Tag: politics

The Cusp of Revolutions

I’m pretty excited this morning. Awoke in that state. I owe this excitement to a teenage woman.

I didn’t meet her, but I saw and listened to her. It was during our weekly beer meeting of the BoBs, the pretentious and silly name of our group, “Brains on Beers”. It’s actually a group of retired doctors, scientists, engineers, professors, etc, that meet to have a beer each week and talk. We mostly talk about science, technology, politics, and beer.

We also collect and donate money to buy materials to help local schools and their STEM educational programs. One of the projects we support is the southern Oregon robotics team. The teenager was with that group when four of them came to us to pitch their project for a donation.

An adult leader and three local high school students were making the pitch. Christina, the young woman that I found so inspiring. She loves science. My sense, from listening to her, is that she loves life, knowledge, and learning. Her dream is to join Space X and go into space and colonize other places. Her enthusiasm was like gulping a dozen shots of espresso at once. It was beautiful to behold.

Her comments and enthusiasm trickled into my thinking streams. Eventually, a week later, thoughts came together and bubbled up from my subconscious thinking, and I realized, we’re on a cusp of a revolution.

No, make that revolutions.

People feel and see them coming. That scares and intimidates them. Many people dislike change, or are uncomfortable with change. I’m not too good with it, myself. Processing change requires time and energy. I often feel like I lack enough of either, and just want to climb into bed and cover my head.

Yet, I could see the revolutions coming so clearly in my thoughts this morning as I contemplated my fading dreams. I saw at least another industrial revolution as we move away from fossil fuels and introduce more robotics and automation.

We’re undergoing an information revolution right now. How we acquire, process, and spread information has evolved, and that evolution is speeding up. To combat it, guerrilla warfare comprising of false information and false equivalencies have been

We’re undergoing gender revolutions, and revolutions that are overturning Business As Usual. Sexual assaults, bigotry, and prejudice are being exposed. In a sense, we needed the Trump Administration, because its existence turned on the lights, revealing the ugliness that we’ve institutionalize and accepted as normal and standard.

Of course, the technological and digital revolutions are underway, as well. These are leading to social and cultural revolutions. These revolutions will cause yet greater economic and political revolutions. The great democratic revolution will itself undergo another revolution because the representative form of government, with its elections that establish a ruling class, has been outgrown. So have nation states, as we conceive of ourselves more and more as humans sharing a planet with finite resources, with a need to improve how we use those resources, and begin developing plans to seriously use exo-resources on other worlds.

That’ll launch the space revolution.

It’ll all be a bloody mess for a long time, of course. We know that economic, social, political, and regional stagnation and siloing reduce cooperation and create obstacles and roadblocks. Some like these obstacles. They even want to build walls, because they’re afraid, or they don’t want their comfort zone to change, which is wholly understandable.

But, smart people are out there. They’re perceiving these problems, and they’re conceiving solutions and new approaches.

Trust me. I heard one.

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The Fake News Poll

Have you seen the poll results about fake news in America? Forty-six percent of Americans believe the news media make up news stories about the Trump administration.

Who is surprised?

I believe the news media make up stories, but not about Trump. I believe that other stories have been made up and posted as real news. That set up the meme that the news media can’t be trusted, a position that President Con Don pushes.

Let’s count some of those fake stories. Remember those birther stories about President Obama? They were demonstrably fake stories that right wing media sites continued circulating for years.

Just today, several right wing news sites made up and spread a story about an immigrant starting the California wildfires that swept through NorCal.

How often was Hillary Clinton mocked as “Killary” because of all the people she and Bill were said to have killed? Fifty people, according to some sites, although none of those deaths have been proven in court.

What about Pizzagate?

Remember Jade Helm 15, and the Federal government’s plot to invade Texas and other states?

Many media sites ran with Con Don’s insistence that he won the popular election, enough that people believe him, even though he later asserts that he didn’t win the popular election because of rampant illegal voting in California, and that his inauguration crowd was larger than President Obama’s crowd?

Without effort, I can go back and remember more. What of Judith Miller and the Iraqi WMD, and Nigeria yellow cake? How about the FEMA death camps? Shall we talk about climate change denial? Con Don even lied about his statements on Charlottesville, and though they were broadcast that day, and shown repeatedly, people believe that news was fabricated. Hell, they’re giving him credit for the jobless rates declining, and the improved economy, without being able to cite anything he’s done for either one, and without acknowledging that those are continued trends that started years ago, under President Obama.

None of this news. Spinning news to dirty a candidate isn’t new, either. Nor does it belong to America. Much of the derogatory opinions about Jews, Muslims, and just about anyone who isn’t a white male, can be traced back to unproven or twisted whispering and news campaigns.

No, I’m not surprised that people think news is being made up about Trump. He makes up a lot of it himself, then feeds it to the media, and some of them blindly run with it.

It’s part of a great heritage.

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Divided

Pursuing the writing thread after my walk, sipping my first cuppa writing coffee (I drink one cup of coffee at home in the morning to start my heart), I’m thinking about America’s division. We come together for disasters. Hurricanes, wildfires, and other disasters bring us together to help and save one another. In those instances, we’re no longer just Americans, but humans, caring for one another.

Then someone takes a gun and kills several people. Suddenly we’re not humans toward each other, nor even Americans, but Liberals and Conservatives, hurling insults and threats at one another, and creating a storm of anger and hostility.

Will there ever come a time when we move beyond this, to that place where we’re always humans to each other, stepping up to help, without resorting to vitriol? I don’t know. I have hopes it’ll happen. Then someone writes or says something that I find stupid, offensive, or horribly wrong, and there I am, in the storm of anger once again.

 

 

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Protest Dream

I dreamed I was with my wife and sister-in-law. We’d arrived at a huge meeting center and were there to protest against government actions and for social justice, freedom and equality. The opposition to these ideals, who believed that others shouldn’t get them because others getting these rights were ruining our country, were also showing up. Armed, they were intent on intimidating “our side.”

But we weren’t intimidated. We assembled to protest. When government leaders appeared, we raised our right hand and formed the letter “C.” We held it up over our heads in silence.

It was amazing for me, in the dream, back in the crowd, to look forward, down, across and back, and see tens of thousands of people standing silently in sunlight with their right hand raised in a “C.”

Why that letter and action? The dream didn’t explain that. We all just knew, that’s what we were to do.

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Us

Can there be us, if I can’t see what you see, and you don’t hear what I hear, and you fear what might be, while I strive for what could be, and you worry about what could be, while I worry about what might be, and we can’t understand what the other understands, and the present and the past are broken mirrors of success and failure?

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Experience

He was seventy-five, and she, the younger, was just seventy-three. They met on a cruise to Alaska, an adventure to eat food and see things like glaciers. They knew they didn’t agree on politics but there was e l e c t r i c i t y between them, not sparks or embers, but record one hundred mile long billion volt lightning strokes. So they said, what the hell, let’s try this and see.

Adventurous people they were, they went ‘camping’ together, renting a small cabin to share (there were separate beds), fishing and hiking in the day, campfires and singing at night.

Ten days in, they knew it would not work. He was an ardent Trump supporter and she was advocating RESIST. She gave him three choices: “Take me to an airport and I’ll fly home. Drive me home. Drive me to somewhere where I can rent a car and I’ll drive myself home.”

He replied, “Number three sounds good.”

So that’s what they did, swearing never to see one another again, and unfriending one another on Facebook.

It was a thirty-day life experience.

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Longings

I hate myself on days like this.

I confess, I have longings.

Some are very simple and basic. Many will claim them as impractical and idealistic, even absurd.

Like, I have longings to be young again, and to have a nice cup of coffee with a pastry or donuts without worries about its healthiness or origins, longings to walk around, preferably on a warm, pleasant beach, smiling and nodding in friendliness to other people, who simply nod and smile back in friendliness.

I have longings for success, comfort, happiness, fun, and security in all its forms.

I have longings for freedom, equality, liberty and justice.

I’ll bet those longings are shared with many others.

I bet many people on the right and left share these longings.

I bet many politicians and CEOs share these longings, along with teachers, minorities, refugees, shoppers, consumers, teenagers, the elderly, the rich and the poor.

The nut is in the details of how we get satisfy these longings.

When the United States was founded, it was another step as part of a long walk to satisfy these longings, and the founders walked on the backs of many others. We’re shocked, angry and dismayed by their declaration that all men are created equal even while they were stealing land others already lived upon, deciding women are less deserving, and so are people who were slaves, because slaves were slaves; they were property. That was a compromise. A good one? Hell, no, I hear some shout. We’re still arguing it. It was a different era, with different values, views and principles.

I have sisters and friends who wish the protests going on in the U.S. to be over because, well, the elections are over, and isn’t that what this is all about? They have longings for a happier, more relaxed life.

But the protests and elections are part of a process. Both are symptoms of desires and larger arguments about what is right and wrong, and whether freedom, liberty and equality is even possible for everyone. Aren’t we humans simply animals at the heart of the matter, and shouldn’t it be that the strongest shall rule and take what is theirs by right of strength and power, whether it’s physical or intellectual prowess, military force, or the power of our gods?

These are arguments about longings and principles, perceptions, hopes, dreams, emotions and frustrations, resentments, hostilities and dreams that go back to separations derived from where we live, what we speak, our differences and similarities, all the way back to the most basic and fundamental questions of why we’re here, how we came to be here, and what we want to become.

I hate myself on days like this because I have longings. I want to go write. I want to enjoy my comfortable routine of writing fiction, dreaming of breaking out, working toward the horizon that I’ve created for myself to keep myself going while staving off bitterness, weariness and depression.

Some will read this and remark to their screens to me through their screen, you are a self-indulgent idiot.

I can’t argue that I’m not. I know too well the limits of my talents, intelligence and abilities. I tell myself that if I try harder and persist, promising myself, “I can do better,” and that, if I do, I can overcome my shortcomings.

Which is what these longings are all about, really. You understand.

And I hate myself on days like this, because others have longings, and I think of myself as one person but part of a larger body trying to make a difference. So I set aside my personal longings to take up the longings of others, those longings that were there long before I was born as an American, and march for what we believe is right against an agenda that we believe is wrong.

History will not judge us. History is written by the winners. It’ll be the winners who judge us. If we lose, we’ll probably be forgotten. Hell, if we win, we’ll probably be forgotten as well.

That’s the nature of being part of a larger longing.

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Marching Saturday

Multiple, large marches are planned for Saturday, January 21st, 2017. These are women’s marches, to protect their rights against Trump’s encroachment. For some reason, they’re concerned about a man who likes grabbing them by their pussy while thinking nothing of he or anyone else doing anything like that.

I’ll be marching, too, to support women, as part of a local march in southern Oregon.

What can I say? I like women. Why, some of my best friends are women. I like them so much, I married one. I don’t want to see her, Mom, my sisters or any other woman grabbed by their pussy because some idiot thinks it’s okay. Grab him by the balls uninvited, and let us see how he reacts. Well, the first thing he’d do is react according to who’s grabbing them. If they’re not a ‘loser’ or aren’t ‘unattractive’, he’ll be all for it.

According to a recent poll, many Republican men think it’s better to be a woman than a man now, because women have more rights. Too bad we can’t have someone grab them by their pussy, or work the same hours for less pay, or get raped and told they must carry the child to term because of another’s religions, or get raped and beaten and told they were asking for it because they were drinking or how they were dressed. Bet they’d change their fucking minds in a New York minute, were they ever the victims. But their white maleness often saves them from being victims.

Now some may read this and think that I want Trump to fail. Ben Carson, the failed presidential candidate now up for HUD Secretary, is probably one of those people. Ben said last November that he wouldn’t accept a Trump cabinet position. ‘“The way I’m leaning is to work from the outside and not from the inside,” Carson said in an interview Tuesday with The Washington Post. “I want to have the freedom to work on many issues and not be pigeonholed into one particular area.”’ He said that he made that clear to Trump in several conversations. I guess it wasn’t very clear after all.

It’s amusing to me that Trump often states he ‘dislikes losers’, but someone like Ben Carson, who ran for office and failed to win, the very definition of a loser, is his buddy. Likewise, the young woman singing the national anthem for his inauguration did not finish first on ‘America’s Got Talent’, which, sadly, according to Trump, makes her a loser. That’s how it works, right?

But I don’t want Trump to ‘fail’ any more than I want the United States to ‘fail’. I want Trump’s racist, bigoted, sexist and hateful policies to fail. I want his efforts to drag our country and progress in the areas of social rights and justice back to the 1950s or earlier to fail. I want his efforts to make shitloads of money by being POTUS to fail. But I don’t want him to fail.

I want him to change. I want him to be enlightened. I want him to quit acting like a child throwing a tantrum on Twitter every time someone famous criticizes him. And yeah, views of what it means to be enlightened can be different. I’ll be willing to argue those facts, although it’s hard addressing facts with people who insist that facts don’t matter.

I don’t want Trump to fail but I’d rather that we didn’t put the oilman in charge of oil policy, especially one so in love with Russia, like Rex Tillerson. It’s odd to note that if U.S. oil production increases, oil prices will drop, unless, as it is likely, OPEC takes action to protect their income streams by reducing production. No matter; Trump and his incoming administration want to wean America off of oil imports, even though that trend has been going on for a number of years, which Rex Tillerson should know, right?

I don’t want Trump to fail but I question his understanding of modern manufacturing processes and economics. He must know, because he’s a successful businessman, a reputed billionaire. We can argue about those points, too. Trump has promised and then refused to divulge his ‘big, very beautiful’ tax returns so we don’t know if he’s actually a billionaire. We do know from public records that he’s made money by suing others, reneging on contracts and payments for work done, and declaring bankruptcies.

Trump believes he can save America by putting tariffs on anything imported into America and forcing companies to build factories in America. By this, then, America will become great again. He believes he can force Apple, for example, to build their iPhones in America instead of China. Perhaps he can (although experts think he can’t). See, that’s been addressed multiple times by multiple people but no matter; it’s new to Trump and his supporters. Trump hasn’t been leading by example in this matter by outsourcing his clothing manufacturing to other countries besides America. He says that it’s because that’s the way it is but that he didn’t want to; yet, as a billionaire, he lacked that clout and needs to be POTUS in order to have such clout?

Oddly, a Chinese woman ordered a gold-plated iPhone encrusted with diamonds and engraved with Trump’s face to give to him as a gift at the inauguration. Perhaps she’s being ironic.

Wonder if he’ll turn it down?

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I’m A PLAID

Have you told you that I’m a PLAID? I may have. You may have deduced it.

PLAID:

Progressive

Libertarian

Activist

Independent

Democrat

I’m a Progressive, believing that we should be moving forward in the arenas of justice, freedom and equality, along with protecting our planet. I’m also a progressive that leans toward socialism (perhaps making me a PLAIDS) because I don’t believe that making money off everything and the free market is the answer to every problem.

You can also say I’m a Feminist, but I consider that as part of the broader arc of being a Progressive. Equal rights are equal rights, equal opportunity is equal opportunity, and equal freedom is equal freedom.

I’m dismayed that technology has become so consumer oriented. I accept it with a large dose of regret, but I understand money makes money and fuels ideas. Being principled is challenging and requires courage. I often find myself lacking the courage to live up to my beliefs, and keep kicking myself in the ass to be more cognizant of what’s going on, to live up to my principles, and not be a sheeple.

Besides being Progressive, I’m a Libertarian. Government overreach does exist. Knee-jerk reactions are often embedded into laws that become destructive in practice. Once in law, removing it from the books is problematic, and it comes back and bites us in the ass.

As an Activist. I actively voice my politics through letters, donations, demonstrations and activities. I pursue knowledge and truth. Sometimes, too many times, it seems, I don’t like what I find. Then, weary, I withdraw from my activism to recharge, re-balance and start afresh. Change is a constant; as part of that, I must change. To do that, I need to be able to identify my boundaries and horizons. Otherwise, I can’t go forward.

And I’m an Independent. The I could also be for Idealist. I believe we should have principled leaders with vision who do not live in a protective bubble of privilege but serve us and endure the same problems and situations as as. But wealth and power has its perks, and most people succumb to enjoying the perks to the point that they’re taken for granted and ultimately abused, leading to greater abuses.

I end up as a Democrat, with a sigh, because our two party system dominates the system, writing and enforcing laws, customs and loopholes to protect their power and accomodate them. I wanted a black POTUS but did not believe Barack Obama was the best person to achieve that change. I watched and listened during his primary campaign as he pivoted from being a progressive to becoming a solid centrist. I understood that was politics to win the greater vote but also speculated that it could be more. I wondered where he would govern when he won. He described himself as a Reagan Moderate in later interviews and his actions and positions agree with that description. He is less of a leader and visionary than I wanted and more of a political manager.

Likewise, I believe we’re as long overdue for a female POTUS as we were for a black POTUS, but Hillary Clinton was not the person for that role. Neither was Jill Stein. I prefer Elizabeth Warren to both. She speaks to me more than Jill or Hillary.

There I am, in a complex crucible that barely begins to capture my politics and thinking.

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