Ah, GOP Hypocrisy

 

If there is one thing humans are good at its being hypocrites. I know I’ve been guilty of it from time to time, though I would qualify that by saying my instances of hypocrisy are relatively minor. It’s not like I’m in charge of governmental policy that affects thousands to millions of people. When it comes to hypocrisy political parties take the cake, especially the GOP.

 

Yes, Democrats are guilty of hypocrisy from time to time – the further-Left elements are all for equality as long as you’re not white – but for the most part Democrats are not malicious when they do their about-faces. Remember that Democrats are merely dumb whereas the GOP is actually mean. For instance, the GOP went into an uproar over SCOTUS nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson’s supposed leniency on pedophiles yet the same people have absolutely nothing to say about Matt Gaetz, Roy Moore, Jim Jordan, Trump being on Epstein’s flight manifests, or the Tennessee bill currently being advanced that would legalize children getting married. As political analyst Brian Tyler Cohen put it on Twitter, "Literally the same week Republicans are desperately trying to label everyone else pedophiles and groomers the Tennessee GOP is advancing a bill that would literally legalize child marriage. Truly beyond parody.” I wish I could say it ends there but it does not.

 

Hunter Biden’s laptop is a hot topic with the GOP right now, the allegations being Hunter Biden used his father’s influence to land a cushy job with a foreign government, sold access to his father, made some questionable tax payments, and had salacious personal material on it. How is any of this a bigger deal than the Trump kids using government influence to rake in almost a billion dollars while government advisors, Trump’s missing tax returns (and proven instances of business and charity fraud), or Trump’s infidelities? “You know what wasn’t on Hunter’s laptop? 15 boxes of classified and top-secret documents. That shit was at Mar-A-Lago,” tweeted Andrea Junker in reference to the documents Trump stole when he left office.

 

The GOP also claims to be the party of ‘law-and-order,’ though that appears to not really mean anything. At last count, at least 11 Trump Administration advisors had been arrested in connection with criminal activity, to say nothing of the hundreds of QAnon supporters arrested during the J6 riot that was incited by the Trump Administration itself. Not coincidently, the father of the woman who stole Nancy Pelosi’s laptop on J6 has been arrested for – you guessed it – child pornography. The GOP doesn’t seem to realize if Joe Biden is guilty by association with his son, then…

 

Oh, and hey, remember when Moscow Mitch McConnell denied Obama a SCOTUS nominee because it was ten months before the next presidential election but then rammed conservative Amy Coney Barrett through less than a month before the 2020 election?

 

To be fair, the GOP isn’t always hypocritical. More and more they’ve been showing their true colors and being outright racist as in the case of Ohio Republican senate candidate JD Vance, the “Do you hate Mexicans?” candidate who apparently blames Mexicans for his mother’s opioid addiction, nevermind that the drugs were prescribed by American doctors. Oh, and remember how much the GOP hates ‘cancel culture’? But what are they doing but calling on Disney to be cancelled for opposing DeSantis’ attack on the LGBTQ community? They also want to cancel workers rights, voting rights, and marriage rights. The GOP also wants to protect children, by not doing anything about school shootings.

 

Again, I’m not going to say I’m not a hypocrite from time to time. We’re all hypocrites. It’s just that some people love it and are better at it than others. Why? The human animal isn’t exactly the most reasonable thing around. So, if you’re going to be a hypocrite, at least admit to it least you be a hypocrite about being a hypocrite. That’s a sign of a mental health problem, meaning you’re bat-shit crazy. It appears the GOP has no problem with that.

Acceptable Losses

 

There has been a great deal of outcry over policies meant to curtail the spread of COVID-19 as it is argued that said policies are an infringement of either natural or constitutionally guaranteed rights. However, as America’s conservative politicians were found of saying after 9/11, after the subsequent ‘need’ to wholesale spy on American citizens was revealed, freedom isn’t free. Have the COVID-19 policies up until now been legal? More importantly, are they ethical? How much freedom, if any, is it permissible to curtail in order to stem a pandemic that at least on occasion sees people die?

 

As of this writing, according to Worldometer, COVID-19 kills 3.4 people per 100 recorded cases. In the U.S. there have been 70 million recorded cases and 866,000 deaths due to the virus or complications due to the virus, for a 1.2% mortality rate, a lower overall percentage in the U.S. due to improved medical facilities. In the U.S. for the unvaccinated, there is a 1-in-85 chance that infection will require serious medical attention. For the vaccinated, there is an approximate 1-in-10,000 chance of infection leading to hospitalization. I am leaving out statistics by age, ethnicity, or gender because they are irrelevant to what follows as a life is precious regardless of age, ethnicity, or gender. Is this not the case? It is the case; this is what abortion rights opponents would like us to believe. And, this is the viewpoint we’re all supposed to tow as a supposedly civilized species. But how civilized are we, really?

 

Not just in the U.S. but globally authoritarianism has been on the rise while at the same time there has never been a greater outcry for protecting one’s freedoms, usually by those very proponents of authoritarianism. While we might forgive political extremists for their blatant hypocrisy – it’s just what they do – there is a more sinister undercurrent of human psychology at work here. While no reasonable person is denying the virus that causes COVID-19 exists, makes people sick and occasionally kills people, what the people protesting for their right to assemble without even the most basic precautions are essentially saying is that any single person’s right to behave as they want should not be infringed upon even if that behavior potentially means someone else might die. In other words, our right to socialize in all the ways we socialized before the current pandemic should be retained even if there is a potential for one of the people socializing to die. This is not only (supposedly) ethically incorrect, but constitutionally incorrect in the U.S. I’ll explain, but first a quick yet realistic thought experiment

 

In terms of numbers, let’s suppose there are 1,000 people attending a concert: there is the potential for anywhere between 12 and 34 of those people to die from COVID-19 (a scenario made more likely if the audience members are unvaccinated). Even in a best-case scenario, at least 10 of those concert-goers are going to require going to the hospital and it would be a safe bet to say at least one of those 10 people are going to die. The question becomes this; in order to maintain the freedoms we are accustomed to, like being in a crowd at a concert, how many people are we willing to let die (with ourselves being among the potential victims)?

 

We calculate these kinds of risk-assessment unconsciously all the time. We do it when we drive our cars, for example. According to Gallup.com, in the U.S. there are .012 deaths per 100 drivers in the U.S. annually (or approximately 38,000 driver deaths) in order to preserve every driver’s right (privilege, really) to drive, with most of these deaths being preventable seeing how most of them are not mechanically related, meaning, due to driver error and/or recklessness. In the case of our actual constitutional right to bear arms in the U.S. there are approximately .0059 homicide related deaths per 100 citizens (or approximately 20,000 citizens a year) according to the CDC. The number of gun-related deaths goes up into the tens of thousands, of course, if we factor in suicides and accidents. That aside, in 2021 alone, 68 people were killed or injured in school shootings [edweek.org]. To be allowed to drive and own firearms, these appear to be acceptable losses for our rights/freedom to these things, whatever ‘rights’ or ‘freedom’ means. So, this should probably be sorted out.

 

When discussing these alleged rights and freedoms, we are probably talking mostly about those rights the U.S. Constitution affords, such as the right to bear arms (and not even have to be in a militia, apparently). Also afforded or protected are the rights to assembly, the freedom of speech, the freedom of religion (or not be religious), and importantly, the Ninth Amendment which states that rights afforded by the Constitution shall not infringe upon other rights. For most U.S. citizens the U.S. Constitution basically affords the right to go most anywhere and mostly do whatever we want so long as we don’t intentionally harm other people, least that be a violation of the Ninth Amendment. Certainly U.S. citizens have a level of freedom not seen in many other countries. Only how free are we as U.S. citizens, really? It might be helpful to think of all the ways in which we are not free and why this is important.

 

Let’s start with the First Amendment, which grants citizens the freedom of speech (among other rights). We are allowed to say whatever we want. Of course, this isn’t true – Explicit child pornography is not protected free speech and was ruled illegal by SCOTUS in 1996. Also ruled illegal is speech that incites violence/bodily harm, defames someone’s character, or tries to pass off someone else’s copyrighted work as your own, to name a few. The First Amendment is also supposed to allow us to practice religion as we see fit as much as protect us against state sponsored religion, only, several states’ laws contend that an atheist cannot hold office. (This is unenforceable according to the SCOTUS but has not been tested. Also, women have not been protected from religious zealots in Texas most recently and notably.) When it comes to the Second Amendment, which is supposed to hypothetically protect us against a tyrannical government, U.S. citizens can own assault weapons but not weapons of mass destruction such as a fully functional tank or nuclear weapon, which a hypothetical tyrannical government would be allowed to have.

 

We have a number of other federal, state, and local laws that limit our freedoms as well, and this is mostly for our own protection as well as the protection of our neighbors of whom it is irrelevant whether you like them or not. For example, while we don’t have to wear seatbelts, we can be ticketed for it and that fine will be enforced by a court of law. Also enforced by the courts is our responsibility to pay taxes; they have to be paid or we face fines or even jail. In most states, it is considered battery to spit on another person (without consent). In most states, we cannot marry a minor or marry multiple people at once. By law, we cannot arbitrarily discriminate against someone based on sex, race, religion, or national origin. (Yes, we know, this last one is broken all the time; people of color and women face gross inequities and mistreatment compared to their white male counterparts.) These are some of the more obvious ways in which U.S. citizens are not free.

 

Less obvious freedoms involve the widespread use of social media. The very people complaining about COVID-19 mandates are the same people who do not seem to realize that every time they use a search engine, log on to Facebook or other social media app, algorithms are tracking how the user behaves in order to keep that user engaged for as long as possible. Siri, Alexa – any smart devices we own – and the NSA are listening to us all the time. Everyone knows this. No one disputes the fact that major corporations and tech companies are doing everything they can to manipulate citizens into doing their bidding, and they often succeed. Oddly, or maybe I should be saying ‘unsurprisingly,’ no one cares and its never a part of the conversation regarding freedom(s).

 

These are but very few examples that are in place to reign in and control behavior for actors within a society for the safety of society. It is simply not true that a U.S. citizen can do whatever they want whenever they want unless they leave the country to become a king or queen of another country and they don’t use the internet.

 

What does any of this have to do with COVID-19? If it is not obvious by now, there is a pandemic affection millions of people, with almost one million deaths associated with the disease in the U.S. as of this writing. In order to stop the spread of illness – and possibly death –  it was asked of the general population to give up a small measure of freedom; wear face coverings, stay six feet apart, avoid large gatherings, and isolate if we felt the slightest bit ill or were in close proximity to a symptomatic carrier of the virus. It was also asked of the population to get a vaccine which would limit the number of people getting ill and more importantly limit the time during which an infected person is transmitting the virus. And none of this, so far, has become law. None of this has become law because if the population could not take the simple precautions first asked of them, making the precautions law would result in a nationwide riot. In short, Americans could not be asked to save the lives of almost a million of their fellow countrymen because individual ‘freedom’ is more important than those other people’s lives. That being the case, as with driving or being allowed to own firearms, we implicitly consent to acceptable losses. In actual numbers, for example, 2,462 school-aged children were killed by firearms in 2017; we consider this an acceptable loss of life so that the right to bear arms goes on uninfringed. The question is – when do the numbers start becoming unacceptable before we consider reigning in some freedoms? How do we arrive at those numbers if those numbers even exist? I ask because for some rights, it seems like no number will be too high for the U.S.

 

Concerning gun rights, the number did get too high for Australia. In 1996, a gunman killed just 35 people at a tourist destination with a semiautomatic weapon. Their gun laws changed within the following year and the country did not have another mass shooting until 2018 when 7 people were killed. A similar regard for life can been seen with Australia’s initial response to the pandemic.

 

When it was recognized in early 2020 that COVID-19 was going to be a problem, Australia closed its borders and required citizens returning home to isolate. The people who were required to quarantine were checked on by police. Some states and territories closed their borders to each other. Non-essential services were closed. There was bipartisan unity within the government to deal with the pandemic. Australia’s measures to protect themselves against COVID-19 was quickly implemented and clearly communicated to the public, resulting in nearly zero cases through the rest of 2020. Australia ended its zero-COVID-19 strategy in late 2021, citing that it was impossible to suppress the virus forever, which is probably not true had everyone (globally) initially taken similar measures. Australia, with its regard for its citizens lives, understandably wanted their people to return to life as it was before the pandemic. Unfortunately, they lifted their restrictions too soon, for instance opening their borders to COVID-19 carriers from less pandemically savvy nations. Fortunately, with high vaccination rates and occasional snap-lockdowns and other restrictions, Australia has kept their death toll below 4,000 for the time being. This is a vast difference from, say, the U.S. even despite the disparities in population.

 

It appears death tolls do matter to some nations. In contrast, the reason the U.S. has been so awful in dealing with COVID-19 has to do with the fact that compared to many other nations, U.S. citizens simply don’t care much about each other’s lives. Individual freedom must be maintained in the face of ridiculously high death tolls even when those numbers are largely preventable. It does not seem to matter how many people die in car accidents or are killed by gunfire. Recall that in one incident alone, in the 2017 Las Vegas Strip shooting, 61 people were murdered and 411 injured by gunfire. The numbers are astounding to everyone but gun rights advocates and politicians. If that incident did not change the nation’s mood towards the Second Amendment, we can gather nothing will. There does not seem to be any sense of national community. So, we should not be surprised that Americans do not care who they infect or kill by not taking any precautions against COVID-19.

 

Why is there no sense of protecting the greater community? Why do high death tolls that are preventable not matter to U.S. citizens? For starters, we can blame division on the internet that produces echo chambers for our worst human qualities, which itself is influenced by the larger tech companies that puts profits before people. We can also blame foreign regimes like Russia who have an interest in dividing Americans. The rich, such as the CEO’s of the afore mentioned tech companies, bear no love for the poor whom, they don’t seem to realize without, they would not be rich. (Also not a secret is that the rich and politicians only care about the poor long enough to exploit them, and this has been going on so long it’s accepted as just another part of life. My apologies for stating the obvious, which is apparently not obvious to enough people.) Blame may even lie with the American healthcare system, which only thinks in terms of dollars, in terms of putting a dollar sign on life, in terms of how not to pay for the medical care their insurance is supposed to provide. And, at the root for Americans, there is the false notion that the U.S. was a country born exclusively out of a need for individual freedoms to be had, with the nation as a whole to be burned to the ground should that notion be challenged. This is basically what the psyche of conservative America has been ever since people of color were allowed to voice their opinions and speak about their experiences with racism, jeopardizing white privilege. (To be certain, the current drive in conservative U.S. states to ban abortion is not because they care about life, rather, they fear being ‘bred out.’) Least we forget as well, history has demonstrated time and again that as human beings, we just don’t care about people beyond our immediate tribe(s). It appears frowned upon to say this forthwith, so history says it for us.

 

All this adds up to what I’ve come to call, again, ‘acceptable losses’ which in reality means ‘any amount of loss.’ Any amount of loss is acceptable to U.S. citizens to maintain their (alleged) absolute freedoms. Had the Las Vegas gunman in 2017 killed a thousand people, gun rights advocates and conservative still would not have seen a problem. There is no number of lives lost that would convince gun rights advocates and conservatives to willingly curtail their rights.

 

Realizing this, and out of curiosity, I’ve posed this question in my Ethics and A&P classes in relationship to COVID-19 or any other infectious disease: What death toll would be high enough for you to say we should curtail some freedoms in order to fight a deadly disease? Ebola for example will kill anywhere from 25% to 90% of the people it infects, allowing for various factors (with 25% being so low due to how the particular outbreak was responded to. Otherwise, Ebola’s mortality rate would be closer to at least 50%). Would sacrificing 25% of the population for our basic freedoms be acceptable? At what point would the death toll be so high it would cause you to say, “Perhaps we should curtail some freedoms so that there is at least a few people left to cook and serve me food at the restaurant”? Astonishingly, I’ve been given figures as low as 20% and as high as 80% of the population. While this perhaps speaks to an unspoken belief that there are too many people on the planet (I don’t disagree), I don’t think the people giving me that figure have thought through the consequences of 20-80% of the population actually dying. One student did mention that the allowable percentage would be based upon the freedoms lost, meaning, the more liberties that would be taken away, the more people we should let die because again, anyone’s possible and even preventable death does not supersede anyone’s right to liberty. Perhaps that 20% threshold isn’t being met?

 

While it can be argued that COVID-19 is not as deadly as Ebola, Americans have effectively said a loss of 2% of the nation’s population is perfectly acceptable in order not to have to wear a mask in public. While I understand wearing a facemask is uncomfortable, few people are willing to let a surgeon operate on them without one. In other words, if a surgeon can wear a face mask for several hours straight during surgery, why is the rest of the population so fragile that they cannot wear a mask in a supermarket for 20 minutes? Why is 20 minutes of someone’s time seen as too much to ask to save even one person’s life? Because masks and the other precautions aren’t effective? Then why hasn’t anyone criticized surgeons for wearing masks and washing their hands prior to surgery before the pandemic? 

 

I can understand vaccine hesitancy a little more. At the beginning of the rollout even I wanted to see what kind of side effects there were going to be as I had a bad experience with an injection in the military. (I had a sudden fever and passed out after a shot. To this day I do not know what they gave me that caused that reaction.) And, I can understand being hesitant of the vaccine’s long-term effects. But, I don’t understand being hesitant about the vaccine’s long-term effects when we do have a better idea of the long term effects of COVID-19 itself. Nor do I understand being told someone is worried about the vaccine’s long-term effects or being afraid of what’s in the vaccines when they are throwing back a Mountain Dew and a Hershey’s candy bar, as my students often do. There is also what I believe to be a reasonable suspicion of Big Pharma; while there is much money to be had by Big Pharma in the case of a pandemic like this, consider the fact that only Big Pharma had the capability to create a vaccine so quickly. Also, keep in mind that it does industries such as Big Pharma no good to intentionally kill the very people who would use their products, so that reasonable suspicion of Big Pharma only goes so far. At this point, it is a safe assumption that vaccine hesitancy and resistance is merely towing political lines and there is no actual valid reasoning against it, not when vaccines have been so effective in the past. I will not mince words here; it says something unflattering that almost half the U.S. takes its vaccine advice from a former hippie and Playboy model. (I’m referring to Jenny McCarthy, who started the anti-vaxxer movement back in 2007. And no, this is an ad hominin attack as McCarthy had no medical expertise back then and still doesn’t now.)

 

Now comes the catch-22: If vaccines did kill a small percentage of people, how many would be too many? How many lives lost are worth it to save more lives? Is there an acceptable death toll for vaccines but not for preventable infections? Hint – the answer is ‘yes’: Vaccines have not killed as many people as COVID-19, so it would make sense for the population to get vaccinated even if a few people would in fact die from the vaccine, as long as we’re making this comparison. There is no logical argument against how unsafe the COVID-19 vaccine might be as the numbers do not lie. Americans hesitant about vaccines because they’re allegedly unsafe is an outright hypocrite and again unapologetically towing political party lines. Getting COVID-19 is clearly more dangerous for everyone if a person is unvaccinated.

 

Now that we’ve cleared the air about what is acceptable in terms of losses, particularly those that are preventable, what I ask of people who will not take any precautions to stem the current (and future) pandemic(s) is this: I want to know who the toxic people are (both figuratively and literally) so I can avoid them. So, be honest and don’t hide behind rationalizations. Be honest in saying that you simply don’t care how many people die and that your individual freedom is more important. Be honest that human life does not matter to you. Be honest that what little is asked of you to protect human life is too much, that you are easily defeated, especially by a piece of cloth. But remember, you are the same people who (supposedly) are for the rule of law, and the rule of law is, at least in the U.S., that your rights end where mine begin. It’s literally in the Constitution. Read it from time to time.

F*** the USA

It seems so long ago I was what a modern ‘red’-blooded American would consider a patriot. When I joined the army when I was 18 (and for the better half of my military career) I was a Republican, I believed in the rule of law, I believed in the country’s elected officials, and I believed that – all things considered – the United States was a country every other country should be looking up to because her citizens warranted that respect. Three decades later, I could not have been more wrong. While I have figuratively renounced my U.S. citizenship years ago, this morning’s news item finally caused me to spit, “Fuck the USA.”

Various news agencies reported that the owner of a Massachusetts ice cream parlor decided to close his door one day after re-opening during the current pandemic due to the harassment of his employees because…because people had to wait in line to get ice cream. (Please read that again, pause, and let it sink in.) Apparently his best employee quit at the end of her shift due to the harassment. It is absolutely unbelievable that this happened because, again, ICE CREAM was at stake. Although the operation basically returned to ‘normal’ soon thereafter, what with a renewed emphasis on safety and ordering procedures, it cannot be dismissed that people simply forgot their manners after weeks of being in quarantine.

It’s a common criticism by the alt-right that the alt-left hates America and I dare say the alt-right is not totally incorrect. But the alt-left also has a point insofar is that a love of the U.S. is simply not warranted and in fact perhaps should be hated. Donald Trump’s favorite saying ‘Make America Great Again’ really gives a thinking person a moment’s pause as it is not known exactly when America was so great. (Perhaps briefly upon entering WWII?) While many of you reading this right now may think ‘hate’ is a bridge too far, let us not forget the very recent history in which a black man, Ahmaud Arbery, was peacefully jogging until he was hunted down by apparent white supremists and shot to death, and then his assailants went free for two months until a video of the incident surfaced. To be certain, the assailants were not arrested because Georgia law enforcement saw the video but because the rest of the country saw the video. So is this the ‘great America’ the current U.S. president thinks the country should be? If it seems like I’m digressing, I’m not.

The Polar Cave Ice Cream parlor incident is indicative of almost everything that is wrong with the U.S. (By the way, this happened on the same weekend a group of white men carrying large-caliber weapons went to a Subway sandwich shop in North Carolina in an apparent attempt to protest lockdown orders.) Because Americans are not particularly well known for their intelligence, I will briefly enumerate what makes the U.S. such a terrible place to be these days (assuming you’re a non-white, unarmed, non-male person, though, the alt-left is certainly not without problems given their philosophy).

·       The Polar Cave Ice Cream parlor incident reveals the utter entitlement Americans feel they have to everything they want and to have it immediately. (Surprisingly, Americans haven’t yet stormed Amazon warehouses because they have to wait two whole days for their Prime shipments to arrive.) Americans feel so entitled to everything – including ice cream – that to too many people it was acceptable to harass ice cream shop employees for having to wait too long (a few minutes?) with language that would embarrass a sailor. Americans feel so entitled to what they want that involuntarily celibate men think it’s okay to shoot up college campuses because they shouldn’t have to do anything to get laid. And naturally Americans feel entitled to the guns they use in such incidents because they are part of a well-regulated militia. FFS, these days, Americans even feel entitled to their own facts. And when Americans don’t get their way, the play the victim card.

·       Being entitled to their own facts demonstrates America’s now nearly complete war on intellectualism short of killing university professors. A friend recently posted a blog (here) on the intellectual dishonestly so often associated with memes that is, of course, so completely on point we should be thankful Americans are able to communicate through posting memes at all and not still smashing rocks together to make crude music. Can a country that made the Kardashians, creationists, and flat-earthers famous and can’t answer basic questions about how their government works but is somehow mind-controlling them really be considered great? The U.S. is a country whose citizens can’t be asked to wear a facemask for a few months for everyone’s protection. It’s not like these people are being asked to go off to war to fight Nazi’s – which they wouldn’t do now anyway – or suffer a famine ala The Great Depression or stop taking selfies. The U.S. is a country that elected a president that cannot maintain a train of thought for more than two minutes, which no one should have sought to do because most people should not be electing people like themselves to high office seeing how unqualified the average American is for such a task. Exerting power by fiat has never worked out well for anyone, but the average American has no idea what I mean when I say that anyway. America is the same country whose Republicans foam at the mouth when the word ‘socialism’ is spoken but gladly took their pandemic stimulus checks and think big businesses and farmers deserve government bailouts.

·       Anti-intellectualism and racism go hand-in-hand, so it’s no surprise that hate crimes increased dramatically after Trump took over the U.S. presidency. True, it’s not like many white Americans weren’t already racist, it’s just that the person they elected to high office emboldened them to act on that racism. While we probably didn’t have too many incidents during the

Obama Administration in which the police were called on a black cop searching for evidence in between houses, but today it’s basically the norm. White people are so willfully oblivious to what black people go through, they dare not take a moment to figure out what Black Lives Matters really means. Does that sound ‘great’ to you? America is simply an evil place for allowing racism to go unaddressed and unfettered. It is an evil place for what happened at the ice cream parlor. If Americans cannot get over the frustration of not having ice cream in a ‘timely’ fashion, then how are they great?

·       America no longer appears to adhere to any rule of law. Just this past week, the Trump Administration’s DOJ dropped charges against former national security advisor Michael Flynn, a man who admitted to lying under oath twice. There are various reasons for this which have nothing to do with Flynn being an honorable man, but as it is for many in the Trump administration, being legally accountable is laughable. (Yes, Bill Clinton lied under oath, too, but at least he paid for it.) Meanwhile, President Trump has routinely said he is above the law as president…which would mean all the crimes he’s accused Obama of committing in office are irrelevant. Meanwhile, white men are walking into capitol buildings and sandwich shops with guns in an attempt to intimidate elected officials, but they are not charged with domestic terrorism because white. Meanwhile, in the 1960’s the Black Panthers were charged with domestic terrorism for doing exactly this. Meanwhile, a white salon owner in Texas openly defies a court order and judge and is hailed a s hero while the people hailing her as a hero keep telling black people that they wouldn’t get shot if they just did what they are told by law enforcement. What officials in high office and white people get away with, to say nothing of corporations, is reprehensible, to be polite.

·       Not surprisingly, the current pandemic has exposed the weaknesses of capitalism, that weakness being that it cannot survive something like a pandemic without the aid of socialism as I mentioned earlier. The strange thing is, not even liberals are questioning the fundamentals of capitalism. I expect such a thing of Republicans, but not Democrats. Even Bernie Sanders is mostly silent about the recent turn of events. I’ll say that capitalism may be the best monetary philosophy going, but that is not the same as saying it’s good at all.

·       For those of you who have forgotten, the U.S. consistently lags behind other Western and some Asian countries in math, science, and reading. You don’t see the Trump Administration doing anything to rectify that situation. No, instead Trump installs a completely unqualified person (because that’s what he does with his cabinet) to head the DOE because she’s a campaign donor with a vested interest in college students repaying their student loans. No, trump doesn’t see to it that Americans get an education because that would disrupt his base, that being uneducated citizens. As we’ve seen from China, Japan, and the Scandinavian countries, an educated population is in a country’s best interest. That simply cannot be allowed in a country held hostage by mega-corporations, though.

So we’re left trying to figure out when the U.S. was great and deserving of being loved. Was it when it institutionalized slavery and even fought a civil war to preserve it? Was it during Prohibition when the government was poisoning beer so it could use the dead as propaganda? Was it during the Trail of Tears? Was it during the McCarthy era? Was it when it dropped TWO nuclear bombs on Japan? Was it during the Tuskegee Experiment? Was it during the My Lai Massacre in Vietnam? Was it when it lied its way into invading Iraq post-9/11? Was it when the wholesale spying on Americans by the NSA was greenlit? Was it when the Supreme Court ruled that corporations were people or ruled that super-PAC money didn’t have to be transparent anymore? Was it when the employee of an ice cream parlor quit her job because of the harassment she received because people couldn’t get their ice cream on demand?

It might be argued that many countries behave reprehensibly but this means nothing more than the U.S. being a country no better than any other. Yes, the U.S. may have a higher standard of living and all the money and goods it could ever want (gotta have the latest iPhone!), but U.S. citizens seem to equate these enviable qualities with some kind of moral high ground. That is how stupid Americans are. That’s how undeserving of America’s status it is.

Is it really such a big deal to be an American, to live in the USA.? Not when your job at an ice cream parlor entails threats to your life. Not when it’s more important to re-start the economy than to save people’s lives. Not when Americans are too stupid to see that capitalism cannot survive without socialism. Not when a black man cannot go jogging without being hunted down by Trump supporters. Not when the alt-left has ruined any sense of fairness on college campuses (they’ve turned out to be almost as bad as their alt-right counterparts). Not when you’re considered a lower form of life because your credit score is terrible.

The next time you see someone post “We’re better than this” on social media in response to the next example of human depravity, please remind them that the U.S. is not and never has been. Given history, both past and present, you might even want to say to them, “Fuck the U.S.A.” I sure do.

On Villains and Villainy

“One man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter.” – Gerald Seymour in Harry’s Game

When I first heard the Joker movie with Jaoquin Phoenix was being made, I admit I was disturbed in the slightest. Critics of pop culture have long criticized what has seemed like a gradual and unnecessary decent into what seems like an anything-goes mentality for entertainment’s sake. The inundation of sex, drugs, and violence in pop culture appears to be on one hand merely for the sake of titillation yet on the other hand a reflection of the Western world’s dark underbelly it seems the average citizen doesn’t want to concede exists nor accept their explicit or implicit role in.* It is, however, the glorification of the villain that has troubled me the most when it comes to pop culture. I can name countless movies, not to mention countless musical artists, whose villains and villainy outshine their protagonists.

[Perhaps the same can be said for the world at large.]

To be clear, I prefer my villains to be complicated, for their motivations to be more than evil simply because that’s who the villain cannot help being. Certainly, the new Joker movie is a reflective character analysis in this regard. Even the long string of Marvel movies were part of a story arc that centered around stopping a ‘mad’ Titan, Thanos, from wiping out half the life in the universe. His murderous methods aside – which we assume are wrong – it’s difficult to say what’s wrong with Thanos’ motivations for those of you who are aware of them. I think it’s fair to want interesting villains – the world is not black-and-white after all – but we’ve reached the point where in America’s culture at least, we’re literally rooting for the bad guy.

Case in point; at last night’s WWE’s Hell In A Cell Pay-per-View (I apologize for still keeping tabs on professional wrestling at my age), a character called The Fiend did not win the championship match and fans in the audience were audibly upset. This Fiend character is very popular among the internet wrestling community to the point that fans would rather see him crowned champion than have a face (good guy) retain the gold. I agree that the character is interesting and that the heel (bad guy) needs to win on occasion to maintain the delicate and eternal dance between good and evil alive for the sake of storytelling, but for a crowd to nearly riot when the heel doesn’t win indicates something is possibly wrong with either the Western psyche, the current rules of society, or perhaps a matter of definitions. (It is possibly all of these.) I can point to actual current events to make my case.

The election of Donald Trump to President of the United States in 2016 couldn’t make my point clearer, being of the opinion that Donald Trump is clearly a villain. Why; what has he done that is so wrong? I could name a number of things and not be nearly exhaustive: Asking foreign powers to interfere in U.S. elections, accepting the word of despots over his own intelligence community, cavorting with said same despots, backing out of treaties with traditional allies and treating them with contempt, rolling back environmental and civil protections, coddling white supremists and stoking xenophobia, ignoring the U.S. Constitution (this is perhaps because he’s clearly never read it), embezzling from his charities, doing nothing about gun violence, and generally acting like a third-grade schoolyard bully. While I understand the frustration of many modern American voters with the federal government, I was aghast to find out a large swath of the U.S. thought Donald Trump was the answer. In my opinion, I can’t say Donald Trump has never done any good as U.S. president – even a broken clock is right twice a day by accident – but does the good outweigh the bad? No, because all things considered, the person in question wouldn’t be a villain. Inevitably, then, we’re forced to think about what exactly makes someone a villain.

What is a villain? The definition of ‘villain’ is broad throughout various dictionaries, meaning anything from the antithesis of the protagonist in fiction to generally someone doing harm to others in reality. In either case, a villain is typically breaking the law. They are considered dangerous or have behaved heinously towards any given person or group of people. A villain is often considered immoral, and therein lies a problem.

To some people, Donald Trump is a hero, a freedom fighter even. He is a protagonist to all those who feel they’ve been ignored, stepped on, or otherwise aggrieved by the federal government. The current president of the U.S. doesn’t play by the established laws, traditions, or unwritten social contract. This makes him a terrorist to some (in that word’s broadest sense) and a hero to others who feel that the current laws, traditions, and unwritten social contract need to be revised or reset to reflect some unspecified glory somewhere in America’s history. (Possible interpretation: When they felt more entitled.) So if a villain can also be a hero, there must either be something wrong with our definition or perhaps there is no such thing as a villain, objectively speaking.

It’s easy to contend there is something wrong with the definition. Scores of English words are too broad in their definition to be of much use or are outright confusing; ask anyone studying the English language. I contend that in modern U.S. culture, the definition of ‘villain’ is so ambiguous as to be vague to the point that many people would not know when they are behaving as a villain. (I’m not sure which is worse, a villain who knows they’re a villain or one who doesn’t know they’re a villain.) It also seems wrong to label anyone who offends us or that we simply don’t like as a villain, but that does seem to be the manner in which many Americans now operate.

Do villains exist, objectively speaking? Not if all cultures are relative, something we have to assume if not all cultures can agree that murder is wrong. (There’s always a caveat.) Villains can exist within a given culture, certainly, as there is no doubt that people have existed that have flouted the laws of a society they are seemingly a part of. Again, though, this allows a villain to be a hero to society’s downtrodden or any one outside of a society that would like to see that society fail. So it’s hard to say villains actually exist anymore than we can now say heroes exist. Now we can see that heroes merely prop up the rules of society, and this would make them villains in someone’s eyes somewhere.

My original feelings towards the Joker movie have to be misgiven. After all, what does his nemesis Batman do but prop up the rules in Gotham City? Imagine Batman having grown up in 1930’s Germany; what would he have been but a Nazi superhero come WWII? Thank goodness he’s not, but Batman must be seen as a villain by some law enforcement agencies; there are procedures for catching and detaining criminals and subsequently putting them on trial. When this sense of fairness is broken can we agree this is something villainous? In the Joker movie, the central figure that is Arthur Fleck is driven insane by a thousand unfair psychological cuts, so can we blame him for the anarchy that ensues?  Can we blame a mass shooter who goes on a rampage because they think they’ve been treated unfairly?

Hopefully you are saying ‘yes’ because you agree that murdering innocent people, people who have not directly affected the shooter, are being murdered and we have to agree this is wrong no matter what society we belong to. Breaking two fairness rules – making two wrongs – does not result in a right, correct? Unfortunately, any given mass shooter or lawbreaker will have sympathizers. (To say nothing of laws that should be broken either because they are apparently unethical or quite ridiculous.) It would make more sense for a mass shooter to only kill the people that have affected them assuming the punishment fits the crime against them and we’ve never seen that.

If we invoke this rule of fairness which we, Western culture, seem to have forgotten as of late it might be easier to gauge who the villains are when the doctrine of fairness is broken. Given the current impeachment inquiry regarding Donald Trump, his proponents can argue for an investigation into the Bidens ad nauseum, and I’d be okay with that, but so should there just as well be an investigation into Trump as well. The fact that Donald trump obstructs justice in a manner that most of us cannot violates the fairness doctrine. I think it therefore reasonable to construe him as a villain. Then again, his proponents see this ‘unfair’ characterization as exactly what’s wrong with current American culture (despite these same people not wanting to do anything about solving the problem of mass shootings, which I view as villainous). I can’t imagine asking a Donald Trump supporter what they think made Obama such a villain because it seems like their definition is going to wind up being arbitrary. In fairness, though, I am willing to hear them out. Villains on the other hand hear no one out and simply assume they are entirely in the right.

How to Defeat Trump

It’s looking more and more like Donald Trump is going to win the next U.S. presidential election. Why? Mainly because the economy is doing well and that issue is the biggest issue of all. People are content as long as they are able to buy stuff. It doesn’t matter if income disparity is growing at an ever increasing rate or if tax cuts for the rich burden the middle class as long as people have enough money to buy stuff. After all, being an American means being a consumer, so the economy has to do well enough for people to at least have a job. (Or at least a better job than the ones they’re not willing to do which these same people accuse illegal immigrants of taking away. SMH.) If the economy is okay, the sitting president gets elected. That’s all there is to it.

Trump has added benefits, too, as far as his base is concerned. He appeals to evangelicals (despite every evidence to the contrary of being one himself) and white supremacists who still don’t know that white people didn’t invent agriculture, mathematics, clocks, or even the gunpowder and bombs they love so much. Jesus, not even their religion – Christianity – was invented by white people.

That being said, it looks like it’s going to be hard for Trump to lose to any one of the Democratic contenders, especially when all of the contenders’ platforms revolve around immigration. While the situation at the southern U.S. border is terrible, no amount of suffering by illegal immigrants is going to override the economy’s health. (Making any social issue the focus of their campaign is going to get the Democratic nominee defeated.) So not only do the Democrats need to shift their focus away from immigration – sorry, I know it’s really tough –  they need to target the only demographic Trump may not be able to secure: Independent voters. And the only way to sway those independent voters who may have voted for Trump in the previous election is to make Trump look like an ass in debates. Trump already always looks like an ass when he goes off-script but realize that most of the time he’s under control due to the pandering of sycophants such as when he’s talking with Fox News (which is always). While many of us already know Trump’s incapable of making logical rash decisions and sound judgments, this needs to be witnessed on a national stage by the casual independent voter. Independent voters need to be able to say to themselves, “Wow, this guy’s a maniac. And not in a good way.” Get Trump going off-script in debates and the Democratic contender will at least stand a chance.

Democrats, heed my following points well. You risk ignoring me at the country’s peril. The stakes are too high to lose again. Bite the bullet, take the low road for once, and do what needs to be done. Defeat Trump in the debates by following the suggestions I’ve laid out before you:

·        1-The one rule to rule them all (do it immediately and do not let up): Get under Trump’s skin – challenge his vanity, for example, by alleging that Trump wouldn’t have won the election without Russia’s help. Bring up Russian interference and all the people around him that have faced criminal charges. (So much for appointing the ‘best people’ who either leave because they were incompetent or have faced criminal charges. Heck, go so far as to imply Trump has partied with underage teenagers with Jeffery Epstein. The Trump administration can’t vet anyone properly, it seems. Of course, Trump never needs to because he is a great judge of character.) Bring up Russia and the Mueller Report a lot. Point out that Hillary won the popular election. Trump hates that. It doesn’t even matter if what you say about him is true – we live in a post-fact world anyway – say his golf swing sucks. The thing is, once Trump gets flustered, he wings it, and we all know how well that turns out.

·       2-In case you didn’t just hear me, keep bringing up Russia and how Putin is an enemy, not a friend. Ask Trump about election security since he has no plan whatsoever.

·       3-Oh, I forgot to mention that it’s really important that Trump faces a woman for the presidency. Trump has been very successful at challenging every man’s but Putin’s masculinity, so if the Democrats put up Biden or, God forbid, Bernie the Dems will need to get nasty and talk about what Stormy Daniels said about his genitalia. I know that’s wishful thinking but it’s the only defense. Again, it would fluster Trump. He’ll already be annoyed to be facing a woman.

·       4-Bring up all the times Trump has ignored the Constitution – challenge Trump’s knowledge on the Constitution since he has none.

·       5-Trump’s foreign policy has been a disaster and we all know why he wants desperately to be friends with Russia, North Korea, and Saudi Arabia – hotels. Make it known that the Democratic contender will rebuild confidence with our traditional allies and fight terrorism against journalists with sanctions. Accuse Trump of being played for a fool by North Korea.

·       6-The Trump administration’s environmental record is another (literal) disaster to harp on. A central issue of the Democratic nominee’s platform should be combatting climate change and cleaning up the environment. Bring facts about how environmental disaster is impacting areas Trump voters live in. This will have Trump frothing at the mouth about global warming being a hoax. Ask him which oil company told him that.

·       7-Ask Trump where his health care plan is after saying the GOP would become the party of healthcare. Healthcare should be another central issue for the Democratic nominee. And sorry, the Democratic nominee will need to back off of saying free healthcare for illegal immigrants. That annoys even me and I’m pretty liberal on most social issues. If you’re not going to take care of Americans first, you’ll lose the election in a landslide.

·       8-If Trump says he’s doing well and the economy proves it, bring up the tariffs and the farmer bailouts. This is how you’re going to combat accusations of socialism, which Trump is going to do often. Ask Trump if he even knows what socialism is. For that matter, ask him if he knows what fascism is and how it relates to how private companies like Twitter and Facebook do their business. He won’t know how to answer. Watch him talk out of his ass.

·       9-Take Trump to task for all his vacations at taxpayer expense, which Trump accused Obama of doing. Ask Trump why it is okay for him and why it wasn’t for Obama. Point out his never ending hypocrisy; if Obama was such an ineffectual president why has Trump spent so much time rolling back so many of Obama’s implemented policies?

·       10-Like Trump’s associates who face criminal charges, accuse Trump of pandering to ‘good people’ like racist white supremacists and fringe evangelicals who are curbing women’s rights. Attack Trump for attacking the four congresswomen who are supposed to ‘go back where they came from’ even though three of the four were born Americans. Bring up Trump’s racism which has now been fully realized. When Trump mention immigrants, outline the horrible things Trump’s base is doing. Statistically, you’re more likely to be shot by a white male than an immigrant and everyone knows it.

·       11-Bring up Trump’s nepotism and how he overruled the FBI to give his family members clearances. Ask him what makes his family more qualified for certain positions rather than people with actual qualifications.

·       12-Accuse Fox News of being state run TV and all their instances of fake news. Bring up Trump attacking journalists just because they’re not kind to him. Call Trump a snowflake who is so easily offended that he shouldn’t be running the country.

·       13-If for some reason Trump should talk about the Democratic nominee’s personal relationships, they’ll need to get nasty and talk about Donald’s affairs and how the women he sleeps with aren’t exactly the brightest. Sucks to have to insult the First Lady, but remember that she’s an immigrant and us Americans don’t like immigrants.

·       14-Bring up his taxes and investigations. Ask him what he’s hiding; if he’s not guilty of any wrongdoing, he should release his taxes.

·       15-Address his tax cut for the rich and the future consequences. For once, do some fearmongering. Except it’s not fearmongering. As always, it’s going to come down on the middle class and they make up the majority of voters.

·       You may have to go way off topic to point these things out and Trump might even recognize you’re off topic (doubt it) but it’s the same as trying to get Trump to stay on topic. The chances of Trump staying on topic are about the same as him staying on top of the same woman.

It’s going to be a longshot for the Democrats to pull off a presidential victory in the next election unless they get ballsy. You can’t fight insanity with sanity. You will lose every time. Are your principles really worth four more years of a complete shit-show? Please, Democrats, please grow a spine just this once. Asking for more than one-half of the United States.

PHILOSOPHY: DEADER THAN EVER

Be wary of certainty; one’s degree of inaccuracy is often inversely proportional to their insistence of accuracy. – Theory Parker

I find myself needing to leave social media. The question is not why; it’s a waste of time if you don’t have an undying need for people to like you. If there’s any question about leaving social media, it would be why not? What do any of us get out of social media? Yes, there’s the dopamine boost we get from people ‘liking’ something we post – that undying need again – but this simply amounts to one of the many drugs we could all do without. Among its other uses, social media is used to announce the ongoings of our businesses, which really is just 21^st century panhandling. (Worst among this trend is GoFundMe, in which everyone begs for money because somehow their situation is unique and deserving of the rest of us throwing our money at it. On a rare occasion, special circumstances do arise or an actually useful invention come along, but spare me your need to raise money for your classroom.) Perhaps social media gives us a chance to congregate with other like minds, albeit in the most superficial way because really, who has time for an entire phone call, an entire conversation? I know I don’t because I’m too busy working, working all the time, with people, and when I’m done with that I don’t want to deal with more people. This is not to say I don’t like my family and friends; I’m just exhausted. And I’m more exhausted by what I see on the internet. We look at posts from family and friends and it’s never too long before something – some kind of train wreck often political in nature – catches our eye. Noooooo, I often say to myself of some headline before being forced by curiosity, amazement, or (usually) disgust to delve deeper. This cannot be the world we are living in. It just can’t.

The internet is without question one of the worst things to ever happen to mankind. Yes, it has allowed us to connect on an unprecedented level with people far and wide. And yes, it has allowed us access to an unprecedented amount of information. Both of these things is what has kept the world from turning away from the insanity it has always known, instead using the internet to strengthen beliefs and tribal ties. Instead of using the access to information to study different cultures and perhaps change archaic ways of thinking, people dove headfirst into the concrete pool of confirmation bias to strengthen their ties to whatever community it is they consider themselves a part of. The internet gave people access to others of like mind and hence we have been given a world that instead of getting any better* has given new rise to authoritative governments around the globe. Militant Islam would not have nearly as many members as they do now if not for the internet. Vladmir Putin controls the internet and all other media in Russia to keep himself in power. China and North Korea likewise control what can be accessed through the internet. And you simply cannot go on the internet in America without catching a glimpse of the alt-right and the regressive left frothing at you and each other. Even if you somehow avoid that, there is sure to be someone who has something nasty to say about something no matter how innocuous the post.

Given an unfettered path to confirming one’s bias,’ philosophy became roadkill along the way. The last thing you’ll ever read on the internet is someone beginning their post with, “I may be wrong, but…” There is simply no reflection of thought, no self-analysis of ideas or one’s beliefs. Social media has become nothing more than a game of saying how right one thinks they are about whatever bullshit they want to believe. And surely if one uses ALL CAPS to say it, it becomes all the more true. There is simply no reasoning with anyone who uses the internet on a regular basis. Try to think of the last time you actually changed someone’s mind – difficult isn’t it? I don’t think I’ve done it myself since 2010 when I showed a college freshman the data on CFC’s and how it affected the ozone layer, thus convincing him that human activity can have an effect on the environment. This was a rare and exceptional case perhaps because the young man’s mind was open to new ideas. But this is not the case for most people of any age. Entrenched belief is difficult to dislodge because people hate to be wrong; most people see being wrong as a defect instead of a virtue, something to learn from.

Philosopher’s themselves are also to blame for the death of philosophy. Physicist Stephen Hawking declared that philosophy was dead back in 2011, making note that today’s philosophers have not kept up with or have failed to take into account the data emerging from the sciences. And why would they when most philosophers’ views can be ‘confirmed’ by others of similar thinking on the internet? You can search the ‘pros’ of communism with at-the-ready counter-arguments against its detractors within seconds, nevermind any lack of objectivity. Unfortunately philosophers are people, too, and like most people are typically not above confirmation bias. Despite real-world evidence that communism simply doesn’t work in practice, many young idealists still think it can. (Ah, ah, ah –Like every other attempt at communism, China is only communist on paper.)

The failure of philosophers to ‘keep up’ combined with the effect the internet has had on people has given Americans a country hijacked by the regressive left and the alt-reich. You read these people’s comment’s on the internet every day, whose typical comment is usually rife with some false assertion and/or unblinking hypocrisy. False assertions are one thing – we don’t typically have time to fact-check everything – but the hypocrisy is breathtaking. For example, Putin and Russia were basically enemies during President Obama’s tenure but because Trump is friends with Putin, Russia was somehow never our enemy after Trump’s election. Or take Sarah Huckabee Sander’s attack on a business owner for booting her out of a restaurant while agreeing that a bakery had the right to refuse gay people service. But the regressive left is no prize either, who can’t see its own policy of denying anyone with a difference of opinion to speak at college campuses as fascist. You also cannot bring up the atrocities of any other race throughout history as only white people have committed crimes against humanity. Anyone who dares think is either dead or is dying in the middle.

All of this is why I’m a misanthrope. We can’t have discussions anymore, as if we ever could. For fuck sake, female scientists have had a historically rough time being taken seriously even though data should speak for itself. If scientists can’t be rational, what hope is there for everyone else? There is no hope. We’ll die by our own hand having never learned from the Roman Empire even though their collapse was well-documented. And if any philosopher hasn’t given up yet, they will eventually be hunted down and murdered by whichever side ultimately wins the culture war. That is what authoritative regimes do, after all. The U.S. is dealing with two right now that are engaged in an ideological war that will ironical kill nothing but ideas.

Depends on their PR person.