Thursday, April 30, 2020

Securing Safety in the Modern Age


“Those who would give up essential liberty, to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.”
Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790)
Our nation was built by those willing to risk all for the hopes of a better life.  Our past generations risked their lives to leave the oppressive hierarchy of Europe, where the divine right of kings and queens could not be questioned.  Where the hopes of better lives rested with the decisions of a removed and stratified upper class.  Where religious freedom was subject to the whims of whatever church was in power and where war and the sacrifices of the common man were frequently demanded.
For generations of Americans, we risked everything in the hopes of providing a future that was ours to build.  We traveled across the raging oceans and in the process settled on land where opportunity offered something our ancestors could not imagine, freedom to choose.  Of course, in the process, we made many selfish and morally questionable choices.  But the morality of those choices is only now apparent when we reflect back on them with the luxury of second-guessing those choices made when daily survival was a real concern.
We displaced a race of people who had themselves immigrated a thousand years earlier.  We fought them, conquered them, and placed them onto reservations.  We made promises we would routinely break for we are greedy people.  Now the grandchildren and great-grandchildren of those peoples are beginning to gain a stake in our prosperity as they feed off that same human greed with the creation of gambling centers.
We grew our nation on the backs of slaves brought to our shores by those willing to profit off the trafficking of human beings sold into lives of servitude where their lives were viewed as little more important than the animal stock that constituted the wealth of the farmers and plantation owners who owned them.  We’ve not changed dramatically in the idea that it is okay to traffic in human beings as that is still a major enterprise in most of the world, including here in the Americas.
In the course of our growth into a nation, with our own national identity, we created a document that has withstood the changes of 230 years.  A document, which created the framework for a limited government, by the men who dared to write a previous document that stated our rights came not from government but from God when we told the King of Great Britain to take a hike. 
As more individuals of our nation reject the idea of God as the source of our rights, then it would seem inevitable they believe the power of government must come from them.  That the power of government is only limited by their willingness to stand against the wrongs of government overreach.  But what if their fears of the unknown outweigh their fear of government?  What then?
Let’s take a look at our current pandemic, and how it differs from previous pandemics.
First, we now have experts.  Not that we didn’t have experts before, but now we have a whole industry of experts on the television almost non-stop telling us how expert they are and how we need to believe them or we are all going to die.  In past pandemics, we would get snippets of advice and the media supporting the government would feed it to us in dribs and drabs.  Now we have them giving it to us in fear-producing bucketsful to convince us this pandemic is far worse than all the other pandemics around.
Of course, there may be an underlying motivation in a lot of these experts or the media channels that push them out to us.  We would have to be insane if we didn’t realize this, but then the fear of death can certainly push that insanity aside for a while.  For the past four years now, the political pundits on ABCNNBCBS and MSNBC have been vilifying the President while glorifying the professional politicians and bureaucrats that make up the core of the government in Washington DC.  Despite all the implications of fraud and deceit coming out of investigation after investigation the most we’ve seen about real punishment have been a couple of forced retirements.  This doesn’t count the cases the professional politicians and bureaucrats have brought against the Trump administration and the President himself.  But let’s focus on the impeachment for a minute.
As hard as the Democrats tried they could not come up with a criminal event to hang their impeachment on.  Two years of investigations came down to “an abuse of power” impeachment demonstrating it was a purely political exercise bound to fail in a Senate trial.  Then along came the Wuhan Virus, Chinese Virus, Corona Virus, or COVID-19 virus (take your pick).   
To keep us all safe from the dangers of a virus that threatened to kill us all we’ve shut down the economy.  I have a friend, who at the beginning of this said, “I’ll take this seriously when they close Disney World.”  The next day they announced its closure.  Even as they closed you could sense the panic being raised as they were widely criticized for having one last party on the last Sunday they were open.
At first, the administration was condemned for acting too hastily and when that proved not to be a good argument the drumbeat changed to not taking the virus seriously enough.  The governors demanded actions, the administration scrambled to meet their needs, but always with the political experts offering their political opinions, and the medical experts (both known and unknown) offering their scientific opinions.  Along the way we, as a population has had very little to say about what we should or should not do.  Of course, we are not experts in anything other than living our lives.  For the most part, we don’t make grand decisions that affect more than a few dozen lives and for that we are grateful.
But we’ve become a nation where half of us are willing to condemn the other half of us simply because we disagree with their political views.  Thanks to the internet and applications like Twitter® and Face Book® we can scream to the world all that is wrong with those other guys and why we must listen to this or that half of our politicians/media experts.
Now that we have surrendered our independence for the promised safety from this virus, how exactly will we regain it?  In looking at the roles of our politicians it appears to me that some are unwilling to give it back.  Of course, they are doing this in the name of keeping us safe.  Then we have those who would steal our independence because they are above the purview of our laws, how will we change that if we can’t agree even on the most obvious of points that individual liberty is the foundation of this nation.

Sunday, April 26, 2020

A Note to #MeToo

I'm confused.  Am I supposed to #believeallwomen or #afforddueprocess?  It would seem to me it can't be both ways, can it?  I know it's just part of that age-old question, what came first the accusation or the agenda?

It seems like only yesterday we were supposed to believe a woman who claimed to be a victim of sexual harassment or assault.  Even if that event allegedly took place decades ago.  Then all the sudden allegations of harassment and assault began coming forth from women accusing prominent Democratic leaders and those who were so morally outraged, including journalists, writers, actors and actresses, political opinionists, and media outlets like the NYT or CNN, just a scant two years ago are all up in arms about how the accusers should not be believed.

It is all so confusing for someone just trying to figure out the right thing to believe in.  I guess I'll just stick to the Constitution as I did when this all began.  Sorry, you have to prove your accusation beyond a reasonable doubt to persuade me.  That involves some sort of legal process, not just shouting on television, marching with pink hats, politicians being outraged, or CAPITAL LETTERS IN SOCIAL MEDIA.  

For those with more fluid convictions of who is right or wrong good luck with your outrages.
 

Saturday, April 25, 2020

The Manchurian Candidate

I think the one thing we should all be able to agree with is nobody can accuse President Trump of being a "Manchurian Candidate" the name coming from the title of the 1962 Cold War thriller about a platoon of US soldiers captured during the Korean War, taken to Manchuria China, and brainwashed into becoming sleeper agents for the Russians and Chinese.

No foreign power could possibly hope to put someone like Trump to work when he says so many stupid things each day that half the world spends most of their waking hours mocking. 

I'm not sure the same can be said for some previous Presidents but that is another story.

But maybe I'm wrong?  Maybe a foreign power would do precisely that knowing the media is so simple-minded that they would focus on his narcissism and miss the real subterfuge. 


Saturday, April 18, 2020

Herd Immunity


There is a debate if you can actually call it such, floating around social media about what we should have done, or what we did too late, or what we need to do next about protecting both the population at large and the economic engine that has made America what it is today.  It is that economic engine that has given us a standard of living that is the envy of much of the world and has, since the Second World War, made us one of the most powerful nations on the earth.
On one side, we have the position we need to “flatten the curve.”  The idea here was/is if we don’t slow down the rate people were becoming infected we would overwhelm the medical systems' ability to treat the disease and handle the lethality of the virus.
One the other side are those who believe the best way to deal with the virus is to let all the young and healthy people be exposed.  The logic being once they are exposed they would be strong enough to fight the virus and develop an immunity.  The advocates for this approach recognize the old and “at-risk” people would have to be separated from the herd to keep them safe, but the majority of the nation could carry on with business as usual with people coming down with COVID-19, a percentage coming down with the disease and needing treatment, but with a few exceptions, it wouldn’t be fatal.  What the advocates for this don’t explain is how would the elderly and “at-risk” be reintroduced into the herd without suffering the fatal consequences of the virus?
Let’s talk about herd immunity for a moment.  Isn’t herd immunity a normal function of evolution and environment?  As the disease is introduced into the heard the weakest of the herd are the most likely to fall prey to its effects.  The herd will survive but the weakest won’t.  If the strong can survive the disease they will hopefully develop immunity and be able to pass it on to the subsequent generations.  It is precisely like the herd’s relationship with predators. The sick, the old, and the weakest young are the ones the predators will cull from the herd.  They are gone but the herd survives.
So, the question for intelligent humans is can you combine the two strategies?  Are we willing the allow the weak and at risk to suffer the consequences of COVID-19 while the healthy supposedly develop their immunities?  How many old and “at-risk” would die in this approach?  No one seems to say.  But thanks to the media and politicians, this has become a US versus THEM argument just as everything seems to be.  And like all those arguments one side will argue for the importance of protecting the old and weak while insisting abortion is life sustaining[1].  The other side will argue for the importance of allowing the majority to develop natural immunity, sacrificing those most vulnerable while demanding an end to abortion.

Wednesday, April 8, 2020

Looking at the Numbers




Just killing time, but I figured since the press is making such a big deal about how many people in the US have tested positive for COVID-19 I'd look at what that really means when compared to others in the world.

 
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