Category Archives: Politics

About the Shutdown

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Mariner had a group meeting with his three alter egos. It seems the group has serious concerns about the shutdown. The US is very much in the roiling currents of change on many fronts including economy, governance, industry, civil rights, Constitutional rights, technology, society norms, religious rights, and international relations – indeed a plateful. The shutdown is larger than life, larger than myopic news that broadcasters describe, and very much a pivot point in US history.

Not wanting to eat the whole pie at once, mariner has a few observations that may be more important than the daily hodgepodge may imply.

Mariner recommends that readers take some time to study the situation in Egypt. The conflict is between a Trumpian dictator, Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, and the majority Islamic citizenry in Egypt. There are fewer players than in the US but the manner of governance under Abdel Fattah el-Sisi is very much dictatorial and he has imprisoned, under the term ‘terrorists,’ all citizens who oppose his reign. Only 47 percent of Egyptians voted in 2018 (same as US in 2016); Abdel Fattah el-Sisi garnered over 90 percent of the vote (US did not mess with ballot boxes; it used the Electoral College). It should be noted that Abdel has imprisoned over 60,000 citizen ‘terrorists.’ Type Abdel Fattah el-Sisi in your search engine for further awareness.

There are many parallels between Egypt and the US (typically, abolishing free press, the right to due process, justice by law, and democratic governance). Granted, the US is more mannerly only because for 241 years it has been a Federal Republic with three established branches of government and relatively independent state governments. Egyptian governance has suffered the disruption of Middle Eastern politics, religious rebellion and recent civil war. Nevertheless, in terms of citizen abuse, manipulation of ‘justice’ in governance, and attempts to impose the authority of a tenth century king, Egypt is on the same path as the US. Given the civil constraints of US history, one can respell Abdel Fattah el-Sisi as Donald Trump.

True, mariner may have overstated some similarities but the mechanics of change – particularly under the influence of a leader who would be king – are quite similar. Comparable is the citizen rebellion in Egypt versus the rebellion against Donald, a castrated Senate, and a 35 percent minority of citizens (AKA the ‘base’). As for Senate neutering, Senator McConnell holds the knife. While Abdel imprisoned 60,000 citizens, Donald has put 800,000 government employees under house arrest and garnered their income; while Abdel attacks mosques, Donald attacks nonwhites, immigrants, green card children, and ignores critical support needed for US citizens in Puerto Rico after a destructive hurricane. There are several more comparisons on the personal level, all dealing with corrupt financial dealings, international cronyism and deliberate showboating. We can only hope that the new Congress, the State Attorneys General and Robert Mueller will slow the rotting of our democratic process.

The shutdown is an act of war. Like Abdel, independent power is used to disrupt normal governance. It is an act that Donald must not win. This is a terrible position for mariner to take, given the imprisonment of 800,000 fellow citizens, but the nation’s democratic process and its citizen rights to representation are at stake. Lest prejudice sway one’s commitment to Congressional resistance, Congress, sans McConnell, is willing to pass six budget bills that will fund all government functions except the TSA and related security/immigration functions. Donald knows that if the government reopens generally, his strong-arm position will be diminished. Think of a New York mob enforcing protection from threatened abuse on local businesses.

A few posts ago, mariner suggested that if Donald were not impeached or otherwise removed from office, the new Congress would get little done because Donald and McConnell can control unwanted legislation. Mariner and his fellow citizens don’t need Donald’s disruption during times of change on many fronts including economy, governance, industry, civil rights, Constitutional rights, technology, society norms, religious rights, and international relations.

Ancient Mariner

 

 

Power Corrupts

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The last post, “The mice warned us,” dealt with the self-destructive nature of overcrowding. Calhoun’s mice experiments showed that unity broke down into have and have not classes, that violence erupted in self-destructive ways, and social mores disappeared. Eventually the physiology of procreation completely failed. Violence was common; illness and flagrant disregard for the wellbeing of other mice became universal. Across several experiments, the population fell to an average of 116 mice before beginning to grow again.

– – – –

Just to get the reference out of the way, it was John Emerich Edward Dalberg Acton who, in 1887, said “Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men.”

This post deals with an imbalance in power. “The Stanford Prison Experiment” (SPE) was a 1971 social psychology experiment that attempted to investigate the psychological effects of perceived power, focusing on the struggle between prisoners and prison officers. It was conducted at Stanford University between August 14–20, 1971, by a research group led by psychology professor Philip Zimbardo using college students. In the study, volunteers were randomly assigned to be either “guards” or “prisoners” in a mock prison, with Zimbardo himself serving as the superintendent. Several “prisoners” left mid-experiment, and the whole experiment was abandoned after six days. Early reports on experimental results claimed that students quickly embraced their assigned roles, with some guards enforcing authoritarian measures and ultimately subjecting some prisoners to psychological torture, while many prisoners passively accepted psychological abuse and, by the officers’ request, actively harassed other prisoners who tried to stop it.” [Wikipedia][1]

This experiment has been challenged because of questionable methodologies and unwarranted suggestions to participants by Zimbardo. In fact, other similar experiments with more disciplined methodologies suggest that the breakdown of social roleplay was caused by the manner in which Zimbardo exercised dictatorial control over participants, whether guards or prisoners. It was Zimbardo himself who proved Lord Acton’s quote.

In a similar experiment in England, it was found that tyranny (cruel, unreasonable, or arbitrary use of power or control) can only arise when groups become dissatisfied with their circumstances. Organized social structure that is fair and reinforcing will not let tyranny take form. In other words, fragmentation of society (we call it identity politics) will permit extreme reactions to occur in an effort to rebalance group ethos. Mariner found the English study highly relevant to the history of democracy in the US and those troublesome times when privileged groups took advantage (as in Calhoun’s mice studies) or when there was dissatisfaction on a broad scale (one example is the Vietnam War along with inflation). The conservative voters Reagan met that year became the core of his support in the decades ahead. They embraced Reagan not just for his moving pro-America rhetoric, but also for his anti-tax, small government policies and his strong stance against communism and the Soviet Union. Today, the issue again is economic imbalance as old style capitalism begins to fail in an international economy.

Forty years later, the US President seeks to restore Reagan’s policies by tyrannical behavior and disregard for a fair and reinforcing society.

Ancient Mariner

[1] For the 2015 film, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Stanford_Prison_Experiment_(film)

The mice warned us

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The early pioneers in psychology, the standard list around the western world is Pavlov, Skinner, Jung, Maslow, Erickson, Rogers, Freud, and Piaget, focused on an individual’s response to reality. These folks helped us understand the physiology of the human brain and mind; they provided insight into the human response to love, fear, success, failure and a myriad other emotional behaviors. It wasn’t until the Second World War and after that psychology partnered with sociology and history to investigate group behavior. Similarly, management theory and economics incorporated psychology and sociology to uncover new approaches to management; one thinks of Deming, Drucker, Chandler and Aldrich among others.

An interesting observation is that the study of group behavior began about a decade before differences in individual behavior versus group behavior began to be documented in contemporary terms. Two world famous experiments were conducted that have become common knowledge. The first was one of a series of studies of mice by John B. Calhoun in 1972; the second was a college experiment performed at Stanford University in 1971 covered in the next post.

CALHOUN’S MICE

The mouse study was performed to answer the question, ‘what happens when overcrowding occurs?’ (The human brain is optimized for a social group of about 150-200 people). Calhoun was careful to eliminate the lack of resources as an influence and fed his mice with an endless supply of food, water and nutrition. Calhoun provided a mouse utopia with apartments and different levels called Universe 25; the initial number of mice was 8. The landings of the pilgrims and the first migration to the Middle East from the Rift Valley in Africa come to mind.

Brackets [] in the quoted material below are added by mariner.

“At the peak population [2,200 by day 560], most mice spent every living second in the company of hundreds of other mice. They gathered in the main squares, waiting to be fed and occasionally attacking each other. [Nations live this way now on every continent except Australia and Antarctica] Few females carried pregnancies to term, and the ones that did seemed to simply forget about their babies. They’d move half their litter away from danger and forget the rest. [Forced migration] Sometimes they’d drop and abandon a baby while they were carrying it. [Closely approximates behavior in estranged communities and certain starving populations in Africa; mice had no chemical alternatives or voluntary abortions]

The few secluded spaces [owned territories] housed a population Calhoun called, “the beautiful ones.” [wealthy class] Generally guarded by one male, the females—and few males—inside the space didn’t breed or fight or do anything but eat and groom and sleep. When the population started declining the beautiful ones were spared from violence and death, but had completely lost touch with social behaviors, including having sex or caring for their young.” [Comparatively, humans in their teens and twenties today have significantly less sex than their elders at the same age] [Add to that the lessening need to socialize with other humans directly because of the smartphone, TV and other electronics]”

A notable side effect as the population approached its maximum was that mice that still had a bit of territory chased other male mice into specific corners at the opposite end of the cage. Mariner wonders whether suppressed groups in Africa and other nonproductive locations are simply ignored because there is no forced limit of territory at this time. Oh to live in Silicon Valley….

Now, in 2015, interpretations of Calhoun’s work have changed. Esther Inglis-Arkell (UCSF) explains that the habitats he created weren’t really overcrowded, but that aggressive mice enforced territorial prerogative to keep the beautiful ones isolated. She writes, “Instead of a population problem, one could argue that Universe 25 had a fair distribution problem.

“In 1972, with the baby boomers coming of age in an ever-more-crowded world and reports of riots in the cities, Universe 25 looked like a Malthusian nightmare. It [collapse of society] even acquired its own catchy name, “The Behavioral Sink.” If starvation didn’t kill everyone, people would destroy themselves. The best option was to flee to the country or the suburbs, where people had space and life was peaceful and natural.

“The fact remains that it [Universe 25] had a problem, and one that eventually led to its destruction. If this behavior is shared by both mice and humans, can we escape Universe 25’s fate?” [Inglis-Arkell]

Mariner leaves the door open for readers to have further speculation about group behavior in unbalanced societies.

Next post, the effect of power.

Ancient Mariner

Newsy

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Mariner often is chastised for persistent negativism. It’s not his fault; it’s Amos’s fault. Today, however, mariner makes an effort to report good news. It is about Newsy broadcasts on 283 DISH.

Regular readers may recall that mariner stopped watching CBS, NBC, ABC, Fox, MSNBC and CNN last fall. He collected his news from online sites, reputable magazines, newspapers and subject-specific websites for health, science, etc. He watched only two TV broadcasts: PBS News Hour and MSNBC Eleventh Hour with Brian Williams.

All the big, showy news broadcasts are flawed. Every one of them, whether soft-toned or sharp advocacy, reports very little news; they are totally preoccupied with gossip, speculation, accusation and market share. Donald is not the be all and end all of the world’s newsworthiness – but he plays to the press, feeding them easy candy and the broadcasters are addicted. Mariner read an item that said the ‘cable news’ stations contributed to increased tribalism and baiting the opposite political parties.

Mariner must prepare the reader for watching Newsy. We are accustomed to news broadcasts being ritzy with expensive studios, all broadcasters and pundits are Type A personalities with expensive wardrobes, coifed hair and even a picture that fills the entire TV screen. Newsy doesn’t fill the screen. Newsy doesn’t have high voltage lights and bright colors. Broadcasters are dressed in normal casual clothes. Broadcasters are young and tell the news with no fanfare or hype.

But wow! Mariner’s favorite part is how news headlines are presented. Because the news and only the news is given, each news item lasts an average of about 30 seconds. A friendly tone says it’s time to move to the next news item. This rapid fire presentation permits Newsy to cover the world’s headline news, domestic news, sports and throw in an occasional 15 minute examination of an interesting subject.

Most important, Newsy is apolitical; Newsy presents news that has no spin but still the viewer understands what truly is important about the news item. There is an air of PBS, Frontline and Nova but these people are young; they are serious; they are professional; they are not in show business.

Get your news from Newsy.

Ancient Mariner

 

Happy New Year

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A new year is upon us. Mariner wishes the best for mankind and especially for his readers. Today, his town has a bright winter Sun; it is cold and quiet outside. For a moment one can sense fulfillment and satisfaction for another year passed. For a moment. Unfortunately, this is not Norman Rockwell’s world; it is not Mickey Rooney’s world or Judy Garland’s or even George Herbert Walker Bush’s world. It is our world. It’s a failing world everywhere. Something is wrong with how the planet’s humans are doing things. Consider a few realities:

Out of 195 nations that exist today, only ten are not engaged in war. Only Botswana, Chile, Costa Rica, Japan, Mauritius, Panama, Qatar, Switzerland, Uruguay and Vietnam are free from conflict.

24 nations are facing a full-blown debt crisis and there are 14 more that are rapidly heading toward one. Right now, the debt to GDP (Gross Domestic Product) ratio for the entire planet is an all-time record high of 286 percent, and globally there are approximately 200 TRILLION dollars of debt on the books.

By 2050 climate change will reduce the world’s GDP by $21 trillion.

The world population was estimated to have reached 7.5 billion on April 24, 2017. Unfortunately, of the 7.5 billion, 600 million will die from starvation.

Mariner could go on noting the bad state of political, social and quality of life failures but already he is too depressed.

Happy New Year

Ancient Mariner

 

 

Think Abouts

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Mariner watched an episode of Christine Amanpour when she interviewed Jon Stewart and Dave Chapelle. Both men are astute observers of human life and social discourse. One comment that stayed with mariner was a comment by Jon Stewart; he was alluding to the brashness and unthinking environment that marks our society today. He said our opinions don’t have time to mature because we live at a circadian pace driven by tweets. Think about the rapidness of our society. Does rapidity override social grace?

Words that stir thought from Amanda Kolson Hurley:
“Ah, suburbia, land of the bland. White-picket-fenced realm of white-bread people and cookie-cutter housing. That’s still the stereotype that persists in how many of us think about and portray these much-maligned spaces surrounding cities. But if there was once some truth to it, there certainly isn’t today.

“In the past several years, a much more complex picture has emerged—one of Asian and Latino ‘ethnoburbs,’ rising suburban poverty, and Baby Boomers stuck in their split-levels. And 2018 really drove home the lesson that, when Americans say they live in the suburbs, the suburbias they describe are vastly different kinds of places.

“A century and a half after Frederick Law Olmsted laid out one of the first planned American suburbs in Riverside, Illinois, and seven decades after the builders Levitt & Sons broke ground on the ur-tract ’burb of Levittown, New York, we haven’t fully mapped the contours of modern suburbia—not just who lives there and why, but the role that suburbs play in politics and society.”

Mariner once read in a forgotten sociology book that towns, suburbs and other neighborhoods have a cultural lifespan of sixty years. Since reading that passage, mariner is convinced by continuous examples that it is true give or take a few years. Mariner is old enough to remember the new instant neighborhoods, some large enough to be small cities. Economics required that only one or two models would be available else costs would be too high for profit. Given today’s situation, income and profit slowly have dwindled in these suburbs; new better housing is found elsewhere and newer prices and salary requirements have trapped residents in their homes, unable to move out of the old neighborhood. Think about your childhood neighborhood; is it culturally the same as you remember?
– – – –
In mariner’s home town things have changed dramatically over sixty years. Mariner lived in his town in the sixties, left and returned ten years ago. In the sixties, the town was booming and healthy with robust churches, agricultural employment, investment potential for banks and entrepreneurs, active social life with dozens of clubs and social activities. It was a good time to live in his town. But it was the last decade of growth. Since then, the town slowly dwindled; churches are on the verge of closing; the older folk are trapped because their economic model has yielded to relentless inflation; and significantly, the age of electronics, computers, and soon artificial intelligence will totally reconstruct the daily culture and economic model of town citizens. From 1960 to 2020 will be sixty years. . . Think about how a town in the middle of corn fields can energize itself. It is a necessary goal for 800 people – many of them are young with families.
– – – –
Now think about this. An increasing number of nations are considering paying a basic income stipend to every citizen. Mariner is neutral on this issue. However, to solve the rapidly growing injustice of income and economic injustice as money gravitates to the upper classes; as a growing poor increases day by day; as an aging population cannot keep up with inflation and earnings; as the ability to produce dwindles in most neighborhoods, towns and even cities (consider the rustbelt on one end and impoverished Native Americans on the other), there are no other recommendations with the dynamic effect capable of reducing class-based economic disparity. Let’s use the Swiss as an example:

“Switzerland has a very direct style of democracy. For example, changes to the constitution, or “popular initiatives,” can be proposed by members of the public and are voted on if more than 100,000 people sign them. If a majority of voters and cantons (Swiss states) agree, the change can become law. This system not only allows individual citizens a high degree of control of their laws, but also means that more unorthodox ideas become referendum issues.

“Recently, there has been a spate of popular initiatives designed to curb inequality in the country. Earlier this year Swiss voters agreed to an idea proposed by entrepreneur Thomas Minder that limited executive (in his words, “fat cat”) salaries of companies listed on the Swiss stock market. Next month, voters will decide on the 1:12 Initiative, which aims to limit the salaries of CEOs to 12 times the salary of their company’s lowest paid employee.

“Earlier this month, an initiative aimed at giving every Swiss adult a “basic income” that would “ensure a dignified existence and participation in the public life of the whole population” gained enough support to qualify for a referendum. The amount suggested is 2,500 francs ($2,800) a month.

“While most observers think that the vote is a longshot, it has certainly sparked debate — and not just in Switzerland. Writing for USA Today, Duncan Black said that a “minimum income” should be considered for the U.S.” [Business Insider]

If ever there were a curse word in capitalism, it is “guaranteed basic income.” Very much a socialist concept, today’s conservatives perhaps even more than the rich, will have apoplexy if such a bill were submitted to Congress. Still, is there another alternative which forces income into communities and individuals who are production negative?” Think about it.

Tangentially, ProPublica published a report saying:

“A new data analysis by ProPublica and the Urban Institute shows more than half of older U.S. workers are pushed out of longtime jobs before they choose to retire, suffering financial damage that is often irreversible.”

Ancient Mariner

Current Events

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In the nation of Norway is an archipelago called Svalbard, the home of the village of Longyearbyen, the northernmost town in the world. Longyearbyen is notable for two things. First, temperatures are below 32° year round; second, the Global Seed Vault is buried in Svalbard on a nearby island called Spitsbergen. It is the security vault holding important seeds from all over the planet just in case there is a terrible disruption to the climate that kills all plant life. Name any crop you can think of; its seeds are in the vault. The Global Seed Vault was buried deep in the permafrost to assure seeds will remain frozen virtually forever.

Recently the permafrost began to melt. Permafrost is mostly water and some dirt mixed with mulch. When it melts, long held methane is released which exacerbates Global Warming – which caused the permafrost to melt in the first place. The melting has reached the seed vault; further, the deceased buried around Longyearbyen have started to pop up here and there. Actually, the corpses look pretty good because the cold has kept them frozen.

So we don’t need to measure the weather. We don’t need to measure carbon dioxide. We don’t need to measure ocean temperature. We know climate change exists because the Svalbard archipelago is melting and the dead have risen.

– – – –

Here are a couple of questions to test one’s news knowledge: What is the name of the farthest planet from our Sun? And second, how many planets are in the solar system?

The farthest planet’s name is ‘Farout’. It was discovered recently and has been confirmed as an ice-covered planet about 310 miles in diameter orbiting the Sun. The distance between The Sun and Earth is one Astronomical Unit (93 million miles); Farout’s orbit is 120 AU from the Sun, hence its name.

There are thirteen planets or dwarf planets orbiting our Sun: Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, Pluto, The Goblin, Sedna, Eris, and the aforementioned Farout. True, some are quite dwarf but they are part of the family of orbs that have stable orbits around the Sun. These new planets are part of a search for gravitational influence by a theorized super-Earth-size Planet Nine, also called Planet X, which researchers have proposed orbits in the extreme reaches of the solar system. The movements of several distant bodies have suggested the existence of this planet, which would be extremely faint and hard to locate.

– – – –

An article on www.livescience.com is interesting. Meteorologist Jana Houser argued that of four tornadoes observed in enough detail with a rapid radar technique, not a single one started its rotation in the sky. Instead, Houser and her team found, the tornado rotation began rapidly near the ground. “Tornadoes do not appear to form from the traditional, top-down mechanism,” Houser told reporters at a news briefing. Traditional meteorological technology checks for tornado development every 5 minutes; Houser’s equipment checked every thirty seconds.

All four tornadoes formed from supercell storms. Otherwise, they were very different in strength and impact, Houser said. None, however, formed from the top down. In the case of the El Reno tornado [wide damage, killed 8], a storm chaser actually snapped a picture of the funnel cloud on the ground minutes before the mobile radar detected the tornado about 50 to 100 feet above the ground.

– – – –

About a quarter of American households own a “smart speaker” like the Amazon Echo or Google Home, and in the not-too-distant future, a whole host of devices and appliances—from coffee makers to doorbells to toasters—could be connected to the internet. The Atlantic staff writer Joe Pinsker questions what could happen to all the data that companies will accumulate about domestic life, and how these devices ultimately shape people’s behavior.[1] A small teaser:

“I’ve just asked Lowenthal what he, as an advertiser, would be able to do with data transmitted from an internet-connected appliance, and I happened to mention a toaster. He thought through the possibility of an appliance that can detect what it’s being asked to brown: “If I’m toasting rye bread, a bagel company might be interested in knowing that, because they can re-target that household with bagel advertising because they already know it’s a household that eats bread, toasts bread, is open to carbs. Maybe they would also be open to bagels. And then they can probably cross that with credit-card data and know that this is a household that hasn’t bought bagels in the last year. I mean, it’s going to be amazing, from a targeting perspective.”

This is a classic example of corporations shaping a human’s life decisions and curtailing independent thought. While this may not matter in toaster negotiations, its impact on political control, economic knowledge and other thought-based activities also will be shaped and curtailed such that a human being will not be in control of his or her own destiny – just ask the Russians.

Ancient Mariner

 

[1] full article at https://www.theatlantic.com/family/archive/2018/12/smart-home-devices-data-privacy/578425/?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=family-weekly-newsletter&utm_content=20181222&silverid-ref=NDkwMjIzMjA1Mjg2S0

The Right Spirit

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A bit of thrust and parry about abolishing the Senate. The idea is emerging in magazines, books and even television commentary. Mariner again will proffer why the Senate distorts public discourse – an example taken from John Dingell’s book:

California has a population of sixty million people. The bottom twenty states in population together have less people than California. Yet, those twenty states have forty senators while California has two.

This imbalance in Senate representation echoes throughout many national policies, civil rights, and contemporary issues requiring, to be fair, a national perspective larger than the constraint caused by a minority of US citizens. Most political thinkers attribute the rise of identity politics to the ability of a few Senators representing a significantly small population to block healthy, rational compromise.

The Senate’s cousin, the Electoral College, twice in recent times has elected a president who lost the popular vote.

What forces this issue to the front is the massive changes in government, economy, civil rights, technology and class discrimination that are upon us. Compared to our cultural and economic stress, the Luddites had it easy.

Turmoil among rank and file citizenry has been growing since the riots at the Democratic Convention in Chicago in 1968 – just to name a contemporary starting point.

– – – –

Ahem. Allow mariner to straighten his tie, comb his hairs, and change the subject to one of cultural cure: It is the holiday season. For all cultural segments and religions participating in this most uplifting time of year, mariner steals lyrics yet again.

Have yourself a merry little Christmas

Let your heart be light

From now on our troubles will be out of sight.

 

Ancient Mariner

 

2018 Observations

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    Speak to a member of Donald’s base and they will say “Donald is doing exactly what we want him to do.” The populist base wanted a grenade thrown at the Establishment. It did explode and has upset the status quo to a great extent – especially in Cabinet policy. In fact, the grenade exploded so strongly that it exposed the GOP for what it is: Republican Senators living foremost for selfish reasons; Senators holding on to Reagan economics which don’t work in today’s international economy; GOP Senators are conservative tribalists rather than national statesmen. Could a blue wave wash over the Senate in 2020? Mariner believes a few new democrats may make it but not enough to overturn the GOP majority. The Senate doesn’t work correctly in today’s Government consisting of 50 states, 350 million citizens and a modern computerized society. Mariner’s observation is to abolish the Senate completely or at a minimum combine the two houses thereby making every representative subject to proportional representation. And toss out the Electoral College while we’re messing with the Constitution.

   January 2018 had bouncy temperatures ranging from below zero to days in the sixties in the Southeastern part of Iowa. El Nino is forming in the Pacific; it appears the winter jetstream will offer slightly warmer weather in January 2019 than we had last year. If one lives in the Carolinas or New England, the same jetstream won’t be so nice with increased rain, snow and energetic storms. It is a fact that one cannot predict climate change with weather forecasts over a short time. However, mariner agrees with the observation of scientists who study the Earth in geologic terms: the climate change thing already is out of the bag and will have its way with us. Even if the international community meets the requirements of the Paris agreement, the Earth is a big place and large, slow moving planetary phenomena have too much momentum for us to steer. The main worry is what will rising seas, floods and droughts do to our economy?

   According to a Senate Intelligence Committee report, Instagram “was a significant front” in Russian election meddling, eclipsing even Facebook itself. Between 2015 and 2018, there were 187 million interactions with Instagram content from the Internet Research Agency, the Russian trolling operation, compared with 77 million interactions on Facebook and 73 million on Twitter. [Bloomberg]

A popular quote is in frequent use at the moment. The quote is Ben Franklin’s response to a woman’s question about what the founders had delivered: “A republic, if you can keep it.”

A democratic republic requires constant maintenance by its citizens. This means that managing our government at Federal, State and Local levels is a necessary chore that we must continually exercise by voting (but today only 47 percent vote), attending town hall meetings and other events that provide access to our representatives, participating in political causes and party affiliations (only 12 percent of citizens participate even minimally in civic activities). This is sophisticated stuff that requires an educated understanding of citizen responsibilities (civics is not taught in public schools).

It is mariner’s observation that US citizens duck responsibility and blame Russian influence on the Russians. There’s nothing stopping any citizen from taking ownership of their democratic republic at a cultural level and at a political level. Stop blaming others a la Donald and step up to ownership of a nation. If we Americans did that, the Russian issue wouldn’t exist.

Ancient Mariner

 

Bowling and Politics

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In this post mariner promotes two books. The first one is a sociological view of American behavior particularly as it relates to how Americans have changed how they socialize. The second is by a memorable US Representative from Michigan, John Dingell, who was an active liberal during his tenure – the longest of any Representative serving from 1955 to 2015.

֎ Bowling Alone, Robert Putnam, 2001, Simon and Schuster

The premise is that Americans have, as a total population, withdrawn from community activities and civic life. The popularity of TV reflects people’s desire to wind down and relax in a setting over which they have total control. Many people may feel that socializing with neighbors is taxing, while TV is in one’s home and it’s always available. The national average across all segments of the population is eight hours per day.

Add to TV the phenomenon of smartphones. Mariner has noted in past posts how the smartphone eliminates extended or serious conversations in family life. Children aren’t admonished for using the smartphone too much because the parents are busy using the smartphone too much. A Silicon Valley executive once admitted he requires all electronics to be left by the door when family members return home. Just like in the Wild West days when guns were left at the door – will both harm us?

Another distraction to interactive human life is social media. Why visit family when one can pretend to visit on Facebook?

“Putnam contends that participation in collective activities such as bowling leagues and other leisure, faith and political associations, fosters norms of reciprocity through which people develop an orientation to cooperate with and trust others. Surveys have consistently shown that members of associations tend to trust others and have more friends in the neighborhood than non-members. Such norms and networks of civic engagement constitute what sociologists have called ‘social capital’. Drawing on theoretical insights developed in his previous book Making Democracy Work, Putnam argues that social capital is important because the high levels of trust and cooperation that characterize socially and civically engaged communities are positively associated with the performance of social institutions, economic prosperity, and individuals’ wellbeing and longevity.”[ResearchGate]

Since the 1960s Americans increasingly have moved to socially and ethnically homogeneous, car-dependent suburban areas. Obviously this arrangement limits open, public discourse on matters of the day with others who may be from different social situations. This neighborhood isolation leads to false assumptions that are counterintuitive to democratic concepts, for example, “NIMBY” – not in my backyard!

֎ The Dean – The Best Seat in the House, John Dingell, 2018, HarperCollins.

John Dingell always has been known for calling a spade a spade. Speaking to the terrible shape our nation is in:

“There are many reasons for this dramatic decline: the Vietnam War, Watergate, Ronald Reagan’s folksy but popular message that government was not here to help, the Iraq War, and worst of all by far, the Trumpist mind-set. These jackasses who see “deep state” conspiracies in every part of government are a minority of a minority, yet they are now the weakest link in the chain of more than three centuries of our American republic. Ben Franklin was right. The Founders gave us a precious but fragile gift. If we do not protect it with constant vigilance, we will most certainly lose it.”

How does John suggest we restore our political ethos?

“An electoral system based on full participation. At age 18, you are automatically registered to vote. No photo ID, no residency tests, no impediments of any kind. Advances in technology can make this happen effortlessly. Yes, voting should be restricted only to American citizens. Strict protections against foreign meddling are also necessary.”

Further:

“The elimination of money in campaigns. Period. Elections, like military service—each is an example of duty, honor, and service to country—should be publicly funded. Can you imagine if we needed to rely on wealthy donors to fund the military? I know there are those who genuinely believe in privatizing everything. They are called profiteers.”

Restructuring the Federal branches of government:

“The end of minority rule in our legislative and executive branches. The Great Compromise, as it was called when it was adopted by the Constitution’s Framers, required that all states, big and small, have two senators. The idea that Rhode Island needed two U.S. senators to protect itself from being bullied by Massachusetts emerged under a system that governed only 4 million Americans.”

“Today, in a nation of more than 325 million and 37 additional states, not only is that structure antiquated, it’s downright dangerous. California has almost 40 million people, while the 20 smallest states have a combined population totaling less than that. Yet because of an 18th-century political deal, those 20 states have 40 senators, while California has just two. These sparsely populated, usually conservative states can block legislation supported by a majority of the American people. That’s just plain crazy.”

“With my own eyes, I’ve watched in horror and increasing anger as that imbalance in power has become the primary cause of our national legislative paralysis. In primaries, the vocal rump of a minority of obnoxious asses can hold the entire country hostage to extremist views. This insanity has sent true public servants fleeing for the exits. The Electoral College has the same structural flaw. Along with 337 of my colleagues, I voted in 1969 to amend the Constitution to abolish it. Twice in the past 18 years, we’ve seen the loser of the popular vote become president through the Electoral College formula, which gives that same disproportionate weight to small states, each of which gets two automatic votes for its two senators.”

There is a solution, however, that could gain immediate popular support: Abolish the Senate. At a minimum, combine the two chambers into one, and the problem will be solved. It will take a national movement, starting at the grassroots level, and will require massive organizing, strategic voting, and strong leadership over the course of a generation. But it has a nice ring to it, doesn’t it? “Abolish the Senate.” I’m having blue caps printed up with that slogan right now. They will be made in America.

If mariner were motivated to write a book, he would not need to – John wrote it for him.

Ancient Mariner