Covid-19 in the Summer of 2021

Let me start by clearly stating I believe in vaccines. I believe vaccines are useful in minimizing (if not curing) the effects of disease and in relation to Covid-19, we already know very well who the at-risk populations are: the elderly (particularly over the age of 70), those with pre-existing respiratory conditions and the obese. 

Let me clearly state that I believe the at-risk populations should be getting vaccinated as quickly as possible all over the world.  And those are the only people that should be getting vaccinated. Vaccinating others serves no purpose and merely erodes the efficacy of the vaccine itself. 

It's not that vaccinating everyone is a dumb idea, it is that it is an impossible idea. There are almost 8 billion people in the world, vaxxing them all, then shutting them down for two weeks and then vaxxing them again would go a long way to eradicating the virus. That still wouldn't completely work because vaxxing and locking down could only occur on a rolling time frame, meaning at any given moment there are still billions of people unaccounted for. Oh, and there's absolutely no political will from the various factions of Earth's population that would allow this to happen. So in short: absolutely not at all possible to do and wouldn't even necessarily work if we could do it. 

Therefore a strategy of vaxxing everyone is not possible, it is not going to work, it is doomed to fail, it is built to be unsuccessful (meaning many more people living with Covid-19, whether vaccinated or not--which is what's going to happen anyway!). The virus is here to stay. No amount of immunizing is going to make it disappear. If we vaccinate everyone, then tell them to go live their lives as if they're bulletproof, that won't get rid of the virus. Indeed, it will enable it to spread (through easing of social distancing) and will encourage a more virulent strain (the virus will have to work harder once a vaccine has been introduced). 

The vaccination doesn't keep you from needing to wear the mask and social distancing. And if the point of getting vaxxed was to no longer need the mask or the distancing...well....that isn't the case. There was no reason to think that was going to be the case and now we know that it is not the case. Vaccines and masks are two different issues, one does not impact the other, which is not the bill of goods we've been sold so far. 

The idea that we have to vaccinate everyone to eradicate the virus sounds good, but we are far from being able to pull that off. This virus has only existed (that we know of) for two years and has already gone around the world now in multiple forms and currently accounts for 200 million active cases. Vaccinating it out of existence is not gonna be easy--indeed, it's not gonna be possible. Living healthier lives in relation to Covid-19 is the way to go, vaccinate those in real danger but not those without underlying conditions. 

By insisting that everyone get vaccinated--and that everyone who is not vaccinated is somehow fucking up the beautiful world of awesomeness the vaccine is supposed to provide--you are lying to yourself and to everyone else. You're creating an air of fear and paranoia, where you've tried to passive-aggressively force people into pointless behavior. We've created an impossible task and built in the mechanisms for us to point fingers at each other when it doesn't work. And that's all we've done!

This is a basic respiratory illness that spreads very quickly, it is not going away any time soon. Eradicating Covid-19 by, say, the end of 2021 is absolutely not humanly possible for a million different reasons. I don't anticipate Covid-19 will go away in my life time--and I don't understand why anyone would think that it would.

In two years there have been (according to the July 29 South China Morning Post) 4,182,008 deaths from this virus. In two years there have been (according Statista.com on July 15) 177,226,941 Worldwide Covid-19 recoveries. A lot more people (177.2m:4.1m) don't die from Covid than that do. So why are we vaccinating everyone? Just vaccinate the people that need it!

The vaccine has done a fine job of keeping serous symptoms from developing, it is doing a fine job at keeping people from dying of the virus. However, the virus itself already has 98% survival rate...the extra 1% the vaccine provides is really only for those people who are at risk. And not for anyone else. 

So why are we trying to vax everyone? Pure politics. Serves no other purpose. There's no medical reason to do anything other than vaccinate the at-risk people, keep social distancing as a basic practice and then move on with our lives. Why are we still acting like this is a dangerous disease? We've had a full year now to see that the initial introduction of Covid-19 to the Human population brought a lot of chaos and killed people already close to death but has otherwise had a fairly mild effect on our actual bodies. And that it isn't stopped by a vaccine.(*) 

Create an impossible ideal than blame your political enemies when it fails--and it absolutely will fail. That's what the current leadership has done. 

Look, man, the doomsayers (and you probably assume that I am one) will tell you that this was all a mind control game and now the Democrats have all the levers of power right as gov't spending is ramping to a new all time high, the Federal Reserve is claiming ever more powers on overnight markets, the White House is finally seemingly in lockstep with the communications tech giants and now they're hooking us on a vaccine to control us. I would agree that they've tried to do those things (have been trying with erratic success for the last 200 years), but American culture is extremely fluid and I don't think it will even take the usual 5-10 years for the next generation to pound this current mindset into the dust.

The contemporary crop of cultural controllers are all about paranoia, never ending grievance and rewarding laziness. This is the most myopic, selfish, humorless batch of humans ever created in the Western world and at the moment they are ascendant (the coming January 6th Hearings will likely be their peak, I would suggest). But they represent all that is backward in American culture. America is about the go-getters, the innovators, the entrepreneurs, the daredevils, the mavericks, the thrill seekers, the people with new ideas. This reliance on the past and on passive-aggressive social control is fruitless and 100 liberals in a room together will never agree on anything. So the idea that this current Democratic control will lead to some dystopian future doesn't really worry me. (**)

The next batch of young people will see how the media manipulated demonization of Trump is merely a gutless power grab by people that have no vision of the future, only complaints about the past, and by people who claim to be experts when they display no skills or abilities (most of all they don't understand how medicine works--and they are proving it right in front of us all day long!) The anti-anti-Trump reclamation may take a while. Unfortunately, Trump himself is still around blocking the Republican Party like a kidney stone and until he's gone, the right is still just a turtle flipped over in the sun. But the Democratic Party is a bunch of fascists (***) and soon even the dutifully vaccinated will realize that the vaccination served no purpose other than that to minimally weaken their sense of self-control.  

But if we just vaccinate the people that are at greater risk of dying (re: treat this vaccine like every other vaccine) from the virus and allow the rest of the population to absorb the virus itself, then the at-risk people are safer and the virus needn't mutate. Meaning, next year's vaccines could steadily chip away at the virus while continually providing more assurance to the rest of the population. Herd immunity is going to happen eventually--no matter how far off into the future our bureaucracy tries to push it. 

We haven't made people safer. We've maximized political control and nothing else. The game we're playing now of pretending like everyone is going to get vaccinated (****) is not going to work. But, of course, that powers that be will just blame (insert: your particular political bullshit here). That plan is not feasible for a million different reasons, so pretending like that's what we're doing is just straight up foolishness. Eradicating the virus through mass vaccination is not a worthwhile policy. Herd immunity will save us....eventually. If we can only survive the herd-drivers currently calling the shots. 

The vaccination doesn't keep people from getting and passing on the virus! The vaccination isn't doing what you think it's supposed to do! The vaccination doesn't make it safer to not wear a mask or stay socially distanced! You can blame your political enemies all you want, they are not the source of the frustration. 

If you need the vaccine, by all means go get it! Your personal health may be impacted, you can't let politics stop you from being smart! 

But if you don't need the vaccine, then why are you getting it? And why on earth are you so convinced that everyone else needs to get it?

(*) Now, the idea that the vaccine itself creates variants is a bit like the "lab leak hypothesis" in that it doesn't need to be true. Viruses create variations naturally just as the Earth produces viruses quite naturally. Covid-19 did not need to be bred in a lab (whether it was or wasn't) because the Earth has already produced tons of viruses in the past and will produce more. Likewise, vaccinating everyone may produce even more vicious variations, but doing nothing at all may have produced vicious variations, as well. I don't see the overly aggressive vaccine rollout as a smoking gun. But I also don't see how it helped anything. All it can do is water down the efficiency of the vaccine. 

(**) Well, except that they are trying to get us addicted to a vaccine instead of just absorbing the virus that has already penetrated every nation on earth. Like many medications, once you take this vaccine you're basically addicted to it for life. And you will need boosters once or twice a year for the rest of your life: the numbers are pretty clear that the vaccines and the virus itself wear off after 4-6 months. Now if you have underlying conditions, then this is a lifeline. But if you don't, this is just unnecessary medication and warping your immune system to match the vaccine's version of Covid-19 every year for the rest of your life becomes a less good idea the longer you live. If you follow the gov't plan, you'll be on the gov't plan for life (that's the Democrat vision of public service). So far the vaccine (like the first taste) is free....but for how long....?

(***) As per Wikipedia: "Fascist movements advocate a form of democracy that advocates the rule of the most qualified, rather than rule by a majority of numbers." Only a matter of time til smart young political science kids realize that this is the action performed by Super-Delegates within the Democratic Party, the Party that wanted Bernie instead of Hillary in 2016 and anyone instead of Biden in 2020. Most good liberals I know pride themselves on being smart and informed, though it's always amazed me they've never grasped that their own Party is specifically designed to thwart the majority of its followers. Any minute now...it's gonna dawn on them...any minute now...

(****) I am a smoker, I am prone to respiratory infections, my lungs are the weakest part of my body. That said, I am otherwise in excellent health for my age, I exercise regularly, eat pretty healthy, socially I'm already comfortably distanced and thinking that I would be in the 98% of people who survive their encounter with Covid-19 does not strike me as hubris or tempting fate. I never stopped wearing the mask deciding some time ago that I'll wear it at least until summer 2022 regardless of what anyone else is doing. I like the mask, I'm a big fan of the mask, and I don't give a fuck what anyone else thinks, I'm keeping it when in public for the foreseeable future. Getting vaccinated wouldn't change that. Getting vaccinated would merely take me from a 98% chance of survival to a 99% chance and while some people need that extra marginal lift, I do not believe that I am one of them.

BBC News on American Voting Rights

BBC News: Voting Rights: How the Battle is unfolding across the US

According to the BBC, "At the centre (sic) of this national debate is a question of what is the greatest threat to American Democracy. Is it the security of an election process that in 2020 relied heavily on early and mail-in voting?"

No. That was never the problem. The problem is American politicians poke each other and position themselves behind minimal details rather than actually taking the act of voting seriously. Voting is the core of citizenship, connected directly to the Revolution, the Declaration, the Constitution, all that, it is the very center of your existence as a citizen.  You should be vigilant to changes in the system, against advantages and disadvantages. But you should also keep an eye on which crises are just babble for TV cameras and which present actual problems to solve. 

The Democrats and Republicans will likely spend the next two years going to war over 'voting rights' to distract the American people from what voting rights actually are or need to be. They're going bare knuckle over a semicolon on page 56 of some obscure Act instead of actually making voting more convenient and effective for the widest possible pool of citizens. The parties are just looking to put on a good show, some philosophical red meat that makes us feel like the politicians are fighting for us when in reality all they're doing is distracting the masses.

We just had an election where more people voted in more ways than ever before....the voting system has never been better. Imperfect since birth, but not bad and continuing to improve. The political outcry is because the parties need outcry, and where there is no outcry, the parties are expert at creating the appearance of a philosophical battle when actually they're fighting over something insignificant or tangential. 

Manipulative political bickering is the only problem with voting rights Americans have ever experienced. The Dems are making a vague grab at continually federalizing the workings of civic society and maybe it'll work, maybe it won't. If they pull it off, maybe it'll make a difference in our lives, maybe it won't. The talk will continue, though, and when a scoundrel needs a refuge, expect big talk about high falutin' gibbery like the failure of democracy. 

BBC: "Or is it a system, corrupted by the influence of big donors and powerful interests, that makes voting more difficult than necessary, particularly for historically disadvantaged groups?"

Big donors? Powerful interests? Restrictions on voting are now and have always been the result of the political parties and no one else. The government gives the citizens the right to vote because it wants the People to vote, to participate in the civic order. It is the political parties that carve up the People into sub-groups (some intentionally disadvantaged), for their own purposes. 

The Republicans and the Democrats are two extremely wealthy corporations that have colluded together to keep everyone else away from the forces of actual power (re: gov't spending). Most of their collusion revolves around making sure the People never challenges their duopoly over gov't power. (FWIW, the American People seem to love the 2-party system; hell, even through all my complaining, I must admit it has been remarkably stable for multiple centuries and that ain't bad. But I still can't help thinking the endless political bickering is to alter capital flows to partisans rather than citizens and...well, not much else. It's all about the money and just the money--and these are the guys that print the money) 

BBC: "The Democratic effort at national voting law centres (sic) around passage of the 'For the People Act'...(which) would guarantee that voters can receive a mail-in ballot if requested, mandate a minimum of 15 days of early voting before every federal election, require paper ballots and set standards for voting machines."

1) Mail-in ballot. The first (and only) time I voted was 1992. I voted by mail-in ballot. I can only speak for Fayette County, Kentucky in 1992, but as for as I know, mail-in ballots are always available if requested. And if they've ever not been available, you should've complained to your representatives. 

2) 15 days of early voting. I don't really understand what this means. Election Day is election day, early voting is fine with me, but the votes would sit uncounted (right?) until Election Day. Election Day is an end point, not a beginning point, there has to be an agreed-upon moment where the voting comes to a close, but what difference does when we start the vote? How does it work? (I don't get why this is important)

3) Paper ballots. Uh oh, here's the problem--should be a problem for Liberals more than Conservatives! Once you mandate a specific form of ballot itself, then you cut off any evolution of what ballots can be. As we move further and further into the digital world, paper ballots themselves will become (already are, actually) obsolete and wasteful. And this will LIMIT rather than expand the range of voting population. 

If Democrats were really looking out for the American people (which, of course, they are not) they wouldn't be putting forward such a short sighted proposition. Republicans, too, should run screaming from this kind of Federal control but they won't, because they're Republicans (rather than rational thinkers). Paper ballots are fine, but other types of ballots may benefit the citizenry, too, so why create limitation rather expansion? The Left will continually applaud themselves for giving away rights, but the Right is too stupid to keep it from happening because both think of their own Partisan advantage rather than the welfare of the American populace. The Citizenry isn't advanced by this waste of effort, our choices are delineated and neutered.  

4) Standards for voting machines. Voting itself is county by county--which is why this bill is either utterly pointless (applies only to federal guidelines, of which there really aren't many) or incredibly important (amazing attempted power grab at centralizing voting which has hitherto always been very local). I think its the former rather than the latter. Politicians love to blather about stuff designed to be insignificant knowing full well its just a (micro) money-sucking tool and not an actual (macro) evolution of the social order. For the Feds to grab control it means they'd have to grab it from a million little fish out there, but those fish are gonna bite back. There's a reason why voting is extremely local--and extremely not Federal--in USA: even piddly politicians don't like giving up their power. And hanging chads is their super power. 

BBC: "It would prohibit states from disenfranchising felons who have completed their sentences and enact new restrictions on undisclosed 'dark money' contributions."

1) Disenfranchising felons should never have been authorized by any legislature or accepted by any judiciary. What jurisdiction has the right to permanently limit Constitutional rights to citizens? I support not letting inmates vote, violent crimes should come with cessation of some Constitutional rights while incarcerated. But once the sentence has been served, why should the State exert any cessation of Constitutional opportunities of the Citizen? By what authority is Constitutional protection stripped from a citizen? Why would past criminal activity ever be a consideration to remove natural born rights? 

We're treating this like the gov't is granting us a right, when in fact the hope here is that it stops removing this right. Liberals, Libertarians and Conservatives alike should be in support of this. How it took 200 years to get here (and I don't know that this will be reversed) is shameful and irritating. 

2) Restrictions on 'dark money' contributions is, to my mind, a "campaign" issue rather than a "voting" issue, but I don't make the issues. I'm not opposed to restricting dark money, though I doubt any of the current Our Gang could actually craft something useful. It seems to me the proper reading of Citizens United v Fed Election Commission is that political contributions should be more documented rather than less but I don't know that it has played out that way. As long as all contributions are documented and made public, I'm cool with it. (Don't get me wrong, I'd never give a politician any of my money, that's absurd and I'm skeptical of anyone that would give their money to these most horrible people in our society, but if people wanna give their money to hucksters, liars, fools, and soothsayers, they should be free to do so) 

"Dark" Money doesn't necessarily mean illegal contributions, sometimes it can mean out of state contributions or obscure sources which may or may not be illegal, so dumping potential criminal activity right in a patch of legal activity is an intentional obfuscation. Legislators know very well they're stirring the pot by leaving future arguments built into the laws they write.

BBC: "Many new voters would be automatically registered under the legislation, which also requires tech companies to disclose information about political advertising, create new government support for small donor-funded candidates and seek to end practices of "gerrymandering" voting maps for partisan advantage."

1) Automatic registration. Yes, this is how it should always have worked, tied to taxation (re: the annual piece of paperwork all citizens are expected to submit). The reason it doesn't work that way (and never has) is because the political parties don't want it. It is the political parties--and only the political parties--that limit voting opportunities in USA. Always. Again, this is an example of the politics making voting harder rather than easier and the Partisans have been getting away with it for centuries. (Bet you a dollar this provision is left out)

2) Tech companies disclose advertising. Yeah, whatever. Trying to get "information" from a tech company is like an orphan asking for more: you'll look really sympathetic when you don't get what you want but that's as good as its gonna get. This is just vague puffery that looks like an opportunity for politicians to make vague future wars on each other through trying to manipulate the tech industry (who will likely be one step ahead of the politicos for the foreseeable future). Any and all of that makes me wanna barf. 

3) Gov't support for donor-funded candidates is something that already happens, right? Remember when Obama turned down gov't sponsorship in 2008 because his donations were so high? This already happens when the parties leave certain candidates out of the big money. Whatever, just another way to funnel federal monies straight into Partisan bank accounts. Serves no other purpose. I see no benefit to the Citizenry, merely Public monies going to Party interests. 

4) "Gerrymandering" *exasperate shrug* You realize that most voting blocs of citizens don't live in a rectangle or a perfect circle, right? The sheer bizarre shape of a voting district probably has more to do with physical landmarks (mountains, highways, etc) than political chicanery; indeed, weird shapes should be expected. Every 10 years as per the Constitution, the Congressional districts are re-drawn and the Party in power at that time has the power to make it so. This is how it has always worked since 1790. Each party has put their grubby fingerprints on the drawings numerous times over the years, there is nothing new about it or out of the ordinary about it. And the weird shape of the map is not a smoking gun. 

If we endeavor to change this system, the worthwhile change would be to convene a private body--outside of Congress (or State Legislatures)--every 10 years to perform this task. Okay. First, that requires Congressmen to give up their grubby powers and hand it over to a bunch of outsiders (yeah, that ain't happening). Even if that did happen, what rationale for voter re-districting would this independent body take up? What is the proper way to draw districts? Yeah....there is no answer to that question. Even an independent body would likely draw it up based on partisan voting patterns because, well, what else is there? 

For example, if a large city has a cluster of African-Americans, is it advantageous to the local African-Americans to be lumped together in one district that they could then politically dominate? Or better to be divided across 3-4 districts, to ensure African-American representation across a range of seats? What's better for African-Americans in that scenario? I dunno, how would anyone know that? We would only know over time if creating an African-American dominated district is better than creating a wider dispersal of African-American constituency--and even then, whose opinion determines what is "better"? What "advantages" this population and what "disadvantages" them? I dunno. How would anyone know? Only time will tell if any given policy ever does any of the things that it's supposed to do. I vote for empowering the citizenry against unnecessary gov't spending at all times. How does that effect re-districting?

The Party in power gets to be in charge of the process, how else would it work? Why would we have imbued Congress with these primary powers if we did not expect them to adjudicate things amongst themselves? "Amongst themselves" means majority power in the House with some minority powers in the Senate. This is one of those rubber to the road moments, this is just how the process works, trying to change that is a feudal process--indeed, what exactly is there to 'change'? 

The debate is a non-starter and in this case the solution is just a new version of the same problem. The system we call "gerrymandering" is what it is. It is inherently politically corrupt in the sense that everything the gov't does is corrupt. We could call it something else but getting rid of the reapportionment of Congressional districts is not gonna happen--and that's all 'gerrymandering' is. So what is it you think you're trying to get rid of by 'banning' it? (And how do you plan on 'banning' it?) 

As for as I'm concerned, any move of Congress is a no-win situation, we're all disadvantaged every time any of them do anything. Occasionally the agglomeration of sheer gov't waste creates enough detritus to power the economy, I am for empowering the citizen to be the most in control of his own destiny; preferably with the aid of (rather than threat from) the gov't (but figuring out how to do that is rather complicated). 

BBC: "Democrats have since turned their focus to updating the Voting Rights Act, a 1960s-era law that has been curtailed by the Supreme Court over the past decade."

What the Supreme Court pointed out was that the Voting Rights Acts was basically defunct because it hadn't been updated (or actually employed) since 1972. The Supreme Court didn't 'curtail' anything, it pointed out that the Act had not been properly maintained and was basically null and void on its own. It showed clearly what needed to be changed for re-submission to the legislature, which could have happened without much effort at any point since that decision was handed down. Instead, the Dems have not bothered to re-write or re-submit the bill because claiming victimhood is politically more palatable and blaming the Supreme Court for something that clearly hasn't been important since 1972 is easy money to a politician. 

BBC: "Democrats counter that the confidence of the public has been damaged by the unsubstantiated allegations made by Trump and others after November's balloting."

Even in foreign lands the prevailing narrative is Trump is responsible for all ills. Not at all. Voting rights improprieties in USA go back to the 1780s--probably earlier. I guarantee this problem is older than Trump--there are multiple amendments to the Constitution on this very topic, voting rights didn't just appear ten minutes ago. 

Do you understand what you're doing when you blame Trump for everything? You're getting further from ascertaining the real problems that need solving and engaging in empty cult of personality uselessness designed to keep the masses--even the educated fancy pants masses--from really absorbing what their gov't is, what it does and can do and how it interacts with the citizenry. 

Hurling mud is the easiest form of rhetoric and Trump is the muddiest target America has produced in ages. That's not a defense of Trump, it is a call to ignore the sideshow and the demagoguery that comes in his wake. But none of this started with Trump, he is just the most convenient distraction for Partisans to wave in front of the American People. 

"Taxation without representation is theft!" was one of the battle cries of 1776. The understanding is clear: taxation is a fact of life but representation needs to be demanded. The colonists of the Eastern seaboard were tired of being made to pay for British imperialism, especially since it no longer served colonial interests. 

The ability to choose our own leaders is what it means to be an American, the ability to remove them when they have failed us is the purest, best power the American people have. And protecting that power should be our foremost concern because it so primary. 

But once you actually elect the leaders, they combine around their own necessities, the necessities of representing. An infrastructure of gov't sets in quickly (just ask George Washington, that dude hated being president). The power of the people to choose their own representatives fades once the representatives themselves create their own power blocs within the façade of gov't. 

A corporation becomes prominent when it serves the needs of the consumers, it will make whatever adjustments the consumers demand in order to maintain its position. But when the corporation gets big enough, it moves on to its own concerns and consumer influence becomes more of a suggestion than a motivating force. Political philosophy is just a consumer good, like bicycle tires or yogurt. You buy it off the shelf--it's called 'retail politics' for a reason. And the exotic partisans have 'boutique' issues, the consumer relations of the game itself are built right into the language. 

When set against each other politicians are generally more successful at playing a negative game as opposed to a positive one: loving your favorite candidate isn't nearly as important as hating the opposing candidate. Here the partisans keep the people divided, using hatred as animus, and now using the tool of voting to injure each other. Voting is is presented as a weapon rather than a right and thus some people must have their weapon removed. 

Voter suppression is always and only a function of political will, what else could it be? Who else can manipulate the levers of democracy except the politicians? Politicians are just entertainers, they say what the paying-est people want to hear in order to keep their jobs. And by driving each other from the marketplace, they injure the Citizenry's right to choose. And by pretending to fight for those rights, the Citizens are meant to feel protected when in fact they're more in danger than ever. 

Okay, so Major League Baseball decided they didn't like Georgia's voting laws, so they abruptly moved the All-Star Game from Atlanta to Denver. Okay, so what is Colorado doing that makes their laws so clearly better than Georgia's? I dunno, we never had that debate. All I know about the odious Georgia laws is that you're not allowed to give water to someone standing in line. I have no idea why giving water to someone waiting is a threat to democracy, but then again I have no idea why people stand in line to vote. Seems like we're fighting over a symptom rather than the disease. I'm guessing most all the people in those lines would have cell phones, no? Why doesn't everyone just hit a button on their phone in the privacy of their home weeks ahead of the election if they want? And if you say, 'that method of voting wouldn't be secure enough!' I would say, 'as opposed to what? What is the form of voting that is infallible?' 

Major League Baseball is trying to convince us that our current system is dangerous enough to not even deserve an exhibition baseball game in Atlanta! Well, what the fuck could be so different about voting on an app? If the point is to make things easier to vote--something I firmly believe in--then why aren't we voting on our phones yet? If you think its because paper ballots are safer....why do you think that?

The politicians are using the most dire language to describe the most mundane elements of our freedoms. And the People have become so use to pointless political blather that no one is even bothering to notice the deception the partisans are trying to pull over on us. The problems with voting are the same problems we've had for decades: that the politicians occasionally remove rights from us and then try to convince us they're doing it for our protection. 

The technology rules us, not the politicians. The technology rules the politicians, too. We need to get right with the coming technology and we need the gov't to protect us. And that's precisely not what its doing because the Partisans need to keep us unprotected for their benefit. They're pretending to fight for you but the Parties are fighting for themselves; they, like the gov't, are planning on out-living you. They are doing whatever it takes to keep the Citizenry ignorant of the future. When it gets to the level of something as basic, as primary as voting rights, then it's clear to see the Democrats and Republicans are using our rights as bargaining chips. This is a game to these corporations and the citizenry are the tokens.

The political parties are the scourge of our nation. They're more or less in an intertwined death struggle that's dragging us further from our Constitutional rights. You can pick your favorite one, but why bother? They're both foul, they're both self-interested, they both live on ignorance and manipulation--and the nicest thing I can say is that they're both much too inefficient to actually be as bad as they could be. 

Voting is the same problem it always was. The details are just a part of someone's self-aggrandizing narrative. How hard is it for you to vote? If it is hard in any way, you should stampede to your local, state and federal representatives at least to register complaint. Try to live from your own experience rather than imagining yourself (or others) as a trending statistic. All the Republic asks of its citizens is for each one of you to be you. When it comes to your relation to voting, remember it belongs to you, it cannot be taken from you, though the Partisans will endeavor to make you work for it while pretending to serve you. 

Your right to vote is clearly laid out in the Constitution therefore--think about it!--no law on voting rights can expand the Constitution. Therefore any law on voting rights--put forth by any party in any place at any time--can do nothing but LIMIT voting rights. As a citizen you should be wary of anything related to "voting rights" because it can only be about limiting rights, not extending them. 

The partisans know that this is a phony debate that can only end up worse for the citizenry. You may think you're on the right side of this but I assure you there is no right side of this debate.   

Egypt in the Arab Spring (*)

The Arab Spring (Dec 2010/Jan 2011)

Turmoil in Tunisia spreads rapidly around the Arab world, including Egypt. 

Raw footage from Cairo (Jan 25, 2011)
From "Cracked Cauldrons" by Tamim al-Barghouti (**): "During the eighteen days of demonstrations between January 25 and February 11, the Egyptian army command estimated the number of demonstrators throughout the country to have been around 20 million...these large numbers of people were able to manage communication, supply, information, security, defense, and negotiation without any ministries, committees, parties, or any other hierarchical centralized governing body...when public opinion in Tahrir Square was to continue the sit-in until Mubarek resigned, no conservative party could convince the masses to leave and when the people decided to leave after Mubarek's resignation, no radical party could convince them to stay." (88-89)

Hosni Mubarak ascended to power following the assassination of Anwar Sadat in 1980 and ruled with an iron fist for decades. The corruption is well known, even tolerated, but the people are energized and suddenly decide they want a new leader.

Mubarak steps down (Feb 11, 2011) The al-Jazeera overview of Mubarak's career. 

CNN presents President Obama's comment (Feb 11, 2011)
The USA has long supported Egypt's military, though the Americans have been wary of the other sectors of Egyptian culture. The American assumption is that if the military is well entrenched in the power structure then chaos will be avoided. Think of it less as USA trying to control Egypt (not possible) and more of USA just wanting to bet on a winner.

The upheaval leads to the closest watched Parliamentary elections in memory. The feeling of a new era in Egyptian leadership is palpable.

South African media on the Parliamentary election (Nov 26, 2011)

Here's the PBS view of Morocco on December 23, 2011. The Arab Spring has introduced terms and concepts for liberalization but not much real action. 

The Brookings Institution on the Presidential elections (May 23, 2012)

The Americans:

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton

Vice President Joe Biden

Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel 

US Ambassador to Egypt Anne Patterson

Head of Central Command General James Mattis

In short: Clinton thinks Morsi is in over his head, Hegel seems to kinda like Morsi, Mattis thinks Morsi is an Islamist zealot and must be stopped, Patterson thinks Morsi has no chance of staying in office for very long (*spoiler alert* Patterson's the winner here). 

(April 2012) Obama appoints Michael Flynn as Director of Intelligence. Flynn agrees with Mattis that Morsi is an Islamist of the rankest order and must go.

The Egyptian people choose Mohammed Morsi, the Muslim Brothers candidate. Truth be told he's a minor figure in the Brotherhood, which is precisely why he is allowed to rise to the top. Once elected, he tries to establish himself as leader.

Telegraph UK covers Morsi's symbolic oath (June 29, 2012) 

But the military asserts control over Morsi immediately, even demanding he take his oath of office in the Constitutional Court, who only begrudgingly allowed him to be elected in the first place. Telegraph UK covers as Morsi takes the real oath in the Court (June 30, 2012)

In January 2013, President Obama removes General Mattis as head of Central Command for Lloyd Austin.

In February 2013 John Kerry replaces Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State. (Kerry thinks Morsi is an idiot and probably won't last long or be very effective)

The Americans (outside of Hegel) never develop much faith in Morsi. And...well...that lack of faith was rewarded. 

The al-Jazeera view of Morsi's ouster (July 3, 2013)

The Guardian UK with Sisi's announcement of Morsi's ouster (July 4, 2013) 
General Sisi was head of Intelligence from 2010-2012, then became Morsi's Secretary of Defense in 2013. Observers differ on how much power Sisi let Morsi have but everyone knows the power was always Sisi's to give.

EuroNews covers the Muslim Brotherhood slaughter (Aug 14, 2013)

On Demand News reports  Mohammad Bodie of the Muslim Brotherhood has been arrested (August 19, 2013)

Gen. Michael Flynn retires from the military (August 7, 2014)
An outspoken anti-Islamist, his rhetoric was not appreciated by the Obama White House (and still so generally unappreciated as to be chased from the Trump White House almost instantly). 

But this calls attention to the difference between USA and Egypt: the Director of Intelligence works for the President, who is the Commander in Chief of the military, but in Egypt the military is a separate and distinct autonomous body, divorced from the political apparatus of the state. In USA, a power hungry intelligence minister writes books, teaches grad students or gets a talk radio show; in Egypt he removes and replaces the President, because it is the military that rules not the politicians.

Sisi thought Morsi was too weak to rule and that forces compelled him to remove Morsi and take power himself (incidentally, virtually everyone preferred Sisi to Morsi, whether it was the right thing or not); while in USA Flynn is not only drummed out of power but the only way back into the politics game for Flynn was to jump on the Trump bandwagon (which had plenty of empty space on it in those days, if you'll recall) and even then he couldn't overcome petty politics. Hey, in USA the leaders can't say all that's really on their minds, in Egypt the leader doesn't ever have to say anything at all.

Kenyan media reports on Egypt's new election laws (March 2, 2015)

BBC interview of Sisi (Nov 6, 2015)

Mubarrak acquitted, gets to retire in peace (March 2017)

Trump with Sisi (April 3, 2017) 

Sisi wins election (April 3, 2018)

PBS talks with David Kirkpatrick about his book Into the Hands of the Soldiers: Freedom and Chaos in Egypt and the Middle East. (August 14, 2018) (This was the book I read that inspired this blog-form deep dive)

Sisi has recently met with Germany's Angela Merkel, Russia's Vladimir Putin and China's Vice President Wang Qishan, in addition to attempting to brokering a partnership between Hamas and the Palestinian Authority. So Sisi is firmly in control of Egypt and seems to be looking outward for peaceful relations and economic growth. Will any of this benefit the Egyptian people?

PS -- President Obama Speaks to the Muslim World from Cairo, Egypt (June 4, 2009)

"Government of the people by the people....must maintain your power by consent, not coercion"

This all kinda reminds me of the collapse of the Qing Dynasty in the early 20th century. A republic took hold (briefly), then Sun Yat-sen is quickly chased from power, the next guy is assassinated, the military rules for a while, the Qing comes back but then falls apart leading to pitched battles in the streets, which is how Chaing Kai-shek seizes power, rules through World War II. Once the dynasty falls, the people dream of republican gov't but it doesn't solve all problems right away, so the people lose faith, the political structure falls apart and then only the strong survive. The period of Chaing is kinda stable but hardly peaceful: he's fighting Communists pretty much from jump and then the invading Japanese. The combination of the two (and kleptocratic financial mismanagement) drives Chaing to Taiwan where it still pretends to be "China" pretty much to this day.

In that example, the Chinese people had been ruled for centuries by the steady boring empire that rules over everything. Then the empire falls apart and no one knows what to do. That leads to 1) chaos, 2) an attempt to return to the old way, 3) more chaos, 4) military rule.

So Egypt finally tired of Mubarak (thought to be the 2nd longest reign in 5000 years of Egyptian history) and reached for the opposition, the Muslim Brothers. Their introduction was fraught with peril from the beginning and the people tire of that within a year, which leads back to military rule. The Muslim Brothers are given just enough power to appear incompetent and then jerked back to the private sector or the jails (or the cemeteries). The military rule kinda pretends to be democratic and beholden to an elected legislature but really the military is the military. The upside is that Sisi provides stability for a long, long time; the downside is that now nothing will ever get better and the people will live in a...stable...hellscape of degradation and decline, while the military-industrial apparatus loots the wealth. 

The question is: Should Egypt prefer stability or progress? Should USA prefer what Egypt prefers? Is it possible to have both? When was the last time Egypt had either? 

(*) I read Into the Hands of the Soldiers: Freedom and Chaos in Egypt and the Middle East by David Kirkpatrick in the summer of 2018. As I recall the book was fairly new at the time. The book (a good read, very informative) inspired me to undertake a long post or collection of posts that I didn't finish compiling at the time. So I just finished compiling them here. 

My last major edits were in November of 2018. I didn't put this up back in the day because I was...I dunno...having trouble with the links or something. But outside of minor word choice changes and updating/re-shaping the links and pictures, I didn't change this at all from what I found amongst the drafts. Not sure why I didn't try harder back then to get this up but I am a lazy man. 

I've never waited over two years to post anything before (though I do have unpublished drafts older than this), but I'm still cool with the sentiments that were in place. Text-wise, I didn't really delete or add anything. The links and pics were all there, I just never properly organized them before. I still think this all still relevant, so here it is. 

(**) This essay appears in the collection Shifting Sands edited by Raja Shehadeh and Penny Johnson.

'A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace' -- John Peter Barlow

More than two decades old and still (mostly) hits the mark. "The global conveyance of thought no longer requires your factories to accomplish....May it be more humane and fair than the world your governments have made before."

You are terrified of your own children, since they are natives in a world where you will always be immigrants. Because you fear them, you entrust your bureaucracies with the parental responsibilities you are too cowardly to confront yourselves.

Amen.

The Heliopause

Last year I began work on a series of blog posts about astronomy, cosmology, physics, etc., that I grew tired of and have yet to post. Perhaps I'll return to them but until then I stumbled on this video and it intrigued me.

Heads up: You can skip the first minute (which is just internet-style self-congratulations) and you can stop watching around 5:30 minutes in, when it starts yammering on about the larger universe, as if that is pertinent to the edge of our solar system. But the four and half minutes in between is intriguing. 

This video doesn't really tell us anything new, just a follow up to discoveries made a while ago, as in this Nature abstract from November 2019 about Voyager 2. And while this video doesn't explicitly confirm anything I'm about to write, it doesn't refute either. So here it is. 

As discovered by Voyager 2 in the past decade or so, the edge of our solar system is a giant wall of plasma. It seems to me this is where the heat of the sun no longer warms the cold empty space and the wall of plasma is decaying photons that can exist no longer. While the title of the above video suggests that there is a wall at the edge of our solar system, the video doesn't actually go that far. So I will. On the other side of the wall of fire is likely a wall of cold--and yes, I mean a solid wall. A solid wall of Bose-Einstein condensate. 

At super cold temperatures, bosons will link together into a solid. On the other side of the wall of fire at the edge of the heliosphere is, I suggest, a solid wall of cold. It is perhaps permeable, it is perhaps not very thick. Is all of empty space solid? I doubt there would be enough particles to form into anything solid. But around stars it seems to me a screen of ice, like frost on a windshield, should be pretty standard. The wall of cold (protons) would be the other half of the decaying photons creating the wall of plasma (electrons). I'm sure I'm not saying that correctly; photons, bosons, fermions, etc, aren't really protons or electrons, but when the power of the sun begins to fade, the breakdown of the photons could create wildly reactive effluvia. 

Why is this important? Remember this thing from a coupla years ago: Oumuamua. If this is from outside of the solar system, how did it penetrate the wall of plasma and/or the wall of ice? As the outer layer of the earth's atmosphere basically shreds intruders to dust, wouldn't our solar system be similarly impenetrable? (Or at least only penetrable by highly coordinated systems?)

So are we sure Oumuamua is from beyond the heliosphere? Isn't it important for us to track it as it leaves the solar system? Yes, I understand it is vanishingly small but is there something better for NASA to do?

My astronomy binge last year was incredibly disappointing, almost heartbreaking as I've been fascinated by the cosmos since I was a little boy. But our understanding of what lies beyond our heliosphere strikes me as delusional at best, cynical and manipulative at worst and realistically is merely fiction. Again: perhaps I'll return to the subject (I actually did a lot of writing) and perhaps I won't (until something new happens, I reckon I'll just stick with my skepticism). 

The thing about Oumuamua is that it seems more likely to me that it is not alien to the heliosphere but native to it. How long has it been flinging around out there? Just a thought.

The Trump Years

I am a student of history. I tend to ignore the world I live in favoring to view instead the world we will all one day look back on.  How will history remember Trump?

I think 20 years from now Trump will be as distant (possibly even way more distant) than Bill Clinton is to people now; kids today probably only know Clinton as Hillary's husband, though I don't think that view will last long into the future. I think 20 years from now Trump will still be hated--I suspect "Trump" will be a buzzword for universal disgust for the rest of my lifetime. But will we recall everything that he did and/or everything that happened during his term in the Oval Office? I doubt it, because the hatred for Trump never needed a reason to begin with, so why would we bother to catalog his efforts? 

The historian's eye view will look back on Trump's presidency, I think, with as much of an emphasis on the anti-Trump rhetoric as to Trump himself. Trump courted the anti-Trump media, one of the rare Republicans that actually enjoys being the villain and feels like getting tarred in the media all day is a sign of his success. To be sure, Trump will likely never develop any real defenders in the future but the further we get away from this time, the harder it will be to distinguish, say, the George Floyd protests from the January 6th siege on the Capitol.  It will all look like one continuous four year struggle of social unrest with blame going all around. (*) Beginning with the FBI wiretapping the presumptive national security adviser or the calls for Trump's impeachment before he was even inaugurated! Moving through the all day every day anti-Trump media rhetoric, the first impeachment (which failed to remove him from office and actually resulted in more votes for Trump in 2020 than he received in 2016) and culminating in Trump's embarrassingly clumsy and self-serving handling of his failure to win reelection.  Future historians will just lump it all together as the collective media-driven angst of the American populace finally driven over the edge by Covid-19. 

Will we look back on January 6th with shame and revulsion? I suspect not. Outside of tying it to Trump's legacy--which, again, needs no actual events to be recalled--I doubt the siege on the Capitol will be remembered any better than any of the other previous sieges on the Capitol (**). Watching the gravity-inflected voices of the chattering media trying to make this seem like the next 9/11 is mystifying to me because it's the exact opposite: we just watched Lebron James dribble the ball off his foot and we're acting like he just hit the game winner at the buzzer. The "siege" accomplished nothing, because there was nothing accomplish. 

And rather than being one of those indelible cultural moments that everyone will forever remember (9/11 for contemporary adults, the Challenger for my generation, JFK for my parents, Pearl Harbor for grandparents), I think this will fade because the sheer range of what people saw (and will see) is too diffuse to actually make sense of. There's video of cops letting people into the Capitol, video of cops fighting to hold people out, video of cops taking selfies with rioters, video of cops shooting and killing a rioter. Even in the future they will not know how to draw that fine line between carnival and circus. Even in the future they'll see real violence but they'll also know that these people were not mowed down by a hail of bullets, nor were they really any threat to anyone but themselves (and the cops). 

The reason those rioters weren't mowed down by a hail of bullets (on live television, no less) was because that would've been a far more traumatic experience for the country than what actually happened. And what actually happened? According to Chuck Shumer, upon returning to the Senate floor to perform the business of January 6: "As we reconvene tonight, let us remember in the end all this mob has really accomplished is to delay our work by a few hours.  We will resume our responsibilities now and we will finish our task tonight. The House and Senate chambers will be restored good as new and ready for legislating in short order." Rarely has Senator Shumer taken the words right out of my mouth, but that is precisely what I was thinking as I watched the Senate reconvene that night. 

This is one of the many weird little moments of American history that people forget about because in the world of politics there is always something new to take up our attention and only future historians actually look back to figure out what took place. It will be noted in the public record that windows were smashed, a police officer was killed (***), as was one of the rioters, and the House and Senate took a few hours longer than usual to perform its daily business. 

If this is the worst the pro-Trump hate-driven redneck right wing nationalists has to offer, then we have nothing to fear. Likewise, if Black Lives Matter can produce nothing more than a few dozen rowdier than normal public gatherings every summer, then the Republic will not soon die. The Media speeds up the wider recognition of these spasms of action so they hit with greater intensity but they burn out quickly because no one is in enough agreement to actually affect any actual change. The Media holds the key to the dreaded 'mass mobilization' because it can reach so many people so quickly; but it draws so many people in so many different directions that there is no coherent center and violence peters out quickly. (How many more generations until the People learn to tune out even the Media itself?)

We fear the tinderbox event that will ignite a wider conflagration but what we see instead is a constant simmering of vague antagonism that will likely never subside but I think won't combust (any time soon). We were born of crisis and we have lived in crisis every day since. Our politics is the non-stop need for crisis and the wider our society grows, the wider and wider the crises--real and imagined--will grow, as well. We drive each other to panic, it's just what we do. But we don't go to extremes because we are such a diverse nation with so many voices in so many stages of life, so many socioeconomic levels, so many different stages of educational and professional attainment, that we are pulled to and fro but never in any particular direction. So many voices louder than ever--and what do you know?--they don't agree on anything. That's not Politics, that's just how Life works.

I think what Trump wanted on January 6th was for his band of drunken redneck slobs to go down to the Capitol and stand around outside looking all menacing. If violence erupted with cops, then fine, he can say, 'my people get beat up by the cops, too!' I don't think he expected cops to open the barriers and just let people in (a brilliant gambit, still not sure who to credit for that: let the rowdies inside, let them show the world how much they truly respect the United States Congress). And the rowdies had no plan because they've never understood how anything works and they didn't know what they were supposed to do anyway (****), so they mostly bumbled around like ugly Americans and then when a single shot was fired, they scattered like roaches with the light on. 

I can see calling these rioters "Insurrectionists" because I can believe that some of these people actually believed that that's what they were doing; but that doesn't make what they did an "Insurrection". What would have been "insurrectioned" that day if the rioters had succeeded? Is there any scenario where any actions taken by those rioters would've resulted in a transfer of gov't power? No. So while we can be horrified and reviled by the shameless display of stupidity, thinking of it an as attempted overthrow of the gov't is pretty ignorant to what gov't overthrows have typically looked liked throughout history. Any gov't that would've fallen to the January 6 rioters is no gov't at all. Is this an insurrection?

The point was to protest the electoral college (suddenly making the Left the defenders of a system they've never liked) and put pressure on Mike Pence in hopes of crushing his political hopes and dreams. But the actual procedural reality of these moves is nil. None of these things are how elections work.  

Look, here's how the two-party system operates: at the end of the day the secret handshake committee has decided that Democrats and Republicans will not fuck with elections. The peaceful transfer of power is held up as the highest ideal and both parties have pledged to this. If they think they can steal an election, they will, but deep down the parties understand that all they have is the force of their corruption and that there are limits to that. So they have agreed to let election results go pretty much uncontested. The election of 1960, for example, may have been a steal, but it was stolen fair and square (*****). What about Bush v Gore, I hear you say. Well, that was an election that was so fucking close they actually had to bust out procedure. The election of 2000 is not an example of a 'steal' but of a deadlock that actually had to be adjudicated in dusty and forgotten methods. 

Trump's complaints about the 2020 election results, though clearly self-aggrandizing, were not really out of bounds legally speaking. It isn't for Yahoo News to determine whether Trump's claims were "baseless", it is for the courts to decide and if Trump--or any other contestant--wants to challenge the vote in any of the 50 states, that is legal and permissible and might even be successful (although I doubt it, because that's not what the parties want). If the Republican Party really wanted to keep Trump, I think some of his legal challenges would've succeeded--there would've been managers, commissioners, aldermen, supervisors, county blah blahs found to corroborate his claims. That shit didn't happen because the Republicans were cognizant that the election results were not going to be overturned and that Trump's efforts were abhorrent to the secret handshake about the peaceful transition of power. 

But Trump never gave a shit about two-party politics--that's the whole reason he won in 2016. Trump was out for Trump and the party apparatus wasn't coaxed by his bullying. I believe this is why Trump didn't campaign as hard as he could have in the senate run off elections (fuck the Republicans, they didn't do anything for me! What do I care if they lose the Senate?), making for a weird end to his term: his popularity swamped the Republican Party and when he chose to forsake them, he left them completely out of power in his wake. 

As for contesting the election, that is Trump speaking to his base. You read "base" and think politics, but I would suggest no. Trump never wanted to be president, never cared about the presidency, never cared about this two-party bullshit. He is always out for his own brand, which demands non-stop growth of popularity. Contesting the election is just something he had to do to convince his people that he was trying. But he's ready to be a public citizen again, he's ready to be out of the shackles of the White House. Or...at least he was...until January 6th. His followers were so ineffective and stupid they got Trump impeached again, banned from Twitter (the REAL punishment) and may well have tied Trump forever to the booger eaters and conspiracy theory whackos (and I mean the ones that even the conspiracy whackos think are whackos!) and finished him for good. The post-Presidency plan was to go back to being a self-important media shill. But January 6th showed his enemies he has no real power, played out his supporters as a bunch of out of touch weirdos and may well have gotten him banned from running again (******). January 6th finished off the political career of Donald Trump and it was his own fuckin' fault. He played with fire and eventually it burned up everything he had. 

I'm all for the second impeachment. Unlike the first one, which I found frivolous, pointless and shamelessly political, this one strikes me as exactly what the impeachment was designed for. And though I think the wording of the Impeachment is a bit clumsy, I understand the desire to act quickly while the public mood is so decisive. And of course this is not a legal trial but a purely political vote, so while I'd personally rather see some real legal language in this piece of posterity, I also acknowledge that that isn't required and as time is of the essence, I'm willing to let it go. 

And it deliciously places the dagger in Mitch McConnell's hand. I never thought McConnell liked Trump and I bet he's no more eager to have Trump blathering on about 2024 than anyone else is. McConnell is the ultimate representative of the two-party handshake system I described above. And Trump was always a threat to that order and to McConnell's beloved Republican Party. Now McConnell has the chance to string up Trump's carcass, gut the fucking pig, bleed him out on the floor of the Senate and say, 'I never liked that piece of shit, he was never one of us and if you're offended by what I just did, then go vote Democrat.' (*******)

I suspect McConnell's request for a two-week recess is so that the Republicans can clear out the Trump wackos and bringing back some semblance of order to the GOP. If so, then gutting Trump like a strung-up hog is absolutely the way to go. The Republicans can shed themselves of the dead weight in a clear and decisive manner and I suspect there are plenty of Republicans that are more than happy to rid themselves once and for all of Trump (off the top of my head I can think of one named Melania). 

The harder the Democrats work to make the January 6th siege look like 9/11, the more they give Trump and his booger-eating followers a lever to come back in 2024--we're powerful, they're afraid of us!. But if they don't play this up for all its worth, then the Twitter Left will feel 'disrespected'--remember the Liberal Media that hated Trump never particularly liked Biden. But if the Democrats stand aside and let the Republicans do it, it could provide some of that 'unity' that politicians love talking about so much. Removing Trump's ability to run again vastly decreases his blathering power in the coming years. And while getting Trump out of office was never that meaningful, running him out of Twitter might be the real death knell. He's melting like the Wicked Witch he always was. 

When Twitter/Facebook/etc banned Trump basically what they were saying was they thought they could survive just fine without the traffic that Trump was driving. And while the Liberal Left spent every day for the last four years sipping the Trump cocktail, Twitter is confident that Twitter has taken over enough that people will just keep Twittering even after Trump is gone. I suspect Twitter is correct. 

Now is the time for Trump to prove how popular he actually is by forming his own media empire...except that this Capitol siege basically just showed that his following ain't enough. And what political cronies he may have taken with him are surely abandoning him as fast they can. What will be remembered in political circles is the way he baited potentially violent throngs of people into going after Mike Pence. That is an impeachable offense! Even a criminal offense! That is something that will finish off Trump for good in Washington. (And I wouldn't be surprised if it turns Pence into a more beloved figure in Republican insider circles)

Liberal media can keep Republicans from getting too popular but can't create a Democrat consensus at the same time. Realistically this is called 'checks and balances', though ordinary citizens just think of it as nobody getting what they want. I've long believed that Politics is the province of charlatans and fools; now after the Trump years, I can add booger eaters and unsatisfiables to this list as well. Umbrage taking is deep in our lineage and it is annoying and gross and I can't believe we still do it. Americans talk a lot of shit considering how much pearl-clutching they do.  

It isn't Trump that made me numb, it was the anti-Trump. Listen, I never cared about Trump, I never liked Trump, I never supported Trump, I never voted for Trump, I never sought out Trump. And I don't spend much time at distinctly right-wing media centers, so it wasn't pro-Trump blather I heard all day. It was the anti-Trump monolith that drove me so far away from the Left. The Left hated on Trump all day every day without ever bothering to differentiate the important stuff (reckless and stupid trade war with China) from insignificant nonsense (Stormy Daniels). There were many many many good reasons to hate Trump and I don't think the Left ever bothered to come up with one because they have no need for objective reality. They hated Trump not for anything he actually did but for merely being elected. 

The Good/Bad news is this: this is how it is supposed to work. We've somehow come around to believing that "Democracy" means we're all supposed to agree with each other, when in fact the opposite is the case: we are free to disagree with each other without everything falling to shit. I can hear the reply: "But it has fallen to shit!" To which I'll say, "Meh." When Rome had a bad day, there'd be 500 dead bodies in the drinking water that night; we haven't had anywhere near that many casualties after an entire year of virtually non-stop unrest across America, not even from a storming of the Capitol building itself! The Media makes it seems as if the world is ending because the Media needs to be re-created every single day. (The screen is not the reality, it is just a screen) 

We just had an election where more people voted--in more ways!--than ever before and despite a sitting president openly questioning the results, we managed to have two more run-off elections and swore in a new Congress and a new President. And yet we're told that Democracy is dying and our system is broken. What, exactly, is "broken"? And if you think all the turmoil was just because of Trump, wait til you see a Congress full of Democrats--300 liberals in a room together will never agree on anything. 

You know what our elections gave us? A House and Senate so close that they will have to make compromises to get shit done. And a President and a Senate Minority Leader that have known each other their whole lives--indeed, I can't think of a President and a Senate Minority Leader that were so close (LBJ and Everett Dirkson, I suppose). I think Biden and McConnell, if allowed by the liberal media, can actually get a lot of shit done. And in the House I think the far Left wing will get pushed aside, especially if they attack Pelosi (hey, man, they were built to question authority and now that Trump is gone, who you think they're gonna be questioning?), meaning reaching across the aisle in Congress might actually become a thing again. 

We've been told over and over that America's is politically divided and gone to the extremes; quite the opposite, ladies and gentlemen. The election of 2020 stunted the woke socialist agenda and discarded Trump simultaneously. The extremes were neutered and we've been pushed back to the center. But the Media relies on crisis, Politics relies on crisis, so when good things happen, no one is allowed to notice.

Trump exploited innate crisis all the way to the White House and then all the way back out again. Trump is the effect, not the cause. The longer it takes us to realize that, the more time and money we will waste. In short...nothing has changed, nothing is different, our society is as vibrant as ever. And Democracy has never been stronger. Is that good news or bad news? You decide.

I will now repeat my mantra: the gov't was here when you born, it will be here when you die, it doesn't care about you and it couldn't even if it wanted to. Devote your time and your energy to the causes you believe in instead of politics. And stop believing in gov't, it just makes you prone to overreactions.  

(*) Culminating, of course, with Coronavirus--the real culprit for the last 12 months of unrest. Will Trump be blamed for it? In Liberal media, absolutely he will. But historically speaking, do we blame Woodrow Wilson for the Spanish Flu? No, nor should we. Pandemics happen all the time, they are impacted little by the powers that be. 

(**) This is my new favorite piece of historical trivia that I'd never heard before. Granted, this is during the Articles of Confederation period that even the most ardent students of American history never pay any attention to. But it does show why Washington DC was created--and why turning it into a state is not necessarily in Congress's best interest.  

(***) Say his name: Brian Sicknick. This man is a true patriot who died for his country. Will the name Brian Sicknick forever be enshrined and whispered in hallowed halls every January 6th? I doubt it, but I suppose it's possible. 

(****) This is the case against Trump "inciting" the rioters. Have you ever read a transcript of Trump's ramblings? I think you'll notice very quickly that he does not speak in complete sentences, he does not communicate complete thoughts. He is a cypher, an empty vessel onto which you can project your own anxieties. The Liberal Media spent four solid years projecting on to Trump whatever it wanted and, to my mind, what we refer to as "Trumpists" were reacting to the anti-Trump rhetoric, which is much more cohesive and easier to understand than Trump himself. The Trumpists never cared about Trump save that he solidified a left-wing opposition to which the Trumpists could themselves take opposition. Trump was never worth paying attention to, I never understood why anyone would even bother to like or dislike him. Trump is a meaningless shit-talking weirdo, I've been telling you that for years. How can anyone listen to him for very long and think that he is still worth listening to? 

(*****) We don't remember 1948 or 1968 or 2004 that way but I'm not sure why not, they were all close enough to summon chicanery.

(******) Whether or not Trump actually wants to run again in 2024, pretending like he does surely would've been the core of his rhetoric for the next coupla years. He has to look like he wants the White House back even if he doesn't (and really, why would he?).  

(*******) Not as unrealistic as you might think. The far-off fringes of the populace don't know the difference between Right and Left, between Democrat and Republican and if they think that Black Lives Matter means we're allowed to blow up shopping malls and shit, well, I wouldn't be shocked to see even the white supremacists finding common cause with anti-white supremacists (which is just a testament to what pointless fucking drivel the concept of race is to begin with).

RCEP With China Minus India: Spotlight On ASEAN