Living in the Age of Ultimatums

I am not sure when this age began but it must have been a long time ago.  The thing is it has become a lot more popular this century.  It used to be nations issued ultimatums, then it filtered down to parents, then celebrities, and now former celebrities.  The only problem is what does one do when their ultimatum falls on deaf ears?  Do they believe enough in their position to actually move forward with the threat?

From my chair, it appears most don’t, unless they put the ball in someone else’s hand.  For example, how many of our privileged elite threatened to move to Canada if Donald Trump were elected President?  Once elected, exactly how many fled Southern California, their Chicago/New York penthouses, or their properties in the Hamptons and the Cape?  For all the vilification and threats, I can’t recall a single famous person making the trek north to seek sanctuary from the Donald.

Fortunately for most of them, the organizations who call themselves news outlets are more interested in polling and their own ratings than actually holding people accountable for their words.  Shows like “The View” still exist, Barbara Streisand is still holed up in your palace in Southern California, and Oprah is still interviewing former princes and their mates from the comfort of her stateside estates.

We are living is a world of “Cancel Culture” but this is really just an outcome of the whole idea we get to make ultimatums and everyone must listen to us, because the progressive movement has told us we all have value, unless it is an opinion they don’t like.

This latest spat of ultimatums falls into two groups.  The first is pure silliness, the second may have greater ramifications.  Let’s deal with the silliness first.

Spotify is one of those music streaming services that has become so popular.  From what I understand it’s like those old time AM/FM radio stations, although you can choose your own music to listen to and as long as you are connected to the internet of all things you can hear them through your earbuds.  Obviously, Spotify exists to make money, just like those old time AM/FM stations did.  The question will always be, what makes them the most money?  Radio stations used to play Glenn Miller, then they moved to Rock and Roll, then Country, and then talk/news, all in the hopes of a larger audience share.  I can assume Spotify keeps track of who listens to what on their service.

So, when a 76-year-old hippy got upset with one of the talk radio shows on Spotify he did what all celebrities do these days.  He issued an ultimatum!  It is him or me! Spotify, to their credit looked at the financial implications and told the hippy, it was nice, but don’t let the door hit you on the way out. This created a fervor among other aging hippies who’ve chosen to follow their friend out the door.  Since most of them are millionaires, I don’t expect any of them will suffer real financial discomfort, but ask yourself, when was the last time you actually had to listen to Neil Young, Peter Frampton, or Joni Mitchell or your day wasn’t complete? 

Now we come to the second set of ultimatums!  The one with greater implications.

President Biden, I assume at the urgings of his son’s financial interests in the Ukraine, has told Russian President Putin, there would be serious actions if Russia was to invade the Ukraine.  To back up that ultimatum he has alerted troops to prepare to deploy, and is busy sending a lot of military equipment to the Ukraine to help them prepare for the invasion.  Of course, along the way he has said he wouldn’t be sending troops to the Ukraine, just military hardware.  The question is what will happen if this threat of action is viewed as the same empty threats Biden has made in the past, and our actions are viewed with the incompetence we showed as we bungled our way out of Afghanistan?

Now putting ourselves into the shoes of Putin, and I don’t do this lightly.  From his perspective the expansion of NATO into the former Warsaw Pact countries can certainly be viewed as a threat, especially if you consider the historical view of Russians in authoritarian regimes where anything that threatens their absolute authority is a concern. The question then is for Europe, more than the United States.  How do you expand the European Union to offer the economic and defense advantages of western Europe without threatening Russia?

For the United States, with our history of involvement in the internal affairs of other nations, how do we make a convincing argument we are not interested in the overthrow of yet another regime?  Or are we? If so, why?  At this point, do we even know what is in our national interest?

A Year in Review

I’ve not done this before, but this past Christmas season has become a time of reflection for me and as I watch the nation deal with a new crisis each day, I’ve decided to put my thoughts into some kind of synopsis.

In the beginning, the year began with the explosion of political ideologies. After a summer of violence in Democratic-run cities, a growing loss of confidence in the resolution of COVID, and the struggle for the votes of the nation we approached the transition of one administration to another.  Of course, no one was really ready to give up on the animosity of the past four years, nor was the President willing to concede he was beaten by a Democratic slate, which had done next to no live campaigning during an election that saw about 67% of all registered voters turn out[1] (compared to a historical average of 56.5% since 1980[2])).

On January 6^th, when Congress was to certify the vote of the Electoral College, the Trump campaign had scheduled a political rally in the mall to support the President, and show their dissatisfaction with the incongruity of the election and the results.  After the rally groups of the participants trooped up to the Capital to voice their disbelief in the legitimacy of the election.  In the process, they stormed into the Capital and disrupted the process of government.  Of course, this was immediately called an insurrection by the politicians and the media, and the President was accused of igniting this rebellion.  As far as actual violence the riot of January 6^th was a relatedly minor affair when compared to the outrages of the anti-police riots of the past summer and the Antifa violence of Seattle and Portland.  Yet since it actually scared the politicians who were happy to take a knee when Minneapolis was burning this became a traumatic event of such magnitude the House immediately set out to impeach the President once again and establish a select committee to determine how best to expand government to intimidate its citizens and keep such insurrections away from the house of the people.

Next, we come to January 20^th, when President Joseph R. Biden Jr. was sworn into the office of the President.  His inaugural speech covers all the main points of most inaugural speeches, but as with grand worlds, we really should see if actions support those ideals.  It was John F. Kennedy who inspired a generation with “ask not what your country can do for you – ask what you can do for your country.”  From those words came the Peace Corp where Americans, young and old, reached out to help those in developing countries.  In his speech, President Biden sought to unify a nation clearly divided.  He talked of truth and lies but in this age of information who decides what is true and what is a lie?  As we routinely see in the public broadcasts the experts of government will condemn information they dislike as false, only to be proven later they were wrong.

President Biden spoke of coming together, of unifying a nation broken by racial injustice, extremism, lawlessness, violence.  Unfortunately for the nation, he and his party remain blind to equality of action.  It seems for this administration extremism, lawlessness, and violence is only a quality of the right, and not of the left.  The protections of the Constitution, the document he swore to defend are only relevant if the administration agrees with the politics of the political or financial views of the individual.  If its defense is useful in the continuation of “the narrative.”

The “Biden-Harris” administration has set its agenda, and it can be found at https://www.whitehouse.gov/priorities/  According to the White House containing the COVID-19 crisis is the government's number one priority.  A review of the past year suggests their plans have been far less than successful.  They were to expand testing, take science-driven steps to address community needs – especially communities of color, and launch a national vaccination program.  The media certainly did its part, condemning any option that did not originate with the CDC, or posting the approved solutions on social media anytime someone mentioned the term COVID.  But here we are at the beginning of the new year with a recent mutation and testing lags, community support lags, and the plan for a national vaccination program amounts to threats of punishment if you don’t comply with the mandates of the government dictates.  On that last point, it seems to be more akin to a fascist approach than the ideal of democracy he spoke about in his inauguration speech.  

What seems to go unaddressed is the intent of vaccination and its effectiveness.  What does fully vaccinated (now a primary dosage and a booster) actually accomplish?  Does it prevent the acquisition of the virus? Does it prevent the spread of the virus?  Does it reduce the effects of the virus and prevent the need for hospitalization?  As with all vaccines, there is no 100% correct answer to any of these questions, but the “science-driven” approach the administration has taken seems to assume there is and if you don’t do what they want you must be punished in some way.  Perhaps this is democratic.  In a true democracy, the majority in power can override the desires of the minority.  Our founders recognized this potential and tried to avoid it with the establishment of a Republic where power was shared and the Constitution specifically addressed the rights of the individual by limiting the power of government.

The administration's second priority is, of course, climate change.  Their strategy to abandon fossil fuels and create “good-paying union jobs” to build an equitable clean energy future was funded to the tune of $1.5 trillion this past year.  It will be interesting to see how much of the aging infrastructure is modernized during this administration, but we do know the free flow of dollars into the economy is having a truly negative effect on the poorest of the nation.  On December 21, 2020, the median price for a gallon of regular gasoline was $2.19 after bottoming out earlier in the year at #1.77[3]. At the close of 2021, the price was about $3.37[4], a 53% increase in one year.  While some of this can be justified by an increase in demand as the nation resumes travel, a significant portion is directly attributable to the administration’s decisions regarding supply-side control and the inflation caused by all the “free money” floating around. Again, what seems to go unchallenged by the media is who suffers the most from these price increases?  Is it the government officials who drive their official vehicles, the President who flies in a Boeing 747, or in a 20-car motorcade, the rich who take their private jets to climate change conferences, or the lower-income family struggling to make ends meet?

The list of priorities goes on, but I’m not sure where we look to see any remarkable successes in this past year.  We’ve had administration officials say the number one threat to our nation is climate change, white extremism, police brutality, systemic racism, gender discrimination, or a lack of diversity.  All threats that demand more government control over the individual, and less respect for the individual. The question that goes unanswered, at least for me, is who really gets to decide what our greatest threat to national survival is and how is that threat addressed?  Does making a trans-gender pediatrician/politician an Admiral in the public health service really address the diversity challenges?  Does looking at military members' social media posts eliminate extremism, or does it shift the focus of the DOD from a defense of the nation into an administration police force? Do more taxes, greater inflation, and greater government control actually protect this nation, or does it weaken it? 

Well, that’s enough for now.  Have a great 2022.

---

[1] https://www.census.gov/library/stories/2021/04/record-high-turnout-in-2020-general-election.html

[2] https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/statistics/data/voter-turnout-in-presidential-elections

[3] https://www.gasbuddy.com/go/gas-price-report-december-21-2020

[4] https://ycharts.com/indicators/us_gas_price