Guns are like sex

Republicans in New Hampshire have generally been producing the kind of legislation they produce everywhere else, encroaching on women's rights, gutting public education, chatting about returning to segregated schools, playing games with the tax laws to create the illusion that they're lowering property taxes when they're just shifting the burden to a different column in the ledger... the usual crap. However, they have introduced a bill that favors a controversial position of my own: firearms education.

We live in a country where there are already more guns than people. They're here. We have a whole amendment to the Constitution dedicated to preserving the right of ownership for ordinary citizens. It's been stretched way out of shape to help the firearms industry move vast amounts of merchandise, but the principle unfortunately continues to make sense in our primitive species. Any person should have the right to be armed.

Many of us, myself included, have not prioritized personal weaponry. I mean, I have a couple of firearms, and I've gone to the range as few times, but I can think of a lot of reasons not to be armed. Plus it's expensive and time consuming to become competent and remain in practice. You might think it's as simple as pulling the little lever thingy and whatever you're aiming at troubles you no more, but the device itself requires attentive care and maintenance. Your skills require regular range time. Ammunition itself isn't cheap. If you want more advanced tactical skills, that's another whole layer of training. That's also beyond the scope of what the Republicans and I propose is a good idea.

Here's the thing: guns are a part of the fabric of our society. Refusing to teach young people how they work and how to handle them is the same as insisting on abstinence-only sex education. You can be comprehensively educated about sex and decide to abstain. There are a lot of good reasons to abstain. There are also reasons to participate over a wide range of styles. Deciding from a place of ignorance is never a good idea. So is just learning it on the street.

Educating everyone robs the knowledge of its insider power for the people who had already sought it out. Giving everyone a functional base of exposure to the technology and terminology means that arguments against use have more strength. The aficionados can't sneer at your lack of technical vocabulary. Sure, there will always be higher levels of immersion, and changing slang to try to evade the outer circles. But no one will be completely outside the circle.

Obviously, the teachers have to be well screened, but that's true anyway. And the curriculum has to be scrupulously neutral. So the text of the bill may allow for or even nudge toward a pro-gun bias, and that's not good. But the basic idea is sound.

Guns are widely available. They will remain pretty accessible in this country unless there are some drastic -- and probably undesirable -- changes in government. Sure, we need to tighten up access quite a bit, but it's decades too late to make them all go away.

Even now, Second Amendment folks on the "left" are coming out in response to ICE atrocities, to indicate that the stakes for the front line agents might be higher than the happy hooligans anticipated. It's not a great development, but it does demonstrate that the Bill of Rights cuts both ways.

Levels of training on both sides probably span a range from utter noobs to ex-military or law enforcement. If actual fighting broke out, it would be a mess. That's true of fighting in general. The mess gets worse as the use of weapons increases. But one thing that could cut through the gunslinger fantasies would be actual education. It gives everyone a basic informed vocabulary. It sets a baseline standard for what everyone knows about the uses, dangers, rights, and responsibilities inherent in having and using a gun.

Next, institute my plan for driver education that requires anyone getting a license for the first time to have to use a bicycle for transportation for a full year, whether it's 12 continuous months (impractical with our winters) or just a total of 12 months collected over no more than a three-year period.

Terrorizing a nation is expensive

 Terrorism depends on emotional impact. The 9-11 attacks killed a tiny fraction of the total population of the United States, but drove a precision chisel into divides in the country, starting the fractures that led us to two costly wars and the election disasters of 2016 and 2024.

With an authoritarian government in place in the United States, we now have government forces terrorizing US citizens under the pretext of terrorizing "illegal immigrant criminals." They're on a rampage in Minnesota, focused mainly on the Twin Cities area, after a summer that included a shock raid in Chicago that could have come from a movie script. Remember that Donald Trump comes from reality television, and Steve Bannon made his money in the movie business. It's all show biz to them. Coincidentally, terrorism is all show biz, too.

Terrorism is performance art. It's guerrilla theater. It's improv in the wild, only it's not improvised by its writers. It's only improvised by the unwitting characters in the general public or target population who have the situation sprung on them.

Despite having an enormous budget and now asking for more money, and hiring anyone from 18 to 80 who is willing to buy their own tactical kit and pepper spray old ladies and school kids, ICE can't put big touring companies in more than one or two cities at a time. The expense goes beyond money to personnel. A goon squad needs goons. While humanity seems to produce an endless supply of people who like to be mean to other people, they're still a small enough percentage that the Department of Homeland Security will soon have to hire people who have to get their parents to drop them off at work.

All of this malicious incompetence comes at a cost to taxpayers. You, the average citizen, are paying all of the budget for ICE to commit acts of brutality without fear of penalty or pushback. Their funding was specifically secured in the One Big Bucket of Bullshit reconciliation bill the Republicans managed to shoehorn through last summer.

The Republican members of congress aren't spineless, they're complicit. Republican voters: is this really what you voted for? In some cases, I'm sure it is. But the rest of you: even if you long to live as the privileged class under apartheid, don't you realize that the strategies of xenophobia and isolation are demolishing your precious American exceptionalism? Even without the Toddler-in-Chief stomping his feet because he didn't get a Nobel Prize, the rest of the administration has the foreign policy plans of a 12-year-old. At best they're led by Stephen Miller, who hasn't evolved spiritually and intellectually since high school. He was a nasty piece of work then, and now he has years of experience. They have not mellowed him.

Stephen Miller is another chickenhawk playing toy soldier with other people's lives. Never served a day, but he's all about "might makes right" when it comes to sending other people's kids to pick fights on behalf of white nationalism.

At Davos this week, where America once held considerable influence, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney laid out a plan in which the United States is left to devour itself with petty squabbles while the rest of the world moves on to outgrow the era of superpowers. The US was described as the last superpower in the 1990s, even as a "hyperpower" because it was the apparently victorious survivor of the Cold War. Drunk with power, the country has lurched through the decades since, believing its own hype to the point that ignorant voters were convinced to hollow out and undermine the bipartisan structure created after World War II to facilitate peace and prosperity through diplomacy and global trade.

And now the neo-Nazis who can't get over their side losing the second world war have merged with the white supremacists who couldn't get over losing the American Civil War to throw us back into the hostile and destructive worlds of the 19th and 20th centuries. They'll squander as much of your money as they can to lift up the worst elements of racist government and suppression of labor. Labor is most of us. The myth of upward mobility is that there's always room at the top. The myth of meritocracy is that the best people always rise. The truth is that there's only so much room for middle management. The bulk of us will always be down in the massive pile of the lower part of the pyramid, carrying the load of all of the pretensions of the few rich and powerful manipulators acting out their disparate fantasies of how the world should be to suit themselves

A note to my Democratic senators...

 Just  caught some social media chatter to the effect that Senate Democrats are considering offering increased funding to ICE in exchange for body cameras and de-escalation training.

Respectfully, ARE YOU FCKING KIDDING ME?!  That's some top quality appeasement. "Give him the Sudetenland, maybe he'll be satisfied." No. Just no. And furthermore, hell no.

ICE funding should be cut. Any pending funding should be held back while all of their crimes, including the murder of Renee Good are fully investigated and evidence logged for future prosecution after we no longer have a corrupt POTUS. And the utterly improper investigation of Good's wife on trumped-up domestic terrorism allegations should be halted immediately.

ICE needs a firm yank on the leash, not more biscuits and pats on the head.

Thank you.

Fascist Fatigue

 Opponents of the current regime and the institutions behind it have been using the f-word for years now, with a sprinkling of the n-word as well. The terms "fascist" and "Nazi" have become meaningless epithets, as both sides fling them at each other.

Voices on the left face accusations of crying wolf because they have been calling "fascist" for so long. But there's a difference between crying wolf in the sense that we've all come to scorn: alarming the populace about an imaginary peril; and simply providing advance warning long before the general public is ready to see where the trend must inevitably lead. The wolf was a long way off, but its path was clear.

As with original recipe fascism in the 1920s and '30s, the current iteration has had its supporters who like some or all of its tenets, whether they just hope for the economic prosperity or also relish the suppression of fringe elements in society. Maybe they believe that what really brought down the fascists and Nazis was their expansionism (which is true), and believed the rhetoric of the current regime about ending foreign wars and concentrating on some nice ethnic cleansing at home. Now, of course, the regime has struck militarily at Venezuela, threatens to steal territory from a NATO ally, has eyes on Cuba, and is rattling sabers at Iran.

Nothing annoys a modern fascist more than being called a fascist. They will lead the chorus saying that anyone who points out their fascistic tendencies is overreacting. They find harmony among all of the ordinary folk who don't want to believe that their simple struggle for survival and economic advancement is going to be interrupted by either an authoritarian crackdown or a messy resistance to an authoritarian crackdown. Surely things aren't so dire! We just want affordable housing, food, education, and transportation.

America is the land of the open mind when it comes to debating political philosophies while ignoring systemic oppression of women and minorities. Let's argue fine points of whether we're really well into a fascist state, while said state sends armed goons into selected cities to harass, maul, and even kill without remorse or restraint. Don't get between them and their targets of ethnic cleansing, or you will be punished, up to the point of summary execution in the street (you fuckin' bitch).

Sounds pretty fascist to me. And the playbook was public before the election that threw this regime into power. We knew what they wanted to do. Now they're doing it. Call it what it is and declare your support or opposition. It's that simple.

Why the 2A crowd ain't shooting:

 There are two main reasons that the patriots of the Second Amendment aren't picking off the shock troops that the current regime is sending into selected communities to pound them into submission.

First, they have generally voted reliably Republican, which means accepting if not endorsing all party policies. This includes racism, misogyny, xenophobia, and Christian nationalism. So they sense victory, not a threat. For many of them, ICE is a dream job.

Second, they probably know better. Opening fire on this government would just invite a devastating counter-offensive. It would justify the claims of the regime, that there's an insurrection. It would tilt public sympathy in favor of "law and order" even when that actually represents a further assault on the Bill of Rights. Wars are only entertaining at a distance.

The widespread ownership of guns in this country contributes to the virtual impossibility that the government could actually occupy the country as a whole against its will. If the entire military supported a government crackdown, they could devastate large areas, but would still have to deal with unconventional warfare until the resistance got bored with it. Anything short of full military cooperation leads to a paramilitary force like ICE as the regime's goon squad. They can be brutal and lethal in a limited area, but can't hold it for the long term.

If combat becomes the norm, certain places will turn into battle zones, while others remain physically untouched, albeit economically devastated. All the while, China and Russia will observe, smiling, while running psyops to fan the flames, and funding insurgents to keep them interested.

Stupid Slogan of the Day, 1-14-2026

 Just caught a post on Blue Sky that said, "A reasonable and moderate opposition party will never ever ever ever ever ever permanently defeat and displace an extremist ruling party."

I posted in response, "Thus assuring that we never have reasonable government."

While the opposition party in this moment has to act with strategy, strength, and resolve, the power of any party derives from the voters. Say what you will about the influence of big money, big money exerts its influence by brainwashing little voters in large numbers. By scorning moderation and reason, you lock yourself into an endless cycle of lashing back and forth between extremes. That will never ever ever ever ever make the United States trusted and respected globally. It will weaken our country permanently -- if it hasn't been so weakened already by the fact that voters chose to install the most destructive and unstable executive branch in history in our last election.

The damage of that executive branch is compounded by the anti-democratic Supreme Court majority, and the authoritarian Republican Party in general.

We need to get to reasonable government and work to stay there. Extreme rhetoric and actions from the far ends of the political spectrum serve no one but their insane disciples.

That being said, I acknowledge that the current threat to our very existence calls for powerful action. But don't expect miracles from the minority party. Every citizen needs to engage in the endless process of persuasion to get voters in large numbers to vote for the policies that will get us to a government that takes care of its people instead of its corporations. The power comes from the people and the responsibility rests there to keep pressing. If that's too much trouble, kick back and hope that you get lucky with the next dictator and the one after that and so on. Or commit to generation after generation of bloodshed in extremist confrontations.

Extremism in defense of liberty is a vice, because extremism can't help but curtail liberty. The extremist personality is fundamentally self righteous. That's not a trait you want in power.

Commitment is not extremism. Staunch opposition to the unreasonability of extreme authoritarianism is not counter-extremism. Truly effective government calls for thoughtful, deliberate action. Inclusivity is always more complicated than exclusion. Extremism narrows its view and resorts to coercion. You might claim that extreme actions are just for now, but in the aftermath you discover how many war crimes your own side has committed. You find yourself as a besieged revolutionary government crushing dissent to defend itself.

Extremism is dumb. Theirs is narrow minded and nasty, and ours would be, too.

Is it time to start sleeping in our clothes?

 With Vice President JD Vance threatening that ICE will begin "door to door operations," and the rogue agency clearly targeting anyone even slightly uncooperative with the regime, maybe those of us who are at all vocal in opposition need to start sleeping in our clothes. Especially in colder climates, who wants to be dragged out in their PJs for the humiliating spectacle of being cuffed and stuffed, carted away to a mysterious fate by secret police?

Keep some sturdy slip-on footwear beside the bed to complete your ensemble. And be mindful of how your nightly moisturizing routine might make you look to the cameras.

No one expects the Spanish Inquisition!! Likewise, you may have no hint that the all-seeing eye of the regime has settled upon little old you. Dress for the weather outside, in case you have to face it unexpectedly.

Lots of apocalypticists and general preparedness advocates have kept a "go bag" handy for years. Unless you plan to beat feet through the back door as the agents kick down the front one, don't expect to be able to retain a handy kit of personal possessions after your arrest. You'll probably have a shaved head and an orange jumpsuit within hours. But, for the sake of dignity and protection from the weather, stay suited up at all times, in anticipation of your time in transit to that fate.

Even if they just pop the door and shoot you in the face, you want to look good. On the other hand, in the case of summary execution, sporting the flannel pajamas, mug of cocoa, and fleece blanket will get the point across that maybe you aren't such a terrorist mastermind after all.

Everything in political violence is for emotional effect. That's why we keep our protests scrupulously nonviolent. They call us a threat, we show up in goofy costumes, or cheerfully assure them that we're not mad at them. And they shoot someone in the face. Who looks like a threat now? All of this posturing from the regime on one side and positioning from the opposition on the other is ultimately to persuade the sideline public that they want to support one side or the other. Do you prefer the goofballs in frog suits who want to share a living wage and universal health care, or the masked, armed, angry men who want to shoot you because you don't grovel quickly and thoroughly enough?

The vast majority of us do not have to worry about the goon squad kicking our door in and dragging one or more family members away. But no one has perfect immunity. Just because it probably won't be you does not mean that it never could. Certainly the percentage of people who should be subject to home invasion by law enforcement, after thorough investigation and under a valid warrant, is minuscule. There were already enough mistakes before the current regime decided to make it a regular occurrence. They're being sloppy both in preparation and in accountability afterward, because the people in power don't really care about accuracy. They care about intimidation, about maintaining order by making obedience seem like wisdom and self defense.

ICE is living the American Dream

 Who among us has not secretly fantasized about shooting some smartass in the face for defying our authority? Seriously, what's the point of having guns if you can't use them to enforce your will?

The freedom-loving patriots of the right wing never cared about freedom for everyone, only freedom for themselves to exert force on all of the types of people they deem inferior. If you judge human value solely by the ability to dominate by physical force, they are correct. It's all about the hierarchy. You're either dishing it out or taking it. They have always only wanted the freedom to dish it out with no consequences except at the hands of someone better at dishing it out. Let every dispute be solved by combat or the threat thereof.

How many people who deplored Kristi Noem shooting her puppy for being unruly celebrate her goon shooting a lesbian in the face for being mouthy? You have to realize that a solid percentage of the voting public still thinks that gunning down people they view as deviants is a step in the right direction for this country. It's nowhere near a majority, but it's not a tiny number, either. They feel fully safe from that kind of street justice, because they are the good people, the righteous people, the true Americans. And they don't care who they have to kill to secure their dominance.

There is no shared humanity with people who don't consider you human.

Their American dream may not be your American dream, but it is as American as slavery and genocide. As such, it does not invalidate every other, more welcoming American dream, but it traces its roots back before the Mayflower. Our only power against it is the vote. Outnumber the bastards, and show up every time. We can also educate, and hope to prevail gradually in the contest for hearts and minds, but well short of that we just have to keep working the system on which we base our rights.

All you people who like to yap about revolution and starting over, remember this: you lose everything in the process. Starting from scratch in this modern, interconnected world is a far more dicey prospect than it was in the 18th Century. You don't really want to render the entire country defenseless while you haggle over the perfect constitution you will use to replace the tattered and scribbled-on document from which we currently work. Your whole concept of what rights you should have comes from those 18th Century documents.

Voting seems like a feeble response, but...

 As murderous thugs kill citizens with impunity and the regime lies about it, you might feel that we've gone beyond the humdrum norms of political engagement. But what's at stake are exactly those humdrum norms.

Protest. Yes. Demonstrate. Yes. Absolutely barrage Republican officials with harsh criticism of their cowardice, corruption, and treasonous betrayal of the United States Constitution. Lean on irresolute Democrats to make sure that they know we are behind them in their opposition to the un-American (to say the least) operations of the current lawless regime.

Lawless is the only word for it. The dictatorship currently holding the executive branch with the full support of Republicans in Congress and conservatives on the Supreme Court simply does what it wants. Their behavior reflects the cancerous libertarianism of people like Peter Thiel, who have declared that their freedom to wield power solely based on their money completely outweighs any influence that ordinary  voters should have on how  the country is run, and for whom.

All that patriotic bullshit about 1776 and independence and freedom? They don't believe a word of it. If the popgun patriots try any Second Amendment shenanigans against the regime that they thought were their friends, they will probably find themselves on the receiving end of a drone strike. That goes double hard and double quick for anyone who has been openly opposed to the slide into fascism.

The first, indispensable step in reclaiming our constitutional republic is to vote in overwhelming numbers in the upcoming midterm election, and any special elections before or after. It's a shame about the Republican Party, but they've been digging this hole for themselves since the 1970s, and started using heavy equipment on it in 1980.

I'm all for self interest. That's why I'm all for a government designed around taking care of ordinary citizens as the default. Spend my tax dollars to make life go a little smoother for people who have it rough. Make a charitable outlook the standard. Make society function more smoothly to reduce the burden of private charity to try to treat symptomatically a disease that is caused and intensified by a government that only favors the wealthy.

The system we're trying to preserve and defend provides us as voters with the ultimate check on power. The Constitution itself begins with the words "We the People." Yes, "people" in those days meant white male property owners, and property included both Black people and wives. We've literally fought a war over that and amended the document to clear some of that up. More work is required, but we were moving in the right direction.

It's hard to keep up with the actions of elected officials after they get elected. I get that. Depending on where you live, you may have municipal officials, county officials, state officials, and federal posts to monitor. Maybe a school board, a water commission... it's a lot. We have to trust each other, when the positions attract unscrupulous types who want to take advantage of that trust. 

Time to get back to expanding the inclusiveness of who people are. Time to get back to selecting and maintaining a representative government that responds to more than bribes from corporations. Such a government is assembled through the boring mechanism of voting.

Matt Walsh: Chickenhawk Imperialist

 I do not seek out right wing online content, but sometimes it finds its way. Tonight it was a video by Matt Walsh, proclaiming the heritage of the United States as an empire, glorifying expansionism, and celebrating the death that goes with it.

Whenever a right wing figure starts talking all ruthless and shit, I check immediately to see if they have any military or other combat experience whatsoever.

Matt Walsh has none. It reminded me of another chirpy right wing pipsqueak, in the 1990s, a guy named Michael Kelly, who was also a chickenhawk. Chickenhawks are people in media or government who talk a hard line about swinging America's dick, but have never actually served. Kelly was thrilled to death to be embedded with US forces invading Baghdad in 2003. He died on the very first night, when the Humvee he was riding in crashed into a canal. He never got to see the war turn into the money-sucking quagmire that encumbered us for eight years.

The aftermath of 9-11 ushered in a wave of pro-war sentiment unparalleled since before World War I. Probably well before. I suppose you could draw the parallel to Pear Harbor as a motivator, and say that Americans were all in favor of World War II, but they mostly weren't until the Japanese attack.

The world of the 1930s was very different from the world of 2001. War was nasty at the start of hostilities in the 1930s, and horrific at the crescendo in 1945. The stakes have only gotten higher since then.

Walsh rhapsodized on the spiritual and material benefits of expansionism. Expand into what, though? We're on a round planet with one atmosphere, one oceanic system, and, like it or not, one species of human. We will destroy ourselves trying to create ever-expanding empires. That's kind of what World War II was all about. He spoke warmly about the killing and dying necessary to build and maintain his fantasy empire. 

You first, dude. Suit up and get on the field.

Are we just creatures of statistics?

 Voters have let the parties take them for granted for so long that we all just accept that partisan gerrymandering will almost always work. It only fails when the party in question loses control of a subset of voters that they might have expected to win, as may occur in Texas this year. But a "dummymander" only trips up the party that drew it because statistics let them down unexpectedly in a limited instance. Voters in general plod along on such predictable paths that districting is destiny.

Does that sound like a free people to you? Does that sound like the outlaws and anti-heroes that Americans pretend to be? I guess pretend is the operative word.

As a "left-leaning" independent, I have been voting consistently Democratic, because a Democrat supermajority would be much more likely yield some of the programs progressives yearn for. A slim majority is just a tease, doomed to failure. The government needs to be strong and fearless, and be able to institute a well-chosen selection of solid policies to prove their concept long before it all gets pushed over by a backlash election just based on party label.

It's not that the Democrats are so great. It's that the Republicans are so...not. Look at them right now: they've let the current occupant of the Oval Office blunder around and shit all over the place, and for what? Seriously, I can only guess. I do not know exactly what the party in power thinks they are doing other than amassing as much wealth as they can and avoiding criminal prosecution.

If international law had any teeth, a whole bunch of them would be in serious trouble right now. Unfortunately, the rules-based international order has about as much real clout as the global environmental movement. "Heyyyyy!! You guyyyyyysss!! Stop it! Stop it now!"

Polling shows that the policies of the party in power are wildly unpopular, but when has that ever translated to a resounding ass-kicking electorally? We barely saved ourselves in 2020. The policies of the Biden administration were great economically, and represented a re-centering of the interests of ordinary citizens in place of the super wealthy, but the handicaps it faced from the pandemic provided just enough economic turbulence to give the GOP a talking point from which to spew lies about all of it. Then Hamas decided that they'd like Trump to be president, and Netanyahu agreed.

Voters have power, but it's all single-shot muskets. It's not dramatic while you're doing it, only afterward if it turns out that enough people agreed with you. If they didn't, it's frustrating at best and horrifying at worst. Right now we're living in "at worst." But that's the mechanism. You vote. It's the basic unit of citizenship.

Anyone content to remain rigidly partisan will continue to fulfill statistical probability. The country gets run by maps, not by people. Not by us people, anyway.

If you believe that the only way to clean up the political system is to collapse the country completely and rebuild from the ashes, you are incorrect. The collapse of this country would lead to such a long period of chaos and weakness that any transition to a better system for regular folks would take many generations. Doing it my way would only take a few election cycles, if we got our shit together about what really matters, and quit focusing on suppressing and persecuting LGBTQ people, controlling women, and imposing any kind of religion onto government. You're never going to get a perfect election. But if voters don't defy the maps and vote against the ignorance, greed, and incompetence of the current party in power we are headed down. Not "down a difficult road" or "down a dark path." Just...down.

What is an artist? And what do they owe you?

 Internet memes pop up in response to every situation these days. They're meant to provide a concise critical or satirical analysis of some event or point of view. Because they are nicely bite-sized and written to provide a quick resolution, they take on the status of crystallized wisdom, even when they're not.

One I saw today states that if a bakery can refuse to make a cake for a gay couple's wedding, then a musician can refuse to perform at the Kennedy Center under its current management. In so doing, the meme makes the case that either the bakery is justified in withholding service from the gays or that the performers must be compelled to play their scheduled gigs at the Kennedy Center.

The person who posted the meme does not support either of those positions, but her meme does. I don't care what anyone meant by it. The very essence of a nation of laws is that words matter, logic matters, argumentative integrity matters, and that public statements should reflect the actual situation, not some tit-for-tat argument that is supposed to open the eyes of a right wing hypocrite.

The meme equates a musician or performer to a storefront business, a service provider. "Hey, I want some melodious philosophical poetry delivered through a framework of classically trained popular music. Think you can do it? Send in your sealed bids." It's just another business.

Musicians in particular run the risk of being viewed this way because so many of them make a point that they are professionals who should get money for what they do, not "exposure," and because they're just pulling ideas out of their head. Even when they "make it" and get recording contracts, the recording and distribution companies are completely soulless business ventures that squeeze every dime out of them.

What is an artist? What is an entertainer? I have been hearing people bitch for years about actors and singers who use their prominence to support political philosophies. "They should just shut up and entertain us! It's what we're paying them for!" The actor, the musician are servants, and we are all their boss.

In the land of the free, we keep coming up with reasons why certain categories are not free. The First Amendment has an asterisk. "An entertainer has too powerful a voice! It's not fair to let them use it to broadcast their personal beliefs!"

Excuse me, what? I have fundamental disagreements with a number of celebrities, but I absolutely disagree that their celebrity alone should mute them. I just know that those particular celebrities are assholes, and I will view all of their professional work through that lens. If they're actors, I'll look at the roles they take, and sift carefully through the lines they deliver. If they're a real asshole, I will already have no interest in wasting an hour or two of my irreplaceable life watching whatever stupid shit they decided make. They can still make it.

In order to become a celebrity, an actor or musician has to have put in the time and effort to get paid at all, then get paid fairly regularly, then get paid perhaps a significant amount. They have to have developed an audience through their personal qualities on stage or screen. They helped build that big soapbox, so you can't tell them they don't deserve to speak from it. You can turn your back, walk away, heckle from the pit, whatever, but you have no moral justification for relegating them to servant status.

A musician should have the right to rethink a gig if the venue management changes drastically between the time the gig was scheduled, and the date of the performance. You vote with your wallet in this country. The musicians canceling at the Kennedy Center are voting with their paychecks to withhold their support for what the current regime is doing at home and abroad. We should all be expressing our condemnation of the current regime, and work noisily and diligently to have them removed for criminal acts. We should all be refusing to cooperate. If musicians have embarrassed you because they have courage that you lack, don't blame them.

Is it the same as a bakery refusing to make a cake for a gay couple? Discrimination against anyone on the basis of sexual orientation is a primitive prejudice based on immutable characteristics. Discrimination against a treasonous, criminal regime on the basis that they are destroying the very fabric of the country itself is a heroic act of resistance. 

In the Masterpiece Cake Shop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission decision, the United States Supreme Court upheld every principle that should have given the win to the Commission, only to cite a technicality in the commission's language as indicating that the commission itself acted with selective discrimination against the religious beliefs of the bakery's owner. The resulting decision was full of language that narrows the scope of the precedent, but all anyone remembers now is that the bakery won.

The subsequent case in Washington State, between a flower shop and a gay couple, ultimately went against the florist. Appeals by the florist's legal team even cited Masterpiece Cakeshop when asking the Supreme Court to remand the case to Washington State for rehearing to include any relevant aspects of the bakery case. The Washington courts found that nothing from the bakery case applied.

Similarly, the meme's citation of the bakery case in relation to the Kennedy Center gig cancellations is equally flawed, and, as a piece of propaganda, more harmful. It fully leaves the door open for bigots to say, "Okay, we baked your gays a cake. Now make your musicians play for our Dear Leader."

Why you say what you say, and how you say it, are vital to the success of whether what you say gets you the result you wanted. In the case of the bakery, civil rights commission members went on record with language broadly condemning religion in ways that may be valid social criticisms, but which demolished their credibility as an impartial body rendering a decision about a specific discrimination case based on laws existing at the time. The case itself is a stark lesson in choosing your words carefully.

Oceania, Eurasia, and Eastasia

 Given that the Trump regime has been a joint venture with Russia since the first time around, and it's been even more obvious this time, any political figure or analysts asking whether he's concerned that the kidnapping of Venezuela's president, and stated plans to take over that country's oil fields will embolden Russia and China in their territory grabs is just framing a statement as a question.

Trump has an understanding with Putin. They've divvied up the world. Russia recently deployed intermediate range, nuclear capable missiles to Belarus, putting a gun to Europe's head. China's conducting military exercises off the coast of Taiwan. The deals have been made. Mind you, both China and Russia are assuming that the forces of ignorance and greed that have lifted Donald Trump to the status of most destructive president in American history will blunder so badly in their new playground that China and Russia will be able to close in from either side. The odds are in their favor.

At this point, China looks like the least worst as a global overlord. They're  repressive, sure. But Putin and Trump, and the powers aligned with them, are outright sadists. Trump and Putin and their devoted followers actively enjoy causing and watching pain and suffering. It's a major part of the strongman image. I don't welcome our Chinese overlords, I merely observe all the players and make a prediction. Domination by any or all of them will be much worse than bumbling toward some sort of global human understanding would have been. I just wanted to get a time and date stamp on my conjecture.

Trump has already threatened Cuba. Russia used to consider Cuba a tripwire, but I bet now they'd be willing to cut it loose to focus on getting more and more of the contiguous territory of the old USSR back together, and adding Western Europe as at least coerced allies.

Africa presents a problematic prize. South America gets mighty skinny as you go south. Neither Russia nor China would cross an ocean to fight you for it. But Africa is thick and broad and loaded with resources. It's difficult country to hold. A superpower could wield influence, but no outside force would be able to subdue any major percentage of it. China, Russia, and the country formerly known as the United States will continue to compete there, with the US off to the slowest start because of the stupidity, greed, and bigotry of the current regime, whether it's the part led by the senile 1980s real estate failure or the part led by Bible-thumping misogynists.

So: The Big Three have divided the world into general spheres of influence where each will let the other do pretty much anything. Global war will be threatened on a regular basis to keep ordinary citizens on edge expecting Armageddon. Small wars will bleed off young people who have no other job options. Or maybe conscription will return. If you survive your enlistment with all your body parts, and your mind intact, you might go on to finish out your career in the building trades, or trucking. If you're maimed in body and or spirit, die a beggar. No one asked you to be born. Ask not what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country's wealthy leaders.

Fear of immigrants

 At the gas station yesterday, the card reader at the pump wasn't working, so I had to pay inside. I hate paying inside. I will forego a "cash discount" to pay at the pump because I dislike the time spent on human interaction that seems just as likely to expose me to someone else's poor health choices. Since the Covid 19 pandemic revealed the deep layers of asininity in so much of the American public, I have assiduously avoided exposure to concentrations of people as much as my job and the logistics of life will allow. But I digress.

I had not been inside at this particular convenience store literally in years. I had not noticed when the ownership passed from local rednecks to a family of people who appear to be from the Indian subcontinent. The station is having a price war with one just down the road, also owned by a family corporation of people from the Indian subcontinent. It may even be the same family corporation; the station down the road was embroiled in a lengthy zoning controversy during which we all learned about the company behind it and their little petroleum empire in the region.

The guy behind the counter spoke virtually unintelligible English. In situations like this I imagine myself attending "Hindi as a Second Language" adult education courses. Try as I might to become a polyglot, my only fluency is in American English and Profanity. But it struck me how fear of the immigrant has gained such power as hardworking entrepreneurs who don't talk Amurican have flourished in this particular area of vital supply. It's not just that they're "from away." Immigrants have always been pressed into low level jobs, and some of them always rise to positions of power in industries that they might have entered as low-wage labor. But as the United States has sought to be more and more accommodating to non-English speakers, non-English speakers have had less and less incentive to try to master the language that most of us whiteys grew up viewing as normal.

An American corporation owned and operated by immigrants only needs to interact with the legal establishment with multilingual fluency. At the street level, customers and staff get by with mumbles, gestures, and telepathy. The private operations of the corporation can be conducted in Hindi, Urdu, Somali, Czech, Hungarian, Ukrainian, Russian, whatever, largely impenetrable to the average dope like me who can pick up a word or two here and there, if that. It's as if sovereign nations exist within our borders, technically answerable to the law, but insulated from our amateur critical examination by the mere fact that we have no idea what anyone is saying.

I handed the guy my credit card and shuffled back out the to the pumps. Right now I have the worst respiratory ailment I've had in five years, so I was in no mood to dally. It would either be all right or it wouldn't. I don't know if he took my flat affect and grumpiness as a comment on his apparent country of origin, but it was strictly a result of the fact that I wouldn't have left my house at all if the forecast for the next several days hadn't been much worse for someone feeling sick to spend a few minutes pumping gas in the frigid wind.

I can't let myself give a single shit whether the country ends up majority-minority, because I can't do a damn thing about it anyway. And it shouldn't matter, if the enlightenment principles on which our constitution were based really are essential human values. The values will speak for themselves in whatever language a person finds comfortable. And if those values aren't strong enough to become universal, they were fucked anyway. Humanity's future holds endless, insoluble conflict. Any "winner" of a global contest by force or guile will not be nice or enlightened. You can only fight for peace so many times before you realize that it's an endless stupid cycle, and we'd all be better off being trustworthy. Maybe that happens someday. Maybe not. I didn't bet anyone's life on it.

Still, I completely understand the paranoia of people who feel excluded by the opaque subcultures they see forming around them. It could be bad. Or it could be fine. You can bitch. You can engage in pointless, localized violence, making everyone more miserable for zero gain. But you can't change the course of social evolution. Eventually, all the nations of the world were going to meet each other and have to work out some kind of planetary understanding, whether it's a happy future appreciating each other's food and music, or bloody murder suicide.