Things that are Inevitable

 Recently, a couple in New Hampshire decided to have a gender reveal party. Gender reveal parties are a thing now in case you didn't know. The expectant couple has a gathering where the gender of the new addition to their family is announced in the form of blue or pink colors. These parties usually involve balloons or flowers but people tend to get more inventive with their festivities over time. There have now been several incidents where damage occurs or people are injured, even killed at gender reveal parties. 

The latest incident in New Hampshire was an inevitable occurrence in my opinion. Someone decided that they needed a bigger bang for their buck in their announcement party. Being from Alabama, I am almost certain there was a "hold my beer" moment in this particular incident. Someone got the bright idea of using Tannerite to explode a bunch of glitter at their announcement. A huge cloud of exploding blue or pink glitter. Seems harmless? Well.... that's only because you don't understand redneck mentality that same way I do. 

Tannerite is a readily available substance that is a two party stable explosive. After it is mixed it is impossible to set off unless you have a high velocity projectile to set it off. A high velocity projectile such as a bullet from a deer rifle. Yes.... Tannerite is the stuff they use on the gun shows to blow up things in an orgasmic display of testosterone enhancing explosion (usually at the end of the show). It is readily available at sporting goods stores or even on eBay. All you need to do is mix the ingredients and shoot the container with a high velocity bullet and PRESTO you have a large explosion. In case you didn't know this already, high velocity bullets and explosions are like a ready made wet dream for rednecks everywhere. 

At the gender reveal in New Hampshire someone decided (and this is another inevitability when dealing with explosions and people who like them) bigger would be better. Each one half pound "package" of Tannerite has the explosive energy of almost a whole stick of dynamite. Someone at this party decided to "go big or go home" (another statement you will often hear from rednecks) and bought eighty pounds of the stuff. That works out to be about twenty five pounds of TNT. YeeeHAW that will make quite a cloud of glitter (right after someone says hold my beer and pulls out the deer rifle). 

Fortunately, no one was killed in the blast the ensued. Unfortunately,  several homes in the area were damaged when the blast shook the ground hard enough to break foundations, crack bricks, break glass, and knock pictures off the wall in houses for miles around. The sound of the blast was heard in towns quite a few miles away and car alarms went off everywhere. Some people were upset. 

Like I said earlier, it was inevitable. Rednecks are everywhere and they also procreate, have deer rifles, and love gun shows and explosives. Thankfully, most of them aren't into physics and nuclear reactions or the next gender reveal might be the infamous mushroom cloud that Condoleeza Rice warned us about years ago. 

Dangerous Cosmology

 In 1584 an ex Dominican priest named Giordano Bruno published two tracts on Cosmology that were extraordinarily prescient in their scope. Going one step further than Copernicus' loose idea that the planets revolved around the sun which was considered both blasphemous and ridiculous by most educated experts at the time, Bruno suggested that the other stars were in fact suns similar to our own. He further suggested that these stars each also had planets in their orbit similar to earth. This was an astoundingly different view of the universe and one that Bruno refused to recant to the end of his life which was to occur some sixteen years later. 

At various points in his life, Bruno was to suggest many things that seemed outlandish and infuriating to authorities in Italy, France, and England. He questioned if Mary was truly a virgin. He suggested that the universe was vast, unknown, and endless with other planets, other life forms, and an endless array of intelligent life that may or may not be similar to human forms. He suggested that reincarnation might be possible and true and studied Cosmology and Astrology from Islamic texts when that culture was vastly superior in knowledge to Western European thought. He also suggested that Jesus and God might not be of the same substance and form and had by 1570 found himself a target of some church leaders bent on punishment for his heresies. 

Finally, in 1592 he made the mistake of going back to Italy as a private tutor for a wealthy patrician in Venice. This eventually led to his imprisonment and trial by the Inquisition. Bruno was both inventive and arrogant it seems. He refused to admit that his views surrounding religion contrasted with Catholic orthodoxy but he also refused to recant his Cosmological views about the universe itself. For seven years his trial continued in Rome. He was eventually judged guilty of crimes against the church and heresy. 

On February 17, 1600 he was burned at the stake in a public square in Rome. He was stripped naked and hung upside down from a stake while a large fire was started below him to slowly burn him alive for his heresies. In order to assure he couldn't spout such heresies during his execution his tongue was placed in a thumbscrew iron clamp that was tightened as tight as possible before burning the protruding end of his tongue with a hot piece of iron so that it would swell enough that he could no possibly remove it from the clamp during his execution. 

Knowledge can literally be a dangerous thing. As late as the year 2000 church leaders publicly regretted the fact that Bruno refused to recant his views. Apparently not so much that they he died for having views antithetical to their beliefs, but that it was necessary to torture and kill him for doing so. Newton, Einstein, and an endless list of some of the brightest minds in history have since proved that Bruno was right about the universe. I somehow doubt that Bruno himself was able to take much comfort in that once they clamped his tongue and roasted him alive.

Throwing Rocks....

 Long ago, a fellow worker used to say that there were people you trust and people who you know not to trust. He further espoused that the worst people, the most untrustworthy of people, liked to encourage people to create chaos but were not honorable enough to do it from the front. Rather, they were the people in the back of the crowd who would "throw a rock and then hide their hand." This expression stuck with me as I could immediately see the truth it represented. It is bad enough for people to throw rocks in anger or frustration but if you are going to throw rocks at least have the integrity to admit you think it is necessary. There is nothing worse than throwing rocks and then acting like you didn't. 

Recently, we saw a whole group of people who actually believe they are patriots protecting their country and supporting the Constitution breaking into the Capitol of our government and threatening our elected representatives with bodily harm. There is a long list of people responsible for this action. First on the list of course is the people who carried it out. They should be punished to the fullest extent of the law. Some of them are now experiencing that much to their surprise. This is the worst part. They are surprised. They believe they were doing the right thing. How it came to pass that such a large number of Americans can act in violence against their own government and yet believe they are protecting the Constitution is too important to pass over. 

Quite simply, these people have been lied to. They have consistently and carefully been fed a pack of lies for many years now. Fox news, talk radio, and all manner of right wing ideologues have been feeding them lies since the time of Reagan. Reagan started a lot of this with the "Welfare Queens" story that basically got him elected. It suited the narrative of a lot of southern conservatives still stuck in the Jim Crow narrative and it suited the narrative of corporate America who were then free to do what they really wanted, to lower taxes on the wealthy and corporate interests and do away with those pesky agencies specifically designed to protect the average consumer from the wealthy and corporate interests. 

We could go back further and find the roots of this movement but I don't have time here. Suffice it to say Reagan was the first one to use populism to work against the best interests of the average American. He was not the last. The Republican party and much of the Democratic party has been dominated by these interests ever since. Meanwhile, the right wing propaganda machine has grown unabated and unchallenged since they did away with the fairness doctrine and the concept that the American public owns the airwaves and they should be protected accordingly. 

All of this leads to the recent troubles at the Capitol. Donald Trump was the inevitable result of this propaganda machine. A populist who pandered to the worst instincts of several groups of bigots and racists while at the same time letting the corporate interest plunder the treasury. Right wing media supported him because he gave them power. Corporate interests supported him because he gave them money and power. The right wing Christian leadership supported him because they support whoever keeps them in their positions of power and influence and have no real honor themselves. There are exceptions to all of these of course. There was the Conservative wing that left voluntarily because they actually had the courage of their convictions. There was the occasional corporate leader who bailed on the Trump Agenda for the same reason and there were a few religious leaders who also couldn't stomach the lies and lack of moral character of Trump himself. 

After the recent insurrectionist chaos at the Capitol a lot of people are rethinking their support for Trump. More especially, even the right wing media who supported him are adjusting their positions. Most of right wing radio is still pushing the narrative of lies that Trump himself took from them. The current talking point is that a large portion of the American population believes the recent election was not fair or properly done. I have no doubt this is true but the simple truth is that they believe that because these same people have been continuously lying to them for many years now and have made them believe something that is plainly not true. These people who push the agenda through their very loud megaphones in the voting public's ear are the ones "hiding their hands" after throwing the rocks that set the recent unrest off. 

They weren't leading the charge that kicked in the doors at the Capitol but they were in the back yelling their encouragement and throwing rocks. Now they want to hide their hands. These are the people we need to take on. No one would believe the election was rigged if the people they trust to tell them the truth hadn't lied to them. The people who do believe this fallacy do so because they have had misinformation drilled into their heads for almost fifty years now by the far right media. 

I don't want to silence the far right media but I do want to require it to be responsible for the truthfulness of what they say. Yelling fire in a crowded theater is NOT protected free speech when there is no fire. At that point is is just a lie that causes great damage and destruction and there is no amendment designed to protect the people who do it. Throwing rocks is bad enough. Throwing rocks and then hiding your hand is much worse. 

The Foundation of the Assault on the Capitol

Like most Americans and was saddened and sickened by what I saw unfold in Washington yesterday. I wish that was the first time I have felt this way since Donald Trump was elected as president of the United States but it was not. I won't bother to go into all the details of the gradual slide from integrity and basic decency in our government that has occurred since Americans elected this man to the office. The record of his abuses is long and growing and I have expected nothing less since he was elected. The truth is that Donald Trump is a man without integrity and he has been this same man without integrity ever since he has been an adult. 

Integrity matters. Truth matters. It is impossible to conduct business, do research, run a government, or be a productive member of society if you don't respect the truth. It is the core principle that allows us to do anything worthwhile in this world. We can't intelligently discuss any subject without the basic understanding that people have to be willing to respect the truth. We don't learn from our mistakes without acknowledging they were mistakes, that takes a respect for and understanding of the idea that the truth is important. We don't advance knowledge in any field without respect for the truth. Scientists, Engineers, Teachers, Business Owners, and workers in every field have to respect the truth in order to come to agreement about what is fact and what is not fact. The basic concept is the same, either something is true or it is not. Either something is a fact or it is not a fact. 

Shortly into Trump's term we saw one of his inner circle express on camera that they have "alternate facts". That should have set alarm bells off everywhere that we were in serious jeopardy of losing our own government. We had somehow put people in charge of our government that believed there is such a thing as "alternate facts." There are facts and there are things that are not facts but there is nothing in between. Unless you are willing to accept that premise you are not a person who is capable of doing anything constructive. It really is as simple as that. 

There is a direct and inevitable path from that statement to what happened in Washington yesterday. For reasons having to do with power and control a large portion of one party of our two party system has lent itself to supporting the continuous and incessant lies of Donald Trump for four years now. This lying by him and his supporters has eroded the very foundations of our government to a dangerous level. The good people who were willing to look the other way and unwilling to confront the fact that he is a habitual liar with absolutely no respect for the truth saw the result of this inaction yesterday when a large group of insurrectionists violently invaded the very center of our national government and threw it into chaos. People died yesterday because Donald Trump is a habitual liar. He charged them up at a rally with yet another string of unfounded outright lies about the election and they violently assaulted Congress in session with his outright encouragement. They believe his lies because people who know they are lies have not called him on that fact. Members of his own party know they are lies but they have not had the courage to call him on it. Conservative media outlets intent on increasing their viewership support and ratings have also contributed to this problem by refusing to call Trump on his lies and giving him an outlet from which to spread them. 

A large segment of our population would not believe the lies of Donald Trump today if our leadership in Washington had been willing to call him on his lies four years ago. He would now be powerless and out of government and we would all be safer and better off for it. Mitt Romney was absolutely correct last night when he said the best thing we can do for people who believe this election was fraudulent is to tell them the truth. It wasn't. It's as simple as that. Judges all over this country have said it. State election commissions from largely Republican states have said it. Every single state where supposed improprieties were brought up has adamantly rejected the theory that the election was fraudulent. These were not partisan officials, there were the duly elected officials charged with regulating and organizing elections in their states. 

The reason that people still believe these lies is that Republicans, members of Trumps own party, have not called him out for what he is; a habitual liar and a man without the basic integrity to have the respect for the truth that allows him to be a functional member of society. It's not in their personal best interest to do so. If you care more about your own personal interests than being an elected official then you don't have the integrity required to be an elected representative. 

I watched my local representative, Mo Brooks, suggest it was time to "take names and kick ass" when he led off the same rally where Trump incited an insurrection yesterday that attacked and overwhelmed the Capitol. Trump promised to lead them there and then got in his limousine and went to the White House to gleefully watch the whole thing on TV. Mo Brooks meanwhile, tweeted out it was ANTIFA infiltrators who were doing the violence when everyone with eyes to see saw Trump supporters break out windows and physically invade the very chambers in which Congress was trying to do it's lawfully proscribed duty. It was the exact same people he had just a few hours earlier incited to riot yet he acted like these two event were unrelated. Unfortunately, Mr. Brooks is another example of an elected public official with little or no real integrity or respect for the truth. 

Mr. Brooks gets to live with his actions yesterday, as do the hopelessly and intentionally misinformed people who thought they were doing their duty by forcefully and violently shutting down our government. These were not ANTIFA infiltrators, they were red blooded Americans republican supporters of Donald Trump. They were incited to anger by a President and a group of his loyal supporters who have so little respect for the truth that they have actively assisted him in his propaganda efforts. 

The undeniable truth is that integrity matters. It especially matters when it comes to electing our leaders. Integrity is a basic requirement in that it is simply not possible for an elected official to be an effective public servant if they don't have integrity. It isn't the only thing that matters of course, but it is a prime requirement to start with. Hopefully, if we learn nothing else from the unmitigated disaster that has been the Trump era, we will have learned this. 

A Dangerous Seed

It is now almost a month since Joe Biden won the election as president of the United States. Unsurprisingly, the current president refuses to accept he lost. I say unsurprisingly because the man lives in a self-made delusional world where he is not only the smartest guy in the room in every situation but also the most popular president who ever sat in the White House. He has never had greater than a 45% approval rating since his election yet he still insists that he is the most popular president ever. 

I'm long since past being irritated by this idiot. He simply can't help himself. The man is totally without scruples or basic understanding of almost any concept and is a classically proven narcissist. None of this is new. He's been delusional and self inflated since he began to ingratiate himself in the media many years ago. There is a long string of broken relationships, broken promises, bankruptcies, refusals to pay people he owes money to, and totally false statements from him that go back for decades if anyone cares to actually look at the record. The fact that he could lose an election by a large margin and yet still insist he won is by no means remarkable. It is simply how he operates and it will never change. 

What is irritating to me is the number of people who continue to feed into his fantasies. Obviously, many of them are doing it to maintain their power or influence with his voter base but the really scary part of this is that a lot of people truly believe the things this man says. This has been a puzzlement to me for many years but it plainly exists. Otherwise, a large portion of the population would not have voted for him. 

I think we could break it down even further and find that many people don't approve of him or his methods but they like his policies. I can accept that. I find it disgusting that these same people have for years put themselves forward as the moral leaders of our society and now turn a blind eye to a base criminal and habitual liar in the most powerful office in the world, but I can accept it. I will no longer remain quiet the next time they want to morally legislate for the rest of us but I  can accept it. 

The supporters who really scare me are the ones who believe the drivel he is putting out about the election being stolen. These are basically the same people who believe the rest of his lies but they are sadly disconnected from reality. I'm not quite sure how to react to these people. I am a strong believer in logic and communication as without it, no one ever gets past believing what they want to believe. In other words, choosing what we want to believe in the face of all evidence to the contrary is the kind of thing that brings on chaos and violence and it always has been. It is a dangerous seed to plant and it bears bitter and violent fruit when it ripens. 

We have allowed that seed to be firmly planted in our midst. Social media which feeds us what we want to hear and "news" networks that do the same are dangerously close to wiping out the very idea of truth in this country today. At one time, we understood the power of the media and regulated it accordingly. The airwaves belonged to the American people and we zealously guarded them to make sure that powerful voices weren't allowed to drown out dissent. At that time, you couldn't own more than one media outlet in one area. Even the ones that people did own had to answer to the FCC and tell both sides of the story or face losing their license to broadcast. 

People say the internet changed all that. That's partially true, but we began to change things long before the internet. Reagan defanged the FCC by putting people in charge of it who ridiculed the idea that broadcasts should be regulated any more than people who make toasters should be regulated. Shortly thereafter, news networks, radio stations, and newspapers began being gobbled up by people who had no interest in unbiased reporting. Instead, they wanted to simply maximize profits. What we have now for news reporting is the inevitable result of that. Affirmation and not information rules the newsroom driven by ratings with no concern for the truth. 

Trump is the end result of that type of thinking. Unfortunately, he is not the worst result. The worst result is a large portion of the population on both sides of the spectrum who simply refuse to hear anything that disagrees with what they already think. They don't have to. Just get your news from someone who agrees with you and believe what you read on social media and you never have to question your own ideas. Never mind these ideas are carefully packaged and fed to you by people willing to sell your votes to the highest bidder. You just don't have to think for yourself anymore and you are always right. What could be better than that?

Timing,,,,

I sold my motorcycle last night. It was on old Harley Davidson made the year I graduated high school. A friend of mine had it out in his barn when I bought it. He had used it as his backup bike. It was kind of rough looking but ran really well. Squat, beefy, and loud with lots of power and a very low centre of gravity. The first time I rode it I gunned it too hard going down the gravel road he lived on and it jumped hard to the left, perilously close to a barbed wire fence running parallel to the road. The barbs were whizzing by close to the crash bars and a slightly surprised cow just inside the fence gave me a startled look before jumping and kicking like a calf on her way away from the fence and the hard guttural growl of the old shovelhead engine. I had a huge smile on my face at the instant at the insane response of the throttle and the massive vibrato roar that a shovelhead infuses in your whole body while you are riding one. 

Harleys have a following for a reason and it's not all hype and posturing. The distinctive sound from the V shaped single pin design is unique and mystifyingly similar to the beat of a human heart. The timing of the two pistons firing in one distinct part of the cycle and then resting for a longer cycle is quite unique in combustion engines. It's not mechanically efficient but it is unique. Because Harley's fire on such an odd cycle they also tend to vibrate and shake violently when you rev them up. It's almost irresistible when you are riding one. The surge of power is uneven and the bike feels like it squats down and grabs the road before jumping forward like a large lioness grabbing the savannah with each churning lunge of her body. 

Over the years Harley has mitigated this vibration with an assortment of rubber mounts, belt drives, and counterbalance weights imbedded in the engine. The new Evo's sound similar, although there is a difference, but run smoother. The world's largest vibrator now has a softer shake. The old Shovelheads and Panheads were hard mounted to the frame and unmitigated in their stroke. My bike vibrated so much that I had to have a loose grip on the handlebars to get my eyes to focus. It had been bored twice before I got it. It was tuned to turn over slow at idle so it sounded like it was going to go dead between strokes but when I turned the throttle it would literally jump forward after that initial squat to grab the road. The chain drive rattled and added to the cacophony and it had been lowered to the point that the pipe mounts dug into the pavement if you leaned too far right on a turn. Everything came loose on that bike. It laughed at loctite and every short ride was followed by tightening of bolts and screws or reinstallation of accessories that were about to fall off. I actually had the crankcase vibrate open one ride and begin dumping sixty weight oil out directly in front of the rear tire. 

Try that sometime if you want to experience instant panic and see your life flash in front of your eyes. I tore the bike down to the frame and rebuilt it at one point. (Yes.... part of it was in my kitchen for a while so I was that guy). I remember the night I got it put back together and cranked it back up in my shed without the baffles in it to blue the pipes. It was a small metal shed more suited for lawnmowers than bikes but I literally rattled the metal itself so that it added to the symphony of growling horsepower and mistimed energy so much that I could feel it vibrating through my whole body every time I revved it up a little. I remember watching some roofing tacks in a wooden crate move around like an ant bed coming alive as I let it sit at idle and warm up. 

I put it up for sale a week ago as my daughter needs the room in her shed and I haven't ridden it in at least ten years. I lost the urge to constantly work on it. It was the kind of bike that required oil in the saddle bags and and an extensive tool kit to go far as it would just shed parts if you rode it too far or too hard like a big dog shaking water out its fur after coming out of a creek. Putting an old Harley in a sale paper is a little like setting a field of catnip on fire. People come out of the woodwork to bargain with you. Last night a guy pulled up in a large enclosed moving van truck with a lift gate on the back. He was wearing a porkpie hat, a long ponytail, and an long grey goatee that reached halfway down to his belt. He looked straight out of every biker movie ever made. He shook my hand and started talking about where he could back his truck up to load the bike. He immediately told me he was buying it sight unseen because he knew what it was and had to have it. He handed me a wad of folded hundred dollar bills that was exact to the amount I had agreed to over the phone. He was tickled to take all the spare parts I had hanging all over the shed. My homemade tilt jack, the Clymer's manual covered in oil and grease, and every other homemade tool I had come up with in years of working on the bike. He loved the custom paint job and was ecstatic to find the jack plate I had made out of 5/8 steel plate for the clutch assembly. We talked about bikers we knew in common and marvelled the hadn't run into each other before. Somehow.... he and that bike were meant for each other, two relics of a different time reunited. A part of me hated to see that old bike go but I was happy to see it go to someone who understood and loved it like I did.

The New World

When the Spanish Conquistadors landed in the New World they were so alien to many of the natives that they weren't capable of processing the images they were seeing. Having never seen such technologies or blatant materialism they were simply incapable of making judgments as to the dangers they presented so they welcomed them as gods of a new age. Clarke's third law says that any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. We don't like to think of ourselves as being the natives sufficiently unadvanced but the evidence seems to suggest we are at the moment.

The world is changing pretty dramatically. I know that every generation says that and it true for each generation as well but I'm not sure we have ever seen changes like those that have come about in the last 20 years or so.

In the last century we saw the power of states with authoritarian rulers bent on controlling nations lead to destructive wars of massive scale. Words like Freedom, and Liberty seemed at risk from these powers that be within these states. The human race has always had a disturbing tendency towards self destruction but that period seemed especially dangerous for some of our leadership's efforts to control and dominate.

Now, we face a different kind of danger to our freedom, liberty, and self determination. This threat doesn't invade or destroy from the outside, it does it from within. It isn't a state or a government, it is a business model. We willingly let it into our homes and our minds but make no mistake, it's goal is to take over and control us and it is well on the way to doing that.

It ignores privacy laws and constitutional protections across the globe because these were largely put in place to protect us from overweening governments, not private business interest. No one imagined in the past that such private interests could gain enough power, influence, and control to actively control our actions; much less our thoughts.

Like most human disasters it has been a confluence of events and actions that led to this change. 9-11 and other terrorist actions across the globe woke us up to the idea that we were in danger from people we hardly knew. Organised terrorist attacks made it seem reasonable to give up some of our freedoms and rights in order for our governments to protect us. The timing of these events happened to coincide with our gradual awakening that our privacy rights were being usurped and ignored by this industry but we looked the other way and our governments became encouraged by the tools of unlimited surveillance these companies were already utilising to sell us products and herd us towards a complete lack of privacy rights.

Now, they blatantly gather, sell, and gradually successfully control our thoughts and actions in thousands of different ways each day. Cell phone apps tell them where we are each moment. Cell phone and smart house apps and devices tell them when we move, how we move, and what we say in ways that allow them to predict what we might buy next. Facebook clicks and likes allow them to categorise our thoughts, beliefs, values, and habits in algorithms designed and perfected to influence what we do next.

None of this is legal in this country or most of the rest of the world, yet the profits from this information sold to the highest bidders in competitive auctions is so massive that it's worth the risk of collecting and selling it. Governments turn a blind eye for the tradeoff in security in knowing who might be plotting the next terrorist act and most people see it only as a matter of convenience and improved technology.

Meanwhile, our children spend hundreds of hours a month being shaped, pushed, pulled, and controlled by these same algorithms latched on to their very real need to be accepted by their peers. We have long known that the adolescent years produce psyches especially prone to suggestion and peer pressure but Facebook, Google, and Microsoft have made it into an exacting science of gathering huge logs of data available to the highest bidder.

If what they know isn't bad enough, what they intend to do with the information is even worse. These companies believe with some certainty that by gathering and stealing this information, the information that tells them what we think and when we think it, that they can control what we do next. If that sounds scary it's only because it is. They believe this because they test, retest, and perfect their algorithms daily. They are able to sell this information because it is accurate and it works.

We have never in history faced such a threat. No small group of people have ever owned the information that would allow them to control our actions. Orwellian horrors of big brother or big other are here. They didn't come from government, they came from private entities who stealthily managed to make us believe we were getting something for free while they steadily and illegally mined our thoughts and actions like so many strip miners swarming around a gold mine we believed we owned, the thought processes in our own mind.