This is not to discount variations in solar output, sunspot cycles, variations and weakening of the magnetic field and so forth, but let those go. We may have an impact, no matter how arrogant we sound in saying so. Still, it’s fairly small and slow to make a difference. There isn’t any treaty or legislation that is going to make a rapid reversal. Decades, generations.

This doesn’t mean we shouldn’t start as soon as possible… and we have. But, increasingly, the choice that true believers offer is stark destruction of our ecology and mass starvations and all they imply; OR, VOLUNTARY population reduction. The possibility that Humanity might resolve pollution by dint of invention and technology or even good motives, is never proffered. According to the Church of Inevitable Death, mankind will either kill itself out of stupidity and greed or thanks to enlightened leadership from government members of the new religion.

I’ll take door number 3, Winky.

Climate acolytes are currently very upset about “…the four inches of sea-level rise that has already happened!” Well that’s serious, especially if you’ve been living within two inches of the mean sea level in 1940. It’s also extremely difficult to determine with any precision. But if the seas have risen a couple of inches, their worry and over-concern has to ignore the 400 FEET of sea-level change since the beginning of the reversal of the last ice age. Of course, there was a lot more ice available for melting in the good old days, so small global changes could cause massive meltwater volumes. We’re relatively safe from those kinds of effects, today.
A large part of our ostensible sea-level problem is our own damn fault, since we do enjoy living right on the waters’ edges. I expect we’ll deduce how to avoid drowning slowly, most of us, anyway.

If the entire atmosphere could be liquefied it would be about 33 feet deep, or 393.7 inches. Well great… so what? Well, in fact, CO-2 comprises about .0397% of the total. Let’s see what this means:
1% of 393.7 inches is just 3.937 inches – out of 33 feet. But, CO-2 is less than 4/10ths of that percent, or slightly deeper than 1.57 inches. Around the year 1800 (pre-industry), we’re told, CO-2 was only 3/10ths of a percent of the total, or what would have been 1.18 inches. Now we are told, it is the added .39 inches of the 33-foot total that has caused nearly every problem we face today, hot or cold, wet or dry, cloudy or sunny.

It is a big deal because people literally breath out CO-2, as do our cars and trucks and planes and things. Better, it’s a trace gas that we can BLAME on humans! We can TAX it and buy votes with it and be superior about it. Ohh, Heaven!

Worse, it is swamping tiny atolls in the Solomon Islands and the handfuls of people who like living there (who wouldn’t?) need some of everyone’s money to compensate their moving costs. At least, that’s the trumpeted theory. Still, it fits with the trends of the past 100 centuries or so, which ought to be comforting. Our anxiety derives from changes that have affected things we know from the past couple of hundred years… things that, in our arrogant view, should have remained static once we decided we liked them.

Right? Of course, right!
Since so many factors we have nothing to do with have maintained the direction of change, we are now adopting an amazing attitude that it is within our politics, economics and powers, that we can steer change in a different direction. This is far more remarkable than divinity, but a lot of people have bought it.

Foreign Policy, Politics 2017, Trump

RUMORS OF WAR

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There are wars and rumors of war. How pleasant the last year of Ronald Reagan’s term appears, looking back. The Soviet Union was falling apart, the economy was in good shape, there was no ISIS, the Middle East was relatively calm, commodity markets were “under control,” so to speak, Syria, Libya, Venezuela and even the East Coast of Africa, Iraq and Iran were comparatively un-troublesome. Nicaragua was yanked back from Communism, Chile restored free elections, casting off Pinochet’s military police state (CIA -created), and American ships were still welcome in the Philippines. Thankfully, the senior George Bush defeated Michael Dukakis for president. Desert Storm and Bill and Hillary Clinton were yet to burden the polity.

Read the history of the ‘80s and things were anything but calm and peaceful. Nelson Mandela was still in jail, Robert Mugabe was firmly installed as “president” of Zimbabwe, and Hosni Mubarak was in his first decade of his never-untroubled leadership of Egypt and rough alliance with the U. S. Africa was in turmoil and many were starving, there, while tribal racism threatened millions. Argentina barely functioned with double digit inflation, yet decided to invade the “Falklands/Malvinas” to “reclaim” its sovereignty, based as much on proximity as on history. The U. K. decided under Thatcher, to re-take them. Ronald Reagan easily subverted the Monroe Doctrine to help his friend, Maggie, sink the General Belgrano.

Typically we try to believe that politics creates war and the conditions for war, but we can’t quite succeed at that. While war may be a political tool, it rarely rewards the party or leader in power in the intended way. On the other side of the mirror, however, it can be observed that war often creates politics – in fact, not just often, but generally – in that militarism is easily equated with patriotism and tends to divide the body politic along patriotic lines. One cannot hide from the truth that neither the body politic nor the nations at war are generally benefited. Individual politicians or their party… maybe.

Now, what? A supposedly “America first” presidential candidate (meaning to a degree: America only) has been turned in the span of 5 months to a president willing to view the world like a so-called “neo-Con.” Abruptly, acts of war – missiles into Syria, super-bomb into Afghanistan, threats of hot responses to North Korean “provocations” – are deemed useful internationally. Supposedly, this turn-about and its apparent unpredictability of the new president, will move China to change its policies toward North Korea; will cause Russia to pull back from its prior stance in Syria, and possibly in Ukraine and Georgia. Even Iran’s theocrats will quake at the threats of Donald Trump since we have been willing to take some actions against people or things that have almost no chance of retaliation.

Perhaps we should bomb Venezuela because the government there is starving its people and being mean.

Sudan and Zimbabwe are worth at least some cruise missiles, aren’t they? How demeaning it is to choose Syria… Syria! Sudan has at least as crappy a government as Syria! We live in a strange nation growing stranger.

Americans think, many of us, that the U. S. is pure and well-intentioned and very misunderstood by all the nations or groups that distrust us and wish to kill us. Our global deployment of military activities: 156 countries in a recent estimate, is for humanitarian aid and economic development. Well, that’s right – economic development of somebody.

Maybe it’s necessary. Multiple administrations have thought so. The “Truman Doctrine” of containing Communism has morphed into the unspoken – dare we say, secret – doctrine of containing everybody. The World’s policeman, indeed.

Well, say the thoughtful ones, if not us, then who? China? Russia? God forbid! Believe us, they thoughtfully pronounce, you don’t want to live in a world that’s not “led” by the United States. Perhaps not.

Money talks. Our beneficial “Petro-dollar” scheme buttressed by Saudi Arabia has permitted the U. S. to borrow and spend in astronomical quantities, to the degree that our worldwide military adventures have been “free,” sort-of. We have outspent our income – the largest income in the world to boot – for 50 years, by creating unlimited debt. Maybe it is completely fair that we “protect” the world with its own money. After all, it costs us only the interest – and a few thousand of our very best men and women. At least during this election cycle.

So, Mr. President, what are we going to stir up? It’s one thing to risk your own people, quite another to risk most of South Korea. Or Japan. Attacking the North Koreans can never be done with clear knowledge of all of their capabilities. What if they have pre-positioned a couple of nukes next to the DMZ? Or just offshore of South Korea? How many “South” Koreans are really “North” Koreans? Some, for sure.

And, then, there ARE the 30,000 or so Americans watching the DMZ from the South who are some sort of “trip wire” in the event North Korea starts an invasion. That must be a comfort. Most likely, if the North does decide to make a move, it won’t start at the DMZ, it will start well behind it, in Seoul. Then what shall the 30,000 do? Invade the North? That’s not a plan, either. The North has many, many more troops and artillery arrayed on their side.

If the North moves it will be all or nothing – do or die. They must know that Hell will shortly find them if they start anything. By the same token, if the U. S. starts something, the North must either fold its tent and retreat or, again, go all out with everything they have – they’ve sort-of talked themselves into it.

Oh, Mr. Trump, what are you going to do? You risk the South at the very least. Recent endeavors show that there are not enough bombs to deliver victory without protracted ground action. Do you really think China will allow the decimation of its handy cat’s paw? Or will Russia, for that matter? Who will overnight become whose friend if things “go hot?”

Finally, like abused children, North Koreans will not abandon their homeland or their dear leader. I think you have not contemplated the potential of a new Asian war long enough, Mr. T. You’ve not been in office long enough: and there can be only two terms.

Governance, Politics 2017

Tipping Point

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We are, evidently, at a tipping point for the American experiment. For myriad reasons, we who have been so blessedly comfortable (borrowed comfort, but still…) and never devastated by conquerors, bombing raids or economic destruction, have, for fifty years, been inviting unusual immigration in huge numbers, many of which immigrants are our cultural, if not actual, enemies. Rational nations don’t do this, but the U. S. and Europe have convinced themselves that there is some “rightness” to doing so.

Some are already howling about xenophobia and worse. How did we get here?

The larger source of hatred for the United States – domestically – is decades of dishonesty in government. Sad, that. It took time to convert basic graft into nationwide political power. What is required to move large numbers of voters is some sort of “national” crisis or threat… like war and threats of war. World War I, for example, was played slickly by Woodrow Wilson, a visionary Progressive who was tired of democratic populism and nationalism. First he declared his opposition to getting involved in “Europe’s war,” but once re-elected, sent General Pershing and the “American Expeditionary Force” to France with the message: “Lafayette, we are here,” hearkening back to France’s vital role in defeating the British in the American Revolution.

Following hostilities, Wilson strove to create a “League of Nations,” a large first step toward one-world government. America wasn’t quite as devolutionary as Wilson was and Congress never accepted the treaty of membership. But the trail was blazed, while the largest effects of the war to end all wars were festering, having ensconced Communism in Russia and Fascism in Italy and Germany. Not long before the Great War, the U. S. had adopted the 16th Amendment establishing the Income Tax, and passed a law establishing the misleadingly named Federal Reserve Bank. They, together, installed another form of fascism, perhaps not recognized even now, that has inexorably destroyed American independence financially… freedom-wise, too.

But that was a slow method; another crisis was needed and the Great Depression served perfectly. Suddenly big government was not a handy, righteous expense burden. Now it was salvation, a source of food, employment and confidence… dare we say, hope? This was new: government had a role in growing numbers of people’s lives, a role many could not live without. Another trail was blazed.

After WW-II, the U. S. became the world’s policeman, first keeping Communism contained (Truman Doctrine) and the Korean War, then establishing a C.I.A. that acted in place of stated foreign policy, toppling governments and embroiling us in wars and skirmishes around the globe.

Under Johnson we took two trails: the spirit-sapping Viet-Nam War and the Great Society – both expensive, both yet to be fully paid-for. The American fifth column, led by the New York times, Washington Post and others, flexed its muscles and destroyed President Nixon and the results of a legal and voluminously overwhelming rejection of progressivism in the 1972 elections: 49 states to 1. Nixon was no more or less perfect than most of his predecessors, but he was a threat to what liberals believe was the inexorable direction of history: one-world elite paternalism and the equality of mass mediocrity.

That subsequent presidents have routinely committed actual crimes against the Constitution far greater than what Nixon was accused of, has no meaning on their planet. Every domestic condition has become a “crisis” or a “war,” and worthy of planetary indebtedness. The U. S., for a multitude of reasons, has had the power to increase DEBT without practical limit, since Nixon closed the “gold window.” And, so we have, to the point that we can barely afford to defend ourselves or to prevent riots in the streets if anything threatens welfare. Our highly-paid congressional “leaders” got us here – let’s re-elect them!

Every congressional move is now, by fifth column caterwauls, a threat to life as we know it. Every presidential tweet is simply proof of that threat. Americans voted clearly, in their 50 state elections, to not continue fatuous liberal government, but as in 1974, the fifth column is gearing up to reverse that shift: Trump is an highly obvious threat to a “progressive” future. Progressive jurists and bureaucrats – everywhere – are doing their damnedest to help bring the elected government down. Our Fifth Column is happy to help.

Could tip either way.