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.
Sunday, June 12, 2016
Monday, May 30, 2016
Memorial Day
Just because a person died in uniform doesn't mean they died for freedom. That's the saddest part. The great wallow in conspicuous gratitude and automatic exaltation of the death truly does the armed forces a disservice. Many of those lives have been outright wasted.
Sunday, May 29, 2016
Term Limits
The idea of term limits for elected officials appeals to a lot of people who haven't really thought about the depth of the problem of corrupt government and why it exists.
The false premise behind term limits is that people who run for elected office are sincere to begin with. They come into office as idealistic innocents who are then corrupted by their own power and proximity to the collective power of others in leadership positions. That hasn't been true for many years.
Corruption in politics has been a tradition for centuries. A rare elected leader might display altruism, but for the most part the activities of politics are pragmatic, if not downright filthy. But the advent of media campaigns allowed a new dimension in corruption, in which wealthy interests can manipulate public opinion without appearing in the media themselves. We've all heard of the notorious Koch brothers, and George Soros, and a small list of other billionaire heavies, but they occupy the headlines far less than their elected lackeys and whipping boys who do the dirty work. Railroad one lackey out, be assured another lackey is being groomed to move up the chain into the vacated slot. So, there is flaw number one with term limits.
Flaw number two is that term limits are generally discussed for national offices. Forces who hated Franklin Roosevelt managed to get limits placed on presidential terms. The movement now talks about doing it down through the senate and house of representatives. In addition to simply speeding up the conveyor belt of pork and favors with absolutely no interruption of services provided to the oligarchs, this also leaves the vastly influential state, county, municipal and local governments in which power brokers can lodge like reef-dwelling eels, growing longer and fatter, with sharper and sharper teeth as no amount of spearfishing manages to dislodge them. And so we come to the one -- and only one -- way term limits could work.
Term limits could work if they were instituted without exception all the way down to the lowest elected office in the tiniest jurisdiction in the country. It would be the closest we could come to drafted government, which would, in fact, be quite resistant to corruption. Turnover would be regular, and could be quite rapid if the limits were made tight. We would have to choose from eligible candidates, as previous office holders limited out and could no longer serve directly. Politicians no longer eligible could still hang around and exert influence, the way former elected officials become lobbyists and paid lecturers, but they would be out of the direct chain of command. However, unless the laws were written specifically to prevent it, a bad actor could get elected to one position, then another, then another, aided by backers who would advertise the candidate's experience right alongside his outsider status coming into each new position. Voters are easily led by shallow rhetoric and slick entertainment. We vote by emotion as we pay lip service to well-reasoned consideration of the issues.
Without massive overhaul of campaign finance, and a thorough application of term limits as far down as I have stated, corruption will find a way, because corruption has the more powerful motive than innocent honesty. Honesty just wants to do the right thing and have everyone else do it, too. Corruption wants to manipulate the system for the gain of a few masterminds. It doesn't take a lot of energy as long as the corrupters remain focused on their goal and keep applying the funds they control to consolidate their advantage.
Personally, I would welcome term limits at the town level, because I would be ousted from my two board positions and could screw off on those evenings. But in a town as small as Effingham, we would have to import people in just a few cycles, to have anyone eligible at all.
The false premise behind term limits is that people who run for elected office are sincere to begin with. They come into office as idealistic innocents who are then corrupted by their own power and proximity to the collective power of others in leadership positions. That hasn't been true for many years.
Corruption in politics has been a tradition for centuries. A rare elected leader might display altruism, but for the most part the activities of politics are pragmatic, if not downright filthy. But the advent of media campaigns allowed a new dimension in corruption, in which wealthy interests can manipulate public opinion without appearing in the media themselves. We've all heard of the notorious Koch brothers, and George Soros, and a small list of other billionaire heavies, but they occupy the headlines far less than their elected lackeys and whipping boys who do the dirty work. Railroad one lackey out, be assured another lackey is being groomed to move up the chain into the vacated slot. So, there is flaw number one with term limits.
Flaw number two is that term limits are generally discussed for national offices. Forces who hated Franklin Roosevelt managed to get limits placed on presidential terms. The movement now talks about doing it down through the senate and house of representatives. In addition to simply speeding up the conveyor belt of pork and favors with absolutely no interruption of services provided to the oligarchs, this also leaves the vastly influential state, county, municipal and local governments in which power brokers can lodge like reef-dwelling eels, growing longer and fatter, with sharper and sharper teeth as no amount of spearfishing manages to dislodge them. And so we come to the one -- and only one -- way term limits could work.
Term limits could work if they were instituted without exception all the way down to the lowest elected office in the tiniest jurisdiction in the country. It would be the closest we could come to drafted government, which would, in fact, be quite resistant to corruption. Turnover would be regular, and could be quite rapid if the limits were made tight. We would have to choose from eligible candidates, as previous office holders limited out and could no longer serve directly. Politicians no longer eligible could still hang around and exert influence, the way former elected officials become lobbyists and paid lecturers, but they would be out of the direct chain of command. However, unless the laws were written specifically to prevent it, a bad actor could get elected to one position, then another, then another, aided by backers who would advertise the candidate's experience right alongside his outsider status coming into each new position. Voters are easily led by shallow rhetoric and slick entertainment. We vote by emotion as we pay lip service to well-reasoned consideration of the issues.
Without massive overhaul of campaign finance, and a thorough application of term limits as far down as I have stated, corruption will find a way, because corruption has the more powerful motive than innocent honesty. Honesty just wants to do the right thing and have everyone else do it, too. Corruption wants to manipulate the system for the gain of a few masterminds. It doesn't take a lot of energy as long as the corrupters remain focused on their goal and keep applying the funds they control to consolidate their advantage.
Personally, I would welcome term limits at the town level, because I would be ousted from my two board positions and could screw off on those evenings. But in a town as small as Effingham, we would have to import people in just a few cycles, to have anyone eligible at all.
Sunday, May 01, 2016
Employment and vacation
We who were born in the 1950s and '60s grew up with widely accepted concepts that included retirement and vacation. They seem to persist even now, but the time must be near when we realize they are as unnatural as so many of our other civilized assumptions.
At the start of the industrial age, workers were expected to put in 16-hour days, six days a week, having only a sabbath on which to pay the proper respect to the deity of their choice -- provided the deity's schedule fit the factory's schedule. Anyone who wanted to escape from that grind had to figure out how to maintain sufficient income to survive, and possibly prosper, outside of the rigors of the productive system imposed by the owners and their accountants.
Small business owners learned that they could catch more customers if they spread the net as wide as possible, to the limits of their endurance, or their ability to conscript their spouses and children to serve as cheap labor.
Only the wealthy vacationed.
Fast forward through the rise of the labor movement, the imposition of a more humane official work week, and the spreading of such benefits as paid time off. At the height of the golden age of American employment, the bread winner might in good conscience and with full legal justification take two weeks with pay to spend time with the family, visiting national parks, or renting a beach house. Someone below the top ranks might actually be spared from the vital processes of the company for that long. Someone in the top ranks could manage to break away for longer. It was the age of democratized leisure.
The Revenge of the Bean Counters started to kick in during the 1980s. Becoming wealthy replaced having a good life as the focus of everyone's efforts. The perception that businesses existed to make money, and that the actual product was merely incidental went in tandem with this. And if a business exists only to make money, not to make lives better, the first thing we need to do is cut down the work force so that only essential personnel remain. Work 'em hard, bleed 'em dry and hire new ones, because there's no shortage of eager beavers coming out of school with shiny new educations and no street smarts.
I'm not sure when the 40-hour work week became a joke, because I was actually trying to have a good life for my early working life. The idea that people were expected to put in 50-80 hours a week as a matter of routine never occurred to me.
I'm still trying to have a good life, now at a more acknowledged cost of decreased life expectancy.
Legally, an employee can still claim paid vacation from many employers. As a result, one must ask whether the bean counters have managed to complete their program and excise all surplus employees from the payroll, or are the remaining workers stressed all the more to cover the lack of necessary hands.
When I left work for 11 days to go to a funeral, the remaining worker on our payroll had to give up all his days off to cover my shifts. Now he's about to head off to Japan for an actual vacation trip. I may be called upon to torch my personal time to meet the needs of the business from which we derive our sustenance. That funeral trip was almost the farthest thing from a battery-recharging pleasure cruise. But in the reality of survival, the business must go on. Whatever my hopes, dreams, and needs for personal experiences, I have a job to do.
A small business is like a lifeboat. Everybody has to row. Everybody has to bail. Hopefully, someone knows how to navigate, to keep you pointed toward some theoretical island, or cross the shipping lanes and be rescued. But in all likelihood you just row until the boat sinks and then swim to another one or drown in the attempt.
We're older and tireder. The fact that the business no longer draws as many customers as it used to makes the fact that we close one day a week both possible and necessary. The owners can't pay for coverage for a full seven days. With the middle class becoming the working poor, fewer people anywhere seem to be able to afford to play tourist, or even to recreate more or less locally. Down, down, in a lazy spiral goes the economy and the aging population.
An energetic generation waits to take over after the die-off frees up land, and a philosophical shift brings about the sustainable society I hoped we would start working on 40 years ago. I wish I could feel happier for them, but I'm afraid I still resent the greedy assholes of my generation who turned their backs on all that hippie shit in the mid 1970s and chased the dollars instead.
At the start of the industrial age, workers were expected to put in 16-hour days, six days a week, having only a sabbath on which to pay the proper respect to the deity of their choice -- provided the deity's schedule fit the factory's schedule. Anyone who wanted to escape from that grind had to figure out how to maintain sufficient income to survive, and possibly prosper, outside of the rigors of the productive system imposed by the owners and their accountants.
Small business owners learned that they could catch more customers if they spread the net as wide as possible, to the limits of their endurance, or their ability to conscript their spouses and children to serve as cheap labor.
Only the wealthy vacationed.
Fast forward through the rise of the labor movement, the imposition of a more humane official work week, and the spreading of such benefits as paid time off. At the height of the golden age of American employment, the bread winner might in good conscience and with full legal justification take two weeks with pay to spend time with the family, visiting national parks, or renting a beach house. Someone below the top ranks might actually be spared from the vital processes of the company for that long. Someone in the top ranks could manage to break away for longer. It was the age of democratized leisure.
The Revenge of the Bean Counters started to kick in during the 1980s. Becoming wealthy replaced having a good life as the focus of everyone's efforts. The perception that businesses existed to make money, and that the actual product was merely incidental went in tandem with this. And if a business exists only to make money, not to make lives better, the first thing we need to do is cut down the work force so that only essential personnel remain. Work 'em hard, bleed 'em dry and hire new ones, because there's no shortage of eager beavers coming out of school with shiny new educations and no street smarts.
I'm not sure when the 40-hour work week became a joke, because I was actually trying to have a good life for my early working life. The idea that people were expected to put in 50-80 hours a week as a matter of routine never occurred to me.
I'm still trying to have a good life, now at a more acknowledged cost of decreased life expectancy.
Legally, an employee can still claim paid vacation from many employers. As a result, one must ask whether the bean counters have managed to complete their program and excise all surplus employees from the payroll, or are the remaining workers stressed all the more to cover the lack of necessary hands.
When I left work for 11 days to go to a funeral, the remaining worker on our payroll had to give up all his days off to cover my shifts. Now he's about to head off to Japan for an actual vacation trip. I may be called upon to torch my personal time to meet the needs of the business from which we derive our sustenance. That funeral trip was almost the farthest thing from a battery-recharging pleasure cruise. But in the reality of survival, the business must go on. Whatever my hopes, dreams, and needs for personal experiences, I have a job to do.
A small business is like a lifeboat. Everybody has to row. Everybody has to bail. Hopefully, someone knows how to navigate, to keep you pointed toward some theoretical island, or cross the shipping lanes and be rescued. But in all likelihood you just row until the boat sinks and then swim to another one or drown in the attempt.
We're older and tireder. The fact that the business no longer draws as many customers as it used to makes the fact that we close one day a week both possible and necessary. The owners can't pay for coverage for a full seven days. With the middle class becoming the working poor, fewer people anywhere seem to be able to afford to play tourist, or even to recreate more or less locally. Down, down, in a lazy spiral goes the economy and the aging population.
An energetic generation waits to take over after the die-off frees up land, and a philosophical shift brings about the sustainable society I hoped we would start working on 40 years ago. I wish I could feel happier for them, but I'm afraid I still resent the greedy assholes of my generation who turned their backs on all that hippie shit in the mid 1970s and chased the dollars instead.
Tuesday, March 22, 2016
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.
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.
Brussels, the latest insanity
The stated motive behind the current generation of terrorists is to
institute their own authoritarian state, an Islamic theocracy. However, if they succeed, they will have to govern a populace that now
accepts suicidal terrorism as a proven method of driving social change.
Very much like the Republican party now facing the ultimate blowback
from its own deal with the devil.
The knowledge of our own inevitable mortality has bred some bizarre coping mechanisms. Explosively rushing off to your "eternal life" is just about the worst.
The knowledge of our own inevitable mortality has bred some bizarre coping mechanisms. Explosively rushing off to your "eternal life" is just about the worst.
Monday, March 14, 2016
Republican nominee Trump
If Donald Drumpf ends up as the Republican nominee, America will have a referendum on hatred. So, if you are afraid of a Drumpf candidacy, you have already given up on America. He IS rallying angry, bigoted people. He's bringing them out, not creating them. They need to be repudiated at the polls. If they can't be, then this country was lost a long time ago. The truth may turn out to be sad and scary. That will make it no less true. At least then it will be out in the open and we can prepare for the rest of the world to decide whether to appease the real America or eradicate it.
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