They Passed the Test

I just read this article by Sean Hughes about the recent solitary shown by these West Point Cadets. He calls it "Fierce Lives Matter". I felt it was worthy of a direct comment which I posted  to the article and now I want to share here on my blog.  Here is the article.

Fierce Lives Matter
BY SEAN HUGHES ON MAY 14, 2016

Sean has written an excellent piece, no doubt. He addresses a subject that most shy away from because it’s almost impossible to approach the topic without showing personal bias thus inviting criticism from one corner or another. It takes bravery to do so. Sean is to be applauded and I stand with all the accolades he has received. That said, I guess I’ll throw down from my corner a few comments to be profiled as seen fit…

First, why do we characterize “Black Lives Matter” as a political movement? If the cadets were standing there in solidarity of “Breast Cancer” for instance, would they be receiving the same scrutiny? It’s an awareness issue. Those who turn it political show their prejudice immediately. There is only one side to the issue, thus it is not political. Black lives matter.

Second, to suggest the picture demonstrates in the cadets a lack of judgement equivalent to that of the “idiots” wearing Hawaiian shirts at the football game is a poor characterization of the professionalism of these officers. They are ready to serve our Country. They are not pulling an ill advised prank as underclassmen at some sorority rush, that due to social media has come back to bite them in the ass. They are making a simple statement. They are not stacking tires over a flagpole, exploding low quarter bombs on the quad, or hazing underclassmen…all things that show poor judgement but become learning opportunities at a military school should cadets survive the fall out. This is not a learning opportunity.

Third, I disagree with Sean’s “Don’t tell me I can’t”. As military officers, violating the UCMJ is a criminal offense. Because, there are many things, under the UCMJ, that you simply can’t do…like miss work, disobey an order, fraternize, or speak freely. That, I hope, is not what our new officers are learning at military schools. That said, I don’t believe this to be a Grace Hopper moment either, where one can ask forgiveness rather than get permission because it’s easier. Although it is a bit closer. Sean wisely does not pretend to know what’s in the mind of these women…I would not pretend to venture a guess either. There are 17 minds at work….perhaps all of their reasons are different. What’s not different is this moment of solidarity. A moment in time where they all have put individualism aside and stood together as one. At war, this is the moment of unity that good order and discipline teaches us. This is the band of brothers, and sisters, that Sean and I, or any other warrior would go to war with…this is the foxhole moment. This is what should be taught at military schools. They passed the test.

Fourth, and this one is not directed at Sean, it’s directed at a comment coming from Merrell. Thank you for your service to our country. I’m glad I wasn’t in your unit…

Trump, Calculus, and the Evolution of the Squirrel

I feel bad for the women who asked for her aircraft to return to the gate because she felt sick.  She felt sick because the guy next to her was scribbling math equations that she didn’t understand. Since she didn’t understand what she was observing she immediately characterized it as a threat. She thought he must be a terrorist.  

The man, an economics professor, was simply writing down differential equations. The women has not been identified.  I suspect she will be and I fear that over the next few weeks she will be the exploited party in the punchline of every conversation and comedian’s  joke.  She will be the poster child for Mike Judge’s “Idiocracy”.  That is of course unless Donald Trump and his supporters haven’t already taken that honor.

Even this blog, to some extent, will exploit her unbelievable stupidity, and of course, bad luck. In her defense she is not the only one who would have reacted that  way given the same circumstances.  It’s not her fault.  It’s the fault of 200 Million years of evolution which tells us to be wary of things we do not understand.  We should, in fact, fear them.  We should consider them a threat.  Being leery of the snake in the grass or the color red keeps us safe.   When the hair stands up on the back of our neck it does so for a reason.  We should listen to our instincts and react accordingly.  Don’t get in the elevator is what they teach women to avoid the would be rapist. If you feel something terrible is about to happen trust your instincts.  Our instincts have evolved to the point that we have these visceral feelings, they help us survive. And no I’m not expecting my daughter to get into the elevator.  But I also don’t want her delaying my next flight.

It’s only in the last century that we’ve been flying in airplanes.  Think of how odd that is to our evolution.  Flying in an aircraft you are sealed in an aluminum tube of death traveling at 500 mph 32,000 feet in the air. That’s  not something that we’ve evolved to cope with...so our wits are already seriously confused.  We are in a strange place.  So when something else strange happens it’s perfectly natural for our bodies to react viscerally.  We are swimming in a sea of strange.  The women on the airplane reacted viscerally.  Sadly for her the results have hit the front page although as of this morning her identity seems to have been protected.

I think Sergeant Friday, played by Dan Aykroyd, said it best in the silver screen remake of Dragnet, when he said, “...there are two things that separate us from the animals. One, we use cutlery. Two, we can control our sexual urges”  With those two exceptions, the rest is pure instinct.   How then do we keep from deporting all those we are unfamiliar with?  How then do we keep from building a wall to keep out so  many more?  How do we live on this cosmopolitan planet earth, with the first black US president, and now (God willing) our first female President.  As of two days ago we have witness the election of the Muslim mayor to the city of London England.  How can we live this way with 200 Million years of evolution telling us to kill the next tribe that lives on the other side of the  hill? We need to kill them, before they kill us.  Isn’t that what our bodies are really telling us?  

In my most recent blog I lamented the death of the republican party and placed the blame on the Tea Party republicans and their leader Ted Cruz.  While I’m not ready to  issue a retraction to my lamentations, perhaps I am ready to say that it is time for the republican party to die.  Evolution determines survival, and if the characteristics of the organism inhibit it from surviving, extinction shortly follows and it must exit the gene pool.  When I became an independent during the Bush W administration, I was exiting the gene pool thereby exhibiting my own right to political life  Since the republican party has split three ways all the variants will not survive.  With the Tea Baggers, the Trumpeters, and the RINO all vying for their political lives it’s fitting that they all will not make it.  If I were to guess which party the women on the aircraft was from, of course I’d be stereotyping, she is a Trumpeter.  Only Trumpeters show fear outright.  She demonstrated fear sufficiently public to have an airliner return to it’s gate!  That’s an amazing public exhibition and worthy of a Trump pep rally.  The Tea Baggers might feel the same  fear, I suspect they do since they cling tightly to their guns for phantom reasons.  But instead of quietly signaling the flight attendant to return to the gate, Tea Baggers would argue that had the women had a concealed carry permit she could have handled the issue from her seat.

The question, however, remains. What is to become of the GOP?  Is it dead?  Or will remnants of it evolve into something that can survive the current political climate where a Hillary Clinton can be considered conservative alongside a Bernie Sanders?  But I digress.  What I really want to examine is how to prevent the coming Idiocracy.  Since evolution is in God’s hands we don’t really have too much of a say, or do we?  Does God want the coming Idiocracy?  Or is it possible to beat God at his own evolutionary game?  The answer is simple.  Whereas we might not beat God at evolution, it is possible to pick a path where he favors our survival.  Recall the parable of the sinking ship.  The victim swimming for their life rejecting the three row boats and a helicopter that offered salvation in favor of God’s providence.  God will save me was always the reply.  Of course at the Pearly Gates, the victim began chastising God for not providing His saving hand.  God’s reply, “I sent three row boats and a helicopter”.

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Those who believe the Constitution of the United States to be inviolate, fail in their understanding of both this parable and of course the intention of our forefathers to create the Constitution as a living document.  To create a country that could survive the human condition. From the very first days that the America’s became a beacon of freedom around the world, the world has heard the call and immigrated here to live the American dream.  Donald Trump has lived the American dream.  Further, he intends to live out the American promise that anyone can be President.  When Bush W was elected I thought we had already proven that promise but I digress. He will do so, in part, by denying others the right to live the American dream.

If we are to survive as a species we must recognize danger and embrace that which we find different. Perhaps the women on the flight should have asked the man seated next to her what he was doing?  But that will never happen on the flight.  I’ve already given her the out.  By the time that question could have been asked the women was already fraught with worry.  No, the time to embrace our differences is now, not when we are seated next to different. The 200 Million years of evolution cannot be overcome easily when your survival instincts kick in.  Just like the squirrel that has evolved to turn back for the safety of the tree when attacked by car tires, not understanding the threat, or lack of threat,  has resulted in the death of far too many squirrels.  The squirrel is thinking, “Those tires are out to kill me”. Just like the women believed the math equations were out to kill her.   Fortunately God has given us the capacity to think clearly about what is and what is not threat.  A squirrel cannot reason in this way when at a full sprint.  Neither can we.  

What is happening is we are giving into fear.  We are giving into terrorism.  We are letting groups like DAESH win.  We are being terrorized.  Instead of rationally understanding that DAESHoles can be defeated and that immigrants don’t want our jobs. The scared women on the plane is the perfect indicator of what happens when we let irrational fear win.  I suggest whenever we react foolishly to a threat that isn’t real we call it doing the squirrel.  When the car is approaching the squirrel's  heart is pounding like a freight train. The squirrel doesn’t understand the threat. The squirrel dies because fear drove instincts that don’t work on the highway, not because the threat was real.  If you cross the road twice, you have twice the chance of getting stuck by  car tires.  The squirrels that have less of a quick twitch to return to the tree sprint straight ahead.  They have twice the chance of survival on the open road. The squirrels that survive in an urban environment will evolve this characteristic eventually, or they will go extinct..

Trump intends to win the election by hoping we do not evolve.  He want’s to play to our fears.  He knows many will run for the safety of the tree. Today we all live on the open road, not in the woods. Unfortunately since we lived in those  woods, alongside of those same squirrels for 200 Million years,  we all have hard habits to break. Now that we live in traffic it’s time to evolve.   It’s time to recognize our differences and stop being afraid of them. We need to do that now, not when we are seated next to them.  If Trump does get elected on fear, that still doesn’t mean we should move to Canada . Squirrels with the characteristic to run straight need to remain in the gene pool. So do the rest of us. No matter what happens the United States is still a safe final destination to live, work, raise a family, grow old, and live out the American dream, we just have to be a little less fearful of things that are different like someone else's religion, the color of their skin, their gender identity,  or, as it turns out, their math...

Public Shithead Number One Threw a Tea Party and Was Voted Off the Island

Now that Ted Cruz has left the Presidential race we can look back to the beginning and understand why, as a seemingly extinct species, the death of the RINOs was a highly over rated event.  It appears they are still alive...unfortunately with no real place to go now that John Kasich has also left the race. But they still have plenty of influence. Ted Cruz supporters don’t understand that they are the ones destroying the GOP...or maybe that was their intention. But neither does the half-wit Charles Krauthammer who believes the Trump win in Indiana to be a paradox, rather than what actually occurred. Krauthammer also believes that the conservatives who support Trump’s anti-establishment rhetoric are the same conservatives who should be supporting the anti-establishment rhetoric of the Tea Party. They are not.   In his article, "The GOP's Ideological Earthquake and the Aftermath" Krauthammer incorrectly posits this paradox and completely fails to see that the GOP is actually split three ways. The Teabaggers, the Trumpeters, and the so called RINOs.

Didn’t we see this coming when the Tea Party stood up?  Sure, there were a few moments...I’d say about two full weeks...when a lot of us were on the Tea Party dream machine...then we woke up. Why didn't the rest? When Cruz shutdown the government, with no hint of a compromise in his bones, it was clear he did not stand for the RINOs.  Will Cruz  be praised for destroying the Republican Party?  I hardly think so.  He left, in his wake, the first vestiges of the fall of the greatest country the world has ever known.  Talk of revolution, not just a revolution of ideas such as those coming from Libertarians who love our Country, for instance,  but a revolution of arms.  These conversations were uncomfortably out in the open. Those are the Cruz supporters, not the Trump supporters (with the possible exception of Trump's racist following).  That is why I like to call Cruz Public Shithead Number One. He is the most dangerous man in the Country. The fall of Cruz demonstrates that this Country does not want to go quietly into that good night along side the Tea Party.  He is not the only danger. Trump is Public Shithead Number Two but for different reasons.   Trump, could still lead  to our destruction as a country, just not by our own hand.  The threat under Trump would originate externally through the adoption of destabilizing international policies, for instance. Trump, however, promises not to be that destabilizing influence even though it’s hard to see him giving up on his stated deportation policies and, of course, the building of a wall. Nevertheless, Trump appears to actually love our Country.  Cruz, on the other hand, appears to have nothing but disdain.  

The existential threat to the United States of America, under Cruz, is real. The existential threat to our Country under Trump is also real.  However, a united United States will stand...Trump is appealing to that aspect of his supporters. Cruz is not someone who unites.  He is someone who divides and is thus unfit to lead our  country.  It is for that reason that those in the leadership at the GOP might have decided a contested convention would only work with a Kasich outcome.  Since that could not be certain, and a Cruz outcome might be likely, the hope for a contested convention had to end.  Trump as uniter versus Cruz as destroyer is a far better outcome even though they know Trump cannot beat Clinton.  Cruz supporters do not understand why old school republicans such as former Speaker of the House Boehner have such venomous hatred for Cruz.  It is because he is a destroyer. Those in his support base must either be destroyers themselves or don’t understand the destruction within him.  Trump, on the other hand, is a builder.

Capitalism is based on building.  If you are not growing you're dying.  Capitalist must build.  Thus when it comes to capitalism there is no difference between Republican capitalists and Democratic capitalists, both build. Republicans want more of the benefits from the building to go into the hands of those making the investment. That’s what’s the most important to RINOs.  Democrats want more of the benefits from the building to go into the hands of those doing the work. That is the position of the Unions and most liberals.  They want less exploitation and more balance.  It’s that simple.  Everything we do as a country should be about facilitating capitalist growth in an effective, efficient, and sustainable manner in such a way that comes as benefit of all.  That means we must not exploit our people or are resources.   

The Tea Party, as wonderful as their long platform of endearing beliefs and platitudes may seem on the surface, are in a group who live in the past.  They want to hold on to the cards they were originally dealt. They are so wedded to their static dreams they don’t realize the world has changed around them.  The cards they are holding are from a different time.  The game has moved on.  Grow or die.  Rather than grow, they have chosen death and wish to bring down everyone as they fall.  It would be better for everyone, if the Tea Party would simply expedite their death stagnation and disappear.

The big problem we face now, since we know Clinton is a lock for winning the general election, will be whether or not she is indicted.  If you follow this  logic, we should see the old guard backing off on a Clinton  indictment for now.  They know Clinton is a better choice for our country  than Trump...but Sanders is clearly a worse outcome for capitalism.  Since the FBI announced yesterday that it doesn’t appear Clinton will be indicted  I have to wonder is it just a coincidence?   How convenient to be simply a coincidence when it maps so clearly to the RINO agenda.   Since it is conceivable, however, that Trump could beat Sanders, and the GOP knows either outcome is to be avoided, even when they know they are handing the election to a previous  enemy.  Clinton is an enemy to their politics, but she is not an enemy to our Country and our capitalist aspirations.  RINOs recognize this fact.  Many in the GOP will not vote for Trump or Hillary...so they will not vote.  But they also know they can no longer live for that day when she is indicted...rather they must suspend the joy of an indictment until after her Presidential term is over.  Otherwise we face the prospect of a Trump  presidency, or worse, the presidency of Sanders, and with it the possible death of capitalism.  Are we on a train bound for socialism?  Perhaps it is inevitable...and that will be a bitter pill to swallow.  If not this year, once the Millennials grow up, we will no longer be able to stop the handouts. But is getting on that train this early more dangerous than electing Trump?  To me that is the big question.  What’s absolutely clear, however, is that rather than think about that outcome...Tea Party conservatives will rally around Trump...and that’s as dumb as dirt, it’s not a paradox.  Since they are destroyers at heart, and he will let them keep their guns, this is their only logical move.  That’s the incorrect paradox that Krauthammer tries to create.  The feeble nature of his mind will be proven  when he eventually speaks favorably of Trump, if he doesn’t out and out endorse him...I would put money on it.

There is a significant risk that the major problems the world will face from overpopulation, disease, diminishing natural resources, and environmental change will not be solved in a world where too much socialism is unable to produce the technical advances necessary to combat these coming storms. Socialism slows progress. Only a capitalist society has a shot at creating the necessary technology, at a sufficient pace, to keep the world ahead of our own destruction.  Trump, rather than being the destroyer the Tea Party will eventually rally behind,  is a consummate builder.  He is  good for capitalism. Nevertheless I could be wrong about socialism.  Forms of socialism (which is not Communism if you need the lecture ) may have the necessary incentives to advance the human race sufficiently to survive death by it’s own hand.  To feel the Bern would be to believe this to be true.  I have yet to feel the Bern...but it is an outcome that must be anticipated because democratic socialism is coming like a freight train.  There will be very little RINOs, or Trumpeters, or Tea Baggers can do to stop it.  

I will not vote for Hillary or Trump...I will let everyone else sort out that mess.  But if Hillary is out...I will have to think deeply before I cast my vote for Trump, because I don’t want to admit we are headed towards socialism. And that  is the real paradox...the one Krauthammer doesn’t have the brain cells to comprehend. And the one the destroyers within the Tea Party haven’t a clue exists either...they prefer to cling to their guns.  Trump will help them keep their guns.  Guns are not going to help them keep their heads above the rising water.  Technology will.  When Hillary Clinton might be the best decision we can make for capitalism it’s time for the GOP to pull it back together.  What that means is voting the Tea Baggers off the island as quickly as we can.  Fortunately, that appears to have occurred in Indiana.  Public shithead number one has been voted off the island.