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You don't know me.  I'm from Tennessee and I was born in the 1960's.  I've been an independent as long as I've been politically aware, because it is clear to me that both of our dominant parties here in the United States of America have become corrupt.  Both are overly influenced by big money, favors and whatnot.  Political figures on both sides have found ways to work the system to stay in power and enrich themselves.  Both parties have become more extreme because our voting systems including closed primaries cause that.  The incentives in our system are all wrong.  It might seem to be time to blow it up, to clear the slate in a dramatic way.

I would argue there's a right and wrong way to clear the slate.  Blowing it up is the wrong way because so much useful stuff gets destroyed in the process.  The right way would be to update our voting systems so that no one population gets to decide for all of us.  Open primaries, non-partisan districting, and ranked choice voting would fix our problems immediately.  The far left wouldn't be stuffing wokeness down our throats.  The far right wouldn't be trying to set up an authoritarian who will rule without regard for the Constitution.  We would have more options, instead of always having to choose between extremes that are both awful.

The beauty of the American system of government and its Constitution is that it was designed to keep any one faction from gaining absolute power.  That saying about power corrupting, and absolute power corrupting absolutely--that's absolutely true.  Our government was designed to keep anyone from having too much power.  The plan is to force us to compromise for the good of the people.  Compromise is hard work. 

Our government is supposed to be OF the people and FOR the people.  Not OF the academics, Christians, rich people, minorities, white people, men or any other single group.  OF THE PEOPLE.  FOR THE PEOPLE.   This is why America is a beacon on a hill for people all around the world.  A place where regular people have a chance.  A place where you won't get killed because you look different or celebrate a different totem.  THIS is the greatness of America.  Our forefathers had a vision and we have carried it forward for over 200 years.

Democracies usually fail before 200 years.  It's rare for a democracy to last as long as this one has.  And it is riddled with imperfections.  It needs work, a big update, a major overhaul.  Those who pretend it's perfect are totally nuts.  We made a lot of changes early, and the civil war forced us to make a bunch more changes.  We're about to have to get busy again.  If this democracy doesn't fail this November because too many people vote for a DICTATOR, we still have a lot of work to do.  The Democrats aren't autocrats like DJT, but they aren't going to give up power easily either.  WE THE PEOPLE must force the changes needed, and those changes will disempower BOTH of our dominant political parties and return the power TO THE PEOPLE.  Ranked choice voting.  Open Primaries.  Non-partisan districts for voting. 

Democracies require work!  They don't work if the people aren't paying attention or doing the work.  A failing democracy is not a reason to give up, it's a reason to get after it!  If we let Trump win it's because we gave up, we were too lazy and too ignorant to make the updates needed to keep rulership in the hands of the people.  Or return it there, really.

If we let our government fall prey to a dictator who ditches the Constitution, we will have lost all that we've fought and died for, for so long.  We'll be right back where we started when those rich Brits and the king were bossing us around.  Don't remember that?  It's because it was 200+ years ago!  History seems real boring until you start repeating it.  The LAST thing we need is to let Trump destroy all the democratic systems in our government in order to glorify himself.  It will take hundreds of years to dig ourselves back out of that pit.  Autocracy is a very bad trap. 

If we let the Dems take this next election, we might live to see the changes that would actually help!  We'll be fighting against them too, but at least they aren't about to ditch the Constitution and ignore federal law to deport a whole bunch of people.

There are LOTS of other changes that we need to work on, but our voting systems must come first.  I pray that NO DICTATOR gains power before we are able to hit the RESET button on our systems and keep working toward a more perfect union.


liveonearth: (Default)
Fascism
should rightly be called
Corporatism,
as it is the merger
of corporate
and government power.

~Benito Mussolini
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Ever since Tuberville made himself a household name by blocking Senate confirmation of military leaders, I've been wondering.  Is the military "woke"?  It seems unlikely. Does the military have some problems that need addressing? Of course.  Every department needs to keep improving.  Failing to change is failing.

The ideologies on both sides oversimplify the issue.  The left says that because the women are getting raped, it's the military's job to help them end those unwanted pregnancies.  The right says it doesn't matter how the sperm got in there, those sperm and egg combos are of utmost value.  Both sides irritate me.

The military started facilitating abortions for its female members because raping them and making them have babies didn't seem like a good idea.  The military said it was doing it to maintain military "readiness".  Raping them is still a good idea--there seem to be no repercussions for the sperm donors. A friend of mine suggests that men should lose a testicle each time they rape a woman.  While this may sound barbaric, so does shutting up women about their abuse by providing them with abortions.

We want strong, high-testosterone men in the military.  Burly beasts of men who are able to do what needs to be done are extremely valuable in this setting.  Unfortunately, hormone-laden brutes are prone to taking what they want.  Making them take trainings about consent will not fix the problem.  It raises the question of whether we should be putting women in the same units with men.  Perhaps our military would be better served by having units led by women and comprised entirely of women.  Then we would see what women can do.

There is no doubt that Tuberville's blockage is negatively impacting readiness.  The commanders of each branch have an important role, which is to see and understand the big picture, and to plan, prepare, and act accordingly.  Without commanders, our military coasts along without updating position or strategy.  Over time our vulnerability and weakness increase.  The protection of fertilized eggs is not, in my view, more important than having a functional defense, or being able to move aggressively when needed.
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If times were ever interesting, these are getting right up there.  In America, the Executive Branch sent an attack mob to the Legislative Branch of our government.  Marched them right down the avenue from the White House and up the Capitol steps.  One week ago.  That mob overwhelmed all barriers and invaded the Capitol through the windows, during a session.  The building was under lockdown for hours, with our representatives hidden in a subterranean chamber.  You can see the patriot invasion on youtube.  According to potus his mob looked "low class".  But then later he pronounced "we love you" to the same crew.

Then today the president is impeached for the second time.  How interesting.  Twice. May that be followed by a Senate trial and prompt Removal.  

The inauguration is planned to be a "hard target" so attacks may divert to state capitols which are considered "soft".  White supremacists have been booted to the backroads of the internet and are developing clandestine communications to sort out their next grand move.  They would enjoy a chance to kick some ass; a race war would do nicely.

The Executive Branch has been subverting the Judicial Branch by filling benches with sympathetic judges, but it is still a very separate Branch of power.  Lawyers and especially judges tend to be smart and willful and develop their own thinking rather than adopting half-baked ideology.  They see the obvious bogusness of the Big Lie.  The election wasn't stolen.  Those Attorney Generals, all 17 of them that signed on to a Texas lawsuit trying to flip the election, they aren't stupid.  They have been corrupted.  They must be getting rich.  Or have their nuts in a vise.  Or both.  Barr is probably still trying to get his nuts out.

Oh yeah and the pandemic.  Isn't that interesting?  What fascinates me the most is how utterly ignorant most people are about how the body works, and how a virus works, and why some people live and some die from the same virus.  The TERRAIN matters, my friends.  If your organs are sick, you can be weakened and susceptible without knowing it.  Science is really cool, too, it explains so much.

Ignorance about our government and institutions is also prevalent.  Broad ignorance is the terrain on which half-baked ideologies grow.  The difference is education.  But our schools have gotten as lazy as our Capitol defenses.  Believing that America truly is the greatest nation on earth has led to complacency and then denial.  What?  No problems here, we say, but the world knows better.  America was a great experiment in government, still is as of this moment. 

There is the possibility that Trump will function like a vaccine.  Just a tiny dose, well four long years.  Maybe that will autocrat-proof America.  Or maybe the booster shot will be worse.  And on top of that there is the possibility that this Republic will fail.  Trump tried to bring down this government and to date has failed.

Interesting, huh.
 
 
 
liveonearth: (Default)
 
When stupidity is considered
patriotism,
it is unsafe
to be intelligent.

--Isaac Asimov, quoted in TheBulwark.com
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 ..."viewpoint diversity is necessary for the development of critical thinking, while viewpoint homogeneity (whether on the left or the right) leaves a community vulnerable to groupthink and orthodoxy."
--Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt in Coddling of the American Mind; How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas are Setting Up a Generation for Failure, p113.
liveonearth: (Default)
 
 
 
Being ignorant
is not so much a shame
as being 
Unwilling to Learn.


--Benjamin Franklin
 
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On Tuesday this week I attended the opening lecture of a lecture series hosted by the nonprofit organization Portland Literary Arts.  I had little idea what to expect.  The speaker was someone I hadn't heard of, or at least didn't remember, but I will remember him now.  The name is George Packer.  He was a staff writer for the New Yorker for a long time, and now is on staff writing for The Atlantic.  He also has written some books and essays, largely about culture and politics.

I was impressed.  He was there to promote his latest book, Our Man, which is about the controversial diplomate Richard Holbrook and the old America that he symbolizes.  The new America is something different.  Packer understands the changes in our culture better than most and I fully intend to seek out his writing in the future.  I have probably read him in the past but the name did not stick in my head.

Our Man is written in an unusual style for a biography.  Rather than being overfull of dates and details, it is told in narrative style by a fictional narrator who is older than the author.  The narrator was "there" for the whole story, and tells it in a style that the author repeated calls "a yarn".  I'm sure it will be a good read, and I will read it as soon as the demand for it at the library goes down a bit.

The book that he wrote in 2013 is called The Unwinding and it is about the cultural shifts that led to the election of Trump--except that at the time nobody knew it would lead there.  It is on my reading list.  The NY Times says it explains why Trump was elected.  For many of us that bears some thought.

When Packer first took the stage he looked up at the audience in the Schnitzer auditorium and he said that Portland is not the biggest city, but it was the biggest crowd.  The auditorium is huge and a beauty.  It holds 2,500 people, and it was full.  After his talk he took out his phone and photographed the crowd from his view on the stage.

Portland, Oregon is an interesting place, full of many highly educated individuals who dearly want to save the world.  They share Packer's sadness and fear about the changes that have come to our country and our politics in the last 20 years.  The patterns of applause during the Q&A period at the end reveal the overall agreement of this crowd with Packer's assessment of what is happening because of Trump.  His answer to the question about Syria (after the Trump-licensed Turkish bombing of the Kurds) made the situation more clear to me than months of reading in the Times.

Packer recommended three books to read (not his own) at the end of the talk.  I put them all on my library list but the one that really excites me is more current.  It is called Intellectuals and Race, by Thomas Sowell.  Amazon says it is an inclusive critique of the intellectual's destructive role in shaping ideas about race in America.  Other sources talk about how much ruckus this book has raised.  Intellectuals don't like to be criticised but in this day and age, they need to respond to criticism rather than dismissing it.

I would say that the ivory tower has made some missteps in shaping ideas about sexuality and gender, too.  I have been subject to some pretty strong progressive brainwashing in this town and witnessed it being misused to shame and alienate.  We would do well to pay attention to George Packer and other thoughtful people in the future as we try to find a way out of the stalemate we are in culturally and politically.  Our democracy is on its way toward failure and if we care about this experiment enough to continue it, we need to find a way that we can talk across the rather deep divisions.

 
 
 
 
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When they play to their bases, they miss me entirely.  I am tired of our people and our politicians talking past each other.  Politicians, it is on you to lead the way to civility, to honest negotiation and compromise.  I know Trump won't do it, but he is pushing you to do it.  Stop spouting talking points and get on with the hard work of figuring out how to best secure our borders.  It can be so much more than a wall.   
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 Seems like neither side will take the other side's point.  Dems, it makes sense to discourage people from using their children as a way to get into the US.  Reps, it's not fair to treat every desperate person who illegally crosses the border as a vicious criminal.  Let's talk about this, and Dems stop harping on "inflicting harm on the children" (one of the oldest lines in the book of politicians), at least until you address the issue more deeply than that.  I'm tired of it too.  And I pretty much despise both parties and their talking points.  And our asinine prez.  Ugh.
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Trump is the first antidemocratic president in modern U.S. history.  On too many days, beginning in the early hours, he flaunts his disdain for democratic institutions, the ideals of equality and social justice, civil discourse, civic virtues, and America itself.  If transplanted to a country with fewer democratic safeguards, he would audition for dictator, because that is where his instincts lead.  This frightening fact has consequences.  The herd mentality is powerful in international affairs.  Leaders around the globe observe, learn from, and mimic one another.  They see where their peers are heading, what they can get away with, and how they can augment and perpetuate their power.  The walk in one another's footsteps, as Hitler did with Mussolini--and today the herd is moving in a Fascist direction.
--Madeleine Albright in Fascism: A Warning, page 246 (in what I think is the final chapter).
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Following the Axis surrender, Korea's fate, like that of Central Europe, was still to be worked out.  Officially, the victorious Allies were committed to a free, united and independent Korea.  Then in the war's last week, Stalin's Red Army penetrated far into the country's northern half.  American diplomats, their inboxes overflowing, shifted their focus from what should be done to what could be achieved most easily.  In Washington, late one night, they met with their Soviet counterparts and, tracing lines on a map from National Geographic magazine, consented to the peninsula's "temporary" division along the 38th parallel.  The people who lived there were not consulted.

In 1948, with the Cold War well under way, the U.S.-supported Republic of Korea (ROK) and the USSR-backed Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) officially declared their existence--the former in Seoul, the latter in Pyongyang.  North Korea's head of government, hand-selected by the Soviets, was Kim Il-sung, a thirty-three-year-old military officer who had spent the bulk of his life in exile and possessed little formal education.  He did, however, have big ideas.  Determined to reunify the Korean Peninsula on his terms, Kim persuaded the Soviets to underwrite an invasion of the South, boasting to Stalin that he would win easily.   He almost did prevail, but the United States surprised the DPRK by intervening, under a UN umbrella, prompting China to counter by also entering the fray.  In 1953, an amistice was signed to end the fighting, but with no victor, no formal peace, no significant change in borders, and a death toll that included more than a million and a half Koreans, 900,000 Chinese, and 54,000 Americans.

The war was a colossal waste of lives and treasure, so it matters that the DPRK has been built on a lie about who started it.  The worldview of any North Korean begins with the conviction that, in 1950, their country was attacked by sadistic murderers from America and the ROK.  If not for Kim Il-sung's brave leadership and the pluck of DPRK fighters, their homeland would have been laid waste and their ancestors enslaved.  Worse still, the story continues, Americans are evil and do not learn from their mistakes.  Given a chance, the savages will return and wreak more havoc.  Out of this sham narrative come the fear, the anger, and the yearning for revenge that Kim Il-sung harnessed to justify that world's most totalitarian regime.

--Madeleine Albright in Fascism: A Warning, pages 189-191, published in 2018.
liveonearth: (Default)

 

"...growing up in church desensitizes you to logical inconsistencies, and that opens up large numbers of people to manipulation tactics employed by individuals and institutions keen on controlling groups of people for their own self-serving purposes."

 

—Neil Carter in How Faith Breaks Your Thinker 

APRIL 10, 2018

SOURCE: http://www.patheos.com/blogs/godlessindixie/2018/04/10/how-faith-breaks-your-thinker/

Excellent resource on logical inconsistencies:
https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/

liveonearth: (Default)
"A single dot on a canvas is not a painting and a single bet cannot resolve a complex theoretical dispute.  This will take many questions and question clusters.  Of course it's possible that if large numbers of questions are asked, each side may be right on some forecasts but wrong on others and the final outcome won't generate the banner headlines that celebrity bets sometimes do.  But as software engineers say, that's a feature, not a bug.  A major point of view rarely has zero merit, and if a forecasting contest produces a split decisions we will have learned that the reality is more mixed than either side thought.  If learning, not gloating, is the goal, that is progress."
--Tetlock, Philip and Gardner, Dan, in p269 in Superforecasting; The Art and Science of Prediction 2015.
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Socialism never took root in America because
the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat
but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires.

--Ronald Wright
liveonearth: (Default)
 “If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom yet deprecate agitation are men who want crops without plowing up the ground; they want rain without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters. Power concedes nothing without demand. It never did and it never will. Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have found out the exact measure of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them, and these will continue till they are resisted with either words or blows, or with both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress.” 

—Frederick Douglass

liveonearth: (Default)
"Mr. Trump, you appear to be laboring under the delusion that you have the necessary qualifications to be president. The manifest failure of almost everything you have attempted during your first six months, coupled with the anarchic chaos that pervades your White House, should give you pause--or would give pause to any person of normal sensitivity...

Get all your news, not from FOX but from all the sources available to a president, many of them not available to the rest of us. Announce your decisions after due consideration and consultation, not impulsively on Twitter. Cultivate common good manners when dealing with people. Do no be misled by the crowds thatcheer your boorish rudeness: they are a minority of the American people.

Listen to experts better qualified than you are. Especially scientists. Be guided by evidence and reason, not gut feeling. By far the best way to assess evidence is the scientific method. Indeed, it is the only way if we interpret "scientific" broadly. In particular--since the matter is so urgent and it may already be too late--listen to scientists when they tell you about the looming catastophe of climate change."

--Richard Dawkins, when asked by John Horgan in interview, "What would you say to Trump if you had his ear"?
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I read this morning about a doctor who went mad and shot people in a hospital. As a doctor myself, I know that docs have terrible stresses trying to deal with a corrupt medical-industrial system that impairs our ability to help people regain their health. Then I went to look at the NY times article, here: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/30/nyregion/bronx-hospital-shooting.html. He's richly melanated, that is to say, he has lived a life of fear because of his skin color. I infer from his violence that he may have been guilty of the accusation--sexual misconduct. He was a man, and he was angry enough to shoot others and hopeless enough to set himself on fire and shoot himself. He did not see any way out. He knew he would not receive compassion.

What people forget when they demonize any group of humans is that they are human. Dark skinned people. Doctors. Men. Gun owners. Murderers. Whatever group. All humans share the same basic needs. When those needs are not met, we have the same basic emotions. Driven hard enough, any of us could become dangerous. Hitler had reasons. The Arabs that flew airplanes into buildings had reasons. No one is pure evil, we are simply human and if tortured we can lash out, or become cunning.

My hope that that everyone who reads this will take a deep breath or three and think about the kind of pain that drives a person to such horrors. My hope is that compassion will rise in spite of the poisonous atmosphere of shame and blame that dominates our political world. We all deserve an opportunity to be free from fear, long enough to find our centers and our hearts and reach out into the world from that place. It will take a lot of us finding compassion to heal these wounds.
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The uglification of which I speak didn't exactly start with Ailes (Fox), but he certainly boosted it. One of the hats that I wear is at a natural products pharmacy; we dispense herbs and supplements and a few hormonal products. I spend some time sitting behind the counter simply helping the next person who comes to the window. Most people are decent, kind, and even patient. But lately I've noticed a trend. The proportion of cranky, mean and abusive people is increasing.

Today it was a lady by the name of Hammer. What's in a name, I ask? Did your name make you into a prosecutor in the pharmacy line? How many hammering questions does one have to tolerate before you are satisfied? Is there an inkling of generosity in you? A morsel of patience? An ounce of kindness? I saw none. I experienced questions hammering in faster than they could be answered, demands stacked up while I was trying to answer the questions, topped with an insult. Ms Hammer is just the most recent experience of this sort. There was one yesterday, and the day before more than one. Too bad it's nice people who get cancer and not the bitches.

This is Oregon. People in general are nice here. But not the raving maniac that stabbed two men to death the other day trying to get to some young women who were a different color than him. This disease of condemnation and hatred is seeping deeper and deeper into our culture, and leaking out in more settings all the time. I do not know how to fix it. I don't believe in phony niceness, but I also don't believe in punishing people just because you can. I am sensitive and not cut out to tolerate verbal abuse in the course of my work. I try to contain my anguish until I am in private. Then I weep. I try to be kind to the people that I meet. And I may have to find a way to not serve the public any more.

In Japan they have a name for it. Hikikomori. It's a sociological phenomenon in which people simply stop participating in society. If society is ugly, then decent people will not show up. If decent people do not show up, society will uglify even more. If we all retreat into our tiny little bubbles even more than we already have, the fractures in our supposed union of states and free people becomes null and void. This culture is headed for the bloodbath.
liveonearth: (Default)
As you may know, I am a student of body language, aka nonverbal communication. I've been fascinated by Trump's use of certain gestures, and this video explains their meaning and function. At root, he has hypnotized a great number of people and most likely he did it with these gestures, not with the stunning illogic of his words.

http://www.cnn.com/2017/05/12/opinions/hand-gestures-matter-for-presidents-van-edwards-opinion/index.html

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