Blessed Autonomic Resistance

Those who are selling a message want to get that message in front of our eyes as often as possible. Thankfully, that strategy usually backfires. For example, Bible-thumpers got our national motto changed in the Eisenhower administration (Ike thought he was fighting communism, such were the narratives of the time) from E Pluribus Unum (Out of Many, One) to In God We Trust.

E Pluribus Unum is a perfect motto for our Grand Experiment in democracy. It applies widely. There are 3,143 counties in the U.S. and those are bound into 50 states. Those fifty states are bound into one country. There are 300+ millions of Americans, quite diverse in every way one can think up, but we are all “Americans.” Out of many, one. Not one mind, one religion, one sexual orientation, just politically. It is a brilliant motto as it keeps the goal we are struggling for in front of us.

But our coins are now stamped with “In God We Trust.” But that is a flat statement that is far from true. In fact, I think it is quite the opposite. If it were true, then why do we have, by far, the largest military force on the planet (in destructive ability if not manpower)? Why do businesses insist on contracts being involved in every significant purchase and even insignificant ones, like the purchase of a piece of software. (Read the fine print that comes with a software purchase sometime to see how screwed you are; if you bought the software on a DVD disk, that disk is the only thing you own. You just rented the use of that software.) If we really trusted in this god, why are there so many laws? The number of tax codes is enormous (mostly they apply to businesses).

In God we trust, my ass. Better might be “Praise the Lord and Pass the Ammunition” a song lyric from 1942.

Then there is the Pledge of Allegiance. As a school child, I recited this “pledge” thousands of times (every school day in the year (185 times) for twelve years, and then there were Cub Scout meetings, school board meetings, etc.). So, what did our lords and masters get from that? Nothing spoken in the pledge, for sure. What it got from the sheer tedium of the repetition was smart-ass lyric rewrites from us school kids. I came up with “The United States of Asparagus” (along with myriad other children, I am sure).

Did that pledge cement any allegiance we had to the country? I don’t think so. Was it targeting all of the immigrants so important to our growth? I don’t think so.

What it did prove to all of us kids was that a solemn pledge can wear off in as little as 24 hours and needed to be reinforced. I wondered why pledge-less weekends and summer vacations were allowed. This, I think, tends to undermine other pledges, like “to love, honor, and obey” and whatever Donald Trump mumbled when he was sworn in as president.

So, all propaganda is a two-edged sword. We tend to believe the lies we are told if they are repeated enough, even Big Lies. But if they are repeated ad nauseum they fade into oblivion.

Some resistance to brainwashing is blessedly innate.

Why Does Speaker Mike Johnson Want to Turn the Country into a Catholic Nation?

Speaker of the House Mike Johnson has stated public his desire to lead this country into becoming a theocracy, specifically into becoming a “Christian Nation.” But Speaker Johnson is a Baptist and Baptists are not even close to being a plurality in his own House. Catholics are. And his fellow travelers on the road to destruction (destruction of church-state separation) are the Supreme Court Justices, six of the nine being Catholics.

One cannot transform this nation into a “Christian Nation” without specifying what kind of Christian, no? Would the Baptists like it if the Mormons get in line with all of the other Christian churches for the government dole? I don’t think so.

So, we would have to declare ourselves to be a “<fill in the Christian Denomination here> Nation” and the Christian denomination with the most clout would be . . . the Catholics (most church members, most people in places of authority, etc.).

The irony is that the evangelicals in the time of the debate over ratifying the newly drafted Constitution (without the Bill of Rights yet) were in favor of church-state separation because they were a small minority at the time and understood that if the other churches (Congregationalist, Lutherans, etc.) got on the government dole, they would fade away to obscurity, because of their inability to compete. Now that evangelicals have achieved some political standing, it looks as if they are falling into the trap they avoided in that long ago debate.

The Truth About Immigrants

The starters for the NBA All-Star game were announced and on that team are, Nikola Jokić, Luka Dončić, Giannis Antetokounmpo, Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, and Joel Embiid. Such strange names! That is because Jokić was born in Serbia, Dončić was born in Slovenia, Antetokounmpo was born in Greece of Nigerian parents, and Joel Embiid was born in Cameroon, Africa. Shai Gilgeous-Alexander is from that far-off country, Canada. You see, NBA has become a global sport.

Of the ten All-Star starting players, five are not U.S. born. And this is not a new phenomenon. “Foreign” players have been recruited and have been playing for decades. Players from Germany, the Virgin Islands, Croatia, etc. have not only participated, they ended up in the Hall of Fame and obviously on All-Star teams.

So, what has this to do with immigration?

Immigrants have made this country better and stronger and not just in NBA basketball. If we had constricted those basketball immigrants to just white people we could have lost Antetokounmpo, Gilgeous-Alexander, and Embiid plus many others and the league would be the lesser for it. If we had restricted the acceptable immigrants to those who were already well-to-do, we would have lost a great many more; the rags-to-riches stories of many pro athletes are very common.

This country has been called, rightly, a nation of immigrants. We have drawn great strength from those who willingly come here to participate in our Grand Experiment in Democracy.

The Republicans are doing us no favors in demonizing not just un-documented/illegal immigrants, but all immigrants as the source of our “troubles.” Basically this is just playing the race card. All the brouhaha is at our southern border (Hint: where the brown people are) but no similar issues have sprouted up at our northern border, where our friends, the mostly white Canadians are.

I would suggest that if we were to poll those supporting the GOP’s campaign to stop those nasty immigrants from “stealing our jobs” as to whether they themselves or any of their relatives have lost a job to a “brown immigrant,” I would bet the numbers of positive responses would be tiny (assuming the respondents answered truthfully).

What we have is an unprecedented and unprepared for surge in people seeking political asylum at our Southern border. The GOP is blocking any congressional effort (and it is Congress’s problem, in part) from addressing the issue because they want to keep the issue as an election lever. So, rather than solve the problem they would rather it festered.

The GOP’s platform of late has been limited to tax cuts for the already wealthy and corporations, “they are coming for your guns” (They who?), and the darkies are coming for our women, er, jobs.

Despicable.

And if you don’t believe me, how about Robert Reich:

Republicans make wild claims about the dangers of immigration. Here’s the truth

Idiots, Idiots, Idiots

In New Hampshire, there is a bill in their state’s legislative hopper, H.B. 1206, which states that educators “shall not present unproved theories as fact,” nor shall they “advocate for belief in any particular theory or ideology by students.”

Wonderful piece of nonsense it is.

No scientist would present a theory as a fact in the first place as that would be a demotion for the theory. And, there is no such thing as “a proven theory.” Theories are either accepted or supported or not, they are never proven. (All scientific conclusions are provisional . . . all.) And teachers of science should never advocate for the “belief in any particular theory or ideology.” That is what religions do and we wouldn’t want to encroach on their turf, as it were. It is not a matter of belief, it is a matter of whether there is enough support for a theory or viewpoint for it to be useful.

Even if this idiotic piece of legislation were to pass, it therefore wouldn’t change one bit of behavior of teachers.

I can see, however, that it will be a royal pain in the ass. After students being taught a segment on biological evolution and given a test on the topic, some misbegotten student’s parent will claim that the test is a mechanism of advocacy for the theory involved and will sue. The suit is nonsense but an irritation at the least. Countersuing for “emotional distress, legal fess, etc.” is a must.

Any teacher who crumbles under the pressure, certainly any school district which does, is succumbing to bullying (this needs to be called the “Trump Technique,” using the legal system to bully people) and no good can come from that.

Stupid, Stupid, Stupid

Donald Trump has made it clear, in public, that he has ordered his minions in the Congress to stop supporting the bipartisan immigration bill currently being developed. This kind of thing was done off and on, but you never wanted anyone to know that you were behind it, it was done in secret. But, Trump, always wanting to be seen as the Big Man on Campus, let everyone know that he doesn’t want there to be any sort of solution created for the problems at the southern border that would reflect well on Biden’s leadership.

Just as background, the Republicans refused to pass support of Ukraine’s battle for its life unless something was also done about the “border crisis.” So, the legislative deal under discussion is of their making and it includes quite a few concessions to the GOP on the border issue. And killing it kills any hope of additional support for Ukraine against the Russian invasion.

Allow me to make a suggestion for an alternative route for the GOP.

Donald Trump could have taken the position that “while this is only a partial solution, it is better than nothing, so I have asked all of my Republican colleagues to support this effort. I asked them to make it work!”

Here are the advantages to this alternative approach:
• people will forget about the kerfuffle within a week or two
• Trump can claim as much credit for its passing as Biden
• If it doesn’t work, Trump can say “I knew it wouldn’t work, but we needed to get started on the problem”
• No effort will show much progress by election time, so the issue of “the Southern Border” will still be there to run on
• Trump will be seen as a deal maker, not an obstructionist.

Okay, compare all of that with the advantages/disadvantages of the path they are taking:
• Trump will not be seen as a deal maker, but as an obstructionist.
• Since the border issue is not going away, Trump blocking any progress will carry through to the election
• Trump will be blamed for the lack of support for Ukraine
• Biden will argue that to deal with the border crisis requires additional funding from Congress, just as wars require additional funding, but Trump blocked that
• If Trump loses the election and takes a number of GOP lawmakers with him, they will blame Trump for the losses
• Biden’s surrogates can claim that Putin ordered Trump to block support for Ukraine’s war effort (it doesn’t have to be true, just believable to be politically useful).

Are there any Republicans left with more than two brain cells to rub together?

I wonder?

A recent comment on one of the GOP’s most talented lawmakers . . .

. . . and about the GOP.

An Open Letter to Ms. Mercedes R. Lackey

Ms. Lackey is a writer of primarily fantasies and is incredibly prolific, having written over 100 books. She is remarkably good at writing and gives extremely valuable advice to young or new writers.

I follow her on the Quora.com site, but she has blocked all further commenting on her posts because of the sheer volume of complete nonsense she attracted. On the other hand, I have acquired a callus on the finger I use to click on her post’s “up vote” buttons.

She has expertise in raising birds, as well as writing and her website has more on it about birds than all of the writing awards she has won.

So, since I have not been able to praise her in comments, I am doing it here. If you know her personally you might forward this to her.

I consider Mercedes Lackey to be a National Treasure. As a teacher I like her responses to questions clearly focused on getting someone else to do their homework for them.

Her posts quashing requests for advice on magic are priceless. Here is one example of the memes she uses to supplement her words of reason:

She starts of gently, but ramps up quickly if the questioner persists.

And her kiss-offs are sublime.

So, thank you, Ms. Lackey, not only for your fascinating books but willingness to engage with the wide spectrum of idiots you encounter on Quora.com.

My up voting callus will continue to grow as I read your question responses.

Economic Bullshit to the Right of Me . . .

In an article in The Guardian an admitted conservative was saying that it was time conservatives admit the economy is doing fairly well. But blithe statements like the following were included.

“Yes, prices are higher, but inflation is down from a 9% annual rate to about 3%, so whatever the Federal Reserve did to offset the treasury’s spending on fiscal programs seems to be working.”

As with most comments about economics there is a bit of a problem, or two, or three, or. . . . The implication was that the recent surge in inflation was due to the federal government spending to support ordinary people. (Remember the checks? Remember who insisted that his signature showed up on them?) Other than that I don’t know to what “fiscal programs” he might be referring.

And recent studies have shown that half of the inflation in that recent surge was due to corporations raising their prices far in excess of their increased costs. More than a few CEOs baldly claimed that they could raise prices all they wanted and could blame it on “inflation.”

The second implication in this single statement is that the actions taken by the Federal Reserve Bank are the primary or at least a major cause of the inflation subsiding. There is also no evidence of that being the case. The actions taken by “the Fed” actually targeted ordinary people (by raising mortgage interest raises, and auto loan rates, for example) while not affecting the morbidly rich and wealthy corporations who have been sitting on small mountains of cash.

While the intent of the article, at least on the surface, was to have critics of “the economy” become more factually based, many of the false assumptions of conservatives were still woven into the narrative.

The Ultimate Don

In reading the Bible, there is one basis that makes it almost entirely intelligible and that is that Yahweh is the Ultimate Mafia Don, the one used as a model for all other Mafia Dons, fascists, and authoritarians, for example Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin, etc.

As an example, consider the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah. Yahweh has decided that he is going to make a big hit on these two cities. He has his goons tell his made man, Lot, to get himself and his family and animals out of town but not to “look back” as destruction rained. And that Lot did, except his wife looked back over her shoulder at the fireworks display and was turned into a pillar of salt. The Moral of the Story? Mafia Dons do not leave witnesses when big hits are made.

And then when Yahweh was really pissed off at humanity, he gets his made man Noah and his family to build a really big ship and get aboard with all of his animals because Yahweh is going to make it rain (and currency hadn’t been invented yet, so not that “make it rain”). And so Yahweh drowns all of the people in a Great Flood, including all of the plants, animals, fishes, birds, snakes, everything. The Moral of the Story? Real Mafia Dons making big hits go big. Excesses of violence are their calling card.

Then there was the story of the Israelite General who asked Yahweh to provide him victory on the battle field and if He did, he would make a burnt offering out of the first thing leaving his house upon his return. Well, the general got his victory and when he got home the first thing coming out of his house was his beloved daughter, his only child and the apple of his eye. Well, he got his victory and Yahweh got his burnt offering. The Moral of the Story? If you ask the Mafia Don for a favor, there will be a price and you had better pay it.

One of the Israelites carrying the ark of the covenant, touches the ark when the ox pulling the cart it is on stumbled, saving the ark from crashing to the ground. God smites him and kills him on the spot. No one is to touch the ark, and rules are rules, the Don says.

Similarly, “Then Aaron’s sons Nadab and Abihu made a mistake. They took their incense dishes and put some fire and incense in them. But they did not use the fire that was on the altar — they took fire from some other place and brought it to the Lord. This was not what he had commanded. So fire came from the Lord and destroyed Nadab and Abihu, and they died there in front of the Lord.” (Leviticus 10:1) Rules is rules, sayeth the Don and Dons are masters of pettiness.

It continues in the NT, of course, There was a rich couple wanting to join up and they were told to sell all of their worldly goods/land/etc. to give to the nascent Jerusalem church but they held back on a small percent of the proceeds, just a “taste,” and of course are struck dead (Acts 5:1-11). Only the Don says who gets a taste of any transaction. Don’t try to usurp the power of the Don.

In Genesis 38:6-10 we are told about a guy Er. We don’t know if he was a made man or not, but “Er did many bad things. The Lord was not happy with him, so the Lord killed him.” The Don is judge, jury, and executioner. Do not sin against the Don and surely do not piss Him off.

And, of course there is the story of the 42 kids who mocked the prophet Elisha because of his baldness. Yahweh sent a bear to tear all 42 kids into pieces. The Don is bald (why would a god need hair; to stay warm?) and doesn’t allow bold jokes.

Finally, of course, Yahweh has his own son crucified to make a point of how great he is. Loyalty to the Don trumps everything, so sayeth the Don.

This explains a lot about Donald Trump. He thinks of himself like the Roman Emperors who were on paths to become gods. The path the Donald has chosen is to become the most powerful Mafia Don on Earth, then accepting godhood.

Reading Daniel Quinn is Dangerous

I recently decided to re-read all of Daniel Quinn’s books (at least the ones I have on the shelf). If you don’t recognize the name, he is the author of Ishmael, The Story of B, and My Ishmael, and more.

Throughout all of these books it seems the author has one mission: to change the way we think about our existence.

To demonstrate the thinking needed I ask you a question: Do you think humanity has another 1000 years of existence left? When I consider our current pace of environmental degradation, global climate change, billionaires looking to move to Mars, etc. I would say no. Actually I would say Hell, no!

So, what would change our fate? According to Daniel Quinn, only a change in our thinking will work. (We have tried all of the other means, for example consider The War on Poverty and The War on Drugs. Did either of these make things better or did they make things worse?)

So, what is at the core of our ability to exterminate ourselves?

One point Mr. Quinn brings up is that humans stretch back no more than 3 million years of time. Prior to that other hominid species existed, but not us, not Homo sapiens. And human history seems to have begun about the same time that large scale agriculture became more common. Writing was initially just record keeping: amounts of stored grain, numbers of herded animals, etc. but writing soon led to “stories” being written and humans like to have stories about them written, so, ta da, written records of human activities began what we now call history. We will use a rough approximation of this time as being 10,000 BCE even though many scholars will insist that that time was in human pre-history still. I want to make sure we get all of human history in our harvest.

If you ask people about human activities they will have some knowledge but all of that will be limited to historic times. Ask them about the time before that and most will respond with a blank stare, because obviously nothing happened then of any importance.

So, for the most recent 3 million years of time humans existed, but things only started to take off in the past 12,000 years. This is part and parcel to our thinking problem.

World population estimates for 12,000 years ago range roughly between 1 and 10 million (with an uncertainty of up to an order of magnitude). A common number is 5 million people scattered around the globe. And this took 2.99 million years to accomplish (99.67% of our time on this planet so far), so what was accomplished? Actually a lot. We managed to grow from a very small population to that 5 million humans sustainably.

And in the last 12,000 years? We managed to grow to a world population of over 8 billion people (and more chickens and pigs that that). The cost of doing that has been astronomical and we ignore that. We have wiped out many of the plant, animal, insect and other species that provided us with a “balance of Nature.” And in the next 1000 years we may end up exterminating ourselves.

So, what am I and Daniel Quinn recommending? Should we go back to living off of the land in tribes? Should we give up hypercars, YouTube, smartphones? What?

We should change our thinking so that everything we do is in the context of total world obliteration for humanity. Consider the phenomenon of global atmospheric warming, which we were warned about many decades ago, and are now starting to recognize (and feel) the massive negative effects it provides. What did we do to forestall this from happening? Basically nothing. If we continue at this rate, we won’t make a few centuries more, let alone 1000 years. And there are other environmental degradations to consider: the availability of potable water, soil depletion, over fishing of the oceans, etc.

We have reached a point where renewable energy sources, solar, wind, hydroelectric, etc. are cheaper than providing a similar amount of energy burning fossil fuels. Yet, it has become a social war issue in the USA to not let “them” take away our gas guzzling cars, or gas stoves in our kitchens, or any other use of fossil fuels. And, who is creating this narrative of a “war”? Gosh, it is the humans profiting monetarily from the sale of those fuels. You can’t make anywhere near the profits on renewables because wind, gravity, and sunshine are all free to one and all.

So, when did this particular mode of human thought solidify? In our “western tradition” I would say it began in spades with “And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth.” (Genesis 1: 26-31)

And we took that literally. We took and took and took. If coyotes were attacking our sheep we took their lives, exterminating them if we could (we couldn’t). If Native Americans were on land we wanted, we took their lives. If gold was found anywhere, we took that and killed anyone in the way. And those examples are just here in the U.S.

We need to change the way we think. Our current politicians reflect how we think. If we want them to behave differently we need to think differently. Voting for somebody because they promise to “stick it to the libs,” is not going to solve any problems, it will just create more. Politicians who get voted out of office because they do not serve “the people,” and only serve their rich campaign donors will get the message. (A distant relative of mine, Huey Long of Louisiana said “If you can’t take their money and vote against them; you don’t belong in Congress.”)

We need to recognize failure. We expanded the food supply to feed those who were starving. Did you notice any diminishing of the numbers of “those starving?” No? We just had Green Revolution after Green Revolution and all we got were more human beings (it is a principle of biology that all species expand their numbers to the limits of the food supply). But we still have all kinds of people still starving, more now than before. So, what was the real motivation of the people demanding “the markets shall grow” if the ones typically offered are clearly fantasies? (Can you spell greed, boys and girls?)

We need to fundamentally change how we think about the actions we take.

Slowly The Truth Comes Out

Guardian’s ‘Hamas Mass Rape’ Story Doesn’t Add Up