Category Archives: Politics

My Thoughts on the Infamous Election

Politics, , , , , , , , ,

governmentSo, I hear there was some kind of election that took place a week or so ago, and for some reason everyone seems to be a bit stressed about the results. Knowing how much my fan base cares so much about how I think about things, I thought I would just make a couple of comments about the whole thing. (Disclaimer: No one cares one iota about what I think, so I’m just feeding my ego by pretending that people actually do)

  1. The result. During the primary, I remember stating numerous times that Trump really shouldn’t be discounted. I even described the whole situation as a potential “mule” effect, meaning that it may be one of those situations that defies predictive algorithms and statistical approaches. People said I was stupid and ignored me. They pointed to people like Nate Silver and said that was why I was wrong. Turns out, Nate Silver was extremely wrong (and still going on talk shows pretending that somehow he really wasn’t, even though he most certainly was). People are now starting to come out of the woodwork claiming that they knew this was going to happen all along. They didn’t. They were so completely wrong and just don’t want to admit it to themselves.
  2. Hillary was the worst candidate the Democrats could have ever run for president. I kept saying this to people. It wasn’t because I liked Bernie. It was because I really didn’t like Hillary. And I suspected that a great deal of people in the country didn’t either. Enough to mean the Electoral College might seriously disappoint her. The responses I got from people were quite hostile, so I stopped talking about it. And then people I really respected started revealing they “were with her” and I felt bad talking in negative terms to those people who I didn’t want to get into social biffs with. Well, she lost. And that’s just one of those things. First off, she was never all that popular with America in the first place. She was beaten horribly by Obama eight years before because people wanted pretty much anyone but her. This time around, the Democratic Party basically railroaded America into having no choice but her, so everyone had to sign onto her name as “with her”, and when the numbers were finally counted, people weren’t really with her. Oh, sure, she won the popular vote, but let’s put this into some perspective. She was running against what should have been a sure thing: A candidate who alienated practically every demographic, spoke out loud with his inner voice, and didn’t give a flying crap what anyone thought about him. And he still managed to beat her on the state by state basis so that the Electoral College is now his. She lost. He won. Except people don’t want to accept that and will continue complaining about it for the next couple of years as she’s unemployed and he’s the President of the United States.
  3. This should be the end of the Clinton Dynasty. Bill was great. No one wanted Hillary. Which means this should be the last we hear from them. Except that’s not going to be the case. In a few years from now, we’re going to start hearing about the GREAT CHELSEA CLINTON, who has actually done absolutely nothing in her life other than be the daughter of a president and a loser for president. Yet, she’ll eventually emerge as “OUR ONLY CHOICE” some day in the near future. Mark my words. The girl who has done nothing but receive a special network job ONLY because she’s someone daughter will one day be a shoo-in for political office. And we’ll have to endure more years of a dynasty that really should have been contained with one excellent president.
  4. Protests. Yes, I understand people are upset that Trump won when they didn’t want him. But rational choice statistics causes me to think: “Why protest if NOTHING can possibly change?” Protesting Trump isn’t going to lead to a recount and a sudden declaration that we were wrong, that Clinton should now be president. Protesting isn’t going to change the minds of the people who backed Trump (or any Republican) especially in an election that was much more about not wanting one candidate as much as another. Boycott businesses? Sure, but what purpose does that serve? Before and during the election, we heard all sorts of horrific comments from CEOs of Papa Johns, Hobby Lobby, Chick Fil A and a bunch of others, but people are still shopping at those places and not changing their ways. Boycotts don’t work when you weren’t originally a daily shopper at the place you’ve decided never to shop at in the future. So, about the only purpose protesting is doing right now is to serve one’s own personal desire to be upset, kind of like when little kids scream until someone acknowledges them. And like those kids, when no one acknowledges them, nothing really changes. And if the only acknowledgement you get is to be arrested (and have no support from the community around you as a result), then all you managed to do was start up your criminal record which will probably make it more difficult to get work in the future. Part of what made dumping tea into Boston Harbor in the 18th century turn out to be a good idea was that the community recognized this as a positive thing and supported future protests. None of the protests I’ve seen seem capable of doing that because for the most part, no one even knows the protests are even happening, other than to be inconvenienced for a few moments (like when an actor gets arrested for climbing up the side of the Bay Bridge and stopping traffic; most people are generally just pissed at the actor for making their commutes a bit longer).
  5. Going Forward. This is a more difficult one to discuss because our country seems to be in a bit of a pickle because few people want to move forward after the election, yet the reality is that eventually exactly that is going to have to happen. Trump is going to be president. That doesn’t get postponed or changed just because half of half of the country voted for the other candidate (the other half of the country didn’t care enough to even show up to vote). So, come January, things either move forward or we end up in total anarchy. Historically, and statistically, I don’t see the latter case happening, meaning that business will be as normal, even if a bunch of people walk around all pissed about it.
  6. Movements. The biggest casualty of this election, in my opinion, is the population of people who have gained great ground over the years that are completely frozen in time right now because alternative political forces routed them and beat them in the field of battle itself. This means a lot of people who were walking around with chips on their shoulders, convinced they were not only power centers but the power brokers themselves, are kind of on the outskirts of power, realizing that all of America didn’t respond to their proclamations as they were expecting. A lot of liberal power centers were seriously humiliated on that day, including boisterous celebrities, the Daily Show (and numerous other talk show personalities as well), and entire news media outlets. A sea change really should take place here, but won’t because the personalities involved will make the wrong assessments and continue to do the same things they did before, except now they’ll try to shame the conservatives who liberals have never learned generally don’t take that sort of bait (something they should have learned during the George W Administration). An example of what I’m talking about: I watched for about two weeks before the election of how many times The Daily Show went from being a satirical news site to being a cynical news site to straight out becoming an advocate for the Hillary campaign. I used to defend The Daily Show from conservative attacks, but wow, they were so over the top with one-sided commentary (not even humor) that I began to equate Trevor Noah with a Hillary talking bot. If that sort of thing continues, as I suspect it will, then we’re in for a very interesting four or eight years of negativity and shame approaches to reporting the news.
  7. Moving to Canada? This “threat” needs to just be removed from the English grammar process. We don’t live in a world where you can easily just move to another country any longer. Unless you’re already a citizen of Canada, your chances of being able to move to Canada are pretty close to nil. First, you have to have the economics to allow yourself to make such a move, apply to that country itself (which has quotas and immigration much like the US does), and you have to have some kind of job lined up for when you get there. If you don’t, your chances of being accepted aren’t really there. So the two prongs of this “threat” need to disappear. First, the threat is baseless and rarely ever going to be carried out. Second, trying to hold someone to it because that person made the threat needs to also understand those practical implications. A person threatening to move to Canada and someone actually being able to do it are quite disconnected. Now, a number of celebrities have made that threat, but if someone is a celebrity and that fame requires working in a country that isn’t Canada, again, its a baseless threat and should be laughed at and never taken seriously. I imagine we’re going to hear a bunch of conservatives shaming liberals these days about their threats to leave to Canada and that they never did. Just stop it already. Both of you.
  8. Future legalities. This is the one thing I find interesting because this election exposed both Clinton and Trump to all sorts of potentially illegal activity that should be addressed. From foundations that promised money to Haiti and never delivered to universities that might have cheated people out of lots of money, including federal funding, there is a lot that needs to be accounted for. I suspect NONE of it to be addressed over the next few years. And that’s really all I’m going to say about that.
  9. So, we had our election and now we’re back to the wait for our next election. Remember Rousseau’s claim (reworded for clarity): We’re only a democracy when we vote; at all other times, we’re under the control of the people who run our authoritarian government. Remember that as you pay your mandatory taxes and register your cars for the permission to drive on your country’s roads at a speed mandated by government representatives and enforced by uniformed men and women who carry guns. It’s our democracy.

A political media trend I wish would end yesterday

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donald-trump-hillary-clinton

I don’t know if anyone else has noticed this, but I’m getting really sick and tired of media portrayals of political people that include unflattering pictures of the politician, mainly because the publication responsible for the article doesn’t like the politician. I don’t mean a one-off picture here and there, but I mean EVERY media outlet using the same image over and over again because it’s the worst picture of the politician they can find. Like the one I’ve included with this post. I hate this picture. I’m sure Donald Trump hates this picture. Yet, media outlets that hate Donald Trump continue to use it nonstop. I imagine we’re going to see several thousand uses of it during this upcoming election.

There are a couple they’ve been using of Hillary as well. Mostly they are the ones that show her laughing as she’s pointing at something. She needs to stop doing that because I have yet to see a flattering picture of her doing that. Ever. But at the same time, media outlets need to STOP USING THOSE PICTURES. I could understand if the article is about the picture, but they never are. It’s usually an irrelevant connection (meaning, no connection) but they use it because it makes the politician look stupid.

hillary-clinton-unflattering-photo-cheering

Please stop doing it. NOW!

Popular television treats politics so that conflict is inevitable–and is slowly making us comfortable with it

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Last week, I spent some free time watching the political drama, Madame Secretary with Tea Leoni. Well, actually, I didn’t watch it WITH her, but it does star her. And for those of you who don’t know, the story is about an ex-CIA section chief who gets the call to become Secretary of State after the previous one dies in a plane crash. There’s lots of intrigue and “West Wing”-like drama, so it’s one of those kinds of shows. But after I finished watching the first season, something started to stick with me, and it’s been bothering me ever since.

The whole show seemed to be about an intelligent woman who basically makes decisions to keep the US from falling off the brink of disaster. Weekly. Which means that there’s usually some huge incident that threatens all sorts of horrible ramifications, and through some quick-thinking ideas, she fixes it. And then it started to get me to think about other shows that are similar to this. There was the previously mentioned The West Wing, which pretty much had the same kind of crisis of the week as its main element. There’s Scandal, which is basically the same thing. There was, for a very short time, Commander in Chief, which yes, did the same thing. There are comedies, like Veep, that do this sort of thing. Then there are action shows like 24, The Unit, Contagion, Flashpoint, and so many others that usually involve some kind of national emergency that requires people to fix those situations almost overnight.

Which got me to thinking that this is how government is being introduced to a lot of people who probably don’t know a lot about what people in government actually do. I remember years back when I told someone my title was “counterintelligence agent” and that person immediately assumed I was an American James Bond, going undercover and killing bad guys. Okay, it was exactly like that, but I digress. No, it wasn’t, but let’s just leave it at that.

The point is: If popular media presents the idea that government is nothing but a group of people who work from one crisis to the next, how hard is it to assume that people are going to start thinking that crisis situations are natural and to be expected? I remember someone once asking me what it was like being a CI agent, and I said it was usually boring and lots of paperwork. The person thought I was lying to protect her.

I’m worried that this sort of exposure the population has to “government” is exactly what makes it possible for people in government to argue that we need things like the PATRIOT Act or waterboarding of prisoners for information that they rarely give up during torture. When people discovered that the NSA was wiretapping Americans, the response was along the lines of “duh, of course they are.” That really scares me for the future of this country because I think we’re moving down a path that is taking us quite far away from the original path this country was set on when we first embraced the ideas of liberty and democracy.

I’d say more, but my show is on, and I need to make sure Jack Bauer manages to save the day.

The Problem of Mapping an Historically Paranoid Country Like South Korea

Politics, Relationships, , , , , , , ,
Yeah, he's North Korean, but I bet he doesn't like giving out maps either.
Yeah, he’s North Korean, but I bet he doesn’t like giving out maps either.

Today, it was learned that Google is having some problems with its desire to map South Korea. The reasons are varied, but certain little things like an eternal war footing with North Korea (they have a ceasefire, not an actual peace treaty from the war in the 1950s) and a history in South Korea of making sure that maps are a thing for government rather than the people, make it that much more difficult for a company that has a desire to map every kilometer of land that exists on the planet.

Strangely enough, I once dealt with this problem. Decades ago.

You see, I was a young counterintelligence agent working in Tonduchon, South Korea. Tongduchon was one of those tiny towns slightly south of the demilitarized zone (DMZ) in South Korea. Basically, the town consisted of peasants who were formerly farmers, newly crafted shopkeepers, and a military post of US soldiers who were tasked with defending the DMZ in case the north should decide to take a trip south. It was my job to assist in countering any intelligence gathering efforts of hostile armies, forces and entities. This meant I spent a lot of time out in bars, getting to know the local population and getting a real sense of the lay of the land.

At one point, I was talking to one of my colleagues in the Criminal Investigation Division (CID) field office on post, and while we were downing a couple of Korean beers at a local bar, he remarked that it was really bizarre that we were both part of agencies that conducts investigations of the local area, yet neither one of us has ever been able to find a map of the area. Stores didn’t sell them. Our intelligence assets didn’t actually have them to give out to rank and file soldiers, although I’m sure they would have emerged overnight if a war was to have started the night before. Basically, if you wanted a map of the local area, you pretty much had to make one yourself.

So, I tasked my assistant at the time to go about trying to become an amateur cartographer. It was more of a joke than anything else, but he was one of those assistants who took a “hey, wouldn’t it be a good idea?” as a direct command, and he set out to start creating a rudimentary map of the local area, specifically the town of Tonduchon. To be honest, it wasn’t bad. It wasn’t great, like an actual map, but it would at least be enough for us to put stick pins in it to designated what was going on in which location.

Still, for our purposes, and for the purposes of CID at the time, we really needed something a little more official.

So, I did what I normally did. I went to the one place I figured there had to be a working map of the area. I went to the local police station.

I should probably point out that counterintelligence agents back then had a weird relationship with the police agencies of South Korea. We were given national police identity cards that designated us as representatives of the national organization. It was one of those cards that I discovered worked well with some people and horribly with others. Let me explain. A colleague of mine in our office was one of those “America is great and is here to fix everything” kinds of agents. This meant that whenever he met with a local national, he tended to receive really bad results, and thus, determined that the population of South Korea was jealous of Americans and, thus, would rarely cooperate with anything that the US needed. He also spoke zero words of Korean, which meant he was always speaking through one of our translators.

I, however, was lucky enough to have been put through the Defense Language Institute to learn Korean, so when I went out into the population, I could have one on one conversations with the locals. Surprisingly, when you speak directly to people and respect them for being the experts in the fields they represent, you tend to get much different results than those received by others who treat the locals like foreigners. Strangely enough, that’s something we should have learned from the British and their adventures long before ours, yet for the most part, we kind of suck at learning from history. But I digress.

So, I went to the local police department and introduced myself. I discovered at this time that not once had anyone actually come to engage the local police or to ask them what they thought about what was going on. I found this out because the assistant police chief took me into a room where he showed me a ton of files that had been prepared to turn over to US representatives should they ever show up and inquire about what was going on in Tongduchon. I literally had to come back with three agents in order to carry all of the files out of the place and back to our field office. Keep in mind, this was a few years before databases and computer technology would have made this so much easier.

So, I sat down with the assistant police chief and asked him about maps. His answer was kind of surprising. He asked me if I was interested in accompanying him on a raid his people were going to be conducting later that afternoon. I said sure and then asked if it would be appropriate for me to invite one of my colleagues from CID (as I thought this was more their field than mine). He said sure. So, a few hours later, the two of us met the Korean police at a local nightclub and observed them raid the establishment. What I discovered they were doing was enforcing local ordinances and license checks. However, at the end, I noticed the assistant police chief was meeting with a couple of young prostitutes in a side room. Part of me thought the worst thoughts, thinking this was about hooking up two GIs with local prostitutes, but then discovered the reason we were there was to be introduced to these young women. They were informants for the local police, and he thought it might be a good idea to have us make contact with them as well (I discovered later it was more about the fact that I spoke Korean that caused him to think it was appropriate).

Anyway, a few days later, my assistant knocked on the door to my office to tell me that a young Korean man was at our door and wanted to speak to me. After he was let in, I discovered he was one of the local police officers. Once inside, he presented me with two envelopes, each one containing a map of the local area. He said one was for my friend (the CID agent who accompanied us).

That was how we managed to get a map of the local area back then. What I discovered is that sometimes you have to go through extra hoops to get the things you need, and sometimes you have to make friends where you weren’t planning to make them in the first place. What I find amazing is that South Korea is still so closed to revealing information as it was decades ago. I’m curious to see what Google will end up doing to accomplish their goals.

My Run-In With the Klan in the Mid1980s

Politics, Relationships, , , , , , , ,
The protest is getting out of hand
The protest is getting out of hand (image from in game screen shot of City of Heroes)

It was shortly after West Point, and I was stationed at Fort Knox, Kentucky. One weekend I had time off, so a few soldiers and I decided we were going to take a trip to Nashville for a concert that was taking place there. This was in the middle of the 1980s during a period of time when the United States was starting to regain some of its image around the world, as much of the 1970s was spent recovering from the disastrous Vietnam War era. Reagan was president, the Soviet Union still had years until it collapsed, Star Wars had finished its original trilogy, the Cosby Show taught us values from someone who still had a lot of respect throughout the country, and there was a sense that things in the future were going to be improving because so many technologies appeared to be in our headlights, like microwaves, cell phones, the Internet and some device called a Rubik’s Cube.

So we hopped into my Mercury Capri, all five of us, and made our trip south. In case you’ve never taken the trip by car before, it’s a really nice drive through beautiful country.

Anyway, somewhere around the border of Kentucky and Tennessee (to be honest, I don’t remember which side of the border when this happened), we came to a huge intersection that was kind of bogged down with traffic. It felt kind of out of the ordinary because traffic had been moving so smoothly only moments before. And then I discovered why.

On all four corners of the intersection were people dressed in white robes handing out pamphlets to people in their cars. For some reason, this spectacle seemed to slow traffic down to a standstill. It took me a couple of moments to realize what was happening, but traffic was moving slowly because each driver was having somewhat of an impassioned conversation with whatever person in robes showed up alongside that driver’s car. Unfortunately, I couldn’t hear any of their conversations, but part of me to this day hopes that the words exchanged were not friendly, but I honestly don’t know any of those details.

This was the Ku Klux Klan handing out their pamphlets to the people who were driving through their county.

Now, I’d never seen one of those people before in real life. Sure, I’d heard all of the stories about them, watched films of some of their notorious deeds in the past and knew that since the early days of this country they represented some of the most vile sentiments people could possibly have. But seeing them in person, I had no clue what their intentions might be, or even how much of the past history the group made was part of what they might be doing on that particular day.

Then I reached the position where they were located. They were blocking traffic, one person standing in front of a car to make sure you had to stop while another came over to the window to speak and offer their pamphlets. I was kind of oblivious to what was really going on, but the person who came to my window knocked on it and gestured for me to roll down the window. Somewhat curious, I did.

Okay, two things are important to this story. First, the person who knocked on my window was a female Klan member. Second, well, I should have probably mentioned a little bit more about the group of people in my car.

There were five soldiers in my car, tightly packed into it. The guy in the middle back seat was white, and so was I. The guy sitting next to me and the two men seated near the doors in the backseat were all African-Americans. Every person in the car was a seasoned veteran and currently serving in the Army.

So I rolled down my window, and I was not known for holding back on anything I had to say, so the first thing out of my mouth was: “So, they’re letting women into the Klan now?”

The woman stared at me for a second and responded with: “Women have been in the Klan for years.”

On instinct, I said: “Wow, how progressive of them. I guess they let anyone into it these days.”

To that, the guy seated next to me crouched over to the window and said. “That’s so cool. How long until I get to join?”

And I think that’s the moment that she realized the car was packed with a mixture of people she was probably not all that comfortable with seeing. The two guys in the backseat yelled out: “Can I have a pamphlet?” and “What time are your meetings, cause most of my mornings and afternoons are kind of busy these days with Army shit?”

The woman turned to her partner who was blocking my car and pointed to the car, I guess trying to figure out what she should do. I helped them make a quicker decision instead.

I said: “If he doesn’t move, I’m running his ass over.”

The guy in front of my car motioned for one of other partners, kind of trying to motion him over to the car or at least to assist him in blocking the car. Now, I don’t know what they were intending to do, but let’s put things into perspective. We were all trained killers and even without guns could do some serious damage to someone if we needed to, so if they would have stopped us and forced us out of the car, even if they were armed, the chances are there would have been three fewer Klan members alive that day.

I also noticed that one of the guys in the backseat, a part time power lifter who people used to call “The Tank” (which is someone ironic because he was an armored division officer) had his hand on the door handle and was about to step out and start an encounter that wouldn’t end well for anyone. In my rear view mirror, I could see the whole group was already transitioning into the “fight” of fight and flight mode.

Instead, I gunned the engine and just lurched forward. The woman at my window jumped back and the guy directly in front of me saw me coming and literally dived to the side of the road. The other guy that was heading towards the car also jumped back, realizing that I was flooring it and had no intentions of remembering my car had a brake pedal.

So we continued driving until I stopped a few miles out so the adrenaline could subside. One of the guys n the back yelled: “Let’s go back and fuck them up!”

But we didn’t. We continued on and made it in time for the concert we went to see. A good time was had by all.

That was my one and only encounter with the Klan. But I never forgot it.

The Problem With Our Government and Classified Information

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For those of you who already know me or about me, you know I used to be a counterintelligence agent. I worked with and about classified information. It was basically my job. What I’m about to say now is probably going to be taken as a bit of hypocrisy or at least with a sense of strangeness. You see, I don’t think most of what is classified these days really should be classified at all. I’m being nice by saying “most”, but in actuality, I mean none of it.

The first part of the problem is that we classify way too much. If some decision-maker thinks there’s a fear of our “enemies” finding out something about what we’re doing, he or she immediately feels that information needs to be classified. In my time, I’ve seen people feel the need to classify newspaper articles. Yeah, I’m serious. Mass-printed and mass-distributed newspaper articles. Someone in our government (and by someone, I mean a LOT of people) reads an article in a newspaper and then decides that information needs to be classified, so it gets made “Confidential”. Then someone up that chain reads the release, feels it’s even more dangerous if our enemies find ou about it and upgrades it to “Secret” or even “Top Secret.” Meanwhile, some farmer in Utah is reading that exact document with his morning coffee because it came from a newspaper, not from the CIA. Yeah, that happens a lot.

Which brings me to the philosophical part of the argument. If we were an autocratic government, or a dictatorship, or some country that basically lives its existence by doing evil deeds in the shadows, well, then, I would think we need to classify a lot of things. But that’s not supposed to be our government. We’re supposed to be a nation that exists as one where the people make the decisions. The people decide who goes into office. The people decide who creates new laws. And at a lot of times, we vote for a lot of the laws that run our very lives. At no time did we elect a dictator-in-chief, nor did we ever sign up for a Master-of-Secrets. We have a free press because our news people are supposed to be able to tell us what’s really going on so we can properly decide on the right people to keep representing us for the laws we would like to see enacted.

A perfect society should have no secrets. At all.

I know the immediate response to this is “but what about our enemies???” The thought is that we need to keep certain information from our enemies to make sure they don’t know what actions we are taking against them.

Okay, why are we taking actions against anyone to begin with? Cause they don’t like us? Cause they hate us? Cause they do dastardly things targeted at us?

What would change if we were more upfront about the information we collect? We have entire police agencies that operate mostly in the sunlight, yet they are still quite capable of stopping a lot of really bad people. Sometimes, they don’t tell the whole story of what they’re doing, and most of the time when that information has been revealed, it turns into a bit of a scandal, and the Monday Morning Quarterbacks indicate that they probably should have been a lot more honest about what they were doing. And even if that wasn’t the case, our police agencies collect information until they make the arrest. And then the courts are privy to the information. We generally don’t try people with “secret” information. The few times we have tried to do that, it has backfired horribly. And yeah, I know there are a couple of instances going on where we’re doing exactly that. Mark my words: Those will backfire horribly, too.

An important question to ask is why do we have enemies in the first place that we have to keep information from? I think if we dug deep enough, we could probably find some circumstances we did in the past that made things as they are. Some, maybe not. But that still doesn’t indicate a reason for having to keep information confidential from people we generally don’t trust. If the Iranians know that we have lots of cruise missiles on ships parked off their coast, knowing about it is probably not going to do them a whole lot of good. But even so, I’m not advocating telling our “enemies” about our troop movements, but about changing our mindset from one of secrecy to one of sunshine diplomacy. We are a very powerful country. If a potential enemy sees us on their doorstep, classifying stupid memos doesn’t change the fact that they’re going to realize that they’re being watched, and they’re being watched by a pretty powerful potential foe.

You see, the problem I perceive is that our secrecy is being used as a type of cloaked power that it was never designed to be. The press, our check on government, is told that it can’t find certain things out because of “national security” when most people know there’s absolutely no national security at stake in most cases that phrase is used. What’s generally at stake is embarrassing information that certain actors don’t want to reveal to the press because it might cause them to lose their leverage in the cloaked power of secrecy they currently maintain. A fresh slate means that people can make honest decisions based on honest observations. Way too often in the past, someone in power has stated that something cannot be revealed because “government knows better”, which is slang for “some moron in government thinks he knows better than you do.” Sorry, but I call them as I see them.

The biggest problem I perceive in my suggestion is that people will constantly cling to the old adages of Cold War philosophy, thinking that diplomacy is a weapon rather than a tool. We still think in terms of how another country can benefit us rather than how we can use this mega machine of democracy to develop more democracies and, in turn, fix our own. Because in case you don’t realize it, since 911, we’ve moved further away from democracy than we have in decades, and we’re still cascading down that path towards oppression. And most of us don’t even see it because we’ve been blinded by nearly a century of having gone the other way.

Government should never be used as a vehicle to drive over its citizens, but as an implement to take those citizens to somewhere better. Right now, we’re going through a pre-election period where absolutely NONE of the candidates are talking about that better road. Well, one of them maybe, but he’s being cast aside as inconvenient rather than as an actual player. Which means we’re going to have nearly an entire decade of continuing to travel down the wrong path without ever realizing we’re not even traveling to the place we set out to go when we first started.

Why white privilege is the wrong battle to be waged in seeking equality and justice

Economics, News, Politics, , , , , , ,

There’s been a lot of talk lately involving the concept of “white privilege” and how quite often a Caucasian will misunderstand his or her benefits of being white while trying to appear just towards those who do not maintain the same generic status. Some examples are the #alllivesmatter versus #blacklivesmatter, which is often used as an erroneous argument of “I care about everyone, not just a particular race.” And then from there a whole diatribe is usually leveled on the idea that anyone who is born white exists in a world of privilege that others can never reach.

Some of it is correct, but in reality, people with diabolical purposes are using these arguments to create a false dichotomy, something I often equate to a framing issue rather than a normative one. Let me explain.

The argument is that someone born white has certain advantages that are not afforded to someone who was not. Examples include: Cops tend to shoot non-whites more than whites; whites are less likely to be convicted of crimes than are non-whites, a white male with a prison record is more likely to get a job than a non-white person with a prison record, etc. Many of these can be summed up in this comic about white privilege. What people don’t seem to understand when they post these kinds of arguments linking to this type of information is that it doesn’t mean what they think it means.

word means When someone makes that argument about white privilege, it is followed by an insinuation that those are actually benefits, rather than lucky brushes against much worse circumstances. The fact that I’m a white male should not then be met with “well, aren’t you lucky that you don’t get railroaded by the system by cops who might hate you.” It should be met with “cops shouldn’t be railroading anyone anywhere”. It’s like we’re already on top of a slippery slope that is continuing to force us back to unwanted situations rather than we should all be on a flat surface trying to make sure that no one creates the slippery slope in the first place.

This is why #alllivesmatter is not an adequate substitute for #blacklivesmatter. Sure, all lives matter, but all lives are not being targeted. Black lives are. Therefore, a movement to make sure that doesn’t happen became necessary. #Alllivesmatter creates an “issue” that doesn’t actually exist so that if that takes the other’s place, we’re left with the situation we stared with: People doing nothing because it doesn’t affect them.

So, what’s my point? Stop focusing on white privilege because that is not the problem. The problem is the opposite: Minority Disadvantage. THAT is the issue that should be dealt with rather than trying to create a wedge between those being oppressed and those who might actually care that there are people being oppressed. This is why Occupy Wall Street was such a powerful voice that quickly got squelched by those who feared its power. The real oppressors are the ones who actually do have the power, the one percenters who control manufacturing, media and even the police forces. Without turning this into some outdated communist manifesto, the problem is that the people who need to band together aren’t because the people creating the messages for them to follow have done so in a way that only creates an us versus them dynamic but in a way that never actually addresses what needs to be addressed.

So, how do you find answers in a civilization that is so blinded to its actual problems? Well, we could do what my grade school teachers always said: Start at the beginning. How did it happen? If we trace the time back hundreds of years, it’s not hard to figure out that the government we live under was created by rich people who wanted to continue being rich (meaning others would have to be poor). This isn’t the social model people constantly think we’re living under because that social model would actually look at the group of people around us as equal and in need of the same benefits as everyone else. We don’t live in that society. Sure, we pretend to, but when it comes down to it, a person who has little is going to always have little to none, whereas someone with much is probably going to end up with even more. That’s the civilization we live in.

How do you recognize that if you’re currently living within its infrastructure? I can conduct a simple experiment just by walking into a bar and talking to the first woman I see. In the US, the chances are that the conversation will hover on what my job is (and how much I make) before it turns into anything more interesting. I’ve had this same conversation in many other nations, and strangely enough, it was usually me that thought I had to bring up money as apart of what makes me be me. It took years to realize that the further away I moved from centralized capitalism, the less focus there was on income as what someone is worth.

So back to my original question. What steps should we take to lead to a future of equality and justice?

I hate to go all Socratic, but if you want justice what steps are you taking to actually achieve it? Do you hold conversations with people who aren’t like you? Do you comment when someone says things that lead to injustice and inequality? I’ve listened to conversations in mixed demographics where some people have said some awful things about people not present in the conversation. What I find interesting is how many people don’t say a thing, or even worse, escalate the conversation to even worse levels. Speaking up in these circumstances is difficult, and I’ve felt the tug almost every time I have done so. But what bothers me is how often those moments go unremarked, almost as if they’re okay.

The same thing is happening today in our political atmosphere. We have some politicians saying some awful things, and so few people are even casting a light on these moments other than to treat it as a news cycle rather than say: “Hey, by the way, there’s an awful racist running for office. Here’s what he said.” And even in the few circumstances where this has happened, the people listening are responding with the thought process of “yeah, but he’s better than those other guys.” If our canary in the mine is at this level, we’re going to be breathing some pretty toxic fumes sooner rather than later.

So, what’s the answer? Right now, I don’t perceive one because I think we’ve moved so far down this road that we’re not going to turn around. Sure, a nation can adjust, as many have before (I mean, face it, we aren’t ruled by divine kings any more, so eventually we can make huge changes), but I don’t see our current civilization all that anxious to try to make things better for everyone because until someone is scrounging for scraps in the gutter, people aren’t all that focused on change. And when you reach the gutter, people stop listening to you and wait for you to die. So, rational change isn’t to be expected.

Irrational change, however, is a different story. That’s the sort of punctuated equilibrium that no one ever sees coming. Unfortunately, we’re coming closer and closer to having that as our process of change, only because most other methods have fallen on deaf ears or were dismissed by people who are pretty happy with the limited value of the status quo.

But what do I know? If I was truly wise, I’d be a rich entrepreneur and well rewarded in the society in which I live. There’s a joke in there somewhere, if you look hard enough.

The Problem of Dealing With Race By Invoking Historical Ancestors

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Race seems to be a big issue these days. I guess that’s a good thing. It means people are thinking about the concept and discussing it with others. At least that’s my hope. In some cases this is massively necessary because it helps deal with oversights that have been going on way too long. In other cases, not so much. What I see is that in those types of cases racism as a concept is used as a process to silence others or to beat people over the head in an attempt to collapse all disagreements under the blanket of racism, even if the individual artifacts we’re discussing may have had little to do with racism (which is why blanket criticism is used).

But this post isn’t really about that. Like I said, I’m glad people are addressing racism. There’s just way too much of it present in this day and age, even though a lot of closeted racists would really like to put forth the idea that racism is gone (so they can stop being rightly accused of being racists, or at least apologists for the same). What this post is really about is one of those commentaries that shows up in these discussions, and quite often this commentary comes in groups of people who don’t actually deal with racism in any way.

I know that sounds confusing, but let me explain. People who address and call out racism are quite often those who are directly affected by it. Racism directed toward race is more often addressed by African-Americans in U.S. society because let’s be honest: African-Americans are far more the targets of racism here than most other demographics. Sure, any minority race and/or ethnicity is a potential target for racists, so I don’t want to make an argument that assumes otherwise. But overall, African-Americans are going to have a better chance of perceiving racism more than a Caucasian because racists are pretty one-sided when it comes to this dichotomy. Sure, an African-American can be a racist, but part of what makes racism as powerful a weapon as it is is because it also has a mechanism of power to be used against the victim. A group of African-American racists standing around the streets of Wall Street aren’t going to chase a non-African-American away from Wall Street because the background of Wall Street doesn’t support such an attempt to alienate the victim, but a group of Caucasians targeting a non-Caucasian on a street of Wall Street might cause someone from that targeted demographic to think that Wall Street isn’t a safe place to hang around. The point is: Racism involves power, but it also requires power in order to be effective.

As an academic, I find myself around a lot of people who quite often invoke specific arguments whenever it comes to the idea of racism. I’m also a moderator on a very active current events message board, so I see all sorts of commentary that comes from that origin as well. And what I’ve come to observe is something I don’t believe a lot of people realize seems to be happening around them. And specifically, this sort of racism that is happening today is also very localized in its temporal vicinity (the time it inhabits right now). As a result, people today who are frightened of being perceived as race-challenged (or “racists” for lack of a better term) will do everything possible to avoid being cast as villains in this dynamic. As such, it’s not surprising to hear someone say something along the lines of “I’m not a racist because I have a friend who is black.” Okay, that one is kind of obvious because we’ve all heard that one and know how it’s almost become a punchline to a joke no one wants to admit making.

No, part of the problem stems from an argument that orchestrates how a lot of people who are a part of the problem that they don’t even acknowledge exists. We all know the argument, even though we don’t think much about it because we discard it because of its simplistic nature when we should have thought about and realized why it makes things worse rather than explain things away. You know you’ve heard this argument whenever you hear someone say “Well, my ancestors are from Europe, so I wasn’t responsible.” It’s one of those arguments made in hopes of closing off conversation (and hoping the topic changes as well). But think about it. If someone’s ancestors were from South Carolina, does that make that particular individual responsible for racism that happened 150 years ago and several generations ago as well? Probably not. But that’s only if you feel that responsibility ends with theoretical people who may or may not have been personally involved. Are people complaining about stuff that happened in the 1860s? I don’t think they are. We all know that horrible things happened back then, and we all pretty much agree today that if we could change things, we would make sure they didn’t happen again. Or would we?

And that’s where that argument that gets made loses its traction. There are problems happening today, and rather than deal with them today, we have people saying they shouldn’t have to be responsible because they weren’t around 150 years ago. But again, the problems exist today. What are any of us doing to change things here and now? I would argue “not a lot” because if we were all doing something to make things better, my belief is that things would be better.

Instead, we have ghettos, slums, income disparities, fenced off housing, more cops than educators, hostility towards certain populations, massive corruption in places that should be making a difference, and finger-pointing rather than any desire for accountability. An example is the City of Detroit. It practically collapsed due to white flight and inner city corruption. Instead of solutions that work to fix these problems, we end up with right versus left rhetoric, race baiting and people who support corrupt leaders because to not do so means giving ground to racist rhetoric. In other words, NO ONE is seeking to fix the problems, and the few who are seem to basically be drowned out by the people who find more importance in criticism and looking for scapegoats.

So, what’s the solution? Well, let’s stop caring about what the color of someone’s skin is and start looking at how we can make the neighborhoods of people prosperous and worth living in. That means also changing our criminal codes so that “crimes” that don’t hurt people stop being crimes. If “drugs” are seen as a problem, convict people to treatment programs rather than criminal institutions. Some aren’t going to be fixed the first time, but a responsible civilization doesn’t give up after the first time. It keeps trying until it works.

We also need to change our financial circumstances to benefit all. Yeah, a lot of very rich people are going to hate that. But having a few pissed off people and a civilization filled with thriving individuals seems like a good trade off. This A. Rand society of doing well and screwing over everyone else needs to end.

We need to stop going to war because some group of people don’t think like we do. Different thinking people should be interesting, not enemies. The reaction is that we need to do this because there are people out there trying to kill us. They’re trying to kill us because we always go to war against people who don’t think like we do. That tends to lead to diminishing returns. Change the thinking; change the outcomes. It can be pretty simple. Of course, the naysayers will say no because they only know the institution that we are currently in and like the frog in a well who sees only the circle of light in the sky, we’re never going to see constellations in the paths of other wells if we never get out of the well we’re currently stuck in. Just saying.

Or we can keep doing the things we’re doing and hope that somehow things get better. But they won’t. So good luck with that. I’ve given up trying, so I’ll be playing video games while the world crumbles around me. At least I can accomplish something with a high score. They don’t give Nobel Peace prizes for that, but I guess that’s just cause I don’t own an army that kills a lot of people. Yet.

The Problem with Bernie Sanders Isn’t Exactly Bernie Sanders

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There’s been a lot of talk recently about Bernie Sanders as an alternative to Hillary Clinton for those who really don’t like Hillary Clinton as a candidate. Sanders has done a great job of showing that he’s an “outside” candidate that doesn’t go along with corporate greed and all of that. As someone who basically isn’t all that fond of Hillary Clinton, I was seriously looking at Sanders as an alternative, but then I started thinking. What makes anyone think that Bernie Sanders is going to be that much better of an alternative to Hillary Clinton in 2016 than Barack Obama was a better alternative to Hillary Clinton in 2008?

Think about it. Part of the reason why so many people like me don’t like Hillary Clinton is because she’s as close to a corporate follower as you can get (aside from being a current Republican). When she takes office, she’s going to give Wall Street exactly what Wall Street wants because she needed Wall Street to get elected, and let’s face it: She’s a freaking elite who is going to do for the elites what elites generally do for elites. She’s not one of us. Hell, even Bernie isn’t one of us. We don’t have one of us running for office, and when one does, he or she is so far marginalized that we never hear from that person again.

Obama was going to be the outsider response to Hillary Clinton in 2008. Unfortunately, what happened once he took office was he discovered that Washington doesn’t do anything different than the way Washington likes to do things. Wall Street doesn’t comply. Politicians don’t change their ways. And the rich don’t stop doing what they do in order to embrace new ideas. No, things stayed pretty much the way they have always stayed.

Some things got better. But marginally. Not so that students mired in student loan debt were relieved. Students loans were addressed, mainly to spread more margarine on the butter so that things didn’t really change, but people got to say “hey, look, change!”

That’s what’s going to happen with Bernie Sanders. He’ll get to the White House (if he wins) and see that the Republicans aren’t going to allow any changes. Hell, the Democrats in office aren’t going to allow any changes because they’re filthy rich millionaires that don’t want to rock that apple cart any more than they have to. Wall Street will continue to rape the American people, and politicians will take their payments while pretending to care about doing something about corporate greed.

Change isn’t going to happen until government holds corporate greed hostage, and that’s never going to happen in our system. We live in a capitalist system that rewards greed. How do you change the system from within if everyone who makes change is receiving kickbacks from the system in the first place?

So, we can all vote for an outsider, but he’s either going to become an insider, like Obama did, or he’s going to remain an outsider (more like a Carter) who can get absolutely nothing done. That’s kind of the problem.

Tomorrow’s Protests May Not Be So Easily Contained…Or Ignored

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Not so long ago, when the Occupy Wall Street protests were happening, it was suggested by not a few people that the movement may have more legs than people expected, meaning that the protests had the potential of spiraling out of control and gaining steam and momentum. But elections happened, and people thought they were getting their concerns addressed in that process. And then the protest was quickly forgotten, co-opted by other movements (like conspiracy theorists) and quickly shelved.

A little time before that, we had the infamous Rodney King riots, which threatened to spiral out of control, as the protests moved from Los Angeles to places like San Francisco and Chicago. But they eventually died out, little was done to change the reasons for the riots, and we all went back to our usual way of doing things.

There’s a certain Mancur Olson (The Logic of Collective Action) and Piven/Cloward (Poor Peoples’ Movements) going on here in which people tend to rally together long enough to get some kind of payout and then quit the movement which has always managed to keep the U.S. from turning into something it keeps kicking the can down an uncertain road. You see, eventually we’re going to hit a point where people aren’t going to just give up on the realization that they can’t get what they want and then go home, but that eventually they’re going to hit a point where the spiral unravels the whole ball of yarn.

Fortunately, we’ve just never reached that point.

Yesterday, Baltimore turned into one of those spirals again, where fed up people took to the streets to protest another police-caused tragedy. People protested, others rioted, police cars burned, and we’re shaking our heads yet again, wondering how something like this could possibly happen. And instead of actually doing something to fix the situation, we’re kicking the can down the road again, hoping that there’s still some road to travel before we come to some kind of impenetrable wall.

What we should be asking ourselves is how much more can the institution stand before we can’t return back to normality again. Unfortunately, no one actually has that answers, and even worse, no one is even paying any attention to the possibility that someone needs to be asking that question. If you look to previous civilizations that had events spin out of control, what has generally been the spark that has lit the fire is the ability for the message to travel from one powder keg to the next. In the U.S. history examples, we’ve been lucky by the mere fact that most incidents of powder kegs going up have been contained in geographical areas that did not spread to others. The Rodney King example was probably one of our closest incidents of spilling over because it erupted in numerous areas before quickly being contained. Occupy Wall Street is also similar in the location problem, but it was quickly contained and forgotten because other things happened immediately after.

What people aren’t acknowledging is that the problems causing many of these powder keg issues are identical, and they haven’t changed any over the years, meaning that the chances of a multiple powder keg incident occurring is not a matter of “if” but a matter of “when”. Racism is still an issue that has never been dealt with. Income equality is an issue we’re never going to deal with. As long as we keep sweeping these types of issues under the rug, they’re going to explode on us and when that happens, there’s no amount of “clear thinking” that is going to cause those kegs to return back to normal.

The French Revolution should have been an example we held close to the chest because it showed us that when the incidents finally erupt, they don’t end until people who are angry enact some type of violence, or are killed themselves. Since then, we’ve had world revolutions happen over and over, where the violence has been absolute and devastating. What did we learn from ANY of these circumstances? People are real shit heads to each other when out of control and when given the opportunity, people will do horrible things to each other before common sense prevails (if it ever does).

So, how about dealing with some of these issues now, instead of waiting until after we tally up how many horrific things we can do to people we don’t like for “reasons”?