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What do Donald Trump, the internet, America’s insanely lax gun laws, Black Lives Matter, capitalist greed and the corporate ownership of the U.S. government, the rigging of the Democratic primaries in 2016, Brexit, and what’s currently happening in Gaza have in common?
It’s that we are now living in a world where people will say and do incredibly ridiculous stuff, stuff that would have been unthinkable a few short years ago, and get away with it, which initiates a feedback loop, because the more they get away with it the more they do it.
Consider. When Donald Trump rode down an escalator and made directly insulting remarks to every Mexican, pundits said that was the end of his campaign, but they were wrong. He not only got away with it, it increased his popularity and he was just smart enough to realize that and kept making more and more inflammatory comments, and he totally got away with it. He is much wealthier today, not in jail, and still a political force. On the internet, people say anything they want to and there are seldom real world consequences, which has encouraged right- wingers to go further to the right, and left-wingers to go even further to the left, which I must admit is liberating for me, but it makes for a dangerous and volatile atmosphere. As to the gun laws, I remember some time after Sandy Hook when I read a comment that made so much sense it was frightening. To paraphrase: “After Sandy Hook, the gun argument was basically over. If a class full of 2nd graders being slaughtered wasn’t enough to convince the American people, it is clear that nothing ever will be.” And that’s true. The gun lobby won, because we live in a world where you can get away with anything. After Michael Brown was shot, and the Black Lives Matter movement really took off, I had high hopes that things would change. But, hundreds of murders later, and police are still killing random black people. We’ve got precisely one conviction, which I’m pretty sure is being appealed. The police can still get away with it, and they know they can get away with it, so the problem continues. As far as capitalist greed and corporate ownership of the U.S. government goes, they aren’t even trying to hide it any more. Congress votes tax cuts and giveaways to big corporations without blinking an eye, and they block public health and green energy without even bothering to justify their position, because they can do that. The Democrats rigged their primaries in 2016. When they were caught, they admitted it, and defended it in court by saying (and again I paraphrase) “We can do whatever we want and we don’t owe the voters shit, haha.” So, they did it again in 2020 and here we are.
It seems as if the Tories in Britain (who more and more resemble Donald Trump) and the Netanyahu government in Israel have learned from the U.S. model. Lie, lie, lie, lie right directly in the face of contradictory evidence, and do whatever the hell you want to, and if you have the power you will get away with it.
It is a hell of a state of affairs.

Of course, history is written by the winners. I don’t suspect that there is some kind of an Illuminati school board that sits around and decides on these things, but the story the powerful want told is their story, and that which supports that gets reported, and repeated, and taught, and every thing that deviates from that gets ignored. It’s sort of Darwinian, which information survives and is passed on to the next generation.
It’s nothing new. Our views of 15th and 16th century England are largely formed by the plays of Shakespeare, and Shakespeare was writing for Elizabeth. I imagine Homer’s version of the Trojan War met with the approval of his contemporary Greek ruling class. And so, American history doesn’t tend to emphasize the trail of tears, or any of the various Indian massacres, or the true horrors of slavery and modern day racism, or any of the times government troops fired on striking miners.
It is dangerous, because if we’re looking at a fictional version of the past and, as we’re told we should, learning from the past, so as not to repeat it, then we are heading into the future with totally incorrect directions.The question is, how can we change course?

Just re-watched Matrix. I saw it when it first came out, ’96 I believe it was, and enjoyed it, but was somewhat surprised to keep hearing people rave about it, and then it began to get referenced all the time. Red pill or blue pill became as much of a catch phrase as “Soylent Green is people!”
I liked it O.K., it’s sci-fi, Laurence Fishburne is awesome, but I thought it was deliberately confusing in parts (but this is years before Inception, and we really learned what confusion was about) and, once he’d ‘started to believe’ he just became Superman basically. Once bullets cannot harm you and you can fly and you can go into somebody else’s body and make them explode, the edge is sort of off.
Anyway, running out of things to watch on Netflix so gave it another look. It was, again, good enough to watch all the way through but I have exactly the same reservations now as back then.

Well, the debate was raging fast and furious, on the subject of ‘Should trans women be allowed to compete in women’s sports. As I believe I have written in this blog before, I’m in the same camp as Joe Rogan on that question. No. No, they should not. But, of course that got a lot of pushback because I’m apparently ‘transphobic’ and ignorant. Oh, so very, very ignorant. There was also quite a bit of conversation about the term cis, which did not exist until trans people decided that they should not be the only ones with a qualifying adjective in front of their gender, and ‘natural born’ would imply that others are not.
Anyway, the original conversation has almost nothing to do with this blog. Someone posted, without attribution, “Some men think the Earth is round, others think it flat; it is a matter capable of question. But if it is flat, will the King’s command make it round? And if it is round, will the King’s command flatten it? No, I will not sign.” I read that and thought ‘By golly, that is a damned good quote, very medieval sounding, but strikes right at the heart of so, so many debates. Are there intelligent, space faring creatures from other planets? We can argue about it for days, but either there are or there aren’t and we don’t know. Is there life after death? What about ghosts? Re-incarnation? Is faster than light travel possible? Will it rain this afternoon?
So, I asked where the quote was from but it was a really long thread and direct questions often get ignored, so I typed it into the old google machine and voila. It’s from A Man For All Seasons, which is now on my list of things I really must watch, and there were some other great quotes from it, too.
You learn something new every day.

Well, it does seem from what I’m reading on Facebook that Andrew Yang has just stepped in a huge pile of dog poop. IMHO, it couldn’t have happened to a more deserving guy.
On the other hand, my Facebook skews left, and I am often stunned by what shit people can say and get away with it.
His statement, that we should all support Israel as it valiantly defends itself against the raging Palestinians, or something like that, might have raised nary an eyebrow in years past, and would have garnered him some votes in the Jewish community, but coming hard on the heels of a bombing that killed 20 people in Gaza, the storming of the mosque in Jerusalem, and the evictions in Jerusalem, was a bit off. It still might play well for him, we’ll wait a few days and see.
To me, it just reinforces my opinion of Yang, which is that he doesn’t have the political knowledge, much less the experience, to be an effective mayor of New York City. Like Caitlin Jenner, he has never held an elective office before. His UBI plan, while appealing on an abstract level, was poorly thought out and basically just a cover for cutting everything else. And, with this Israel thing, it seems like he just didn’t put any thought into it – and so it came across sounding somewhat bloodthirsty, in the moment.
But, whether people turn on Yang because he’s supporting an apartheid regime, or just because he’s a yutz, I don’t care. I would be very happy to witness his political downfall.