A Few Thoughts on Gun Control.

I know what I write is a waste of time.  It won’t change any minds, it won’t persuade those who demand legislation to ban guns or “assault-like” weapons, it won’t convince those who plead for change because some young school children, or Asians, or grocery shoppers were killed by a mad-man with a gun, nor will it change the minds of those who believe any change in gun control violates their personal freedom. But I write to appease me.

First, guns are tools.  They may be good tools or bad tools based on your personal view or immediate need, but there is an old adage that goes something like “It is a poor workman who blames his tools for his failure.”  If we substitute the word “society” for "workman" I think we come up with an accurate view of guns.  It is a poor society that blames guns for society's failure (i.e. to create an agreed-to level of safety).

Nothing brings this home for me as much as a FaceBook posting from the United States Air Force Special Tactics organization.  In Air Force Special Operations and Special Tactics, we have Doctors, Nurses and Medics trained to deal with the battlefield trauma our Airman, the Soldiers, Sailors, Marines, and the allied partners they support will experience in combat. 

How exactly do we train our medical personnel to be proficient in the life-threatening injuries they may find as our combat troops protect the nation and execute its foreign policy?  We send them to work in inner-city hospitals in large cities like New Orleans, Chicago, Atlanta, New York, and Los Angeles.  There they find far more combat-type trauma than we can simulate in training and they, unfortunately, experience the frightening reality of gunshot wounds and other “combat” related injuries while they help their civilian counterparts care for the neediest.

Are all these injuries a result of some single madman and a mass shooting?  No, they are the reality of an on-going war the news can’t be bothered covering and it involves people who’ve lost their moral basis for decision-making and a society that has cast them aside as just so much flotsam and jetsam.  

When we as a society have reached a point where we argue the technical details of a rifle, rather than the sanity of a gunman and how best to treat him or her, while ignoring the reality of life in the inner-cities, we have all surrendered our belief in the actual basis of our society. A belief that each of us must be responsible for ourselves, our family, and our society.  Why is this?

Is it because so many of us reject the idea of God as a higher power, and now believe ourselves god-like?  Perhaps it is because we’ve destroyed the foundation of family for the poorest among us and the young men and women grow up with the role models of the entertainment industry where outlandish style and behavior sell the next ticket? Maybe it is just a generalized sense of “it’s somebody else’s job” that leads to this, but if it is whose job is it to unite society with a purpose to protect the individual and his/her rights?  Clearly, our politicians don’t think it is their role, beyond the promises they make what can the new laws and the spending on entitlements really do to change the shape of society?

George Santayana famously wrote, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."  The one truth a study of the past teaches is civilizations come and go, falling most often to the foolishness of mankind.  The question then becomes how much longer will this modern civilization continue until it to is replaced by some dark age where all the glories of the past are buried in some tomb waiting for the reawakening of minds open to the possibilities of the future rather than the condemnation of the past?

There Was a Time

My life has been interesting.  There was a time I was a social liberal, but at that time I always thought it was about doing the right thing.  I joined the military for the sense of adventure and because I felt an obligation to give back to a country, which afforded me the opportunity. I was a distinct minority even then.

I thought things like social security and welfare were good ideas, as long as we could afford them within the fiscal realities of the nation.  But over time I’ve come to realize they are only tools used by the politicians to gain and increase control of the populations so they can enrich themselves.  Today, we see the two political parties dueling with each other, again so they can continue to enrich themselves.

If we look at welfare with an unjaded view what do we see?  With over 60-years of experience have we eliminated poverty, or just made poverty more expensive?  With over 60-years of Medicare and Medicaid have we made medicine more accessible for the poor or simply more expensive?  Meanwhile, we enrich those who’ve found ways to make their fortunes from the government dollars.

There was a time when a liberal saw the possibilities of the world and could argue for their advancement and support.  Today’s liberals have no great ideas that don’t involve the surrender of our personal liberties.  They no longer believe in personal responsibility or individual ability as the keys to success, they cry out for reparations and government largess from those who would spend someone else’s fortune to make right the perception of social injustice, as defined by some academic theory originated by someone with an advanced degree in some social science or gender studies program. 

Over the course of my life, I’ve seen the greed of men and women destroy good ideas for the sake of individual gain.  I’ve seen profiteering from conflict lead our politicians into rash action which has cost thousands of lives as we take personal liberties away in the name of safety.  And when someone comes into the power elite from the outside both sides band together to vilify him so the threat to their wealth and power is stalemated.  

We no longer have young who can think for themselves, and perhaps we never did.  For thinking requires wisdom, not just the illusion of knowing it all.  

There was a time before everything was a meme when men and women had great ideas and some of those great ideas made us a nation unlike any other.  Now we just sink into the realm of bickering where our politicians argue for sound bites and neither side proposes real ideas, they just argue about the stupidity of the other side.  A time where the flow of information is controlled and the exchange of ideas is nonexistent.  

I Don't Know Why, But We Do

People love causes.  I don’t know why, but they seem to believe they are highlighting some wrong that needs to be fixed, or some social ill we can address if only we would send enough money, or create an environment where the problem is highlighted so everyone can adjust their approach.

Here in America, we especially love social or humanitarian.  It gives us a chance to just send money as a salve for our conscience.  We can send a few dollars to “Save the Seals” while we put on our fur coats against the winter chill.  We can write a check to “Adopt an Antarctic Orphan” on the same day we give Planned Parenthood our credit card.  We can feel good about ourselves because we are involved without bothering to leave the comfort of our easy chair. 

In the olden days, we would all tune-in to Jerry Lewis and the Muscular Dystrophy TV marathon to watch the tote board climb as millions of dollars were raised to fight a terrible disease.  To solicit the greatest sympathy there would be adorable children rolled out as “poster children.” We were told all those dollars were going to research and treatment so we could eliminate this plague when in reality only about 70% of the funds raised are spent on treatment or research.  By the way, the American Cancer Association Incorporated won’t even tell us how much of their fundraising goes to the actual work of curing cancer.  

Don’t get me wrong, all fatal diseases are terrible and if we could find a cure that would be great, wouldn’t it?  On the other hand, if we lived forever what would happen to the earth?  We are crossing approaching the 8-billion humans on earth number and it seems every day someone is complaining about how mankind is destroying the earth.  Some believe we need to end the use of fossil fuels and then everything would be green. Unfortunately, I am reminded of a line from the Muppets, “it’s not easy being green.”  At some point, all those people will displace all the farms and we’ll be condemned to eating Soylent Green as we send our elderly to the recycling centers.

Social media is the modern forum for soothing our need to seek social justice and improve the planet.  Now we can do so without having to actually spend a lot of time or money.  We can find a meme that speaks to our causes, post it so all our “friends” or the “public” can see it, and move on to address the next great social issue. Of course, if enough people all agree with this meme we can be seen as a social influencer and supposedly drive the conversations in the way we think best. The difference in today’s world is we want the government to fix everything, and one side will accuse the other of not doing enough or of causing the problem and the other side will call them names. I don’t know why politicians think this is a good strategy but it is the one they and the media are in love with.

For example, today I saw a meme that made me cringe.  It went along the lines of “You were never told to surrender your civil liberties; you were asked to help each other stay healthy and survive.” People write this, and worse people believe it.  I don’t know the thinking of the people who write this, but I can assume the people who post it don’t understand what civil liberty is all about for if they did the meme would die a quiet death. Every time a government demands a certain behavior from its citizens some restriction to civil liberty is imposed.  For the most part, a majority of us will usually agree with that restriction if we understand it is for a “common good,” but as the government becomes more draconian those small surrenders add up to a complete loss of some civil liberty.  To avoid this debate over what we should or shouldn’t do for the pandemic, let’s go back to the turn of the century when Congress rushed to pass the Patriot Act and, in the years, following only added to the act in the name of protecting all Americans. 

I can think of no other act that so obviously took away civil liberties, and expanded the nature of government spying on its own citizens in the name of security.  Our founding fathers in declaring independence from the English monarch declared all men had the inalienable right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.  With the Patriot Act, our government clearly said liberty was less important than security and we’ve happily gone along with that view. 

Unfortunately, we average citizens let this happen by casting our votes for the same people time and time again.  I don’t know why, but we do.

Emotions versus Reality

Bottom Line Up Front (BLUF):  The debate over the $15/hour minimum wage seems intended to make more people dependent on the government, not less.

Thanks to the invention of the worldwide web of everything, and the social media tools invented to let us share cat pictures, become social influencers, and YouTube stars we are now able to share our deepest emotions and opinions with anyone who will view the videos, or read the writings.  This is just such a thing.  I post my opinions to a blog, share them on social media and it is read by a couple of dozen people.  

A byproduct of these things is some of the shallowest thinkers now believe their own press and think their emotional appeals will carry the day.  We see that from such Hollywood heavyweights as Rob “Meathead” Reiner who spent the last four years of his life focused on condemning the very existence of Donald Trump on Twitter^® or Alyssa “Who’s the Boss” Milano, who like Rob spent the last four years condemning Trump, and advocating for the #MeToo thing, as long the men were Republicans or disgraced Hollywood producers.  She didn’t seem to care too much if they were Democratic politicians, but then she must have seen some kind of moral difference.

To an extent though these, emotion-driven, Twitter^® tirades served their purpose.  The nation now has a new President.  He may be really old, apparently senile, and a career politician with almost 50 years of non-accomplishment, but he will carry the nation forward with increased energy costs, increased debt, and support for the most radical aspects of social evolution, at least until they can get Kamala Harris installed to replace him.

Forgive me, but this is a long way to get to the subject of emotions versus reality.

I’d like to talk about the emotional appeals from the left to raise the minimum wage for the unskilled labor force.  A group of people who make up a significant portion of the service industry.  For those who may not be familiar with what the service industry is, it is made up of the restaurants you can’t eat in if your state is governed by Democrats, it also has “fast food” places like Micky D’s, Burger King, and Taco Bell et.al.  The retail stores we find in the malls, and shopping centers, the gas stations where you pump your own gas, except in New Jersey where according to the State, it is unsafe for you to do that and an unskilled worker is hired (at presumably minimum wage), and finally, it includes all the entertainment establishments where you go to unwind after a hard day of self-isolating.

People who fill these unskilled labor positions mostly come from those who didn’t think high school was all that important, or some of the more advanced social “studies” programs in liberal arts colleges who are having a hard time translating a Bachelor of Arts in Italian Medieval Art Collections of the 14^th Century into a high paying executive job with a Fortune 500 company. Of course, there are also the “soon-to-be” superstar singers and actors who are waiting tables until they are discovered and thrust upon the nation as the next great thing.

The thing about these “unskilled” jobs is soon all the unemployed coal miners who were told they should learn to code will be writing the code to teach a machine to do every one of them.  Heck, we already see that in the self-checkout lines and self-ordering machines popping up all around the country.  Several years ago my neighbor, who manages a Styrofoam cooler manufacturing facility shared a conversation he had with the multi-millionaire owner.  My neighbor wanted to invest in a new machine and was concerned about the cost.  The machine took fewer humans to operate, had better reliability than the old machine, and would pay for itself in reduced costs in a few years.  His owner approved the purchase and also said, anytime you can replace an employee with a machine it was a good decision because machines don’t complain or need days off.

Look around, we are in the digital age.  The big manufacturing companies have gone to robots everywhere they can.  As the United Auto Workers Union fights for new wage increases has the membership grown since the 1970s?  The answer is a simple no.  It reached its peak in 1979[1] with 1.5 million members, today it has about 391,000 active members and 580,000 retired.[2] The only question is how long will the retirement funds hold out for those members?

So as the Democratic party, and its voters, argue for this wage as the new minimum should we assume they are all blind to the economic reality they would create, or is there some other reason?  Are the billionaire supporters of the plan going to all the sudden change their business models or will they just lay off people to ensure their profits?  As I look around it seems to me companies like Amazon^® are already positioning to automate their workforce future and cast aside those unfortunate individuals who don’t have the technical skills to adapt.  Of course, the caring Democratic party will pick up the cost of sustaining these unfortunate victims with the expanded welfare programs they will put in place.  They will become wards of the state and the state will rob them of their dignity.

As people are paid this new minimum will the quality of their lives go up?  Perhaps for a brief time, but as we’ve seen with every other minimum we’ve set -- inflation will inevitably catch up and they will be right back struggling to survive, although with each rise there will be fewer and fewer entry positions to enter and grow out of, so at the end of the day the transition from unskilled to skilled laborer become more restrictive. I wonder, what groups benefit most from this new reality. I doubt it is poor and uneducated the DNC promises to help each day.  Is it?

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[1] https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2010/04/uawm-a01.html

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Auto_Workers

A Dynasty ain't What it Used to Be

For the past couple of years, I’ve been teaching grade school history to a couple of my grandchildren.  Last year we studied Ancient Egypt, the Persians, and the Babylonians.  This year so far it has been Ancient Greece and Rome for one and the colonization of America for the other.  What I’ve learned is those guys in the olden days knew how to create a dynasty.  While I’m on the subject the Chinese were no pikers at dynasty building either.

The Egyptian Pharaohs had a pretty good run with each generation succeeding the prior.  I think they averaged something like a hundred years each with some being a few hundred while others only one generation.  The Roman Empire went for almost 500 years from Caesar Augustus to Romulus Augustus before shifting to the east.  The average dynasty was about 75 years. 

We in America, on the other hand, have not done a very good job at creating political dynasties, no matter how hard some have tried.  In the nineteenth century, we had Jackson who changed the shape of the Democratic party, but for power politics, I think the Society of St. Tammany probably came as close to a dynastic rule as anyone.  In the twentieth century, this is the model for the Democratic rulers of Chicago.  

On a national level, we are hard-pressed to see the long-term rule of a single entity which could be called a dynasty.  As close as we come in Franklin Delano Roosevelt's refusal to step down after his second term as tradition had dictated.  Of course, this pissed off some in Congress and as a result, we have the 22^ndAmendment. When John F. Kennedy claimed the office of President he was supposed to be the first in a long line of Kennedy’s who would rule.  Unfortunately, assassinations and drunk driving put an end to those plans. 

All this brings us to the present where we are watching perhaps the end of the Cuomo dynasty in New York.  The family ruled New York for 12 years (’82-’94) and again since 2011.  All indications are that Andrew, the current governor is great at intimidation and has effectively used that skill to remain in power.  He is also beloved by the press who have tripped over themselves praising him for his handling of the COVID pandemic.  At least until the facts about his and his closest staff’s decisions began trickling out. So, I have to wonder, was he so brilliant, or just the anti-Trump?