֎ Mariner was up early this morning. As usual, first get a coffee then turn on the computer. His standard procedure is to go to NOAA to check the weather, then to the blog, then open email.

Before mariner got past the weather check, Googlesyndication had made 138 attempts to enter his computer system. Fortunately, he has software that blocks this kind of silent intrusion.

֎ Mariner read the commentary of a Big Data executive who said, “Our future in the metaverse is to be a dot similar to the dots in a George Seurat painting.” The inherent value will not be in any one dot; one will have to step back to view the entire collection of dots.

Things like individualism, one person-one vote and personal choice in life no longer will exist. Instead, the entrapment of becoming a pink dot whether or not one prefers pink will be the extent of individualism.

֎The Trumpian movement occurs because the labor class in the United States for decades has been discounted as an unsuccessful class because they are not white collar; their salaries have fallen in value because of inflation versus employer disregard for economic well being; they carry no respect in the gestalt of US culture; their voice through unions was systematically eliminated. Now to be a dot . . . 29 percent of US citizenry believe it is somewhat likely that within ten years there will be a civil war.

The situation is made more complex because of a dysfunctional Congress. We can blame Newt Gingrich for that dysfunction. During his tenure as Speaker of the House of Representatives (1995-1999), he weaponized party politics; the opportunity for Bob Dole and Ted Kennedy to cut a deal could no longer happen.

In Congress, party dominance became Job One; citizens weren’t on the job list. Campaign fundraising became the influence on policy. When Al Franken resigned, he said he spent five hours a day making calls to raise campaign funds. Today, Mitch McConnell carries the torch but isn’t the leader of the party. The party stands armed and ready under the Trumpian flag.

So, reader, will there be a civil war? Who cares if one is just a statistical dot?

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On the good side of things, unions may be coming back. Gallup news reports that public approval is rising and is at its highest since 1965 (71 percent). Mariner’s brother is a union advocate. He reports that many trade companies are voluntarily coming to unions to have access to workers. Obviously the economic effects of the pandemic have messed up employment enough that unions are the only dependable source to find workers.

Ancient Mariner

Private equity investors are different from venture capitalists, who provide a cash infusion to small startups and hope they blossom into the next Facebook. Nor are they stock traders making split-second decisions to buy or sell shares in public companies. Rather, private equity funds aim to take control of a business for a relatively short time, restructure it and resell or liquidate the company at a profit.

It is mariner’s opinion that private equity firms are the most evil and destructive element of uncontrolled capitalism. The impact on local newspapers across the country has been in the news. Small newspapers are disappearing because of private equity take-overs.

It is a form of thievery. Mariner knows about four billionaires who bought a bank and immediately foreclosed on every mortgage – creating great financial hardship for homeowners. The billionaires either received immense amounts of cash when property owners could pay off their mortgages or took title to properties well below their market price. The event was a tragedy for mortgage holders and demonstrates the disregard of private equity for any form of moral behavior.

Propublica reports that private equity manages over six trillion dollars in the US economy. The Congress, of course, does not attempt to change the tax structure advantages.

An unexposed impact of private equity is the disregard for employees who are summarily laid off, fired, and whose retirement benefits are redirected to private equity.

Does the reader have a hobby?

Ancient Mariner

Before we start, mariner has been asked about the accuracy and prejudice of his cluster of news sources. Anyone who knows mariner knows he is critical about everything – especially doctored facts. He has collected the best commentary, best fact checking and least biased reporting available. That being said, the two news sources below aren’t trying to change minds, just enlighten them.

Mariner owes it to his readers to reprint a Protocol (news agency) article that clearly demonstrates how large corporations can erase privacy even for the most personal aspects of one’s life. This issue also begs the question whether super giant corporations like Amazon should be allowed to be so large as to control what should be independent government oversight.

“Amazon announced yesterday that it’s buying its way into a huge slice of health care provision with the acquisition of One Medical for nearly $4 billion. It claims the deal will allow it to “reinvent” health care, and it’s raising some eyebrows.

One big concern with the deal: data. Health care companies hold a massive amount of information, especially in the age of telehealth. The deal gives Amazon new ways to glean data to help it build AI, Protocol Enterprise reporter Kate Kaye writes.

One Medical operates clinics throughout the U.S. and already has roughly 800,000 members enrolled for both in-person and virtual services. Amazon will have access to a treasure trove of valuable data for AI health products.

This means that talking with your doctor could be used to improve things like voice-enabled health apps or in-office ambient software.

This deal is also unlikely to face antitrust pushback despite its size, Protocol Policy editor Kate Cox told me.

Because Amazon doesn’t yet have a strong foothold in the health care industry, other than its work with Amazon Pharmacy, the deal will likely be viewed by regulators as “competition-neutral,” Kate said.

This reveals a flaw in current antitrust laws, allowing massive corporations to continue to grow their influence: Antitrust laws go after companies that are trying to grow in one particular sector, not “octopus” companies working on a little bit of everything.”

Join Amazon Prime! Cancer cured with Amazon products. Get Amazon health insurance discounts not based on averages but specifically targeted to your ailments except for existing conditions . . .

If Amazon doesn’t produce goosebumps, read this article by Axios that reveals Donald’s active pursuit to dismantle the FBI and IRS as part of a scheme to make America great again as a dictatorship, should he be re-elected. Winning aside, his advocates are deadly serious. See:

https://www.axios.com/newsletters/axios-am-ed1e48cc-4d9d-4a23-b2b9-042504d7b0b6.html?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=newsletter_axiosam&stream=top

Ancient Mariner

What must it have felt like to societies that were at war before the invention of explosives and then experienced bullets, bombing and impersonal killing? Before explosives, war was very personal; brutal person-to-person engagement in violent and painful murder; war was an engagement of individuals – war could not be executed without individuals directly engaged with other individuals. Suddenly, many individuals could be killed without that personal, person-to-person engagement.

This is an example of ‘depersonalization’. War was no longer a personal experience, it became one person taking no risk but killing many unknown persons far away – whether the unknown individuals deserved it or not or even knew they were engaged in combat. Society must have felt an important moral commitment slip away – the individual was no longer morally responsible, rather, killing became a pluralistic, amoral experience.

What must it have felt like to societies that lived in relatively stable, locally governed communities where daily commerce was an engagement with familiar people, where the local economy was created by the community as a group of related individuals before the invention of the internal combustion engine that shifted commerce away from communal living, required massive interaction with non-community businesses and having to travel away from the local community on roads and rails? Afterward, communities were subject to economic forces outside the community and its familiar economic ethos of individual well being. This is depersonalization of economy – no longer a community-driven value system.

What must it have felt like to society when elections were strictly a regional phenomenon, where the elected officials were locally known and the issues were the voters’ concern focused on meat and potato issues before individual perspective was swamped by television which exposed individuals to unknown, pontificating, irrelevantly motivated hacks that had no concern for the power of the individual in democratic politics? This is depersonalization of democracy – a philosophy dependent on strength that comes from a bottom-up flow of authority.

What must it feel like to humans when growing up, assuming persona and responsibility and living life among other humans when the chemistry of inter-human behavior is disrupted by a handheld device that replaces human behavior with insidious instructions and influences, induces drug-like dependency and the sole motive is to deflect normal human behavior. Truly this is the depersonalization of human life.

Mariner has vowed to practice forgiveness and compassion, center his life in the society of his town, deny participation in top-down political activities that impose on local perspective and will never participate in the evils of uncontrolled, unmonitored behavioral modification.

In accordance with his Luddite attitude, mariner has completed his Christmas wish list for 2022: two ponies and a small, two-axle pony cart.

Ancient Mariner