Category Archives: Advocacy

Phew! Lent is over

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It’s Easter! Now we can get back to our jelly beans, Hershey bars, donuts, ice cream and wine! Jesus thanks you for your effort and wonders why he ever decided to rise again.

Don’t blame yourself for failing to understand the core values of your faith. Every religion erodes over time, subject to cultural shifts, personal conflicts and the state of the planet. One can imagine how strong one’s faith had to be when, as a mother, you left your baby behind to save it from being, as you will be, eaten by a lion. Then Alexander saw a cross in the sky made with a cloud and considered it to be the reason he had won his wars so he declared Christianity as the state religion. Since then Christianity, in whatever form, is society’s Department of Religious Affairs and even spends enough money on buildings and cultural politics that DOGE would love to get it’s hands on that department.

But things change. Today in the United States, two billionaire Christian ministers (a bureaucratic title) are trying to reinstall Alexander’s form of theocracy – similar to the Islamic theocracies in Iran and Afghanistan. Further, one’s approach to personal ritual, budget and life management does not seem to fit the needs of the wealthier nations. Consequently, overall attendance in Christian churches is shrinking.

The oversight in history is that Jesus was encouraging selflessness as a means of personal survival. Sharing isn’t only a physical act, it is a way to cope in difficult times. The theology of Jesus was personal – not to be dependent on worldly conditions that brought death, starvation, insecurity, inequality and abuse. Not only does sharing minimize hardship in others, it makes a person feel functional and useful – a healing act that may feel liberating, perhaps like sitting at the right hand of God who is above the fray of human reality.

There was only one religious organization in Jesus’ faith. There were three roles: God, as an unending source of love; Jesus himself as a human example (not a prophet); every human being who, by their spiritual commitment to ‘sharing’ brought God’s creative, gratifying love to a human’s sense of self. This religious ‘organization’ is called the Trinity. When humans engage in sharing, there is only one experience: the blessing of God’s love – a love that displaces all despair, insecurity and hardship.

Theologically, Lent and Easter aren’t about giving up gumdrops or promising to improve one’s own inadequacies, it’s about sharing with others who may need your help. In short, as a Christian, what is given for Lent is you giving yourself to the Trinity experience so that your faith and your self will expand God’s love in an imperfect world. Spiritually, one’s sacrifice is the power that lets Christ rise on Easter.

He has risen. Are you in?

Ancient Mariner

 

Social Security

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Mariner hasn’t commented on the Trump tornado, choosing to stay with Nosey Mole in his underground abode. But Social Security is an issue that must be openly talked about  by everyone. Time is short, perhaps so short that the current Trump-infested government must resolve the collapse of Social Security during his tenure. A recent post metaphor suggested that if change isn’t done on time, it will be more difficult to change. This is the case with Social Security. The Federal Government (and likely the electorate) have the attitude, “SS funds may come up short in 2033? Oh, well we have some time to deal with it later.” In fact, if Congress were capable of thought, they would have taken note of the population shifts that have been common knowledge for decades. Because the US is so late in managing Social Security, it is made more difficult as the economy enters the AI age where many professions are at risk (any white collared staff job) and many functions will become automated (truck driving for one).

THIS IS AN ISSUE THAT NEEDS THE ENERGY OF EVERYONE TALKING ABOUT IT FULL TIME AT WORK, IN PUBS, AT CHURCH, ON TELEVISION AND REQUIRES EACH OF US TO WRITE A LETTER TO ALL OUR REPRESENTATIVES AT COUNTY, CITY, STATE AND FEDERAL LEVELS.

67 million citizens receive Social Security. If 67 million citizens wrote these letters, Trump’s opinion would only mean something to himself.

If the reader doesn’t know how Social Security works, there is a good article on the process published by Motley Crew (financial magazine) at:

https://www.fool.com/retirement/2025/03/22/president-trumps-biggest-social-security-proposal/

WRITE YOUR LETTERS AND TALK ABOUT IT – A LOT.

Ancient Mariner

Our electronic Books of Knowledge

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Metaphorically, in the last post about the distant future, mariner borrowed a Musk tourist rocket. In this post, he takes a ride on the fact tractor, that heavily geared pursuit vehicle most of us need to delve into truth, reality and comprehension (TRC).

Today, the tractor goes by many names but two are prevalent and represent the only publicly handy sources for TRC: Wikipedia and the Public Broadcasting System (PBS).  There are many, many other TRC internet sites and publications but typically, they are known to fewer searchers and often have privacy procedures.

Only the two mentioned sites honor the factual standards of that time when TRC was available only in books. How many readers had a twenty-volume ‘Book of Knowledge’ reference when they were young? Mariner still has his, published in 1938, and the distance to the moon and stars was represented in an image of railroad trains setting off on trips to the Universe.

Both Wikipedia and PBS have fact-checking and nuance-rinsing requirements before broadcasting. PBS has a large library of insightful documentaries about every thought under the Sun – including the Sun. Further, PBS news editors do their best to represent today’s cacophony in a neutral manner. Wikipedia will print at the top of an article whether there needs to be some further editing by contributors.

Except for highly specialized subjects, jumping on the search engine or television to do some dependable research finds little to be confident about TRC beyond Wikipedia and PBS.

But today they need our help in a serious, continued survival way. They need subscribers to help pay the bills. Mariner subscribes to both, otherwise he would be embarrassed given the number of times each day he accesses each. As readers may know, all US governments are as happy as a bunch of three-year-olds being let into a playroom; anything is subject to abuse. At risk is Federal funding that contributes to PBS overhead. It is a specified target for the circus performers in Washington.

Wikipedia, just like all of us, has been overrun by social media. It requires a lot more staff and automated crosschecking to keep the dinner dishes clean, metaphorically speaking.

So here is a chance to help out. Become a subscriber.

You do not need to mark this post as ‘trash’. It is the only request for you to help out two TRC information sources that we use every day.

Ancient Mariner

 

Chicken Little moved to hospice

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Afraid so. It is true that evolution is the dynamic element in all the universe – including galaxies, solar systems, life of every kind and certainly every conceivable element of existence – including the planet Earth itself – is subject to change over time. So, too, fantasy and whimsy move on as reality paves a new future.

What was important about Chicken Little’s presence was his belief that it was possible for things to behave as expected – it was just a matter of adjusting a bit to keep reality chugging along. Like the Chicken Little of children’s storybook fame, he often overreacted to what others felt was not so important as to warrant hysterical behavior.

The belief in adjusting has faded as all the world’s activity is in disarray. Human history has become a demolition derby where every conceivable idea is an effort to dismantle rational, logical behavior. Mariner, like Chicken Little, is acutely aware of the abrasion of industrial development against the evolutionary limitations not only of Homo sapiens but all of the planet’s life forms. Homo’s dangerous ability to imagine things that do not exist has been the fire that has set off an Armageddon. For casual readers who may not be familiar, mariner’s examples are any industrial development requiring chemical, environmental or any other destruction of the biosphere. For example, internal combustion engines, killing millions of species for greedy reasons, leveling quantum amounts of forest for commercial purposes, forcing every biological behavior of every species to compensate or die, etc. The result today is, of course, a destabilized, biospheric condition humans call ‘global warming’ which is most commonly observed as changes in the climate.

So mariner is interviewing several applicants to replace Chicken Little. An applicant that has caught mariner’s eye is the squirrel – especially urban squirrels. Squirrels already know that Homo sappians is a destructive creature, said and done. What concerns mariner is that the squirrel already has a bit of skepticism about it’s obsessive neighbors; Amos, another alter ego, already has more than enough skepticism.

Perhaps this is all a sign that mariner is growing old. He’s old enough to be receiving social security but young enough to see it disappear. His brain has been throwing out to trash memories that aren’t relevant anymore. Sadly, he cannot forget Lawrence Welk or Hyacinth Bucket on the British series, Keeping Up Appearances.

Suggestions for a new icon to replace Chicken Little are welcome – an icon that has come to accept Homo sappians as the failure it is but with an innocence that there is a looming Armageddon.

Ancient Mariner

Emerging Theocracy – or maybe Nazism?

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From NPR – the whole article at

https://www.npr.org/2023/05/04/1173274834/book-bans-library-funding-missouri-texas-ashcroft?utm_source=npr_newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_content=20230504&utm_term=8367890&utm_campaign=best-of-npr&utm_id=39748169&orgid=445&utm_att1=

is horrifying not just for public libraries but for American democracy as well. One quote to show temperament:

“One of the board members said, ‘Well, what about this book? It’s about underage drinking, and underage drinking is illegal, so why would we have this book in the library?’ ” Dawe recalls. “And my question would be, ‘Where does that end? And what are you doing next? Where does this end?’ ”

U.S. Rep. Clay Higgins, a Republican from Louisiana, has a thought on that.

Higgins recently tweeted about the future of public libraries, saying libraries have become “grooming centers” and that he wants to change the “whole public library paradigm” and help get funding for “beautiful, church-owned public-access libraries.”

The topic makes mariner feel unwell. He will leave this issue in the reader’s hands.

Ancient Mariner

The Pandemic is comparable to Round Up

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With the exception of those terrible times when changing weather patterns, earthquakes, plagues or ice age expansion killed many people and forced an immediate shift in cultural behavior, culture typically changes in an orderly way. It takes about sixty years to move clearly from one set of mores to a different set. Even with behavior-changing inventions like the internal combustion engine or gunpowder, it still takes a while for society to adapt to new ramifications.

But not this time. The timing of the Covid pandemic could not have been worse. The world economy is weak and the poor nations truly are entering bankruptcy; The rich nations have economic problems, too, as global resources are shrinking and forcing governments and economists into new ways of thinking about everything from limitations on wealth to child care.

The introduction of the Internet, social media, and supply chain abuse (e.g. Amazon, Disney, JP Morgan Chase Bank, Google, Facebook and private equity monopolies) have been introduced at lightning speed compared to the slower standards of cultural change. This contemporary fullness of time is fragile and has shallow roots in a newly emerging moral foundation.

Then came Covid. With the crushing power of Round Up plant killer, the cultural transition, halting at best, was stopped dead. Big money was free to manipulate social function; plutocrats took charge of Congress; the wounds from Donald’s presidency could not heal. The working classes, long persecuted under Reaganomics and now caught in a culture at dead stop because of the pandemic, lost faith in institutions, have doubts about sustaining a satisfactory life, and even the birthrate has continued to drop in the U.S. primarily because of economic fears (and helped along by an aging population).

How can the U.S. citizenry restart a process that will grow a new ethos, a new moral character that will control the new age of economics, powerful advances in electronics, social media and provide fair, equitable guarantees for every citizen’s future?

To shift metaphor just a bit, fixing the aforementioned issues is a lot like taking a car to the repair garage: society is made up of parts just like an automobile. The citizenry must educate themselves on which parts need to be replaced. For example:

Don’t vote for baby boomers. The world they understand doesn’t exist anymore.

Don’t vote for ideologues – either conservative or liberal. One can tell an ideologue because one or two issues are what is wrong with everything in the world. For example, the move to restrict voting in state governments is motivated by a desire by conservatives to gain the upper hand in national politics even as a minority. Voting, while a bit outdated given modern communication technology, isn’t the primary cause of the nation’s problems.

Don’t vote for identity candidates. It is true that there are many issues that need to be repaired involving race, environment, police, taxes, etc. but a larger issue is that the nation has no unity. Electing candidates with one large social issue will not help with unity.

Do vote for younger candidates – even in their twenties if they seem capable.

Do vote for candidates with an even demeanor who seem pragmatic and capable of negotiation. These are the mechanics that can get the government running again.

Despite the bad name education has received lately, don’t discount it entirely. Ask the candidate a question about an idea rather than a quick fix. How is the idea handled?

Unfortunately, the vote in 2022, 2024 and even 2026 will not settle things very much. Too many issues are rolling along unconstrained. The best bet, though, is to vote in a new set of representatives in all U.S. governments.

Ancient Mariner

 

Books

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It is a rare advantage to live with a working librarian. Mariner’s home is a sub-branch of his town library. Mariner’s wife maintains a steady stream of contemporary works moving on and off their library shelves. One book that has just come and gone is Lisa Genova’s popular book, ‘Remember – The Science of Memory and the Art of Forgetting’.[1] It is an easy-to-read book with a conversational style of writing. One tip she provides:

“Let’s start with what you eat and drink. Several studies have now clearly demonstrated that people who eat foods from the Mediterranean diet and MIND diet (helps hypertension) cut their risk of Alzheimer’s disease by anywhere from a third to a half.”

Another book in mariner’s personal library is the late U.S. Representative John Dingle’s book, ‘The Dean, The Best Seat in the House’[2]. John holds the record for longest continuous service as a Representative, sixty years! His book recounts his memories and the many historical moments between 1955 and 2015. John was a centrist liberal, very much driven by the human rights of American citizens. He was the first among many who have decried the imbalance of the Senate in terms of its representation of the U.S. population. He died in 2019 at age 92. Mariner recommends the book for its easy to read documentation of the United States through several notable periods of historic change.

Someone who took up John’s lamentation about the Senate and proposed a solution is Eric W. Orts. In the January 2019 edition of the Atlantic, he proposed a redistribution of Senate seats. Mariner reproduces the distribution below as information to ponder, “What would happen if . . .”.

Each state has one Senator by default.

26 states have only that one Senator.

12 states have 2 Senators, as they do now.

8 states gain 1, perhaps 2 Senators.

California has 12 Senators; Texas has 9; Florida and New York have 6.

One example: Wyoming would have one Senator representing 580,000 citizens while California would have twelve Senators representing 39 ½ million people.

It is mariner’s firm belief that the future success of the United States is based entirely on the redistribution of the Senate.

Ancient Mariner

 

 

[1] Remember, Lisa Genova, © 2021, Harmony Books, ISBN 978-0-593-13795-6

[2] The Dean, John Dingle, © 2018, Harper Collins, ISBN 978-0-06-257199-1

A New Form of Popular Government

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A new methodology for electing government representatives is emerging. Eighteen states already have some form of ‘ranked choice voting’ in place. Instead of using ballots that pit party against party, the ballot will elect the most popular candidate, party notwithstanding. It works exactly like the TV show ‘America’s Got Talent’. Perhaps for elections it should be renamed as ‘American Politicians Got Talent’. Politico.com has the most succinct description:

“Ranked-choice voting allows citizens to rank their candidate preferences on an election ballot instead of voting for a single candidate. If one candidate does not initially win a majority, competitors with the fewest votes are eliminated from the race and their voters’ second choices are applied to the tallies of the remaining candidates until one candidate achieves a majority.”

The process asks the voter to rank all the candidates rather than selecting just one. Then, exactly like voting on ‘America’s Got Talent’, less popular candidates are eliminated to identify the candidate with the highest ranked votes.

So what does the reader think about this?

Dominated by political party machinery, the election environment has become both complex and expensive. For the 2020 primary, mariner’s own state, Iowa, collapsed under burdensome procedures of trying to determine who would be on the Democratic Party’s ticket. Bean counting became an art form involving many qualifiers that confused voters at the precinct level; it grew worse as tallies were transferred up the chain to State headquarters.

Hand in hand with complexity was the amount of cash required to sustain elaborate party machinations and local campaigning. For years at the national level, all political parties continuously have been increasing fund raising to the point that one had to be a billionaire (Tom Steyer and Michael Bloomberg) to run independent of party machinery. It is conceivable, one hopes, that funding will become a local sport rather than a national one.

Besides the overly complex and expensive processes the parties have created, the party system became competitive in its own right for its own purposes – subverting the idea that it was the voter who was most important. Many pundits identify Newt Gingrich as the politician who made winning as a party more important than winning as a nation. This has grown intense over the decades to the point today where party victory counts far more than compromise in behalf of the electorate. Note only the shenanigans of Federal and Supreme Court nominations in recent years. Today the Senate Majority Leader (McConnell) controls every aspect of business in the Senate; in the House the Speaker has the same role (Pelosi) – the Party comes first.

Lastly, because the founding fathers left voting procedures to the States, there are many different election procedures for each state, each city, each county and each Representative district. In this age of cultural change at the speed of light, even the ballot is under pressure to change for the twenty-first century. The familiar list includes government supported elections without private funding; eliminate the Electoral College; reallocate the Senate to represent the population; allow referendums at the Federal level. Now add ranked choice ballots.

Ancient Mariner

 

The Beginning

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May 4, 1970 was the beginning of mariner’s disillusionment with all things politic, including the citizens. His skeptical attitude remains with him today. It was the shooting to death of four Kent State college students and wounding of nine others by the Ohio National Guard. These assassins weren’t every day police, who even today can be expected to do such things; these were part of the Armed Forces of the United States.

Laurel Krause, whose 19-year old sister was killed, wrote on March 7, 2014 “It has been 44 years, and the U.S. government still refuses to admit that it participated in the killing of four young students at Kent State. There has not been a credible, independent, impartial investigation into Kent State. No group or individual has been held accountable.”

One can write all the US Constitutions they want; nothing constrains bias, prejudice and bigotry. The reaction of conservatives was that the students deserved it. They were the same bunch that today rebels against shelter-in-place. They were the same bunch that today rapes children while priests. They were the same bunch that today denies human value by denying health care to those who need it. They were the same bunch that today divides Christianity into racist and elitist factions. They were the same bunch that hoards wealth while thousands die in the US from starvation and disease. They were the same bunch that today elected Donald. They were and are the electorate.

Ancient Mariner

 

The Facts, Ma’am

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Mariner would like to contribute to the effort to defeat Covid-19. There are three valuable, fact driven sources for information on the virus:

https://www.usa.gov/coronavirus for fiscal procedures, enforcement policies and other actions taken by governments.

https://www.coronavirus.gov for medical and descriptive information.

https://www.newsy.com/categories/us/ for factual information on statistics and newsworthy activity. On DISH, see channel 283 or on ROKU, see NEWSY. Of specific importance are the factual presentations of New York Governor Cuomo, usually in late morning hours.

Also as a contribution to the effort against Covid-19, DO NOT ACCEPT INFORMATION OFFERED BY DONALD TRUMP’S PRESS BRIEFING! Largely, it is defensive crybaby arguments, campaign snippets, and undependable ‘facts’ that may be offered one day and retracted the next. The overall effect of this source is agitation, a tone that separates the public rather than unifying it, and a blatant cry for approval of Donald.

By the way, mariner’s Non Sequitur desk calendar is a fine source of wisdom:

Ancient Mariner