America the Failure, unless we act now

 You know how it sucks when a product you really like is still in production, but the great company that made it was bought out by some greedy corporation, so the product is a cheap copy of what once made it so desirable?

That conveys the feeling, but hardly the true threat we face since gullible voters reinstalled the worst president in our country's history at the controls of what had the makings of eventually becoming a great country.

The "sphere of influence" concept championed by greedhead Putin works by threatening neighboring countries and absorbing them into a totalitarian framework. You might decide to run your sphere differently, being generous and kind, but eventually you will have to face a militarized foe when the cruel empire decides to push its boundaries. 

Republican Saint Ronald called the USSR the evil empire. Now Republicans embrace Russia under the leadership of the current occupant of the Oval Office, who has been a Russian asset since the 1980s. Vain, greedy, and stupid, yet exalted by American media culture as a beacon for idiots, Trump was the most useful idiot the Russians had ever had. He's paying off big time now.

Proponents of the unitary executive -- an all-powerful presidency served by a subordinate Congress -- really pushed us off a cliff here. Several Supreme Court justices should be dragged off the bench and put to work cleaning latrines for that one. Dictatorship is tempting when you feel confident that your ideological position will always be on top. SCOTUS and the Heritage Foundation laid a lot of groundwork to build a system that will assure their control. Their opposition may be tempted to leave the machinery in place and use it to force a different set of reforms. That will fail because the natural human inclination is conservative: fear based and self protective.

Various fables use the device of shabby travelers seeking shelter, turned away by most, but taken in by a generous host at last. After the host provides food, shelter, and comfort, the shabby travelers reveal that they are gods and reward the hospitable mortals handsomely. This may be supposed to teach hospitality and generosity, because you never know who might be a god, but it starts from the basic human fear of strangers. Vampires can only come in if you invite them. Drifters and hobos might be serial killers. That hitchhiker might murder you. Or you might murder them.

On a very basic level, we don't trust each other. Of course we do trust each other constantly, but paranoia is never far away. It's easy to excite. It drives conservative thought. So if a self-styled progressive administration tried to strong-arm benevolence on people, it would set off the kind of quiet resistance that leads to stunning election losses and a return to institutionalized distrust. You want some assistance when you're down and out? How down and out are you really?

Trump rallies were not the norm, although the Tea Party rallies did foretell them. The norm was Republican victories just quietly grinding forward with their bold assurance that the party of killjoy fuddy-duddies knew better than those dippy kids thinking that we could have luxuries like universal health care, excellent public schools, and well-maintained infrastructure. Next they'll be saying that we should go back to taxing the wealthy! Ha ha ha, how cute. Now run along and bury yourselves in popular culture while the grownups run things.

Conservatives have been constantly pulling toward authoritarianism in the name of freedom while the other side was trying to find something for each side. The net result is that we kept getting dragged toward the situation we're in today. Freedom was always code for a very specific, vocal, violence-prone subset of the entire population. The rhetoric of the conservatives was as elastic as the founding documents themselves. It's as vague, contradictory, and modularly applicable as the Bible.

The changes in tax laws and election financing since 1980 have almost turned our elections into shareholder meetings where the wealthy actually get to outvote us. The upcoming midterms may be our last chance to assert the true power of the people by voting against the party most thoroughly responsible for empowering rich punks and gangsters.

Should the Democrats gain control of both houses of Congress, don't expect an instant miraculous recovery and get all snitty in 2028 when it hasn't happened. A depressing percentage of potential voters are persnickety and apathetic. They don't vote or vote third party, thus perpetuating the conditions that make them persnickety and apathetic.

Social media showcases cynicism and sinister conspiracy theories designed to convince you that you shouldn't waste your time trying to make anything better. These posts can appear right next to one about environmental protection, social justice, universal health care, or political action, posted by the exact same person who just told you that the medical establishment is just a money machine designed to keep you sick and paying, and that "both parties are the same." You can't exhort people to vote and then tell them that anyone who runs for office is guaranteed to be a con artist or worse. And don't get me started on the childish belief that term limits for elected officials will solve anything. Term limits is not the same thing as limited terms, as would be a good idea for supreme court justices. But in that instance, the length of a fixed term would give parties a set target to anticipate exactly when they get to appoint a successor. It would become another precise political calculation. Not a magic bullet.

What is a magic bullet is your vote. You get one shot per candidate or ballot measure. You will be part of a massed volley in one exchange of fire. At the end, we will have a winner. The bullets, fortunately, are metaphorical, but the result will affect lives for years to come. We're choosing once again what our brand and quality will be. What do we offer to each other and  the world? We failed in 2016. We barely came back in 2020. Lost our chance in 2022 and set up the epic faceplant of 2024. One more time: are we stupid and violent or are we thoughtful, brave, and faithful to the ideals of human rights?

Quit publicizing racist twats

 A racist twat in Rochester, Minn., recently dropped repeated n-bombs on a Black child she suspected of filching something from her bag in a city park. The boy is five years old and reportedly has special needs.

A bystander took video and confronted her. I won't link any of it because you can find it easily, and I don't want to give her any more publicity. I also omit her name, because she has raised a reported $500,000.00 so far, based on the claim that she has been doxed and fears for her safety.

First off, she has a right to say anything she wants, including racist epithets against a child, as long as she doesn't slide into criminal threatening. Representatives of the child might sue her for slander regarding the allegations of theft, but the First Amendment gives her plenty of latitude to spew ignorant garbage. This should never have become a cause celebre.

Our zeal for public shaming has begun to backfire spectacularly. A video meant to embarrass this loser instead gave her prominence to attract her fellow racists to protect a poor waif beset by threatening Black people and their terrorist white allies.

The racists and other far right adherents constantly shift between presenting themselves as badasses that you should just surrender to outright, and poor, noble victims of a legal system perverted by miscegenated Communists. They might walk around with firearms draped all over them, and talk about how they ask and grant no quarter, only to whine piteously when someone publishes their home address. What part of "no quarter" don't you get, tough guy? Total war is total war. Are you advocating for it or not?

America is basically a nation of shit-talkers. In the course of a day, how many thousands of death threats are flung back and forth in the heat of a moment and never go anywhere? In that mix, some may be credible. Most are not. In angry discourse, it's more common to oversell and under-deliver than vice versa.

Racism won't go away if you ignore it. But individual incidents of it won't turn into fundraising opportunities if you give it less air. Racists are not ashamed. Why do you think that a particular club is called Proud Boys? Putting a racist in a viral video is no longer a good strategy.

Along with hardcore racists come fashionable racists and the business interests that simply follow the money. Those business interests were into diversity when diversity seemed to be winning. Now that racism seems to be on top, business interests are okay with it. Corporations have no morals. They try to appeal to buyers with whatever seems to be attracting them at a given time. Some business interests will hold onto their support for diversity because they know that a solid percentage of consumers will choose them on that basis. Rather than compete in the more crowded arena of racist businesses, the "good guys" can depend on a loyal customer base to tide them over until things swing back to favor diversity overall. It is morally right, but also safe business.

I originally headlined this piece Nonviolence versus Violence because of reactions I read from the anti-racist community as the story about the Rochester bitch plays out. Certain Black activists called out their white supporters for a lack of resolve. Supposed supporters take down their Black Lives Matter signs and flags of support for marginalized groups. This may in fact indicate a weak will among some of those allies, but it also acknowledges a sad and frightening reality: the right wing likes to use violence and vandalism more than the left does.

The right wing cites the left's lack of violent propensities as a sign of cowardice and weakness. Paradoxically, they also accuse the left of perpetrating violence or of threatening it as an excuse for their own armament. Back in the Cold War, we did wonder whether the Soviets would outright invade us. Long before that, in the rise of Marxism in the 19th and early 20th centuries, Communists did engage in violence. They also didn't act very communistic wherever they gained power, but that's a tangent for another day.

Nonviolent protest emerged as a powerful tool in the 20th Century. However, it was only one tool. Outbreaks of actual violence in support of civil rights, for instance, showed the government that the costs of maintaining the racist status quo were higher than the costs of expanding the rights of full citizenship under the full protection of federal law. Gay rights got their big kick forward from the Stonewall riots in New York City.

Riots are battlefield actions. The combatants form ranks under their banners on a piece of ground that's publicly accessible, often completely public: streets, parks, business districts. There have been spectacularly bloody exceptions in which mobs descended on residential areas. This has most often been white forces attacking minorities individually or collectively. A handy list is provided here.

Slavery in the United States was not ended by peaceful protest. It was ended by a bloody and wasteful war between factions that conveniently lined up with geographical boundaries, allowing the South to secede and pretend to be their own country for four years. They spent those years proving that their economic system couldn't support a long-term military conflict against an industrialized power. They were not only morally wrong, they were economically inferior in an era when business competition was evolving rapidly. But they were so in love with their hateful ideology that they let thousands of their men get killed and their land was laid waste by Union forces. And afterward they merely shifted their tactics  -- still to their own detriment -- in order to maintain racial hierarchy.

Meanwhile, the rest of the country received both Black residents and racist ideologies. Exposure to both has led somewhat to acceptance of Black and brown people as a part of normal society, but also to the persistent cancer of racism. If the Civil War happened today, battles would break out all over the country. You would also find out in a hurry who really had the stomach for it.

When Timothy McVeigh bombed the Federal Building in Oklahoma City, he thought that he would trigger a revolution against the tyrannical United States government. Instead, he set the militia movement back ten years as people recoiled at the horror of his act. We had those dopes walking around our town in their little Confederate hats, and then poof! they all ditched the regalia and shut the fuck up for a while. It was nice. They probably still met in private. You can tell by the signs and flags around town today that a good chunk of them suck up conspiracy theories and far right propaganda. And the few years of relative peace were bought at the price of innocent people killed and maimed in the Oklahoma City bombing.

My point is that large scale violence is the best advertising against itself. Too bad that it does not inoculate against small scale violence.

Bad actors on the right in this area have engaged in vandalism against targets that they could identify as holding opposing views: roofing nails in driveways, political signs cut down with a chainsaw, slashed tires, broken windows, occasional arson. During one dispute in the tiny town where I live, people were advised to put a padlock on their well cover (if they hadn't already just for general prudence) so that someone on the other side of the dispute didn't drop something unpleasant in there.

Whether to display symbols of a political position calls for a cost-benefit analysis. How many people will be swayed toward your point of view compared to the odds that some destructive, hateful chud will damage or destroy something you depend on, like your car or your house or an outbuilding containing tools you use?

The same Black activist noted that racism always attracts more funding than anti racism does. Anti-racist endeavors depend on mostly small donors. As a small donor myself, I can tell you that I view the many problems that our species faces as interlocked. Racists and destroyers have the benefit of their simple minds to help them focus their contributions on the narrow front pushed hard by their narrow minds. Saving things is much more complicated and delicate than destroying them. Because I tried to be content with a frighteningly modest income, I don't have the money to toss monthly donations totaling a couple of hundred dollars once I have paid my routine expenses and set aside some for non-routine expenses. Before I put a target on myself, I ask what my sacrifice will do to advance the greater good.

Once violence breaks out, it shapes reality to itself. The conflict becomes more important than the stakes in it. Combatants fight for their lives. We talk of the sacrifice of heroes who fall in battle, but that's a very different act from the human sacrifice celebrated by Christian churches, in which their pure messiah was executed just for being too darn good.

In either case, the gruesome deaths don't have a lasting good effect. One dead on a cross in 33 CE and millions dead by 1945, and yet here we are. Thousands obliterated in the 1860s just so some racist twat can raise a half a million dollars on the n-word and speculation that she might receive pizzas she didn't order on a few nights in 2025. I don't know what -- if anything -- will smarten up the racist dipshits. It's reached the point of unreasoning hatred, so no reasoned discourse will sway them. The death toll of racists is in the millions just since the 1860s, and yet there are still millions of them, so you won't "kill the problem out," as violent right wingers like to say.

Should the racists manage to rule the world, they will discover that they cannot make it into their utopia any more than we progressive dreamers could. Maybe the technofascists will achieve their fantasy of entirely automated labor serving a handful of actual humans living in luxury. In that case, the vast majority of people will have died out. It seems like a long term goal at best, except for the part where most humans die out. That part is too easy to achieve.

I can see it: Jesus comes back in about 2075.

"Hey, I'm back! Hey! Where did everybody go?" And then some AI planetary defense system vaporizes him.

In the meantime, we're alive now. How nice or not nice we make it is up to us. One more war or era of bloody skirmishes won't fix a goddamned thing.

Arm yourselves!

 A lot of people are talking about arming themselves against the unrest they fear will engulf our relatively safe country. I mean people who weren't already arming themselves and preparing to live in their little fantasy forts when everything collapses. That's fine as far as it goes, but if the apocalypticists get their wish, the period of violence and shortages will outlast the supplies of nearly everyone. The best-prepared of the extremely wealthy will be warlords. Everyone else will live tenuous lives, trying to find a place in their service or a fugitive life avoiding them.

Conflict resolution is difficult at the best of times, and we're definitely not entering the best of times. A slim majority of American voters decided that they're completely finished accommodating anyone they don't like. Some of the voters choosing the dictator cared so little for any of the other branches of government that they didn't bother to fill in any selection below the top spot. They can't wait for that big hammer to fall on everyone that they view as a nail.

Eradication of opposing viewpoints is tempting. Who hasn't had a momentary -- or longer -- flash of rage and imagined carpet bombing an imaginary gathering of opponents in a glorious fireball? There! That'll teach 'em! It might, for a while. But the treatment must be applied frequently. It can get out of control. So we use economic pressure instead. Deny employment and housing to "undesirables" and to people who have failed to thrive in the existing system. As a country, we do use military force and the threat of it. As individuals, armed citizens use the threat of death to stifle disagreement. This is the world they think they want to live in. How soon before shootouts become everyday occurrences? I know they already are, but they're not everywhere yet. How long before we bring back dueling? So many things wrong with that, but it's a natural outgrowth of a society structured on cruelty and force.

Violence can be inserted into society in a number of ways. I'm sure that the people eager to initiate it imagine specific scenes in which they prevail over their clearly inferior foes. When it comes to deadly force, you want to dish it out, not take it. Look at the evolution of warfare: armaments were developed to inflict damage on opponents while receiving as little as possible in return. The ideal battle ends in extermination or rapid surrender by one side. It's not a game. It's pest control.

You might get away with a threat display, but if that fails then what? Your threat is less effective if you yell it from behind a protective object. And that assumes that the object you might hide behind will actually stop a bullet.

Your best defense is often to run like hell. In an unstructured confrontation, it's all variables. Can you run? Where can you run? What can you hide behind? How are you armed? Do you have enough ammunition? Is your adrenaline making you shaky? Are you not as ready as you thought you would be? How can you really be ready for someone trying to kill you?

Whether our country survives this crisis and returns to therapy in search of sanity, or just degenerates the rest of the way, we might consider setting up recreational death facilities where consenting adults can try out deadly confrontation on willing foes in a sealed environment. Forget wussy paintball. The blood is real. Flesh is torn, bone is shattered. Losers die. Even winners might die, depending on how ferocious the exchange was. Whoever draws the last breath is the victor. Just leave everyone else out of your personal drama. But who are we kidding? Dragging in helpless bystanders is part of the fun, isn't it?

Initiators of violence love the power trip. They take control of the lives of everyone around them. Maybe they don't have perfect control of the outcome, but for as long as they present a threat, everyone has to react to them. If they aren't as good at it as they thought, their moment is brief. Just because you start something doesn't mean you will be able to finish it.

Even if you plan to act only defensively, you need to practice, practice, practice, with live rounds, so that your muscle memory is as ingrained as possible with the actual weight and recoil. You need to shoot in different positions and situations, at least some of the time without hearing protection, so you're ready for the actual volume of sound. Or maybe you will get lucky, whip off just the shot you need when you need it, and scamper away to run another day.

Civilization is nice. It's comfortable. Only a fucking idiot looks forward to its collapse and the hell that follows. Tough guys of all genders like to growl that anyone who gives up liberty for safety will have neither. That's one of those logic trails that leads to a scorched landscape of constant killing, as we do nothing to restrain murderous impulses because doing so would mean giving up the freedom to indulge our wrath. Freedom in that case belongs only to anyone ruthless, powerful, well-armed, and skillful for exactly as long as it takes for their luck to run out anyway.

The military forces that defend our very own Land of the Free begin their careers by giving up their freedom. It's a very rule-bound life. Freedom of religion means that believers get to give up their personal freedom for the sake of satisfying the rules of their faith. We give up freedom all the time, for very sensible and grownup reasons. You might say it's fine if it's voluntary, but once you're in it it's coercive. The military has disciplinary options including imprisonment and , in extreme cases, death. Religions dangle the threat of eternal damnation over you if you stray. You can resign from the service or be dishonorably discharged. You can serve your hitch and take a regular discharge. You can quit your religion and take your chances with the eternal damnation, or sidestep over to another religion which will curtail your freedom. Point is, if you participate in a society of any kind, you will face restraints.

Even if you're in the militia of your favorite post-apocalyptic warlord you can only engage your enemies in specific ways. Go rogue and you might make your boss nervous. You get no job security when you work for a warlord who doubts your loyalty.

Safety depends on consent

A piece on NPR this morning about Squirrel Hill and the Pittsburgh synagogue shooting mentioned that it was a "safe" neighborhood.

The devotees of armed force like to remind the rest of us that no place is safe. And they are right. Unless you are in some super-fortified safe room -- in which you are a prisoner of fear -- you may encounter an evil person any time, anywhere. But the odds are better in some places than in others.

I lived in a safe neighborhood in West Annapolis in the 1980s. Just a few doors up the street, someone was murdered in their home. As I recall, that was a spousal murder. It was still a murder. A couple of years later, on a slightly sketchier residential street in Edgewater, the guy next door wigged out on PCP and fired off a few rounds at something imaginary before sprinting up the street stripping his clothes off. Years before that, in Coral Gables, Florida, I found a .32 slug from our crazy neighbor flattened against the wall of our house. She was a drinker, who kept the pistol at the head of her bed. Good thing the houses in that neighborhood had thick masonry walls. We never heard a shot. She could have done it any time, even before we moved in. Just another day.

Mass shootings and ideologically motivated murder have increased in this country since the mid 20th Century, adding to the ongoing death toll that merely stems from the ugly side of human nature. Our own citizens subscribe to enough homicidal ideologies to supply us with atrocities that require no invaders or sneaky terrorists from abroad. We rate the safety of a neighborhood on its record of crime and violence. But ideological violence leaps over the local customs between neighbors, the consensual agreement to live and let live.

Safety depends on consent. The residents of a place agree that they will work with and around each other without resorting to forceful confrontation. They will respect each other's boundaries. In the best cases, they will enjoy the experience and expanded point of view brought to them by a diverse population. But even lacking a diverse population of residents, people can cultivate a peaceful attitude if enough of them choose to do so.

All this is for nothing, the armed and dangerous crowd tells us. The only path to peace is through the threat of mutually assured destruction or by eradicating everyone who holds an opposing viewpoint. Anything less is cowardly.

For decades now, the promoters of an armed society have been telling us that anyone must be prepared for a gunfight. As the rhetoric creates an ever more paranoid and volatile population, their prophecy fulfills itself. I see armed men all the time, just going about their lives: shopping, gassing up the truck, serving on town boards, with at least one gun visible. With permitless concealed carry, they could have a couple more tucked in various crevices on their person. A couple of weeks ago it was a scrawny young dude with a 12-pack of beer under one arm, and a handgun bigger than his skinny thigh almost pulling his jeans down as he climbed into his truck.

The Second Amendment cancels out the First, if the threat of armed response is what makes people shut up and ignore each other's behavior. Flip the bird at someone who drives like a sociopath and you may find out just how much of a sociopath he is. It was always true. Anyone might have a gun, regardless of the laws. But the more we enable and encourage the idea that deadly force is normal, the more of it we will see. Deadly force may be a last resort, but feel free to hop right to it with only the briefest glance at other options on your way by. Homicidal ideology plus an arsenal of firearms leads you right to Squirrel Hill, or a grocery store in Kentucky. It breaches the agreement of safety wherever it arrives.

Every time I've considered carrying a gun I've decided that it would probably make a situation worse rather than better. Because we do not yet live in an actual war zone, by the time you know that deadly force is justified you have probably already lost that battle. Our stereotypical movie cowboys of the mythical old west weren't fighting off muggers. They were calling each other out in duels. Or the sodbusters were engaged in guerrilla warfare with the ranchers. Or the gang of outlaws would sweep down on the town, where the brave sheriff and his deputies would pick them off. In every case, the participants knew that they were in a defined conflict. It was right there in the fictional script.

The racists and antisemites in this country who want to eliminate people they deem undesirable are eager to define the conflict and declare war. They have no use for conventions of safety. Perhaps they would feel differently if they were immersed in a lengthy conflict that destroyed a lot of property and killed a lot of their friends, but you'll never convince them of that by imagination alone. They imagine glorious victory and rivers of blood from their enemies. The same optimism has ushered in every war since the first pre-human picked up a stick and showed his tribe-mates how great it was to bust heads.

That first war led to the proliferation of sticks. A secret weapon is only a secret until you use it. Then everybody wants one. And no one imagines themselves on the receiving end of it. That reality sets in later, when the glorious conflict turns into a quagmire. And people start to yearn for peace, rest, and safety.

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.

Thoughts, prayers, and argument

Another lone gunman has raised the bar yet again for mass shootings in the USA.

My employer's son was at Virginia Tech in 2007. He just missed being in one of the classrooms where that shooter struck. Ten years later, he lives and works in Las Vegas. He dodged these bullets, too. But I wonder how the world looks to a young person whose life has already been closely invaded by unhinged murderers not once but twice.

Along with normalizing virulent bigotry in the name of free speech, we have normalized personal violence. America was settled at gunpoint. The wave of white people moved westward, hunting, gathering, and subduing the natives as it went. A gun was a tool, like an ax or a plow. The gun was woven into our national identity here far more than anywhere else. It is as American as the flag, and more widely worshipped.

Popular fiction has long celebrated heroes who can handle a shootin' iron. From tall tales around the camp fire to pulp fiction to radio, movies, and television, we admire the man who says little while his gun barks a sharp response to the impertinence of evil. And our super villains push the arms race. Deadly combat is the ultimate test of a person's skill and courage.

Actually, singing solo, unaccompanied, on a stage in front of a large audience is the ultimate test of a person's skill and courage. This probably explains the greater popularity of gunplay.

I'm sure that watching people drop before your hail of lead is very satisfying. Many of these killers have already accepted that this will be the last thing they do. Good luck figuring out how to detect those tendencies in a free-range population.

Here in the Land of the Free, we must be careful when we tell people what they cannot do or own. But how many times do we have to see someone misuse a high-capacity weapon before we acknowledge that the tool itself is part of the problem?

When I first got a handgun, I had the weirdest flood of thoughts. I looked at it and saw all the ways in which it could inflict suffering. I could shoot someone else. I could shoot myself. I could shoot an animal. I could put a bullet hole in anything I could hit. I did not buy the gun. My first wife already owned it. It was never enough gun for her, it was just the gun she could afford at the time. She left it behind when she left me.

The idea of inflicting suffering repelled me, I'm happy to say. But we are primitive creatures who have killed since before the invention of language. In all those years, some of us have clearly enjoyed it more than others. That willingness to push things to the ultimate extreme lives inside all of us. It's controlled in some, and unbridled in others.

My gun-worshipping friends repeat over and over that humans are dangerous creatures, and that access to weapons is all that will save the good ones from the bad ones. Sometimes, people get killed who don't deserve it. That's an unfortunate side effect. To the gun believer, it reinforces their contention that everyone should be armed, in order to participate fully in the exchange of lead when it inevitably breaks out.

That sounds incredibly bleak to me. It may be true, but it's sad. Any family picnic in a park, any public entertainment, any convergence of people whatsoever, may be interrupted by a murderer. Get used to it. It's the will of the people and the intent of our founders.

Winston Churchill famously said that democracy was the worst form of government except for all the other forms that had been tried. Granted, a majority could vote to give their government strong police powers, and agree that only trained professionals in the government's service should be allowed to have the most powerful weapons. But we already voted to let the wealthy have all the money, and now they're using it to crush ordinary citizens. In other words, a free society needs to pay attention and stay in control of the people's government to keep the power from being misused.

I wonder if it can be done. How do you keep everyone informed at all times about the actions of all the public officials at all levels of government, in real time? The internet? That hacker-infested, troll-plagued repository of convincing disinformation? What else ya got?

I wish I had an answer. A lie can go halfway around the world while the truth is still getting its shoes tied. That concept has been attributed to a number of famous people, but its origin matters far less than its validity. Especially now, a lie can travel at the speed of light. So can the truth, but a good lie sounds convincing, and a great lie can cast doubt on the truth.

And then there's opinion. An opinion may turn out to be true. It may sound so attractive that its supporters treat it as true, regardless. All this competes for attention in a busy world where increasing numbers of strivers struggle to stay alive and feel like it's worth something. We are asked to make quick decisions about policies with far-reaching consequences. We are represented by elected officials that most of us don't fully trust, because we don't have time to keep track of all the influences  on them.

Broad-brush government haters and conspiracy theorists simplify their lives by condemning the whole thing. It's rotten, they all stink, destroy it all. Maybe they scale it back to certain departments and party affiliations, but a nihilist view of government in general is the foundation of both anarchy and tyranny.

By now I'm sure that someone has already posted the opinion that the tragedy in Las Vegas could have been contained with much lower losses if trained individuals in the crowd, openly and legally carrying their own automatic weapons, had been allowed to identify the target and pin him down with return fire. If we really live in a land where outbreaks of gunplay need to be tolerated, we all need not just weapons, but combat training as well. The best remedy for bad speech is more speech. The best remedy for bad gun use is super-precise, heroically competent, instant retaliation. That would obviate the need for heavily armed police forces and eliminate the lag time between calling 911 and the actual arrival of help.

When you're writing the script, you get to pick who wins. Reality is seldom so courteous.

Police misconduct further complicates any simplistic prescription. Armored vehicles and extensive arsenals present quite a temptation. As we learn from many reports of misbehavior ranging from mildly questionable to outright heinous in both law enforcement and the armed forces, some who serve are gratifying a personal urge to dominate more than a lofty calling to protect. Anarchy or tyranny will serve their purposes equally well.

Anyone with a heart feels wounded when we hear of a murder, mass or otherwise. Naturally, those inclined to care will offer warm words at the very least. Those inclined to celebrate violence will exult. There will be a lot of opinions and statistics back and forth. Thoughts, prayers, and argument will create a jumble of noise that will fade to the usual grumble until the next time.

A dark truth becomes ever more obvious

As a Baby Boomer, I accepted without question that the human race wanted to last a long time and grow ever more friendly toward each other. How could I have been so blind to the fact that nearly half of all people are outright hostile to such a utopia? I joined vast numbers of others who bought into a vision of a world beyond hatred and divisiveness, unaware that the very concept fostered deeper and more bitter divisions.

The descendants of that world view continue to work toward it in spite of the continuing opposition. We dig through the muck of hostility and greed, thinking we're building a permanent road to higher ground, only to see the mire close behind us and grow deeper in front.

Believers in a higher power have an advantage when it comes to organizing. That's the way in which they will gather and march forth to destroy a secular society created by ethical -- but non-religious -- citizens who may come to outnumber the believers in a specific, narrow version of religious doctrine. The believers in their small groups can plan their campaigns of violence and sabotage in the name of goodness and righteousness. With the stamp of God's approval they can dedicate themselves to destroying the enemies of their belief system. These enemies include religious people who believe that believers in different faiths can and should get along.

Any way you look, you can see a final confrontation brewing. Obstinacy and superstition demand it.

In the Christian tradition, God will whisk the virtuous true believers straight to heaven before the shit hits the fan. It would be interesting if this roster included a lot of people who were not scripture-waving churchgoers.

Meanwhile, in another Abrahamic religion, the self-styled Islamic State is trying to bring about their own version of the final battle, as described in an article from 2016 about the attacks to date in Europe and America.

No religious narrative has to be true for religious warfare to bring about the end of our species. Everything does happen for a reason. Unfortunately, the reason turns out to be that humans are suckers for suicidal delusions.

What would you do? Way beyond Quinones

As we enter what could be a period of violent upheaval in this country, you might want to think about how you would react in various scenarios.

The ABC show "What Would You Do?" plays with light versions of social issues, but the legitimization of white nationalism, sexism, LGBTQ-phobia and strong-arm tactics in general coming out of the recent presidential campaign has already spawned incidents of violence.

The wonderful Women's Marches all over the country and in the world in general made a commendable display of peaceful protest. However, the climate in authoritarian circles, and in the right wing, is not at all receptive to protest demonstrations.

What would you do if law enforcement covering a demonstration opened fire with automatic weapons? Would you back down immediately, take cover, and run? Or would you march forward to be mowed down, as a rebuke to the vestiges of conscience left in the world? If you fled on the first day, would you come back for a second day? If you fled on the first day, would you begin to organize for civil war?

What would you do if you saw a group of white people beating up a brown person? A non-heterosexual person? A Jewish person? What would you do? How would you intervene, if at all?

What would you do if Jewish businesses were vandalized and ransacked in your town? What about Muslim businesses?

What would you do if lynching began again, law enforcement did not investigate, and district attorneys did not prosecute? What would you do if perpetrators who did face token trials always went free?

The current administration drew heavily on the influence of paranoia and hatred to build momentum for their campaign. They used voters disenfranchised by corporate influence, economically burdened by overpopulation and by technological advancement, feeding the popular myths about poor people, dark people, unfamiliar religions, and government conspiracies to advance the real conspiracy, which is corporate dominance of political, social, and economic life.

What would you do if oligarchy took over your country and you still had to look the word up every time you heard it, or just ignore it and hope it goes away?

It will start so slowly that you can easily tell yourself it's going nowhere. And it may really simmer down. But if it doesn't, you should have some idea what you would do.

Deadly, self-centered attention whores

The shootings in Orlando are just the latest act by deadly, self-centered attention whores who want to end their lives in spectacular murder-suicide. They probably won't be the last. Murderous suicide is an increasingly common emotional disorder with deep roots in the human psyche.

This latest performer has done a great service to the Stanford rapist, Brock Turner, by pushing him out of the internet's spotlight of shame. The sole imperative of the attention whore is to get attention, to the detriment of whatever else might still deserve consideration and detailed, careful discussion.

The attention whore is irrational. The motives of the attention whore are also irrational. This is particularly conspicuous now, when atrocities are committed by home hobbyists claiming cosmic motives of religious devotion. They are condoned by the manipulators of such passions, who themselves see only a new way to operate a global power play. Religious militancy is nothing new at all, but using it through widespread media and communication to launch attacks here, there, and everywhere is up-to-the-minute use of technology. No need to gather troops and transport them to a battlefield. Just broadcast suggestions and let the volunteers create the killing ground at any convenient location.

Attention whores never realize that they are pathetic. They have no shame, because they are the innocent, the aggrieved, the brave martyr. It's a seductive role. Never worry about old age, retirement, sickness, a bad credit rating, a failing marriage, or any other stressor in modern life. You're going to die anyway. Why not go out in a blaze of glory? Strike a blow for something noble, best expressed by slaughtering defenseless people in an undefended environment. If you have properly dehumanized them before you start, the rest is truly easy.

The End of the World

Humans tend to equate the end of the era of human domination with the end of the world itself. That's so cute. The planet existed for billions of years without us and will probably continue to orbit and support life long after we have knocked ourselves off our own pedestal and broken it up so we can throw the pieces at each other.

After World War II, legend has it that there was widespread support for the idea of a world without war. The one just ended had killed enough people and damaged enough real estate to make many survivors believe we could no longer accept armed conflict as a way to settle intellectual disputes.

Of course we continued to have wars. We just did not let them get out of hand. They tended to be inconclusive and unsatisfying, no matter how savage and bloody they may have been in their own theaters, and how divisive they might have been on the home front.

Against the backdrop of the Cold War it was easy to believe in Armageddon as a conflict between two political philosophies in control of discrete and contiguous land masses. It would be the conventional war of the past, scrawled immensely with enormous weapons. Probably no one would survive.

As the collapse of the Soviet Union demonstrated, preparing for Armageddon is not very economical. You have to have a balance of trade that supports your militaristic expansionism. Merely being armed and dangerous is nowhere near as effective as being rich and ruthless.

In the late 1990s the threat of superpower conflict seemed to have been banished forever. Indeed, this may be true. In the 20th Century we had the incorrectly named War to End All War. In the 21st Century we have the Wars That Can Never End. There's the one between corporate capitalism and Islamic radicalism. There are internal struggles and international chafe areas all over the world.

Separatism is the new nationalism. Dissolution has replaced unification. It's more important to refuse to lose an argument than it is to solve a human problem. Anyone, anywhere, might suddenly find themselves standing next to a suicide bomber. It doesn't happen often in some places, but there's really no reason it couldn't. Because you can't do anything about it, you can't worry about it. If someone is so pissed off at the world that they're going to flip out and kill a bunch of people you can't guarantee to stop them without completely abandoning civil liberties and making everybody go around naked under surveillance cameras. Even then, someone at some level will be wearing pants and giving orders. Or maybe a shirt and no pants. Our leader could be an exhibitionist.

Watching news coverage of the Islamic State and other thinly veiled excuses to commit murder, you can see the logic and the economy of small-scale conflict spread over a widening area. Because it travels on ideas rather than an advancing front of conquered and assimilated territory, a battle of sorts can break out anywhere one or more interested parties can equip themselves with cheap and available materials to spread a little bloodshed. Once people thrust away the idea of living in peace the logical result is fighting.

The people who like to fight and the people who like to watch them accuse anyone who speaks against it of being chicken. Don't think we should fight? You must be a coward. Right. Because those are the only two choices: warrior or coward. It's typical lazy binary thinking, to which humans are subject everywhere.

This would seem to imply a sort of unity among the warriors against the cowards. But the warriors need enemies to fight, not just weaklings to exterminate. Among both the peaceniks and the fighters, factions argue. In the peace camp the arguments just get bitchy. The warriors declare each other enemies and have another war. The result is fragmentation of both sides into smaller pieces that don't get along. The armed and dangerous crowd, often manipulated by the rich and ruthless, battle wherever they can. The bitchy arguments of the peace promoters get very bitchy indeed. Unkind things are said. It's very painful. It becomes very hard to put together a guest list for a party.

The conflict that brings down civilization and returns humanity to scrounging for food in a harsh landscape will not be the spectacular exchange of nuclear missiles, although someone may manage to get a few nukes mixed in. It will be more and more little bombs, rockets, bullets, clubs, knives, kidnappings, beheadings, torture, maiming, IEDs, rocks, bottles, here, there and everywhere. It will be one failed state after another. It will be breakaway republics reabsorbed by their old imperial masters, festering with armed resistance to both independence and absorption. It will be fighting for the sake of fighting, just to prove we can take it.

Maybe we'll burn out the fighting urge before it takes everything down. It seems doubtful at this point, but you never know. What fuels it now is the sense in so many people's minds that they could be the winner that takes all. So put together a band of fighters and start your campaign. Imagine your own Thousand Year Reich, or whatever your culture likes to call that empire of power and control so dear to the grandiose. Or maybe you envision a rational anarchy in which liberated people live in perfect individualistic harmony without paying any taxes to a stupid, intrusive government. Or maybe theocracy is your bag. Your group of true believers will create the nation favored by God to rule the planet. Unfortunately, just a few miles away, a similar group has formed. Take up your weapons. The first glorious battle is upon us. It certainly won't be the last.

Any survivors of this global conflict probably will be no wiser. They'll just be hungrier, more weather-beaten and less well armed. Some of them may be the kind of cowards who talk about living in peace, but we've seen how little traction that has. It will just be a whining noise in the background.

Conservative conceit

It's been almost a year since a relative of mine used the conservative assertion that some person or persons we were discussing "isn't old enough to be conservative yet." It still bothers me coming from a family member, when I might have brushed it off from some idiot on the street, the television or in an opinion column.

I first ran across this snotty put-down back in the 1990s. I'm sure it's older than that, but that's how long I've had to be aware of it. It's one more subtle way to turn a discussion of issues into an exchange of insults. By all means, be patronizing.

As further proof that I'm living my life backwards, I have steadily grown less conservative as I have gained life experience and listened to the stories of more and more people. I have my limits, but anyone to my right would surely say I am and have been headed in the wrong direction.

Over the years I have steadily scoured out remnants of racism, sexism and homoanxiety I had acquired simply by growing up privileged and white in the 1960s and '70s. Sure, lots of white people were braver and more noble in support of the advancement of all the repressed and downtrodden, and others were far worse in continuing the oppression, but in the middle were doofuses like me who laughed at certain jokes without thinking hard about them, who treated women at least ever so slightly like a prey species and worried about whether we might be homosexual because male classmates were questioning our manhood. Even referring to heterosexual orientation as manhood, as if it was the only form of it, is a holdover from a more simple-minded past.

Fiscal conservatism can be sensible. I don't like to waste money, even if I do get along with all sorts of freaks and weirdos and believe that no one should make 700 times as much money as someone else who has a job and tries to be useful. I happen to believe that the government established by the US Constitution is basically a good model for addressing a bad situation, namely the need to have a government to take care of the routine details of running a society that allows for ample citizen input. The channels of input have been bought out by financially powerful interests masquerading as "the Private Sector." If they can be reclaimed, the big old rickety ship of state might actually start working for the benefit of all once again.

Conservatism in its worst form tends to reject ideas based on their source and to act on the basis of fear. While the conservative may brandish weapons and say warlike things, it is the emotional first line of defense against a world perceived as inherently hostile. If they are correct, and the human race is incorrigibly violent and duplicitous, I'm even happier not to join anyone's hate club and not to have subjected any offspring to the Planet of the Assholes.

I know my relative's fear springs from a time he was very small and still innocent, and had the very bad fortune to be thrust into the middle of desegregation in the schools in a city that was only just recovering from a period of racial violence. Oops. He's not a swastika-wearing skinhead, but he's one of those people who still keeps the N-word available in his vocabulary to describe dark persons who do things of which he does not approve.

Other influences have contributed to solidifying his position. I never argue about it. There's no point. Everyone has to try to find methods that get them successfully through one day and the next for as long as they keep getting more days. While I believe that many -- if not most - of the positions strongly held by today's conservatives are bad for the future of humanity, I know that no one can change this by acts of force. And if it can't be changed by persistent spread of knowledge and a gentle insistence on productive discussion and action, it won't be changed at all. So back we come to the self-fulfilling prophecy of conservative dystopia. They'll have been right because their intransigence brought about the culture of violence and distrust they feared existed all along. The only freedom comes through the skillful use of weapons against whoever tries to muscle in on you.

Bummer.

Guns and helmets.

The rationale behind the need to own a gun is strikingly similar to the arguments supporting bicycle and motorcycle helmets. Even some of the arguments against guns sound somewhat similar.

Many people who tremble at the thought of being gunless tell you that they don't want to use it but they want it on hand in case they need it. Likewise, helmet wearers will say they don't plan to crash, but want the protective gear in case they do.

Opponents of both guns and helmets might acknowledge that each has its uses, but point out the ways in which either one can be a genuine hazard to your own personal safety, even if you're trying to use it correctly. Helmet wearers have suffered neck and facial injuries because the projecting edge of the helmet caused their heads to twist sharply during an impact. Gun accidents are well-publicized by the faction saying "I told you so."

Helmet wearers are almost never injured or killed because someone took their helmet from them and attacked them with it. So guns get the demerits there.

Helmet opponents point to unsubstantiated pseudo-scientific studies that seem to indicate a helmet wearer is more likely to have a dangerous encounter with a passing motorist than someone riding bare-headed. I don't know if wearing a gun makes people more likely to shy away from you or if it might inspire a few aggressive types to take it as an invitation to try you out. Someone wearing a gun certainly discourages me from wanting to walk up and say hello. I might find a safe place to watch if two of them decided to see who is faster. But there might be no safe place when the lead starts flying.

Ultimately the sense of a need to own a gun comes down to the individual's imagination -- one might almost say fantasy life. In fact it would be quite safe to say fantasy life in the case of gun cultists who imagine themselves as action heroes saving the day with their trusty shootin' iron.

Many of us -- perhaps even most of us -- will get through life without ever needing to shoot someone. People in the military don't have to buy the guns they use to shoot the people they're sent to face, so those confrontations don't really figure in the decision to go armed in civilian life.

Maybe I've just never lived in a bad enough neighborhood.

I have a couple of guns in the house. I even slept with them handy during a particularly ugly time in town politics. That level of intensity soon passed.

When I've considered carrying a gun on my bike rides I soon realized that it would not be worth its weight. By the time you know you need it, it's too late. The same is true of many imaginary situations in the rest of life. Deadly force is just so darn deadly. Revenge killing is just so darn illegal.

Ultimately you have to make your own decision. The rhetoric gets hot enough to melt lead.

It's a bully's world

Bullies have shaped society since before humans developed language.

Bullying is the animal model for establishing dominance. As humans developed more complex thoughts and feelings they had to manage the more intricate relationships among bullies who had achieved varying levels of success occupying adjacent or overlapping territories. As our growing minds and collective experience added more and more data, humans developed many philosophies to try to reconcile the increasing collection of new discoveries and realizations.

At some point it became popular to forget our natural origins. After that we could try to hold ourselves to unrealistic standards, declaring we must control or forbid many of our natural compulsions. These were temptations from an evil entity bent on spoiling our relationship with the Supreme Bully, who would treat us handsomely if we behaved ourselves.

In recent years many cultures have adopted the idea that bullying should be discouraged. As one who played on both sides of that conflict at different times in different schools, I applaud the idea. I just wonder what unintended consequence we will spin off as a result. I would love for it to be all cooperation and acceptance and self improvement. I simply wonder how deleting a fundamental compulsion in our personalities will alter human institutions we have unwittingly based on it throughout our thoughtful existence. Everything we praise: brave warriors, law enforcement, holy martyrs on a cross, is based on the interaction between the bullies and the bullied. If no one ever pushed anyone else around we would be different from almost all other living things. Even plants try to grow taller than their neighbors.

Someone who is willing to push other people around has an automatic advantage over people who would prefer not to. This will make bullying a constant temptation. Some would even say that the will to dominate leads to high achievement. Who is going to argue against high achievement? So if you want to convince a potential bully that it's really wrong to feel that way you had better have a lot of good arguments to support your position. Otherwise you'll just end up beaten up and dunked in a toilet.

Pondering Atrocity

The recent mass murder in Colorado stirred up the usual discussion at work. For two out of three people there the question was never whether to execute the killer, only what method would be the most appropriately brutal.

Atrocity can't be punished. The perpetrator has already claimed the reward by successfully committing it. Most of them commit suicide anyway, having experienced the best that life has to offer them. Whatever makes them want to achieve this particular hideous thing puts them completely out of reach of our retribution. You can exterminate them but that will not deter the next one. You can torture them, but that's like kicking a rabid dog. It won't change anything that has already happened or cure or prevent rabies. And nothing you do will compensate the ones who have lost their lives or someone important from their lives, and had their trust in humanity permanently injured.

Trust in humanity is misplaced if humanity is capable of producing monsters. Discarding that trust is probably a good survival strategy, at least regarding strangers. But when someone steps horrifically far outside the normal range of acceptable behavior it goes beyond even the average criminal breach of trust. In a crowd one might reasonably fear having a pocket picked, getting groped, or maybe just having to sit too close to someone who farts a lot. You don't want to go through every day wondering when the masked gunman is going to loom up and start mowing people down. Nor should you. First of all, it remains somewhat unlikely. Second, you can't be one hundred percent ready even if you arm yourself. You still have to be in the right place at the time to get a clear and timely shot. Perhaps the only thing worse than a crazed gunman shooting up a theater full of people is a bunch of armed citizens shooting around in the direction they think the attack is coming from.

A gun-rights amendment written in the era of single-shot muskets and pistols is hardly a good guide for society in the age of much more sophisticated killing machines at all levels of combat from interpersonal to international. A well-ordered militia worth a crap to defend community and country is going to need armored vehicles, artillery, air power and more. What kind of personal budget--not to mention what size garage--would you need to house your personal stash of weapons sufficiently powerful to keep your neighbors at bay and "the government off your back?"

Once the shooting starts, intelligence and reason have lost. The issue in the contest becomes simply life and death, not whatever difference of opinion was used as the excuse to become brutal and simple-minded. But who wants to be the only person in the room without a gun when everyone else is using theirs to support their point of view? It's like trying to be a real big-boy nation in the world when other nations are telling you you can't have nukes like they do. No fair! I want to be able to rain fiery destruction like everybody else!

As long as we retain the compulsion to express ourselves with hot lead, things are going to get out of control sometimes.