Politics

It’s certainly been an interesting nine days since Trump’s indoor inauguration on Jan 20th.

There’s been a flurry of executive orders, followed by freezes to federal funding, and gaffes around international relations including doubling down on the idea that Gazans should just abandon Gaza.

Yesterday (still just Januaray 28th, mind) hit the trifecta:

1. Trump offered a voluntary reduction program (read: buyouts) to all 2 million Federal employees, with the goal of reducing expenses by $100 Billion
2. There’s word that “loyalty questions” are part of employment at the whitehouse.
3. Real cancer studies and federally funded jobs (like civil engineers that insepct bridges) are impacted.

No idea where this is going, but we’re still not up to double digit days under this regime.

This seems to be the question occupying those in power right now:

“Is all this crap for real?”

What follows is my attempt to frame the current socio-political situation in the United States, circa June 2020. Namely, weeks of daily protests and nightly riots about systemic racism.

Whether those in power are stoking the fire or co-opting the mob for political agenda–I’ll not name names there–all those in established positions of authority seem to be asking that self-same question:

It was going to be something.

Something was going to wake a nation of people who’ve been quarantined for 80+ days. People are bored, anxious, afraid, and simply tired.

Turns out, that something was the death of George Floyd on 25 May, a week ago today. Today, an independent autopsy indicates he died of asphyxiation

One week. In that time, protests have broken-out in 140 cities, in particular in Louisville, Kentucky, my wife’s hometown. Each day, there are protests, and as night falls, they turn violent. Last night, police in Lousiville felt they were fired upon, and returned fire with live rounds, killing restaurant-owner David McAtee.

So, phase one (shock/denial) appears to be over.

Over 20 million people are out of work, roughly a 20% unemployment rate.

There are almost 700k total cases, and 32k deaths. This is just from people we know had the disease.

Whatever “rainy day funds” most people had are exhausting. Quickly.

It seems clear, this is going to be somewhere between the “Great Recession” and the “Great Depression.” And honestly: There’s no end in sight.

So, it’s official as of today

(Source. As an aside, this ‘worldometers.info’ site is a clinic on how to present and visualize data at scale.)

Eight-three thousand cases, and no sign of let-up after 2 solid weeks of “shelter-in-place” or “stay-home-pretty-please”

New York is simply exploding, especially The City.

I’ve taken to following a former member of disaster preparedness for Obama, @JeremyKonyndyk. Here’s his take as of today:

We’re not “flattening the curve.” We’re accelerating. We’re fighting our health care system.

Step right up, folks, it’s YEEEEEHAAW election time in Texas.

Unlike the saner May primary in Kentucky, I’m now part of Super Tuesday, along with 13 other states.

Cutting to the chase, I intend to vote ‘Uncomitted’ on my Republican Presidential ballot, and I plan to abstain from voting for Cornyn or John Carter. I’m an MJ Hegar Republican, you see.

Anyway, I’m writing today to go over the 10 (yes, TEN) ballot propositions before me.

I’ve grown remarkably tired of some things recently.

Podcasts

I have a favorite podcast application: Overcast. For the past 12+ years, I’ve listened to podcasts galore. My family/friends have come to loathe subjects I begin with “I was listening to a podcast the other day and…”

Yeah, not anymore.

I’ve dropped several podcasts and been selective with many more, and there’s been a general theme.

The Improv Comic Problem

This all began when I started listening to the NSFW (NSFL?) podcast Why Won’t You Date Me? from Stitcher. I like @nicolebyer’s manic personality. I like things of the genre “dating horror stories” in that voyeuristic “Glad I don’t have to do that anymore” sort of way. Heck, I even like getting that coastal, entertainment-industry perspective, because God knows, that’s now how it is in Texas.

Looks like this will be a series. Welcome to Imperial America

Looks like the sham “trial” ends today. Really the question was whether it ends now or ends in acquittal after whatever witnesses were called.

They needed 66 votes to convict and remove the president. They never had them.

“I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody and not lose voters.”

I don’t care particularly whether you have an ironic (D) or (R) next to your name, at this point neither party represents “Democracy” nor “Republic” in any form.

Why is the world going to hell, Harold?

It seems a right of passage for people of a certain age–typically over 40–to look around them and ask certain questions:

• “What’s with kids these days?”

• “Why aren’t things like they used to be?”

• “Why is no one moral anymore?”

• “Does NO ONE have any work ethic?”

This isn’t exaclty, new. Listen to this modern voice:

The children now love luxury; they have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise. Children are now tyrants, not the servants of their households. They no longer rise when elders enter the room. They contradict their parents, chatter before company, gobble up dainties at the table, cross their legs, and tyrannize their teachers.

As I write this, the White House is refusing to cooperate with an impeachment investigation.  Allegedly, the President used the force and weight of the United States…to help find dirt on a prospective 2020 election opponent, Joe Biden.

The calculus is thus:

• The House has the votes to impeach him.
• In the senate, 20 non-Democrats need to vote to remove him from office.
• There’s ZERO evidence that even if ‘removed’ from office, Trump would actually leave.  He does, after all, command the military.
• The courts are impotent to actually DO anything, since they rely upon the Executive to…execute.

It seems we’re heading for a constitutional crisis here in America, since the founders never imagined:

We once were a nation that tolerated “intolerable” people, that balanced inhumanity with contrition and restoration of the contrite. All fall short.

We abided Daniel Webster AND John C. Calhoun, Billy Graham and Larry Flynt, MLK and George Wallace, the Black Panthers and the KKK.

Did we particularly WANT TO?  

Of course not.

Why, then? Because tolerance of ideas is the price of freedom.

I see that freedom ending soon. Emotion is truth. Outrage becomes mandate. Thoughts must not become a crime.

There’s no such thing as bad publicity – P.T. Barnum

So here we are.  As I type this, the House of Representatives seems ready to cave-in to impeachment proceedings.

Allegedly, the President negotiated with a foreign power to obtain dirt on a possible opponent in the 2020 election.  To leverage that dirt, he withheld US foreign aid.  So the story goes.

I really dislike our President.  Thankfully, in America, one can do that and not go to jail.  I resent how he personally took over my political party like a virus, how he made America less than it is for his own gain.

I posted this to Facebook in October 2017 after the Las Vegas shooting.  It remains valid after a weekend of carnage, and no end in sight.  FWIW, I am for constitutional gun ownership.

I am not for the capability of killing 30-50 people (not feral hogs) in under a minute.

After today, I’m struggling to see the use in an AR-15 with a binary trigger and a 100 round drum magazine.

Things seem….bad.

Offhand, enumerating the things that seem broken in my country right now:

• Our government isn’t really functioning.  The Constitutional Republican Democracy of 1787 seems like a failure at scale.
• We’re more tribal than we’ve been since segregation, a process that’s accelerating.
• We’re in unending, global guerrilla war against people willing to kill themselves for an idea incompatible with our existence as a nation.
• We have roughly one mass shooting per day.  Yesterday, there was one in Kentucky.
• We’ve lost our ability as a society to dream of something bigger: The moon, world peace, whatever.  That seems like a 1960’s fever dream at this point.

What can I do about any of the above?  

As I type this, it’s 8:44 am, and I just drove 30 minutes in 10 miles of pouring rain to start the week on 4 hours of sleep.

I went to bed about 11:30, but didn’t fall asleep until nearly 1am—very unusual for me. Like an overtightened bolt, I felt my corners round-off just a bit yesterday, the torque warping my mind just too much to sleep.

There’s much to consider, globally, nationally, and within my own hearth. Much I can do little about. Globally, there keeps being more of us, and our impact on the planet worsens by the year. Humans certainly seem less education, humane, and trustworthy than we did even 10 years ago. Perhaps my eyes are just open to our own debauchery, my naiveté burned away like so much slag from God’s refiner’s fire.

Last Tuesday night was surreal.

The data all indicated that DJT had no chance in hell of becoming president.   He never polled above 42%.  Then…the returns rolled in.  The NBC anchor team already had their through-line prepped:

• “Did he lose the election on day one, calling immigrants rapists?” 
• “If he loses Florida or North Carolina, he’s going to have a long night.”

As the hours wore on, it became clear that we were at the very end of the bell curve, amid Nate Silver’s 15% chance that DJT could win.  I became more and more despondent, realizing that of the two bad choices, the Chaotic Evil was going to be the electoral victor.

Whatever happens over the next few days, I’d like us to remember we’re Americans.

We’ve surmounted Monarchy, the burning of the capital, a war between ourselves, mountain ranges, slavery, polio, Fascism, Communism, presidential assassination, Watergate, 9/11, pet rocks, and several sub-par Metallica albums.

People tried to take our freedom. “Over our dead bodies!” we cry. And so it was.

We will gladly give it away, though, in fear and hate, vilifying our neighbors.

To quote Donne:

Never ask for whom the bell tolls, It tolls for thee.

The South Carolina primary will likely be the end of Jeb Bush’s run for the Whitehouse.  I’m on the record decrying the idea that we’ll have yet another member of either the Clinton or Bush family lead our nation.

Still, I’m struck by what this means, not only for Jeb and his personal legacy, but also for the Party and our nation as a whole. The saddest part of the slow-motion denouement of Jeb Bush’s campaign: This is not who Jeb is.

So, working late(-ish) last night, I drove home listening to the dulcet tones of Governor Steve Beshear delivering his annual State of the Commonwealth speech.

I’ve long held Beshear to be a dichotomy:  He’s a moderate, reasonable with genuine communication and leadership ability who has a folksy, drawling twang that drives me bonkers.  Though he sounds like a character from Hee-Haw, he’s been genuinely good for the state, surmounting two scandalous previous administrations and noted egomaniac Senate President David Williams.  Beshear has both the common touch of a well-meaning Grandfather, and the business administration sense of a decent CEO.

In a phrase: It obviates your need to think.  It encourages you to simply react.

I’m reading this great book by Andy Hunt called, Pragmatic Thinking and Learning.  A key thesis in Chapter 5 is “Think, Don’t React”.  Reaction is emotional, and involves the fear-based lower brainstem, engaging in stuff like “Fight or Flight,” Territorialism, Hissing at problems.  If you’ve read my blog from years past, I’ve done plenty of hissing at a problem.