Open 'er Up! (Back to Business Edition)

Disclaimer: I'm about to call some people stupid. Or appear to call some people stupid. Or just suggest that some people are doing stupid things. I don't like to do any of these things. In the first place, it's not polite. Besides, I know that I do stupid shit all the time, so who am I to judge? Nobody, that's who. Why bother, then? I'll tell why. Because the stupid is really out of the box in America right now, and we should all be thinking of ways to get it back under lock and key.

People all over the country are taking to the streets to demand an end to all of these COVID-19 “stay at home” orders. They think it's bullshit! There was a real hubbub in Michigan, where an impressive number of cars showed up to drive around the state house, horns a'honkin and lights a'flashin, displaying signs and yelling at the governor to open up all of the restaurants, and factories, and every damn thing! There were also a lot of people standing around with signs and hard-ass looks on their faces. There was even a big group of them wearing camo and carrying big guns! No masks, either, they ain't wearing no damn masks. They were yelling, “lock her up!” about the governor, who is, indeed, a woman, and a Democratic woman at that. The entire world is in dire straights, and these people seem to wish that it was all much, much worse.

Why, pray tell, would anyone act this way? Is it because Donald Trump says that we need the country to get back to work, and he ain't wearing no damn mask either? Could be. Is it because those know-it-all doctors are starting to piss people off? Could be that, too. Is it because they need to go back to work so that they can pay their bills, buy food, and look for some affordable health care? Yeah, I think that's a bingo.

The same thing was happening in Frankfort, Kentucky; Raleigh, North Carolina; and Columbus, Ohio. So far that's a list of the usual suspects, Red states that love the Donald, and hate a long list of things that includes libtards, science, and the devil. There are a lot more of these rallies planned. Texas has one on calendar, but also many for places that I wouldn't immediately expect. California (!) for instance, and Oregon. Those west-coasters generally embrace science, did not vote for Trump, and are blessed with rational governments. But it appears that the stupid is well out of control now, and spreading faster than the Novel Coronavirus.

What are we really looking at? Who is behind this angry mob? Die-hard Trump fans? Certainly. Come hell or high water, those people will never admit that they were wrong. It's Trump-right-or-wrong to them. To paraphrase an old Russian proverb, “let him be the worst president in history, and dumb as a bag of hammers, but let him be our president.” (Original: “let it be worse; let it be ours.”) When Trump says “jump,” they don't ask how high. They just become airborne.

Also definitely libertarians, the Ayn Rand crowd. It's all about the FREEDOM, damn it! They're taking away our freedom! That's why the Tea Party is resurfacing, or at least people are waving their “Don't Tread on Me” flags. That's also why some of the gun club up in Michigan were waving Confederate flags. Somehow, I don't think that this is what those founders long ago were thinking when some of them said, “live free or die.”

Idaho, of course, is chiming in. The Idaho Freedom Foundation, in connection with other organizations, is planning a similar rally in Boise. They should get a big turnout up in the white homeland. That's a freedom crowd up there, a “freedom to discriminate and shoot up stop signs” crowd.

Infowars, unsurprisingly, has an opinion on the subject. They think that the virus is a plot hatched by the Chinese communists in league with the Deep State to destroy the American way of life and Donald Trump's career in politics. Inforwars is a bottomless font of stupid.

There's more stupid around right now than you could shake a stick at. The truth is probably that our less educated and more easily led brethren are reacting in stupid ways to a very real set of problems. American health care is no longer set up to help anyone; it's not even about the medical sciences anymore. It's a business; it's all about the money. You can die when we tell you to! That'll be when you're insurance runs dry. You lost your job? No more insurance for you! In the hospital on a ventilator? You have great insurance? They managed to save your life? Sorry, but there's a lot of stuff on your bill that was “out of your plan.” Your co-pay is $135,000. And by the way, American health care isn't in any hurry to develop and field adequate tests in sufficient numbers. Have you noticed? We're still waiting for that first, basic step to be taken. There's a reason for that, but it's too depressing to mention.

The American government is no more interested in people's well being than geese are interested in Jackson Pollack paintings. They're all the way on the money side now. They're going to skim billions from the stimuli and use the confusion to accrue more power to themselves.

Where can people turn to get a break? How about the churches? I'm sorry that I even brought it up. They're part of the problem. Churches are responsible for a considerable portion of our Corona virus cases, and deaths. “You can't tell us to close! God will protect us!” No one, to my knowledge, has been cured in a mega-church service, but a lot of people have been infected at one. Even one of the big-mouth “ I'm not closing my church!” pastors caught the bug himself and died. A fatal dose of either stupidity or greed.

It's no wonder that the American “your on your own” approach to government has driven Americans with few resources to distraction. All of those people are protesting against sensible medical approaches to this world-wide, deadly pandemic, approaches that are designed by experts to help them and their families live through the event, and I don't think that they could all be that stupid. Not actually stupid, although their actions and protests are stupid. They're just acting out, and they're taking advice from a bunch of idiots, from Trump, Fox News, Breitbart, Infowars, Rush Limbo, the whole crooked bunch of them. Those aforementioned devils in expensive suits are making the needy of America look stupid. You heard me. Hey! You people at those “open up the economy” demonstrations! Use your own heads! Stop acting stupid just because somebody who does not have your best interests at heart told you to do stupid shit!

As so often happens, the thread of this trouble making goes back to Reagan. Devil number one! He and his minions got the ball rolling on this anti-government hysteria. “Government is the problem!” “Government never helped anybody!” That started out as a trick to get rid of entrenched Democrats in Congress, “Vote against Washington!” was code for “vote in some new Republicans.” It worked too well. It was out of control, but still being pushed as the Republican agenda, by Newt Gingrich in his time in the House of Representatives. Do you remember? We had started to see many Hollywood movies in which the bad guy was the government, either a government agent or the whole government itself. We still see this in many movies. Now “government is the problem” has the status of a religion. “Drain the swamp!” It's the same now as it has always been: a trick to separate the Rubes from their money and their political rights.

If you or your baby get the Covid-19 and die, my heart goes out to you. If you get sick and live, or have only lost your job and/or your house, I'm sorry about that too. Be careful, however, where you place the blame. We, all of us, have allowed this situation to come into existence over the last forty years. It's our own damn fault that no one cares if we live or die. We were all too stupid to avoid it.

The God That Is In Us

Or, Everything that I Needed to Know in Life, I Learned As a Baby. 

Babies are born, and they seem to just lie there and do nothing. It’s an illusion. They are actually very busy. From the first day, they are listening carefully to all of the new sounds that are reaching their ears, newly freed from their watery habitat. They are beginning to explore movement in a less restricted environment, moving their hands and arms and legs. Soon they open their eyes, and they begin a close study of the thing that interests them the most:

Faces.

Babies are born with large brains that work perfectly well. They cannot speak, nor can they understand spoken language, and for that they are intellectually short-changed. In reality, they are neither stupid nor ignorant. They are innocent. Their brains are working fine, but there is very little information up there to work with. They immediately set about to remedy this situation by closely examining the world, and the people, around them.

Many aspects of this new reality are distressing. Babies have all had a longish period of awareness in utero before being born into the outside world. They found their time in the womb, I daresay, rather pleasant. It was warm, and the temperature was constant. Sounds were muted and indistinct. Nutrition was delivered on an almost constant basis, and waste products were effortlessly removed. Movement was restricted, but if you ask any mother you will be assured that babies get plenty of exercise and move around quite a bit. Just as they are becoming accustomed to this peaceful existence, they are painfully expelled from it. Those muscular contractions that are making mom scream in pain are no party for the baby either, I’m sure. They are expelled, and/or dragged, or sometimes suddenly cut out. Then there’s the bright light, and the sounds and the smells, and the breathing, and the crying, and the absence of the mother. Her heartbeat! The mother’s heartbeat had been the sound of being alive, and now it’s gone! That can’t be a good feeling.

Chief among these discomforts is doubtless the feeling of hunger. Blessed is the baby who is immediately delivered into the warmth of its mother’s embrace and breast fed. In any case, the baby will presently discover the frequent feeling of hunger, and hunger will teach the baby the most terrible truth of its life:

The baby is helpless.

The baby feels hunger, and soon realizes that it is only with outside help that this awful feeling can be mitigated. The baby itself is powerless to remedy the situation. It can only cry, and hope that somebody is listening. Hopefully it will be somebody who will understand the crying and compassionately render appropriate assistance. This understanding of helplessness brings new urgency to the baby’s study of faces.

Babies look at faces and immediately see differences between them. These are not value judgments, they are not based on beauty or its absence. Babies can instinctively see that some faces are positively disposed to the baby while others are not. Those cheerful, loving faces are much more likely to respond to the baby’s hungry cries. Babies begin almost immediately to encourage this profitable relationship with sympathetic adult faces by smiling, gurgling and cooing. They are saying, love me! Care for me! Clean me! Feed me!

They do this out of desperation, but also with love and appreciation. Tender, loving caregivers will be repaid with the child’s love as it grows through the stages of life. As helplessness is gradually replaced by independence, the child’s gratitude will remain if the relationship, like the child, is nurtured. This is the greatest gift of parenthood for those lucky enough to have been successful at the job.

Well, that’s a nice story, but how do I come to write it up today, on this day in particular? It happens that during a taxi ride yesterday it occurred to me that the baby’s experience in infancy was the beginning of the child’s understanding of right and wrong. It was no less than the foundation of the child’s value system for life. Looking for those happy, helpful faces taught the baby what is good in life. Worrying about those stern, unhelpful faces taught the baby what is bad. Helping people is good. Letting them suffer is bad. In the baby’s simple, straightforward life-and-death situation, compassion and the willingness to help the weak were identified as the best attributes of all of mankind.

This is not all speculation on my part. I have read about studies that involved older babies, immediately pre-verbal babies, say six or seven months old. They are propped up in a car seat in front of a kind of Punch and Judy show. As puppets are introduced, the baby’s facial expressions are videoed and studied. The babies’ emotions regarding the puppets and the dramatic action can be readily seen. The puppets are not designed with visual clues as to their personalities; whether they are kind or unkind can only be seen through their movement and their actions. They do, however, have features that can be recognized. Perhaps one puppet is short and faced with food on a high shelf. It tries to reach the food but cannot, and it appears to be in distress. The babies read this information very well. Now another, taller puppet enters the stage, and helps the first puppet reach the food, which the “hungry” puppet enjoys. The baby is delighted.

In another vignette, a puppet enters the stage eating something. Another puppet comes onstage and steals the food, causing the first puppet to act upset. The baby observing this action is horrified.

Later on, one of the “good” puppets comes on stage alone, and the baby shows delight at the very sight of helpful puppet. By the same token, the mere appearance of the “unkind” or “bad” puppet causes the baby distress. Voila! Their understanding of good and bad is fully formed.

I am sure that this experience leaves a permanent presence in the baby. We grow up with a “conscience,” a voice inside of us that counsels us on the correctness of a particular course of action. As in, “his conscience was bothering him,” i.e., because he had done something that he knew was wrong. Or asking someone who is considering a course of action, “what does your conscience say?” My hypothesis today is that this voice inside of us is God.

Yup, I just said it. And I mean it just that simply. The voice that most of us have inside of us that guides us towards empathy, compassion and cooperation is God. We all have our own God in our minds, and the general chorus of these multiple Gods acting in concert is God overseeing the progress of life on earth. Observed in practice, it is the chief force for good in the universe and the one thing that allows human life to prosper. Without it, we would be much less than dogs, less even than the apes. We would be struggling in selfish chaos like alligators or something.

Without it, we would be sociopaths, considering only our own needs and wants. Without it, civilization would collapse into anarchy in a matter of a few years. We struggle these days with the curse of those among us who lack it entirely or in whom it exists only weakly. I’m talking about these Ayn Rand following lunatics that have become unaccountably successful in politics and the justice system of late. Even in Hollywood, if you count the Scientologists. It’s like a virus that has entered our public discourse. But I guess that’s another subject.

So, parents, do all that you can to strengthen the developing consciences of your children. Help them to become right-thinking adults. And people, listen to your consciences as you go through life. To fail in these attempts has consequences. The God in our heads is powerful. It can make you ashamed of yourself, or it can make you proud of your actions. Which do you prefer? As you lay dying you will judge your own life. This is the only judgment that you should fear. Would you prefer to lay there feeling like you did a pretty good job of it, recalling family and friends whom you loved and helped, and times when you were thanklessly kind to strangers? Or would it please you more to remember only your money and possessions, while realizing that you missed every good opportunity to be kind to anyone, as your family goes about their business wondering what to do with your money? “What the fuck was I thinking!” is not a thought that anyone should want to be the last on their minds.

Make your beds, my friends. Someday you will find yourselves lying in them.  

There's Something Happening Here

From my distant perch, I have watched the protests unfold over the last few days. It reminded me of the Sixties, but not in a good way. More like the echo of an old failing. In the old days, the protests hovered around a focus on the Vietnam War, but were often focused instead, and in scattershot fashion, on the draft, or war in general, or the military, or the government, or nuclear weapons, or something else. This weekend there were also numerous, semi-related demonstrations. There were protests by women’s groups, anti-capitalists, civil-society groups, anti-Trumpsters, anarchists, and no doubt many others.

A much higher level of focus and coordination will be required if any of these protests are going to amount to anything.

These protests were a natural and necessary response to the vicious, inhuman policies and rhetoric of the new administration and the new congress. It was all very admirable, generally. But there will need to be rather a lot more commitment shown, a lot more discipline learned, and a lot more sacrifices made, if anything is going to be accomplished.

Most importantly, or should I say, Most Importantly, please consider that Mr. Trump is not really important in any of this. He is only a distraction, and only for the next eighteen months or so. The real enemy is the Republican Party, at the Federal and the State level. It’s their agenda that threatens us, and their ecstatic glee at having arrived in the position from which they can actually accomplish their Satanic goals should provide all of the motivation that anyone would need to oppose them.

That’s worth repeating: Mr. I-Have-The-Best-Words is only a distraction. The Republicans will use him as a lightning rod for all of the outrage and contempt that they will be generating, he and they together, for the next year-and-change. In that time the Republicans will solidify their position as being totally in charge. Then they’ll dump Herr Drumpf like a hot potato. What, you doubt it? After a few years of this, you’d just love to enter an election cycle with President DJT at the top of the ticket? No, you wouldn’t. I didn’t think so. Believe me, they have no plans to do so. It’ll be President Pence for years by then, after four more years of Gerrymandering and anti-voting-rights legislation.

Need I remind you, again, that the Republican agenda is: 1) to unwind all of the social advances of the New Deal, including, but not limited to, Social Security, collective bargaining, and government regulation of capitalism; 2) to reduce the Federal Government to, in their own words, something so small that it could be drowned in a bathtub; 3) to further enhance the financial position of the growing billionaire class; and 4) to aid and abet the large corporations in their exploitation and despoliation of the county’s resources, not to mention the resources of the entire world.  We have known this for thirty-five years now, known it to an absolute certainty. They have said as much, out loud, and their every action has supported this agenda. So yes, I use the term “Satanic” advisedly.

And what, pray tell, is the Republican agenda for average Americans? The legendary “American People?”  Very clearly, that agenda is increased medical insecurity; increased income insecurity; increased retirement insecurity; severely restricted human, civil and constitutional rights; greater levels of debt-slavery; and ever increasing levels of incarceration. Republican voters! That sound that you hear is a combination of laughter, ice tinkling in cocktails, and a giant toilet flushing.

If it gets any worse, Americans will be retreating to the woods to live as hunter-gatherers, squatting and poaching, no doubt, on land owned by billionaires.

That Republicans can still get elected to anything at all is a testament to the reduced circumstances of common sense and independent thinking in our new digital world. Capturing and neutralizing minds is way too easy these days. It’s like the fucking Walking Dead out there, for crying out loud.

So please, I’m begging you, get organized with the protests, and get focused on the real enemy, the Republicans. Right now, they think that they are in the drivers’ seat. They think, in their twisted Ayn Randian way, that they are the meritorious winners in this social struggle of winners and losers. It’s a sad future for them as well though. They will also be thrown under the bus, in their turn, by their masters, the corporate/billionaire cabal.

Oh! How the real money laughs at mediocrities like Mitch McConnell and Paul Ryan! The real money still needs them to push their agenda, and those congressional fools settle for peanuts to help the real money get what they want! What a laugh riot! Those idiots in congress ask for only a couple of million dollars to pass legislation that puts hundreds of millions in the pockets of the real money! One percent or so, man, what an investment! What assholes. Myself, I wouldn't do it for a nickel less than 12.5%. Someday, and that day will come, the Mitch McConnells and the Paul Ryans of the world will retire to what seems, to them, like splendor, on their several tens of millions of dollars of ill-gotten gains. Maybe a hundred million! Oh! La-la! What a bunch of Rubes.

About those sacrifices that will be required, read on at your peril. Down in Washington, D.C., over the weekend, a couple of hundred people were arrested and charged with “felony rioting.” That one carries a fine of up to $250,000 and ten years in prison. That’s a “message,” right there. The message is: if you own a house that you do not want to lose, do not appear at demonstrations. You will lose that house to the fine. The ten years in prison part, I guess we all understand that.

It would be lovely if tens of thousands of people would go out and get themselves arrested and subjected to those charges. That would be embarrassing to the government, they might even back off. But only a few hundred people? A few times? No deterrent there. Those people are just going down, and millions more are staying right there at home from now on, not wanting to actually pay such a weirdly excessive price for their opinions.

The land of the free . . . Freedom of Speech! I said it before, back in the Sixties. When times are good, you have the right to have a gently expressed opinion; when times get rough, you have the right to get your head cracked open by a night-stick.

The brutal repression will work. That’s my firm opinion. Afghans would line up to do the ten years, but Americans are not made of such stern stuff. Yeah, I said it. And it’s true, too.  Americans are afraid of protest, because they’re afraid to lose what little advantage they have left. Shit, I’m often afraid to write so directly on this stupid little blog. Only my insignificance empowers me, and saves me from imposed indigence through fines.  

What about it, brothers and sisters? “. . . ([Y]ou’d better) stop, children, what’s that sound? Everybody look what’s going down.”

So what do I expect? Me? I expect things to drift along, more or less how they’ve been going since World War II. A continuing state of emergency, a constant acceleration of executive power, a constant expansion of the security state, the inexorable comeback of the billionaire class, the return of working people to penury, the continued erosion of our constitutional rights and the final destruction of the New Deal. No less!

And who’s going to stop it all? The Democratic Party? I think we can all put “paid” to that avenue of assistance. The Greens? Whatever other political parties exist by now out on the fringes of our politics? Give those ideas up right now. Ineffectual bloggers like me? Certainly not. Bloggers with much more talent and energy than me? Sorry, no. God? Oh, honey, no. I’m starting to believe in Satan, but the possibility of assistance from God holds no promise for me at all.

All we can do is hope that they leave us with some entertainment in our abasement. Can we please keep our YouTube, sir? And our wi-fi? Can we keep our air-conditioning if we live in Florida? The electric bill will be low in any case, because people will be out most of the day working multiple jobs to pay for health care. Upon retirement, the non-rich Americans of the future can expect to be driven out into the metaphoric snow, because you can be sure that the United States of Ayn Rand will have no place for useless eaters.  Did I say retirement? I’m afraid we’ll all be on the work-till-you-die program before long.

I remember a slightly better America, and that America would be worth trying to recreate and perfect. I’ve also read about several historical Americas that were not so great, several even quite horrible. Guess which direction we’ve decided to go in the future? The 1880s, with wi-fi. Good luck with that. 

Military History Always Cheers Me Up

We live in what that famous Chinese proverb called, “interesting times.” For “interesting,” read panic-inducing; life-threateningly dangerous; revolutionary; or just bloody depressing. We need strategies to deal with the emotional impact. Reading military history always works for me.

Not the genre of military history that concentrates on the staff officers; the big picture; the order of battle; or the dates on which objectives were taken. You’ve got to find materials that dig deeper and include the nuts and bolts details of the lives of the guys who were in immediate danger of being shot, stabbed or blown-up. The mere mention of “infantry assault” doesn’t really convey much meaning. What was the emotional impact of infantry assault on the participating individuals, on either the giving or the receiving end?

Not just the infantry, either. Here’s an interesting fact about the six-month-long battle for Guadalcanal: total infantry deaths (combined U.S. Marines and U.S. Army), 1,700; total U.S. Navy deaths at sea, 5,000. Did I say interesting? More like shocking.

There were seven naval battles associated with the Guadalcanal campaign. Two of them were fleet/carrier actions; five were up close and personal gunfights that took place at night between groups of cruisers and destroyers. I just read a great book about those naval actions, “Neptune’s Inferno,” by James Hornfischer. Highly recommended.

It’s always the little tidbits that catch my eye, and stick in my memory. In the diary of one Japanese officer there was a little chart to show the life expectancy of a Japanese soldier that was slowly dying of hunger. Those poor guys were woefully undersupplied. Here’s the count-down:

Can still stand? Thirty days to live;

Can still sit up? Three weeks to live;

Cannot sit up anymore? One week to live;

Urinating while lying down? Three days to live;

No longer able to speak? Two days to live;

Has stopped blinking? Tomorrow is it, pal.

By December, 1942 there were 30,000 Japanese troops on Guadalcanal, and the supply situation was critical. Of the 30,000, there were about 4,000 that could be considered combat-effective. By the time of the evacuation in late January, 1943, there were only 10,500 to be evacuated from the island.

So that, ladies and gentlemen, is what happens when push comes overpoweringly to shove. Take heart! Our little dramas with our Ayn Randian overlords and our new, exciting president are but a pale echo of the real problems that can overtake us in life. When I read about these historically factual adventures I feel a certain blissful calm come over me. Maybe, I think, things are not so bad after all.

Incidentally, those sailors who died did so in more sudden ways that ranged from spectacular to horrific. They were, by turns, blown up, burned up, impaled by bits of their own ships, drowned, and eaten by sharks.

So look for the good! Hey honey! What’s for dinner!