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...

The Presidents Johnson

It is now conceivable, within our lifetime, we will actually see a picture of the President's Johnson. Not the Presidents Johnson, Andrew or Lyndon.  But the President's own Johnson.  His willy.  His wiener.  His penis.  The Mueller investigation has nude selfies.  The investigation team has used extraordinary restraint and control of this information not to leak or release these to the press.  I'm not sure how that is possible. The control measures must be extraordinary for nothing to have been leaked other than the fact that these nude selfies exist.  These selfies are of such National Security importance that even information pertaining to their exact content has not been leaked.  What else could they be?  I guess it's possible that someone of great importance to the Administration met with some nefarious character and took a nude selfie.  Our President has already met with the most nefarious character's representing world leadership... Putin, Kim Jong-Un...plenty of pictures exist of those encounters. Alas none of them nude.  But did He or someone else in his Administration meet with the  leader of an international crime syndicate and stop for a selfie?  KAOS, SPECTRE, or even Dr. Evil holding Mr. Bigglesworth?  Mr. Bigglesworth is nude in all of his selfies, but such is the life of a hairless cat.  

Another theory that may restrict release of the selfies is that it's not the content of the pictures that is of National Security importance, it's the manner in which the pictures were obtained.  This means they were either collected within intelligence channels and those collection methods would be compromised or they were obtained illegally.  I think Snowden has forever changed the way we view sources and methods within our Country's intelligence circles.  Nothing seems to be off limits and nothing would come as a shock that someone, somewhere, had access to the President's collection of dick pics.  Selfie's typically mean cell phone.  Does anyone believe the sources and methods to extract a picture from your cellphone, or the cloud behind your gallery of selfies, would actually now compromise National Security?  Particularly during an investigation where a warrant could easily be obtained?  Of course if the Russian's have the dick pics and we obtained the dick pics off of one of their internal servers that could compromise a lot. In this case, once again, the content wouldn't matter.  If I were Russia and had compromising evidence on the President, and someone claimed to also have compromising evidence, I would start looking for a leak on my servers.  It's not hard to connect the dots.  That is, of course, unless a third party also had compromising pictures. That might throw some ambiguity into where and how the information was obtained.  So just how many pictures of the President's Johnson are out there?  I thought I had the only ones?  Doubtful, right?

So perhaps sources and methods are also a ruse to obscure the content of the nude selfies.  Who, what, when, where, and why?  That's what inquiring minds will want to know.  Where is the National Enquirer when you need them?  Where is WikiLeaks in all of this?  The Justice Department has now become paparazzi central.  What with the text messages between FBI lovers Strzok and Page and now nude selfies?  Since we are not talking about a motorboat, those Johnson pictures could fetch more on the open market than the $2M paid for a picture of baby Pax Thien of the Jolie-Pitt consortium.  

What, however, does this say for our Country?  Ever since the blue dress incident we've been preparing ourselves for a White House full of embarrassment and finally a Presidential Penis to make the front page of the Washington Post.  We never saw Willy's willy.  That's probably only because Bill Clinton didn't have a cell phone.  Dick pics were not a thing in 1997.  We did get explicit testimony that's on the record regarding what actually happened in the alcove behind the Oval Office. That testimony would make Stormy Daniels blush.  And of course we know a lot about other President's who couldn't keep in in their pants.  Thomas Jefferson springs immediately to mind, no pun intended.  So does JFK.  In our technological age how is it that we can forever keep the 1st Penis out of the history books.  It's just a matter of time.  And although we will gasp when revealed, no doubt smallish and with an orange hue, the image will quickly fade from our consciousnesses. If the Russian's are actually holding it as leverage over the President, again no pun intended, the quicker it is exposed (again), the sooner it will be impotent (ugh).  So if 45 is listening...let's end any additional National Security intrigue.  For the good of the Country, you have a camera, you have a Twitter account, let's get this over with...that said, you might want to sell it to your friends at the National Enquirer...could be worth more then $2M...

Honor Among Thieves - Radical Honesty, Whitey Bulger, and the Anarchy of Truth in America

Politicians lie.  We know this.  Cyclist and other athletes cheat.  We also know this.  And of course, criminals steal.  When I was in college we had a code of honor, most schools do.  "An Aggie  doesn't lie, cheat, or steal, or tolerate those who do". But most people who lie, cheat, or steal feel guilty about it.  If you play poker, unless you are very good, trying to bluff your way out of a shitty hand doesn't come naturally.  You have to have trained yourself extremely well.  The lie has to become second nature for your body and other natural mannerisms not to give your bluff away.  It's dangerous when someone can tell a lie and not give it away.

Father's, as it turns out, also lie.  In my house, when I'm lying to my daughter, about Santa Claus, or whether monsters really exist, she knows I'm lying.  She can sense it immediately.  "That's your lie face".  She knows it and so does my wife.  Thus I try not to lie. But eventually, the inevitable question will be asked , "Does this dress make me look fat?" Only one man alive, Dr. Brad Blanton, will actually tell the truth.  It's worth considering Dr. Blanton's philosophy, called Radical Honesty.  You can read about it here.

 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radical_Honesty

https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/a26792/honesty0707/

Radical Honesty is something to consider, but alas, reality is something a whole lot different.  Everybody lies, Dr. Blanton does too.  Despite his radical life style he has specific rules for when he is going to lie--and he is truthful about it.  He lies when playing poker, playing golf, or when asked by government officials if Anne Frank is hiding in his attic.  He also lies to the IRS.  That is a very high bar but immediately shows that at some point any rigid moral compass, for the sake of humanity, must be less rigid.  Who among us would be willing to lie when the jackboots are at the door?  Who would give up Anne Frank?  It is a very slippery slope.

I've written extensively about lying surrounding the Tour de France.  I'm accepting of it because of how wide spread cheating has permeated the Tour since the very beginning when bike racers would use cocaine to gain an advantage.  How truly unsophisticated they were back in the day.  Today they say the Tour is mostly clean.  I roll my eyes.  But I still watch, it's an amazing three weeks of endurance.  What riders put their bodies through to compete, clean or not, is no more grotesque than that of any other world class athlete.  Training is extreme.  The search for any advantage is just as extreme.  However the most extreme, and most grotesque, has to come in the form or the sport that brought us the anabolic steroid.  Body building. Check out the new documentary on the Life of Ronnie Coleman on Netflix.  Extreme doesn't begin to describe life as Mr. Olympia.  Coleman won 8 times.  Absent from the documentary...any mention of the use of illegal substances.  Sure, every illegal substance is banned from body building, but the fact remains that when you enter the competition you will never be tested.  And nobody is talking.  The entire community is silent.  The athletes, the trainers, the press.  No one is willing to talk about it.  Why?  It's almost as if the code of conduct requires a code of silence if you want to be a part of the community.  That sounds a bit like organized crime.

So we know athletes lie.  We accept that politicians lie.  We tend to ignore that fact the the car salesman in front of us would never lie to our face.  We never call them out even though we know they are lying through their teeth.  But what about doctors.  Members of our society that should be dealing only in facts when it comes to our health. But our health is so lacking in facts.  Too many unknowns.  We certainly want them to tell the truth.  But alas doctors lie too.  But not in they way one might expect.  When they remove that tumor, it was the biggest one they have ever seen.  Or the surgery was the most complex they have ever performed.  They are managing expectations when there is an uncertain outcome.   Is it lying? Would we want them to tell us something different?  I don't think we would like a doctor if they said to us, "I've got no idea what's going to happen next".   But with the right human to human interaction trust can be established.  And once trust is established, it's OK for your lie to become my lie. The whole family is in on it. And it's very comforting when the whole family is in on it.  It's part of our social make up and one of the reasons humans can live in society.  We play by the rules of the family, group, tribe, or team we ascribe to. It's honor among thieves and why Whitey Bulger, who had no honor, just found himself, at age 89, on the wrong end of a prison shank.

So when the head of the household is lying to the Nazi's at your front door, you have a decision to make.  Are you on the team?  There is no right or wrong answer at that moment.  Lives are at stake.  To tell the truth condemns those hiding in the attic.  Yet you might also condemn your family if you reveal anything at all.  This is why we can over look the lies our father tells us about Santa Claus, or the existence of murders in the caravan of souls making their way north.  We can visualize that these murders will soon be squatting in our front yards because that is what our daddy just told us. And we are definitely on daddy's team.  We must not let them in.  We know daddy is lying...but daddy is lying for us.  His lie is to protect our family.  Fair enough.

That's not to pass judgement on those who are in on the lie.  We honestly believe the safety of the family is at stake, thus there is no right or wrong. His lie becomes our lie. That is why, when the lie eventually swings to the left, and it will, we will not necessarily be that much better off.  The trouble, as I see it, isn't in the decay of honesty in our politics, although we have reached some mighty new heights (or lows as the case might be). The trouble is those in the family who don't see that it is all a lie.  Everything single word.  There are far too many lies.  The majority of the family in power cannot detect the lie face of their father.  Too many actually believe the lies.  No Democrat actually believed Bill Clinton  when he said, "I did not have sexual relations with that woman".  Democrats gave him a pass for their "greater good". Most of what he said was true. The current torrent of lies are all believed to be true thus the Anne Frank scenario ceases to be a measure of merit for our moral compass.  There is no reality.  Anything goes.  We are left with chaos and the anarchy of truth.  That is not the society that our Founding Fathers created.  Truth, has to be, on balance, truthful.  My daughter believes me because the vast majority of what I say to her is true, thus she can discern my lie face.  We have to be able to discern our father's lie face. That is impossible to do if everything the father of a family says is a lie.  Please vote against the anarchy of truth. Vote in favor of some code of honor not the anarchy of truth.  It's not against your family if you are a member of a much larger family, a family that believes in truth, liberty, and justice for all... 

Tyranny Has Arrived...

"What a sad day for our great country". It would be simple to say, “I rest my case”, but that’s a cop out.  Here are a few additional thoughts for Columbus Day...a day fittingly  fraught with it’s own brand of controversy.

I posted that statement on Saturday and was intentionally vague...as in I didn't specify exactly what had happened that made me sad.  Since Brett Kavanaugh was confirmed to the Supreme Court, that was the biggest news, all of my friends on both the left and the right assumed I didn't like the fact that we have a new ass-hat on the bench.   Given my use of that term, ass-hat, my meaning is no longer vague.  But my social media experiment proves that it is indeed a sad day for our great country.  And so much more so than the selection of Kavanaugh.  Why?  You only need to read the comments that were posted to my page to understand why.  I'll get back to the comments in a second.

First, why do I think Kavanaugh is an ass-hat and bad for the United States?  It's not because he may have come close to date rape in college 35 long years ago. It's not because he may be a drunk.  It's not because he may support challenges to Roe v Wade.  He's undoubtedly an ass-hat simply because he believes that a sitting President is above the law.  What are we--North Korea?   Fuck me...there is no human being, orange haired tyrannical wannabe, or even a deity made flesh, that is above the law.  It's troubling for me to believe that there is some sort of legal justification, constitutional or otherwise, that makes this matter so.  It is so foreign to my sensibilities as to render the opinion of this man, on any subject, highly suspect. If he for a second thinks that the constitution holds this to be true he cannot be qualified as a keeper of our constitution.  That, alone, is his disqualifying belief.

Kavanaugh believes, and using his legal writings as reference, that a sitting president is above the law. To indict as sitting president would be a distraction from his duties and thus cause a problem with National Security.  Should he, the President, cross some imaginary line of abuse, Congress would reign in  the executive power before it became a problem.  That's his case.  Therein lies the fallacy of his optimism.  He believes that the checks and balances on the President will always right any wrong.  I'm also optimistic in that regard believing we need only wait out the incompetence of any one administration.  And I have some additional faith in the op/ed piece published in the Washington Post recently, that some adults are remaining on the bridge in case of trouble.  Despite the cowardice of the essay and the subsequent witch hunt it’s semi-reassuring...perhaps that’s why it was written.  

However, the trouble isn't just this one thing, an ass-hat on the Supreme Court.  It's the tiny little victories that lean more and more in the direction of tyranny.  The right sounds the klaxon that it is the left that will lead us into tyranny, when we know full well that all jackbooted thugs hail from the right. I stepped away from the Republican party during the Bush administration and became an independent when it was clear  the new order of conservative thought believed in torturing, occupying foreign lands, and spewing forth all manner of imperial behavior on foreign populations in the name of democracy.  I can name those four ass-hats should anyone forget...Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, and Wolfowitz.  And beyond that neo-conservative bastion of stupidity, following the rise of the Tea-Party jackalopes, we now have a new conservatism, based on a populist ideology, that will, and has already brought forth, the very worst of our human tendencies. One might call these tendencies deplorable. Let me be clear, while the far right, and in particular the racist alt-right, have more than earned their moniker "deplorable", the left is not without their own spin on deplorable behavior. Two wrongs don't make a right.  Yet common decency should be where we draw all lines.  Sure, Kavanaugh is a decent human being and digging up dirt from the past and smearing him is arguably a deplorable tactic, but he was nominated to the court by someone who's deplorable nature has never been in question.

 Anyone, and I mean anyone, who believes mocking a victim isn't deplorable behavior, behavior with no place in our society, I welcome you to the deplorables.  That doesn't mean lying-Hillary isn't a liar.  Of course she is a liar.  All politicians stretch and bend the truth.  Stretching and bending the truth, spinning the optics, is a political profession and typically involved lawyers deciding upon what can be legally defended.  That just doesn't make her deplorable, that makes her a lawyer and a politician.  Making things up whole cloth is not spinning the truth. Making things up is called fabrication and embodies or combines just about every other category of lying into one.  All of us spin, stretch, embellish, or omit facets of the truth in our daily lives.  Very few of us fabricate.    Hillary and her husband could be conspiratorial murders. I highly doubt it given all the real evidence in those cases, but yet there is still some ugly conspiracy in all of that mess.  I've never said she's the most qualified...in fact she fits the very definition of the elitist in Washington.  The left has brought us another Clinton. Just like my argument against Kavanaugh...we've already got one graduate from Georgetown Prep on the Supreme Court, how is it statistically possible for us to have another?  Elitist shenanigans are no doubt at play.  And that’s the swamp.  It's not just any swap.  It's our swap.  And it's the swamp that's been around at least since the founding our Country.  It's a political swamp but it's a swamp traditionally run by the "Best and the Brightest" a term I’m intentionally stealing from the Watergate era.  It’s an elitist swamp that helps our country survive.  It’s why were are a Republic and not a true democracy for those who want to swoop in and point out why we have an electoral college.    

By survive, I don’t mean survival as a country ala the Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire.  I mean as a country of liberty, freedom, the American values we were born into.  We believe in our country and our very foundation that for my lifetime has been the envy of the world.  The rest of the world does not envy a racist country.  You can’t swing a dead cat and not hit a racist country.  They envy us exactly because we are not a racist country and we hold dear certain truths.  "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness".  Yes, that's not the Constitution, something a little less political but quite possibly more important.  Those ideas are not deplorable.  Those ideas are the antithesis of tyranny.  In fact they were declared to cast off the bonds of tyranny. Yet those ideas are being usurped by selfish individuals with a deplorable ax to grind in favor of something less.  Those under attack are those with progressive ideas.  Perhaps the most damning of all the deplorable notions--more so than racism, since everyone has a tribe, more so than sexism, since everyone has some gender, and more so than social inequality, since everyone can be happy within their  economic strata in America--is the notion that any American would rather be a Russia then a Democrat.  What the fuck?  This is a sad day for our Country indeed.

So let’s get back to my social media experiment.  I could walk through all the comments.  I invite you to read them.  They are not vile, as I have read elsewhere on FaceBook.  I thank you all for maintaining a certain degree of decorum. That said, I always feel we are one insult away from a shouting match and someone dropping the F-bomb. The comments are clearly divided into  two lanes politically.  Some are good, some are wrong, some are funny.  But there is no compromise.  One side is right, the other side is wrong...dead wrong.  How can that be possible? How can both sides be dead wrong.  It's not possible.  Both sides, in reality, are right.  We just fail to give an inch. We now refuse to give an inch. We can blame ourselves...and certainly that would be the right thing to do.  But we seem to be beyond that.  Prior to his election, everyone I knew, also knew, that Trump had “some issues”.  They were going to vote for him anyway, for any number of reasons...but they all conceded it was a risky but an necessary step to drain the swamp, keep Hillary out of office, and return us to something else...greatness.  One oft quoted phrase by those who couldn't conscience voting for Hillary, was that they were voting for Pence, expecting Trump to not last long.  Of course most who cast votes for Trump also had the firm belief that he wasn't going to  win.  But now, in hindsight, continuing to support him despite his deplorability, either speaks volumes to one’s own deplorability, or has you, placing  him, above our American values.  With Kavanaugh on the Supreme Court, we are acknowledging, that it’s OK for an American President to be above all that.   We are on slippery slope when the checks and balances that Kavanaugh constitutionally will depend on for checks and balances are being destroyed before our eyes.  Congress does not intend to hold our President in check.  They had one job. We now have a Supreme Court that will not hold our President in check. Well done!

Saturday was indeed the saddest day for our great country...tyranny has arrived...and we defend it.