Category Archives: Political Commentary

Who Has the Power? ( And How Did They Get It?)

Please be advised that this post presupposes that science has value and can legitimately shed light on at least several things in this universe. This is no longer a given.

Lately there seems to be something of a rush to discover and reveal the real differences between Conservatives and Liberals. It’s a mean and meme world out there and there are plenty of pundits with a need to chime in on every tweety youtube trender that comes along, regardless of whether they know anything about it or not. Thus the recent spate of “Here’s the secret handshake of science” journalism that probably comes from certain so-called experts’ need to separate themselves from the glutted pack of a thousand points of sites. And there are plenty of new studies out there for these limelight addicts to reference.

We have the brain activity explanation, complete with those graphs and GIFs of brainwaves that folks are fond of displaying in their articles and on their blogs. Oft times well meaning but inadequately informed journalists will look to graphs to help flesh out their stories, especially if they are pretty. (The graphs that is). The brain wave explanations are so au courant and impressive but as with most speculative science those brain waves are subject to the classic query, “Nature or Nurture”. And, also as usual, I believe it’s some of both.

There is then the genetic proclivity explanation, with a different, more structural look at the brain. They often talk in science-ese, a bizarre language they use to keep us confused enough that they can keep their jobs. They talk about how this or that lobe or area of the brain is larger or smaller, or more or less developed. It gives them reason to declare that there are genetic proclivities towards certain influences and behaviors that predict our political tendencies. I think there is some merit to this point of view, but it is not a complete explanation. The fact that tradition shows us that most national elections, when push comes to shove, are decided by a relatively small margin. This balance references the fact that many brain functions have a binary, on or off, function. More on this later.

My particular preferred explanation for all this terminally intellectual stuff comes through the branch of Cognitive Science that is Cognitive Linguistics. It is on this subject that I will wax poetic, seemingly for the next several days.

Because our brain does not primarily use words to communicate with itself, but only to communicate with others, the development of language says everything about how humans communicate thoughts, ideas and concepts. The study of the brain and how it works speaks to us about the relationship between brain function and the way we use words. The science shows us that words can actually, physically change the brain. For me this reconciles other research being done by cognitive linguists about the influence of our brains on our politics, with the aforementioned purely physical reasons.

Cognitive science is a big deal these days. My opinion is that it grew simultaneously with and parallel to the quest to unlock the human genome. Curiosity is the engine behind scientific discovery, and as the technology to study and research both the physical functions of the brain and the body’s cellular level programming became more and more advanced, so did the drive to uncover the secrets of these heretofore mysterious and vitally important body parts.

What science is discovering is that the existence, outside of us, of a transcendent mind, which houses truth and reason, that we tap into to various degrees, to access universal meaning and conceptual reality, is a falsehood. Rationalists be damned, we are discovering that all human function is embodied in the brain. Not only does the brain control our typing and eyesight but our thinking and feeling.

One may ask, if all human thought is controlled by the individual brain and not an external static source, how is it that we have nearly universal acceptance of certain concepts. In essence that acceptance comes through experience and communication. Our thoughts are more pictorial than verbal. In fact, verbal communication is a limited, imperfect brain function, informed by the differences in individual human thought more so than any concrete construct. Agreement on the collective nature of things and ideas begged the question of what symbols to use to adequately and consistently communicate about things and ideas, between the ever larger sociopolitical and socioeconomic groups that evolved over time. Language became more and more important the larger the number of people we needed to talk to.

Words connect us with the pictures our brains use to simplify complex situations, concepts and functioning physical systems. Words are the triggers that bring entire groups of things and ideas into consciousness, from the unconscious, in one instantaneous moment. These verbally supported thought pictures define both what is and isn’t part of the communication at hand. For example, when one says the word “hospital” we immediately call up the words that trigger pictures of doctors and nurses and gurneys and IVs. Just that one word calls into our conscious minds an entire complex idea. The word also immediately references what is not in a hospital, i.e. a motorcycle or football. It cements a clear definition of the concept in our brain. Our brains do this as a shortcut. The brain processes millions of bits of information a second, and has an incredible amount of information in storage. In order to function quickly and efficiently it has to compress information dramatically in order to do this.

You may have heard the phrase ‘words have power’. This is more true than any of us ever imagined. Cognitive linguists are finding that words and the collective acceptance of their meaning cannot only influence people’s conceptualizations, but can actually change the brain. The brain learns and constantly changes to reflect that learning. Wanna learn how to hit a curveball? The more curveballs you try to hit the brain better remembers the group of complex physical responses that bring to the task both success and failure. Eventually it builds an express lane that more efficiently sets that entire process in motion the instant the eye sees what it recognizes as a curveball. We get better at hitting the curveball. The brain, over time, has learned how to make that entire quantum of processes respond more quickly and accurately, by physically changing its structure. The repetition has worn a “deeper’ neural pathway in the brain, from the seeing of the ball to the hitting of it. This better worn groove speeds up the process and enhances its effectiveness.

The desire for accomplishment and knowledge which leads to changing the brain does not only apply to physical performance but to conceptualization as well. If we are constantly exposed to a pervasive mental or emotional stimulus the brain learns which picture to call up, into the conscious mind, that the word, or grouped word metaphor, triggers. When dealing with a word that can have several meanings, repetition of the word trigger that points to the preferred definition determines which neural pathway becomes dominant. This now dominant pathway points us to that desired definition to the exclusion of others.

The brain can only assign one picture at a time to any given word. This is where the battle originates. Two opposing forces that support different meanings associated with a word, meanings called contested concepts, will fight over which meaning takes hold in the unconscious minds of the masses. The unconscious mind is where the meanings of words live. We could never hold the meanings of the several thousands words we know and use in our conscious minds minds all at the same time. The fight is over which picture comes into consciousness when the word is used and sets off the trigger. Establishing which meaning of the word is dominant is important because, as one address can’t be used for two homes at the same time, one word can’t point to two pictures at the same time. Their is a reason different definitions for a word in the dictionary are numbered. Pickle can’t mean a tasty, if salty, treat and a predicament concurrently.

Conservatives learned and accepted these ideas, putting their own frames around the pictures much earlier than liberals. They have gotten the jump on them in many areas of defining political ideas. In fact, to this day, many liberals consider as cheating the selling of the meanings of words to the public through repetition, by claiming opinion is truth, and by asserting their victimhood, etc.. They say manipulating the meanings of words is propaganda and against their principles. It is, of course, a type of propaganda, and as such is underhanded and vile, but we are in the middle of a war of words, a battle for the political hearts and minds of America. In war if you use inferior weapons, no matter how much you are loathe to use the better ones, you will almost always lose. And liberals are losing. Frankly, contests for the meanings of words take place every day in all disciplines. The irony here is that liberals often accuse conservatives of being more concerned with ideological purity than serving the people when, in this case, it is they who are being ideologically pure to their own detriment.

As usual I have gone way off the reservation here, but there is a method to my madness. People often read the end of articles first, to see what passes for a summary. So I often put the salient points toward the end. Maybe not the wisest thing to do, but I have never been accused of being particularly wise.

I have to put the difference between liberals and conservatives in here somewhere. So here are my salient points. All the folks who love to blame brain structure or brain wave activity or genetics for people’s political philosophies seem to forget that willful manipulation can actually change the brain. In some cases, to varying degrees, they are mistaking the effects for the causes. This often happens when one is looking to support a particular position and only delves as deep as the level where their evidence lives. It doesn’t mean their science is bad, it just means it’s incomplete and, thus, often inaccurate.

Earlier I mentioned that I feel genetics does play a role in a person’s values, fears, and perceptions, things that help forge our politics. I used the example of how close virtually all national level general elections are. But I’m not convinced that the ideological split is right down the middle. Few genetic proclivities, although based in binary sources, are exclusively black or white, on or off. On a dualist continuum there is not one exact place where X suddenly turns into Y but a gradual change from one value to its opposite. If you over-generalize, which for our purposes isn’t all that bad, one can claim that the division of dominance can be divided into thirds. X is dominant over 1/3 of the graph, Y dominates another third, and the hybrid Z, the gray, is prevalent in the middle third. One can see this is fairly true in political choice, as polls show, most often, on nearly any issue, that one third are conservative, one third are liberal and one third will not admit to being either.

This is where the framing of the pictures comes in. Electoral politics is the battle for that middle third. It is inaccurate to call these people moderates. They cannot honestly claim to be truly conservative or liberal because they find truth in elements of both philosophies. But when they are asked to choose, as in an election which only has two choices, they have been shown to choose by turning inward to their feelings about a candidate rather than his/her stance on the issues. So the definitions of the words used to describe candidates and their issues becomes vitally important. This is because the picture a candidate’s or party’s words elicit can influence a person’s feelings in a much different way than the speaker intends, based on the dominant definitions of the words that are triggered in that listener’s brain.

So, convincing that middle third to accept your definitions becomes the goal behind the goal. There are plenty of ways to accomplish this. Public opinion normally moves up and down in somewhat of a sine wave over time, but that doesn’t mean a skilled politician can’t manipulate the public’s feelings, to sell approval of their politics and not their opponent’s, regardless of prevailing trends. They can. in essence, be all things to all people. This duplicitous nature, normally attributed to all politicians often comes from their forked tongued efforts to appeal to all of the Z side of the triangle, and win the votes of everybody except that hard core one third of the other team.

In many ways elections are about using power to keep power. One particular application of political power is, to my mind, the reason why so many incumbents get reelected over and over again, even in the face of a predominantly negative feeling among voters that “we need to throw all the bums out”. This is the power of the incumbency. It is is reflected in the voting booth, where, faced with a choice between the lesser of two evils, a choice we are faced with much too often, we will vote for the incompetent idiot we know over the incompetent idiot we don’t know. That power can come from just a word, a familiar name. The familiarity doesn’t even need to be with an known individual. Here in Scandahoovian country, just having your name end in “son” can get you elected. This phenomenon is a type of scientifically explainable preference as well, just of a different kind.

Yes, there is a great deal of science in how a person behaves politically. But as long as humans use the imperfection of language to communicate the feelings of meanings, there will be a direct and imperfect relationship between the two. We can agree that red is red much easier than freedom is freedom, because the physical evidence of color that we all share allows for little contest in the meaning of red. Imperfection opens the door for falsehood. If the truth is not completely true then lies can appear to have an element of truth. And the political philosophy salesman only needs to get his foot in the door. He only has to establish plausibility to persuade. The meanings of words are one of the best tools he has in his tool belt.

It’s a shame our brains have to use our consciousness as a communications go between. Things could be so much clearer if we could just plug it to each other directly.

Maybe that’s why there is such a deep, ingrained fear in the human psyche that robots will eventually supplant us on top of the food chain. In fact, they don’t even need food.

The Zillionth Only Correct Opinion

Many alleged pundits have weighed in with their opinions of the whys and wherefores of the booty kicking taken by the Democrats this election cycle. As a would be has been, I feel it imperative I post my opinions on this issue onto my beloved blog. Even though no one ever reads this blog I do this simply for my own self aggrandizement.

The Democratic party is an urban party. Lots of people know this. It is why it has been so easy for Republicans to gerrymander. They are able to cram Democrats into gerrymandered districts for geographic reasons that appear logical and make “common sense”. The sheer numbers of urban and inner suburban voters vs. Rural and exurban voters has kept the Democrats viable and mostly dominant in urban districts, but in deep trouble in other districts. Nationally they are strong but locally they are weak.

The Northeast, West Coast and Northern tier of Midwestern states have more urban centers and/or philosophically progressive populations than the South and West. The Democrats are creeping into Mid Atlantic coastal states, because of their increased urban populations, and into the southwestern border states because of their increased minority populations. The exception is Arizona, which has large numbers of Conservative retirees. These states are getting more purple. The Republicans are making headway into states without a preponderance of urban centers, but who have progressively minded citizens. They are also working their way into states with large and devastated urban centers with rampant unemployment and strife. They flip these progressively inclined rural voters and desperate urban voters through fear, turning those states purple. Thus we have our swing states, Colorado, Florida, Iowa, Ohio, Nevada, North Carolina, Virginia, and Wisconsin, and New Hampshire. Developing swing states include Texas, Minnesota, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Georgia, Arizona, Michigan. All of these states display some level of those divisive factors.

I believe the emotionally based electoral decisions of these voters are clearly informed. Rural voters hate welfare and they hate both perceived urban elitists and destitute city folk. I feel urban and minority voters hate Republicans for their essentially backwards looking conservatism and their embrace of social and economic biases. The bizarre thing about this hatred is that it originates in the exact same unequivocal American value that “all men are created equal”. But the concept of equality in America is vigorously contested. The equality rationale of the rural voter is because everyone is equal everyone should pull their own weight, by working hard. For them inequality is other people getting stuff for not working, when they themselves are working hard. For disgruntled urban workers equality is everyone having a job. Inequality for them is there being no jobs available for them, when others have jobs. Minorities see equality as equal rights. Inequality to them is others enjoying rights that they deserve, but do not have. Urban voters see equality as everyone being able to be who they are regardless of any social factor. Inequality for them is people who demand they have biblical social values and rigid, conformist gender identities. Of course these reasons are over generalized and there are certainly other factors and multitudes of crossover contempt at hand here, which I have not addressed.

I have thought about this a great deal, as you may have guessed. It is my contention that people get hung up in their particular vision of reality. They need to expand their appreciation of the complexity and diversity of the many issues that define us, as a people and a nation. The existence of a country that is concurrently homogeneous and culturally diverse seems contradictory and impossible. However, I see America as less a melting pot than a pot of rich soup. There is one overriding essence, a distinct and definitive flavor. But there are also the distinct individual flavors of the various ingredients. The oneness of the soup depends on the inclusion of all the ingredients.

We need to be taught that these issues, plus many others, are intertwined and interconnected, with each one influencing others. We also need to be be made painfully aware that there are cheaters and fraud in everything that involves money or privilege, and the fraud people see, in their anger, isn’t true for everyone they despise, just the few who would cheat at anything. We must accept that there are exceptions to all rules, but the exceptions don’t destroy the rules. There will be people who break your rules just as you may have broken theirs. It’s easy to point your focus at the salient exemplar, the Willie Horton, the welfare Cadillac mom. It’s harder to shine light on the stand up, play by the rules, good neighbor, who doesn’t care to be in the spotlight in the first place.

We could all do well to open ourselves to a larger sociopolitical universe. Rural voters could realize that not everyone on SNAP is a drug addict who doesn’t want to work and just sucks at the government teat. Disgruntled urban workers need to know that it is not government alone that has abandoned them and their crumbling cities. They need to know that a cruel combination of natural and contrived economic factors has left them nearly helpless. Minorities need to be aware that they are not the only Americans whose rights are being trampled. They could be more powerful and effective working together with other social justice activists, instead of staying trapped in their issue silo, sequestered from potential allies. Urban voters have to understand that, yes, they are elitists in many ways and there are more ways to skin a cat than they think. They must consider whether their brand of liberalism has a positive or negative impact on the nation as a whole. They need to develop empathy for the rest of the country, instead of judging them. Finally, I think we must somehow overcome the subtle yet incredibly effective propaganda that has kept the American people divided against itself. The joy of knowing truth has been replaced with fear inflamed by lies. The power of knowledge has given way to despair born of confusion. The art and psychology of persuasion has been honed to a fine point, and it cuts indiscriminately.

I believe nearly everyone, on both the left and right, thinks our nation is failing and our Democratic Constitutional Republic is in real existential danger. Where our great divide is, our unbridgeable gulf, is in our perceptions of the cause of this epic fail. To me it is simple. The right thinks government is the cause and the left thinks it’s wealthy oligarchs. The right thinks we are becoming a Socialist Dictatorship and the left says we are already an Oligarchy. I think the reality is a collusion of these factors, rather than one or the other. This is how we are pitted against ourselves. As long as we blame each other we do not notice the real villain at work, and we are unable to use our united power.

From my seat in the stands, albeit the nosebleed section, I see a nation where Plutocrats rule us from on high and remain hidden from us through the interference run for them by their minions. The focal point, the big boy that nobody trusts is Wall Street. The Plutocrats don’t trust it because of its volatility and entrepreneurial vitality. They can’t control it enough to assure themselves the massive earnings they crave. However the Plutocracy controls the capital that fuels Wall Street enough that, using the profit generated from that capital, the market can virtually purchase government, all three branches to a greater or lesser degree. Government doesn’t trust Wall Street either but it is nearly powerless to affect it’s stranglehold on the economy, or its ability to buy and influence government. Government though does have the power to dictate what hoops the people have to jump through to relate to and live in society. Since a plutocratic government does not exist for the people we do not like it no matter which party is in power. After a few years of very little getting done (they are allowed to get a few things done just to make us think they care) we get weary and elect the other bunch, getting tired of them in turn and electing the other guys again, ad nauseum.

Government, being the face of what is seen by the public, is what causes the ire of the conservative base. Progressives see Wall Street owning government and despise the corporations. The plutocrats are insulated by both the corporations and the government, from discovery. Very few of us ever see their machinations, their joy of being our puppeteers, their orgasms of manipulation. This hidden application of total power is by design. So the plutocrats control the corporations, who control the available money, which controls government, which controls the people. We are left to call each other names in the comments of thousands of blogs and more thousands of social media posts, while the big bosses of the big bosses do their damage and then laugh out loud over a Dirty Vodka Martini at the nineteenth hole.

Our task as citizens is daunting but not impossible. I dare say it will be left to our children and children’s children to complete it. First we must take over the government, all 3 branches, by electing courageous men and women, who will resist the temptation and influence of Wall Street, and break corporate control of government. We the people can then force these legislators, through our collective will, to change enough laws that we the people have power once again. Then, armed with renewed strength, and here is the difficult part, we must invade and infiltrate corporate boards and vote the Plutocrats’ lackeys out of power. This will require a sophisticated and perfectly coordinated effort by people with a combination of business expertise, unshakeable progressive values, and most crucially, superior skills in espionage and callous disregard for anyone’s welfare, including their own. I don’t believe anyone with that particular combination of characteristics is in a position of power today, but I have faith there will be many in the near future.

I also have faith in our children. Through evolution they are revealing daily just how dramatically they exceed us. They have knowledge and power we do not even understand, and they know love in a way we have lost from centuries of forgetting how. There is no other way to win back America for Americans. It must needs be cruel and vicious. They have been cruel and vicious for decades. I’m not saying it is the right thing to do. It is the only thing to do. Through taking over the corporations we can use that power the Plutocrats fear, that spirit of progress, to defy their will and cut off the head of the beast. Their amassed insane wealth will then be meaningless. Having nothing of value they will be powerless, and they may as well liquidate all their money into hundred dollar bills, buy a fleet of obsolete luxury liners, load them up, and dump it all into the ocean. It may be preposterous, it may be ridiculous, but this, dear friends, is my dream.

Danger, intense and emotionally violent rant to follow. Be forewarned.

This is what I have heard on cable news about the Ebola outbreak in West Africa (9,000 cases, 4,400 deaths) since it began in March 2014:

ebola west africa.

This is what I have heard on cable news about Ebola since it came to the USA this month (3 cases, 1 death):

EBOLA EBOLA FEAR EBOLA OBAMA EBOLA EBOLA EBOLA FEAR FEAR OBAMA FEAR OBAMA EBOLA OBAMA-FAIL FEAR EBOLA-OUTBREAK EBOLA FEAR OBAMA-WRONG FEAR EBOLA OUTBREAK TRAVEL-BAN EBOLA OBAMA FEAR FEAR EBOLA EBOLA OBAMA-BAD OBAMA-FAIL EBOLA-OUTBREAK AFRICA-DEATH EBOLA-SPREAD TRAVEl-BAN EBOLA FEAR FEAR OBAMA-WRONG EBOLA-EPIDEMIC EBOLA-FEAR EBOLA DEATH EBOLA OBAMA-EBOLA-OBAMA DEATH FEAR-EBOLA TRAVEL-BAN FEAR KEEP-AWAY-AFRICANS TRAVEL-BAN FEAR OUTBREAK-FEAR FEAR-EBOLA FEAR FEAR EBOLA FEAR OBAMA-WRONG EBOLA OBAMA-BAD EBOLA-OBAMA-FAIL-FEAR FEAR FEAR FEAR!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

What does this say about the specific appetites of the American people for certain types of news? What does it say about the Mainstream Media that they expend such effort, not only sating those appetites but nurturing others they wish to exploit? What does it say about the fragility of the psyche of the American public and their proclivity for being manipulated? What does it say about the sociocultural dynamic of modern life in the USA?

I do not downplay the extremely serious nature of the spread of this deadly hemorrhagic fever, anywhere on the the planet, to anyone. We must take every known measure and spare no expense to stop its spread. We must be steadfast and diligent. But there is something terribly frightening here and it’s not Ebola. We cannot afford, as a people, to continue the spread of panic inducing misinformation, innuendo and especially politically charged accusations. I’ve had it. I can’t take any more.

Here is a part of my FEAR!!!! That politicizing a deadly disease, a practice which is heinous, disgusting, inhuman, lower than low, and reprehensible, represents an irreversible direction in American politics, one that will contribute greatly to our eventual destruction, not only as a nation but as a species. I would hope against hope that this black moment in history is the nadir of our shame as human beings. However, it is my GREATEST FEAR!!!!!!!! that we have only seen the beginning of this descent into damnation and oblivion.

Nostra Culpa Nostra Culpa Nostra Maxima Culpa

Grouchy Rant But Sore

This is an email I wrote to a colleague that was inspired by a gradual, nagging essential injury, one that doesn’t keep you out of the starting lineup but progresses to limit one’s effectiveness. This morning was the bra that stroked the camel’s back and it just poured out of me like a beer chugged out of a pitcher at a fraternity party. That crappy analogy has been the extent of my typical sarca-cynicism on this topic. This is important and I’m angry.

I have copied the entire email here. There’s a bit of personal and a little profane, but I feel it’s germane.

Dear XXXXX,

Dad is hanging in there but shows negative change nearly every day. I am beginning to lose the spiritual strength to help him. I am quite sure the fact that he watches cable news 24/7 has fatally poisoned me.

My weariness also stems from the fact that I get about 75 emails a day asking for money. They explain, in many different carefully vetted and crafted ways, how that money will defeat the trolls and goblins of the “other” party. They tell us if we don’t give and give all we have our brains will explode and the moon will slam into Philadelphia. They call us out by name and ridicule and demean us for not giving. They never meet their quotas.

I told XXX X. and XXXXXX yesterday that we should stop having elections and have each candidate, on a specific date, just show an appointed panel of jurists their campaign bank accounts and then choose our elected officials that way, by who is richest. And we know it’s inhuman for nearly all candidates to be so intentionally cruel and duplicitous in their campaign ads. What have we become anyway? We prevaricate and slander each other without batting an eye.

I would prefer an open, honest and clear authoritarian government made up from the real oligocrats (my word) instead of the shadow, hidden government we now have. We should be fully aware of how f**ked we really are and how none of us will ever get anywhere without their approval. We should be made aware of our true state and true fate so we can work on accepting it.

The result of this ruse is that we spend obscene amounts of money getting these puppets elected then are unable to spend adequate money on the people’s welfare. We cut, cut, cut our bureaus’ budgets drastically and then scream bloody murder when we are incapable of doing our bureaucratic jobs, especially those that most affect our welfare, which are numerous. We politicize everything, especially things that should never ever be politicized, which are legion. We have no respect for nor confidence in any of the three branches of government. In our foreign policy our actions are damned when we do and damned when we don’t. A majority of our citizens have become sheeple, easily frightened and even easier to manipulate.

It is getting harder and harder for me to be active in electoral politics. I feel it may be more important to prepare young people to be able to attempt surviving the coming collapse of the economy and accompanying panic, chaos, and uncontrollable barbarism. I need to do this especially for my daughter, who deserves better and to whom I am ashamed to bequeath such a f^^ked up world.

People who think ISIS and Ebola are serious existential threats to our way of life are delusional. We actually have the resources and possibly the will to reduce their ability to harm us to an acceptable number of fatalities, similar to the Vietnam war. The coming crises will be much worse, so bad that the media will be unable to make them appear worse. They will be forced to actually report them honestly, for as long as they are able to report them. We will be so arrogant and ignorant and f##king stupid that we will have no chance to oppose the real “Outbreaks” and “Epidemics” and “Acts of God” and “Terrorism” and “Collapses” and “Perpetual War” and “Renegades” and “Slaughter” and “Hunger” and “Famine” etc. that will overwhelm the media and petrify the nation. The government will be sequestered in underground bunkers, neutered and emasculated, but modestly civilized. The people will not have that luxury.

I’d almost rather be in a real life Zombie film, where at least I would be able to have an impact on the world, even after I am dead. We are a strange species, so productive while at the same time so destructive. Frankly, we no longer deserve to be at the top of the food chain. We have both abdicated hope, abrogated our legislative responsibilities, arrogated our planet’s resources and the fruits of our labor and given over the legal structure that maintains civil society to partisanship. We worship and gather massive wealth yet are bankrupt in wisdom.

Can you tell I woke up in a bad mood?

Me

A Quarantine of Empathy

It’s getting close to election time. Because this year’s election is very important for America and will directly affect American’s lives, I will be posting some of my feelings about how political decisions permeate every aspect of the American lifestyle, and how America’s, and American’s, perceptions of reality affect the world.

Today’s commentary is about some of the societal and political reactions to the current viral (both meanings) issue of Ebola. It is my contention that while we were aware of a real and significant outbreak of Ebola in West Africa, this, to a majority of Americans, was a problem for Africa and not for us. Yes, it was bad, but since it wasn’t hurting any Americans, except for those martyrs who went there to help, it wasn’t that big a deal, compared to the Secret Service, their prostitutes and their being asleep at the White House wheel. That is, it wasn’t until Ebola came to America. Then a whole lot of Americans suddenly totally and completely freaked out and went ballistic about this perceived existential threat to the entire nation. This mania was all over one case (now two cases.) Of course there have been nearly 9,000 cases and nearly 5,000 deaths in Africa, but our two cases now made this a serious issue for the entire US, when it was previously just a sad situation for West Africans alone. Selective concern and a shamefully tardy response.

It pains me to see widespread panic among Americans of all stripes. It reveals the sad truth that we only accept the version of the truth we think is true, rather than the truth that actually is true. It shows that neither government nor science is no longer respected or believed in by so many of us. It highlights the unfortunate circumstance that propaganda driven paranoia is the new norm in our society. It tells us our veneer of confidence in the power of technology is more precarious than we think. But I digress.

The reaction from certain of our political leaders has been to complain vociferously about how there is no leadership at the top, guiding our efforts to stop the spread of this deadly disease here in America. What does it say about these people when so many of them have purposely, for purely political reasons, obstructed and refused to approve our President’s appointee for the position of Surgeon General? How could most of these so called public servants gut the budgets of the very organizations that have the expertise and resources to keep us safe from these threats? What colossal hypocrisy they display. And how can we continue to give countenance to the continued acceptance of this kind of duplicitous and devious people as our political leaders? If we continue to be so egoistic as to only really care about our own safety, and not that of others, and keep manning the bridge of the ship of state with these heartless cowards, then perhaps we deserve to be hated by animals such as ISIS, as barbaric as they are.

Thank God for sunsets. They save me from the void of permanent depression.