Politics

The struggle is real.

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Part 1.

Take a million rats.

 

Raise them in a strange high tech “ratatarium” full of rooms and environments where every positive experience is profoundly associated with clear-cut brightly colored shape pulsing on screens all around. Every wall and ceiling is a display screen. Local events of feeding, play, nurture or sex all generate a clear instance of the specific happy sign nearby. Periodically the whole place is electrified or bombarded with terrifying noises and rumbles. The happy lights are always off during these events, replaced by vivid and consistent alternate shapes and colors.

Never mind how it’s possible, I got a grant.

These million rats have a shared language of symbols. Being rats, they don’t speak of the symbols or scrawl them on things but if one day the system stopped mirroring what the rats were enjoying with a symbol and instead just turned the symbol for food on in one room and the symbol for sex on in another, hungry rats and horny rats would self-sort into each room, hoping to get lucky. Hungry AND horny rats would face a dilemma, and my heart goes out to them. Rooms displaying the BAD symbols would empty out. The experimenters would only rarely do this proof of concept, because “false advertising” might diminish the power of the symbols.

I didn’t mention it, but there are actually 2 of these Ratatariums ©, and each contains a million rats. I have spared no expense. They are exactly alike except that the shapes, colors etc. of the symbols are associated to mean something very different. A warm fuzzy symbol to one group is a cold prickly symbol to the other.  A green pentagon to one group means “playtime ending in sex!” while to the other it means “horrible shaking with bang sounds”.  Continue reading

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The most intractable problems of this jittery moment come from the human sweet-tooth for conflict and excitement.  The sweet-tooth is natural, it is good or bad by context.  If you are an ancient human and opt to look at the exciting thing, you are better at staying alive. If you are an ancient human and your clan starts getting pumped up over increasing tension with another clan, you are your clan are more cohesive and motivated. In this context the “sweet tooth” is a healthy (pro-survival) relationship to your environment. It’s a bit like our love of actual sugar, fat and salt: That love becomes destructive when these go from rare, random windfalls to a superabundance. When we can have as much of something as we like, we keep mashing the button till we find out how that ruins us. Morbid obesity is what THAT button does. What does this other one do?

Our hunger for excitement and conflict became more complicated when our “news” input went from direct observation and word of mouth to massive information pumps like newspapers that could flood a large city in a day with a single message and point of view. Thousands of opinions could be massaged and tweaked at once. “Yellow journalism” was the click-bait of that time.  The radio hit people like a massively purified version of the newspaper drug. Music and voices could hit sweet spots in our monkey guts that letters on paper could only dream about and rather than the isolated one-at-a-time experience of newspapers, radio could flow like a connecting current though everyone in earshot. And everyone was within earshot. Then the television became a cultural charging station in the center of every home. At night we were quietly filled with a homogeneous informational snapshot of the day. Of course we felt more united, any axes we were grinding were not wirelessly communicating with all the other axes. You couldn’t make that world combust because there was no connecting medium of petrol fumes.

The issue now is that we are a different organism as flashing, participating virtual neurons on a network then we were as slow-moving, disconnected creatures who got the news from kids on bikes, or in the mail, god help us, or arriving on the TV like a friendly little train at the same time every day.

The organism we are now is constantly lit up, alert and watching for movement like meerkats on crack. The news equivalent of plasma waves erupting from the sun flare and sweep endlessly across the internet. Our new atmosphere is a highly combustible, volatile medium. The ignition behind these flare-ups is mostly outrage, as one group or another does a “football stadium wave” of alarm in response to some stimulus. Tsunamis of cortisol are washing over us 24/7, leaving us feeling hypervigilant and weary.

Why? Because we are idiots who like that sort of thing. We can’t help being idiots who like that sort of thing…BECAUSE WE LIKE THAT SORT OF THING. Part of the rush is certainly negative but part of it is the fun of holding hands with like-minded neurons and cascading as a gigantic wave across the world. It’s thrilling because we are playing with a new level of complexity and connection.

We are a new species variant of humans and we are figuring out what this human is, what it does and what it can do.
And because we are the only animal enemy we have left, we are looking for its weaknesses;  feeling around for its windpipe, thumbs and eyes.

The danger from this all-out competition for eyeballs and clicks is low except where real territorial stuff is on the line.  There, virality means masses of people losing control of themselves and losing all sense of proportion. You know, like angry mobs.

Continue reading

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“My good friend Dr. Seuss wrote a book a few years ago titled “Marvin K. Mooney Will You Please Go Now!” He sent me a copy the other day and crossed out “Marvin K. Mooney” and replaced it with “Richard M. Nixon.” It sounded like fun so I asked him if I could reprint it. Please read it aloud.” —Art Buchwald, Tuesday, July 30, 1974

Here’s a timely update…

Donald J. Trump will you please go now!

“The time has come.
The time has come.
The time is now.
Just go.
Go.
Go!
I don’t care how.
You can go by foot.
You can go by cow.
Donald J. Trump will you please go now!
You can go on skates.
You can go on skis.
You can go in a hat.
But
Please go.
Please!
I don’t care.
You can go
By bike.
You can go
On a Zike-Bike
If you like.
Continue reading

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(With acknowledgments to Ambrose Bierce and his Devil’s Dictionary)

  • America: “When you’re a star they let you do it, you can do anything.”
  • Believe me: Subliminal command
  • Chaos: The old Razzle-dazzle. Octopus ink for the suckers.
  • Democracy: This time it’s personal
  • Everybody: Fuck them.
  • Fuck: Everybody.
  • God: A really terrific guy, one of my earliest supporters.
  • Hell: Accountability; see also – listening.
  • Investment: Lower-class whites.
  • Justice: When I win, see also, when you lose.
  • Kinky: No peeing
  • Law: Like justice, but it’s now a rule that I win.
  • Marriage: Like ventriloquism, but you don’t have to move your hand.
  • Nullify: Obama
  • Obama: Trump brand Dog whistle. How I got here.
  • Putin: Pappa?
  • Qualified: Loyal.
  • Republicans: Pussies: I grabbed ’em.
  • Seizing: Emergency powers.
  • Taxes: For chumps, not Trumps.
  • Ubermensch: The one word daddy smiled while saying.
  • Very: A tiny amount, possibly none.
  • Women: A confusing commodity, overvalued; many contain disgusting liquids.
  • Xenophobe: The heart of American greatness.
  • Yes: Where boredom begins.
  • Zigzag: The straightest path between two points.
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The PC movement on campus is a mutation from traditional leftist groups. While it shows concern for the same kinds of people and injustices as familiar liberalism, it has very different goals and strategies. It is highly authoritarian and pursues an absolutist egalitarianism where the high are brought low and the lowly rise to power. Where it holds power, it accepts no different opinions or points of view, demonizing any holdout till they either surrender or leave the community.
The most important and dangerous thing about the PC movement is that is that it is a culture virus, a contagious meme, and an extremely virulent one. I’m a liberal and I am in no way endorsing either standard or extreme right wing positions as my alternative of choice. I’m trying to make visible a dangerous social phenomena that could become a cultural and intellectual “Spanish Influenza” for our time. At the very least it can poison healthy institutions and create an oppressive atmosphere of coercion and censorship.

An epidemiology 

A virus needs a host. A social virus needs a community. This virus causes behavior changes that alter social norms and expectations. Ironically, it elevates the PC group to a high status powerful minority with special rights and powers. It supercharges the social consequences of being accepted or rejected by this group.

To be infected, the host must be a relatively small, self-contained community. In a large enough community, the viral effects are too diffuse to snowball.  The community belief system can’t be starkly opposed to the viral version or the initial resistance would stop the virus. The community culture should be cooperative and polite with an aim to find consensus and generally get along. This allows the PC group to blow the doors off community resistance as people hesitate, tolerate outrageous behavior and simply avoid conflict. As we have observed since Trump became president, a bully with power violates social norms and undermines community standards with frightening speed.

The virus exploits human social fears, promoting the infection and suppressing “immune system” response. In this case, that immune response would be from any opposing belief or standards of community behavior that are at odds with the viral behaviors. This social virus affects those inside the movement, but also outsiders.

For insiders, the primary exploits are fears of:

  1.  Not being accepted by the group
  2. Rejection by the group, once accepted
  3. Being ostracized, scorned and harassed if rejected

For outsiders, there is nothing subtle about the fears. In-group behavior uses overt intimidation to threaten:

  1. Horrible public embarrassment, humiliation
  2. Relentless harassment, knowing it won’t stop
  3. Job security, reputation, future options

If you are ostracized from the in-group, social intimidation is moments away. The oppressive fear created by this combination pushes group insiders into being more extreme to prove their bonafides. Outsiders witness intimidation by large hostile crowds screaming at a selected victim and understand at once what could happen in they get noticed the wrong way. These ugly tactics make people anxiously toe the line inside the group and suppress empathy and conscience toward victims.  Outsiders mostly capitulate in silence if they disagree. The horror facing them if they become targets often reduces faculty, administrators and college presidents into timid, mealy-mouthed collaborators.

Most scary mob behavior is like a tornado. When the circumstances are right, it emerges with a wild, destructive energy, and runs its course till the effect is exhausted. It can’t reproduce or achieve homeostasis and persist. The campus PC movement is mob behavior that can do both. It grows more extreme the more successful it is.  Continue reading

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Is knowing when and where to stop, but also HOW. I’m not sure that anyone really knows how to stop. 

In this article the phrase “class-based treatment” refers to the treatment of all members of some identifiable group simply because they are a member: Examples could be Women, Blacks, Latinos, Whites, etc.

Identity politics begins with awareness of an injustice done to a class of people and the recognition that they deserve the same protections and freedoms granted ALL citizens. It’s all about recognizing our common humanity and the sacred value of “Equal justice for all”. What’s not to love about any of this? This is all good and ethical behavior. None of this is the problem, and all of this is completely in the wheelhouse of being a Liberal.

An American citizen’s rights are theirs as an individual and when these rights are denied because of race, religion, sexuality or culture, a false filter is being applied. Justice will be done when that filter based on membership in some group is stripped away, allowing their natural individual rights to flow to them, unobstructed. The filter of identity is an illogical red herring containing two very bad but very human ideas:

  1. That human rights can be stripped for identity reasons.
  2. That a different identity group with more power can do this because of course, that is exactly what happened.

Continue reading

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My son is leaving middle school and is headed for high school next year. His school had a “Progression Ceremony” for the departing eighth graders. It’s not a graduation, but it is a serious milestone. A summer evening, beautiful outside: Hundreds of parents and separately, hundreds of children, waited in the auditorium then listened to some short speeches by students and faculty over a terrible sound system. Awards were given for exceptional accomplishments, and then, grouped by teacher, the kids were called to the stage by name , one by one. Each group briefly stood together and was cheered and applauded. For a little over an hour.

Part way through the ceremony I realized how utterly profound and beautiful it was to recognize each and every student by name. To literally speak their name loudly announcing their accomplishment before the community. Recognizing them like: “You were here, you affected things, you were seen and appreciated. You persevered to success.” It’s a remarkable moment but even more than that moment for that individual, I was so moved by what really happened AROUND that moment.

In this America, struggling to cohere as a body of citizens, the school pulled a huge neighborhood of strangers with superficially gigantic differences, into one building and warmly reminded them of their fundamental relationship. The principal, staff and teachers reminded everyone of our shared enterprise; a great community, built out of healthy, well nurtured citizens. Nobody would say such a thing out loud of course, but the friendly smiles and chatting as we left reflected a renewed community warmth and openness. It was  just one night in one neighborhood but it was important here, and it’s incredibly important that it happens almost everywhere in this country.

I’m so grateful for the public school system even with all my reservations about this and that. Yes it could use some new approaches to things, but the fact that it’s there, slogging through the absurd workload with the absurd budget, is a beautiful thing. It gets the job done as best it can with the sincerest effort I’ve ever seen.

The scam artists who want to sell out public schools for lucrative private contracts, wouldn’t care about the consequences anyway, but they would unstring critical connective tissue holding our country together. They would see the community as consumers and product, not as citizens charged with responsibility for the future.

 

 

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Hugh
Someday please tell me your take on our current political thing. But I don’t want you to feel pursued. When you feel like it. 
MAR 16TH, 10:00PM

Hugh
What are you thinking about this political moment? Come on, you can do it. Tell me what this looks like from your side of things.
MON 10:58PM

Hugh
OK, tell me about Michael Flynn. Did Trump know about his connections to Turkey and Russia? Did Pence? And how quickly and thoroughly should this whole attack on our sytem be whitewashed and forgotten? ? ? ?  Unless of course her emails are still the big story here…

FRI 5:07AM
Walt
This is exactly why FB is such a waste of time for talking politics; instead of reasoned discussion, it encourages snarky bumper stickers.  Interesting to see that you apparently seem to think that Comey was out there with his Calabash pipe and magnifying glass investigating Trump himself. In the real world, of course, the investigations continue and have produced new subpoenas for Flynn’s associates since Comey was fired. Not to mention the simultaneous congressional investigation. Continue reading

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