Category Archives: Americana

….all men are created equal….

Americana
Painting, by Kerry James Marshall, who was born in Birmingham (Alabama) and grew up in South Central (Los Angeles), at a show at MOCA

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed...Thomas Jefferson with Benjamin Franklin, John Adams, Roger Sherman, and Robert Livingston.

If you’re not outraged, you’re not paying attention, Heather Heyer, killed in Charlotteville.

We are a racist nation with the bigotry of slavery in our DNA. For a long time, it seemed that that racism was in remission but President Donald J. Trump has both stirred up that racism and given it permission to come out of the muck and into the light. I don’t know if Trump is racist, but, in the end, it makes no difference, he has used racism to get elected. But we are also a nation trying to overcome that despicable past and it is worth noting that Heather Heyer, the person killed by a demented terrorist in Charlotteville, is white. May she Rest In Peace and may we find new Outrage by her death.

 

 

A couple of thoughts on political discourse

Americana, Politics
Trump-01894

Any data that do not fit the solution or theory we have already clung to are ignored or discarded. Merim Bilalić and Peter McLeod, “Why Good Thoughts Block Better Ones” in Scientific American. 

“Can’t we all just get along?” Rodney King

Persuasion may play a part in a man’s conversion, but only the part of bringing to its full and conscious climax a process which has been maturing in regions where no persuasion can penetrate. A faith is not acquired; it grows like a tree. Its crown points to the sky, its roots grow downward into the past and are nourished by the dark sap of the ancestral hummus. Arthur Koestler, The God That Failed

A couple of days ago – maybe a week, depending on how long it takes to write this – an old friend that I haven’t seen anywhere but on Facebook asked me, “What is it that concerns you about a lack of dialogue between “liberals” and people who disagree with them? That if they talked to each other more it would change things? I think that until willfully ignorant people start educating themselves about reality, we have to just do the best we can to limit the damage they’re doing.”, and I didn’t know how to answer. I didn’t know the answer and I’m not sure I still do; still, those are the best questions so I’ll give it a try.

Every one of the following sentences should start with I think, or, In my opinion, so consider that included. The answer to the first question is implied in the second question, as corny as it sounds. Yes, if we did talk to each other, it would change things. But the third sentence highlights the problem; if it is only the other person who is willfully ignorant and needs to start educating themselves before we even have a conversation, then the conversation is probably not going anywhere. If we define the problem as “We are right and they are wrong and the only answer is for the other guy to change”, we have done two things that are sort of contradictory: we say your opinion is worthless, so worthless that you are not worth even listening to, and we give them all the power by saying that we can do nothing to bring change, they are the only ones that can bring change.

Our beloved country has been drifting in the wrong direction for several decades and Trump is a giant leap in that wrong direction. Still, I understand why some people voted for him; what I do not understand is why most of those people would still vote for him and the only way I am going to find out is to listen to them. I have learned a couple of things by listening. One is that different Trump voters have different reasons they voted the way they did, the Trump voter block is not monolithic. Some voted for Trump because they expect they will pay less taxes and they will probably be right. I don’t think that is a good reason, not even a moral one, but it is rational. Some voted for Trump because they think the country is such a mess of vested interests that throwing a grenade in the works is the only way to stop it from getting worse. They might be right, the country might get better under Trump but that is unlikely and there is a real possibility that Trump might make the situation much worse. I’m sure that some people voted for Trump because they are bigots – although I have never talked to anybody who has said they voted for Trump because they don’t like black people or Jews – and lots of people voted for Trump because he isn’t Hillary.

I have no data to prove that listening to the other, honoring that the other has a point of view worth considering, actually works to calm the turbulent waters of conflict, but I do have lots of anecdotal evidence that yelling or mocking the other doesn’t work.

Explain to me why North Korea is an existential problem

Americana, Politics, Psychological Musings

Korea-00830

Across 25 years and five administrations, we have kicked the North Korean can down the road. We are now out of road. National Review

The threat, dubbed “the worst problem on earth,” has persisted across U.S. administrations and only grown more alarming over time. Outgoing President Barack Obama warned Trump during the transition that North Korea was the most urgent and vexing problem to confront. NPR

Across the political spectrum, all the news reports on North Korea act as if North Korea is an existential threat to the World and, especially, the United States. I don’t understand it. Nobody seems to have an explanation of why North Korea is such a big threat (I’m guessing somebody must have but if so, I missed it). We are told that Kim Jong-un is crazy and while he does seem to have a crazy haircut, he doesn’t seem to do crazy stuff. Except for the Kim Jong-uh is crazy stuff, nobody explains why North Korea is such a big problem, they just assume that you know, or everybody knows, that it is obvious.

What I do know, or think I know, at least is that North Korea is a country of about 25 million people ruled by Kim Jong-un, the grandson of Kim Il-sung, the dictator appointed by and backed by the, then, Soviet Union. North Korea is next to China in the north – and China is North Korea’s biggest trading partner and, theoretically, its biggest external influence – and South Korea in the south (duh!). Its people are starving poor and it still has a larger standing army than we do with (although it is considered to be ill-equipped by modern standards). What it does have is a limited nuclear capacity and an increasingly sophisticated ICBM program which North Korea is trying to parlay into an operational nuclear missile fleet – that’s probably the wrong word – capable of hitting anywhere in the United States. The treat of this program has scared the shit out of us going all the way back to the first Bush. The mainstream media have fanned these fears for over twenty-five years alternating between mocking Kim Jong-un – and he does seem easy to mock – and screaming “The sky is falling!” with no explanation of why this is such an existential problem.

What I think, or know I think, at least is that all this hysteria is made up, there is no real danger, North Korea is like a spoiled kid trying to get the world’s attention. Let’s just imagine, for a minute, that North Korea is fabulously successful in their schemes and they have a hundred nuclear-tipped ICBM ready to go. What are they going to do with them? Nothing, the same as Pakistan or Russia (Russia has about 7,300 nuclear warheads, with about 1800 ready to fire, by the way). If they use them on us or South Korea or Japan, the retaliation would annihilate North Korea along with the Kim Jong-un regime. The only thing a nuclear weapon does is prevent an attack. I read that North Korea is irrational to want nuclear weapon, I think it is irrational to not want them, just ask Moammar Kadafi. We have demonized North Korea since Jun 25, 1950, and we do have a record of attacking countries that we demonize. I think what North Korea wants is attention and the Kim Jong-un regime wants recognition as legitimate.

Demonizing North Korea sells newspapers and magazines, it gets people to watch the nightly news, and it gives the American regime in power a useful distraction. It does not contribute to a better world.

Happy 4th of July….sort of

Americana, Around home

nd t—4th-01547

I – all of us really, I think – are constantly barraged with Trump; he is always on the front page of some newspaper and on the cover of at least one mag a week – this week it’s The Economist – he is almost always the lead story on the Daily Show or John Oliver, CNN has become obsessed with him, and my Facebook friends and enemies are  screaming back and forth like they are in the third grade. Trump is changing our world, our country, in a way that I don’t like and I am reminded of that many times every day. This new normal tempers my usual 4th of July enthusiasm, I am both mad at my country and frightened for it. And it’s not just Trump buffoonery, it’s our Forever Wars, our pious outrage when Russia does to our political system what we feel we have the right to do to anybody we damn well please, it’s our slide into a corrupt oligarchy.

But, from here, where we live, from the edge of Silicon Valley, California, USA, it’s a great Fourth! (and the influence in our day to day lives is really in that order). On Saturday, we went to the San Jose Earthquake~Los Angeles Galaxy Soccer Professional Football Game at Stanford. The tickets were from my Little Brother, Edwin, who now works for the Earthquakes. It was a full house – predominately, but far from entirely, upscale Hispanic – and it felt so American. Really, when you think about it, what is more American than the immigrant experience, all of us are from immigrant stock. Immigrants are what turned a backwater set of colonies into the most powerful country the world has ever seen and today, here, in Silicon Valley, immigrants or the sons of immigrants, are changing our world, they have given us Intel, eBay, Google, and Apple to name a couple. Watching The Earthquakes/Galaxy struggle on a cool summer night also felt typically Californian, another form of the Northern/Southern California rivalry. The game itself was great, LA scored early but The Quakes played a better game finally tieing the game at the 75 minute, and then winning during the Stoppage time.

I was going to continue this post with some pictures of the Redwood City 150 Year Anniversary and Parade, for some reason unfathomable to me, I cannot upload them.  The Parade had all the usual players, The Mounted Sheriff’s Patrol, firetrucks – lots of firetrucks which came early in the Parade –  and our local SWAT Team marching through the streets like an occupying army, but it also had lots of floats and marchers that would not fit in most parts of America. The largest group at the parade, by far, was Falun Dafa, which touts that it is an advanced self-cultivation practice of the Buddha School and the DAR was represented by the Gaspar de Portola Chapter – which, since Portola was the first governor of Baja California having been appointed by the Spanish crown in 1767, is more irony than I can grasp standing up –  for example.

Anyway, while it is still July, I want to say, again, Happy Fourth of July.

A couple of pics from the Angeles Crest Highway with totally unconnected thoughts

Americana, Politics, Psychological Musings

Rules-00751I am not a big rule follower. One of the things that really bugs me is being told to do something only because it is the rule rather than being given a reason. But there are rules, conformities really, that just make life smoother; walking on the right side of a path for example or answering a question when you are the one who brought it up. Trump is one of those people that say – by their actions – “It’s my path, I’ll walk on any side I want” or “There might be tapes of my conversation with Comey.” and then, FORTY-ONE days later, says “I was only kidding.”. Everybody thinks that Trump must have had a good – as in real – reason for saying it in the first place, but I’m not sure, I think it is more likely that he is just a dick with no social graces. He is doing it just because he can. If there is a reason, it is just of seeing how long he can keep people looking at him. He is the kind of guy that never gets invited back after a “get to know you invite”. He is sad…and a dick.

Rules LA-00738

Baldy-00753Democrats Seethe After Georgia Loss: ‘Our Brand Is Worse Than Trump’ headline in the New York Times

What most pisses me off about the Democratic Establishment is their complete cluelessness about the Nation they say they should be ruling. Until Trump won, they – they being everybody from the New York Times to Hillary Clinton who was already picking out her cabinet – didn’t have any idea that Trump was actually going to win. Sure, the Polls were off, but only the Liberal Polls, some of the Conservative Polls said Trump was going to win but they were dismissed as Fake News. What was really Fake News, it turns out, were the news sources we want to trust. That is also sad.