Like a child burning ants...

 The regime in charge of the United States right now is playing with the world like a child focusing sunlight with a magnifying glass to watch ants die. They're that detached and feel that invulnerable to retaliation.

The metaphor breaks down immediately, because the regime's targets can retaliate to some degree. However, the retaliation falls far short of reaching the actual perpetrators of the atrocities. They're limited to the places where military force meets military force. At this time, that only means Iran, but the conflict is spreading to engulf the whole Middle East. The counterattack has only taken the lives of loyal American service members ordered into this stupid adventure by selfish, immature men who expect to remain far from any chance of harm.

The magnifying glass also falls on Cuba, where the sadistic children in the US executive branch have cut off oil to the island nation. Because Cuba relies heavily on oil for electricity generation, the embargo threatens not just creature comforts but medical facilities and food preservation as well. The failure of their power grid will cause deaths among vulnerable populations. And the racist goons in Washington will nod and say that they're improving our species by making the harsh decision that no one else has been able to. They're killing the weak.

Side note: If Cuba had invested in wind and solar, their oil supply couldn't be used against them as effectively. However, their ability to invest in these things was probably hampered by a number of factors, including the malevolence directed at them by the US since Fidel Castro took power in 1959. They were the commie stronghold just 90 miles from Key West. Roughly equivalent to placing US military bases in Germany, snuggled up against the Iron Curtain, only with kick-ass rum, and palm trees. Weirdly, we've had our notorious base at Guantanamo Bay since 1898. That's eighteen ninety-eight. We had "liberated" them from Spain, and got a permanent lease agreement for the attractive waterfront in 1903.

The unauthorized strike in Iran not only blows up a lot of their modern, civilized infrastructure, it destabilizes the country as a whole, while surviving power players figure out who will run the next government. At the same time, it has gotten the other regional hotheads throwing missiles at each other to assuage their frustration because none of them have the ability to throw them at us. Anyone remember how the Saudis finally did blow up a major US landmark in 2001? Groups of patient covert operators hijacked passenger airliners to use as guided missiles. Where there's ill will, there's a way. Maybe it can't be the same way next time, but the juvenile brutality of our current government sets us up for retribution from rightfully aggrieved other nations.

Canada has so far been able to rebuff the regime's attempts to strongarm it by making trade agreements and courting alliances with the countries still run by adults. Those nations are organizing for life without the United States as a reliable partner. We are now considered a risk, becoming a threat.

The juvenile clods in charge of the government right now equate fear with respect. They are two different things. When you respect someone, you seek their approval. When you fear someone, you acknowledge their ability to harm you, but that's not respect. It's a strategic assessment.

The United States has acted in cruel and greedy ways for centuries. We have a lot of room for improvement. From January 20, 2017, to January 20, 2021, and again on January 20, 2025, we stopped trying to improve and turned sharply toward the cruelty and greed. Maybe the country deserves to collapse and be re-formed by forces as yet undetermined. It will be a loss, because the language of our Declaration of Independence and constitution certainly held great promise if we ever really lived up to it. Through the tumultuous 20th Century, we dragged painfully toward that goal. It never needed to be painful, but greed and cruelty insisted on it. Now they're digging in to oppose a greater humanity.

Why cruelty always wins

 A piece I read recently lamented that when the Democratic Party is in power, they don't exert it to enact the full agenda that their base looks forward to, and when they're out of power, they don't use what leverage they have to restrain the merciless policies of conservative administrations.

The secret, as always, lies with uncommitted voters. Mostly white, mostly conservative, they're often assumed to be moderate. But some of these uncommitted voters might withhold their allegiance from the Republican Party because that party isn't heartless enough. If they swing to a Democratic candidate, it is a temporary protest vote to punish the Republican for some perceived inadequacy. The swinging voter doesn't support the Democratic position. It's strictly a temporary, punitive measure to slap some sense into the more conservative party. The moderate ones swing to the Democrat only if the Democrat promises not to act like a Democrat.

While there are plenty of conservative racists, the underlying principle that unites all conservatives of any color is contempt for the poor. Conservative voters who happen to be on public assistance can formulate some exemption in their minds to excuse their own temporary need. Or maybe they vote against their own interests out of self loathing, or a mistaken belief that if they destroy the support system their own fortunes will miraculously improve in the energized economy now no longer burdened with the dead weight of lazy scumbags who don't want to work.

A person I observed for a time was one of these conservatives temporarily receiving public assistance. She would go to the office to collect her dole. While there, she would point out and disparage other supplicants who were obviously dirtbag losers sucking on the public teat for as long as it will be offered. They could not possibly have mitigating circumstances of their own, because the system itself creates them. It's like poor people didn't exist in any significant numbers until a program was created to feed them. They're like raccoons in your garbage cans. Secure your garbage cans and the raccoons have to go fend for themselves.

I doubt if that particular conservative would ever vote across party lines, even to punish an erring official. But her analysis of her fellow poor people sums up the conservative dehumanization of anyone falling below the poverty line. It has to be their own fault in the vast majority of cases.

I get it. We're all a bit reluctant to get sucked into the sob stories of the disadvantaged. There are bullshitters and chronic losers out there. Is it better to yank the lifeline back from the ones who might deserve it in order to cut off the parasites dangling on the same line? Most uncommitted voters seem to think so. And that's why we can't have nice things.

Human Nature and the Death of Hope

Self-styled realists remind us constantly that human nature has its ineradicable dark side. I can attest to that.

Most people who know me now think that I'm a good person and a nice guy. I indulge a house full of cats. I try to control my judgmental nature. I even thought of myself as a good person and a nice guy for almost the first three decades of my life.

Only gradually did I notice the cracks in my facade through which the darkness showed. They would have been obvious to any person or animal I harmed, but not to me. At one time or another I have done nearly everything that I despise. I fear that only lack of opportunity prevented me from being worse, before I realized how bad I was to begin with.

Feeling good about yourself is a privilege, not a right. It is a privilege we are all born with, but it can be squandered before you even realize you've lost it. Doting parents mean well, but they give you the benefit of the doubt. Through that loving loophole you can slip forward, onward, downward, on a path of self indulgence, because you are not that bad.

 Once I learned to recognize self esteem as a warning sign instead of a reward, I had a much better detection system to prevent outbreaks of cruel and destructive behavior.

The improvement is gradual. And much of the insult and deprecation that people think I've leveled at them is really aimed at forces that have misled them. As for the physical cruelty, that pretty well ended before I was 40. I had control issues. Figuring out how little I can actually control has gone a long way to promote a peaceful resignation.

If I can get better, anyone can get better. So why is hope dead?

Time.

Time is short, probably too short.

As much of an asshole as I was from preadolescence through the onset of middle age, at least I had a glimmer, then a gleam, then a full-blown dawning awareness that I needed to get on my case. I am one among billions, many of whom need to get on their own case and straighten their shit out. There is no pill. There is no switch to throw. First you have to admit that you have a problem. Then you have to figure out how to address it in the way that works best for you.

For every problem, there is a program. But no program works until the individual agrees to follow it. And the program itself may have an agenda other than simply helping each individual to live with more awareness of others.

That's it right there: live with more awareness of others. Care what you do to them.

Do I get angry? Yes. Do I contemplate violence? Yes. I see people continuing to act with either no awareness of others or with malicious intent, and my primitive hostility rises immediately. And the warning buzzer tells me that I need to think. Force will not bring the change I want to see in the world.

Unfortunately many people seem unable to learn from the mere story of bad events. And the genuine power of darkness in some of them compels them to create bad events. They have no desire to play nicely with others. Neo-Nazis want to correct the strategic errors of their role models. Would-be tyrants and their eager minions of all types welcome any opportunity to inflict pain on the targets they choose.

The problem gets worse because there have been too many of us since the grateful survivors of World War II fucked us into the Baby Boom. The Boom has gone on to spawn further waves of incoming souls, each equipped with instinct, intellect, and reproductive systems.

There were probably too many of us long before that. After all, Europe overflowed into the Americas from the 15th Century onward, but they had to eradicate existing indigenous populations to do it.

Eradicating each other is a longstanding human tradition.

In the 1960s, I grew up in a culture where a lot of people seemed to be questioning the practice of eradicating each other. That seemed good to me. Eradicate not, lest ye be eradicated. Let's all be cool and have a good time together. We can learn a lot from each other.

Tradition will not be denied. The eradicators want to do their thing. The swarm of humanity thickens on the moldy surface of the globe that brought us forth so long ago.

I miss hope. The realist in me kept me childless, but the hopeful dope inside thought that maybe I would turn out to be wrong. Being right brings no satisfaction except the grim one that I have not personally sentenced anyone to the future that my species collectively seems to have chosen. What remains of that hopeful dope still wants the things that I valued to be valued and carried forward by the people who come after me. An idea has a life of its own. We did not all have to spring from the loins of the framers of our founding documents to embrace their ideas and try to carry them forward, distributed more widely.

Most of human life is in the mind. Instinct and intellect are expressed through technology, from the first stone tools to the latest sophisticated marvel. We imagine, then we do. So what we imagine is the most important influence on our individual acts. One plus one plus one plus one, billions of times over, imaginations combine their actions. We can't really plan. But if, by chance, each person imagines the world with more care for each other, the result will be what I would call better. It would be downright hopeful.