Talking to Ourselves

26 dead in Brussels, reads the sign. 26 dead in Newtown.  It isn't something meant to inform us. Close the borders says the rubric. Get used to it says the counterpoint. Forget for the moment that this is a conversation between two straw men, their lines scripted by someone with a purpose -- and forget that the death toll in Belgium has escalated beyond that number and is only a small part of a much larger number, this isn't about accuracy anyway.  It's about energizing the base, giving them something to contemplate with masturbatory self-satisfaction while mocking an opposition created of straw  for the purpose. But wait, there's more.

Focus on the false equivalence.  Is the international threat of a fanatical, well-armed and well-funded army of tens of thousands that's already killed many thousands of innocent civilians really in any way equivalent to the threat of a disturbed teen taking a gun to school?  Of course not. Yet some will read this, will nod together in warm solidarity and feel good about themselves. Many will feel superior to those other people, whether they exist or not.


Welcome to politics in the 21st century.  From the grotesquely infantile Ann Coulter quote: "Liberals go Wah.  They go Wah, Wah, Wah."  to the  straw words to the effect that "white people think there's no more racism."  one could make a case that there are more straw men then real men in our country and that anything worth stating is worth expanding or reducing to an absurdly smug and factually inaccurate generalization.

It's done not to convince an opponent, to inform or to answer any questions but to unite a group and to unite it under the aegis of some entity, consolidating it's power and authority to speak for all those concerned with, for instance, armed violence, police brutality, civil rights and many other valid concerns. It's there to make it all seem simple and to stifle other approaches to such problems. Quibble about any detail of  the canon and you're the enemy.

Straw man arguments, false equivalences, they're part of a larger constellation of  sophistical arguments. Oversimplification, the idea that one factor is the only factor, the sole cause of a complex problem. "Speed is a factor in all traffic accidents"  so all efforts to make driving safer must be based on speed limits, never mind the tautology and never mind all other factors.  "Air bags save lives" but never mind how very few or how many are killed by them.

 Is that just how it is in America?  Should I just get used to it?  If it weren't for the possibility that  progressive ideas make themselves poisonous to the public using obviously misleading and manipulative techniques: name calling, weak and fallacious arguments and obstinate repetitions of well known falsehoods and more.  We don't argue to persuade, we argue to show people how morally outraged and angry we are and how afraid they should be.  We encourage people to support demagogues and their lies  We encourage Republicans to vote against us.

Every time we call a well-intentioned person a racist.  Every time we call a sportsman a gun nut, every time we elevate a problem every time we shout down a valid question we energize a Republican. We distract from their excesses and their deceit and instead of creating unity we fragment ourselves.  We so rarely put up a united front. We go Wah.  We go Wah, Wah, Wah.-

Continuity With Change

Fans of the Emmy winning HBO series VEEP may recall the slogan used on Julia Louis-Dreyfus' campaign bus "Continuity with Change." In our brave new world such things tend to creep off the screen and into that other world of entertainment: politics. Was Australia's Prime Minister quoting consciously or unconsciously when he said " Continuity and Change" in an interview yesterday?
Perhpas to him it gave the feeling that he would be changing things but not too much. Who knows, but of course the phrase was selected by the show's writers for being as meaningless a statement as they could find in order to typify the state of American political rhetoric. The "most meaningless election slogan we could think of".said writer Simon Blackwell.

So far we haven't heard it from any of the clowns in America's two ring circus, but then it conveys a sort of vapid optimism rather than the furious and outraged invective more common to our politics.

Politics mirrors the art that satirizes politics. As circular as a circus ring if not as vicious.

HOW BOILED FROGS HIJACKED THE CLIMATE CHANGE DEBATE

By Jeffrey Berger

When writing about climate change, the boiled frog analogy serves a useful purpose, and it goes like this: If you place a frog in boiling water, it will immediately jump out. However, if you place the same frog in slowly heated water, it will adjust to gradually rising temperatures and stay put until it boils to death. No frogs were harmed in the writing of this post. Nevertheless, the boiled frog analogy explains a quirk of human nature: How some people ignore a looming threat that unfolds gradually over time.

Climate change cannot be watched on cable TV with the immediate impact of a tsunami. Climate change may not be felt this year, next year, or for several years. Yet, climate scientists predict a grim future of melting ice caps, rising sea levels, coastal flooding, drought, crop failures, disruptions in global food supplies, famine, refugee crises, and wars. In short, climate change represents an existential threat to future generations. Despite these warnings, there are skeptics, doubters, and boiled frogs.

We understand why the concept of climate change provokes anger among people. The economic, political, and moral implications are troubling; and there are deeply rooted historical and cultural impediments to overcome. Yet, we can no longer afford to dither. The climate bomb is ticking, and time is running out.

Climate change scientists study greenhouse gas emissions, heat retention models, and the complex relationship between variables on a global scale. Decades of careful observations lead to an irrefutable conclusion: Human impacts - especially greenhouse gas emissions - are the leading cause of rising global temperatures.

As we burn energy in our cars, homes, and factories, we release greenhouses gases into the atmosphere. “So what,” croaks the frog. “Everything in nature is flatulent.” Yet, when we examine sources of atmospheric greenhouse gases from natural to manmade, fossil fuels are literally the smoking gun. How do we know? Manmade pollutants have a unique molecular signature, unlike natural emissions.

Imagine two world maps, one superimposed over another. One map shows distributions of human population; another map shows sources of greenhouse gas emissions. These maps overlap with uncanny precision. Satellite data confirm the relationship between human activity and greenhouse gas emissions. How extensive, we ask? An increase of 78% since 1970, and 96% since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution. Hence, the term ‘anthropogenic,’ meaning ‘caused by human beings.’

Boiled frogs often cite geological history to disprove the anthropogenic cause of climate change. “So what,” croaks the frog. “Everyone knows Mother Earth has mood swings.” Yet, the boiled frog version of earth history omits one all important detail: How the biosphere influences climate.

Before the Carboniferous period, 400 million years ago, earth was uniformly hot and humid due to high levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide. Plants consume carbon dioxide, and herbivores consume plants. Fossil fuels are the carbon remnants of ancient plants and animals that lived and died millions years ago and became buried underground.

Eons later, an upstart biped learned how to unearth and burn these fossil fuels. Within 12 generations, human beings released thousands of giga-tonnes of long buried carbon into the atmosphere — reversing a four-hundred million year old process in less than 250 years.

Despite decades of record high global temperatures, cold spells bring out the boiled frogs among us. Here is a statistical concept to keep in mind. All data sets — no matter how conclusive — contain some degree of random noise known as ‘statistical outliers.’ Climate change deniers build deceptions and errors of omission on foundations of random noise. In other words, statistical outliers turn boiled frogs into consummate liars.

The definitive scam came to light last year when InsideClimate News interviewed former scientists of Exxon Corporation and released hundreds of pages of internal documents. Decades ago, Exxon’s own research confirmed the consensus of climate scientists. In 1978, Exxon Senior Scientist James Black wrote: "Present thinking holds that man has a time window of five to ten years before the need for hard decisions … become critical.”

In the 1980s, Exxon suspended publication of its findings and embarked upon a campaign to mislead the public. Exxon Mobil is currently under investigation in California and New York for fraud and alleged violations of environmental, public health, and shareholder protection laws. Rivaling the fraudulent practices of asbestos and tobacco producers, Exxon Mobil used deceptive tactics to protect its horde of filthy lucre.

Admittedly, the boiling frog story employs a fanciful metaphor. The definitive experiment was performed in 1869 by Friedrich Goltz, a German physiologist who searched for the location of the soul. His experiment confirmed a fundamental truth: Frogs whose brains have been removed will remain in slowly heated water until they boil to death. Thus, I end my commentary on this note. Unlike their intact amphibian counterparts, the hardboiled frogs of climate change denial and depraved indifference have neither brains nor souls.

(c) 2016

HEY STUPID!

Hey Stupid!  Yes, I'm talking to you, you gibbering idiot, posting fake ABC News reports about how Obama signed an executive order limiting gun owners to three guns.  Can't you read?  Look carefully and you'll find the URL you're forwarding to everyone  is abcnews.com.co or USANEWSFLASH.com. They're both fake news sites but you're so choked up with racism and sicko politics you'll believe anything that feeds your holy communion with Hell because hate feels so good, doesn't it, you parasitic nematode..

Facebook is crawling with "shares" of  fake articles from this seditious hatemonger.  They look real and that's enough for the enemies of all that is good and decent and true. They share it, forward it and shout about it. For all I know they dance naked around campfires at midnight chanting it.


Obama Signs Executive Order: Appoints Rashad Hussain As New Supreme Court Justice 

 President Obama Signs Executive Order Limiting US Gun Owners to Three Guns 

 Jade Helm Protocals [SIC] to Take Effect 

 BREAKING: Obama signs EXECUTIVE ORDER To Take Over America

There's no end to it, there's no law against it and there's no defense against these insurgents using our freedom of speech against us.  There's no shortage of  people to believe it, act on it, vote in favor of it and of course your own petty politics will keep you from doing anything about it, right?

OUR DEEP, DARK DESCENT INTO PLUTOCRACY HELL

Since the Reagan era, the mantra of supply-side economics boils down to this: Cut taxes, cut regulations, and cut social spending so people will be more motivated to work and less dependent on the government; then let the boom times roll.  Been there, done that.  The result has been a disaster.

The tenets of supply side unleashed a boom for plutocrats at the top of the economic pyramid.  For the working class, it has meant losses of manufacturing jobs to overseas markets, rustbelt cities, wage deflation, and massive inequality.  Among pandering politicians during an election cycle, the blame game — and the bullshit — has begun.

Donald Trump blames bad negotiators for making bad trade deals.   Kasich and Rubio proscribe more supply side.  And Ted Cruz wants to “awaken the body of Christ.”  Caveat emptor!

“Tax the rich to level the playing field, raise the minimum wage, and invest in infrastructure,” claim the Democrats.  Economic stimulus programs, although helpful, are mere bandaids unless we fix fundamental STRUCTURAL problems that have distorted our economy since the Reagan era.  Rules of corporate governance are one example.  Here is a look under the hood:

COMPENSATION.  Before 1980, CEO pay was comprised of 95% in salary and bonuses and less than 5% in stock incentives.  Today this ratio is reversed: 90-95% in stock incentives, the rest is chump change.  Changes in CEO compensation have fundamentally altered the business culture.

STOCK BUYBACKS.  Before 1980, less than 2% of corporate profits were invested in stock buybacks (a form of market manipulation now allowed after deregulation).  Today, more than 75% of corporate profits are invested in buybacks.  Why?  CEOs use buybacks to inflate the value of their compensation portfolios.  Before 1980, the ratio of CEO to workforce compensation was 45:1.  Today, the ratio is a staggering 844:1 and rising.

PRODUCTIVITY.  Since WWII, output per worker hour has grown dramatically, and workforce wages rose commensurately.  Today, wages no longer reflect the value of rising productivity.  Worker income has remained flat, and real buying power after inflation has declined.  Thus, the equitable distribution of wealth from top to bottom has disappeared.

HEDGING BETS WITH DEBT.  These days, corporate raiders and hedge fund traders record debt on the books of businesses they acquire.  Simply explained: you borrow money to buy a car; the named borrower on record is the car; you strip the car of tires and hub caps and sell off those assets; then expect the car to pay off the loan.  Until the 1980s, corporate America carried virtually no debt.  Today, corporate debt has reached the $12 trillion mark, while $21 trillion in untaxed profits lay idle in offshore accounts. 

HAVOC IN THE PUBLIC SECTOR.  When corporate debt and offshore accounts go up, public tax receipts go down.  Today, hedge fund billionaires pay less taxes than teachers.  There are Fortune 500 companies earning billions in revenue but paying next to nothing in taxes (such as American Airlines, GE, GM, Hewlett-Packard, Loews, Xerox, and News Corporation to name examples).  Corporate welfare in the form of subsidies, tax loopholes and other privileges have created a rigged economy.  Meanwhile, the cost burdens of civilization have fallen on the middle classes, whose votes no longer count and whose voices are no longer heard.

We lament the passing of an era when capitalism meant small family-owned businesses on Main Street.  In the post WWII era, small business was the province of the middle classes and the wellspring of upward mobility.  Decades of acquisitions and mergers have created mega-cartels with concentrated market power that have enriched the few but destroyed the American Dream for the many.  Economic stimulus programs will have little long-term effect unless we fundamentally change the rules of the game and democratize capitalism once again.

For a fanciful tale about the horrors of supply-side, please go to the preceding post below.

How the Dark Side of Supply Side Unleashed the Zombie Apocalypse

The giant sucking sound came without warning, the sound of 1,400 jobs moving from Indianapolis, Indiana, to Mexico. “We recognize the impact on employees, their families, and the community,” announced the president of Carrier Corporation, the HVAC Division of United Technologies.

“Yeah, [expletive deleted],” an angry voice shot across the room.  Following three consecutive years of record earnings, plus a $12 billion stock buyback, the layoff was a shock, an act of betrayal. The giant sucking sound hardly made the evening news; but we hear it everyday in communities across America:

“Monday, Monday, so good to me;

Monday morning, it was all I hoped it would be.”

The kids, the car, the home, how will you pay bills without a job and keep your family afloat?  Desperate to find work, any work, part-time or full time, neighbors put off weekend chores to Monday.  Why Monday but no other day of the week, you ask?  Sometimes it just turns out that way.

Job or no job, good lawn mowers make good neighbors.  Cutting grass keeps up appearances and keeps peace in the neighborhood. Witness this exchange of greetings when neighbor meets neighbor at the mailbox:

“Good morning, Mr. Briggs. How are you today?”

“Mighty fine, Mr. Stratton. And yourself?”

How and when our fortunes changed is a tale of greed and deception run amuck. It started years ago when corporations and their political slush funds, also known as PACs, won the right to be treated as real people with full rights of personhood.

Suddenly, Lampposts, Manholes, and Utility Poles United sprang to life with special powers and privileges. Little did we know what was to be.

In short order, Manholes lobbied for tax cuts. As job creators, they claimed, tax cuts for Manholes would promote investment, economic growth, and jobs for everyone. No doubt, those tax cuts made Manholes rich; but no job falling into an open manhole has ever been seen again.

Tax cuts for Manholes have meant less revenue for our town.  To cover years of shortfalls and deficits, Lampposts in league with Utility Poles told the town council to cut services, slash payroll, and raise property taxes (which forced Mr. Briggs to sell his beloved home).

Years ago, when a Lamppost burned out, a service truck came to the neighborhood and replaced a bulb. This year, they say: “Buy your own bulb and replace it yourself.” Last year, Lampposts traded in their service truck for a Lexus. This year, they’re driving a Rolls Royce (and still demand a raise, a bonus, and more tax cuts).

Zombies United turned neighbor against neighbor. Manholes and Utility Poles persuaded the homeowners on Magnolia to scorn the homeowners on Dogwood — especially those who don’t look like, talk like, or vote like "their kind of people.”  Our once tranquil community, now divided in acrimony, no longer finds common ground to unite in common cause.

Legal but non-living persons now rule the neighborhood.  They failed to create a single job but reserve the right to shine flashlights in our bedroom windows at night.  These days, Lampposts wield more power and influence than real citizens whose votes no longer count.

Meanwhile, weeds have grown taller than utility poles, and ’for sale’ signs litter the neighborhood.  Enough, we say!  Forget the Lampposts, Manholes, and Utility Poles.  Forget those broken-down, trickle-down blues.  How I yearn for the smell of fresh cut grass, E Pluribus Unum, and friendly neighbors exchanging friendly greetings at the mailbox again.

“Monday morning, you gave me no warning of what was to be.

Oh, Monday, Monday, how could you leave and not take me?”

This ends our tale of how the American Dream left the station, leaving our middle class behind.  Reminder: Tuesday is the day we bring our trash to the curb … and head to the polls.

Good is Bad, but Badder is Better

Imagine a world without one single fail, epic or otherwise, where you gave presents instead of gifting them.  Wasn't it just yesterday when there wasn't a genius toaster or tennis shoe in the world? Seems like that world never existed to most Americans, their Business or Journalism diplomas framed upon the wall.

So listen here kids, I'm going to tell you about a time - a time not so long ago when a macchiado would have sounded like something you'd get from a woman in black leather, and a barista was that floozie who was always still sitting  there at closing time. No, I'm not gonna tell you it was the good old days because those days were no better than these days, just different. Back then we laughed at out-of-date hipsters  who still started sentences with saaaay and ended them with seeee. We giggled at people who thought things might be swell instead of cool or maybe even neat. We laughed at people who still wore fedora hats or worse those little porkpie hats like Norton from the Honeymooners and we laughed all the harder when they turned the brim up like a total loser. Wear your hat indoors?  Hahahaha!  Not one science fiction writer ever imagined that there would be passionate arguments about whether your backwards hat should have a flat or curved brim or should be over-sized enough to cover your ears.

Once upon a time, not everything was awesome, you see.   Gilgamesh was epic, your lunch probably wasn't.

I heard some period drama recently in which a Victorian character says "the disease impacted her brain" and it was like an alarm going off.  We just don't remember how different our language was, or is it that directors are afraid of confusing the tattooed multitudes by saying it affected her mind?  and then there was the CNN News item about concussions impacting brains -- and said without a smile to indicate the news parrot recognizing that impacting the brain causes concussions.

No, really there was a time when people distinguished between because of and due to: a time when we waited for things and waiters waited on us. If my high school chum had talked about his selfie going viral or that his tweet was trending on Twitter, he would have been sent to the school nurse, but it couldn't have negatively impacted on his record since that convoluted and pompous metaphor hadn't yet graduated from business school and shuffled toward CNN to be aired..

Sure, life has changed and so have the requirements of language.  Who needed to call his Timex an analog watch back when John Cameron Swayze showed us how rugged they were and digital meant something entirely different, particularly in the doctor's office, But do we have to confuse meaning with metaphor?  Do we have to accept manipulative marketing blather so eagerly? Do we have to make fools of ourselves trying to sound adolescent, to sound educated or just to sound hip?  Are all of those motivations internal or are they implanted to direct and misdirect thought, stifle perspective and make us pay ten bucks for a cup of coffee?  a Senator wants to refuse to do his job but keep his pay and benefits? A deserter wants to be commander in chief?  All things are possible when  we twist the language.

I remember a decade of hearing how history wasn't as important as "what's happening now baby" and the results of that is a population full of fake and distorted history.  Are we doing the same thing to English by stressing the primacy of slang and jargon and needless complexity posing as erudition?  Listen to a presidential "debate" and tell me why the barking of dogs is less meaningful. Could it be that Orwell's Newspeak is becoming a reality?  Is language being stripped of precision, are words being identified with their opposites and is the function of language to sell, to indoctrinate to simplify past the point of  incisive or trenchant protest?

Why do I keep hearing patriotism used as a synonym for gun ownership? Why does Liberal mean totalitarian and Conservative mean radical revolutionary and why do Family values mean intrusive Theocracy?  Why is a blastula a Baby? What does Organic mean? What does Processed mean? Why is universal healthcare Fascist and Communist at the same time?  Why is any war about fighting for our freedom?  Why is bad good and badder better? Is it for the same reason that war is peace, freedom is slavery and ignorance strength?

I suspect something of the sort and the fact that every English teacher I know thinks there should be no dictionaries and all that is required of them is to teach spelling and the proper use of possessive apostrophes, makes me wonder, and by "wonder" I mean I'm certain.

In Memoriam

I've talked about it. I've mentioned that even though I'm now in my 72nd year I don't know anyone who has been shot, or has been a victim of any crime involving guns although I did know a couple of murder victims.  Perhaps, as with most things in life, what you know is  about who you know.  There are, after all at least two Americas, often almost congruent, like parallel universes.

Living in Florida and living with trees on your property means you need someone to trim large hedges, palm trees and oak trees and assorted vegetation too big for the lawn mowing service to handle. It's especially true in hurricane season and I made the acquaintance of  a couple of local men in 2004 and 2005 after a series of hurricanes came roaring through my neighborhood.   Over the years it became a regular thing.  I got to know them both after a fashion.  Some years ago I was diagnosed with terminal cancer and I remember they seemed happy for me when it turned out to be a bad diagnosis. I can't say that about a lot of people I know.

I was shocked and saddened to hear that Mr. H  had been found dead on the street a mile from here, shot multiple times just before sunrise. People who knew him stressed that he was a well-loved guy and was helping look after an invalid.   The other fellow, I found out had been arrested having been found to have some drugs at home and because he lived within a thousand feet of a school, the mandatory sentence would be very long.  Both these guys had a history of minor drug arrests.  Hard working men, working since their teens at hard things in the hard Florida heat.  Both are dead now.

I didn't mention that they were both black men.

We read these statistics and we make "common sense" judgments about what will help and what needs to be done, but how often do those ideas we put so much faith in, mention the fact that we have two Americas, two cultures.  Life is different for black men.  Things that might get lawyered away, things involving a warning or some order of tolerance sometimes turn out differently depending on what you look like and if you've been caught doing what so many white, European looking young men do will turn out differently for you.  I wonder what kind of gun control would have made their lives different.  I wonder what kind of drug policies might have resulted in both of them being outside right now trimming those 18 foot sea grape hedges.

Federal background checks, gun registration, ballistic "fingerprinting," gun owner registration, waiting periods, banning guns with plastic stocks.  I don't think so and I get shouted at for suggesting that things that repeatedly and often dramatically fail need to be re-examined, that we need to look at whole pictures and not arguments in gold frames.  Is it like trying to control reckless driving with air bags?

The community these men lived in is right down the road from me, right across the tracks from neighborhoods where houses start at 5 million.  It's peaceful, well kept and historically black, but life is very different as I have to notice, and it's not just because the real estate is so much cheaper.  It has a nice little park, it has more than one church from which you can hear some wonderful music if you go by on your bicycle on a Sunday morning.  It has a little grocery store that's been owned by the same family for most of a century, but life is different. I'm willing to bet there are very far fewer guns per capita than on my block. More people there can't own guns because of some prior offense that might have been bargained down to nothing in a different community.  It's not really crime ridden, it's not really run down, but it's been a black community for a century and things are different in such places and people there are treated differently.  Until we take an interest in knowing why, all our posturing about common sense but unscientific and emotionally driven causes isn't going to change anything.

So now I can't say I don't know anyone murdered by gunshot.  I'm not an island any more.

Sleepers awake!

"It's alive! It's ALIVE!" You'll remember the line from the movie Frankenstein. It must have been such a moment when Clarence Thomas broke a decade of silence and started asking questions from the bench. I notice this morning that the pundits are now taking notice of just what questions and why he asked them.

Interrupting Justice Department attorney Ilana Eisenstein in a case involving the constitutionality of abridging the second amendment rights of a convicted wife beater he asked whether she could provide any other example of a constitutional right being suspended because of a misdemeanor.  Now one can infer bias here, or one can realize that this is a legitimate constitutional quandary  Certainly it can be seen as being in the public interest to curtail the gun ownership privileges of someone convicted of assault, but there's the rub:  in the US it's not a privilege, it's a right.  I'm guessing that Thomas the Prank Engine* is going to decide that a misdemeanor isn't sufficient cause to curtail a man's God given Constitutional rights.

Now I could go off on several tangents related to a woman's right to be protected from having the crap beat out of her by her husband, but you'll get the point without my help.  My question and probably the court's question will be to decide what it takes to  "infinge" upon constitutional rights.  Many other second order questions will arise, no doubt, relative to what it takes to infringe on the right to vote or to be exempted from aspects of public employment because of religious feelings, but we have to face it: the right to keep and bear arms is seen by many as the keystone right, a fulcrum of liberty about which all other rights revolve.

I don't belittle the question itself: the question of  just how bad one must be to have one's rights stripped temporarily or permanently, but the question about which this case revolves is how strong is the right to be protected from harm, or is that to be seen by the court as a guarantee at all?

Can we treat the right to gun ownership and the right to carry one about as a privilege as we do with the privilege of driving a car?  The 'original intent' seems to be no and if silent Thom is about to decide thusly, perhaps it's time to consider an amendment to the amendment, hard sell though it may be.


* I refer to the incident of  the Justice putting his pubic hair on a can of coke and asking Anita Hill who put it there.  Oh, don't give me that -- there were 4 witnesses.

The Eye of the Cynic

“Things are not always what they seem; the first appearance deceives many; the intelligence of a few perceives what has been carefully hidden.”

-Phaedrus-

I never thought I'd be saying this, but it just may be that America needs to be more cynical.  Our time is a time of crisis to crisis, calamity to calamity and outrage to outrage  with no intervals in between when  things aren't quite so bad and aren't getting worse. All in all, things may be better than they were for most people on most days, but how often are we prompted to contemplate it?

I wake up on a sunny morning in paradise and tuning in to get a weather report, the first thing I hear is MURDER! RAPE! ARSON!  Is it real or is it manufactured?  Nearly all the other 11 million people in Sunny Florida are having an ordinary morning hearing about little else but car crashes, electrocutions, inexplicable shootings and "isn't it getting worse? "  Did that "double dip" recession ever happen?  Did Obama take away a single gun from a single law-abiding citizen?  Did the markets recover?  Did that horrible scandal that would soon drive him from office materialize?  Who wastes a second talking about that? Who bothers to compare racism 50, 75 years ago to what we're anguishing about today? I keep seeing figures from reliable sources telling us of a downtrend in shootings. Is that a motivation for those who need to distract us from it to keep the spotlight on some subset and make a case for its increase?  Where there's motivation there's a manifestation.  Sometimes only a cynic will notice.

        "There is nothing more deceptive than an obvious fact" 

-Sherlock Holmes-

Our opinions, our fears and our serial episodes of righteous indignation may just be manufactured, cultivated and fed because it's not only big business, but it's an instrument of control and power. One after the other we hear clusters of stories that seem alike:  Pederast priests, brutal, racist cops, shooting sprees,  Innocent Black "children" being senselessly murdered.  It's normal to ask whether the scenario is being arranged, tuned up, framed to fit the model. Is someone arranging or even fabricating anecdotes because he wants some law changed that really has no bearing on events?   It's not completely out of the question that incidents are being assembled and connected to make the latest campaign of some group newsworthy.  It's not to say there are no trends, no clusters no increases of this or that -- it's to say that it's very difficult to tell when there are serial obsessions caused by regular and sequential news blitzes where on story is told over and over for weeks and connections are made to similar stories or stories made to seem similar because if America isn't glued to the tube, revenue at Fox or CNN is going to fall short of projections and hell will have to be paid.

How long have young women and boys been abused by the Roman Catholic Church?  Hard to say, but you only hear about it in outrage clusters even though it's probably been a steady thing for centuries.  Is violence on the increase in America?  It certainly seems so if you don't look back to those "better times" and read papers full of  riots, shootings and rampant violence. It's hard to tell if someone is trying hard to generate a sense of crisis.  It's hard to tell when these little campaigns, crusades and jihads are professionally stage managed and you can be swatted like a fly if you buzz too much about it. Say that human life matters and you're a racist, not that it doesn't or that you are, but for interfering with some organization's agenda of making racism seem on the increase.

"When it is not immediately apparent which political or social groups, forces or alignments advocate certain proposals, measures, etc., one should always ask: Who stands to gain?”

-Vladimir Lenin-

I can only speculate, it's an experiment that would be very hard to carry out, but airing a cluster of completely fake stories - about young people jumping off bridges, for instance, might just cause young people to jump off bridges.  Certainly I've read about how how some young rampage shooters have studied and taken notes about others so as to exceed their "scores."  But such things are difficult to arrange although we can do research, we can talk about it.  We can look a bit harder for invisible hands pulling invisible strings. Cynicism!  We can peek behind the curtain and pay attention to the little man. We can ask Cui bono? -- who benefits from our outrage and is motivated to make the level of crisis high enough to meet his political purposes.