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-
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.
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?
In an effort to understand just what the hell is the deal with Russia, I enrolled in a university extension school spring semester course to study Eastern European history as it relates to capitalism and communism. It concerns the interwar period between WWI and WWII and why Eastern Europe adopted Soviet-style communism. Being from central USA, I’m familiar with much of the two world wars but only to the extent focused on histories written from the western allies’ viewpoint. This is the normal condition for most Americans.
Western European history, arbitrarily dating back to the Romans, is highly complex in the sense that the entire western Eurasian land mass has been repeatedly settled, conquered, and partitioned into empires, kingdoms, and duchies. The inevitable intermingling of cultures, languages, trade, and military might has combined to paint the map of today. Coastal nations had the advantage of access to fisheries and trade across long distances. On the downside, however, coasts were subject to easy invasion and wars of conquest.
This wall is covered and overprinted with diverse messages. So too is the Eurasian landmass overprinted with fragmented, missing and overlapping cultural and political domains over the last several millennia.
Much of Eastern Europe retains a strong Slavic ethnic identity. Along with the Roman Catholic Church, the Eastern Orthodox Church still holds a strong position in many regions, including Russia. Putin even has the cooperation of the Eastern Orthodox Church in his effort to promote his agenda and propaganda at all levels in Russia.
In addition to Slavic and other ethnic identities, Eastern Europe and Russia have been isolated from much of the world by distance, economics, and the high level of modernism that Western Europe embraced. Tsar Peter the Great was aware of the more advanced nature of Western Europe and spent time there in order to gather ideas for modernizing Russia, particularly in the area of naval ships.
The landlocked or nearly landlocked nations of Eastern Europe lacked ice-free, warm water ports, not just limiting trade and shipbuilding but also economic exchange with more distant parts of the world. The Netherlands, Belgium, France, Germany, England, Rome, Portugal, and Spain in particular, established distant colonies and trade, generating wealth and power. With wealth, a kingdom acquires military strength and the ability to project power and conquest in resource-rich territories within just months or weeks of sailing time.
Conquest and the material wealth it brought was critical not only for an empire or monarchy to maintain or expand its holdings but also for self-defense from marauding armies looking for their own conquest. The various kingdoms, duchies, and empires were not entirely independent entities. The custom of the royal families to intermarry across empires and kingdoms assured continuity of the ruling families and wealth in the royal houses. This familial connection led to many alliances and specific choices in dividing up land.
The question of “what’s the deal with Russia” is about how it came to be that Russia is remote and standoffish to the point of being endlessly hostile and paranoid about the West. To American eyes like mine, the attitude Russia has about the West is peculiar and originates from … what? Even if Russia did not suffer overland invasions by Napoleon and Hitler, would they be any less paranoid? They would have less historical invasion baggage to drag along in some ways, but would other tragedies have befallen them? Impossible to say. It is fair to say that the Bolsheviks were keen on global-scale revolution and widespread implementation of Soviet socialism. They were not without imperialistic enthusiasm themselves.
President Putin continues to press the rhetorical but incendive argument about how the West is desirous of their resources. It is pitched as a clear and present danger to Russia. The West, he intimates, is crawling with greedy and perverted imperialists who want nothing more than to steal Mother Russia’s oil & gas, minerals, uranium, and timber. Any leader in any country could get mileage from this argument, and Vladdy-buck is pumping this handle with gusto.
The main thesis of my history class is that had Hitler not invaded the Soviet Union, the spread of Soviet conquest to its western frontier would not have happened. I’ll write more as this topic unfolds in class.
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.”
To all the readers of Lamentations on Chemistry, Happy Holidays, Merry Christmas, С Рождеством, 圣诞快乐, عيد ميلاد مجيد, Feliz Navidad, חג מולד שמח, Wesołych Świąt, Krismasi Njema, (کریسمس مبارک), मेरी क्रिसमस, Happy Hanukkah, Gleðileg Jól, Maligayang Pasko, Vrolijk Kerstfeest, and 메리 크리스마스, Wadda Din Mubarak, Happy Kwanzaa, Feliz Natal, Happy New Year, Peace, Love and (fill in the blank).
Be of good cheer! Beneath all of the chaos, turmoil and ill will rests a beautiful world of natural wonder and fascination. Stop occasionally and take in the views of our gorgeous planet, ponder our amazing human consciousness and let your good will wrap around the web of life.
Putin has said on numerous occasions that the West wants what Russia has. Seriously? You mean permafrost? -61 oF winters. A border with China? A multiethnic and antagonistic population? A shortage of warm, deepwater ports? A long history of brutal authoritarianism?? Its gleaming history with nuclear energy and vast stretches of land contaminated with radioactive soil. Yes, we in the West stare longingly at Russia for this from time to time … NOT!
Oh yes, Pootie-Poot (nickname by George W. Bush) must mean natural resources like petroleum, platinum group metals, gold, titanium, uranium, diamonds, etc. These are valuable natural resources but at what cost for a conquering power. Too high by half would be the conclusion by rational people. Recall the problems Hitler had with Operation Barbarossa. Or the disaster Napolean fell upon with his ill-conceived invasion of Russia. Like any modern state, Russia has much in the way of weapons to bear upon its enemies. But what Russia has in great abundance are brutal winters and a muddy spring season to immobilize invaders.
Like any authoritarian worth his salt, Putin continues to make the case for tightening personal liberty in exchange for layers of “state security”. Citizens have been conditioned to avoid politics in exchange for politics avoiding citizens. It seems to work.
Like nearly everywhere else, Russia is populated by good and decent folks. I’ve been there and have experienced generous hospitality from ordinary citizens in their cramped apartments. How we could be mortal enemies is beyond me.
The people we now call Russians are descended from tough people who survived conquest and occupation by many hostile invaders over the many centuries. Somehow, they even chased out the Mongols and later overcame the mechanized invasion of Nazis. As the Red Army chased the Nazis westward in WWII, they burned down their own villages and even executed Russian citizens who failed to fight and die. My Russian language professor was a Ukrainian kid whose family evacuated Ukraine for Europe in WWII to flee the advancing Red Army.
The title of this post asks, “Who on God’s Green Earth Wants to Invade Russia?” I’d offer that to try would be at best to invite a nuclear exchange, terrible hardships and losses for any invasion force. It would be a supremely bad decision. And even if an invader prevails, what have they gained? A population dedicated to guerrilla warfare and civil disobedience. Sounds like a nightmare.
The consequences of invasion and occupation of any large region would produce guerrilla warfare and civil disobedience by the surviving conquered population.
The West could benefit by making it known out loud to the Russian people and the Kremlin that we understand that an invasion or occupation of Russia by a foreign power would be a suicidal calamity for any invader. The usual rancid Kremlin propaganda must be countered with words of strength, peace and prosperity for all people. We invite Russia to be a member in the community of peaceful states who participate in open commerce and tourism.
Yes, it’s bloody obvious and is itself a kind of propaganda we should be repeating loudly and endlessly. Effective propaganda must be repeated and drummed into people’s thought processes. The US and Europe should be repeating the message of friendship and peace in order to knock down Kremlin doors, grab the bastards by the throat and give them a big wet kiss. It would be a peace and love offensive. It is the one thing we haven’t tried yet.
Last week, this blog saw an unusual spike in traffic—roughly 350 visits higher than normal. Each visit appeared to be for a single post, with no clear theme among them. My best guess? An AI platform was scraping my content for something specific.
Suddenly, I feel a renewed sense of accountability for what I’ve written. What if—gasp—a sentence was inaccurate, or a sarcastic remark too obscure for most readers? The responsibility could be enormous! Think of the children!
The content choices lie somewhere between the bookends of accurate and complete fabrication. I’d rather be accused of being boring than being found in an untruth.
How does this mesh with my anonymity? Well, a handful of people know my identity and their respect is important to me. Eventually I will reveal my identity and suddenly the truth and accuracy (and spelling) of my 1700 posts will be forever connected to my real name. Skin in the game.
Howard!! Whatever shall I do??
Disclosure-
Very occasionally I will write some fictional content, and it should be apparent as fiction from both the content itself, and the key words attached to the post. The example would be my posts on the fictional Poltroon University in Guapo, Arizona. I do enjoy the occasional jab at the culture of higher education and the institution of science.
However, as a scientist in matters of physical reality, I am dedicated and eager to describe content as truthfully, accurately and mellifluously as possible. When I’m on one of my political jags, I’ll admit to some amount of enhanced emphasis where others have tread more carefully with the source material.
The reason I write and blog is to help me think ideas through. Somehow the act of scribbling down sentences followed by multiple passes in editing is helpful. At any given time I have 20 to 30 unfinished posts languishing in draft space. The open-air aspect of blogging is to assure that I have done my best lest public humiliation, scorn and derision should come my way. Not just in the present, but more so in the future. Writing is thinking. To put it bluntly, there is a fear of publishing something I would regret forever. Absolutely the worst thing I could do as a blogger and as a scientist would be to post indefensible or phony science. Posts with linked references are direct connections to what I view as credible content on the internet. The reader only has to click a link to verify a factual statement thing I made.
Ok, so there is this Harvard professor named Avi Loeb who attracts media attention with his suggestions that a new comet or asteroid may be an alien spaceship, especially if we’re sure that it is from outside our solar system. Any given new object arriving from “way out there” has the possibility of being made and operated by extraterrestrials. Yes, it is a remote possibility, but still non-zero.
What gets my attention is how his pronouncements of possible alien spaceships are leapt upon by media who publish and promote with breathless and fanciful headlines. Ok, media are in a 24 hour or less news cycle and feel the need obligation to publish a story with breathtaking headlines. Or at least the writer of the story intends it will attract the reader’s engagement,
Is the professor just looney or is there method to his madness? Perhaps his personal threshold for signal to noise ratios is set just a bit too low. I just don’t know.
With this, however, the ET credibility gap is bridged by the fact that a professor at Harvard University is making the statement. This affords instant credibility because, as we all know, God himself spends Thursday afternoons at Harvard and what is more sanctified than a tenured Harvard faculty member? In fairness, it must be said that God spends Thursday mornings across town at MIT, though half-assed claims of ETs are a bit rarer from there.
As Carl Sagan or someone else once said, incredible claims require incredible evidence. In this example, where was the incredible evidence? Extremely distant, small and faint objects detectable only in the visible part of the spectrum with very sensitive equipment tend to reveal only faint evidence. Even if some kind of signal can be discriminated, would aliens want to broadcast their appearance to the whole flippin’ solar system straight away?
For myself, if there were aliens strapped inside this object, the more interesting problem is how did they manage to cross interstellar space in a way consistent with sufficient fuel for their propulsion system and critical supplies?
My faint mockery of the Harvard professor is now complete. Time to move on.
Perhaps aliens have picked up our radio transmissions, remembering that TV transmission is also a kind of radio transmission. Amplitude modulated transmissions, AM, would be easiest to investigate since it is only a narrow carrier frequency that is modulated by wave amplitude.
A radio signal modulated in two ways- AM and FM. Source: Wikipedia.
Black and white television used AM for video and FM for sound. AM is the easiest to understand, but the FM signals are quite different. Frequency modulation, FM, takes a fixed carrier frequency and combines it with signal that is near the carrier frequency, but the frequency is modulated in a way that the sum of the carrier and sound frequencies combine in such a way that the combined carrier and sound signals produce peaks and valleys resulting from combining two signals of somewhat different frequencies. The peaks of the carrier frequency end up adding or subtracting with the other signal.
AM receiving equipment has difficulty discriminating between signal by variable amplitude noise. Lightning or other sources of radio frequency energy easily interfere with the clarity of the signal. If you have listened to an AM radio station in stormy weather, you know how interfering lightning can be.
FM, on the other hand, is from the addition of a set carrier frequency plus a variable frequency sound signal. Electrical mechanisms that produce RF noise generally do not produce an FM signal, thus the quiet sound of FM reception.
Interlacing raster scan lines on a TV screen. Alien receivers of TV signals would have to assemble images from an interlacing raster scan signal with a proper sweep frequency across the screen. Image: Wikipedia.
This is a superficial explanationof television. Television images of the Lucy show, or the Three Stooges received by aliens has been speculated on to our great amusement, but we should understand that a transmitted TV signal is generated taking into account of specifically how it will be read. On a monochrome TV receiver screen, the picture is produced by interlacing two half vertical images alternating every 60th of a second so a whole image is received by our retinas every 30th of a second exploiting our persistence of vision to prevent flickering images. Below 30 frames per second, the images begin to flicker. Aiding in this is the fact that the phosphors in the picture tube glow momentarily after the beam has passed. In order to produce images from a radio frequency signal, this method would first have to be recognized then a receiver built by the aliens to “decode” the signal. Also, the aliens would have to recognize that the analog information is visual in nature and presented as an interlaced raster scan on some kind of display. Misinterpretation of our signals as hostile in nature would be avoided, hopefully.
Ok, movie projection just for fun
The passage of movie film through a movie projector is at 24 frames per second but flickering is avoided by projecting each frame twice to give a frame rate of 48. The classic sound of a movie projector results from the advancing of each frame past the shutter, stopping the film momentarily while the shutter rotates in the light beam and shines light through the frame twice. Slack is built into the continuous flow of film through the projector using loops of film above and below the aperture and shutter to allow continuous movement of the film but also stopping for 1/24th of a second so that a steady image is projected twice per frame. The source of the flickering sound is in large part from the upper and lower loops jumping up and down every 1/24th of a second.
If only we’d ship reels of movie film to the aliens, they could better understand us. For starters, I’d suggest a recent Godzilla movie.
The essential parts of a movie projector. Note the loops above and below the shutter. Source: Smithsonian.
In this politically turbulent time, I can’t help but recall a quote from Grover Norquist in 2001. From Liasson, Mara (May 25, 2001). “Conservative advocate”. Morning Edition. NPR.
“I don’t want to abolish government. I simply want to reduce it to the size where I can drag it into the bathroom and drown it in the bathtub.”–Grover Norquist
The anti-government coup that is taking place presently resembles closely an attempt to convert the USA into a libertarian state. {How the Project 2025 elite will tolerate Trump’s authoritarian reflex is unclear.} More than just economics, there is also a component of Christian nationalism as well. From what I know about the John Birch Society, the combination of libertarianism and enthusiastic support from far-right Christian evangelicalism adds up to a theocratic-leaning anti-democracy regime. What’s wrong with minimal government? Some negatives are listed below. The six bullet points are copied directly from Google using the searched under libertarian negatives.
===========
“Increased inequality: Critics worry that with minimal government intervention and lower taxes, the gap between the wealthy and the poor could widen significantly.
Difficulty addressing social and environmental problems: A philosophy that advocates for very limited government is criticized for being unable to effectively address issues like pollution, climate change, and other negative externalities that require collective action and regulation.
Neglect of public goods and services: The libertarian ideal of minimal government may lead to underfunding or elimination of essential public services, which may negatively impact infrastructure, education, and social welfare programs.
Conditional freedom: Some argue that a purely libertarian framework might make freedom conditional on an individual’s ability to afford certain protections or opportunities, failing to provide a baseline of security for everyone.
Challenges in complex societies: The principles of libertarianism, which often rely on small-scale, community-based reasoning, may struggle to provide adequate solutions for the scale and complexity of modern societies and economies.
Limited safety net: The minimal government model may not provide the necessary social safety net for those who are unable to work or are facing hardship, leaving vulnerable populations without support. “
============
What’s appealing about libertarianism? Again, straight from Google and searched under libertarian positives-
“Libertarians advocate the expansion of individual autonomy and political self-determination,
Emphasizing the principles of equality before the law and the protection of civil rights, including the rights to freedom of association, freedom of speech, freedom of thought and freedom of choice.”
============
What’s not to like about libertarianism in the above libertarian positives bullet points? In a more humorous mood, I might joke that libertarianism is the theoretical foundation which supports and normalizes greed. If not here already, we are approaching a new gilded age and Project 2025 will lock it into place. The lion’s share of natural resources and related industry is in the hands of fewer and fewer people and corporations. Theoretical question: Shouldn’t a child today expect that by virtue of being born on this planet expect to share in the resource wealth of this world? Every minute of every day, children are born into a world where its riches have already been hoarded by people or by entities far away.
The world is a hazardous place, and nature has many tricks to kill us. Our government in the US has been active in managing our safety and to construct frameworks to monitor infectious disease, dangerous weather, the actions of potential enemies, food safety, pollution, work safety, chemical and nuclear safety, air, land and sea transportation safety, and put in place and maintain the national highway system. Oh yes, and the US military is busy guarding our borders to protect commerce.
Over time our gov’t has identified ways to make life safer and healthier for all citizens, irrespective of race, color or creed. After WWII, the US became the global hegemon. While very far from perfect, the US has contributed to the health and wellbeing of countless people and countries. Where do so many people emigrating from their homelands want to go? To Russia or China? Until now the US was synonymous with opportunity and freedom. But the world has tired of US hegemony and new alliances are being forged.
The sly schemers at the Heritage Foundation who dreamt up Project 2025 seem to have put into play a populist movement that closely rhymes with Norquist’s idea. Make the unpopular cuts in the federal government during a conservative supermajority with a president who has risen to folk hero status. Presently, we are in a 2-year span between national elections. By the time the Democratic party has legislative or executive control, untying the MAGA/GOP web snugged into place will take a new Congress and a new president years to repair, if ever.
Trump is still in office partly because the bulk of the US population respects the national election schedule. In doing so, citizens are trapped in the stretch of history with him in office. This respect is in contrast to Trump’s disrespect for government institutions and the Constitution. His greed mentality, animated by his transactional approach to seemingly everything, keeps him pushing the boundaries of presidential norms. Instead of legislating his plans for the country, he rules by executive order and relies on the courts to validate his actions. The GOP strategy from years back of filling the courts with conservative judges is paying off by planting Trump-friendly judges in many districts. However, it doesn’t always payoff for the orange Jesus.
The viewpoint voiced by Michelle Obama saying to the effect of “if they go low, we go high” has fallen limp and become only a hopeful aphorism. The power of this statement seems inadequate to win many elections for liberal candidates. Part and parcel of the “Woke” accusation by MAGAs is the idea that liberals can’t stomach what needs to be done. It comes from the same playbook that includes advice to spank your kids and ignore the tragedy of gender misclassification. Dems, they say, are too soft headed to apply tough love.
In politics and religion, you find people who are devotees of particular doctrines that they perhaps do not understand clearly. If you are a devotional thinker, you strive to absorb doctrine. If you are an analytical thinker, you will make the effort to dissect an assertion and examine it for accuracy, clarity and implications. This is obviously a spectrum and “devotional” and “analytical” are the bookends of that spectrum. America is a mix of doctrinaire and analytical thinkers who may respond differently to a given idea or point.
The most effective way to outfox your political opponents is to make outrageous statements and repeat them endlessly à la Trump. An outrageous sentence takes only a few seconds to utter but can take many hours or days to research and prepare a rebuttal. Worse yet, the rebuttal isn’t guaranteed to get popular airtime unless delivered by a famous person like a late-night TV host, George Clooney or Gov. Newsom. We’ve become accustomed to outrageous statements paraded in the media in the form of a freak show. Everyone has watched satire and absurdism as entertainment. Superficially, Trump’s absurd statements seem to cray that no one could believe him. But people do take his ridiculous utterances seriously.
All of the legacy news organizations in the US media are owned by corporations. Corporations have both stockholders and stakeholders. Stockholders (owners) of a corporation can be the public, select individuals or the founder and/or upper management. The stakeholders are customers, employees, vendors and other organizations whose livelihood depends on the corporation. The management and stockholders of the major media outlets demand maximum quarterly profits (normal), so news directors have no motive to risk losing eyeballs to the competition for fear of losing their jobs. Newsrooms usually have a well-honed sense of what it takes to hold the flighty attention span of its audiences. Factually accurate and rational analysis, if ever delivered, are likely to remain on a hard drive unless there are some important heart strings to tug. News directors and editors are loathe to broadcast or print content that Dan Rather once called MEGO- My Eyes Glaze Over.
One of the attributes of stockholder ownership of a public stock is that the stockholders are very often like absentee landlords. They have nothing to do with the actual day-to-day operation of the corporation other than apply pressure on C-Suite management from a distance. To them, a given company is just a profitable parking spot for their cash irrespective of the merits of the company’s product to society. They have been given legal personhood but without the expectation of kindness and other human attributes. It’s hard to fathom how this might be different.
The popular news media are more accurately defined as semi-analytical show business.
While the news media have been bathing in the warm glow of its status as the 4th Estate, the inherent attribute of being a corporate entity with stockholders as absentee landlords is approaching the corporate bookend. That bookend can be found in the curriculum of any popular MBA program. Find the gap between the current state and the desired conditions and use KPIs, Key Performance Indicators, to close the gap. The more quantitative the KPIs, the more enshrined they’ll become in the C-Suite. It allows the accounting and finance MBAs to sit at their spreadsheets and plot impressive bar graphs with hockey stick projections of near-term EBITDA.
I will offer that if Trump somehow gets elected for a 3rd term, the USA as we knew it has collapsed. If a single party can manage to illegally keep a man in office for an extra term, then the government is very much out of control. At that point, what are the citizens to do? Sit and endure the new authoritarian state like so many have in history? Or do we take up arms and fight a tyrannical government? Isn’t that what the 2nd amendment to the Constitution is for? Something to think about.
The awful shooting in Michigan recently as well as other shootings in the last several days are a reminder- as if we need it- that this mass shooting business is not a bug but rather a feature of current American culture. It is yet more male violence. So far, Americans have failed to acknowledge that males as a group have a problem. The way we raise boys in general needs to be rejiggered to produce better citizens overall. Obviously, there are a great many good and decent fellas in the US- maybe most- but a minority are quite problematic.
Surely there must be a way to address this matter without heavy handed interference in people’s lives. This is in large part a civics problem. The question is this: How can we guide everyone to be better citizens, maybe males especially?
I am convinced that the current political conundrum in the USA is in large part due to poor education. The primary responsibility for a child’s education is borne by the parents. However, all too often the schools are held responsible for this. Yes, the expectation is for K-12 schools to properly educate students and prepare them to get along and prosper after graduation. Plainly this model is failing many students.
Presently, many parents seem to want to put the entire responsibility on the school system. Yes, the schools have much responsibility, but in the end the parents must be held accountable for their child’s education. Sitting passively and watching your child fail in school while complaining about it is as far as many can go. If your child is unable to add, subtract, multiply and divide by graduation, you have let your child down.
Having gotten a child through K-12 and college, I realize that remedial home schooling is tricky. In our case, the curriculum for math was alien to me (a PhD in Chemistry) and my teacher spouse (MA in Special Ed). Our kid was required to learn many different techniques for basic calculation and problem solving. Because using methods I learned was not in the curriculum, to instruct using methods I learned would contradict the teacher and the worksheets from the curriculum. To avoid this, I refrained from teaching my methods and tried to absorb the curriculum, which I failed.
A great many US citizens are forced to endure gun violence because any argument that might impede any aspect of anyone’s ability to own a gun is met with howls of indignation and angry hand waving arguments based on the 2nd Amendment of the US Constitution. Okay, fine. Conservative politicians are loathe to touch this electrified 3rd rail of politics. Candidates for the US Congress will sometimes post pictures of themselves in ads holding a firearm with a flag somewhere in the picture. This is meant to assure conservative voters that they as patriots will uphold the 2nd Amendment to the US constitution. I understand this and I cannot believe that any liberal politician could ever separate gun owners from their guns. There would be shooting and violence. The government confiscating American citizen’s guns is in no way politically feasible.
Source: K-12 Shooting Database. The Mormon church shooting or other shootings in public places aren’t part of this data set.
For the most part, school killings were unusual prior to the Columbine shootings in 1999. What has changed? One notable change relates to the emergence of smart phones and the internet. According to Wikipedia-
Above is a graphic from the K-12 Shooting Database. In the USA K-12 refers to the 13 years of basic education all children receive in public and private schools.
If you wade into the language, you’ll find that the definition of ‘mass shooting’ might vary a bit. Sometimes the definition refers to 3 or more deaths, but for the most part there is no agreed upon definition.
As a kid I recall exploring with a .22 caliber rifle out in the grassy river bottom. Maybe it’s just me, but I was always itching for an excuse to fire the gun at something like a badger or a fish. Never shot a badger or a fish, thankfully. I’m only saying that possessing a gun and ammo gave me a sense of power and authority. My imagination tells me that there are others.
These shootings are the status quo and usually fail to generate more than a day or two of concern but ring hollow. Except for Charlie Kirk. Thoughts and prayers are offered by many, but to no useful end. Flowers and stuffed animals are left at the crime scene, but most people return to their streaming episodes of TV with gunplay being central to the show.
Americans have a fascination with murder as a plot device for their entertainment. Or is it that the writers and producers in showbiz have a fascination with murder? Better yet, is it that murder as a plot point is easier to mold into a drama? The chore of producing one new and original script per week must be exhausting. Hollywood feigns some concern over the violence but continues to bang out more grotesque violence in their creations.
The prevalence of violent video games exposes young men, women and kids to wanton destruction of human beings. Some deny that these games promote violence, but the enthusiastic death-dealing and mayhem produced by the players is telling. People are immensely entertained by it. I’ve seen where the military even encourages its active-duty soldiers to play games with violent gunplay. That is the job of soldiers. Causing casualties is what they train to do because it is necessary. I get it.
Military training of combat soldiers focuses on efficient destruction, killing and survival. Could there be any room for civics exposure sometime in the soldier’s hitch? Would it be so bad if converting 1 or 2 hours of heavy physical training per week into learning about how to conduct themselves in the culture they are actually preparing to defend? Obviously, continuous training builds muscle memory and reflexes for maximum readiness, however it seems likely that trainees get into diminishing returns eventually.
We want citizen soldiers to exit the military and become productive members of society. But if they enter the military absent the basics of how a liberal democracy operates, how does nothing but weapons training and military tactics prepare them to re-enter civilian life? As a nation we exploit their best years of youthful energy and enthusiasm like other nations do, but afterwards we bump them out without practical job skills.
If the above definition is “woke” then I’m certainly woke.
A good question is, why were these large-scale killings scarce before 1990? For the school shootings, the hockey stick curve above shows that from about 2010, the incident count exploded to 2018 where it leveled off briefly but rapidly took off again.
Before 1990 there was an internet in its infancy, but no smart phones. Unless you had access to a computer, electronic entertainment and news reached a very few people. Unlike today, people were isolated from events and politics. There were only the 3 major networks plus PBS, newspapers and magazines. All suffered from time delays owing to content production chores. The standards and practices required discipline and ‘proper’ content absent speculation and hype. There were the tabloids like the National Enquirer that indulged in gossip, but their credibility low, at least among educated people.
Today, with the 24 hr news cycle, content is broadcast immediately and most of the entire population are free to take half-baked news items and wind themselves into a tizzy.
Finally, I must say that I’m pessimistic about controlling gun violence in the US. Unless a large fraction of the population adopts something similar to how Japan schools their children, Kids will continue to process the contradiction of problem solving with guns and whatever peaceful examples they see around them.
Lamentations on Chemistry 