The Case of Eddie Gallagher

War is hell.  When we send young men and women into conflict...and worse...when we send them to war and keep them there in far away locations that cannot be defined as Mayberry R.F.D. it is inevitable that problems of good order and discipline  arise.  Long ago, after many wars fought, a judicial system, independent of our criminal justice system emerged.   If you leave your civilian job without telling your boss, it’s not a criminal offense.  You may get fired but you don’t go to jail.  It’s not the same when asking soldiers to face gunfire in combat.  They cannot leave their post...to do so is of a particularly heinous dereliction of duty.  One that puts their comrades at greater risk and in a larger sense, one that places the mission and the ultimate security of the country at greater risk.  To be absent without leave (AWOL) is a military crime with military punishment.

Killing someone is also a crime.  Killing someone in combat is not. Beyond our Unified Code of Military Justice, or UCMJ, there are international laws that govern conflict.  They are called appropriately enough, the Laws of Armed Conflict or LOAC.  They are governed by both convention and treaty.  Both the UCMJ and the LOAC strive to make human that which is very much not human.  The execution of violence in pursuit of peace and stability along with our National Security...for the sake of each and everyone one of us...becomes the duty of our military.

When we are asking our human soldiers to do something that is not human, take life, how can we sit in judgement if they make mistakes?  One might judge the very act of war to be the greater sin.  Any further judgement either ethically or morally between those lanes in the road invariably must become quibbling.  Yet we have defined those lanes and hope we don’t get into these arguments that are very cloudy and very grey in color.

Enter Eddie Gallagher...a soldier (more correctly a sailor and Navy SEAL) culled from the very top of the cream of the crop.  We train the very elite to be very elite killers.  They must take life efficiently and effectively.  They must train but they also must teach.  And as they rise in rank they must lead those in their footsteps to become the very same elite killers.  For the vast majority of Americans we never consider this career path, let alone, think about what the Navy SEAL’s (or Rangers or bomber pilots) do on a daily basis.  The closest we come will be the Hollywood version, or perhaps, if we read books, a few here which I recommend.  “Heart of Darkness”, by Joseph Conrad, is my suggested reading on this topic, followed closely by “The Passion of Command”, by B. P. McCoy (if you can find it). And if you really want to go deep into why we are here in the first place, “War is a Force that Gives Us Meaning”, by Chris Hedges. War sucks, but we must prepare for war because our planet is not a peaceful place.  Eddie Gallagher is one of our front line defenders and crucial to our preparation.  And I’m glad he exists, as I do our other special forces and sailors and marines and of course our airmen who must also take life albeit from a far greater distance. Distance makes it no less solemn and somber and of course mistakes are made.

The book on Eddie Gallagher was written long ago.  We know that he and those like him (and her), exist.  We created them.  Gallagher’s actions for most of his career can be characterized as  heroic and on the right side of the line...he has defended our country with honor.  His family should be proud.  The country should be proud. Yet he strayed off the path.  For whatever reason.  Perhaps he is a psychopath?  But more likely, he has a psychological switch, or personality that allows him to rationalize and compartmentalize things that are very traumatic. Without that switch in the human brain, most of us would be insane. Particularly in those we've asked to take human life repeatedly.  The human mind works in mysterious ways.   

Thus I don't believe Eddie Gallagher belongs in prison...even though he strayed into the darkness of the human soul and ended up, for me and my reading of the facts,  on the wrong side of the line.  He will refute those facts and claim he never crossed the line...but no matter. The line is there but it has many shades of  grey... and it is also wide.  And he was far enough into the dark grey that his actions caused the unprecedented action of a few of his comrades to speak up. Not one or two, but as many as twelve.  This is not a single whistle blower...something clearly happened outside the normal chaos of war. Those brave SEALs who choose to speak out will also pay a price...but that's a different story. Once the offense was highlighted everything turns to shit.  At that point the case gets forever tormented as the bureaucracy, not necessarily a corrupt bureaucracy, but certainly a flawed one, and that monster takes over the case.

I don’t like Eddie Gallagher.  I don’t like his smirk.  I don’t like his wife pretending he’s a noble human being for killing the teenage prisoner of war.   I no longer want him wearing the uniform he has clearly stained with this murder.  I wouldn’t want to have a beer with him.  His actions cannot be justified.  However, he can be forgiven.  And his service can still be honored.  Trump, however, is not forgiving him for his crime.  He is exonerating him from doing wrong.

Those who support him are trying to justify what he did, essentially saying he did no wrong.  Instead of saying you did a bad thing but it’s excused, don’t do it again, and then by honoring his past service and moving forward.  What’s going on is the politicization of a populist point of view that doesn’t look upon war as evil, but rather the evil of an adversary.  They are all evil and deserve to die. I don't want to be a hypocrite here...I certainly am guilty of dehumanizing ISIS.  They are scum bags and their ideology is pure evil.  And as such, when we blindly view the adversary as evil in this way, and without considering the lanes in the road, the cause becomes less justifiable.  When we can’t identify cause and why we are there we lose track of what is and what is not evil.  When the cause is evil the adversary is less human.  And the dehumanization of the adversary leads to torture, then the taking of trophies in combat, then the killing of non-combatants who are associated (or greater collateral damage), women and children, and then the extermination of races, and then every other atrocity of war one can think of…  It’s not that slippery of a slope because fortunately we do have precedent and  guidelines within UCMJ, and LOAC.  These are training classes either Gallagher either skipped, or stopped going to later in his career.

Eddie can go free.  He can continue to call himself a SEAL. He can be forgiven for his lack of judgement.  His killing, while not justified in and of itself, can be considered collateral damage from the stand-point of proximity.  Just as the strategic fire-bombing of Dresden in World War II, was justified at the level of less than the greater evil and horrors that were going on by that adversary.  Two books to consider reading to go deeper into the human heart would include, Kurt Vonnegut’s, “Slaughterhouse 5” about the firebombing of Dresden, and “Man’s Search for Meaning” by Vicktor Frankl, if you want to know about the horrors inside a German concentration camp, and why certain actions, though appalling on their scale, can be justified in war.  When it is not justified it is a war crime.  And those can certainly be put on trial...and have been...

What Trump is saying, what he believes, is the killing of the prisoner of war is OK.  The UCMJ and LOAC don’t apply.  Trump is not only above our laws he is above all laws.  This get’s back to his ability to shoot someone in the middle of 5th Avenue and be exonerated by his supporters.  It’s somewhat sickening because it appears to be true.  Only one who is above the law themselves can absolve others in a similar fashion. He appears to take demented pleasure in this type of power.  This is a very slippery slope indeed and it is also very sickening...

Paradise by the Dashboard Light

I've been accused of being a bleeding-heart left-wing whack job and those criticisms have ranged from socialist all the way up to RINO… Which is weird, because I am a conservative. But it's clear that I'm in the middle. Clowns to the left of me Jokers to the right. Here I am Stuck in the middle with you. (BTW Joker was the 2nd best movie I've seen this year).

So I asked myself…if I’m in the middle, why do I feel the same way as the Democratic House of Representatives feels. If I truly believe I am in the middle, shouldn't I have at least 50% love for Donald J Trump?

So I started to think about it...and as I started to think a transformation began. And the more I thought about it, the more I liked him. And I said to myself, "Let me sleep on it Baby, baby let me sleep on it Let me sleep on it I'll give you my answer in the morning." And in the morning I came to an answer. And the answer is sure I do. I love Donald J Trump. I love him as I love all of humanity. He has the worst job in the Country. I have great sympathy for anyone who wakes up in the White House and goes to work in the Oval Office. What a shitty job that must be. Meanwhile, I have the best job in the Country. I would never trade places with him or any other President. Not that anyone is asking me to.

But how do I, as a RINO, convince everyone else that they should reconsider their vote.  As I watch the impeachment procession currently going on in our great House of Representative, and Republican after Republican rises to provide their vote of support for Donald J Trump, I keep saying to myself, I must walk a mile in their shoes.  I must see what they see.  Politics aside, they either see good in Donald J. Trump or they are lying through their teeth.  I know what my liberal friends will tell me…  But it's so antithetical to what I  was seeing that I was compelled to put on my MAGA Hat and say, I support Donald J. Trump and reject the democratic attempt to over throw the wishes of 63 million Americans.  I will walk a mile in their shoes.

So what is it that they see?  Why do they see Paradise by the Dashboard Light?

So let's start at the beginning.  The ride down the escalator….  Yes, the arrival of the great disruptor.  I supported a businessman for president.  When the great Texan Ross Perot made his bid, I was behind him all the way.  Then he dropped out…then he came back…ugh…why did he do that?  Regardless, I can support a businessman.  If Bloomberg makes it through, he might very well get my vote.   I hate lawyers, first, "Let's kill all the lawyers".  I didn't say that…William Shakespeare did, it's not an original thought.  But I like Bloomberg, not because he's a democrat, but a businessman.  I speak business.  Our capitalist society runs on business, not just Duncan Donuts.  But I digress.

When I first heard Trump was running for President my gut instinct was, awesome…that will shake Washington up.  I'm a maverick…I always have been a maverick. That's why I liked John McCain…he was a maverick.  I'll hit the brakes; he'll fly right by...for you Maverick fans.  But  why McCain chooses a numskull as his running mate, the world will never know?  Yet I voted for McCain…yes, my liberal friends, I didn't vote for Obama, at least not round one.

Although, oddly, I rejoiced in his election…which I found somewhat peculiar to my emotions that day.  But I was swept up in the emotion of his electoral first.  Who wasn't?  His win was glorious by any standard or precedent.  I wished him, and our Country well.

So I liked what Trump represented, I still do.  He is the outsider, the disruptor, the drainer of the swamp.  I still love the idea of that…I'm still a maverick.  I haven't changed.  I still want a maverick in Washington.   But then I started to learn about the Donald.  That he doesn't read books, that he keeps a copy of Mein Kampf (or is it Hitler's speeches) near his bed, that he didn't actually write his book, "The Art of the Deal", that he wouldn't be revealing his tax returns to the public.  I don't give a shit how much money you made, or didn't make, if you are the President, somebody gets to see your tax returns.  Not me…I'm not gonna read them, as I don't care if he picked 4 deductions, or 2 deduction, it's not for me to judge another's income or personal financial affairs.  But why keep them secret?  You can see mine…

So, what are some more things I love about Donald J. Trump.  He's brash, I love that.  He's bold, I love that too.  Be bold, gusting to arrogant.  That's a motto I can live with.  Locker room talk.  If someone had a recorder on me, every time I said, shit, fuck or piss, in the office, my mother would be ashamed.  If also, one might be advised to know, the number of times I've looked upon a pretty girl, to paraphrase from Jimmy Carter during his interview with Playboy magazine in 1976, "…and lusted in my heart".   That is not a crime against the Country, nor should Donald J. Trump's locker room talk, necessarily be regarded as a crime against women.  His mocking of Serge Kovaleski was certainly a personal attack on Kovaleski, but in general he was demonstrating his disdain for the politically incorrect.  I love the politically incorrect and if you want to listen to me talking about the politically incorrect, and saying politically incorrect things, for which my daughter continuously corrects me on, I want to run and hide from this current generation of snow flakes, and millennial's who want their safe zone.  Fuck that, grow a spine. I'll bend over backward to help the disabled…there but for the grace of God, go I.  These days I push my mom around in a wheel chair, and change her diaper, and as her Parkinson's reaches stage 5, stay with her throughout the night, and move her, every few hours, so she doesn't develop bedsores.

All that caring for people doesn't mean I didn't laugh my ass off during the "R" rated movie, "The Hangover".  Should I quote the too numerous to count politically incorrect lines from that movie, with our "A" list sweetheart Bradley Cooper and the great Zach Galifianakis, uttering them non-stop.  "Calling Doctor F_got", I can't even type it…but I'm laughing inside.  If you can't laugh during that movie, you can't laugh. "Take me to the candy shop…" it goes on and on…

I love Trump's approach to Foreign policy, America is Great!  Fuck you China.  Not diplomatic, very dangerous, but I love the approach.  But let's return and work out the trade deal…  Same thing with North Korea…except now we are waiting on our Christmas present.  But I'm with Trump on this one…Fuck you dear leader, try it and you'll be sorry…  Let me reemphasize that…"FUCK YOU DEAR LEADER, WE WILL RETURN YOUR CHRISTMAS GIFT IN KIND!"  I'm sorry to the snowflakes whose sensitive ears I may have offended...

I fear the witch hunt.  We've got a history of looking for witches, Senator McCarthy springs to mind.  We can't willy-nilly try to overturn the will of the people.  But as I look at my colleagues on the far-left, who have been trying to overturn the election since the beginning, and I look to my colleagues on the left, who see something has changed. And I look to those on the right, who just wanted to drain the swap. Someone has to be right.  Someone has to be wrong.  Thus someone is lying.

But here I am, walking a mile in your shoes.  I love Donald J. Trump.  I didn't vote for him…but those of you who have followed my previous posts, it was either voting for the possibility of a Tyrant (Donald J. Trump), I assessed to be at 5%, since we've seen a few tyrants rise in the past 100 years, or the rise of the Anti-Christ (Hillary R Clinton) which I assessed to be 1/2000, just guessing since we have only seen a single Christ rise in 2000 years….the probability of that happening, despite what the Republican Hillary haters and conspiracy theorist, may believe, is 0.05 %, just to do the math.  But I have given him the benefit of the doubt, since day one.  I've looked at the good of disruption.  I've looked at the Maverick in the room trying to gain the upper hand during negotiations.  Climate accord, who needs it?   NATO, yeah, pay your fair share!  Jobs...up, Wall...up, Economy...up.  Seems like we are making-out in the front seat, doesn't it?  But at what cost...?

So here we are…  I've said previously it's time to impeach. And now The House has just voted.  He's Impeached.  Will that hold in the Senate.  Odds are no.  But now I've walked a mile in your shoes…it hasn't changed my perspective.  Not because I don't understand what he brings, but because he's demonstrated he is far closer to the tyrant that I've feared could become Our President despite making me feel good when I say, "Fuck", at the office and "Merry Christmas" on the street.

Who knows what will happen in the Senate.  Regardless, he is still our POTUS and CINC until such a time as he is not.

Let's not let these proceedings tear the Country apart.  If the Senate says No, we still have November...

Biscuit 1 - Fox 0

The story you are about to hear is true, the names have not been changed to protect the innocent...

The call came in at 7:03 pm.  I was standing in line at the Chipolte ordering dinner.  It was my daughter, frantic, on the line.  Daboo (she calls me Daboo), get home right away there's a fox in the yard.  Calmly I asked her, "Are the chicken's out?".  "Yes Daboo, the birds are out and they are screaming, the fox got Biscuit!"

In my mind I was picturing the carnage.  One fox in the yard.  Three chickens.  I immediately began thinking about setting up the incubator, ordering some fertilized eggs, and hatching another brood.  No chance three chickens survive a fox attack.  It's been a good run. Over three years and we've never let the chickens wander haphazardly into the jaws of a fox, teeth of a raccoon, or beak of a backyard goshawk.  Sure we have had foxes in the yard before and coyotes.  Typically during the winter months when the chickens stay in the coop and the fence falls into disrepair.  But we know when they have access.  We've captured their coming and going on surveillance cameras.  After I fix the holes in the fence, however, they are banished. And have been so vanquished until tonight.  We let our guard down.

As I drove quickly home I called my wife.  "Yes", she said, "The chickens were screaming and Biscuit was attacked".  "Is the fox still in the yard?", I asked.  "We don't know," was her reply.  

When I got home my daughter had "Biscuit" upstairs in the bathroom  I feared the worse.  Preparing myself for what I imagined would be a severely mangled bird.  And I thought of the speech I gave my daughter when we first decided to keep the chicken's and fight the city for legal residency.  The birds do not get to go to the vet.  We had previously been to the exotic pet clinic a few years ago, before the chickens arrived. On that occasion it was with a rabbit with over grown teeth. But while in the waiting room in came a mother and daughter with a pet chicken.  It was when the doctor asked them to sign the form approving, or disapproving, the resuscitation clause, that I thought deeply about the worth of chickens.  A live hen is worth about $5 dollars.  That's not much money.  How much is it going to cost this family to have this chicken cared for by this doctor, and, what exactly does chicken resuscitation look like?  In my mind, so many years ago, well in advance of having chicken's of my own, I was already marking that form, "No".

Given that experience, when we began our chicken journey, I told my daughter, "No vet visits for the chickens".  This meant, a number of things.  One, we had to do all of our own chicken medical training on-line.  There is definitely a wealth of knowledge.  Chickens are pretty hardy.  Keep them warm and dry and they tend to stay healthy.  After all, they pretty much eat dirt.  How sick could they become?  Turns out mold is a problem.  But if you keep their feed dry, mold stays out of the equation.  Other nasty creatures that would tend to harbor weird things, fleas, ticks, mosquitoes, spiders, small snakes, worms, snails, slugs...things you don't want in your house...the chickens welcome...because they eat them.  Yet still, they have problems.  But if you give them dry dirt, they will take a bath in it.  If you give them a brick or a rock, they will trim their beak on it.  If you put vinegar in their water, they will love you for it...and stay healthy.  But we have had to do medical things.  Beak repair.  Turns out it's like auto body repair.  You use a small tea bag and super glue (gel) to do a fiberglass repair.  It's helpful to trim their claws and spurs, primarily so they don't hurt one another.  And you watch them.  Until this night, 3-1/2 years running, there were no trips to the vet.

So as I ascended the steps to the up-stairs bathroom, I wondered how I would tell my daughter. "The fox won this round, it's been a good run, it was only a matter of time".   My first hand knowledge of fox attacks include, Hondo, who lost 10 birds in one attack.  And Chris, who lost 5 birds in one attack.  I entered the room and saw Biscuit was squatting on the bathroom rug.  She was looking around.  I could tell she was stressed but she looked intact. She was breathing heavy.  Other than that, she looked like she always did. I was surprised.  When I reached down to pet her, she looked at me with one chicken eye and tilted her head sideways.  She was totally aware of my presence.  Then she tried to stand up.  I could immediately tell she was injured. She struggled to stand up and she looked like she was limping, and pretty badly.  But, she was able to stand.   I thought to myself.  "This bird was just attacked by a fox and she looks like she might survive".  The decision was clear, I can't let this bird try to survive on her own.  We would go to the exotic vet.  Breaking my long standing rule.

I called the vet ER...it was about 7:15.  Within minutes we were driving in with a pet emergency.  I thought about the incredible Dr. Po. I thought about Dr. Dee in Alaska.  I wondered who was on call.  By 7:30 we were being admitted.  And as I had remembered, so many years earlier, they presented me with the Resuscitation Form.  I immediately thought, "No", primarily because I had made that decision five years ago, in advance, of this day.  But my daughter was with me.  Biscuit was her pet.  It's her turn to make a critical life and death decision.  It's yet another chance to learn about the real life, during real life.  Yet still, I had a question.  So I told my daughter, "This is your decision".  And I asked the vet technician, "What exactly is chicken resuscitation?"  The tech said, "Its very difficult, if the heart stops, they can do CPR, it probably requires breaking ribs".  Even though, you may think the next answer, is going to be yes, my daughter had a break-through moment in clarity.  By all rights, we shouldn't be here.  The fox should have won.  That said, Biscuit was clearly in a lot of pain.  And wait, if she was going to die, you would have to break her ribs to keep her heart beating?  My daughter, made the decision, I couldn't make.  She said, "No, do not resuscitate".  It felt like the right decision.

That said, we still had a bird to save.  The tech took Biscuit into the back, she was breathing heavy.  And my daughter and I waited in an examination room, spending our time looking at the multiple pictures of exotic pets that blanketed the wall.  Birds, lizards, turtles, hamsters, guinea pigs, mice, rats, snakes, rabbits, chinchillas, ferrets, peacocks, and yes, one chicken. When the doctor came into the room with us, it was a very happy prognosis.  Biscuit would survive, they needed to clean her up, stitch-up some broken skin, and put her on antibiotics and pain killer.  The bill for the treatment would run anywhere from $900 to $1,200 dollars.  And they were scheduling her for surgery to do the stitching the next morning, obviously the chicken would have to be sedated for the stitches.  She also would have to remain over night.  Now we had another decision.  What is a $5 chicken actually worth?  We had already signed the "Do not resuscitate?" but that wasn't based on money, that was based on doing more harm than good.  Exactly what was the current value of the bird?  It was time to do some quick math...would I be willing to pay the $1,200 for medical care?

Hatching ~$400

Brooding ~$600

Coop ~$2,400

Pest Eradication ~$600

3.5 years care and feeding  ~$1,200 x 3.5 = $4,200

Battle with City and Licence ~$1,800

So far, with incidentals but without intangibles like love, the household investment in these birds now approaches $10,000.  That makes the decision easy.  I'm not paying for the medical care of the single bird, per se.  I am paying into the total investment we have made to have and keep birds as pets.  And we are not ready to give up on this experiment turned hobby turned lifestyle just yet.

Just so you don't think the bird was lucky, and the fox, didn't get a good hold on her, the sight of the attack looked like the Manson family had visited.  Feathers everywhere.  The chicken was well in the jaws of the fox, and probably flapping and squawking like, well, a chicken in the jaws of a fox.  Can there be a better analogy?  And my daughter did run into the back yard flapping and screaming, "Drop my bird".  She made eye contact with the fox, he dropped her bird and retreated. But the trauma had been inflicted. Biscuit had a two inch diameter rip in her skin that required 12 stitches.  She had two punctures wounds that required one stitch each.  But it wasn't until all her feathers were removed along her belly and upper thighs that the real damage was revealed.  Her legs were severely bruised.  What should look like white, raw, chicken skin, looked dark green with massive bruising from internal bleeding that must have resulted from the jaws of the fox and the wild subsequent flapping.

I'm happy to report, 9 days into Biscuit's recovery at home,  she is doing very well.  She goes back to the vet today to have her post-recovery check-up.  Since she was crowing for the first time yesterday, I think she will be ready to be returned to GenChickPop (GCP) in the not to distant future.  Her sisters miss her...  They have been visiting her in her recovery cage throughout the week...

The Racist and the Bigotry of the Two-Legged Asshole

The topic for today is "white privilege".  I want to ask the question, is white privilege a thing?  To those who say white privilege is reverse racism I ask the following question.  If a bully pushes a kid down in a sand box and the kid tells the teacher what happened, can the bully claim they have been victimized by the kid for speaking out?  This at it's core is the backward thinking of an oppressor who claims oppression.  We see it continuously from those who believe that political correctness has eroded their ability to speak freely. The oppressor shouting oppression.   "Black lives matter!" No, they shout, "All lives matter!"  But this reverse victimization goes beyond racism.  It happens when women ask to be treated equally and some men feel marginalized.  It happens when the LGBTQA community asks to be recognized and some straights feel marginalized.  And it goes on and on.  Affirmative action, of course, means the only way you can get a fair shake is to bribe your way into a top college.  I'm being sarcastic but not by much.  In my mind, the most sublime expression for defining "white privilege" is the phrase coined by Professor Kiese Laymon in his brilliant book, "How to Slowly Kill Yourself and Others in America".  He said, "Blackness is not probable cause." If you would like to read my complete review of Laymon's book just click here.

  

The phrase "blackness is not probable cause" is the quintessential fact underwriting the existence of white privilege--if it really is a thing.  I have never been suspected of a crime merely based on my skin color.  For me to be suspected of a crime I would have to be holding the murder weapon while standing over the victim.  Even then I would expect to be prosecuted with a fair chance of walking early.   Because, not only would I have to be standing over the victim, my prints or DNA would still have to be discovered on the weapon with some blood, or other evidence, turning up on my clothing.  It turns out evidence is key to our judicial system.  Not so for the Central Park 5 if you've been following that sad story.  That was being guilty by skin color.  Those horror stories of wrongful prosecution go on and on and will continue to do so.  When 40% of our prison demographic is of Black or African decent while only comprising 14% of our total population something is grossly wrong.  Those of us who use math for a living know something just isn't right.  Yeah, it's a complicated story, but we can't turn our back and believe the numbers contain an acceptable margin of error when in the actual pursuit of justice. We have a problem.  Beyond the incarcerations we have other disproportionate acts, like police shootings, and racist incidents that stoke the fire and lead to a belief in something like "white privilege".  Yeah the statistics get squishy in other areas but the message still is the same.  There is an unanswered phenomenon of young black men being disproportionately shot by law enforcement.  This is marginal or incidental if you happen to be  white and struggling to get by with all the normal pressures of life--the frustrations, the misfortunes, the bad luck, and the other trials of life that we all face...to whom nobody is immune (accidents, disease, divorce, death, money problems, etc).  This idea that somehow we have white privilege becomes a serious blind spot...it's not wrong, it's just not on our radar.  We don't see it and thus we tend to passively deny it.  We say white privilege isn't a thing at all...we all have our lot in life and we play the hand we are dealt.  A doctor once told me "you play the hand you are dealt" as I struggled to decide between triple level spinal fusion and living with pain for the rest of my life.  I asked him if I could still be as active post surgery.  After he said that I gave him a two part response.  Fuck you, stronger message to follow.  I didn't have the surgery.  I still play soccer.  I'm pain free. That's a different story I haven't posted about the conspiracy of unnecessary surgeries by unethical orthopedic surgeons...it's in a file I call "Pelican Briefs".  But I digress. 

Now in the case of my spinal surgery, that, of course, isn't white privilege, unless  you want to consider that I had been to four different doctors and I had four different opinions.  I have good health insurance.  That doesn't mean I have good medical advice.  But does everybody have access to that type of medical care...even though there are a lot of quacks in the industry?  What if I only went to one quack..and now I'm living with plates and screws in my spine that will only deteriorate and require more spinal fusions until my entire spinal column is constructed of stainless steel?  I also was able to call my cousin, a neurosurgeon, who gave me some amazing words of wisdom through the episode.  Having those advantages is also playing the hand I was dealt.  So maybe the doctor was right to begin with.  But it's inconceivable, to me, to advise a child on the proper way to behave in the presence of a police officer in order to avoid being shot.  That is not wisdom my father passed down to me.  Maybe he should have?  Nope...never considered it.  A blind spot because the necessity doesn't exist.  It's not something that I've ever had to consider. Those blind spots are real.  We can deny them, or try to identify them.  Denying a blind spot doesn't make it go away.

The point of this story is that we don't have to play the hand we are dealt.  And we certainly don't have to obstruct those trying to change things for themselves from making their life better.  That is the American Dream.  This is a discussion of white privilege, not immigration.  But it is clear anyone coming to our country is doing so to make their life better.  They are not coming here to commit crimes.  They are not coming here to vote for the Democrats.  They are coming here to change their stars to quote from  "A Knights Tale".  Rags to riches.  That too is the American story.  How do we forget our heritage?  Cinderella is not only for little white girls?  Every little girl wants to to be a princess...Disney is trying to make that point more and more...after a shaky start...we should not deny our little girls the opportunity to dream...and dream big!  

White privilege has been the result of dreaming big.  Our forefathers created the foundation for everyone to be privileged in a free society. Privilege to life, to liberty, and to justice should be color blind.  It doesn't become white privilege without the accompanying denial that these barriers exist.  Not everyone gets the privilege.  It's not real from the standpoint of living in a world of steps with two legs to walk up them.  That's called "two-legged" privilege.  Those in wheel chairs feel like the two-legged are out to get them.  Which is not true.  Those out to get them are those who oppose the construction of ramps...or park in front of them. They are assholes. Playing the hand we are dealt oblivious to the hand others are dealt is generally fine.  It's not a problem until you actively want to obstruct those from trying to build the ramp...opposing those trying to better themselves given that they have been dealt the shitting hand.  That's oppression.  When you oppress women, that's sexism.  When you oppress those less fortunate than you, for instance the blind and not wanting Braille in your elevators, that's just sick and twisted.  You are also an asshole.  When you oppress people based on their skin color, that's racism.  White privilege, thus, is just a less inflammatory way of calling obstructionists to racial equality racist.  It's also a sneaky way to out those who live in that camp...the louder you scream that white privilege is reverse racism the more racist you probably are...at a minimum you are an asshole...

The Reality of the Third Rail and Why 45 Turns Out to be an Exceptional Thief

As a country we've finally arrived at the definitive third rail and the reason we have had to endure the worse example of America to emerge in decades.  It's not that he's a common criminal.  It's not that he's a sexist or a racist.  He is, of course, all of the above.  Not discounting the fact that he could be just a common thief (cue Hans Gruber).  And I don't hate Trump, though I'm sure I will be labeled a hater.  I actually like his political incorrectness...he's just dangerous and not an asset to our country.  And I want to qualify that with regard to his supporters, the criminal, sexist, and racist elements are in the small minority.  That means very low in number.  All together this small basket of deplorables could not have elected him on their own. There are not enough deplorables despite Hillary's math.  But they did vote for him.  But so did a much larger and more important group. That larger group of American's voted for him for a single reason.  They are the fabled one issue voter.  They voted for him hoping he would appoint enough conservative justices to the Supreme Court to  finally have a shot at over-turning Roe v Wade.  Despite the fact that the evidence is clear, his position on abortion is only as truthful as any number of his other half-baked positions.  When you see his lips moving you know he is lying.  And his lying depends on whether or not he needs your vote. It has been through this thick curtain of lies that he has accomplished his ultimate magic trick and misdirection of the voting public with regard to Roe v Wade...and subsequently won the election. Again, in the words of Hans Gruber, "...by the time they figure out what went wrong we'll be sitting on a beach, earning twenty percent."

I get it.  Those who support the sanctity of human life place that position above all others.  I can see that the one issue vote has merit.  On it's surface it's so easy to get behind that position.  Who, in their right mind, supports killing babies?  No one can support that to your face.  It is perhaps the easiest lie for anyone to tell...including Trump.  But the reality, as stark and perhaps shameful as it may be, is somewhat different.  Someone has to be lying.  To suggest for a second that the 25 senators from Alabama are so far above reproach, righteous to the core in their mind, heart, and soul is so terribly discordant from what we actually know it befuddles credulity.  I am not saying we have 25 Trumps in Alabama. As individuals they are good men.  They have their political positions, their integrity, and their religious views.  They are also good servants of the public.  As a whole, however, they represent something altogether different.  They are a white faced sham representing the "Moral Majority" in America.  It reminds me of the bumper stickers from the 70's.  And of course the counter-bumper stickers that emerged shortly there-after.  "The Moral Majority is Neither".  They clearly do not, and cannot, represent the United States.  It's laughable that they seemingly represent the Great State of Alabama.  Something is terribly wrong in Montgomery.  Maybe some good will come out of this revelation.  But that's a longer story.

With regard to the issue of Roe v Wade, I am certainly not the legal scholar who will argue any of this in front of a judicial bench.  I can barely argue these issues at the dinner table.  And who touches this third rail at the family dinner? It's more emotionally charged than bringing up gun control or climate change (And when did climate change become a third rail at family dinners?  Answer: Trump).  The problem with Roe v Wade isn't the morality of the decision, which I personally believe belongs strictly with those involved, it is with trying to govern a country where a single issue drives the agenda.  When single issues drive the agenda bad things will happen.  Skin-headed slugs will crawl out from under white rocks. Misogynist rats will slip in through cracks in the doors of sexism.  And corrupt snakes will show up to sell you marsh-land rather than trying to drain the swamp. All this is happening in the name of making America great again.  I don't think that was the intent.  I certainly hope my MAGA friends didn't believe bad things would happen.  I think, rather, they believed in a single issue goodness not realizing that they would be paying tuition at Trump University.  They would be buying the entire farm of bad behaviors.  Again, that is a longer story.

The governance of our Country is complex.  It its, perhaps, the most complex of any artificially created endeavor.  If we are still Number # 1 at something on planet earth, it still has to be getting democracy right, as well as the governance of an economy and a union of states that can stay together.  That includes every single federal institution that leads the world in science, in defense, in policy, in peace, and in prosperity.  Those institutions did not spring up over-night.  They were built brick by brick, dollar by dollar, argument by argument, over the course of two centuries. The debates will continue and I thought the institutions would stand.  Until now.  The dismantling of our government is the dismantling of our way of life.  Reducing the complexity of their creation with the politics of corruption threatens our core belief's.  Not simply the legal right to to make a privacy decision as given by Roe v Wade.  When you disregard the institutions of government.  When you act above the law.  When you create a crises within country that takes a jack-hammer to our foundation the  ends cannot justify the means regardless of what is individually at stake.

News flash, a women's right to choose, under the constitution, cannot be mandated by the Federal government.  It is a privacy issue protected by the 14th Amendment.  That is the legal precedence for Roe v Wade.  Thus, delegating the right, or lack of right,  to the States does not change the constitutionality of the dilemma.  Believing the states can decide for a women is a position that misses the forest for the trees. A state's attempt, Texas in this case, is why we have a Roe v Wade to begin with.  The constitution is silent on abortion but it is not silent on the right to privacy.  It is fundamental. This is why states also cannot decide what is good or bad when it comes to a women's body, or a man's body, regardless. When we start down that slope, when the government can legislate these types of invasions related to our body we stop being unique, we stop being sentient, we are no longer human.  We can kill the economy, we can kill the environment, we can kill our standing within the world order.  But when we kill the essence of what makes us human, our mind and our bodies, we become a sub-class of living things that can be externally controlled.  I will not fill the pages here with the analogies that emerge from this type of legislation because they tend to trifle with the serious nature of a decision to abort a pregnancy.  Yet still (think eugenics) each one makes my skin crawl should a government, any government, begin to legislate those things for us.

Roe v Wade will stand, should it make it to the Supreme Court.  And I believe it is on it's way.  The challenge will fail and Alabama will be forced to capitulate.  Short of that, the dismantlement of our government will be complete.  And why?  Because we elected an exceptional thief to the White House...he squeezed through the cracks with the support of a single issue constituency who were duped on a single issue.  Maybe those one issue supporters don't care if he was lying, so long as he put a conservative on the Supreme Court.  They were duped because Roe v Wade cannot be over-turned.  Why?  Because the issue or our privacy is a universal, and for now, an unalienable right. Those who oppose abortion are fighting an issue that isn't actually on the ballot. Whereas the country may be divided on the right to choose, we are far less divided on our right to privacy. And on that front, in the words of the Brett Kavanaugh, our most recent Supreme Court Justice, this right is "settled and a precedent of the Supreme Court".  Should he change his mind the very definition of integrity must also change.  That will be the true judgement day for our country. Not because Roe v Wade fell, but because the Commander-in-Thief duped a constituency on one issue to enrich himself through the process of his destruction politics on every other.

How Mueller Made America Great Again

I might start wearing a MAGA hat.  We, as a country, need to grab that hat by the visor, place it proudly on our heads, and understand what it finally means.  What is it that truly makes America great?  Is it the unemployment rate? Is it healthcare?  Is it manufacturing?  Is it free trade?  Is it our conflicting views on immigration reform and wall building?  Is it our conflicting views on religious freedom's, free speech, and free guns?  

These arguments are simply conversations about an idea.  The conversations themselves do not make us the "City on the Hill".  The fact that we can have these arguments without destroying one another is what makes us the "City on the Hill".  It's different.  The medium is the message as Marshal McLuhan has told us.  It is not the actual text of the message it is the conveyance for that message.  It is the reason our forefathers came.  It is the reason our immigrant families came.  It is the reason we have waves of immigrants knocking at our southern border (not withstanding the possibility that the current surge is directly correlated to the belief that the doors of the "City on the Hill" will soon be closed).  Nothing has changed significantly about our desire to have these conversations or our freedom to have them. Yes, having these conversations open, visible, and viscerally on Face Book is annoying but we are slowly getting used to it.  Civil discourse is catching on, at least among friends, or people are choosing not to start riots with their keyboard as we were doing frequently last year.

But this doesn't tell you why I might go out an buy a MAGA Hat today...

In the climax of the blockbuster movie SPLIT by M. Knight Shalamalan, James McAlvoy exclaims through clinched and bloody teeth, "The Broken are the More Evolved".  To me, this quote applies as equally to a body of people, as it applies to the an oppressed individual who has been through the trials of life, suffering extreme abuse, and has emerged, stronger, not broken.  This, beside, the genius of creating an entirely new super hero galaxy to rival MARVEL and DC COMICS behind our backs, is the beauty of "The Horde" Shalamalan created.  In his creation he uses 24 separate personalities to comprise his final character.  How is that final beast not us?  True we don't go around resisting bullets, crawling across ceilings, or eating cheerleaders for fun, but that's just an analogy for the corruption within a  society that has no checks and balances.  It's total anarchy.  Unchecked, seemingly normal people will take every advantage offered to get a better deal on a purchase, a loan, a job, or on a position that affects them.  Unchecked, seemingly normal people will take every advantage offered  (or not offered) to get their kid into a better class, a better program, or a better college like USC (seriously?). The Horde is trying to set straight the corruption inherent in this normalcy.  Remember the "Bell Curve".  The Bell Curve is the normal distribution, or the Gaussian.  I'll spare you the intricacies of the normal distribution but just about everything we see in our daily life can be modeled with the normal distribution.  Overtime, the convolution of multiple disparate probability distributions will also become normal.  So this means, over the long haul, everything is normal.  Even Black Swan events (Nassim Nicholas Taleb) events become normal over the course of billions of years.  But we don't have that long...we have enough time for one, maybe two Black Swan's in a lifetime.  Let's digress for a second to consider one scene from the movie Black Swan with Natalie Portman.  Ok, moving on...  The only way to beat the normal distribution is to cheat (or to be different).  Once everyone is normal, everyone is the same.  Once everyone is a Super Hero, No one one is Super (to quote form the Incredibles). Evolution cheats the normal distribution with genetic defects, at least until it catches up.  It takes a defect to evolve.  The Horde was right, the broken are the move evolved...or more correctly, they help us evolve.  Without them we become normal, homogeneous, the same...maybe you see where I am going with this?

The internet has been the great equalizer.  When everyone has access to the Kelly Blue Book Values, stores like CARMAX become the norm.  We now all pay a fair price for our cars, even at the dealer.  You know who prides himself on the art of the deal.  Yep, our POTUS, 45, The Donald, TRUMP.  He wrote the book on the "Art of the Deal".  Actually, he didn't write it.  He cheated.  Someone else wrote it and he got the credit.  That single act was not worthy of headlines since there are a lot of professional ghost writers out there.  But Trump will perhaps had the greatest increase in personal equity by a book he didn't write once elected President. That book didn't do it alone, but it was on his CV.  As was his continual appearance on 14 seasons of the Apprentice. So too were his constant media appearances and his tweets.  He has personified there is no such thing as bad publicity.  Summed up in his statement, "I could stand in the middle of 5th avenue and shoot someone, and not lose voters".  His core supporters loved this statement.  The rest of us threw-up in our mouth.  Not because we were disgusted, but more so because we knew it was true...

The Battle with Trump has been lost.  He won.  Yet the war is not over.  The two years we've stressed and agonized over the Mueller investigation has come to an end.  Every possible correct belief we have had about the lack of ethics, honesty, moral compass, and unfettered narcissism of our POTUS has proven out on the pages of that report.  Yes, I rejoice for the Country that Trump was not colluding with Russia in the sense he was not plotting with Putin in some smoky back room. Although the love he gave Putin on stage in Helsinki still defies logic.  But Trump saw the advantage of what was happening, and allowed it to play out in his favor.  Many of us would also let something like that play out to our advantage...again, his supporters don't see anything wrong.  If Russia takes down Hillary Clinton, and all I do is standby and watch it go down, that's to my advantage.  And if Russia gets caught doing that, bad Russia.  Duplicity runs a muck.  Duplicity is prevalent in both parties.  Neither one is immune.  It's a human condition. It's a defect.  It makes us broken.

But with the publication of the Mueller investigation, our system of government has prevailed. We will win the war.  Through ten documented attempts to quash the Mueller investigation the Cheater in Chief was unable to bring the advantage of the Presidency to his rescue.  He was unable to make a deal.  He had no fixers, no facilitators, no cronies...although he tried.  Even though Barr is clearly in Trump's camp, he has released the report.  He made it public.  The damage is been done.  The Mueller Investigation is now the most important document to our democracy.  It should be held under lock and key, and protected from the elements, for the next several centuries, for as long as our Country stands.  It should be wheeled out on the 4th of July.  It should be curated among the many letters of state, the Articles of Confederation, The Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, The Gettysburg Address.  It is that great of a document.

We don't have to impeach Trump to win.  We just did.  Our Country came face to face with the broken, both Trump is broken (morally), and our Country is broken, split in half by our politics.  But we have emerged on the other side with a comprehensive investigation and exposure of his wrong doing.  And we will evolve, just like we did as a country after we made other mistakes.  We have to be broken to heal.  We have to be broken to evolve.  And in the words of Kelly Clarkson,  "What Doesn't Kill You Makes You Stronger.

So it took Trump, the corrupt of the corrupt, to highlight how bad it can be.  On the brink of doing everything wrong, we will now set upon a course to do everything better.  And it was our system of government that has prevailed.  Ironically, after his broken Presidency, Trump will have Made America Great Again by being the worst President in our Country's history. And that is why I may buy a MAGA Hat...

The Artificial Life of AND, OR, NAND, NOR, XOR, XNOR, INV, and BUF

I've written a lot about the Singularity.  In particular about the fictional merging of artificial and human intelligence.  Whereas I joke about the a future where we are assimilated by the BORG with  SKYNET taking over and kicking off the apocalypse, I actually don't believe in all that nonsense.  With all the advancements in AI we see everyday, we have not evolved a single bit past 2nd Generation AI.  Even if we advance 30,000 years in 30 years (the Singularity) not much will change with regard to machines actually becoming self-aware.

First generation AI captured the imagination.  Expert systems were the direct result of 1st Gen AI.  Most of us wouldn't even call that AI.  Expert systems are simply the evolution of getting searchable databases and expert procedures committed to a checklist in software. Anyone one who was doing things right, without a computer, had a checklist.

Second generation AI machines can learn, but only thanks to Bayesian statistics and neural networks.  But what are they really leaning?  Plenty of apps are out there which can give you a feel for how well this type of machine learning works...  Take a picture of yourself and have the app search for painted portraits of historical figures.  Who do you look like?  George Washington?  Marie Antoinette?  There are thousands of paintings in the archive...  But what did we learned in computer science 101?  Garbage in, garbage out...  Nothing has changed.  You train your AI on the wrong data set, and you get garbage.  Friends of my would argue this is all too human.  You watch Fox News and you train you human brain on garbage.  You get a garbage President.  Fair enough.  At the risk of upsetting my daughter...the problem with the millennial brain, among other things, is that you never know what data set they've been training on.   They have an unlimited number of data sets to train on...much of it garbage.  Most of us growing up only had our parents to mold our minds.  The problem with these unlimited data sets is that some of it is rooted in truth but then it quickly diverges someplace else.  If you've had any experience or understanding of how to think critically, maybe you can sort it out...but even the best of us have been fooled by garbage.

A lot of people much smarter than I am have been considering Third Generation AI.  What do they have to show for it?  Nothing.  No one can even predict what Third Gen AI will look like.  Some say quantum computing?  Nah, that's no real change to the information architecture that will support it...it's all 1's and 0's in the background.  It will be the same foundation of logic.  No one is going to want to recreate decades of digital logic developed behind the current digital age.  We are just seeking faster processing.  And ultimately, the digital logic every single computer at work today still relies on the very same eight logic gates created so many years ago.  AND, OR, NAND, NOR, XOR, XNOR, INV, and BUF.  That's it.  The fact that a computer can resolve the most complex mathematical expressions into this tiny set of tricks in logical circuitry continues to blow my mind.  But it also tells us a lot about the practicality of sentience and whether or not machines will become self-aware.  When in this argument I always like to say, no matter how fast your flick your light switch on and off, the lights in your house are not going to become self aware.

Getting back to the AI app that chooses a portrait from history.  It's easy to spoof.  If your mug shot search produces George Washington, make a face, and you can just as easily be paired with Martha Washington.  Compare and contrast that with sending your mugshot to your mother.  Doesn't matter if you are making a face or not.  She can recognize you.  So can most of your friends. Many will argue that after 30,000 years of training, the AI will spot you...still no.  30,000 years of AI would not be able to tell you who is the real Ralph Northam in his yearbook picture.  His mother knows.

This brings us to today's blog.  Or perhaps what's more important, the dream I had the other night that I am compelled to write about.  I woke up and sent myself a text so I would remember it in the morning. But I don't think I needed to, the dream is just as vivid now as it was when it was occurring the other night.

In my dream I was sent a string of text.  I was trying to decipher what the string of text was saying to me.  I could see the text, every letter in the sentence in front of me.  But it made no sense because some of the words were misspelled.  The sentence was, "The Singularity is near. The recent hack on Alexa was just you and me trying to get together."  That seems straight forward and easy enough to read.  In my dream I remember reading "The Singularity is Near" over and over again, and thinking to myself, what does this mean with regard to the the rest of the sentence.  I read it over and over again, and when I realized, in my dream, that AI was the source of the message, this was a message from the other side, that some machine intelligence was trying to establish contact, I had sufficient chills to wake up.  It was just as frightening as  those times you wake up because you think someone is in your house.

There's a back story here with Alexa.  I'm an early adopter of technology.  I have several Alexa's (Alexi ?) in the house, as well as multiple Google Assistants.  All of them are disabled.  Not because I feel like Google and Amazon are spying on me.  Not because I don't appreciate getting an update on the time and weather whenever I ask.   They are disabled because they give our little dog a heart attack.  Just like fireworks, if Alexa responds to a question, our little dog makes a B-line out of the room and heads under the bed, where she shakes and shakes.  It seems you can't teach an old dog new tricks...or did we teach her a new trick.  Running and hiding when a disembodied voice enters the environment.  Long before the voice even responds, whenever I called for "Alexa" the query was sufficient for her to get up and run to the bed room.

Now when you merge this knowledge with the message I received from the other side, I start thinking about things differently.  Maybe the little dog senses more.  It's not just the frequency of Alexa's voice.  It's not just the human voice detected from the body.  Maybe the dog senses something deeper.  A presence behind the voice.  They say dogs can sense this sort of thing.  I hope not.  For the dog it's must be magic.  And magic is weird enough to give you chills.

Needless to say, all of our personal assistants are disconnected.  I don't need that kind of contact from the other side.  But really, I don't like terrorizing the little dog, for whatever reason.  Her little heart can't take it.  There is no message from the other side.  But what kind of tricks is my brain trying to play on me?  I'm not ready to concede that AI will win.  Even after 30,000 years.

Without understanding Third Generation AI I'm not ready to consider something else.  Arthur C. Clarke said, "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."  This hold's true at every level of technology despite the fact that we use it with regard to future technology.  Someone who has never seen a car or an airplane before, will be just a mesmerized as a pig looking at at wrist watch or a little dog hearing Alexa.  Fast forward two decades, when our first tiny probes begin orbiting the planet Proxima Centauri b, about four light away, but reachable with solar sails and laser propulsion in about 20 of our Earth years.  First, WOW!  We are going to get there in my lifetime.  But, second, what will it be like for the aliens waking up on Centauri b when we try to establish contact with them first?  What will our alien neighbors think of these tiny little probes.  Will they think we are the BORG?  Or will they examine the tiny chip and see the clever use of logic gates...AND, OR, NAND, NOR, XOR, XNOR, INV, and BUF...  Intelligent life?  Yes.  Artificial life?  Not so much...