Category Archives: CounterCurrent

Yammering Idiots

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Noisy idiots have been a problem throughout history. What to do with precocious citizens with half-baked yet strangely appealing ideas? The notion that jobs are being taken by immigrants is an enduring and popular fancy. Another is that the federal government is merely a front for a squad of hidden mandarins quietly controlling the government from a bunker.

So, where do I get off calling people idiots? Is it not possible that I am an idiot as well? Yes, I’m anxious to clear the air and admit to my own idiocy. No point in denying it. As a lifetime member of the set of all idiots, I’ll offer a defining quality of idiocy.

An idiot is someone who knows enough to assert a statement with certainty, but not knowing enough to realize their knowledge may be too shallow or based on falsehoods or inaccuracies. Idiocy is a vector pointing in the wrong direction with imaginary magnitude. It’s a part of the human condition everyone is afflicted with but differing in direction and magnitude.

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The rest of this post is cut and pasted from Facebook. I don’t know who wrote it but here is the link.

Umberto Eco was a scholar — a man who spent sixty years inside libraries, inside ancient manuscripts, inside the deepest questions human beings have ever wrestled with. How do we make meaning? How does a symbol become a belief? How does a word become a world?

He wrote The Name of the Rose — a murder mystery set inside a 14th-century monastery, where the most dangerous weapon wasn’t a sword. It was a book. And the most dangerous idea wasn’t heresy.

It was forbidden knowledge in the hands of the unprepared.

He understood, better than almost anyone alive, what happens when information moves without wisdom to carry it.

So in June 2015, when Umberto Eco accepted an honorary degree from the University of Turin and turned to face the journalists in the room, what he said wasn’t a prepared speech.

It was a warning.

“Social media gives legions of idiots the right to speak when they once only spoke at a bar after a glass of wine, without harming the community. Then they were quickly silenced. But now they have the same right to speak as a Nobel Prize winner.”

The room went quiet.

Because everyone in it knew he wasn’t being cruel. He was being precise.

For most of human history, spreading an idea required effort. A book had to be written, edited, printed, and earned its way into hands. A journalist had to answer to editors who asked: Is this true? Can you prove it? A voice had to build credibility slowly — through knowledge, through time, through the hard work of being right more often than wrong.

That process wasn’t perfect. Important voices were shut out. Power shaped what got heard. The gatekeepers had their own agendas.

But there was friction. And friction — it turns out — slows things down just long enough for truth to catch up with speed.

Now that friction is almost gone.

A rumor written in anger at midnight can reach a million people before sunrise. A post with no sources, no context, and no accountability can be shared more times than any correction will ever be. Outrage travels faster than nuance. A confident lie moves faster than a careful truth.

Eco understood this — not because he hated technology. Not because he was a bitter old man longing for simpler times.

He understood it because he had spent a lifetime mapping exactly how human beings get deceived. By symbols. By certainty. By the seductive confidence of a voice that sounds like it knows.

His warning wasn’t that everyone having a voice is wrong.

Every person deserves to be heard. The democratization of expression — the idea that you no longer need wealth or institutional power to reach an audience — is genuinely, powerfully good.

His warning was about something quieter. The collapse of the space between having an opinion and having expertise. Between speaking and being believed.

We feel that collapse every single day now.

In the health post written with total confidence by someone with no medical training — shared a hundred thousand times by people who trusted the tone, not the facts. In the political story that races ahead of the truth. In the moment satire gets mistaken for news, and no one notices until the damage is done.

The algorithm doesn’t reward careful.

It rewards engaging. And “engaging” — too often — means shocking, confirming, or enraging.

Umberto Eco died in February 2016. Just eight months after that warning. Just as the world he described was beginning to fully unmask itself.

He never saw what followed.

But his words survived. And they don’t read like criticism anymore.

They read like a map.

So the next time something lands in your feed and every instinct says share this now — pause. One breath.

Ask: Who said this? Why does it make me feel this way? Is the confidence of the writing a substitute for evidence?

Not because you distrust everything. Not because truth doesn’t exist.

But because the single most powerful thing any of us can do in an age of noise — is slow down long enough to think.

That, Umberto Eco would say, is not weakness.

That is the only thing standing between information and wisdom.

I agree with what Naomi Klein said

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Image copied from Facebook.

I started to post the content below on Facebook but somehow the old saying about casting your pearls before the swine began to echo inside my pointed head. My Facebook friends aren’t swine obviously -I love all of them- but it is a limited distribution.

The same class of business geniuses who off-shored American manufacturing are now telling us that their AI technology will relieve people of menial labor. This ‘menial labor’ is what keeps food on the table of millions of human beings. Yes, in theory the AI-unemployed could retrain to work in information technology, but seriously, that’s not going to happen. AI is looking to replace computer programmers too as well as white collar management level jobs. Desktop computers devastated the job market for secretarial and typing pools in the 1980s. The result is that information workers spend much of their time performing typesetting and formatting tasks in addition to their to jobs.

Ever try to but tickets online? Invariably you must download an app and enter commercially valuable information like your name, email address, phone number and credit card number so their algorithm can place you in a barrel with the rest of the fish. From there you will be set up for personalized marketing and sale to parts unknown. All to get admittance a single time with over priced tickets. Need to ask a question? Just forget it.

Business school graduates are taught that properly ambitious people should be engaged in bringing down existing paradigms. Okay, fine, I get it. Any economic bubble will reward early adopters with a greater opportunity for wealth. It was true with any gold or land rush in history and is part of human nature. But that does not mean that the government is supposed to stack the deck for business and against the public good by using its immense resources to force the public to ‘cooperate’ and line up to have their pockets picked.

The trickle down economics theory pushed by Ronny Reagan remains in the imaginations of many today. It was BS then and is BS today. When organizations greet an uptick in profits, they have a choice of what to do with it. They can put it back into their businesses for improvements or they could hire more workers to meet the demand. But this often requires new customers who may not be there. Added profits are just as likely to banked off-shore or go into tax shelters. You only hire more people if demand requires it.

Power is in the ability to allocate resources. The American plutocrats of today like the ‘tech bros’ exploit the automatic admiration of the public as well as their wealth to steer the economy as as they please.

Economics isn’t built into the universe like physics, it is sociology with a bit of math. We are free to object and and employ limitations on those with unelected power and self-appointed authority.

Educational Deficiencies in the Past Are Front and Center Today

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As you would expect, deficiencies in American education each school year will impact the future as each K-12 graduating class blends into the population. They take with them a lumpy mix of classroom lessons and life experiences from outside of school.

Some grads will go straight into the work force while others choose college or military service. Some won’t graduate, leaving them to find a living wage without specialist training that might justify higher wages. A few may explore criminality and eventually find 3 hots and a cot inside one of America’s many “Grey Bar Hotels”.

“The argument has been made that the worm of Nixon’s Southern Strategy laid the eggs for Reagan and Falwell’s Moral Majority, the larval form of the Tea Party, and finally bursting from its chrysalis into Trump’s golden MAGA movement.” Source: From the Tea Party to MAGA – How White Christian Nationalism Is Taking Control of the US, João Ferreira Dias, European Center for Populism Studies, https://www.populismstudies.org/from-the-tea-party-to-maga-how-white-christian-nationalism-is-taking-control-of-the-us/

Since the start of Trump’s MAGA movement in 2016, its supporters show a different understanding of civics than what I learned in 9th grade civics, indicating significant discrepancies in our views on the practical functioning of American democracy.

Any fool can describe from their perspective of how American civil society actually functions in its tangle of interconnections and dead ends with what the ideal tangle should look like. MAGA followers believe that they have been systematically kept from the “Good Life” in America by a supposed “Deep State” of elites with their woke-agenda governmental agencies.

In the imagination of MAGA followers the “elites” are a dark coterie of liberals comprising intellectuals, university professors, LGBTQ+, environmental activists and others in the festering carbuncle of liberal wokism. Or so it goes. The accusations of deep state machinations and conniving and woke elites steering an otherwise god-fearing and patriotic nation into disrepute and moral disfigurement was gratefully accepted by disgruntled millions.

As each 12th grade graduating class shambles into the future, we drag along our predispositions, learnings and fresh skills in our survival tool kits. For some, the tool kits are satisfactory. For others, not so much. Many are unaware of what should be in the kits in the first place. Most of us carry knowledge and skills that are hardly used and initially appeared to be a waste of time.

Everyone carries educational deficiencies of some sort into the future. For some, the gaps in education hardly matter in our lives. Sometimes it does matter.

I’ll get to the point. If you did not take or pay attention in civics class, graduation dumps you off into American life with little understanding of how our government works and how politics is woven into the fabric of our lives.

Many who are deficient in civics have trouble avoiding a cynical and sarcastic outlook over government and politics. Rather than admit to ignorance and resolving to improve, many rest on the assumption that politics = corruption. As with all human endeavors, there is some truth to this.

Public schools in the USA are much maligned and have been under attack by those who seek to embed them in an overall religious education. I refer to conservative protestant evangelical organizations. ALEX, the conservative American Legislative Exchange, is a source of written legislation and municipal codes or other rule making text that is used at the local level of politics including municipalities and school districts. Those wishing to legislate their religious beliefs onto school children find this service very useful. It gives continuity to large scale implementation of protestant evangelical doctrine.

School districts in my state have elected board members who have transplanted religious doctrine from ALEX to school boards in conservative areas. One of the best ways to convince governing groups to adopt new rules is to supply them with text to adopt rather than depending on the members to gin up their own text.

I once gave a presentation to our town board hoping they would adopt a Dark Sky Initiative. At the end of my presentation I handed out copies of ordinances adopted by other communities. My request was ignored but a few years later and with another presentation by someone else an ordinance was eventually adopted. By that time outdoor LED light fixtures with horizontal cutoff were widely available and ordinary. Nobody had to take a chance with a new policy.

Many within and from the public schools bemoan the lack of financial and religious education in the schools. I would argue that this is fundamentally the responsibility of the family. In my area, we have a mixture of Mormons, Baptists, Methodists, Catholics, Atheists and Lutherans. Which religious sect should design and teach religious curriculum? Should your Mormon child’s religious studies be taught by a Baptist? What if one group viewed it as well balanced but the Mormons say it is deficient in their doctrines. Imagine the cat fight. Leave the religious indoctrination to Sunday school. The public school curriculum should remain secular just like math and physical education.

Today American liberal democracy is collapsing because 1/3 of the voters misunderstand the basics of democracy. America has always had an anti-intellectual bent and today with social media, ignorant citizens reinforce their ignorance through connection with the wider collection of dullards and lazy thinkers online.

Freedom vs Predation

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Americans, especially those of a particular political bent, love to exclaim that we love and cherish freedom. In America, the word ‘freedom’ is frequently used to amp up political rhetoric and to make people’s chests swell with pride with the aim of making us more receptive to a message. Particularly when playing Lee Greenwood’s song God bless the USA. This will not be the (n + 1)th valentine to freedom. Instead, my purpose is to reexamine a basic idea, i.e., certain pragmatics of freedom.

In America we thrive on a lumpy blend of civil liberties, freedoms and capitalistic ideals. Leading capitalists are both adored and despised, but not universally. Among many, being a millionaire or billionaire is tantamount to sainthood because if they are so rich, they must be doing something right. Luck is never part of the equation. In much of the USA, capitalism is raised to the level of a sacred obligation. Its principles are taken on hearsay or faith, and its boundaries are constantly pressing the limits of the law and ethics. In this way, capitalism is like a gas- it expands to fill the available space. Acquiring everything you can get away with is seen more as the act of a lone ranger. People have always admired a Robin Hood or a Jesse James character. Being one step ahead of the law is viewed as a righteous sport.

There is no doubt that capitalism has raised the level comfort, safety and wealth in America and elsewhere. One of the oft-cited merits of capitalism is that it seeks to raise the efficiency in the use of capital. From a distance that sounds like a dandy goal. Examples of the efficient use of capital are all around us and in ways that we may not recognize. Reducing the cost of doing business while retaining or increasing margins is a prime example of boosting the efficiency of capital. This benefits consumers if prices lower or remain level against inflation. But what about those who may have lost their jobs or their operating margins as the result of someone else’s boost in efficiency?

When the cost of doing business increases due to, say, tariffs, those afflicted are forced to raise their prices to pass along the costs. This is inflationary and most people understand this. But what about businesses not affected as much by tariffs? When they look around and see inflation raising prices by 6 %, aren’t they tempted to raise their prices as well? I would be. If customers are acclimated to inflation generally, they won’t mind if I raise my prices too, will they?

A misconception many people make is that if the cost of some raw material or labor drops, then the retailer will automatically pass that savings along to me. Ah, nope. They’ll bank the increase in margins. Why give away the boost in margins? This is just human nature.

The losses resulting from an increase in another’s raise in efficiency is part of progress. What about the buggy whip makers who went out of business after invention of then automobile? Who cried for them? A Pollyanna might say that they had a chance to expand their horizons into the automobile game.

After word processing became widespread and normal, it coincided with the extinction of the office secretary and typist pools. This helped to make Microsoft very wealthy at the expense of career secretarial staff. Today, most do their own secretarial work. Those who were once secretaries are now called administrative staff. Those of us who use word processors now spend our days on repetitive type setting chores.

Main Point

There comes a point where capitalism discolors into a shade of predatory behavior. The 1941 WC Fields movie Never Give a Sucker an Even Break expresses a sentiment held by many seeking easy money. It says that if I can take your money, you deserve it for being so clueless. In American history there are a great many incidents where a confidence man (conman) persuades an easy mark to part with his or her money. This kind of activity is always simmering somewhere. It involves a proposed cash transaction for something a doe-eyed sucker is anxious to exploit. Usually, the conman receives the cash and disappears leaving the sucker poorer and embarrassed. This extreme example is predatory behavior dressed up as a business transaction.

But capitalistic predators aren’t necessarily lone wolves tracking suckers. Many times, they operate from a store front as a legitimate business. Enron is a glaring example of a capitalistic enterprise that used the energy bull market of the 1990’s, creative accounting tricks and highly complex financial statements to mislead regulators and investors away from their felonious activities. So much money was being made that most were transfixed by their apparent success.

Obviously, business isn’t automatically fraudulent. But within the complex world of finance and accounting there exists a spider web of opportunities to lose your money. Predators may work in the shadows of crimes of omission rather than commission. The big investment people measure their strength and gain status through the contracts they land and the services they bill for. It is all very bewildering to outsiders.

So, what about the commercial onset of artificial intelligence, AI? It promises new vistas and opportunities by those who offer its services. Okay, but how and to whom? AI is already showing its worth in problem solving in many areas. Will AI understand context or counterpoints? Will AI eventually prosecute to the letter or to the spirit of the law? Will AI ever give a person a second chance based on past performance or extenuating circumstances in an HR situation?

Everyone has at some time has benefited from slack in the system, value judgements or another’s faith in your ability to improve. Will AI be used mainly to mete out discipline or strictness on the job? What happens when you are fired by an AI “staff member”? An AI staff member will be able to execute all manner of unpleasant duties in nearly every context. When will we have the right to be judged by a human being?

Uncle Joe is Watching From Beyond the Grave

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I ran into this image today from the online class I’m taking. I suspect Uncle Joe may have been reincarnated and his shadow darkens the Kremlin floors even today.

Question: How do you transition from a Stalinist dictatorship to something less terrible and maybe even faintly democratic? It’s still an open question.

Source: Movie poster of Stalin’s Funeral by Yevgeni Yevtushenko. I’d have been tempted to poke the body with a stick to make sure he was dead.

Nikita Krushchev led de-Stalinization after Stalin died but was soon replaced by Leonid Brezhnev. It is said that not much of interest happened during the Brezhnev years other than keeping up with the cold war.

Big changes finally began with Mikhail Gorbachev and his glasnost and perestroika, but the USSR imploded before he was finished. The Kremlin couldn’t make the centralized economy work as desired, so they shut off the lights and went home. Boris Yeltsin was the first popularly elected and reelected President of Russia from 1991 to 1999 but his tenure was checkered with successes and failures. His hand picked successor was Vladimir Putin who was later elected President. The merits of that choice is apparent in the news today.

An even better question: how does a country whose skids were greased with bribery, had zero history of democratic anything or a market economy and little if any market-related institutions make the transition? Yeah, it’s a hard problem. The Soviet security apparatus didn’t fully collapse and survives to this day, frightening as ever.

There was an old joke- the KGB headquarters in Moscow went up 7 floors and down all the way to Siberia. The gulags were substantially emptied of millions of laborers after Krushchev’s elevation, but many of the camps were retained.

The Tyrannical Gov’t is Here. Where is the NRA?

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For decades a population of Americans citizens have been extremely vocal about the 2nd Amendment to the US Constitution and their right to bear arms. A major element to their argument is to have protection from a tyrannical government. Legislation carrying even the faintest whiff of what they spit out as “gun control” is defeated. But, that is an issue for another day.

In District of Columbia v. Heller, the Supreme Court held that the Second Amendment codifies a natural right to keep and bear arms for self-defense. That right to self-defense extends to both private and public threats, including self-defense against agents of a tyrannical government. Source: Google.

Well, what if that tyrannical government is now materializing? Will they even recognize it? So far it doesn’t look like it. This population is heavily invested in Trump so could that possibly blind them to the situation? Or did they just shrug and sign up to work for ICE in large numbers?

Trump and his cronies are constantly presuming authority over many areas of government that were statutorily or constitutionally understood to be outside the grasp of the executive. These people are constantly flooding the zone with acts of overreach backed by a republican SCOTUS and congress and enjoy a corrupt DoJ, DHS and, increasingly, a politicized DoD.

What does the term “liberal democracy” really mean? From Wikipedia-

It is a form of government that combines the organization of a democracy with ideas of liberal political philosophy. Common elements within a liberal democracy are: elections between or among multiple distinct political parties; a separation of powers into different branches of government; the rule of law in everyday life as part of an open society; a market economy with private property; universal suffrage; and the equal protection of human rights, civil rights, civil liberties, and political freedoms for all citizens. Substantive democracy refers to substantive rights and substantive laws, which can include substantive equality,[2] the equality of outcome for subgroups in society.[3][4] Liberal democracy emphasizes the separation of powers, an independent judiciary, and a system of checks and balances between branches of government. Multi-party systems with at least two persistent, viable political parties are characteristic of liberal democracies. Wikipedia.

Anyone who made it through 9th grade civics should have a background sufficient to realize that liberal democratic America is in existential danger. Not by violent overthrow but by a slow, painless slouch to illiberal democracy. A slouch because not enough voters will engage with money, votes or the gumption to step out and take a public stand against what is happening. A majority still have utilities, access to health care and safe neighborhoods and roads. So far the changes are rather abstract and distant for most citizens and it is easy to conclude that nothing personally serious is happening.

The US Constitution appears inadequate to provide a clear and muscular remedy against an abusive and malevolent single party control of all three houses of government. The Dems have had such control in the past, but did not seek to form an oligarchy or some dictatorial power grab. Were they just too dumb and timid to even try or is there something else? Maybe they know better.

In this country the Republicans have most of the lawyers, guns and money. But we woke liberals also have the 2nd Amendment at our disposal as well.

“Unspeakable Depravities”

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The reliable American MAGA/GOP fear machine shifted into overdrive on the Bad Bunny halftime show during the recent Super Bowl. Against the blinding glare of Trump’s never-ending stream of foul blather stands the latest upsurge of Christian puritanical indignation and accusations of unspeakable depravities freely broadcast over the public airwaves. A group of “conservative warriers” have been orchestrating a war dance from the corridors of Congress out into the MAGA world. Their legislative blunderbuss tactics and shrill accusations and are aimed at Bad Bunny, NBC, and the NFL.

The NFL and NBC stand accused by red state dullards of broadcasting “openly glorified sodomy and countless other unspeakable depravities.” The MAGA populist movement is a jealous and cantankerous mob, intolerant of competing populist stirrings including pop music stars. Roger Goodell, National Football League (NFL) commissioner, enthusiastically backed the selection of Bad Bunny according to Time. This was not a trick foisted on the NFL.

Opposition began after the announcement of the half-time entertainment lineup in 2025. Much of the backlash focused on Bad Bunny’s Puerto Rican identity and his status as a Spanish speaker, with Fox News and political commentators framing the choice as anti-American. 

The truly unwholesome aspect here is the extent to which American politics promotes and elects such Christian nationalist puritans to high office. Though politicians play to their home districts, their nationalist puritanical claims are broadcast widely, banking authority and credibility into their castle keep. Their words are cheap and easy to speak, but practically impossible to correct or refute. With Bible in one hand and the other reaching skyward in supplication, the sobbing preacher-man reads a verse and proclaims fealty to the invisible almighty and the President. It is at once moving and ridiculous. They know precisely what they are doing.

The Christian nationalist cult is intent on moving the US into a position where the rule of law is based on Biblical law, whatever that may be. Whatever it is, it will certainly place preachers into high-ranking, high-power positions of influence. If you listen to the TV preachers, they call for ‘Gods people’ to save America. All that matters is accelerating the return of the Savior to earth to trigger the end of times and banishment of the unworthy to a lake of molten sulfur.

I wonder if Biblical law would continue with parking tickets or tax law? If you wanted to change the easement on your property, would that be New or Old Testament, and would pastor Bob approve it?

What a strange way to run the universe.

The Time is Now!

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The president’s lap dog and offensive coordinator, Mr. Stephen Miller, has been yapping about America’s supposed right to annex Greenland. The pathetic swine is going on about our role as a superpower and how we should be pushing America’s weight around. I’m faint with nausea as I write this because that is what this sickening pig does to me. I’ll try to continue.

The prime minister of Denmark, Mette Frederiksen, said recently that Trump’s comments about Greenland and last weekend’s abduction of Nicolás Maduro and his wife will likely lead to the collapse of NATO. NATO, in case half of America was sleeping, was a big part of what kept the world from WWIII during the cold war. But hey, Trump knows better than anyone because he is rich and has nailed down the speaking patterns of an after-dinner speaker in the hotel ballroom. His third-grade intellect is sufficient for his supporters.

There are plenty of sensible people in the USA who absolutely object to what Trump is doing to our beloved homeland and by extension to the world. It appears that his vision for America is in parallel to Putin’s vision of a large and powerful Russian empire. Putin’s ethnic pride pushes him to Russify as much western territory as possible in order to balance the USA and Europe.

Trump is not buggering America by himself. Who are those pathetic souls who grease the fascist machinery behind the scenes? There must be a list of lieutenants who do the planning and conceive of the action plans. Trump is not a detail man. He is the showboat and on-air talent.

The USA elected a mouthy billionaire real estate developer as president- twice -and what is he doing? He is looking for land to develop. He wants to repartition the world to fit his developer’s dream of having the USA pay for his indelible mark on monuments and in future history books. Another one of his businesses is the sale or leasing of his brand- TRUMP. He’ll plaster his brand without fear of recourse because we’ll let him do it. For crying out loud, he is planning to build a triumphal arch. And his supporters continue to tingle in excitement over his feats of strength and disregard for his detractors.

While Trump is casting societal norms into the ditch, we law abiding citizens must tolerate his dishonesty and incompetent mishandling of our historic nation. We tolerate it because we have respect for the constitution and the rule of law. He was twice elected to high office and we have respected his wins. The founders did not anticipate the ultraconservative majority that got elected or appointed to SCOTUS and how the country might be taken down one wall at a time.

Not only does #47 skirt the law but the news media, the fourth estate, who have previously tried to live up to their role in civic life are now conspicuously silent. The founders could not have anticipated the magnitude of trouble electronic media have contributed to a civically immature population.

It is well past time for us by the millions to take to the streets in lengthy and vigorous opposition to the current administration. We must make noise and push back in vast numbers with all of our strength. I know those who would protest with me once but not many who would do it multiple times. Arrest and reprisal must be accepted as untold millions have around the world.

America has been a land of opportunity for anyone who could summon the will power to “make it big.” Now, America is about those who have already made it big and are trying to push closer to trillionaire status. Haul up the ladder, I’m on board. Trump’s wealth has been seen as a sign of business savvy which was thought to transfer seamlessly into governing. So how did that work out?

The downfall of the United States of America is being accelerated by voters too clueless to know otherwise. Democracy is being undone by an idiocrasy from the low side of the bell curve. Citizens too stupid or too lazy to understand America’s place in the world. World history has been heavily documented so there is no excuse for civic ignorance.

Stephen Miller’s psychotic rattling of his stick in the administration’s bucket of shit in front of the White House never ceases to satisfy America’s confederation of fools. What a sad time to be alive.

Crossing the OS Rubicon- From MS Windows 11 Across to Linux Ubuntu

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After viewing an alarming report on YouTube concerning the shady situation with Microsoft’s business strategy in general and Microsoft Windows 11 in particular, I’ve decided to cross the Rubicon to Linux Ubuntu. It’s not just about what I’ve learned about Microsoft’s intrusion into my personal computer’s files. My latest update of MS Outlook ab.so.lute.ly stinks. My relearning and expectations of Windows 11 Outlook is contaminated by my prior familiarity with the previous rev. The blurred familiarity of the new version is twisted with years of habit and expectations. I’ve had enough.

I’ve been using Microsoft products since the Jurassic age of home computing, ca 1986. I refer to both “IBM” machines of that age and Apple’s McIntosh. As a result, both my entire professional and personal computer lives are deeply invested in Microsoft products, MS Word especially. I’ve heard that transfer compatibility going from Word documents to whatever Linux app is problematic, except for pdf files.

My plan is to experiment with an inexpensive laptop from Amazon with Linux Ubuntu already installed. The goal is to make a parallel assessment of Ubuntu with my personal and consulting work on MS Windows.

Remember the scene from Saving Private Ryan where a German soldier is killing an American soldier by struggling to push his bayonet into his chest on the upper floor of a building? While the German soldier is pushing the blade closer and closer, all the while he is attempting to quell the American’s panic with soft words, shushing and a pleading for him to stop resisting. It’s very disturbing and reminds me of the banality of evil.

Many companies, including Microsoft, are constructing business models that remind me of this disturbing scene. They are encouraging customers to switch from Windows 10 to Windows 11 by aging out Windows 10 updates. In doing so, Windows has become a subscription service rather than your personal property in the privacy of your hard drive. Instead of buying MS windows once, you are now paying for a subscription and allowing MS to examine your files. What do they do with what they may find? Overall, they want to turn your proclivities and interests into cash through selective advertising and sales of marketing data to third parties.

They are trying to force users to use their cloud storage where they will have access to all of our data. Worse yet, their AI “helper” encourages users to ask for help that reveals what the user is thinking. That help can be in the form of rewriting your text or actually producing content for the user. The AI system resides in one of their data centers and who knows what kind of analysis and business planning that results in.

Why is it that many people seem to believe that government is inherently bad and businesses are inherently good, or at least preferable? Why distrust government yet throw your faith into free market capitalism? At the very least, the US government as it has been operated up to now is often regulated to afford at least some transparency and accountability. Does business have such transparency? Politicians can, in theory, be voted out for corruption and malfeasance. But what about the shitheads who control a great many large corporations? Other than the limp-d**k approach of refusing to buy their products and services, what other leverage is there? For example, recent history is full of examples of corporations badly polluting the environment, but even with proof in hand, citizens must fight for years at high personal cost to force accountability on the polluters. Or, recall the trouble with Purdue Pharmaceuticals and their potent and addictive OxyContin. They knowingly profited from their product for years fully knowing it’s addictive potential. Even widespread addiction and death weren’t trouble enough to cause a prompt regulatory response from the gov’t. Here both Purdue and government officials were painfully reluctant to respond. Finally, there was the battle between Erin Brockovich and Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E) over hexavalent chromium groundwater contamination in Hinkley, CA. Detection of hexavalent chromium isn’t difficult, but nailing down accountability is, especially when it is a citizen vs a large corporation.

This approach is really about shooting fish in a barrel and is increasingly appearing on social media with advertisers pushing subscriptions rather than outright purchases. Amazon does it as well with certain food stuffs. I understand the business motivation to exchange a single larger sale for monthly payments of smaller dollar amounts over time. This works best when charges are hidden in your credit card statements disguised as lengthy character strings rather than intelligible names. Also, that particular human frailty of losing track of what you are paying for by credit card is a real issue for people. Do we actually think that the C-Suite knobs who oversee their sales operations haven’t thought of this? They know exactly what they are doing.

Ostensibly, the “genius” of the free market is to maximize the efficient use of capital. Obviously, history bears (or bares?) out that there is much evidence for this assertion. The downside of this is that decisions contrary to your personal choice are made by others who decide what efficiencies that you will pay for while they retain their margins.

Economics isn’t a type of physics resting on the space-time continuum. It is a social science that uses some math for persuasion.

Do you want to produce a product that results in a few single-item sales of a dollar each or a product that produces a larger number of nickels over time? Obviously, it depends on the product.

Like hundreds of millions of others, I have helped to keep Microsoft afloat and remain a great investment for their stockholders. We’ve done our part. But now it is time to say “so long and thanks for all of the fish.”

Good Lord, It’s The Greenland Thing Again.

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The Fearless Overlord of the American Oligarchy, DJT, has resurfaced the Greenland question again. Louisiana’s Republican governor Jeff Landry has been anointed by Trump to a volunteer position as Special Envoy to Greenland. This move was promptly condemned by both the EU President and Denmark, unsurprisingly.

Resembling the many tragic leaders in history, Trump keeps nattering on about the need to annex Greenland for national security. The claim of national security is a kind of universal excuse that is solemnly expressed but rarely explained. We understand that an explanation might reveal the poker hand we are playing- We get it. But like a when a hammer looks around and sees only nails, what does a property developer see when he pans his orange face across a large, underdeveloped island? Bingo!!

We shouldn’t forget that Trump has been in the business of selling his name as a brand for a long time. He knows the value of an attractive brand and is not the least bit shy about plastering his family name as far and wide as possible. Look at the recently renamed “Trump Kennedy” Center in DC where he is the CEO. His coterie of sycophants are constantly trying to outdo each other with ever increasing levels of ass-kissing. Whatever shame there might have been in self-promotion is long gone.

The thing is that when a businessman who was in the business of promoting his brand begins to label government property with that brand, isn’t that a conflict of interest? His escape must be that others are slapping the brand on buildings, not him. There isn’t a single milligram of shame in him that would request that such naming happen only after he passes.

An interesting thing is that while the Trump administration is officially contemptuous of global climate change, a particular result of climate change must come about. In order to extract mineral wealth from below the ice –whatever that might be– global warming will be needed to melt the Greenland ice cap to expose that mineral wealth.

However, the motivation goes far beyond minerals. Access to the Arctic Ocean and whatever crude oil that may be pumped out from below the ocean floor is up for grabs. A US shoreline on the Arctic Ocean supports arctic military access as well as access to the new Northwest Passage that is opening up to commerce.

A surprise to precisely no one, annexing Greenland is about a new phase of American hegemony and extending the reach of military power. Perhaps Greenland is the new Manifest Destiny in the eyes of the rancid White House clique running American government just now.

I previously mentioned American hegemony. The USA has been a leading world power since the conclusion of WWII. There are presently two other powers who desire this status and are happy to help the USA to topple over as hegemon. The post WWII track record of the American hegemon is spotty at best and since the election of Trump, has begun an abrupt nosedive.

Trump’s slogan “America First” is catchy and patriotic-sounding and appeals to us as citizens of an isolated country bounded by two expansive oceans. Unlike a great many other countries, the USA has a temperate climate, warm deepwater ports, and abundant fertile farmland, minerals and lumber. Importantly, the USA had a capitalistic economic establishment favoring industrialization as a mostly democratic republic. In combination, all of this allowed the USA to rapidly tool-up after Pearl Harbor and back its fighting forces with massive quantities of war materiel and enter WWII cocked and loaded for bear. Fascism was defeated in Europe and the Pacific, and we even helped our defeated enemies get back on their feet.

In my lifetime, I’ve heard many fellow citizens try to explain our victories in WWII as the result of some unique attribute of American clean living and superior moral fiber. Never mentioned are the countries who also had clean living and high moral fiber but were unable to summon the resources to assemble a powerful war machine. American successes in WWII greatly relied on abundant natural resources, an existing industrial base and oceans that prevented tanks and troops from marching across our borders.

Today, the tell-tale voices of fascism are surfacing around the USA. People who had previously voted republican and strutted around claiming to be patriotic citizens are now saying that maybe democracy doesn’t work and an authoritarian government is needed. Let Trump be Trump!

WWII veterans and their offspring have come, passed away or retired by now in 2025. They brought a kind of optimism and energy to the growth of the USA. Technological modernism was the answer to all the ills of society. What was needed was an electrified, push button life of convenience.

If you look deep enough into virtually any peacetime period of American history, you’ll find reports of conflict, malfeasance, criminality and a myriad of dirty political dealings for the time. This represents the true baseline, ground state of America. This is bumpy ground but normal. My point is that before we indulge in self-flagellation and unrealistic expectations of our society, we should have a good think about what “normal” is actually comprised of. The inability to deal with exponential growth, uncertainty and a bit of disorder only cripples us.