Category Archives: Politics

Some of this, some of that

Posted on by
Reply

֎ Strolling about on the search engine, as is mariner’s wont, he came across an infrequent word that took him back to college/preacher days when he was reading about religion, philosophy and logic and as a preacher, dealing with religious understanding as part of his job. The word is ‘theodicy’. Mariner had to search for a while but he found a post written in 2016 about this very topic. The subject of theodicy had been raised when one of his nonagenarian friends used the word. Mariner was surprised that someone actually knew this word and its context in theology. A discussion ensued about the goodness of God, whether goodness was derived from human experience and other obtuse considerations.

The next day mariner wrote the post in an effort to settle the meaning of the term theodicy. Mariner provides the reference if you are curious about theodicy; be forewarned that there definitely is no room for emoji and other iconery. [Go to the Home page and search “Theodicy and Secularism” posted March 19, 2016.]

֎ On a less esoteric front, March is upon us. Living on the 40th parallel, small thoughts of gardening, shrub pruning and weed killing poke into consciousness. This past winter was unusual in that there was significant snow cover for about three to four weeks. This snow just now is disappearing as the Sun’s rays melt it away.

Having the snow cover for so long has been hard on small wildlife. Mariner’s shrubbery has exceptional damage caused by hungry rabbits, eating some smaller shrubs to the ground. Rabbits are one of those creatures nature put in place so predators would have something to eat. In a town, there are no indigenous predators.

Sometimes a fox will take residence in town; they are excellent predators. Once in a while the few Redtail hawks will capture a young rabbit and sometimes one of the few feral cats will catch one. None of these predators, however, do enough damage to control rabbit population. In his defense, mariner has become a predator, too. But he isn’t any better at killing rabbits than all the other town predators. So it will be another year of cursing the rabbit in the yard because the rabbit is between mariner and his rifle.

֎ Moving on to more serious matters, mariner wrote in a few posts about the need to have multiple nations bond together administratively in order to manage global issues. An early, embryotic move in this direction is how nations are dividing chores among themselves to deal with China. Note this paragraph from Politico:

“COUNTERING CHINA WITH … MODULAR SECTORAL ALLIANCES? The Wall Street Journal reports progress within the Biden administration on how to organize containment of China. According to the report, alliances would be sectoral and the members would differ with each issue. The core alliance members would be the G-7 countries, with others added according to need: a modular model that avoids new bureaucratic institutions and resembles calls for a T-10 group of democratic tech allies. For example, Israel on tech and artificial intelligence, or India on trade issues. Don’t expect that every country will announce their participation.”

Ancient Mariner

Keep a Close Eye – things are changing

Posted on by
Reply

Mariner submitted a post yesterday warning of a political tendency toward authoritarianism saying that it was a prominent movement in local jurisdictions across the nation. In this morning’s mail Nate Silver at 538.com wrote the following:

“Republican state legislators spend the early days of this year’s legislative session proposing laws that would make it harder to vote — especially in ways disproportionately used by Democrats and voters of color — under the pretense of preventing large-scale voter fraud (which doesn’t exist).

According to the Brennan Center for Justice, a pro-voting-rights advocacy group, more than 165 bills restricting voting access have been proposed in 33 state legislatures — more than four times as many as had been proposed in February 2020.”

The founding fathers left voting procedures to the states likely because of poor communication in those days. That decision, however, has led to disproportional representation in the Senate, the Electoral College and biased practices in gerrymandering. Whichever party controls the state legislature, controls voting. In Georgia there is a bill that would allow the legislature to overturn an election because it didn’t like the outcome.

What makes this movement important to watch is that polls all along have shown that 40 percent of republicans favor Donald and authoritarian practices that discourage democracy. In the last Presidential election 70 million citizens voted for Donald. At 40 percent, that’s 28 million votes against democracy already on record.

Nationally, the United States is democratic. At the State level, 22 states are consistently red states versus 14 blue states; the rest are close to even but unpredictable. At the county level, well, the reader saw the county results in the last post.

The point is this: Benjamin Franklin’s comment that the US will be a democracy only as long as we can keep it has come to a critical point. Around the world democracies are falling like flies to authoritarian governments. This century has begun an era of hardship that has tossed stable governments in the air like confetti.

The next holocaust will include blacks, Hispanics and Asians as well as Jews.

Ancient Mariner

Yes, Virginia, one day Santa may have to move to Antarctica

Posted on by
Reply

֎ Mariner has written in past posts about Earth’s polar magnetic field flipping erratically in the Bering Sea and the southern Atlantic. The following summary is copied from the current Science Magazine:

Kauri trees mark magnetic flip 42,000 years ago

By Paul Voosen

Using a remarkable record from a 42,000-year-old kauri tree preserved in a bog, researchers have pieced together a record of the last time Earth’s protective magnetic field weakened and its poles flipped—known as the Laschamp excursion—exposing the world to a bombardment of cosmic rays and, the team suggests, briefly shifting Earth’s climate. The record shows the field nearly failed prior to its brief swap, which only lasted 500 years. Combined with an unusually quiet Sun that is believed to have occurred during this time, cosmic rays could have caused a notable drop in stratospheric ozone, shifting wind flows and climate patterns, they suggest.[1]

֎ Bad Omens

Here’s what history tells us about what’s next for Trumpism. “From Berlusconism in Italy to Perónism in Argentina and Fujimorismo in Peru, personality-driven movements rarely fade once their leaders have left office.”

Trump’s county-level 2016 election map (red means GOP win):

“To the frustration of those Republicans who want to steer a new course, state-party committees have become the strongest redoubts of Trumpism,” Russell Berman reported last week.

Censured by a state GOP
Supported Biden’s … Voted in favor of Trump’s …
Campaign* Certification** Senate Trial† Impeachment††
Sen. Burr ✓ ✓
Sen. Cassidy ✓ ✓ ✓
Rep. Cheney ✓ ✓
Gov. Ducey ✓
Ex-Sen. Flake ✓ ✓
Cindy McCain ✓ ✓
Rep. Rice ✓
Censured by a county GOP or multiple counties
Supported Biden’s … Voted in favor of Trump’s …
Campaign* Certification** Senate Trial† Impeachment††
Rep. Kinzinger ✓ ✓
Sen. McConnell ✓
Rep. Newhouse ✓ ✓
Sen. Sasse ✓ ✓ ✓
Rep. Upton ✓ ✓

*Actively endorsed Biden.

**Acknowledged or supported certification of Biden’s victory before or on Jan. 6-7.

†Voted in favor of constitutionality of Trump Senate trial.

††Voted for either impeachment in the House or conviction in the Senate.

Officials censured by both state and local GOPs are categorized by the highest censure they received.

Source: News Reports

America’s next authoritarian will be much more competent. As Zeynep Tufekci[2] warned back in November: “It won’t be easy to make the next Trumpist a one-term president.” To wit from Axios:

“Trump advisers will meet with him at Mar-a-Lago this week to plan his next political moves, and to set up the machinery for king making in the 2022 midterms. Trump is expected to stoke primary challenges for some of those who have crossed him, and shower money and endorsements on the Trumpiest candidates. State-level officials, fresh off censuring Trump critics, stand ready to back him up.” [Currently given only thin margins for the democrats in both the Senate and the House, any success by Donald or his nationalist party likely will flip Congress red. AM]

Remember that 70 million citizens voted for Donald in spite of himself and his authoritarian politics. The clouds look familiar – like the clouds in Germany in the early 20th century. It is time for the public to educate itself on fascism. A good reference is Madelyn Albright’s book, “Fascism, A warning”. Banished after the second world war, Fascism is on the rise again, from North Korea to Hungary and Turkey, while a newly introspective America at best looks the other way, sometimes even offers encouragement. Madeleine Albright’s book is a warning aimed at all of us to look up from our petty partisan bickering.

֎ The good news is now that Joe is President and has made overtures to Europe, the Western Alliance quickly is re-energizing itself to deal with Russia, cyber warfare, big data, global warming and repairing trade arrangements. Still, the rubber meets the road when the alliance bumps into Brexit, immigration, EU dictatorships along the eastern front and Germany, who did not wait for Donald to leave and has built trade liaisons with Russia and China.

Remember when the news was just five minutes of simple headlines? Walter Cronkite would be astonished!

Ancient Mariner

[1] For those curious why the magnetic field flips, it is caused by the Earth’s iron core rotating at a different speed than surface layers of the planet. Eventually what can be represented as static electricity disrupts the magnetic balance – just like lightning or touching something while walking in your socks across the rug. Unlike the instantaneousness of lightning, the mass of the entire Earth acts like a capacitor, slowing the change to thousands of years.

[2] ZAY-nep tuu-FEK-chee) is a sociologist and writer. Her work focuses on the social implications of new technologies, such as artificial intelligence and big data.

Do you have a degree in economics?

Posted on by
Reply

Do you have a degree in theology? Do you have a degree in history, sociology, and political science? If you have these degrees, you have the tools to fathom the depths of world and U.S. circumstances.

Mariner was watching his bird feeder the other day. It is quite popular with many kinds of birds, squirrels and rabbits. He observed the gluttony and crude eating habits of the larger starlings. They literally gulped chunks of all the peanut butter, cookie crumbs and nut treats before other species could have their fair share. The starlings left only after the ‘profits’ were gone, leaving only a scattering of sunflower seeds.

This behavior reminded mariner of how capitalism works. Profit is the ethic. If profit disappears, capitalism will go elsewhere to find still profitable resources. Don’t get mariner wrong, conservatives; he understands that the combination of an entire continent’s untapped resources, combined with a new public form of Christianity, the profit capacity of capitalism and little in the way of civic restraint – allowed the United States in a few scant decades to be the powerhouse nation of the whole world.

Something has happened recently. The capitalists have flown away to other nations where profit can be sustained at high levels; only information scavengers remain gleaning what can be had. The United States isn’t destitute. In fact, the U.S. still is the richest nation in the world. However, this is a relative statement because the majority of other nations aren’t doing as well as they once did. What’s left in the United States is a disarray of sunflowers shells and no investment in sustaining the life of the rest of the birds – er – population.

This is where your profound collection of degrees comes into play: How do you fix this situation? It is part economic, part cultural, part circumstance, and part government.

For example, the nation is very, very short on birdhouses. There aren’t enough to go around. And some bird varieties – the darker kind – can’t have one in any case. Will you please fix this?

Some birds have become predators and carry guns and clubs. They are confused and joined the political party that is responsible for their circumstances. Will you please fix this? Birdseed is becoming scarce; some birds have none. Do you know where to get more?

Fortunately, mariner maintains the birdfeeder. It’s a role akin to being the government. Does the U.S. have a government? Not one that can fix anything. Will you please fix the government?

Ancient Mariner

Cleaning the archives

Posted on by
Reply

Mariner still is culling through old documents, deleting many and moving others, long lost, to the appropriate folder. The following is an old item written by Derek Thompson of The Atlantic. Mariner wonders whether the article, one of many along the same vein, describes the beginning of what would become Trump’s base:

 

How Globalization Saved the World and Damned the West

By Derek Thompson, staff writer at The Atlantic[1]

In 2016, James Manyika, the director of the McKinsey Global Institute (MGI) co-wrote a landmark report on earnings growth in advanced economies over the previous 20 years. It was a tale of two decades, he said. In the first 10-year period, from 1995 to 2004, wages grew for at least 98 percent of households in just about every advanced economy. But in the second decade, from 2005 to 2014, everything fell apart.

“We found inequality, yes. But that was the least interesting thing we found,” Manyika told me. “The more interesting thing was wage stagnation in almost all the advanced economies.”

“This was an entirely new phenomenon. Wage income declined for the majority of households in France, the Netherlands, the U.K., and Italy. The U.S. had it even worse. Four out of five households saw flat or falling income before accounting for taxes and transfers. Between globalization, the Great Recession, and the not-so-great recovery, the middle class was slammed. And these people tended to blame free trade and immigrants for hurting their wages and ruining their culture,” Manyika said.”

 

[1] For full article click on https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/02/new-american-populism-needed-save-west/582202/?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=politics-daily-newsletter&utm_content=20190207&silverid-ref=NDkwMjIzMjA1Mjg2S0

As the World Turns

Posted on by
1

One of the characteristics of life today is that there is a sense among people around the world that something just isn’t right. The global nature of this uneasiness makes it difficult for each citizen to identify cause and effect and to take some reasonable action to set things right.

֎ One of the most notable in its cause and effect is the uprising in 31 democratic nations, including the U.S., of rebellion against the government. The nature of rebellion can lead to disruption of government oversight or even to organized and deadly attacks on government. Already many important nations have suffered a collapse in democratic government that has been replaced with authoritarianism.

֎ Another international crisis that slowly increases is the amount of resources available to sustain the world’s population. The most notable evidence is the slow accumulation of excessive wealth for the elite around the world versus growing poverty and public stress. The community of nations has been derelict in its obligation to ‘change with the times’ as today’s economies begin to falter under the imbalance of global resources and its effects.

֎ Still too political for its own good, the response to global warming and climate change remains inadequate. Most scientists doubt that any meaningful effort this late will slow warming for the next century. The primary cause and effect is the relocation of tens of millions of citizens around the planet who will (and are) suffer from sea rise, loss of potable water, disruption of lifestyle and jobs, and massive migrations much larger than migrations away from violence and collapsed economies that occur today.

A tie-in with the global resource issue will be the stress on virtually every large agricultural area in the world. Even the United States will have to deal with crops grown in the Dixie region as the weather there becomes more like Arizona and New Mexico.

֎ Finally, but probably not least, is the massive destruction of the planet’s ecosystem by the human species. The ‘intelligent’ humans have learned how to steal and ravage Mother Nature for human convenience and profit. Mother Nature, however, can be a bitch and will deal with imbalances in her desire to keep a balanced environment.

The point is this: Because of technology, industrialism, class discrimination, resources, weather and everything else, humanity has reached a point where individual nations can no longer solve global problems. The requirement to feed the world requires an international consortium of super-nations that can address the economic stress.

Already China has begun to move in this direction by creating closed supply chain relationships with other nations; interestingly, the idea of a super-American nation comprised of Canada, Mexico and the United States has been around for well more than a century. Unlike the European Union, which tried to sustain nationalism by allowing each nation to keep its own currency, the new consortiums will operate as one nation with one ‘dollar’ used in a common economy.

The pandemic has expedited these issues to the very front of our twentieth century society’s attention.

The future is in the hands of the electorate. Has anyone seen Chicken Little?

Ancient Mariner

Life as a Supernumerary

Posted on by
Reply

Is the reader familiar with the word ‘supernumerary’? Mariner first read the word in his college days reading about ancient Japanese culture instead of Conrad’s Heart of Darkness. In ancient Japanese culture, there was a ritual celebrating the wisdom and contribution an individual made throughout their lifetime. At a time when the person was retiring or, more accurately, when the person wasn’t part of the mainstream of things anymore, they were promoted to the status of a supernumerary. It was a positive, honorable acknowledgement. A supernumerary was one who was approached for advice in those few times when elderly wisdom was needed.

For the record the dictionary says: supernumerary – “exceeding what is necessary, required or desired.” Today’s use of the word doesn’t seem to capture the same elegance implied by the ancient Japanese.

Mariner has declared himself a supernumerary (along with everyone else over 75). A supernumerary does not understand contemporary social principles. Readers know that mariner laments the approaching reality suggested by the Matrix movies – a life totally controlled by artificial intelligence. To this end, mariner must share two cartoons from The New Yorker. The first speaks for itself and represents mariner’s greatest fear:

The combined effect of smart telephones, radio, television, computers, internet and social media is that the meaning of life does not come from individual experience. If one was born before this electronic invasion, one remembers discovering life from individual experience. True, life was quite parochial and limited to existential experience but the meaning of life began within an individual’s own brain without the puppet strings of Big Data. The second cartoon speaks to this disparity:

The cartoon speaks to mariner because he was one of the last to have creased jeans with a two-inch cuff. To supernumeraries this cartoon speaks to a time when reality was very much more intimate with human labors and experience. Even the labor of pulling a book from the shelf and turning pages to educate one’s self has been reduced to a thumb scrape or two.

A clear example of disparate social values is the current identity crisis that consumes our daily life, allows wealth to be increasingly unbalanced and causes political wars where there is no compromise. Many say that the only hope is to have unity in our nation. But what does unity mean? What does it feel like? How will citizens behave without populist values? Part of the problem of creating unity is that no one knows what it means to be unified.

Supernumerary folks know. If one experienced World War II that was a time when the nation was unified. America came first – even before citizens chose their groceries, automobiles, vacations, even when to turn all houselights off. Every neighborhood had social clubs for soldiers and sailors; mariner’s father held a weekly dance for the military from Fort Meade and the navy crews in Baltimore harbor. Good cuts of meat were not available in grocery stores because the meat went to the Armed Services. Gasoline was limited to three gallons per month. Women were the majority in factories. Enlisted men had free seats on trains.

Are the younger citizens ready for unity? Can they put aside their populism? It took a world war to unify the United States. There is another war today but it is not bullets. It is climate change, complete restructuring of society and jobs and creating the reality implied by phrases like “All men are created equal.”

If one is not a supernumerary, one has no frame of reference for the responsibilities of national unity.

Ancient Mariner

The long and short of it

Posted on by
Reply

This one is long: The first ‘human’ to evolve was Homo habilis who appeared 2.4 million years ago and survived for about 1 million years. A similar neighbor who came along about the same time was H. rudolfensis, who survived only for 100 thousand years. The first truly upright was H. Erectus who evolved 2 million years ago and survived until just 110 thousand years ago – about 2 million years. Today’s H sapiens came aboard 90,000 years ago and still is around. Just food for thought – will H. sapiens survive for one or two million years?

This one is uncomfortably short: If the United States were a sailing ship adrift at sea and President Biden took command, he has about six months to right the ship and reset the sails before international meetings and conferences will occur that will determine the ship’s course back to a role that leads in the race to the next decade. Righting the ship involves taming the pandemic and new rigging in Congress that can get things done.

This one is too long: Lingering with the ship metaphor, there are two storms at sea – the nation’s economy and the dangerous waves of Big Tech. It will take long enough to restart the economy that it will influence the 2024 election. Can the new sails and rigging hold? Big tech requires shifting ballast around below deck, which is restructuring taxes for the too rich investors and corporations, keeping the ship at good speed in choppy seas.

Really short: Donald Who? Don’t worry, he’ll be back as his business dealings and a number of investigations involving unconstitutional behavior reopen without the protection of executive privilege. However, we should not be zealous about whatsisname, we have a ship to sail.

Did you hear the Bosun’s whistle? Every citizen to their station!

Ancient Mariner

 

It IS our Nation

Posted on by
Reply

It was a long, relaxing day as the nation witnessed the transition from King Donald to President Biden. One sensed that a great sigh of relief blew across the United States; even the hardened press corps seemed to relish in covering the inauguration. To reach for a metaphor, we had turned off the burner that was causing our pot to boil over.

President Biden was eloquent in his attempt to return the nation to its citizens. Perhaps that is his most important agenda. He has deliberately selected career experts for every cabinet secretary, for the military, banking, corporate America and has begun restoring the State Department and the Department of Justice to be competent, experienced, professional functions capable of interpreting the world in the best possible light for the nation.

As has been reported widely in the press, President Biden inherits the most strained nation since FDR. Many aspects of the American spirit have been abused for decades; most of them appear in the headlines on a daily basis. We have become calloused as we watch day after day the terrible news of our disheveled society.

But we must help this administration. We must watch our daily news looking for progress not only in the nation’s wellbeing but in the lives of everyday citizens who are weary after decades of government indifference.

Joe’s first job is to put stitches on the wounds and at the same time begin therapy and reconstruction. It is a tall job.

It was clear today that the nation does belong to its citizens. Get your positive spirit out of the closet and put it on. That is your job.

Ancient Mariner

January 6

Posted on by
Reply

The attack on the US Capitol was violent; it consumed news organizations, social media, professional politics, corporate behavior and fringe organizations primarily associated with white supremacy. Five people died.

For all the cacophony, it is just a small incident in the midst of massive changes in government, society, economics, technology and global warming. Add to these unrooted times an epic invasion of the entire world by Covid-19.

In the United States 400,000 people will have died by the time this post is logged. Just measuring deaths, 5 people chose to be at the Capital where they may be killed while the virus has claimed one of every 121 people across the country. Each death not wanted and each death ripping into a family’s happiness.

It is true that four years of Donald-power has been extremely troublesome. There is no question that Donald is the match that lit many fires in society – including the attack on the Capitol – not just with his race baiting but with regulations affecting environmental issues, health issues, economic issues and he was disruptive to fragile behaviorisms that underlie democracy.

But Donald is just another incident brought on by the universal disruption we experience today, a disruption we will continue to experience for the rest of this century. Human society is very fragile. Society can be knocked off balance by imbalances in power, technology, weather and basic human need. Just a short list of moments that have contributed to our tidal wave of change:

֎ Since 1942 life expectancy has jumped from 53 to 80. This extra generation is very expensive to maintain and often interferes with incidental changes in society that then lead to larger consequences – think abortion, plutocracy, evangelical religion, any lgbqt issue, etc.

֎ For forty years American labor has been cut off from sharing in the nation’s profits; labor income has not grown commensurate with inflation – think loss of the American Dream.

֎ Despite the best efforts of white supremacists, caucasians will become a distinct minority in the United States by 2070 – think a revamping of civil rights legislation to eliminate the class discriminations that favor caucasians.

֎ Because of rising sea levels, by 2050 300 million people will be forced to relocate to other locations in the US – think housing, job loss, agricultural and local economies.

֎ Artificial Intelligence will force a major change in the relationship between employment and income. Most futurist economists believe a family stipend provided by increased corporate taxation is likely. Interestingly, a stipend was advocated by Andrew Yang in the 2016 presidential campaign and today, the impact of the pandemic has forced the government to issue stipends to keep the economy functional.

֎ The world is running out of resources, causing many nations to fail economically. Even wealthy nations are being pushed to reinterpret long held capitalistic tropes about supply and demand. The current rise in dictatorships is the result of public dissatisfaction with government but cannot be the final correction; internationalism will be redefined by 2050.

Everyone prays, in these turbulent times when society is in disarray, that the machinations of change will not become violent. Let’s hope the attack on the Capitol is the last of it.

Ancient Mariner