A smog-shrouded theocracy

When America resoundingly failed its second civics test since 2016, it ushered in what will probably be the most destructive American government of all time.

The fault lies only partly with the hard core of believers who somehow manage to embrace every statement without choking on the paradoxes. The real blame lies with voters who either voted for nonviable candidates or didn't vote at all.

Didn't vote at all? Really? Decided to sit this one out because you didn't like either side? You were going to show that you weren't going to settle for the lesser of two evils by sitting back and letting the greater of the evils secure complete control of the most dangerous country on earth.

Nihilism surely played a role. Scroll social media for more than a few minutes and you're bound to find someone posting longingly for a giant meteor to wipe out all life on earth, just because they themselves have decided that their own beef with life reflects the value of life itself. You want to give up? Go ahead. There are mental health counselors and compassionate bystanders waiting to tell you why you shouldn't, but ultimately the choice does rest with you. Just leave the rest of us out of your suicidal fantasies.

Political protest surely played a role. The current administration didn't slam the brakes on Israel's genocide of the Palestinians, which should have been an easy, almost instantaneous act. Yeah. The Middle East is that simple. Personally, I feel like a region steeped in war for thousands of years is a poor investment for any outsider, but here we are. The cultures that sprung from there have had nothing nice to say about each other as far back as we have written records. The equation 3X(One True God)=Bloodshed has been calculated and recalculated for more than two thousand years. It has extended far beyond the sacred dirt they all insist on owning, and dragged in other deities and their believers.

"We believe in peace and love and we're ready to kick your ass to prove it."

Christ himself, according to the story, refused to break with principle. He took the beating and the gruesome execution, and called upon God to forgive the assholes who either took part or just stood there slack-jawed and watched. Martyrdom became very fashionable for a while, until the political church realized that it was hurting attendance and income.

A life lived according to strict Christian principles would be nasty, saintly, and short. Through generations of rationalization for the sake of extending and enjoying this mortal existence, we have evolved the prosperity gospel, megachurches, and Bible Belters who embrace their firearms with loving arms, and prepare for the final battle with anyone who differs. It could start today, or it could remain a future threat for as long as anyone can profit from it. 

We've already seen how an institution can lose control of dangerous elements it had been wielding as a political weapon. The Republican Party was devoured by its beast in 2015. The evolved Democratic Party, post 1960, never had such a beast at its command. Instead it has repeatedly lost control of factional elements in its untidy coalition. None of them could ever take over a party that has been focused on realistic and sustainable levels of individual liberty.

"Realistic and sustainable levels of individual liberty." See, that right there is the problem. It's not a simple "God, Guns, and General Motors" kind of slogan. It's an honest statement using long words. They're not complex and difficult words, but they don't have the punch of most right wing rhetoric. The right wing fantasy is that everyone can be heavily armed, excessively fertile, and comfortably rich if we can just get rid of all these eggheads pimping science and raising taxes to give to poor people.

Except for the fantasy of universal tax-free wealth, it's true that the collapse of civilization would free up the survivors to fight and fuck with joyous abandon. Infant mortality would jump back up to pre-vaccine-era levels, requiring plenty of replacements to ensure that a sufficient number reach adulthood. As local chieftains gathered their forces, anyone interested in a warrior's life would find plenty of employment. Ambitious types interested in being chieftains would ravage the countryside, culling the weaker players. Would anyone seize and use what was left of nuclear arsenals? Since the whole premise relies on stupidity to collapse civilization in the first place, no doubt someone would give it a shot.

No one can be sure how the conflict between science and superstition would play out. Destroying many modern conveniences would not magically restore the human species exactly to pre-industrial or early industrial parameters. We know what we know. But we're getting far ahead of ourselves anyway.

The problem with post-apocalyptic fantasies is that they tend to skip over the horrors and misery of the collapse itself. That's fine for a fictional diversion, but we're on the wrong side of that sequence. We get to experience the destruction while probably everyone alive today will be dead long before things settle into a new equilibrium.

Space explorers plan "generation ships" in which whole eras of humans will live and die before reaching a habitable planet on which to land and start messing things up again. Or maybe they never arrive. The planet turns out not to be as good as it looked from our far vantage point, or it gets destroyed by something else before the mad, inbred survivors of the generation ship crash onto it. But don't worry. By screwing up our own planet, we turn it into a generation ship. The people we create now will sire generation after generation hurtling through space, hoping to find conditions that support intelligent life.

The smog-shrouded theocracy craved by the winners of the 2024 election is only the first step toward tearing it all down. Maybe that initiative will fail. Hard to say. Elon Musk and other proponents of the destruction of earth to drive enthusiasm toward colonizing other planets want you all to hate it here, so that going there -- wherever there turns out to be -- will look like a better alternative. It's exactly the way consumer goods manufacturers of addictive technology like automobiles, computers, and phones do their best to make sure that you hate your devices just after the warranty period runs out. Ideally, you loved it up to the point that it tragically failed. So you run right out and get a new one of the same thing, even though it's just going to screw you like the last one did, when the time comes. Sounds just like a corporately owned politician.

We may have a chance to wrest back some power and hope in the midterms in 2026. We may have a chance after that to yank the steering wheel completely away from the oligarchs in 2028. But we face the full power of their media machine, far beyond mere legacy media, pounding incessantly on susceptible minds. They did a great job steering voters in this most recent election. They will only get stronger and more active going forward.

No one knows the order in which things will go bad, or how bad they'll get. The administration could start with a big jolt or just teeter and wobble for days, weeks, or months, like an armload of fragile packages falling from your arms.

Freedom of $peech?

If I tossed 5 or 10 bucks at every worthy cause that sent me a "fundraising alert" I could easily blow through close to $100 a day. If this is to gain political leverage over the tiny faction of the population who can afford to throw millions of dollars at Congress on a regular basis, how long can we be expected to try to beat them at their own game?

Members of congress willing to rock the gravy boat seem few in number, so I don't know how we can really get big money out of politics. Meanwhile, expecting nickel-and-dime grassroots fundraising to continue to finance political positions that go against the interests of the wealthy is like expecting your health insurance premiums not to keep surging upward. I don't know about you, but I can easily be outspent. Is that how we want to decide whose ideas get to be heard?

When stockholders vote in corporate elections, those with the most shares get to make the decisions. Any small holders have to live with that. In our government we are supposed to have equal voices, so that the points of view of all citizens are taken into account. Instead we have another shareholder meeting in which the big players tell the little people what to do.

Revolution IS called for, since we can't get enough elected officials into office to make the change using what's left of our political system. But a shooting war is a stupid gambit. Just refuse to cooperate. Ride a bike. Walk. Live on less. Detach as much as possible from the corporate-controlled economy. That may mean a pretty primitive lifestyle for quite a while -- maybe a couple of generations. But think how much more primitive and brutal life would be in a country torn by civil war.

Corporatocracy will not give up easily. Their forces may lash out. Put the moral burden on them by living inoffensively.

I hate the government

Here in the United States we have citizen government. As much as it has become a tool of the wealthy to impose their priorities on the rest of us, it does reflect the values of Americans. United we stand, in squabbling disunity.

Ordinary citizens could take control if we could agree on common values and insist that they be promoted. Unfortunately, the majority values its freedom not to pay attention, and to dislike each other factionally more than it wants to overthrow the influence of concentrated wealth. The problem is not the government. It is us.

I hate the government. I hate how the need to keep an eye on it intrudes on my pleasures. I hate how it has evolved to be hostile to oversight as much as I hate having to be that oversight. I'm terrible at paying attention to what elected representatives and government agencies are doing. But we do have access -- for now -- to those who govern.

The yellow vest protests in France are presented as an example of what committed, bold citizen action can accomplish. True, they pressed the Macron government for concessions, but two questions arise. How did it get that bad in the first place? And will there be meaningful change after the two sides stand down and the news cycle needs to move on to other things?

We have representative government to free up the majority of citizens to do other necessary work. It also provides a filter between the whims of a sometimes volatile majority and the actual implementation of long-term policy. But representatives have power as well as responsibility, which makes them susceptible to corruption. Some are truly incorruptible. Others arrive pre-corrupted. Voters have to decide who is worth keeping. Detailed information can be hard to get. The information itself can be tainted by an underlying agenda.

I hate it. But it's human nature. Even government by a computer system would only be as good as its programmed parameters. And it might be very hard to overthrow. You can pull the plug, but only if you can get to the plug.

The show ponies who run for office are well suited to their roles in show biz. Some of them are as stupid as a box of rocks, but they've all managed to win the reality show contests we call elections. The best ideas in the world do no good if they can't find a champion who can actually get elected. The process is most visible at levels high enough to attract mass media coverage. But it's happening all the way down to little dinky towns scraping together a budget to keep a handful of roads paved, and send their kids to school. Down where most of us actually live, decisions are made at public meetings by people we know, if we happen to be able to take the time to attend.

Time. Citizen government demands your time. As an ordinary voter, you have to dig out the information you need to make what seems like a good choice. As an actual official, you have to perform the duties of your office. In some places, you're expected to do it for free, so you still have to grub for money in the outside world while paying proper attention to the people's business in your governmental capacity. In a country that glorifies wealth for its own sake, that means a constant battle against inflation, and against competitors who would be all too happy to sink you.

Many hands make light work. If a really solid majority of citizens wanted to get involved and take turns doing the mundane, tedious bullshit of governing, it would become a communal activity instead of turning "the government" into this alien overlord run by idiots and scoundrels. How likely is that? No one wants to be in the handful of suckers who get stuck having to sacrifice their time for an ungrateful populace that automatically assumes they're up to no good. And we're all either too busy working or too busy looking for work to devote our best attention to the needs of government. That's how you end up with independently wealthy people and energetic profiteers holding office. No one else can afford to. So back we come to oversight.

Take a short time as soon as possible to jot down a list of what you would like from your government. Brainstorm it. Write down everything that your ideal society would have. If the list is "no government," write down what you're going to have to get from other sources: roads, energy, health care, defense... Then figure out who is going to provide it and how you all are going to pay for it.

Deep inside all of us in the modern world lives a hunter gatherer wondering what the hell happened. What happened was evolution. As much as we still get the desire to roam as happy nomads across a relatively pristine environment, the only way to get back to that is to destroy all that came after it. And it was other parts of our own nature that made us evolve into our current condition, simultaneously pampered and stressed out. We can't go back. We can only go forward, trying to improve.

Civilization by consent of the civilized

Reading an article in the New Yorker about a white collar crime prosecution that was withdrawn against Ivanka and Donald Trump Jr., it resonated strangely with the bloody carnage of the Las Vegas massacre.

The white collar case involved tons of research and evidence collection. It taxed the ingenuity of investigators not only to put together a case, but to figure out what charges, if any, they could bring. It was an intricate intellectual exercise extended over a couple of years. The exchange with defense attorneys involved all sorts of strategy on both sides. Some of the arguments were legal. Others appear to have been more...intangible. But it was all a brain game.

What does a white collar crime have in common with the brutal slaughter of an unsuspecting crowd? Both of them breach the trust of civil society. While the massacre is clearly worse, both are acts of people who have put aside the restraint of lawfulness to pursue their own gratification.

The massacre represents a far more visceral experience, both to perpetrate and to experience. If you want a laboratory perfect example of the value of civilized behavior, there it is. 

White collar shenanigans can have less obviously bloody, but still far reaching consequences. It may seem like a battle of wits between lawyers and accountants, far removed from the daily lives of ordinary citizens, but the money supply they’re playing with is the one we all use. Sleazy business dealings cost enough on their own, even before you add the bills for the lawyers when the scam goes off the rails. It’s a more sophisticated version of sociopathy, but sociopathic nonetheless.

Civilization as a benign influence relies on the consent of the participants to stay within a certain range of behavior. Here in the Land of the Free, good behavior makes us nervous. Are we really free if we’re not pushing the limit somewhere? Are the rules really for our benefit?

A free society cannot survive if a significant percentage of its citizens don’t agree to accepted conventions of personal restraint. Laws represent nothing but an expensive enforcement hassle if enough people ignore them. I wonder if fatigue and apathy are the real forces protecting us from chaos. Not enough people possess both the armament and the gumption to unleash their own little flames of hell on whoever happens to be around. Whatever the reason, as bad as things are, I can be glad they aren’t worse.

Coexisting strangely with the American obsession with freedom is the American need for control. For some of us, the freedom they cherish the most is the freedom to restrict behavior that makes them uncomfortable. This can take the form of a double standard, in which the dominant group wants rights and privileges that they deny to groups they suppress. Then there are people who have very narrow tastes, and feel that their norm should represent the full scope of permitted behavior. Having accepted their own limits, they want to remain competitive by framing the rules by which everyone else has to play.

Health insurance is an enemy of freedom

In a comment on Senator Jeanne Shaheen's Facebook page, I reported that I could not afford insurance under the ACA:

Senator Jeanne, due to peculiarities in my circumstances, I am unable to afford coverage under the ACA. Health insurance is not health care. And at this point I have neither one anyway. Last month, I had to pass a kidney stone alone at home and then go to work the next day, business as usual. My retirement plan consists of various scenarios for suicide when I can no longer take care of myself. I guess this makes me the ideal citizen, as far as the conservatives are concerned. Work 'em 'til they drop.

Another commenter suggested this:

Really maybe you need to find a better job. personally I have never had a job that didn't offer insur(ance). (Actual post had a typo in the last word.)

I answered:

Forcing people's career choices in search of insurance is not freedom. It indicates a country run for the benefit of insurance companies.

Isn't that pretty obvious? Along with getting people to use the terms health insurance and health care interchangeably, we've conditioned ourselves to seek "benefits" as a survival need, in a wilderness where we have to grub for every resource. Those who control the wealth determine how it is doled out, even if that means working for the destructive economy or choosing to live at risk for the sake of what you believe in. We are all soldiers facing death for a cause, even if we conscientiously avoid using combat for conflict resolution. I happen to have ended up in a place where the job that suited many of my abilities and needs only briefly provided "benefits," regardless of my usefulness to the business or that business's service to the community. Society at large benefits from the unheralded life and death of numerous benefactors for whom no public buildings are ever named.

With a system of universal care, rather than profiteering schemes of insurance, freedom of movement, choice, and work will make our society more innovative and our citizens more free. By making health insurance a marketed commodity, we actually hurt many other aspects of the free market economy. If you want unfettered freedom, live in anarchy now and take whatever happens to you. If you want a reasonably free society with well-maintained infrastructure and civilized amenities, accept that some things cannot be turned to profit. Some things are autonomic functions of society, that need to run quietly in the background. These include health care and energy production. If either of those intrudes on the peace and progress of the human species, we're doing something wrong. Right now, those intrusions make up most of the news. The rest of it hinges on inanities like what color we want our neighbors to be.

Civilization: Humanity's Greatest Blunder

Civilization is the mechanism for concentrating and exerting power. Offspring of the lust for power, civilization has created all the problems that compassion seeks to cure. Without consolidated power, evil can only work piecemeal. Without consolidated power, there is no prize. No prize, no contest. No contest, no cheating.

Civilization started innocently enough. Some geniuses figured out that plants and animals people eat would be easier to find if we kept them together in one place conducive to their proliferation. Some places were better than others. Crops and herds grew in those places more than in others. The people stuck in the less comfortable environments organized themselves to see how they could improve their circumstances in various ways, through trade, conquest, or assimilation.

Without question, civilization has gradually made life more comfortable. I wouldn't want to give up the creature comforts. But since no one can be trusted to run things, and thousands of years of resentments keep grievances fresh through generations, we've probably hit our peak as far as attaining a peaceful and happy world.

When altruism reaches the point where people kill themselves almost daily for the sake of killing other people they see as opponents to their ideology, you see how far the lust for power has come. Murder-suicide is always a problem, because the knowledge of inevitable mortality makes some people unstable. Add the allure of a heroic contribution to a better future, and people who might be teetering, wrestling with the decision whether to embrace suicide, get a new incentive to choose flamboyant death. Political manipulators will encourage the tendency. Manipulators always know how to get the most out of other people's emotions. Political manipulators use these controls to advance grand plans.

Civilization helped the human population surge, and life spans increase. Civilization nurtured technology. Technology advanced civilization. Industrialization increased the speed and efficiency with which natural resources could be gouged out of the Earth and turned into useful objects. The byproducts of these processes have been wealth, filth, and disregard for each other and for nature.

Civilization could have been good. If you're a hopeful sort, you probably believe it still could be. Past performance does not guarantee future results, as the investment shills like to warn us before we hand them the check. The greedy, the angry and the far-too-clever stand in ranks between us and that brighter future.