ACT NOW

I've got to admit it's getting better (Better)

A little better all the time (It can't get more worse)

-the Beatles-

Panic is big business. Hysteria is a moneymaker and the road to riches for those who can inflame and outrage the public.  So of course the persuaders of every persuasion are here to make you think everything is going to hell. Immigrants are going to ruin us, the debt is out of control, all our jobs are going to Mexico and most of all we're all going to be killed. After all you can't go to nightclubs or movie theaters and it's open season on Black children. Gluten will kill you and disease resistant crops will turn you into a wheat stalk and preservatives and processed food?  Oh my God!  This is the worst ever, we're all going to die and all trends point in the direction of Hell. 

All these arguments seem to be the worst when they're not really true or are oversimplified to the point of distortion. The overall trend in violent crime has been down for decades, employment is at record highs and so many things have improved over the last 8 years you'd think someone would notice the dire prognostications of Obama's failure didn't happen, but it's not to the benefit of power that we notice.  Every downward blip is a trend, and an indicator of impending calamity. So obviously we need to stay inside and buy guns before the Obaminator - oh excuse me - Dishonest Hillary takes them away.  We also need to make them disappear with the magic wand of badly written legislation. After all last time we banned "assault weapons" sales went up and numbers increased in a big way.  Lets do it just as badly again.

And by all means let's stay angry. Lets believe these are the last days as they have been for thousands of years now.  Nothing is random, nothing is cyclical, everything is a trend and a downward one. 

The best way to show a trend in a set of data, is to take a small sample. A large sample of mass shootings in the US looks quite a bit more than a series of irregular occurrences with quiescent  periods in between. The previous "worst mass shooting" was in 1927 when the population was a third of today's and falls behind the latest by about 4 deaths. Perhaps toning down the "if this trend continues" rhetoric just a bit might allow some breathing room, but again, that doesn't serve the interests on any side who like the used car salesman, wants you to ACT NOW! 

Act now before we discuss how we go about reducing these things.  Is it one problem of several? How much can we expect from gun regulations, how much increased surveillance and enforcement will we accept.  Do we deprive people of constitutional rights if they are under suspicion?  Do we accept racial profiling? We've already set aside the 4th amendment and perhaps illegally. Do we set aside the 2nd without due process because we are afraid?  this is more than a rampage shooting, more than an act of terrorism, this is an existential crisis for Democracy in America and certainly we need to handle it by pumping up the volume, hyping up the sloppy rhetoric, fuzzying up the logic and making it personal. The craziness, the evil - it's all on their side, but don't question our assertions, our shibboleths or our logic.  Now all together POINT THOSE FINGERS.

Message to Hillary

Dear Mrs. Clinton,

Yes, I plan to vote for you, but to an extent it's a default vote and I disagree with certain of your declarations of intent. One of those is illustrated by your declaration that modern rifles like the AR-15 are weapons of war and unfit for civilian use. The facts are otherwise even if some terrorist uses one. May I point out that Ammonium Nitrate and the Boing 737 have been used to murder  far more people than the two weapons used yesterday in Orlando.

Of those two firearms, one actually was a weapon of war, in the sense that it's identical to the Military M9 pistol, the other one is not military and thus not an assault rifle. It is not used by any military in the world, it just looks like it.  Let me illustrate:

This is the M1 Garand. It's an actual semi-automatic military assault rifle, (no longer used) It holds 8 rounds.

This is the AR-15. It's semi-Automatic but not military and not used by any military for assaults or wall decoration for that matter. Like the military M16, It holds 20 rounds minimum but up to 100 with a drum magazine.

The first uses a massively powerful .30 caliber cartridge cartridge, the second does not, but rather the diminutive .223. Past "assault weapons" bans as we've known them have banned the second and allowed the first.  I suggest that if you do find the ability to ban weapons for any legitimate purpose other than to placate the phobics,  you notice the essential difference between these two weapons is the high capacity magazine on the modern rifle and consider an honest definition of "assault rifle."  It would be very difficult to accomplish, but finally more productive to ban or restrict the sales and ownership of such high capacity magazines on all firearms.

Very truly yours and ever at your service,

Glenn R. Geist

ORLANDO MASSACRE - 2016

I am not persuaded by motivated reasoning. I read the same news and hear the same media reports, yet form my own conclusions. Historically low crime statistics are irrelevant when specific crimes and accidental deaths are preventable.

In 2016, over 100 children killed themselves or other family members after finding unsecured weapons. The NRA has fought legislation mandating safety locks and secure gun storage.

The shooter worked as a security guard with a carry permit and access to guns. We also learned of domestic abuse; his former wife reported regular beatings. The NRA has fought legislation that would confiscate weapons owned by domestic abusers. Shall we ignore this point?

The shooter armed himself with an AR-15 assault rifle — the same weapon used in the Sandy Hook and San Bernardino shootings. A law banning sales of this weapon expired years ago. Yet Congressional Republicans blocked reinstatement of this law. Does cognitive bias blind us?

Furthermore, the NRA lobbied Congressional Republicans to defund research by the CDC on causes of gun deaths in America.

Finally, here is one more point buried beneath the media noise: CNN reported an arrest in West Hollywood, California, during a gay parade. Police found an arsenal of weapons including an assault rifle and pipe bombs.

Anti-gay messaging and anti-Muslim rhetoric conspire to up the ante on hate speech. Dead bodies and grieving families are not numbers. They deserve more than deceptive, self-serving soundbites and decades of legislative obstruction.

Blood on their Hands

Nothing stops a bad guy with a gun.  Not more guns.  Nor the NRA.  Not their stooges in Congress holding us in thrall.  Nor public outrage over dead kids, dead neighbors, dead friends.  Certainly not voters who have demanded common sense gun legislation for years.

Congressional Republicans, Senate Majority leader McConnell, House Speaker Ryan, 'open carry' hooligans and thugs, Christian fundamentalist gay bashers, and the North Chinalina legislature … all have blood on their hands.  

Up yours, America!  Land of the free, home of the knave.

Tick, Tock, Schlock and Shock

He says. She says. The sky is falling. The sky is blue. Point, counterpoint. In any discussion thread, there are no doubt strong differences of opinion. Filled with competing claims, stock narratives, and old shibboleths. Since the beginning of this election cycle, I have often wondered about what motivates people, not necessarily the motivations of candidates (who often appear as two-dimensional caricatures), but the motivations of supporters, cultists and voters. 

At one extreme is a candidate with an obvious character disorder, a man who claims he will make America GRR8 with appeals to bigotry and H8. For months, we have witnessed his grandiosity, his fixation on power, his need for constant admiration, his ruthless and often malicious disregard for others, and his tendency to defame, devalue, derogate, insult, and blame. Yet, he has fervent followers who ignore these flaws (and not all followers are "idiots" or “stupid").

Here is a snapshot of politics in America today:

Deception. Defamation. Pander. Slander. Smears and jeers. Sophistry and hyperbole. Our media is a supermarket of mendacities and sleaze.

Let me offer this conjecture based on “motivated reasoning” and “cognitive bias.” Motivated reasoning explains how people cling to false beliefs despite overwhelming evidence that contradicts those beliefs.

Cognitive bias explains why people deny or turn tone-deaf to new evidence that might change their thinking. And why they filter information that might invalidate their attitudes and core beliefs. Partisanship and politics are not necessarily about seeking evidence or truth, or distinguishing between right or wrong, but about defending our sense of personhood.

Without taking sides, here are questions we should ask ourselves: Are we willing to look in a mirror and confront our own biases? Are we willing to sift through the media noise and separate fact from fiction? 

Here is the irony. At the end of this election, it is not the candidates whom we will hold accountable. Rather, we should hold ourselves accountable for the choices we make.

Pocahontas

Well there he goes again.  Donald Trump keeps calling Elizabeth Warren Pocahontas.  It's not that the daughter of a Powhatan chief, closely associated with Illegal English immigrants to our shores is someone to be ashamed of and neither is Elizabeth Warren who when compared to most of us and to Donald in particular, seems spectacular.  But Donald thinks it's funny and Donald doesn't care that he looks like a bigoted oaf and blowhard and ignoramus.  In fact he gloats at how that earns him the loyalty of what we used to call "the ugly American."

I would hate to have Ms. Clinton lower herself by responding in kind, but I don't see why I can't.  I would suggest calling him Shitting Bull, but on reflection will refrain out of respect for that great Lakota leader. So on second thought perhaps it's better to let him go on, digging his own grave, deeper and deeper. We can shovel in the dirt later.

Viva Las Sandanistas!

Bernie Sanders has boasted

“If, on November 8th of this year, Hillary Clinton is elected President, we will have only begun to fight,”  

Writes Andy Borowitz in the New Yorker.  I have to wonder who he is going to fight with or for and about what. Is he going the way of  many Republicans when Bill Clinton was elected and declare that she's not the "real" president, or not "his" president? Does he envision a sort of schism with two oval offices, or perhaps this is just a metaphorical statement. Might he take his guerrilla forces into the Vermont woods?  Maybe it's just the kind of willful delusion I'm seeing as standard fare among his supporters. Magic thinking seems to be all the thinking that's going on.

Of course there's the possibility that Clinton will get into some legal trouble that would cause her to drop out, allowing Bernie somehow to find himself as the dowager candidate, but that may be more of a delusion than the hope I'll win the Irish Sweepstakes without having a ticket. Some of his supporters are accusing her of espionage and treason in a manner that puts Republican liars to shame - (or would if Republicans could feel shame.) I can't dismiss the idea that he really believes he can still become president without an election by somehow staging a Putsch at the convention.

Is this obstinacy a sort of Sanderista Leitmotif which plays in Wagnerian fashion behind his recent career?  Is it the same kind of thinking that lets him boast about how he's going to re-organize world banking and finance and fiscal and monetary and trade policy by fiat and to declare that henceforth college tuition will be free and never mind what congress or the courts or the colleges say.

It's either deceit or delusion but we've already had one president who thought he was Alexander the Great and we can't afford another. The voters didn't just reject Senator Sanders, they dodged a bullet.

If I Only Had a Heart

Researchers at the University of California are trying to develop a pig whose organs contain some human DNA which will make it possible to use those organs in humans without rejection. Is this good news for those who will die waiting for a human donor or who don't qualify by reason of age?

I should think so, but of course we can always count on popular superstition, fear of the new and the love of  making money from it.  So as soon as hope emerges, headlines pop up to dash them. "Trading Ethic for Organs" blares the article, because if your 14 year old daughter needs a heart, if your dear mother needs a kidney or a marrow transplant, you're certainly going to have too much sympathy for a pig.

And of course this pig with some human DNA is successful, it will be GENETICALLY MODIFIED, and you all know what that means!  All the other pigs will die, and the bees too and if you eat bacon you'll start to oink and maybe even vote Republican. That's just before the sky falls, of course.

Great

Quite frankly, nobody is going to make America great again, at least not to any universal agreement. Nor is it really possible to define the word. That's why it makes such a catchy campaign slogan. Everyone has his own notions about greatness.  For some it means to make America white again, for others it means to return to a day when this was a manufacturing powerhouse and assembly line jobs allowed workers to be part of a booming middle class, a time when foreign competition was feeble and public tastes preferred domestic goods. It's not going to happen and temporal dysphoria, like entropy, will increase. Short of an apocalypse, the world continues to get smaller.

Change itself , like the expansion of the universe, seems to be accelerating.  By the time most people develop what feels like an understanding of how things are, it's all changed, the technology, the certainties, the requirements of social intercourse, the goals of citizens, the expectations and even the language change ever more rapidly.  I doubt that even Taoists are comfortable going with this turbulent flow. I'm certainly not and it may explain my love of antiques, art and old technology. Perhaps it explains all those off-the-grid survivalist shows, the back-to-nature attempts that usually aren't very honest and it certainly explains the obsessive use of words like "artisinal," Natural, craft and Organic, one sees in advertising.  Make no mistake, advertising is the soul of our culture and ours is a backwards looking one. At a time when cars are become autonomous robots, jukeboxes, internet cafe's and video game parlors all wrapped in armor, we still see ads telling us how the Lexus isn't produced, it's "crafted."  We see clips of hands sanding a block of wood for the dashboard and we feel soothed even though we know it's all automated and turned out by robots. Deceit is the root of our culture although we may call it by other names, the cars we're told to worship for having 200 horsepower outsell those with 700 horsepower because we see the world through the dark lens of advertising. The way we smell and taste things owes far more to the expectations we've had instilled in us than it does to tongues or noses. Placebos are often perceived as more effective than real medicine and everyone with a cause feels justified in any level of misrepresentation to further it, it doesn't matter that a mushroom with a gene removed that turns it dark when cut simply must be dangerous to all life on Earth without any evidence just as surely as vaccinations don't work and cause Autism. You can save the planet by wearing organic hemp underwear, Reality terrifies us although we have no actual connection to it.

It's not new, the reaction to rapacious modernity, It was the industrial revolution that spawned the Arts and Crafts movement and gave most of us the wealth to purchase it.  It's scientific farming that's allowed us the freedom and time to raise the hysteria and hypochondria that keeps the aisles at Whole Foods crowded and causes people to adopt the "Kale Cleansing" or Carb Counting Gluten-Free life style, or Copper Compression underwear tuned to Natural frequencies. Advances in medicine produce a distrust of medicine as do advances in most everything, including civil rights, justice, equality and freedom -- and we react accordingly. Is racism fading or getting worse? You tell me - and I'm sure you will.

Some of us resent losing the sense of White Anglo-Saxon protestant primacy we could feel 75 years ago and we support Trump. Others insist nothing has improved and nobody seems to like the way things are, the way they think things are going or their part in life. So we have Bullies for Bernie. We've had "leaders" dedicated to keeping things the way they were or we thought they were, no matter how awful it was for some and we have those who passionately hate what is and envision something altogether different and much more pleasant for them without much concern for what's possible or moral or legal. Welcome to the American fugue state.

America was once great we all agree as long as we don't have to be specific about for whom or when or in what sense that was. America's current greatness is still beyond challenge even while we complain so much about the current "disaster" or claim that everything is "broken," something we can do without any reference to a broader picture.   It's enough to cite one talking point and one example real or manufactured, to support either certainty.

Is it any wonder that a candidate can base his campaign on returning to a lost greatness while his advocates insist we're the greatest there ever was?  It's only a wonder in a rational world, and where are you going to find one of those?

CTHULHU FORPRESIDENT: Why choose a lesser evil