California Free Press

Off the Top of My Head

Problem With American Democracy: Voters Will Never Vote for a Tax Increase Even if It Would Prevent One Person Dying in the Street

by John Lawrence

Question: would you be willing to pay more taxes if it would house the unhoused? Hell, no. What's more, voters don't want even a shelter in their neighborhood. Any time one is proposed, a NIMBY group pops up to protest its location. People don't want to give up even a small portion of their income to help unfortunate Americans. That's the main reason why they vote Republican. They think Democrats will raise their taxes. Other countries like Sweden have high taxes in order to help people. They're called social democracies or welfare states. That's anathema in the United States. The philosophy in the US is "Devil take the hindermost." There is support for those at the top of the economic spectrum, but little if any for those at the bottom. In the US it's all about competition, and those who have failed in the competitive game of life don't deserve our help especially if that means we will have to pay higher taxes. We want tax relief not human relief for those who have lost out in the game of life. I've got mine, and I don't want the government taking one penny of it in higher taxes.

Since heat is becoming a major cause of death due to climate change, the unhoused will be dying on the streets in even greater numbers. But Americans couldn't be less sympathetic. If they were willing to have their taxes increased by one penny, the homeless problem could be solved. It will not be solved simply by building more housing. Housing in our economic system will be priced according to the market not according to affordability. Building more housing will not lower the price of market rate housing. There are too many other factors at play. Such as corporations buying up houses, fixing them up and renting them out. This trend will turn the younger generation in particular into a nation of renters, not a nation of middle class home owners. The younger generation cannot even afford starter homes! The investor class realizes that housing is an economic asset that offers more of a return on their money than even the stock market. Housing is an asset class, not something that satisfies a human need. Investors make money off of the debts of other people, especially the young. Mortgages, credit card  debt, rents - these are the investments that make rich people richer. There's a reason why bankers are rich. They make money off of human debtors. Eliminating debt eliminates the profits of the rich. No wonder there is so much resistance to Biden's student debt relief programs.

One of the Great Society's programs was the War on Poverty. In those days - the 1960s - the poverty stricken were at least presumably housed. Today we have a subclass of poverty - the homeless - which has become a veritable culture of homelessness. This is a culture that is beneath poverty. Even in Huxley's Brave New World, the lowest class, the Epsilons, were bred to be menial laborers. He didn't have the imagination to believe that there would be a class even lower than the Epsilons - the homeless. Presumably, Huxley's Epsilons were paid laborers; the homeless are people, primarily, who don't work at all but subsist on handouts, handouts which, however, are not sufficient to put a roof over their heads. The homeless are a class of expendables. They aren't valued enough as human beings to engage the charitable instincts of most Americans so that as a society we would be willing to see everyone housed, well fed and on the road to a productive life. Instead we blame the homeless themselves for their predicament. Charity is one thing; raising taxes to provide charity is quite another. So as a society we are willing to have people urinating and defecating on the streets, expending societal resources to clean up their trash and being treated to the spectacle of having to step over people zonked out on the sidewalk to get to our favorite restaurant.

Off the Top of My Head

Mud Slinging and Character Assassination: the Only Things Republicans Know How To Do

by John Lawrence

And then the pundits discuss the mud slinging by the hour. Calling people names. Making up stuff. What's this got to do with the future vision for the country? What I want to hear from Trump and Kamala is their vision for the future of our country. I could care less about what they seem to be all about - destroying their opponent. These are the ethics of a wrestling match - destroy your opponent. Kamala has to get specific about a few policies, namely, the border, taxation and abortion. She needs to co-opt Trump's issues. She needs to call for a tax cut for the middle class while raising taxes on the rich. On the border, she has to call for strengthening the border to the point that it is impregnable while calling for increased legal pathways for immigration and asylum. On the wars she has to demand a cease fire and hostage release in Gaza and a settlement in Ukraine that's basically a compromise instead of an all or nothing approach.

The overriding issue of our times is climate change. Nothing could be clearer than the differences between the two parties on this issue. The Democrats are very environmentally conscious. Republicans couldn't care less about the environment or climate change. All they care about is their plastic straws, gas guzzling vehicles, guns and meat. Don't ask them to change their way of life in order to save the planet for future generations. It's hard to imagine a worse ethical stance. They are against everything that is conducive to making the world a better place. It's the legacy of an ethic of selfishness as promulgated by Ronald Reagan, George W Bush and others including Ayn Rand who wrote The Virtue of Selfishness. The US has a very weak, to the point of nonexistence, communal ethic. Individualism and competition is the fabric of American character. There have been a few exceptions, namely, the Depression and World War II. Even in those cases there were many voices who called for not getting involved and just letting the chips fall where they may.

So Kamala, don't get caught up in the mudslinging, character assassination and name calling or responding to same. Express clearly where you are on the issues and where your policies will take America and the world. Vagueness is the enemy of clarity and decisiveness. Better to ignore Trump and his puerility. I want to see clarity about the border and clarity about taxation. As far as women's reproductive rights, Democrats own that issue. As for the rest, a continuation of Biden's policies in terms of infrastructure, the child tax credit, elder long term care and other aspects of Biden's Build Back Better program are important. Especially, the surge in mental awareness and acceptance of mutual responsibility for climate change and the environment is paramount regardless of Republican insistence on keeping their plastic straws, guns, meat and gas guzzlers. A change in the mentality of Americans has to occur or climate disasters will only get worse until many areas of the US, not to mention the world, will become uninhabitable in the very near future.

Off the Top of My Head

A Superpower in Decline

by John Lawrence

1) Rights taken away from women. The Arizona Supreme Court’s decision to outlaw nearly all abortions in Arizona will likely lead to an influx of patients fleeing the state to find care in California, abortion rights activists said.

2) The world's policeman can't police its own borders. The asylum law lets anyone setting foot on American soil ask for asylum. Court dates for asylum cases are, on average, more than four years out in the future, and even longer for final decisions. Over 3 million cases were pending before immigration courts near the end of 2023, with the backlog growing by 1 million since 2022.

3) The archaic electoral college has never been replaced by a direct popular vote for President. The result is that the winner of the popular vote has not been elected President. Gore won the popular vote in 2000, but Bush was elected President. The Florida Supreme Court sided with Gore, but Bush appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, which ultimately voted 5 to 4 to reverse the Florida court’s decision and halt the recount. With Florida in hand, Bush won the Electoral College 271 to 266, while Gore ended up getting 500,000 more votes in the popular vote. As a result Gore's push for limits on global warming was lost as Bush promoted fossil fuels. Also Bush lied the US into a disastrous war in Iraq that resulted in Iraq becoming an ally of Iran.

4) 750 military bases in 80 countries are sitting ducks for an attack by Iran or its proxies. The largest U.S. base in the Middle East is located in Qatar, known as Al Udeid Air Base and built in 1996. Other countries where the U.S. has a presence include Bahrain, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. The US spends more on its military than the next 10 countries combined. Three American service members were killed and dozens more were injured in an unmanned aerial drone attack on a base known as Tower 22 in Jordan on January 28, 2024. Now that the US is expecting an attack by Iran, which sitting duck will be next?

5) An insurrectionist with several dozen indictments is allowed to run for President. Last year, Donald Trump became the first former president of the United States to be criminally indicted. Over the span of five months, he was indicted in four separate criminal cases and charged on a total of 91 felony counts.

6) Futile wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Bush lied us into war in Iraq. Osama bin Laden eventually killed in Obama administration by small Seal team, proving futility of invading Afghanistan

7) Wealth inequality. The United States exhibits wider disparities of wealth between rich and poor than any other major developed nation. There are now more billionaires than ever: 2,781 in all, 141 more than last year and 26 more than the record set in 2021. They’re richer than ever, worth $14.2 trillion in aggregate, up by $2 trillion from 2023 and $1.1 trillion above the previous record, also set in 2021. 

8) Housing unaffordability. San Diego families need an income of nearly $275,000 a year to afford a mortgage on a home, which is nearly double what it was before the pandemic, according to a new report from the real estate website Zillow.

9) Homelessness is an intractable problem. On any given night in the United States, more than half a million people experience homelessness.

10) The filibuster rule and the bicameral legislature. Nothing much can get done unless one party controls both Houses of Congress and the Presidency. President Biden looks stupid since he can't even keep his commitments to NATO because the Republican controlled House won't vote the funds Biden has promised. This means Ukraine will lose the war with Russia, and other countries cannot trust the US to keep its commitments.

11) The Second Amendment. No other country allows the uncontrolled proliferation of guns. More Americans died of gun-related injuries in 2021 than in any other year on record, according to the latest available statistics from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). That included record numbers of both gun murders and gun suicides.

Rich Men North of Richmond

Republicans court cultural populism, while Democrats eschew economic populism. But economic populism is the key.

Robert Reich

Aug 21, 2023

Over the past week, Oliver Anthony’s video of his song “Rich Men North of Richmond” has gone viral, clocking more than 20 million views on YouTube. As it’s risen to the top of the streaming charts, it’s also become a theme song for reactionary conservatives (Marjorie Taylor Greene calls it “the anthem of the forgotten Americans”).

“Rich Men North of Richmond” expresses class resentment with words and music evocative of Woody Guthrie. But Guthrie aimed his fire at economic elites who oppressed hardworking Americans. Anthony is aiming at cultural elites who have reduced the status of white American-born men.

America is in a new populist age, but the new populism comes in two radically different forms: cultural and economic.

Today’s Republicans are wielding cultural populism on behalf of so-called “forgotten Americans” who are white, male, Christian, and nationalist.

For seven years, Donald Trump has rarely missed a day to blame all America’s problems on immigrants, Democrats, socialists, the mainstream media, the “Deep State” (including the FBI, Justice Department, prosecutors, and unfriendly judges), “coastal elites,” and, wherever possible (and usually indirectly), women and people of color.

Florida’s Ron DeSantis is basing his inchoate presidential campaign on a war against what he calls America’s “ruling class,” which includes bureaucrats, journalists, educators, and other supposed “woke” experts who, as DeSantis told the audience attending his campaign kickoff in Iowa in May, “are not enacting an agenda to represent us. They’re imposing their agenda on us, via the federal government, via corporate America and via our own education system.” DeSantis is shipping undocumented immigrants out of Florida, barring teaching about sex or America’s history of racism, blocking abortions after twelve weeks, requiring Trans young people to use bathrooms according to their gender at birth.

For Republican politicians these days, the culture wars are the central struggle of American public life. Why? Because cultural populism’s underlying political agenda is white male Christian nationalism. It aims to resurrect the social and racial hierarchy that dominated American life before the 1960s.

This not only fuels the Republicans’ mostly white, male, Christian, American-born base. It also reassures the fat cats bankrolling the GOP that working-class resentments are channeled away from economic populism — which could threaten the fat cats’ wealth.

What are Democrats doing with economic populism?

Some Democrats continue to talk about “forgotten Americans” who have been left behind economically. And Biden and his allies in Congress have made a good start at helping these Americans — even though most of the working middle class doesn’t seem to be aware of it.

But few Democrats are willing to blame what’s happened on economic elites. (When Bernie Sanders tried in 2016, the Democratic establishment squashed his presidential ambitions.)

Yet the Republicans’ cultural populism is bogus. The biggest change over the last three decades — the change lurking behind the insecurities and resentments of the working middle class — has nothing to do with identity politics, “woke”ism, Critical Race Theory, transgender kids, or any other current Republican bogeymen. It has directly to do with a huge shift in the distribution of income and wealth.

The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office has just released a report showing changes in the distribution of family wealth from 1989 to 2019 (the first and the most recent years for which comparable survey data on family wealth are available).

Families in the top 10 percent of the distribution now hold more than two-thirds of all wealth. Families in the bottom half of the distribution hold only 2 percent of total wealth. (Families in the bottom quarter have negative net wealth — they’re in debt. Families in the top 1 percent — indeed, the top one-tenth of 1 percent — have a disproportionate share of the wealth of the top 10 percent.)

Look at the dramatic change over the last three decades. Although total wealth is much greater now than it was then, the distribution of that wealth is far more unequal. The bottom 50 percent hasn’t budged. Wealth at the top has exploded.

 

This change didn’t happen because of so-called “neutral market forces.” It happened because of policy decisions made over the last three decades.

What sort of decisions? To open the borders wide to imports from China. To deregulate Wall Street and allow it to make bets with other people’s money. To dramatically cut taxes on the rich. To let corporations bash unions and fire workers who try to organize. To encourage private equity to take over “underperforming” companies and then promptly fire workers and sell off assets. To allow big corporations to buy or merge with other big corporations. To bail out the biggest banks but not homeowners who get caught in the downdrafts. To encourage corporations to buy back their shares of stock rather than reinvest profits. To privatize higher education and push students into taking out massive college loans. And so on.

These policy decisions didn’t just happen, either. They were pushed by wealthy elites on Wall Street and in corporate C-suites, who made mammoth donations to politicians on both sides of the aisle — mostly but not exclusively Republican — to ensure that their wishes would be honored.

Donald Trump, Ron DeSantis, Marjorie Taylor Greene, and other Republican culture warriors don’t represent “forgotten Americans.” They’ve championed the very policies that have caused these Americans to be forgotten.

Biden and most Democratic lawmakers in Congress are advocating policies that will make the nation more equitable, such as student-loan forgiveness and negotiated drug prices. But they’re reluctant to push very hard for higher taxes on the wealthy, or labor laws that make it easier to organize, or to roll back any of the other big structural changes that wealthy elites have put in place over the last 30 years.

And they don’t want to blame the rich for what’s happened.

“I’ve been sellin’ my soul, workin’ all day / Overtime hours for bullshit pay,” Anthony sings.

Yes, you have — but not because cultural elites have replaced white Christian nationalist men with people of other races, genders, nationalities, and creeds.

It’s because America’s wealthy have turned their growing wealth into increasing political power to change the rules of the game in ways that further enlarge their wealth and power, while shafting the bottom half.

If Democrats don’t tell the economic truth about what’s happened and place the blame squarely where it’s deserved, the lies of Republican cultural populists will fill the void — not just with faux-populist lyrics, but with bad laws.

Off the Top of My Head

Contrasting the Chinese, EU and American Economic Systems

by John Lawrence

Since 2001, China has pursued a “going-out” investment policy. At first, the PRC (People's Republic of China) mainly encouraged SOEs (state owned enterprises) to invest overseas but in recent years, China's overseas investments have diversified with both state and private enterprises investing in nearly all industries and economic sectors. After Deng Xiaoping came to power in the late 1970s, China opened up its economic policy with the result that approximately 800 million people were lifted out of poverty in about 40 years. This turned China into a capitalistic nation ruled by the Chinese Communist party although the word "communist" is largely an anachronism at this point. China developed a unique economic system comprised of state owned enterprises and private enterprise. It has been the private aspects of China's system that have mainly driven the huge increases in GDP to the point where China is likely to take over the US as the world's largest economy in terms of GDP in a few years.

There are 4 components of GDP: consumption, investment, government spending and profit from exports. Some of the reasons for China's becoming an economic powerhouse are that consumption is only 38% of GDP whereas US consumption is nearly 70% of GDP. While Americans consume, China produces, exports and invests. I would characterize the US as having a Taylor Swift economy, an economy based on consumption of entertainment and other disposable items with no lasting value. It has been reported that Taylor Swift and the Barbie movie have been at least somewhat responsible for keeping the American economy afloat. When you add in social media and professional athletics, much of American consumption is immediately disposed of as soon as the event is over. In the EU consumption is about 52% of GDP so somewhat larger than China's but much less than the US.

Chinese investment is 43% of GDP while The US' is about 16%. EU investment is about 25% of GDP so midway between the US and China. At 21.4% EU government spending is larger than either the US (17.6%) or China (16%). Like the American government the Chinese government doesn't spend a lot of money on welfare. Chinese families are basically savers and provide a lot of the same services to their own intergenerational extended families which are provided by EU governments. The American ethos is largely individualistic and so many family members who can't provide for themselves fall through the cracks. This is one reason for the homeless crisis in the US.

The Chinese economy is bolstered by the fact that it is a net exporter (2.5% of GDP) while the US (-2.7%) and the EU (-2.7%) are net importers which subtracts from their GDPs. China also exports capital and manpower in the form of the Belt and Road Initiative. Announced in 2013, the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) aims to strengthen China’s connectivity with the world. It combines new and old projects, covers an expansive geographic scope, and includes efforts to strengthen hard infrastructure, soft infrastructure, and cultural ties. As of October 2019, the plan touches 138 countries with a combined Gross Domestic Product of $29 trillion and some 4.6 billion people. Supporting a diverse array of initiatives that enhance connectivity throughout Eurasia and beyond could serve to strengthen China’s economic and security interests while bolstering overseas development. 

The Chinese political system, nominally communist, has the same elements of democracy that the early US political system had which is that locally elected bodies select the next higher political body with 3 successive iterations so that the National Assembly is chosen by the provincial assemblies at the next lower level. The original American Constitution had a similar feature in that the Senate was not chosen directly by the people but by state legislatures. State legislatures continued to elect senators until adoption of the Seventeenth Amendment to the Constitution in 1913 which provided for popular election of senators. The Chinese system tends to meritocraticy with the best and brightest ascending to the top levels whereas the more democratic American system has within it the possibility of electing complete idiots like Donald Trump whose ascendancy served to prove how vulnerable the two party system really is. By contrast the Chinese emphasize harmony and stability which are attributes of their main philosophical inheritance: Confucianism.

Off the Top of My Head

Toxic Masculinity

by John Lawrence

Traditional masculine traits are dominance, aggression, emotional repression, violence. These traits have been historically mostly expressed in terms of the military. In the First World War, many of the participants were more than eager to cover themselves in glory by proving their manhood in combat. Instead many of them ended up dying miserable deaths in muddy trenches or hung from barbed wire. The persistence of war in the human experience can be laid squarely at the feet of men and their interpretation of what is manly in my opinion. In fact peace or even world peace is seen as a feminine idea. Most traditional men would not consider peace in the form of world wide understanding and compassion even possible because it would be based on feminine values. The only peace even possible in the traditional male mind is "peace through strength." Traditional male values prevent even an acknowledgment of what peace would really consist of because it would consist of emotional values that are traditionally feminine. The predominant attitude is that joining the military will "make a man out of you." A real man is only supposed to express a limited and actually stunted set of emotions and certainly is not supposed to express any vulnerabilities. Physical force or the threat of force is acceptable in a man's world. Understanding, cooperation and diplomacy are not.

Traditional male activities are beer drinking (a man can hold his liquor), fast car racing or pickup driving (showing dominance by means of a powerful machine), participation in or spectating at competitive sports, participation in or admiration of the military. Dominance, competitiveness, the use or threat of violence, pugnaciousness, toughness, looking down on men who don't conform to this stereotype - these are all traditional male traits. None of these traits are physically or mentally healthy. For instance, holding your liquor can lead to cirrhosis of the liver. Emotional repressiveness can lead to an inability to relate to women even though some women are attracted to the traditional male type. In fact it can be argued that Trump's popularity is a result of his expression of traditional male values. In an article in FiveThirtyEight entitled With His Version of Masculinity, we find this:

But the quest to seem masculine is particularly complicated in this year’s GOP primary because Trump has been so successful at projecting a macho image that Republican voters have responded to. This masculine identity isn’t about demonstrations of physical prowess — nobody talks about how far Trump can run or whether he can bench-press a certain weight. His version of manliness is fueled by other kinds of behavior — including his belittling of other candidates, aggression toward women, “tell it like it is and don’t apologize” affect — that are associated with traditional ideas about how a man should behave. The other GOP candidates largely aren’t trying to imitate those aspects of Trump’s macho identity — but experts told us that without Trump’s signature belligerence, his version of masculinity might not resonate as much. And that means his rivals may have an especially difficult time convincing the GOP primary electorate that they’re as strong a leader as Trump.

“In this view of masculinity, men are supposed to be dominant, powerful, aggressive,” said Theresa Vescio, a professor of psychology at Penn State University who studies masculinity. “And the more that people — both men and women — think that good men should be high in power, status, dominance and toughness, the more they say that’s what a man is, the more they support Trump.”

It might seem strange to some that a man who is not particularly physically fit or athletic, never served in the military and eats junk food is an exemplary manifestation of manhood. It seems ridiculous that Trump's penchant for belittling his opponents is seen by some as "manly." That his getting away with stiffing contractors, creditors and not paying taxes are manly traits. But somehow Trump's unwillingness to apologize about anything or ever admit he did anything wrong is seen by some Republicans as the counter to "liberal values" like having compassion and respect for people who disagree with you. Instead Trump calls his detractors and competitors names, assails them as weaklings and asserts his macho masculinity while he hides behind a bevy of lawyers and uses his money to shield himself from any negative consequences. His seeming ability to get away with stuff is seen as quintessentially masculine. The article continues:

These are the voters who are especially likely to find Trump’s version of masculinity appealing. Trump is particularly effective at drawing on his supporters’ fears about threats to traditional masculinity, while simultaneously building himself up as a paragon of that version of manliness, according to the experts we spoke with. His image as president was aggressively militant, threatening other world leaders and avoiding compromise. And his refusal to apologize for a well-documented track record of sexual harassment and assault makes him seem authentically masculine and powerful to some voters, according to Dan Cassino, a political scientist at Fairleigh Dickinson University who studies male gender identity. “It’s as much about tearing others down as it is about building others up,” Cassino says. “The insults, the misogynistic behavior — these are very negative masculine traits but he’s willing to assert them in a way others aren’t, and that means nobody thinks he’s lying about who he is.”

By projecting an image of himself as a powerful, strong, dominant man who’s willing to shrug away modern conventions around how men and women should behave, Trump has reached people who support traditional gender hierarchies. “There are a lot of conservatives — men but some women too — in this country who increasingly feel like they’re on the outside looking in, while liberals run things,” said Paul Elliott Johnson, a professor of communication at the University of Pittsburgh who studies gender and politics. “Trump invites those people to feel victimized and then says, ‘I will fix the problem.’”

As detrimental to society in general as these toxic traditional masculine values are, they will even probably contribute to the annihilation of the human race altogether either through war or the ignoring of climate change. There is not even any talk of world peace any more. It's not even on anyone's radar. The militarization of the American psyche is complete. The Peace Corps is never even mentioned in the media. Most people would not even know that it exists. The Peace Corps represents the feminine values of help and caring for those less fortunate. The traditional male simply looks upon them as losers in the game of life, probably because of their inferiority to white males. As traditional white males, they believe that they have simply outcompeted those who come from as Trump has termed them, "shithole countries."  Let people with feminine values agonize over them and their claims that rich white men should help them out with their situations due to climate change. Macho men would scoff at their suggestions that the rich nations should bear the cost of ameliorating the effects of global warming or as U.N. chief António Guterres declared, "global boiling." As Trump and other macho men might say, "suck it up." There will probably never be world peace until women run the world. And where would that leave the traditional man and his toxic values? Healthy manhood, in my humble opinion, should be nothing more nor less than loving, supporting and cherishing the girls and women in our lives whether they be girlfriends, lovers, wives, daughters, mothers or grandmothers. All the rest of the positive values a man can manifest are simply personhood values which can be exemplified by both sexes.

Off the Top of My Head

America Has an Employment Problem, Not an Unemployment Problem

by John Lawrence

Wherever you look from air traffic controllers to fruit pickers to caregivers to teachers to police, there are not enough workers. That is why unemployment is so low - at 3.4%. The Health Services, Professional and Business Services, Trade, and Accommodation and Food Services industries have the highest numbers of job openings. The question is why there is a shortage of workers and what to do about it.The pandemic caused a major disruption in America’s labor force—something many have referred to as The Great Resignation. In 2022, more than 50 million workers quit their jobs, many of whom were in search of an improved work-life balance and flexibility, increased compensation, and a strong company culture. But a closer look at what has happened to the labor force can be better described as ‘The Great Reshuffle’ because hiring rates have outpaced quit rates since November of 2020. So, many workers are quitting their jobs—but many are getting re-hired elsewhere. In a game of musical chairs workers are seeking and getting better jobs, leaving high stress professions like nursing and teaching and getting paid more to do other things.

So America basically has a shortage of "essential workers," workers who do necessary work for traditionally low pay. America has developed so many ways to make money doing inessential work at higher pay so why should anyone who doesn't have to work in an essential job? There are two ways. 1) Pay more for essential work and 2) increase legal immigration because increasingly immigrants are doing the work that Americans who have been Americans longer don't want to do. The worker shortage has empowered workers. They are so to speak in the catbird seat. They are demanding more pay, shorter hours, better working conditions. This is all well and good, but, as the pandemic showed, essential work is necessary for people to live while so many other forms of work, while more lucrative, could disappear tomorrow without affecting much most Americans' quality of life. For instance, Facebook had 86,482 full-time employees as of December 2022, up from just 150 people in 2006. If Facebook disappeared tomorrow, nothing essential to life would be lost in my opinion. The same is true for other social media like Tik Tok. In fact considering the effects social media has had on the population, the world might be better off if all social media disappeared tomorrow. Then those workers would be available for more essential jobs.

If the advertising industry disappeared tomorrow, the world might be better off. For instance, I can find anything I might be interested in buying on Amazon. I don't need to be pounded on by TV commercials to be told what I should want or what I should need. In particualar, Facebook makes all its considerable revenues from advertising. It does not manufacture a product essential to life or any product at all. People are getting smart that there are cushier, safer jobs with better work-life balance than essential jobs. Caregivers like Certified Nursing Assistants (CNAs) are low paid but essential jobs. Anyone who has had a loved one in the hospital for any length of time realizes how essential they are. They do the dirty work like changing patients diapers and cleaning up when they haven't got to the patients' bedsides in time to prevent a tragedy. Nurses and teachers are overworked considering the nurse/patient ratio and the teacher/student ratio. Much essential work is done by non college graduates and, therefore, does not merit the esteem that college graduates' jobs garner. Nevertheless, they are more important jobs in an essential sense, than many jobs that require a college education. When you need a plumber, you will not usually be hiring a college graduate.

About half of Americans who lost their job during the pandemic and are still not working say they are not willing to take jobs that do not offer the opportunity for remote work. However, many essential jobs can't be done remotely. They are "hands on." It is about time that America values its essential workers and makes a distinction between what's essential and what is inessential. It's a question, to some extent, of values, of what kinds of work are valued. This is where unions come in. America cannot function without essential workers. Yet the only way they can get the pay and benefits they deserve is to unionize and withdraw their workforce if necessary to get what they deserve. For sure, they won't get a better paying job otherwise unless they quit and go to work for Facebook.

Off the Top of My Head

Republican Presidents Have Been Mainly Responsible for Increases in the National Debt

by John Lawrence

The Reagan, George W Bush and Trump tax cuts are responsible for most of the US national debt. During the Trump administration, the debt increased by roughly $7.8 trillion, and The George W. Bush administration  enacted sweeping tax cuts that will have cost more than $8 trillion by the end of fiscal year 2023. The nation’s fiscal pictured changed in 1981 when President Ronald Reagan enacted the largest tax cut in U.S. history, reducing revenues by the equivalent of $19 trillion over a decade in today’s terms. Although Congress raised taxes in many of the subsequent years of the Reagan administration to claw back close to half the revenue loss, the equivalent of $10 trillion of the president’s 1981 tax cut remained. Donald Trump Built a National Debt So Big (Even Before the Pandemic) that it’ll weigh down the economy for years.

A series of massive, permanent tax cuts have created large federal budget primary shortfalls and continue to exert upward pressure on the debt ratio. In other words, the current fiscal gap—the growing debt as a percentage of the economy—stems from legislation that cut taxes, disproportionately for the very rich. While it is true that the Great Recession and legislation to fight it, along with the costs of responding to the health and economic effects of COVID-19, pushed the level of debt higher, these costs were temporary and did not change the trajectory of the debt ratio. If Congress wants to decrease deficits, it should look first toward reversing tax cuts that largely benefited the wealthy, which were responsible for the United States’ current fiscal outlook.

Therefore, taxes on the rich should increase while spending on the poor and middle class should also increase. Americans want both: social programs and reduced taxes. However, the gross inequality that exists between rich and poor begs the question: why raise taxes on everyone? Shouldn't the rich have their taxes increased while the poor and lower middle class have their taxes reduced? Of course, that 's the ideal solution. However, Republicans represent the interests of the rich so they would never agree to this proposal. They will continue to argue for increasing taxes on the poor while cutting spending that mostly benefits the poor and lower middle class. That's the American situation, writ large, folks. That's all you need to know to understand American politics. It's a struggle between rich and poor. The rich think they deserve all their money even if it runs to billions of dollars while the poor are only trying to get a foothold in the American Dream. The rich think the poor deserve their lot in life because they didn't work hard enough to overcome their poverty. The rich also believe in a meritocracy where they themselves are the winners who made all the right moves and worked the hardest. What's wrong with this picture?

Read "The Tyranny of Merit" by Michael Sandel.

Off the Top of My Head

Donald Trump: The Dominator

by John Lawrence

Just as George W Bush characterized himself as 'the Decider', Donald Bush might well characterize himself as The Dominator. He dominates the other candidates or would be candidates in the Republican party. They are all afraid to criticize him. In the 2016 debates Jeb Bush, a decent guy, was destroyed by him.

“Jeb is having some kind of a breakdown,” he told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer. ​”He’s an embarrassment to his family. He has to bring his mother out and walk his mother around at 90 years old. I think it’s a very sad situation that’s taking place.”

“Frankly, he’s a stiff,” Trump said. “He’s not a guy who can be president. He doesn’t have what it takes to be president.”

Ron DeSantis is walking on egg shells and is hesitant even to declare his candidacy. The Republican base, many of whom have a military background, want a Dominator as their candidate. That is indeed the military tradition. Recruits are dominated by their drill sergeant who gets in their face and barks orders. Ironic then that, although Trump never served in the military, he exemplifies the military mind set. Most active duty military as well as most people in the military industrial complex vote Republican because Republicans. especially Donald Trump, exemplify their values. These are the same values that are part and parcel of the animal world where the dominant male gets to mate with all the females. So Trump characterizes himself as so dominant that he can act like a dominant male and grab 'em by the pussy or shoot someone in the middle of Fifth Avenue and get away with it. Just as other species do, a certain percentage of the Republican base respects and admires a Dominator like Trump. When Trump says this kind of domination has been going on for "millions of years, unfortunately or fortunately," he is referring to the fact that this kind of behavior is the norm in the animal world, and we humans are, after all, not really all that different.

The Denominators of history are of course Fascists. In 1922 Benito Mussolini led a coalition of fascist leaders to Rome and forced the king to yield the government. Mussolini was appointed prime minister. By 1925 he had dismantled Italy's democratic government and, acting as a dictator, declared himself Il Duce ("The Leader"). Hitler dominated the tired old men of the Weimar Republic who were cajoled into appointing him Chancellor. Fascism is a top down political structure similar to the military's top down rank structure. No wonder then that Republican voters, many of whom have a military background, are quite comfortable with a top down structure of political dominance with Trump at the apex. No wonder that Trump is leading all the polls even though he is under several criminal indictments. Friedrich Nietsche was the philosopher of fascism, one who argued for a repudiation of Christian values to be replaced with the values of domination. "A good war hallowith every cause". Just as the dominant male in the animal kingdom passes on his superior DNA to his harem of females, Fascist values insist that dominant men are the ones to eugenically pass on superioor genes to their offspring, and they should be valued and looked up to. All other men should be submissive to them. There is no separation form the animal world. Homo Sapiens represents a continuation of the values that assert that the best and strongest genes of the Dominators should take priority.

Trump's followers in fact give him a pass on Christian values for the very reason that, as Nietzsche asserts, Christian values are the values of the weak. The values of the strong and vital are the values of top down authoritarianism for which the strong man or the dominator should rule the day. As Trump said, this has been going on for millions of years, fortunately or unfortunately. This gives a pass to misogyny as Nietzsche also stated, "The family is the smallest unit of domination." The father is dominant; the wife and children should be submissive. The ethos of dominance and submission should prevail. Christian morals, the morals of tolerance and equality, according to Nietsche, are the exact opposite of the morals that lead to the betterment of the species. Let the cream rise to the top, and, unfortunately or fortunately, the weak must inevitably fall by the wayside. "Devil take the hindermost" is an imprecation that everyone should look after their own interests, leaving those who cannot cope to whatever fate befalls them. The leader of the most dominant nation on the face of the earth should be the most dominant male, ^i.e. Donald Trump, the Dominator. Utter selfishness should prevail. Cooperation is a feminine value. Love is a feminine value. Getting along is a feminine value. Diplomacy is a feminine value. Male dominance is what the US populace wants in a leader.

Off the Top of My Head

The Normalization of Vulgarity and Violence in America

by John Lawrence

America has become accustomed to increasing vulgarity. It didn't just start with the Vulgarian in Chief, Donald Trump, but he contributed a lot including the complete transformation of the Republican party from a buttoned down, strait laced group of goody two shoes to a party of F bomb hurling insurrectionists. This has all happened in the last 30 years or so. Some of the other indicators are the fact that tattoos became mainstream in the 1990s. Gangsta rap became mainstream n the 1990s. Before that tattoos were only seen on Hells Angels and long shoremen. Then it became cool to emulate, if not belong, to the Hells Angels. Hip Hop and rap artists discovered that it was financially rewarding to glorify violence, but violence has been standard fare in American culture for decades. Gangsta rappers were not the first group to make money off of glorifying violence. Now drag queens are trying to normalize drag queen story hour. According to dragstoryhour.com:

"What is Drag Story Hour?

"It’s just what it sounds like! Storytellers using the art of drag to read books to kids in libraries, schools, and bookstores.

"DSH captures the imagination and play of the gender fluidity of childhood and gives kids glamorous, positive, and unabashedly queer role models.

"In spaces like this, kids are able to see people who defy rigid gender restrictions and imagine a world where everyone can be their authentic selves!"

Really?! Gender fluidity of childhood? Unabashedly queer role models? Are rigid gender roles too restrictive? Everyone can be their authentic selves by defying rigid gender restrictions? This is the normalization of what until recently was a very fringe element of society. If somebody wants to be a drag queen, I say let them. I'm not going to discriminate towards them or wish them any harm. As far as I'm concerned they should have all the rights of any American citizen, but do I think my children benefit from be exposed to their "art form"? No! Tolerance of differences is one thing. The implication that their way of life is normal is quite another. Today it seems like there is an epidemic of gender dysphoria and drag queen story hour plays right into it.

So there was a reaction against Hip Hop not because it was too violent but because it was misogynistic. Queen Latifah was a rapper who objected to being called a "bitch." There was also a reaction after Topac Shekur and Biggy Smalls were killed probably as a consequence of embracing and glorifying a life of crime. On Sept. 7, 1996, Tupac, 25, was shot in a drive-by shooting in Las Vegas and died at an area hospital. Around six months later, on March 9, 1997, Christopher Wallace, known as Biggie Smalls or the Notorious B.I.G., was gunned down in his vehicle shortly after he left an industry party in Los Angeles. He was 24. The rappers had a certain "F you. I don't give a F" attitude which was also adopted by the female rappers, but the difference was that the female rappers like Queen Latifah rejected the misogyny of the male rappers. All the white kids ate up and wished they could emulate the same "F you" attitude. They bought the records making some of the rappers quite rich.

Now we get to 2016 and the political ascendancy of "grab 'em by the pussy" Donald Trump. His followers ate it up. There was a complete transformation of the Republican party from a party of tight asses to a party of profligates or as Hillary would say, "deplorables." Now Trump was a guy who could brag about shooting someone in broad daylight and getting away with it. Just a few short decades before Trump, Republicans were all concerned about whether Ronald Reagan was electable because he had been divorced over 30 years before he ran for President! Now here was a guy who had been divorced 3 times and had numerous affairs. Unfortunately for him, he thought he had to pay hush money to cover up these affairs before he ran for President. He should have known that, if he could shoot someone in broad daylight and get away with it, he could commit adultery all he wanted and get away with it. His voters, his base, they all would still love him. In fact they probably wished that they too could get away with it. They wanted to be like him, to emulate him. They couldn't get enough of his grossness and vulgarity. It made their grossness and vulgarity seem normal.

The culture wars in America are ongoing. On the one hand we honor and give awards to (mainly white) movie directors and producers who make money glorifying violence. On the other we honor and give awards to (mainly black) rappers who make money glorifying violence and use the words "bitch" and "motherfucker" freely. When all is said and done, it is like H. Rap Brown said at a press conference, "Violence is as normal as cherry pie." And so has become vulgarity.

Off the Top of My Head

American Lifestyle: Fall in Love. Get Married. Fall Out of Love. Get Divorced. Rinse. Repeat.

by John Lawrence

Celebrities set the tone of American lifestyles, and most of them adhere to the serial marriage model. Except for those who have millions of dollars and prefer to go on fighting after the marriage is resolved like Johnny Depp and Amber Heard. It wasn't enough that Heard got a $7 million divorce settlement. She could have taken the money and gone home. I mean $7 million is a considerable chunk of change, but she chose to go on fighting even after the divorce. She wrote an article which defamed Johnny Depp. At least according to him it was defamatory. So naturally he sued her for defamation. Meanwhile, the media and the lawyers were getting rich. When there are so many more important issues that money and energy could be devoted to, much money and energy were poured into the issue of whether or not Amber Heard had defamed Johnny Depp or vice versa. So what. Who Cares. Even more entertaining than their movies. We are entertaining ourselves to death.

Then there's Taylor Swift with whom one can hardly keep up with all the songs she's written and records she's made off of her serial relationships. Not to mention all of her Swifty fans who cried crocodile tears over the fact that they couldn't get tickets to one of her concerts. Boo. Hoo. Children are starving in Africa, and people are feeling abused because they can't go to a Taylor Swift concert? What kind of values are these? People are all about emulating celebrities so when a Swifty actually gets into a relationship or a marriage, they must ask themselves, when the simplest problem comes up, "what would Taylor do". Why probably just drop the guy like a hot potato and then write a song about it. This trivializes human relationships. Of course money is not an issue regardless of what happens. Celebrities have more of that commodity than they know what to do with. At least what to do with it constructively like the man who took his fortune, went to Africa and repopulated a game reserve from scratch thereby creating jobs in tourism for the local population. He spent $100 million of his own money, but singlehandedly brought hope and prosperity to a great many people.

Mozambique's Gorongosa National Park was the envy of Africa. Wildlife drew tourists from around the world. But, beginning in the 1960's, a man made catastrophe (war) slaughtered the animals until, it was said, there was nothing left but mosquitos and landmines.Then Greg Carr decided it was his life's work to restore Gorongosa National Park to greatness and restore the local population to some semblance of a decent life. He educated the children, imported all kinds of animals that had previously made a home there, and by the miracle of sexual reproduction, the various herds of predators and prey animals returned themselves to their former glory. At least there are some millionaires and billionaires who want to do good deeds with their money. Then there are the self indulgent celebrities and all their followers who could care less about anything other than their own petty and expensive needs and habits.

Off the Top of My Head

Another Day, Another Mass Shooting

by John Lawrence

And all because there are 2 Democratic Senators in Washington and all 50 Republicans who won't vote for comprehensive gun control legislation or voting rights or anything else on Joe Biden's agenda for that matter. Those 2 Democratic Senators, Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema, won't vote to suspend the filibuster even just on the single issue of gun control. Republicans had no problem suspending the filibuster so Trump could appoint 3 nominees to the Supreme Court which will probably overturn Roe v. Wade. So it's seemingly more important to get rid of a woman's right to choose than it is to get rid of assault rifles in the hands of every unbalanced male in the society. There have been numerous carve-outs of the filibuster to get important legislation passed. But I guess getting gun control legislation passed is just not as important as getting a certain President's nominees on the Supreme Court. In other words childrens' lives are not as important as politics.

So why did hundreds of law enforcement officers and elected officials descend on the school in Uvalde, Texas after the massacre had already taken place and the shooter was dead? It was over for Christ's sake; there was no need for yellow crime scene tape at that point. Why are they wasting their money performing an exhaustive examination of the crime scene? And it's a very lame statement when media spokespeople say, "They will try to figure out a motive." Who gives a fuck about the motive? How many motives have they never figured out so why do they keep talking about a motive. That guy will never come back on the air and say, "Remember that school shooting in Uvalde, Texas. Well they've finally figured out a motive and here it is ..." All the commentary in the aftermath is so lame. The only sane response is to hold elected officials' feet to the fire to get rid of assault rifles and other guns whose only purpose is to kill people.

Well, here is my prediction for the future: another mass shooting will occur within a couple of days. And then another and then another. And the American elected officials will do nothing about it. Hundreds of law enforcement people, FBI agents and media people will descend on the place after the fact. They were powerless to to do anything to prevent the mass shooting in the first place, but they will conduct an exhaustive examination of the crime scene. It's all entirely futile and insane. In fact American gun control is an oxymoronic exercise in futile insanity. The Second Amendment was never intended by the Founders to give unlimited rights to individual gun owners. When they talked about "a well regulated Militia" they were talking about the 18th century equivalent of the National Guard, which was more or less a voluntary organization sort of like a volunteer fire department. And yet people talk about the Second Amendment with reverence like it's a bulwark of freedom or something. It's not. It's the worst piece of shit ever perpetrated on any national society. No other nation has the equivalent of it. Most nations have sane gun control laws.

There have been more than one mass shootings per day in this Land of the Free in this year of our Lord 2022. And yet gun manufacturer's profits are more important than childrens' lives. Some 70% of Americans want gun control, but the American undemocracy is more concerned about filibuster rights and campaign donations than protecting childrens' lives. The way the Constitution has been interpreted in regards to the Second Amendment is sick. It's a manifestation of a sick society. For all intents and purposes, the Republican Senators' attitude is that murdered school children is the price we have to pay for honoring the Second Amendment.

Off the Top of My Head

According to Biden's BBB Plan, Buyers of Electric Vehicles Would Receive up to $12,500 in Tax Credits

by John Lawrence

So where is this incentive to buy electric vehicles now that gas (in CA) is about $6 a gallon? Now is the time when we need this subsidy, but, alas, the Democrats couldn't even stick together to pass this and other incentives and measures to get off fossil fuels. How about this as an incentive: preventing daily tornadoes in the heartland of the US? As extreme weather gets more extreme, Congress can't even pass programs to combat global warming and the consequent damage that's being done to people's lives and the economy in general. Not to mention the fact that major portions of the population will not be able to get property insurance which is happening right now and will only get worse. If you have a lot of brush around your house, you're an insurance liability. If you live in a flood plain, you're an insurance liability. We are told by people who know that we only have a few years to do something before we can expect catastrophic consequences from climate change and global warming. Yet we are taking our time getting off fossil fuels. There is even regret that we didn't go ahead with the Keystone pipeline.

The New York Times reported:

"In the coming decades, as global temperatures continue to rise, hundreds of millions of people could struggle against floods, deadly heat waves and water scarcity from severe drought, the report said. Mosquitoes carrying diseases like dengue and malaria will spread to new parts of the globe. Crop failures could become more widespread, putting families in places like Africa and Asia at far greater risk of hunger and malnutrition. People unable to adapt to the enormous environmental shifts will end up suffering unavoidable loss or fleeing their homes, creating dislocation on a global scale,[according to a recent UN report]."

We do know the things we need to be doing. It's just that we're not doing them or doing them at such a slow pace that we will still experience the worst effects of climate change. If you think the refugee problem is bad now, climate change will exacerbate and accelerate the refugee problem. People will be fleeing their homes and homelands when it becomes apparent that they can't make a living there. They will be coming to parts of the world where countries are wealthy enough to mitigate the worst effects of climate change. Basically, that means that people will flee poor countries and attempt at all costs to enter rich countries. That's why the US, as the richest country in the world, should be going full speed ahead to transition away from fossil fuels and into a new era that consists of renewable energy production and more environment friendly lifestyles. Instead, Americans are determined to lead lifestyles of maximum consumption right up to the hilt of their financial resources and beyond in a last gasp of over consumption.

Common Dreams reported:

In the wake of a United Nations report that activists said showed the "bleak and brutal truth" about the climate emergency, a leading economist on Friday highlighted a step that supporters argue could be incredibly effective at combating the global crisis: nationalizing the U.S. fossil fuel industry.

Writing for The American Prospect, Robert Pollin, an economics professor and co-director of the Political Economy Research Institute at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, noted the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and high gas prices exacerbated by Russia's war on Ukraine.

"If we are finally going to start taking the IPCC's findings seriously," Pollin wrote, "it follows that we must begin advancing far more aggressive climate stabilization solutions than anything that has been undertaken thus far, both within the U.S. and globally. Within the U.S., such measures should include at least putting on the table the idea of nationalizing the U.S. fossil fuel industry."

Asserting that "at least in the U.S., the private oil companies stand as the single greatest obstacle to successfully implementing" a viable climate stabilization program, Pollin made the case that fossil fuel giants should not make any more money from wrecking the planet, nationalization would not be an unprecedented move in the United States, and doing so could help build clean energy infrastructure at the pace that scientists warn is necessary.

The expert proposed starting with "the federal government purchasing controlling ownership of at least the three dominant U.S. oil and gas corporations: ExxonMobil, Chevron, and ConocoPhillips."

"They are far larger and more powerful than all the U.S. coal companies combined, as well as all of the smaller U.S. oil and gas companies," he wrote. "The cost to the government to purchase majority ownership of these three oil giants would be about $420 billion at current stock market prices."

So for roughly half of the defense budget, the US taxpayers could own the oil industry and phase it out at the speed required to save the planet from the worst effects of global warming. Instead we're treated to the Big Oil CEO's defiance that they are not price gouging because prices are set by the world market. Does anyone question why prices have to be set by the world market? No. Obviously, the world market exists to serve the interests of the oil producers, not oil consumers. Maybe the US should get off the world market because we produce enough oil to meet all current consumer demands. So why do we even need the world market? The world market exists to serve the interests of the OPEC nations who won't even open their spigots in a time of crisis, and it exists to serve the interests of the western Big Oil corporations like ExxonMobil, Chevron and Shell.

Americans would like to have one more blast of consumption rather than buckle down and do what's necessary to combat climate change, an effort that would be at least as great as the effort and sacrifice put forth to fight World War II. Billionaire's would rather blast off into space than use their money to fight climate change. Their lifestyles are major contributors to the emission of greenhouse gasses. They don't want to be told that they can't overconsume with numerous 27,000 square foot mansions and a fleet of luxury cars. That's the American Dream, or is it. It's soon going to turn into the American Nightmare but probably not for them. They have the resources to escape the worst effects of global warming. Instead the nightmare will be mostly visited on the least among us as well as randomly due to tornadoes, floods and fires.

Off the Top of My Head

Almost as Many Have Died During the Covid Pandemic as in All American Wars

by John Lawrence

Maybe we should have invested more in public health than we have in the military. Compared to the trillions spent on the military, only a pittance has been spent on public health, let alone on promoting peace in the world. 1.1 million have died in all American wars since the founding of the republic. About 927,000 and counting have died from the current pandemic even though a revolutionary mRNA vaccine is available. 675,000 died during the Spanish flu pandemic of 1918 sans vaccine. So many more people have died from pandemics in the US than have been killed in wars. Yet war and the preparations for war are pursued relentlessly while efforts for peace languish. This is not only dumb; it's sick. It goes to show that homo sapiens is one of the stupidest and least empathetic species that has ever evolved. Nero fiddled while Rome burned, but the human race is right on course fiddling while the earth burns due to climate change. We will continue to fiddle and equivocate playing one upsmanship with each other as the earth deteriorates into an uninhabitable planet. No wonder the billionaires are making plans to get off.

Of course the power structure doesn't really care what happens on planet earth after they die. They will miss by virtue of their own natural deaths the worst of it. They will have lived the American Dream while bequeathing to their grandchildren the American Nightmare. As we continue to pour billions of tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, we are more concerned about the economy that we are about human survival and what sacrifices that will mean. In November, researchers at the Global Carbon Project estimated that global carbon-dioxide emissions from energy and industry rose 4.9 percent in 2021, after a 5.4 percent decline in 2020. China, India and the European Union all had major increases, suggesting that any climate effect from the pandemic was fleeting. So not even a worldwide pandemic can significantly alter the relentless pursuit of economic growth which produces mega tons of carbon dioxide. Residents of planet earth refuse to change their lifestyles and their aspirations for what they conceive to be a "better life."

In the US consumerism is force fed through advertising just like in France ducks are forced fed to produce foie gras. Facebook makes billions of dollars not selling a product but selling advertising. Amazon at least provides products and the service of delivering those products. The advertising industry is the equivalent of the forced feeding of ducks only the ducks are American consumers who would rather not change their lifestyles of accumulation even if it means that their grandchildren will die a miserable death on a burned out planet. Meanwhile, nations exacerbate tensions among each other and foment wars, the preparations for which cost trillions of dollars which, therefore, are not spent on climate mitigation.

Lifestyles not only of the rich but of the middle class would have to change if the earth is to survive climate change. The production of steel and concrete by current methods produce tons of carbon dioxide. The generation of electricity by coal and gas produces tons of carbon dioxide. Agriculture, mainly cow farts, produces tons of methane. As the earth warms sea levels rise, the Arctic thaws and even more methane is released. It's so anthropogenic! We would be better off going back to the horse and buggy days. The American fetish for progress has produced an ecological disaster. The American lifestyle is an environmental disaster. Meanwhile, the power structure in the US and elsewhere seems bound and determined to accelerate the process of environmental destruction while extreme weather events are passed off as "seen nothing like it but vowing to rebuild." That's the American can-do spirit!

Off the Top of My Head

That's Not Who We Are

by John Lawrence

Obama declared: "That's not who we are" when opining about the more hateful aspects of American society. But the reality is that's who we veritably is, at least some of us Americans. It's impossible to generalize about the American character. We are not a monolithic society. Take Charlottesville for instance. Latter day confederates and ku klux klaners. That's not who we are? That's who some of us are. That's the problem. There is no common set of values. Trump said there were good people on both sides. What is the definition of a "good person"? Is it one who fights to maintain his own way of life or is it one who tries to reach accommodation with others and understand their point of view. For America as a nation in general, it is more the former than the latter. Historically at least since WW II, the US has always taken the path of using force and power to maintain its standing in the world and to maintain its right to exploit the resources of weaker nations while ignoring the welfare of their people. The US has supported right wing, authoritarian dictatorships in South America and elsewhere so that the "supply chain" of natural resources could be extracted and shipped back to the homeland while keeping the cheap native labor cheap. There was no effort to improve the lifestyles of the natives. Those locals who sought to do so were overthrown and right wing dictatorships were installed in Chile, Nicaragua, Argentina, Iran and many other countries too numerous to mention. For many years it was all about the oil. Now we realize that that oil transformed into greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere is what's killing us.

When Gorbachev sought detente and the elimination of nuclear weapons in the world, Reagan hung on to his Star Wars fantasy. Neoconservatives in the Reagan administration considered Gorbachev's stated desire to bring peace to the world a sign of weakness to be exploited rather than a signal that a new era of peace could be at hand. This neoconservative foreign policy has been the policy of US Presidents both Democrat and Republican. Jimmy Carter had his Zbigniew Brzezhinski. Nixon had his Henry Kissenger. Reagan and the Bushes had a whole host of neocons fashioning their foreign policy. Reagan himself had no idea about what to do other than that he was against communism. Oliver Stone and Peter Kuznick wrote in "The Untold History of the United States":

"But what is Reagan's real legacy? One of the most poorly informed and least engaged chief executives in U.S. history, he empowered a right wing resurgence of hard-line anti-communists who militarized U.S. foreign policy and rekindled the Cold War. He paid lip service to democracy while arming and supporting repressive dictators. He turned local and regional conflicts in the Middle East and Latin America into Cold War battlegrounds, unleashing a reig of terror to suppres popular movements. He spent enormous sums on the military while cutting social programs for the poor. He sharply reduced taxes on the wealthy, tripling the national debt and transforming the U.S. from the world's leading creditor in 1981 into its biggest debtor by 1985. In October 1987, he oversaw the worst stock market collapse since the Great Depression. He let the chance to rid to rid the world of offensive nuclear weapons [proposed by Gorbachev] slip through his fingers because he wouldn't let go of a childish fantasy [Star Wars]. And as for his much-vaunted role in ending the Cold War, as we shall see, the lion's share of credit goes instead to his Soviet counterpart,. Mikhail Gorbachev."

Is it any wonder then, that a chauvinistic and self-serving foreign policy has been internalized by so many "patriots" like the ones who attacked Capitol police on January 6, 2021? They just want what we already have: access to the natural resources of the world for Americans at the expense of indigenous peoples, the continuation of a way of life that favors the fortunes of white, European immigrants at the expense of African American forced immigrants, Latin American immigrants as well as Native Americans. When Obama says over and over, "That's not who we are," it's wishful, thinking because that's exactly who many of us are.

Off the Top of My Head

Don't Be Fooled: The Chinese Communist Party Has Taken Capitalism to a Whole New Level

by John Lawrence

In 2021, Forbes listed Beijing with the most billionaires at 100 people, followed by New York City with 99 billionaires, and Hong Kong in third place with 80 billionaires. Does this sound like communism? But it is not traditional capitalism either. China has eliminated poverty among its 1.5 billion people while traditionally capitalist countries like the US tolerate large rates of poverty and homelessness. In the US in 2020, there were 37.2 million people in poverty, approximately 3.3 million more than in 2019. There were also 580 million people homeless living on the streets in unsanitary conditions. This is the price we've been taught that Americans have to pay in order for us to live in a free capitalist country. So what is the difference between the US version of capitalism and the Chinese version? It is basically that the Chinese central government directs the tools of capitalism while in the US there is little or no government direction. Whatever any individual can devise as a way to make money is acceptable. In China the government directs capitalist entrepreneurialism and energy. So Chinese society is much more unified; American society is much more diverse.

Stability and cohesiveness is very important to the Chinese government and Chinese society in general. That's why dissidents are cracked down upon. Their attitude is why risk the great progress Chinese society has made and is making in order that a few people can speak freely and perhaps create a dissident movement which could bring it all down around their ears. Hence the crackdown in Hong Long. Hence the crackdown on the Uighurs. Xi fears that what happened to the Soviet Union could happen to China. It could fall apart. The US tolerates unlimited amounts of free speech with the result that the US is a very unstable society as witnessed by the January 6 insurrection. The US came very close to a ooup d'etat and an overthrow of the elected government. The US definition of freedom is leading to a society which maximizes freedom at the expense of stability and cohesiveness while the Chinese limit freedom in the interests of stability and cohesiveness. Which model is better? The world is watching.

Perhaps there is a middle ground between Chinese authoritarianism and US anarchy. Is this the social welfare democracies of Scandinavia? Perhaps. While the US has divided itself into 2 tribes at total odds with each other, China has become not only very prosperous but they are all, for the most part, on the same page. They are unified while the US is divided. Perhaps China has overdone the limitation of individual freedom, but most Chinese would probably trade off some loss of freedom for the huge increase in prosperity that the average Chinese is experiencing. Would Americans trade off some loss of freedom in order to get out of the malaise they are experiencing? Even though there are more rich Chinese than rich Americans at least in terms of the relative numbers of billionaires, there are no poor Chinese while the economic divide in the US grows bigger with every passing day.

The question Americans have to ask themselves is is a society teetering on the brink of collapse worth the American definition of freedom or could perhaps a slightly less free society, say one with a corresponding ethic of social responsibility, lead to a better society in terms of a better and more humane quality of life for the greatest number of citizens? Has America taken the concept of individual freedom too far at the expense of social cohesiveness?

Off the Top of My Head

The Dumbing Down of the American Electorate

by John Lawrence

It seems that about half the American people want rational, competent government which advances the interests of the American people and plays a constructive role on the world stage. The other half wants a government based on their pet peeves. They are amenable to being swayed by conspiracy theories and misinformation. The former are mainly Democrats; the latter, Republicans. This is nowhere better exemplified than the 2016 election in which competence and experience in the form of Hillary Clinton was defeated by resentment and lies in the form of Donald Trump. In contrast to China which promotes the best and brightest to high positions in its government, the US form of democracy allows for politicians to appeal to the lowest common denominator which has no knowledge or information about anything beyond the worship of symbols like the American flag. This is clear from the visuals of the January 6 insurrection in which the American flag was displayed ad infinitum as if that is what made these people true patriots who could demand that their hero, Donald Trump, should be President in defiance of every provision of American constitutional democracy.

Republican politicians pander to this group of no nothings and stoke resentment against intelligence and rationality which they define as elitism. Joe Six Pack is easily swayed to vote for someone like himself, a high school graduate who flunked civics class if he was even required to take a civics class. American history was taught from the point of view of white Europeans with hardly a mention of the lands stolen from Native Americans nor the travails of African American slaves who provided the labor to build most of the country and make white southern plantation owners rich. The diaspora of southern Confederate attitudes to much of the rest of the country other than the coasts has provided the grist for Republican politicians to convince this diaspora to vote against their own economic interests and to fully indulge their anger and resentment against those they call elitists who have much more knowledge, education and intelligence while at the same time really smart lawyers and operatives work to advance the interests of the very rich unbeknownst to the Joe Six Packs who voted for them.

When half the country votes based on conspiracy theories which the Republican party amplifies, what is the solution? More education for one thing. The January 6 insurrectionists sent to jail for their crimes need to be reeducated. They should be required to take a course on contemporary issues of American society and also a course on World Problems. Many Americans are so insular that they never even stop to consider what's going on in the rest of the world. It's not enough to start educating children; many adults need to be reeducated. If this smacks of what the Chinese are doing to the Uighurs, it bears the similarity in the sense that many American adults do need to be reeducated, and their sentences should require it because many of them have been miseducated in southern schools which elevate states' rights to a primary position in American democracy. Problems of American Democracy, a course my father taught at Highland Park High School, should be required from kindergarten through college. The American people need to become more sophisticated as citizens if democracy is to have a future. Otherwise, Republican politicians will continue to pander to the least common denominator stoking their resentments while stealing their futures unbeknownst to them. Competence, intelligence and good hearts will continue to be defeated. Republican politicians' skill set consists of getting their followers to vote against their own interests while pandering to their resentments. Democratic politicians, for the most part, actually want to help the American people and not just the ultra rich.

When one country promotes smart people to high positions in government, and another country is prone to electing people based on lies and conspiracy theories, which country do you think will prevail on the world stage? One party in this country is acting intelligently trying to advance the interests of the average American while the other party does everything in its power to stands in its way while basing its appeal on misinformation, lies and conspiracy theories. How did democracy ever descend to this level?

Off the Top of My Head

The Shortcomings of Democracy

by John Lawrence

What other countries are concerned about is the specter of Trump coming back in 2024 and reversing everything Biden will have accomplished specially with regard to climate change. An American government no matter how well intentioned and competent cannot maintain itself in power for a long time. It can be replaced by a malevolent and incompetent one in relatively short order. It almost makes you look on other forms of government with envy. Angela Merkel was in power in Germany for 16 years. She was a steady hand on the tiller. Trump tried to rip the tiller out of the ship and he may come back to try and do it again. It's not only China which has long term stability, but China has been pretty consistent in delivering for the Chinese people over a fairly long term. Their government is stable no matter what else you want to say about it. They also promote the best and the brightest to high positions in the government. Trump put in place agency heads that were dedicated to destroying the agencies they were in charge of and many were incompetent political cronies to boot.

Coherence, cohesion - these are values that do not apply to the American people. The American people are freedom fanatics, freedomaholics. In most other advanced societies the value of freedom is balanced by the value of social responsibility. When freedom is way out of proportion with other values, you have a society that can come apart at the seams which is what is happening to American society. The American system engenders a two party system by its very nature, and almost inevitably it develops into two parties which are diametrically opposed to each other. A parliamentary system of government gives rise to  many parties, and that is less likely to devolve into a major societal divisions.

The other thing that contributes to the divisiveness of American society is the American predilection for guns. The supposed right of every American to own and use a gun creates a situation where angry people with a penchant for freedom are more likely to use their gun if they don't get their own way. If they sense that some people are on the other side of a divided society, they feel justified and entitled to use their guns to demand that society conform to their values much in the some way that a divided society resorted eventually to a civil war in America's past. Right now militias and paramilitary units roam the streets similar to the situation in Germany that predated World War II. If a society can't control or prohibit the private accumulation of guns, if it even encourages it, nothing good can come from this situation. All the preliminary conditions are in play for eventual uprisings which, if organized and controlled from above, can have disastrous consequences for civil society.

Off the Top of My Head

Social Responsibility Was Not Written into the Constitution

by John Lawrence

The French demanded Liberte, Egalite, Fraternite in their revolutionary Constitution. Fraternite, social responsibility, was left out of the American Constitution. So now there are people who feel no social responsibility to get a vaccination so that they won't spread COVID to others, let alone protect themselves. A pandemic requires social cohesion, something that is unheard of in American society. Americans are extremely selfish and self-centered, something encouraged and exemplified by Republican Presidents like Donald Trump, Ronald Reagan and George W Bush and also by Ayn Rand and her advocates like Republican leader Paul Ryan and Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan. Greenspan, who served 4 terms as Federal Reserve Chairman, was a devoted Ayn Rand fan. He even took a six foot high floral arrangement shaped as a dollar sign to her funeral.  Rand’s conception was to create an individualist morality. Rand took traditional Christian morality, which said it was good to act in the interest of others—not in your own selfish interest—and she flipped that. She said selfishness is a virtue, and the goal of life is to grow and develop as an individual, and that a moral social system supports the rights of the individual above all. One of her books was called "The Virtue of Selfishness."

Service to our fellow man has been redefined in military terms. You serve American society by joining the military and killing other people who are not Americans. There is no conception of serving American society by joining the Peace Corps or AmeriCorps or doing anything that helps the weakest and most vulnerable among us let alone to plant trees or do anything to forestall climate change and benefit the environment. This culture of militarism, as the only way to exhibit patriotism, is what led to the January 6th insurrection. Militarism promotes the waving of flags and jingoism of "we're number one." Not only is there no conception of service to our fellow Americans, there is no conception of service to our fellow man. There is only pride in domination over those who are not American and people who are suspect of being weak or not American like Barack Obama, for instance. Dominance and selfishness are considered to be paramount virtues. Ask Donald Trump. Being number 2 or 3 or whatever is seen as being weak. Being a loser is weakness personified.

Long before Ayn Rand developed her ideas, Friedrich Nietsche set out more or less the same philosophy. His was about "the emergence of the superman." Nietzsche’s idea of the superman and its religious implications, was an attack upon and a rejection of Christian religion. His attack on religious moral ideals, using the concept of the superman, sought to strip humanity/man of his religious nature. Nietzsche’s superman represents the highest principle of the development of humanity and the affirmation of man’s full potentialities. He posits the superman as a critique on Christian religion and the crisis of modernity. This is because, according to him, the Christian morality stifles the development, freedom and creativity of humanity/man, as well as making him dependent on faith. Consequently, he advocates for the total rejection and abolition of the Christian moral ideals in order to make way for the freedom of humanity/man and consequently the emergence of super-humanity. Both Hitler and Donald Trump (an Ayn Rand superfan) represented the superman that both Nietsche and Ayn Rand argued was the highest form of humanity. The January 6 insurrection illustrated how far some will go to place their superman in power. The antivaxxers represent how far some will go to maintain that they have no responsibility to their fellow man, only to themselves.

 

Off the Top of My Head

Replace Halloween With a Day Honoring Mother Earth and Its People

by John Lawrence

Americans will spend $10 billion on Halloween this year, a day dedicated to goblins and ghouls. There is enough scariness in the world. What the world needs is not a day dedicated to rotting children's teeth, but a day dedicated to preserving the environment so that they have a stable and hospitable planet to live on. Instead of "trick or treat" how about a day of "how can I serve my neighbor?".No other country celebrates Halloween and makes such a big deal and spending spree out of it. In Latin American countries they celebrate Día de Los Muertos, the Day of the Dead honoring their ancestors. This is totally different from American Halloween which celebrates nothing except the selfish acquisition of candy. American Halloween has no socially redeeming value whatsoever.

What are we teaching children by celebrating Halloween? That American life is all about the acquisition of stuff - in this case candy. And if we don't get what we want we will do harm to others. Instead of a trick why not teach children to do a favor for others. Let's eliminate tricks from Halloween. It's teaching children that it's OK to do harm to others if they don't get what they want. Enormous sums of money are spent on Halloween which could be spent for more constructive purposes like providing funds to help the growing number of refugees around the world including the refugees internal to our own country which the homeless surely are.

Greta Thunberg shines a spotlight on global warming every Friday with her school strike for climate. School Strike for Climate (Swedish: Skolstrejk för klimatet), also known variously as Fridays for Future (FFF), Youth for Climate, Climate Strike or Youth Strike for Climate, is an international movement of school students who skip Friday classes to participate in demonstrations to demand action from political leaders to take action to prevent climate change and for the fossil fuel industry to transition to renewable energy. Let's make Halloween a day for honoring future generations and Mother Earth. We could also make Halloween a school strike for peace because peace is necessary if the world is to cooperate in meeting the challenge of global warming.

The celebration of Halloween sends all the wrong signals to children. Instead of public service, it sends the message of selfish acquisitiveness. Instead of concern for others it sends the message that, if they don't get what they want, they will do you a disservice. Halloween has no redeeming value. It is just a spendfest on candy and costumes which money could be better spent on more worthwhile goods and services for themselves and others. Instead of candy, children should be taught about nutritional literacy and the value of eating healthy foods. But instead children are carefully taught to disregard any concern for others and even the dangers of self indulgence for themselves. Many eat candy until they get sick. Sugar has no redeeming nutritional value, and Halloween has no redeeming social value whether it be honoring our ancestors as the Mexicans do or honoring a planet suitable for habitation by our children and their children. The world is scary enough with the pandemic and climate change. Instead of honoring scariness, let's celebrate the redemption of the planet and the health of the global population.

Off the Top of My Head

Biden's Goal of 50% Electric Vehicles by 2030 in Peril Because of American's Freedom of Choice

by John Lawrence

Fast forward to 2029 and we find ourselves in the situation that many Americans are insisting on purchasing gas fueled vehicles because of their freedom of choice. Even though the government has subsidized electric vehicles to the tune of $10,000 per vehicle, and electric vehicles outperform gas powered ones in every category, even though electric vehicles have more bells and whistles than the same identical gas powered one, Americans are insisting that their freedom of choice is more important than helping President Biden reach his goal of 50% electric vehicles on the road by 2030. Wolf Blitzer's son, Chip Blitzer  interviewed Joe Blow of Shrevesport, Louisiana. Blitzer: "Why do you want to purchase a gas powered vehicle when the electric one is cheaper and a better performer?" Blow: "My Daddy drove a Ford F-150 with an internal combustion engine which was the pride of America as did his Daddy before him. The internal combustion engine is what built this country. It's how we won every war we ever fought in. My Daddy was a roustabout in the oil fields and my family has a long history of fossil fuel products. You won't ever catch me in an electric vehicle as long as I have my freedom of choice."

President Biden is considering mandates to get gas powered cars and trucks off the road, but some southern Governors are balking at that. Governor P.T. Abernathy of Texas said this: "The Federal government is overstepping its bounds when it comes to telling us here in the south what kind of vehicles we can drive. I've always preferred a gas powered vehicle myself, and, as long as I'm Governor, I will let our citizens decide for themselves what kind of vehicle they want to drive. It's unAmerican to dictate to American citizens that they have to drive an electric vehicle. We also won't be following Federal government incentives to get people to move out of flood plains." Back in Shrevesport Mr. Blow had this to say. "I ain't moving out of my house even though it is in a flood plain. My Grandpappy built this house. We Blows have lived here for generations, and no Federal government is going to order me to move out of my house." It is notable that 2 years ago, FEMA gave Blow $350 K to rebuild his house after Hurricane Upsilon totally destroyed it. Yet Blow said at the time: "I've never seen anything like it before in my life, but I will rebuild. I'm not going anywhere. This is America."

We note that in blue states people are 90% compliant with Biden's goal. They are buying electric vehicles at a fast rate taking advantage of the generous government incentives in doing so. Red state Governors on the other hand are imploring their residents to support the oil and gas industry by buying gas powered vehicles making it less likely that Biden will reach his goal of 50% electric vehicles on the road by 2030. Despite the cleaner air that has come with more electric vehicles on the road not to mention helping in the effort to forestall and mitigate global warming, many in southern states primarily are insisting on their right to choose as Americans citizens. Ex-President Donald Trump said at a CPAC convention: "Global warming is a hoax. We have so many wonderful oil and gas resources in this country that we'll never have to import another barrel of oil. Yet these socialists like Biden want to cripple that industry destroying the livelihoods of red blooded Americans to feed their families." As a result of American hesitancy to go ahead and buy electric vehicles, Biden will probably not be able to reach his goal. One guy from Alabama said: "Have these electric vehicles even been FHA fully approved. I heard that they were just provisionally approved. When there is full FHA approval, then I might consider buying one. In the meantime I'll just stick with my F-150 with the American internal combustion engine, the engine that made America great. Don't tell anyone, but I take off that godforsaken catalytic converter every time I buy a new pickup. Internal combustion rules, baby! Let 'er rip!"

Off the Top of My Head

People Will Not Even Get a Vaccination to Fight the Pandemic. Would They Put Up With Rationing to Fight Climate Change?

by John Lawrence

In World War II, Americans sacrificed for the common good. Today some will not even get a free vaccination for the common good. On August 28, 1941, President Roosevelt’s Executive Order 8875 created the Office of Price Administration (OPA). The OPA’s main responsibility was to place a ceiling on prices of most goods, and to limit consumption by rationing. The OPA rationed automobiles, tires, gasoline, fuel oil, coal, firewood, nylon, silk, and shoes. Americans used their ration cards and stamps to take their meager share of household staples including meat, dairy, coffee, dried fruits, jams, jellies, lard, shortening, and oils. Resources were devoted to the war effort and not to Americans' consumption. Today we live in a consumer society. Would Americans resist if they lost their freedom to consume? That's what freedom means to most Americans. What if those resources were needed in the fight against climate change?

Would Americans put up with a shift from a consumer society to an all hands on deck building infrastructure to mitigate climate change society? Advertising budgets would dry up because the purpose of advertising is to get you to buy more stuff. What if your consumption was limited to essentials as it was during WW II? Freedom in America is the freedom to consume whatever you have the money to buy. What if you couldn't do that any more? What if the purveyors of nonessential products didn't have the freedom to sell you stuff that you really don't need in order to devote resources both human and material to Biden's building back better agenda? Is it some people's right to consume while other people are wiped out due to extreme weather events like fires and flooding? Should the rich be restricted from spending their money on luxury items like private jets and yachts? Should they be taxed heavily to provide the financial resources for mitigation and adaptation to global warming? Would billionaires have to give up their rocket ships? Do thy even care about the world that our children and grandchildren will inherit?

So if people are protesting that getting a free vaccination is against their concept of what being a free American is, how much more are they going to complain if they had to go without some consumer activity that they have become accustomed to? They are just not the type to roll up their sleeves and pitch in to do their part to mitigate or adapt to global warming. Just as the dying unvaccinated finally wish that they had heeded the warnings and got vaccinated, as long as some extreme weather event hasn't destroyed their home or impacted them in any way, they will continue to stick their heads in the sand and deny that global warming really exists. For them it will just be another government conspiracy theory while they will find charlatans in social media who will reassure them that global warming is still a hoax.

Off the Top of My Head

The Dumbing Down of America Due to Social Media

by John Lawrence

Freedom of speech has led to every nutcase expressing their opinion on social media. Some of them are even "influencers" regardless of their expertise. Conspiracy theories and unfounded advice preponderates and proliferates. Anti-vaxxers and anti-maskers get more "hits" than do recognized experts. Instead of reading respected newspapers like the New York Times or getting their news from reliable TV resources, people's eyes and minds are glued to alternative media. Since everyone's opinion is equal to every other person's opinion, it's no wonder that the bonafide experts aren't listened to. They are not as entertaining as the charlatans, and the charlatans are getting more hits on social media. I doubt whether many of the experts like Dr. Fauci are getting as many hits on social media as some of the snake oil salesmen.

There is only so much time in a day, and many peoples' time is taken up with social media rather than getting their news from reliable sources. Since they have "freedom," they are free to think whatever they want about any subject. Anyone's opinion, supposedly, is as valid as anyone else's opinion. That's why the COVID pandemic has not been gotten under control. The anti-vaxxers have as much control over public opinion as the vaxxers, thanks to social media. It's as if, when taking a test in school, there are no correct answers. One answer is as valid as some other answer. No reputable professor would tolerate such a state of affairs, but political leaders tolerate it because of freedom of speech. But one person's speech is not as valid as another's. The opinion of a recognized medical expert should have more weight than the opinion of Joe Blow.

Social media needs to be reined in, but government has a phobia about censorship. They do not want to be involved with it in any way, shape or form so they tolerate the fact that uniformed "influencers" have as much sway as recognized experts. The result is that the pandemic continues apace. The virus is winning. Social media is winning in attracting more of people's attention than reliable news sources. This phenomenon is all about attracting peoples' attention because that is profitable. Since the reliable news sources have to be concerned as well about supporting themselves with advertising, they have to try and make their reporting more palatable to the dumbed down populace. They can't convey too much information because it will turn off people who just want their news taken with a spoonful of sugar. They don't want to have to think too hard. The algorithms that social media implements insure that dumbed down infotainment will get more "hits" than will valid information.

Off the Top of My Head

Whoever Thought It Would Be This Difficult to End a War? A Good Reason Not to Start One.

by John Lawrence

Not Like the old days when you had a ceasefire, signed a peace treaty and everyone went home respectfully. George W Bush started two wars, the first of which - the Iraq war - was based on the lie that Saddam Hussein was developing weapons of mass destruction which he wasn't, and that he had something to do with 9/11 which he didn't. The second war in Afghanistan had some dubious plausibility that Osama bin Laden was stationed there. The fact of the matter is that you didn't need a land invasion of a country to get Bin Laden which Obama amply proved by sending in special ops forces to get him. Now we are faced with the messy and sticky problem of extracting ourselves from Afghanistan. Once done, Biden will be remembered for having the guts to actually do it. The messiness will be forgotten except for right wing pundits who will attempt to keep it alive.

Another question: why are approximately 20 high schools students from El Cajon, CA, where I happen to live, allowed to travel to a war zone to visit relatives? Aside from that the major question is can the Taliban really govern Afghanistan? Oh what tangled webs we weave! Afghanistan has been sucking at the American teat for 20 years. Now that we're soon to be gone, where will the money come from, the money that has kept the country running for 20 years? Or will Afghanistan become another basket case like so many Third World countries? Will China and Russia step in to throw them a lifeline? The Taliban are finally wising up that all the talent has been leaving the country on American evacuation flights. It seems like a large percentage of the Afghan population has been helping the Americans so we feel a moral obligation to get them out. But do the Taliban really want to kill them or do they just want their services as doctors, professors and other professionals? Do they really want to roll the clock back 500 years or are they smarter than that?

Meanwhile, the US just wants to get back to normal: overconsumption. We want a large share of the world's resources so we can overconsume and continue to pour carbon dioxide and methane into the atmosphere. The largest percentage of greenhouse gasses already in the atmosphere was put there by Americans. We just want to get back to normal and continue doing so. Just think of the consequences if we didn't continue to overconsume: our GDP would decline. Less consumption equals lower GDP. It's as simple as that. To reorient our society so that we underconsumed so that the rest of the world had enough food to eat and a roof over their heads is something that we as Americans have been programmed not even to consider in going about our daily lives. Our freedom, primarily, is the freedom to consume. That is about 50% of our population, those invested in the stock market and enjoying generational transfers of real estate assets, has the freedom to consume while about 50%, those doing the menial but necessary jobs are living paycheck to paycheck. Even college graduates, single mothers primarily, are still sleeping on their parents' couches because you can't make it on one salary in today's America particularly if you still have a lot of student loan debt to pay off.

Trump's base are those who not only say to hell with considering the planet as a whole or those in other countries, they say to hell with other Americans who disagree with their right not to get vaccinated and who might die from their very germs. How selfish can members of the human race be? What is civic duty if not pulling together and doing what's necessary to defeat our arch enemy: COVID? Especially when vaccinations are free. They'll even pay you to get one. Now we've reached the pass where you have to pay Americans to fight. Actually, we reached it years ago when they ended the draft.

Off the Top of My Head

Carlos Santana: "We Need to Update Bible and Constitution"

by John Lawrence

After the "I Love New York" Homecoming concert was canceled Saturday on account of rain in the middle of Barry Manilow's set, Anderson Cooper interviewed Carlos Santana on CNN. Of Santana's remarkable remarks, among which were "I don't believe in time or space", Santana expressed his opinion that the Bible and the Constitution need to be updated. How refreshing! So many have thought that both were set in stone sort of like the 10 Commandments were actually set in stone. So how would Santana change them? There wasn't enough time in the interview to go into that. The amazing thing was that these opinions were even expressed on cable TV at all. At the concert, Bruce Springsteen, one of the headliners, didn't even get a chance to perform. Mother Nature had the last word as if to say, "You all are acting as if the pandemic is over. It's not" Mother F-ing Nature had the last word. And what about climate change? Millions of dollars must have been spent on this concert with a state of the art audio visual system and a whole bunch of very expensive performers. I don't know if the concert goers got refunds after lightning strikes were observed in the area and the concert was canceled.

We're back up to 1000 deaths a day due to COVID. Having a major concert as if things were back to normal was probably a bad idea in the first place. But when the concert was being planned, it looked like the pandemic was over. It's just that COVID had a different idea and came surging back. Now fully vaccinated people are beginning to die due to the fact that they have been hanging around unvaccinated people, many of them, like those in nursing homes, without a choice in the matter. The fact is that vaccinated people can still get COVID. This hasn't been made clear by the authorities because they seemingly want you to believe that once you're vaccinated, you're safe. You're not. Put you in a room with 10 people with COVID, and you're going to get COVID. Will you probably get a milder case? Yes, but some will still die. I for one don't want to be a statistic: one of the fully vaccinated that dies with COVID, so I will avoid indoor spaces like the plague until 100% of the people are vaccinated. The pandemic is not going to be over any time soon.

Even though the pandemic is basically under control in China, they still have flare ups from time to time mainly due to people coming in from outside and despite the fact that the borders are closed. Americans are acting like the pandemic is over with only about 50% vaccinated. It's fool's gold. COVID is surging whether or not Americans are tired of it and over it in their minds. COVID isn't over them yet. The only probable thing at this time is that a lot of anti-Vaxxers will get COVID. Even Trump is afraid that many of his supporters will be checking out and is telling them to get vaccinated. The crowd booed him. That's so many fewer red state voters if they die. The south is a huge disaster aided and abetted by governors like DeSantis who mandates people not to wear masks! People advocating for increased sickness to augment their political careers are just sick themselves. American rationality is under threat, and they wonder why China is pulling ahead.

Off the Top of My Head

Just When We Thought the War Was Won, the Enemy Surprised Us With a Blitzkrieg

by John Lawrence

Reminiscent of the blitzkrieg in the Second World War when Germany overwhelmed France in just a few days, Americans had been led to believe that the war with COVID was winding down. Just then COVID mutated and launched a surprise attack. Americans were taken by surprise. Like Yogi Berra said, "It ain't over till it's over." So now we have to pivot and take on the enemy again just as we were starting to relax and go back to our privileged lifestyles. The problem has been exacerbated by so many Americans not doing their patriotic duty and getting vaccinated. It's a sad commentary on American culture when President Biden has to offer the unvaccinated $100 to get vaccinated. It's not just about your freedom, it's about saving the nation from an unmitigated disaster.

The Delta variant is a game changer and not in a good direction. Americans who haven't gotten vaccinated have been far too casual about it. And uninformed and downright stupid. In a war some people are going to be sacrificed for the greater good of winning the war. When the General sends people into battle he knows that some of his troops are going to be killed. The Civil War was a war of attrition. The North won because they could afford to sacrifice so many more of their troops than the South could. By contrast the war against COVID doesn't require much if anything in terms of sacrifice. Getting vaccinated doesn't mean that you're taking a chance of being killed or harmed by the vaccine. It means that you are increasing your chances of staying alive. Sure some people will die despite the fact of being fully vaccinated, but the vast majority of vaccinated people will live while the vast majority of unvaccinated people will die. It's as simple as that.

The Delta variant is the virus equivalent of a blitzkrieg. It's military potential is far mightier than the US defenses which rely on convincing people rather than mandating people to get vaccinated.  It's like a war in which people are free to decide whether or not they want to join the battle. Some are saying, "I don't give a fuck whether I die or I infect those around me and they die. My freedom of choice is more important. Isn't that my right according to the Constitution?" With this attitude Germany would have won the Second World War. Oh I have to wear a mask. Boo Hoo! What babies! What selfish A holes. No wonder so many of them are following the former A hole in Chief who only thought of his own selfish interests. They are a perfect reflection of his values.

Even the best guidance from the doctors and scientists was too rosy glowed compared to the situation on the ground. They never emphasized the fact that, even if you are fully vaccinated, you can still get infected with the virus. They told us that, if you were fully vaccinated, you could go anywhere, do anything unmasked and unsocially distanced and never have to worry about getting COVID, This was too pollyannish. Yes, chances are you won't die fom COVID, but it was never emphasized enough that the vaccines were 90% effective - not 100%. That means that 10% of the fully vaccinated could still get COVID and potentially even die. Now with the Delta variant being COVID on steroids, even though statistically you are much better off, it's still a statistical possibility you could die, and the best way to prevent yourself from being a statistic is to stay away from large gatherings of people especially when some of them might not be vaccinated.

We know children can get the virus. Those summer camps where a lot of them got it are a case in point. So now we are sending them back to school unvaccinated which is a disaster in the making. Why are we doing this? Because we had planned to do it thinking the pandemic would be over by the time children went back to school? Well now the situation has changed. We can't pivot because we had promised that children would be back in school sans masks? This is ridiculous. Sure vaccinations are super important, but children under 12 cannot be vaccinated due to the fact that the authorities haven't cleared them for vaccinations. So now, since they were promised it, we have to go ahead and send the largest unvaccinated group into a situation where they are most likely to get infected? Does this make any sense at all? Even if the adult population were 100% vaccinated, the children would still be at risk. Ironically, we have the capability of remotely educating them at home. Parents can even home school them. But the American people are being told that their children should go back to school masked or unmasked. They still insist on children going back into the classroom. The Delta variant is watching and waiting. And then comes the blitzkrieg.

Off the Top of My Head

Should We Hold Them Down Kicking and Screaming While We Jab Their Arms?

by John Lawrence

Oh, I forgot. We're not an autocracy. We are free to infect others, free to not get vaccinated, free to die and cause others to die. That's what makes us so great. We're not like one of these autocratic countries where they can mandate that everyone get vaccinated ... or else. Freedom has reached its rational limit and become toxic. We are also free to shoot people. We are not an autocratic country where they can mandate that with a few exceptions no one can own a gun. So we are free to kill each other, commit mass murder, assemble an arsenal in our parents' basement or read up on the internet about how to build a ghost gun or a bomb. Then Joe Biden wonders why autocrats laugh at the US' version of democracy. It's not about democracy, Joe. It's about too much freedom. We have created a nation of spoiled brats. America has forgotten the concept of community responsibility. Other democracies limit freedom, limit guns and limit the freedom to infect other. We have also let the virus be free to mutate to more virulent strains which might escape the vaccines that we have painstakingly developed.

There was just too much hoopla around having everyone mask free by July 4. Even Joe Biden was promoting that. Oh we'll all be free to hug Grandma and Grandpa, but wait a minute. No sooner had we hugged Grandma and Grandpa than we did a switchroonie and woke up to the fact that only 48% of the people had been vaccinated and the Delta variant had arrived on our shores. Now we are starting to realize that fully vaccinated people are getting COVID and even suffering quite severe symptoms. However, they are not dying so that's a good thing. The lesson is don't just go about living normally even if you're fully vaccinated especially if you're a senior citizen. The few fully vaccinated people who have died were over 65. So now we are having to pay people to get vaccinated? Just like we have to pay them to join the military? It's because we are too free. We are fee to ignore what's best for the community. We are free to think only of ourselves.

So what is public health? What is public anything? Ronald Reagan said the 9 most feared words in the English language are, "We're from the government, and we're here to help." Translation: Don't trust the government. The government can't do anything to help you so why should you do anything to help the government, including but not limited to, paying taxes. So everyone who can hire a financial advisor to tell them how to avoid paying taxes, which includes most rich people, proceeds to not do so. Not paying taxes is endemic among rich people who then have more money to spend on space ships. They give lip service to helping those of us who are earthbound after they have seen the curvature of the earth as if that triggered a moral awakening which they never had an inkling of before.

So Joe Biden, who I think is doing a fantastic job (but he can't do everything all at once), thinks that American democracy has the wherewithal to compete against his friends Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin who are openly skeptical about it. When it comes to vaccinations and guns, he may be wrong. Like Yogi Berra sid, "It ain't over till it's over" Truer words have never been said when it comes to COVID. The virus has one up on us with the Delta variant, and it may have others up its sleeve. Celebrating on July 4th like everything was back to normal was just a little bit premature.

Off the Top of My Head

O Say Can You See That Francis Scott Key Was a Racist?

by John Lawrence

When Francis Scott Key wrote the "National Anthem," he was a slave holding lawyer from an old Maryland plantation family who spent his life in court fighting against abolitionists. The third stanza of his song written aboard a British ship mentions "slaves and hirelings," a reference to the fact that escaped and emancipated slaves fought on the side of the British in the War of 1812. The British promised refuge to any enslaved Black people who escaped their enslavers, raising fears among White Americans of a large-scale revolt. The final provocation was that men who escaped their bonds of slavery were welcome to join the British Corps of Colonial Marines in exchange for land after their service. As many as 4,000 people, mostly from Virginia and Maryland, escaped. They were later given land in in Trinidad and Tobago to resettle with their families. Their descendants, called “Merikins,” still live there today.

Who else fought on the side of the British and likely prevented Canada from being annexed to the US? Indians. They were later abandoned by the British, and, with the death of Tecumseh, the Indians' hopes for a confederation were largely dashed. Hero of the war, Andrew Jackson, later as President presided over the "Indian removal" as Indians were forced off their traditional lands onto the Trail of Tears. At the beginning of the 1830s, nearly 125,000 Native Americans lived on millions of acres of land in Georgia, Tennessee, Alabama, North Carolina and Florida–land their ancestors had occupied and cultivated for generations. By the end of the decade, very few natives remained anywhere in the southeastern United States. Working on behalf of white settlers who wanted to grow cotton on the Indians’ land, the federal government forced them to leave their homelands and walk hundreds of miles to a specially designated “Indian territory” across the Mississippi River. This difficult and sometimes deadly journey is known as the Trail of Tears.

Oppressed people of the young nation fought in a war that was fought over British "impressment", a practice of the British who captured American seamen and made them work on British ships. This practice was actually ended before the war started, but due to the fact that transatlantic communications took weeks, the war was started before word was received that impressment had been ended.

The third stanza of The Star Spangled Banner contains the words

                                                        "Their blood has washed out their foul footsteps' pollution.
                                                        No refuge could save the hireling and slave
                                                        From the terror of flight, or the gloom of the grave:
                                                        And the star-spangled banner in triumph doth wave,
                                                        O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave."

Many rewrite the last line as "the land of the oppressed and the home of the slave." When he wrote the poem that would, in 1931, become the national anthem and proclaim our nation “the land of the free,” Key not only profited from slaves, he harbored racist conceptions of American citizenship and human potential. Africans in America, he said, were: “a distinct and inferior race of people, which all experience proves to be the greatest evil that afflicts a community.”

So was Colin Kaepernick right? Were Tommie Smith and John Carlos right when they raised their fists on the victory stand in the 1968 Olympics during the playing of the Star Spangled Banner? Did they even know about Key's racist past at that point? Recently, Gwen Berry, a contender for a medal at the Summer Olympics this year in Tokyo, has already raised her fist on a medal podium at a competition, and at the selection meet for the U.S. Olympic track team she turned away as the national anthem was played, drawing worldwide attention. When you consider Francis Scott Key's life of virulent racism, it's not hard to understand why.

The Smithsonian magazine reported:

Ironically, while Key was composing the line "O'er the land of the free," it is likely that black slaves were trying to reach British ships in Baltimore Harbor. They knew that they were far more likely to find freedom and liberty under the Union Jack than they were under the “Star-Spangled Banner.”

Additionally, Key used his office as the District Attorney for the City of Washington from 1833 to 1840 to defend slavery, attacking the abolitionist movement in several high-profile cases.

In the mid-1830s, the movement was gaining momentum and with it came increased violence, particularly from pro-slavery mobs attacking free blacks and white abolitionists, and other methods to silence the growing cries for abolition. In a House of Representatives and United States Senate inundated with petitions from abolitionists calling for the ending or restriction of slavery, pro-slavery Congressmen looked for a way to suppress the voices of abolitionists.

In the same year, shortly after a race riot in Washington, D.C. when an angry white mob set upon a well-known free black restaurant owner, Key likewise sought to crack down on the free speech of abolitionists he believed were riling things up in the city. Key prosecuted a New York doctor living in Georgetown for possessing abolitionist pamphlets.

In the resulting case, U.S. v. Reuben Crandall, Key made national headlines by asking whether the property rights of slaveholders outweighed the free speech rights of those arguing for slavery’s abolishment. Key hoped to silence abolitionists, who, he charged, wished to “associate and amalgamate with the negro.”

Though Crandall’s offense was nothing more than possessing abolitionist literature, Key felt that abolitionists’ free speech rights were so dangerous that he sought, unsuccessfully, to have Crandall hanged.

During the Andrew Jackson administration, Key served as the district attorney for Washington, D.C., where he spent much of his time shoring up enslavers’ power. He strictly enforced slave laws and prosecuted abolitionists who passed out pamphlets mocking his jurisdiction as the “land of the free, home of the oppressed.” So is it fitting and proper to stand during the National Anthem when it's composer was a virulent racist? The Star Spangled Banner, although written in 1814 didn't become the National Anthem till 1931, over 100 years later primarily due to the efforts of the Daughters of the Confederacy. “The elevation of the banner from popular song to official national anthem was a neo-Confederate political victory, and it was celebrated as such,” according to Jefferson Morley, author of “Snow-Storm in August: Washington City, Francis Scott Key, and the Forgotten Race Riot of 1835. “When supporters threw a victory parade in Baltimore in June 1931, the march was led by a color guard hoisting the Confederate flag.”

American history needs to be reexamined in the light of the atrocities perpetrated on African Americans and native American peoples. We can honor the lofty rhetoric of the Declaration of Independence, but we must remember at the same time that its author, Thomas Jefferson, was the owner of 175 slaves and the father of some of them.  The composer who wrote the inspirational words of the Star Spangle Banner also spent his life as a lawyer defending white supremacy and fighting against the abolition of slavery.

Off the Top of My Head

The Militarization of the American Mind

by John Lawrence

From seemingly rational thought processes that would make it impossible to end the war in Afghanistan to the insurrection at the Capitol to the "American movie" chock full of violence to the "well regulated militia" justification of gun proliferation, there is no end of rationalizations for the American military-industrial complex and gun culture on every level. Why does it come as a surprise to some journalists that many participants in the January 6 insurrection were current or ex military or police officers? They are exactly the ones with the mind set that believes Trump won the election, and that it was OK to do what their leader commanded them to do - invade the Capitol. The Generals who say that Biden shouldn't end the Afghanistan war on the grounds that the Kabul government will collapse are exactly the ones that argued we shouldn't end the Vietnam war because the South Vietnam government would collapse. Sure when the US sets up a puppet government and then props it up with money and a military presence, it probably will collapse when the US leaves that country which it never should have invaded in the first place. Afghanistan is Vietnam all over again or as Yogi Berra would say deja vu all over again.

The division among Americans into two tribes can be understood in terms of the two paths Americans take after high school graduation. There are those who go to college and there are those who go into the military. Those are basically the two choices high school graduates have. Those who go to college are taught to think critically to some extent, while those who go into the military are taught to obey orders. Unfortunately, Trump, as their Commander-in-Chief gave them the order to invade the Capitol, and they felt justified in following it because that is what their training led them to do. The choice to go into the Peace Corps or AmeriCorp is not really viable for most high school graduates because the perks of going into the military greatly exceed the perks of going into more peaceful pursuits, and they are less glorious. This is also a characteristic of the militarization of the American civilian mind. The military-industrial complex including, Lockheed Martin, Raytheon and Northrop Grumman, profits greatly from ongoing militarization and military thought processes, employs most of the college graduates and provides debate ending rationalizations for American military preparedness despite the fact that their extremely expensive hardware doesn't work half the time, and the threats to America are primarily cyber in nature as well as domestic terrorism.

The divide and contrast between high school graduates who go into the military and are taught to follow orders and those who go to college is reflected in the political divide between those on the right and those on the left.The military is all about symbolism including snappy uniforms, medals for valor in combat, saluting the flag and honoring themselves for their patriotism. On the left results in the improvement of the lives of the American people - and not just the elite civilian Officer's Corps - are more important than symbols of glory. They are more likely to question authority rather than unquestionably following orders. The January 6 insurrectionists were following Trump's orders at least that's what they were thinking in their own minds and by their own admission. I would like to see the FBI release to the public the number of insurrectionists who were military or former military. I bet that would be most of them, especially the males. A lot of ex military go into police work because of the familiarity with weaponry which they gained in the military. Since guns are a familiar way of life for them, naturally they become arch supporters of the Second Amendment, "well regulated" or not. They are used to classifying groups of people as either friendly or the enemy, and this mind set lends itself to police work.

In the final analysis, America is so used to being the world's policeman and profiting in various ways therefrom, that it is unthinkable that we should cooperate with our supposed adversaries to forestall global warming or to thwart future pandemics let alone the current one. We must always have an enemy or at least an adversary to justify our existence. A peaceful world in which everyone gets along and cooperates to solve the problems we earthlings face and have to deal with is unthinkable. Even though the US has a glut of vaccines while the rest of the world is begging for them, Americans feel free not to have their arms jabbed because after all they are free - free to be stupid, free to ignore the safety of other Americans and free to get infected with the virus and die taking others with them.. They just want to get back to normal entertaining themselves to death and ignoring totally any responsibility to their fellow citizens not to mention fellow citizens of the world, many of which they would like to maintain in their necessary roles as the enemy.

Dr. Fauci wondered why we couldn't all unite to fight the common enemy  - COVID - instead of fighting among ourselves about taking the vaccine. Uniting to fight a common enemy like COVID or climate change just isn't the way Americans and maybe humanity in general do things. We need to disagree even about things that are crucial for our continued existence as a species. As a nation we need an enemy whether it be Russia or China seemingly to justify our existence.

Off the Top of My Head

Future Generations Will Analyze This Era and Judge Whether Autocracy or Democracy Was More Successful

by John Lawrence

So far autocracy is winning. The vast majority of the Chinese people are on the same page as the Chinese government while the US is a nation divided - one half diametrically opposed to the other half. The Constitution itself needs to be revised as its First and Second amendments are causing many of the problems. The Second amendment is contributing to the US being the mass murder capitol of the world, but the First amendment is also insidious as it has morphed into something perverted and toxic in the form of social media and spun out of control allowing the spread of vicious gossip and lies gone viral. This has given vent to the worst impulses among the American people. Facebook's very business model has contributed mightily to this outcome as it allows hate groups to identify one another and come together on a common platform provided all too profitably by Facebook.

Hillary Clinton, the former secretary of state warns of the danger to democracy of lies flourishing online – and says big tech’s wings must be clipped in an article in The Guardian. She of course has been the victim of outrageous character assassination perpetrated by lies on social media over the course of 30 years or more. The Guardian reports:

"Her bid for the White House was engulfed by a tidal wave of fabricated news and false conspiracy theories. Now Hillary Clinton is calling for a “global reckoning” with disinformation that includes reining in the power of big tech.

"The former secretary of state and first lady warns that the breakdown of a shared truth, and the divisiveness that surely follows, poses a danger to democracy at a moment when China is selling the conceit that autocracy works."

Uncontrolled social media makes more money by perpetrating lies than it does the truth because the truth is often boring, bu lies especially when shared by a large group of people are often very entertaining, and the American people demand constantly to be entertained. Maybe this is because their lives are otherwise quite boring. Anyway boredom is the crux of the matter. The “Pizzagate” conspiracy theory, which made the preposterous claim that Clinton ran a child sex trafficking ring at a Washington pizza restaurant, entertained the masses in a viral manner. This segment of society loves them a reality show TV star like Donald Trump or even a B movie star like Ronald Reagan. They would rather have the impersonation of a competent leader than a competent leader him or herself, but then Hitler was very entertaining as well. So are most autocrats. Social media represents the First amendment run amok.

The Guardian continues:

"Far-right Republicans have become openly anti-democratic, endorsing Trump’s falsehoods and seeking to suppress voters of color.

"The traditional the-truth-is-somewhere-in-the-middle approach will no longer do, Clinton argues.

“They’ve got to rid themselves of both-sidesism,” she says. “It is not the same to say something critical of somebody on the other side of the aisle and to instigate an attack on the Capitol and to vote against certifying the election. Those are not comparable, and it goes back to the problem of the press actually coming to grips with how out of bounds and dangerous the new political philosophy on the right happens to be.”

"The press cannot be expected to restore a common baseline of truth on its own, however.

“The technology platforms are so much more powerful than any organ of the so-called mainstream press, and I do think that there has to be not just an American reckoning but a global reckoning with the disinformation, with the monopolistic power and control, with the lack of accountability that the platforms currently enjoy,” Clinton said."

News shows on TV need sponsors and sponsors want eyeballs glued to the tube. What is more gluing than some outrageous lie such as the ones Qanon perpetrates. So the "business of America is business" crowd is out there perpetrating lies because that is more profitable than perpetrating the boring truth. Entertainment is everything. We are entertained to death and that had resulted prepandemic in a full employment society where the lower 50% serve, bartend, cater, cook, work as baristas, housekeep, provide security, take tickets for the upper 50%. Profitable business decisions have made lies and deception profitable. Every day during the Trump administration, the media covered Trump's outrageous lies and behavior because it was more profitable than reporting the dull facts. Even Trump's adulterous affairs were "forgiven" because they made him a more vivid character providing juicy gossipy entertainment even for the tsk tsk crowd.

In Amusing Ourselves to Death, Neil Postman argued presciently 35 years ago that television was reshaping our culture and trivializing public life—news, politics, religion, education, and business—by turning it into entertainment. He warned that we would become so inundated with irrelevant information that we’d lose sight of what was important—even worse, we wouldn’t care as long as we felt entertained. With the proliferation of digital media today and worries about excessive “screen time,” his analysis still resonates.

Hillary added: “In particular Facebook, which has the worst track record for enabling mistruths, misinformation, extremism, conspiracy, for goodness’ sake, even genocide in Myanmar against the Rohingya. So governments are going to have to decide right now that the platforms have to be held to some kind of standard, and it’s tricky.” So do the Chinese have a better idea to control the out of control lies perpetrated in the West? For one thing they wouldn't stand for it. Freedom of speech has morphed into something sinister and out of control. The same could be said about the Second Amendment. Maybe the moral of the story is that constitutions need to be updated at least once a century in order to keep up with new technological developments. The US Constitution is 233 years old.

Off the Top of My Head

Sadness for a Good Man Leaving After a Life Well Lived Contrasted With the Sadness for Victims of Mass Murders Gone Before Their Time

by John Lawrence

Prince Philip lived a good, successful and honorable life to the age of 99. It is sad to see him go, but that is tempered by the nobility of his life and the fact that we all have to go at some time. On the other hand, the US is in the throes of mass murders on a daily basis killing people senselessly before their time on earth was up. Is there nostalgia for a monarchy to replace the chaos that the descendants of the rebels against the British monarchy have created? Did the emphasis on liberty and the Second Amendment make this inevitable? Now we have politicians whose sole purpose in life is to fund raise off the chaos that they themselves have created. The First and Second Amendments are killing us. That includes the "peaceful protests" that turn into rioting and looting when the sum goes down. God save the queen.

The US is alone in the civilized world with an unrestricted right to gun ownership. The only other countries which have a right to bear arms written into their Constitution are Mexico and Guatemala, Six other countries used to have a constitutional right to bear arms, but they've since repealed those laws. The US should do the same. The US is the only country with a right to keep and bear arms with no constitutional restrictions. Americans own nearly half of all the civilian-owned guns in the world, and on a per capita basis, the US has far more guns than any other nation.

Just south of the US border, the Mexican government has a strict hold over civilian gun ownership. Although Mexicans have a right to buy a gun, bureaucratic hurdles, long delays, and narrow restrictions make it extremely difficult to do so. Article 10 of the 1857 Mexican Constitution guaranteed that "every man has the right to keep and to carry arms for his security and legitimate defense." But 60 years later in 1917, lawmakers amended it following Mexico's bloody revolution. During the rewriting of the constitution, the government placed more severe restrictions on the right to buy guns. The law precluded citizens from buying firearms "reserved for use by the military" and forbid them from carrying "arms within inhabited places without complying with police regulations." Today, Mexicans still have a right to buy guns, but they must contend with a vague federal law that determines "the cases, conditions, requirements, and places in which the carrying of arms will be authorized."

In Guatemala individuals who want to purchase a gun for private security purposes need approval from the government. They are also limited in how much ammunition they can own, and they must re-apply and re-qualify for their firearm licenses every one to three years, according to GunPolicy.org. A license also requires proof that the applicant has a clean police record, does not suffer from mental illness, and has not deserted the army or police. Although Guatemalans are not allowed to own fully automatic weapons, they are allowed to buy semi-automatic weapons, handguns, rifles, and shotguns if they obtain a permit. Still, that can be difficult.

Although Mexico and Guatemala both have a constitutional right to bear arms, the US is in a league of its own, because it is the only country without any restrictions on gun ownership in its Constitution. The US makes up 4.4 percent of the world’s population but has almost half of the civilian-owned guns around the world. The horror show of mass violence will continue until there is gun control at the Federal level or gun restrictions are written into the Constitution. The latter is probably not possible. The Second Amendment to the Constitution in and of itself is probably enough to doom the US to the fate of a second class nation or worse. In the People's Republic of China, access by the general public to firearms is subject to some of the strictest control measures in the world. With the exception of individuals with hunting permits and some ethnic minorities, civilian firearm ownership is restricted to non-individual entities. China is surging ahead of the US economically and doesn't have to deal on a daily basis with the spectacle of mass violence committed by its citizens on other citizens. As Joe Biden said, mass murders are a national embarrassment.

The conclusion is that most of the world's nations are much more sensible about gun control. The US is the outlier, and it's turning the US into a police state not because police own all the weapons but because the citizens own so many of them and are using them on fellow citizens with increasing frequency. This is having a destabilizing effect on the whole citizenry because no one knows who may be next to suffer a random act of mass violence. Lenin once famously remarked that businessmen would happily sell for a profit the rope that would later be used to hang them. American businessmen who sell guns and ammunition are now happily selling American citizens the guns with which on a daily basis they are slaughtering each other senselessly and for no reason at all. The US is degenerating into a nation dragging itself down and destabilizing itself into a black hole that seemingly it can't recover from.

Off the Top of My Head

Unlike Trump, Biden's New Deal Will Actually Make America Great Again

by John Lawrence, April 4, 2021

GDP is the measure of national economic activity and is composed of 4 components: private consumer consumption, business investment, government investment and net of imports and exports. America's economy is 70% consumption compared to about 50% for most of our western allies. Government spending is about 17% compared to 40-50% for most of our allies. In fact for Norway, Belgium, Finland and France it's over 50%. Joe Biden's infrastructure plan will change all that bringing government spending on infrastructure both material and human more in line with the rest of the developed world. While most of our allies spend around 50% on consumption, America is primarily a consumer economy at 70%. That's about to change under Biden's New Deal. Government consumption and employment will increase while private consumption and employment will decrease. This is a good thing, but Republicans and states' rights advocates disagree. American infrastructure is falling to Third World status while Americans entertain themselves to death. Nothing has been invested and everything has been consumed. Biden's attempted change in these dynamics, which Mitch McConnell has vowed to fight "every step of the way" is a bid to preserve first world status for the US which is rapidly diminishing.

The one thing the US has going for itself right now is the fact that the US dollar is the world's reserve currency. As such the US can spend large sums - trillions of dollars in fact - without fear of the dollar losing its value. So it might as well "go big" on spending because the dollar may not always retain that status. China is becoming the world's largest economy with major spending on infrastructure not only in China, but, with its Belt and Road Initiative, around the world. Meanwhile, what the US has to offer in that regard is using its bloated military to police the world. So if you were President of your country, which would you rather have - policing or investment. The answer seems clear to many, even to many US allies. China is consistent and values stability and unanimity of its citizens. The US government is subject to radical change every 2 or 4 years with deep divides among its populace, and more and more can't be counted upon by its allies even to the extent that a sizable number of US citizens invaded its Capitol! Autocratic countries may be brutal towards political dissidents, but they would never tolerate a threat to their very existence.

Some Americans will have to be brought kicking and screaming into the Biden economy. Just as they were cavalier about wearing masks, they could care less about good jobs at good wages. They just want good beer and football games. Cruises, spectator sports and abundant entertainment is what Americans have come to expect, and they prefer that to safer roads and rebuilt bridges. They are viscerally opposed to doing anything to prevent climate change or global warming. They don't want to work hard to make America great again. They want it all given to them on a silver platter preferably by an entertaining and charismatic President rather than a plodder who has their welfare at heart. There is a looming war between states rights Republicans who want the US to remain a private consumption economy and Democratic neo-New Dealers who want government to play a larger role in investing in American infrastructure, both material and human.There will be more and better paying jobs working in government infrastructure projects than there will be working in the entertainment industry. This infuriates some people.

Taxing the rich also brings Republicans out of the woodwork to proclaim that Biden will end up taxing the middle class as well "to pay for it" even though he has said that everyone making under $400,000 a year will not pay one penny more in taxes. Republican lawmakers will chomp at the bit to naysay that bit of profundity by saying over and over on their media outlets that it is not true. The truth is that Biden wants to construct a stronger safety net while rebuilding and extending American infrastructure, and a lot of Trump supporters just don't care about any of those things. They just want to be entertained and to eat out while watching spectator sports.

Off the Top of My Head

The Trouble With Belief Systems

by John Lawrence, March 28, 2021

Belief systems lead to cults. A cult can be defined as a group of people who all fervently believe the same things although there is no objective proof for any of their beliefs. People who believe Trump won the election are members of a cult. People who believe their religion is the only correct and true religion and everyone who does not accept their belief system is going to Hell are members of a cult. A lot of wars have been fought because members of one cult dehumanized members of another cult. The European wars of the 16th century were fought because Catholics and Protestants could not accept that there were people who did not have the same cult beliefs as they did. The 30 years war was a war between Protestants and Catholics. The Crusades were wars between Christians and Muslims. People who hold belief systems fervently cannot accept the fact that there are other people in the world who don't hold their same belief system.

There are some things that are unknowable, at least at this point in time, and they form fertile ground for some one or one to develop a belief system around. Charlatans and manipulators realize that there is money to be made by claiming to assuage peoples' anxieties. One of the biggest unknowables is what happens to us after we die. Another is is there a God or, if there is, is He a judgmental or a loving God? The Founding Fathers of the US, cognizant of the European wars of religion, were mainly Deists. They believed that God created the universe, but was not involved with it after that, the so-called "watchmaker God." Founders who fall into the category of Christian Deists include Washington, John Adams, Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson. Jefferson was more influenced by the reason-centred Enlightenment than either Adams or Washington. Jefferson also created his own version of the Bible. This Bible was focused only on Jesus, but none of his mystical works. It didn’t include major scenes like the resurrection or ascension to heaven, or miracles like turning water into wine or walking on water. Instead, Jefferson’s Bible focused on Jesus as a man of morals, a teacher whose truths were expressed without the help of miracles or the supernatural powers of God.

Because of our existential anxiety caused by not knowing what's going to happen to us after death or even in this life, belief systems have grown up and attracted adherents. Fervent belief systems are really cults as they exclude and dehumanize people with alternative beliefs. There is no objective proof, but people are willing to kill those who aren't members of their cult. This is from Britannica:

"Deists argued that human experience and rationality—rather than religious dogma and mystery—determine the validity of human beliefs. In his widely read The Age of Reason, Thomas Paine, the principal American exponent of Deism, called Christianity “a fable.” Paine, the protégé of Benjamin Franklin, denied “that the Almighty ever did communicate anything to man, by…speech,…language, or…vision.” Postulating a distant deity whom he called “Nature’s God” (a term also used in the Declaration of Independence), Paine declared in a “profession of faith”: I believe in one God, and no more; and I hope for happiness beyond this life. I believe in the equality of man; and I believe that religious duties consist in doing justice, loving mercy, and in endeavoring to make our fellow-creatures happy.''"

The problem with the Trump "true believers" is that they have been sold a bill of goods by those who shamelessly have made money off of feeding this cult a bunch of lies. These people have been conditioned by means of their religion to have a certain set of beliefs which they are willing to fight over. These beliefs coincide with a way of life predicated on an American version of history and an American narrative in which America is a shining city on a hill and a beacon of veracity and truth to the rest of the world. They believe in an America also which is fundamentally white like it's always been in their minds, but that's not the reality any more. American history is not all that noble. Indians were robbed of their lands and Africans were brought here and used as slaves. After they were freed, supposedly, Jim Crow laws made sure that they remained second class citizens. So there is  clash of belief systems. There are those who think the great and noble sentiments expressed by our Founding Fathers should not apply to everyone equally and those who point out the hypocrisy of not doing so.

The problem really is with belief systems which turn into cults. The way forward is really the one expressed by Rodney King: "Can't we all just get along?" With deference to Mission Impossible: your mission, if you choose to accept it, is to make the world a better place for this and future generations without regard to belief systems or ideology. Your vaunted way of life, as perceived to have existed in the past, is irrelevant.

Off the Top of My Head

Instead of Sanctioning Foreign Actors Sanction Domestic Terrorists

by John Lawrence, January 12, 2021

The best development so far post insurrection is taking away Trump's twitter account permanently. The FBI, CIA and other law enforcement are rounding up the insurrectionists and they should get lengthy jail sentences and sanctions. The biggest threat to American democracy is not out there; it's in here. Their gathering places on social media such as Parler have been taken down or will be taken down soon. If the terrorists can't meet to spout their vitriol as well as plan future insurrections, we'll be making progress. Rush Limbaugh and other domestic terrorists should be sanctioned. Anyone egging on, benefiting from, taking advantage of the poor mental health or encouraging hatred and violence of the American people needs to be sanctioned. The fact that these terrorists could overwhelm the Capitol Police was a huge security failure. The fact that it took the Pentagon three hours to supply troops shows the fact that we are wasting huge amounts of money on a worthless military establishment that does not confront the real threats to this country. Perhaps these domestic terrorists need to be reeducated. We don't have the moral authority to mock China any more for doing this with its domestic terrorists.

Right now security forces in the US are on high alert. The National Guard is out in force. There are more forces on the streets of Washington, DC now than there are in Afghanistan. They should stay on high alert for the time being. I think the situation will get under control. Massive arrests and the total deplatforming and isolation of Donald Trump and domestic terrorist social media sites needs to be carried out. If they don't have gathering places on social media, they won't be able to organize. That's important. There needs to be a recognition that the militarization of the mindsets of young Americans which happens in the military and the glorification and seeming ubiquity of war as the only way to deal with other nations is a cause of the recent problems. Instead of funneling all non-college bound youth into the military, there needs to be an upsurge in funding and encouragement for young people to go into the Peace Corps and AmeriCorps. We need to demilitarize the mindsets of the American people.

Terrorist and threatening phone calls need to be traced and the perpetrators brought to justice. No public official should have to live in fear for their lives and their family's lives because of death threats on phone calls or on social media. Social media is a big problem. They have gotten rich off the fact that their algorithms have encouraged, aided and abetted the domestic terrorists. Their business model showed that there was a lot of profit in encouraging conspiracy theories and other activities detached from reality. It's good that it has become evident by reporting on legitimate news outlets that social media is not subject to the First Amendment because that only applies to government hindrance of free speech. Social media platforms are private entities and they do not have to honor so-called free speech. Private entities also don't have to honor the Second Amendment so that there is space to restrict guns on private property which is probably 99% of the property in the US.

The next administration has its work cut out for them. Good leaders and good people will prevail. Deplatforming all right wing media and groups that espouse conspiracy theories and outright lies will be an important step. Sober analysis and critical thinking must replace narcissistic fantasy and entertainment values. This starts with children in school. They need to taught how to distinguish truth from lies. They need to be taught the value of peace and harmony not only in their daily lives but in the pursuit of that status among and between nations. They should be taught that the US has not always been but should aspire to moral and ethical behavior with regard to other nations and within its own country.

Money must be drained from the military establishment which is oriented towards either non-existant or phony threats and reoriented towards the real threats and funded at appropriate levels rather than be treated to carte blanche amounts of superfluous cash. Budgets both military and domestic need to be appropriate to their realistic needs. Right now the greatest need is in overcoming the pandemic and responding to the economic needs of the lower half of the population. Also eliminating energy production from fossil fuels needs to proceed post haste. It's obvious that the private economy can not do this at the rate necessary to save the planet from the ravages of global warming. Only big government programs in conjunction with the programs of other countries can possibly achieve the reality of zero carbon emissions by 2030.

The last word is that Trump must be denied any post Presidential influence or following by any and all legal means. This is the greatest thing that can be done to heal and deradicalize the country. America also will pay a heavy price if it doesn't get its promotion of gun culture under control.

Off the Top of My Head

My Horse, My Horse, My Kingdom for a Horse

by John Lawrence, January 9, 2021

Only in Trump's case: My Twitter Account, My Twitter Account, My Kingdom for a Twitter Account. Trump has been emasculated. He's been banned from Twitter, Facebook, Shopify and God knows what else. As well he should be. This guy was not so much a President as he was a Tweeter-in-Chief and rabble rouser. He roused a lot of rabble a few days ago when he almost had Congress persons killed and taken hostage. Who thought it was a good idea to have a rally on the day the votes for the next President were to be certified? Well, Donald Trump of course. He knew what he was doing. It's just that his doofus supporters were inept at coup planning or the outcome might have been entirely different. Trump, Rudy Giuliani ("trial by combat"? he was wrong and, according to his own words, has been made a fool of and should go to jail) and Don Jr should be criminally implicated for inspiring to riot. Trump should be criminally implicated also for not calling out the National Guard till it might have been too late. It seems that only he had the authority to do so, and he was allowing sufficient time for his acolytes to do their dirty work.

Joe Biden definitely has his work cut out for him. He has to deal with a global pandemic which may be mutating. He has to deal with 40 years of neoliberal economic policies which have made the rich richer and the poor homeless. And he has to deal with a cult of domestic terrorists. To those who think that China, Russia and Iran are the problems, I've got news for you: the American people, a huge contingent of them, are the problem. Gun violence is the problem. Trillions of dollars wasted on a sitting military, on the grounds that we have enemies who justify this, is the problem. The policies of George W Bush who caused millions of deaths in the Middle East with the result of ongoing chaos is the problem. It's enough to make your head spin. While the US is in chaos as a society, the rest of the world is moving forward. While Joe Biden must play catch up, the rest of the world is moving ahead. While much of the US citizenry is composed of cultish dingbats, the rest of the world are very clear eyed by comparison. While the US culture and militarization of mindset is descending into a cesspool of self indulgence, people in the rest of the world are using their brains and feelings of compassion for their fellow inhabitants of earth to move ahead. While religious bigots use Jesus as an excuse to do dastardly deeds in the same way that the Ku Klux Klan has always done, the rest of the world is coming from a more enlightened attitude toward ethics and morality, religion or no religion.

The result is that the US has become the equivalent of a Third World country with an outsized and bloated military. Pride goeth before a fall, and the US, if it cannot get its act together, will go the way of the Roman Empire when it descended into chaos. The best the US can hope for coming out of the putrefaction of the Trump era is to be a good partner with the rest of the world as we solve enormous problems including climate change and poverty. No more yelling "We're Number One" when clearly a significant number of us are spoiled brats and worse. Let's turn the military culture into a peace culture. Let's take megaphones away from demagogues the way Twitter has denied Trump his Twitter account. Let's police social media.

Social media has not ennobled the American people; instead it has allowed a large number of Americans to be turned into a cult the way radio allowed Hitler in the 1930s to encultify, to coin a word, the German people. Cults demand that people pay obeisance to a leader. Kim Jong Un is sitting there thinking that the US is just as big a cult as North Korea. The remedy for this is that people have to be educated to think critically and not to follow some powerful figure with a huge megaphone whether it be Hitler, Mussolini or Donald Trump. Trump's megaphone has been taken away the way a parent takes away a child's favorite toy if he or she misbehaves. Trump's following have a militarized mindset. I would lay dollars to doughnuts that most of them have served in the military the way Ashli Babbit, the rioter who was shot, did. Perhaps if young Americans were required to do two years of national service or service in the Peace Corps instead of being incentivized to become Marines, sailors and airmen, attitudes would change. Instead of their minds being molded to taking commands from superior officers, they might develop an alternative mindset in which serving the poor and unfortunate of the world would be their highest priority.

The US has become a degenerate society, composed of unthinking followers of a strongman who had promised them that they're number one, Americans are number one and we're the greatest society and nation on earth. This is misguided thinking doomed to failure. This is the fall of the Roman Empire, the people of which had become a bunch of degenerate spoiled brats. There are good people here of course. The new administration represents a great many of them. There are many changes that need to be made in US society that they will try to change. It will be a sisyphean effort. Much of what has been seen as essential to American culture will have to be discarded and we will have to join the rest of the world's nations humbly in a cooperative effort to combat global warming and create a culture of love, peace and compassion.

Off the Top of My Head

Why Are Republicans Being So Deferential to Trump?

by Kay Oss and Pam Dennick, November 22, 2020

Why are Republicans still going along with Trump's fantasy that he won the election? Why aren't they speaking out telling him it's over and recognizing Joe Biden as the next President of the United States? The answer is that they realize that the Republican base is really Trump's base. 70 million Americans voted for Trump, and these people are more loyal to Trump than they are to the Republican party. If Trump wanted to, he could take these voters with him and form his own party. Then where would that leave the Republican party? It would be a head without a body. Trump could effectively decapitate the Republican party. That's why the Republican leadership is handling Trump with kid gloves.

The Republican party is an incongruous amalgam of an old line Republican head exemplified by Mitch McConnell, Lindsay Graham and Mitch Romney and a base consisting of white supremacists and other disgruntled people with a multitude of grievances. These two quasi Republican groups have little in common. The Republican head represents rich people and are mainly interested in using politics as a means to wealth and power. The Republican base, which is really Trump's base, consists of aggrieved and uneducated people who are readily amenable to conspiracy theories and the entertainment value of political theater. The problem with the Republican party is that the head needs Trump's base in order to even have a viable political party. Without this ill fitting base they represent very few people. So Trump only needs to repudiate the Republican party and tell his base that he is forming his own party. This spells doom for the Republican party which needs Trump's base to get elected.

Trump has already formed a PAC, and most of the money he is raising is money that he has complete control over. Trump is very interested in monetizing his popularity. This money could be used for political purposes or it could be used for paying off Trump's humungous debts once he leaves office. This is money that would be evacuated from Republican coffers and be used to fill Trump's personal coffers. If Republican leadership repudiates Trump, they will live to rue the day as Trump takes his base and goes home with it. Republican leadership must maintain the fiction that their values and the values of Trump's base are really compatible. They're not.

The fact is that the Republican party doesn't stand for anything but sheer ambition for wealth and power. On the other hand the Democratic party stands for helping the middle class and the poor and saving the earth from the ravages of global warming. We are very soon arriving at the stage of global warming where fire season and hurricane season are year round events. In other words they are no longer seasonal. The seasons are getting longer year after year. Nevertheless, despite the fact that wealthy Republicans are taking measures to protect their wealth from the ravages of global warming, they must keep up the fiction in public that global warming is a hoax. Hoaxes and conspiracy theories are the stock in trade which Trump uses to feed his base and keep them entertained. Without them there would be nothing to keep them interested. Reality just is not as much fun. Fact based science is boring. The problem is that fact based science will help us get better; conspiracy theories will lead us down the rabbit hole of self-deception and disaster.

It can only be hoped that Joe Biden and the Democratic party will have the courage to do what is necessary to get the United States on the right track, to build on a constructive agenda which benefits the American people and the world, extracts Trump's base from their rabbit hole and heals the underlying condition of the complete denial of reality which Trumpism represents. America has come very close to a fascist takeover of democracy, and we're not out of the woods yet. Trump is still a force to be reckoned with in or out of office.

Off the Top of My Head

Are We Really All in This Together?

by John Lawrence, October 21, 2020

The pandemic in terms of dying has affected mainly old people and minorities, but also there have been many at the highest level White House related cases including 87 year old Senator Chuck Grassley. I assume that these high level cases have been and will be treated with monoclonal antibodies like Remdesivir which "cured" President Trump. These treatments it should be noted are not available to everyone. Why not if they are so efficacious. Those who have the best treatments available can subscribe to the thesis that the coronavirus is no big deal. Mainly others are doing the dying.

Pope Francis' words of wisdom, Fratelli Tutti, his encyclical letter on Fraternity and Social Friendship represents a plea that we all should be in this together even though it's clear that in many parts of the world we're not. His words of wisdom follow:

"All too quickly, however, we forget the lessons of history, “the teacher of life”. Once this health crisis passes, our worst response would be to plunge even more deeply into feverish consumerism and new forms of egotistic self-preservation. God willing, after all this, we will think no longer in terms of “them” and “those”, but only “us”. If only this may prove not to be just another tragedy of history from which we learned nothing. If only we might keep in mind all those elderly persons who died for lack of respirators, partly as a result of the dismantling, year after year, of healthcare systems. If only this immense sorrow may not prove useless, but enable us to take a step forward towards a new style of life. If only we might rediscover once for all that we need one another, and that in this way our human family can experience a rebirth, with all its faces, all its hands and all its voices, beyond the walls that we have erected.

"Unless we recover the shared passion to create a community of belonging and solidarity worthy of our time, our energy and our resources, the global illusion that misled us will collapse and leave many in the grip of anguish and emptiness. Nor should we naively refuse to recognize that “obsession with a consumerist lifestyle, above all when few people are capable of maintaining it, can only lead to violence and mutual destruction”. The notion of “every man for himself” will rapidly degenerate into a free-for-all that would prove worse than any pandemic."

Yet in the US we are divide into two nations fundamentally at war with each other. Even religious institutions fan the flames of political divides. Masc wearing has become something that freedom loving Americans feel free to not do on Constitutional grounds. Caring about the welfare of others is unAmerican when it takes away from some Americans' freedoms. That's the American way: freedom trumps "Fraternity and Social Friendship" as the Pope would say. Is freedom the only value worth supporting? Must it dominate all other values? Must saving the earth from global warming be politicized into a Left-Right issue? Those who want to convert to renewable energy are characterized as "too far Left?" It isn;t a matter of Left Right. It's a matter of what is the right thing to do.

When it comes time to give the American people a tax break, there's no hue and cry about deficit spending. When the big banks were bailed out costing trillions of dollars, there was no hue and cry about deficit spending. Even though many of the bankers had committed fraud, none of them went to jail and the fines were just a slap on the wrist. But when a government program that forgives student loan debt or funds a massive green infrastructure program is mentioned, all of a sudden Republicans are concerned about deficit spending. It's "too far Left." Providing affordable housing, feeding the hungry, creating jobs for the unemployed - all those ideas are "too far Left." It's more important to preserve American values than it is to solve social problems. In other words despite the Pope's pleas, we are not all in this together. Freedom is more important than social cohesion.

Off the Top of My Head

About Lying

by John Lawrence, September 16, 2020

To be blunt lying is as American as cherry pie. Lawyers lie even if they know their client is guilty. Prosecutors lie even if they know the defendant is innocent. In fact the best lawyers are the ones who can lie with the straightest faces as if they were telling a profound truth. Ads on TV lie all the time. About the only thing you can't claim for a product is that it will cure cancer. That's a no no. But for anything else it's caveat emptor - buyer beware. The same holds for politics. I'm not a fan of President Trump, but I find it naive that some newscasters are astounded that Trump lies routinely. Political ads lie routinely. Facebook posts lie routinely. If you did away with lying, you would do away with half or more of public discourse. That's why fact checking is so important. Some people want to believe lies because they are sexier than the truth.

Then we get to conspiracy theories. Basically they are whole congeries of lies. They are lies upon lies that somehow manage to create a story. This isn't hard to do. Works of fiction are by definition not reality, but they make sense because they tell a story. So do conspiracy theories. They just do not represent reality. They are lies based upon lies. They are whole multilevel structures of lies. Getting to the basis of what's true, what's factual, what represents reality is the work of all of us. American culture does not make it easy when so much of it is based on lies. There are a few people we can trust to tell the truth. Dr Fauci is one. So is Bill Gates. But when there is a truth teller among us, the first thing that some people want to do is to cast doubt on their veracity. They want to make up conspiracy theories about them. It seems that some people find the truth to be too bland, too unsexy.

What this boils down to is the Nazification of American culture. Hitler supplied the conspiracy theories that the Germans needed to assuage their feelings of defeat over the First World War. It was not your fault, Hitler told them. You were betrayed by the Jews.Hitler gave them pageantry, campaign rallies complete with torchlight parades, symbols like the Nazi flag, a rationale why they found themselves in such miserable circumstances. He created a culture that was fun and sexy, one that gave Germans something to look forward to after they became immersed in their Germanness and rid the world of certain nonGermans. Hitler gave them entertainment; he gave them something to cheer about. He was an exiting public speaker.

American demagogues have done much the same thing. They have taken their approach right out of Hitler's playbook. Concoct a reality that is more entertaining than factual reality. Give them someone to blame for their lack of success. Whether it was Father Coughlin, Joe McCarthy, George Wallace or Donald Trump, their tactics and techniques are similar. They cater to a downtrodden group which has seen better days and is resentful of the fact that they have landed up where they are. They are highly entertaining. They give their followers something to cheer about. Entertaining crowds is their forte. They encourage conspiracy theories especially about their perceived enemies, the ones responsible for their being where they perceive they are. They look forward to a future utopia when their enemies have been vanquished and they will take their true place in history, the place they were destined to achieve. Destiny is theirs once they rid the world of undesirables.

Which brings us back to lying and Donald Trump. Since he lies so consistently, it's easy to discern the truth. It's usually the opposite of what he says. A good liar will tell the truth about 50% of the time. Then you never know whether he is telling the truth or lying. Lying usually works with people who have no critical thinking ability. They can't tell truth from fiction because they just accept unquestioningly what their leader tells them. A free society demands fact checking. Facebook, Instagram and all the social media should employ watchdogs to fact check posts so they don't get out of hand. Hate speech should just be taken down. The First Amendment doesn't apply to private property so Facebook can do whatever they want with posts on their platform. Twitter is taking a more aggressive approach with fact checking even fact checking the President. This will throw cold water on the cult like atmosphere Trump and other right wingers are trying t create.

Off the Top of My Head

Redefining the American Dream

by John Lawrence

I've heard a lot about the American Dream from the Republican convention. Put simply, the American Dream is having more stuff than your parents had. It's the freedom to accumulate wealth unconditionally. That's their definition of freedom. If I hear the phrase 'hard work and determination' one more time, I'm going to puke. By the way they can retire the words 'kitchen table' from politics as well. Conservatives maintain that equality is about equality of opportunity not equality of outcome. Supposedly everyone starts the race at the same starting line, but does everyone? Do black people who have suffered from the legacy of slavery, Jim Crow and redlining start from the same starting line? Even in golf they give handicaps to equalize the chances for all players regardless of ability. The point is that never does everyone start from the same starting line.

Take my sister for example. She was born before they measured the oxygen level of the baby in utero. The doctor wasn't there, and the nurse kept telling my mother to hold the baby back. As a result my sister was born with severe brain damage and was stuck with the mental capacity of a one year old her entire life. She never learned to talk or take any responsibility for herself. She needed caregivers her entire life and those caregivers primarily were my mother and father. Lucky for her that at least she was born into a family that had the capacity to love and take care of her.

The American Dream as defined by Republicans is unsustainable. It is based on unlimited consumption which is killing our planet. We cannot continue to consume without limitation and have a healthy planet. The planet's resources are not unlimited. We cannot continue to consume fossil fuels without leading to a hell on earth. I think California wildfires and Hurricane Laura are proving that today. Unlimited fossil fuel production, as advocated by Republicans, is killing us. Taking away regulations that allow corporations to pollute our air and waterways freely is killing us while it maximizes profits. The Democratic version of the American Dream - a well paying job, a decent house in a decent neighborhood, medical care, educational opportunities and a dignified old age - is much more sustainable. Republicans cater to those among us that are favored by nature, that are favored by not having any physical or mental vulnerabilities, that are favored by access to capital, that are favored by living in neighborhoods having the best schools. Republicans are always pushing charter schools. That's because the funding for public schools comes from the tax base in the neighborhood where the school is located. if a school is in a poor neighborhood, the tax base is poor with the result that the school is poor. It's as simple as that. Change the way schools are funded so that schools in poor neighborhoods have the same resources as schools in rich neighborhoods, and that advantage for rich kids goes away. No need for privatized charter schools which, by the way, still want public money.

So where at the Republican convention were the real Republican constituents.Their real constituents are not truck drivers, first responders and nurses. Their real constituents are hedge fund managers, bankers and billionaires. Sure they give hypocritical lip service to the 'hard working middle class', but they are not about the middle class. Did Jamie Diamond, CEO of JPMorgan Chase and billionaire, speak? Did hedge fund manager of the Blackstone group, Stephen Schwarzman, worth over $118 billion, did he speak? No, the Republicans pandered to Joe SixPack and never mentioned the vast gap between the Lloyd Blankfeins (billionaire chairman of Goldman Sachs) and the Ray Dalios (Bridgewater Associates - salary $2 billion) and the rest of us. But these are the real constituents of the Republican Party. Of course they have their base of white supremicists as well. So where was the CEO of Lockheed Martin, Marillyn Hewson with a salary of $30 million? Where are the defense contractors who benefit from a bloated defense budget 3 times bigger than China's? Instead, they celebrated the fact that Trump added $54 billion to it, an amount almost as large as Russia's entire defense budget.

So what is a sustainable American Dream. It's one devoid of fossil fuels. It's one where there's no drilling in the Alaskan Wildlife Refuge. It's one of renewable energy. It's one that recognizes the threat of global warming. It's one that recognizes the need for Medicare for All or equivalent that covers everyone. It's one that recognizes the need to rebuild American infrastructure. It's one that recognizes the need to raise the wages of essential workers to a living wage. It's one that needs to pay caregivers. It's one that recognizes the need to deal with economic inequality by taxing the rich and using the money to fund free education from pre-K through graduate school without students having to go into a lot of debt. It's one that recognizes the responsibility to deal with the 40% of the world's population in dire poverty, without even a functioning sanitation system, especially the 60 million refugees that the US is responsible for creating so that they too can have a Dream. In short it's one that recognizes the role of Americans not simply as individual wealth creators and accumulators for themselves as individuals, but one in which we all endeavor to make the world a habitable place for all human beings now and in the future.

Off the Top of My Head

How Important is the Culture of Poverty as a Determinant of Criminality?

by John Lawrence

Police reform is now being undertaken to some extent because of the Black Lives Matter movement. Whether it is sufficient to solve any problems is questionable. Most of the policing activities take place in poor neighborhoods both black and white because most street crime takes places in poor neighborhoods. In some families and neighborhoods there is not only a culture of poverty, there is a culture of crime. The two of them seem to go together. If your uncle or brother or father has spent time in jail or in prison, it seems to young people growing up that this is a normal part of life. Close to six million kids in America have experienced losing a parent to prison or jail at some point in their lives. African Americans are incarcerated at more than 5 times the rate of whites. The imprisonment rate for African American women is twice that of white women. 45.8 percent of young black children (under age 6) live in poverty, compared to 14.5 percent of white children. This says it all.

There is a culture of imprisonment in predominantly black families and neighborhoods. My contention is that the solution is the elimination of poverty in the black community, and that would go a long way to eliminating the need for police enforcement in the first place. The culture of poverty and imprisonment is cultivated by both black and white artists, playwrights and musicians. For example, take the play Porgy and Bess written by a white man, DuBose Heyward about a poor crippled black man. It was developed into an opera by George and Ira Gershwin, also white. Porgy and Bess started out as a novel, was converted into a play, then an opera and finally a movie. It contains many cultural stereotypes of black people. Wikipedia reported:

Another production of Porgy and Bess, this time at the University of Minnesota in 1939, ran into similar troubles. According to Barbara Cyrus, one of the few black students then at the university, members of the local African-American community saw the play as "detrimental to the race" and as a vehicle that promoted racist stereotypes. The play was cancelled due to pressure from the African-American community, which saw their success as proof of the increasing political power of blacks in Minneapolis–Saint Paul.

The belief that Porgy and Bess was racist gained strength during the Civil Rights Movement and Black Power movement of the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s. As these movements advanced, Porgy and Bess was seen as more and more out of date. When the play was revived in the 1960s, social critic and African-American educator Harold Cruse called it, "The most incongruous, contradictory cultural symbol ever created in the Western World."

One of the characters in Porgy and Bess is Sportin' Life, a pimp and dope peddler. This emphasizes the connection between black people and a traditional role model - pimp and dope peddler. Now Sportin' Life is one of the most successful members of the neighborhood. Why is this? Because most of the people were extremely poor. The lesson is, if you want to be successful, if you want to have money, be a pimp or sell dope. Or gamble like Porgy does in jail. So all the associations of black people with dope, prostitution, police and jail are reinforced by this work of art which has been praised as a brilliant story filled with brilliant music. Even Miles Davis, a black jazz artist, recorded a much praised album with orchestration by Gil Evans: the Jazz Soul of Porgy and Bess.

In order to have street cred, even black men make up stories to make them seem bigger criminals than they really are. Then they peddle their art to make money. Take Akon. According to the Baltimore Sun:

The world of thug culture has its own perverse equivalent, in which middle-class men with minor legal transgressions exaggerate their bad behavior, claiming to be hard-core degenerates in order to impress youngsters looking for outlaw role models. In this destructive environment, the more violent and predatory you are, the more heroic you seem.

That helps to explain why a hip-hop star known as Akon wove a tall tale of malevolence and criminal activity, claiming to have spent three years in prison for running a "notorious car theft operation," a story he's been telling for years. In fact, he has apparently never served hard prison time. A Web site called The Smoking Gun recently exposed Akon as a thug wannabe, a "James Frey with ... an American Music Award.".

So the culture of criminality is perpetuated so that some black men can make money off of it, and young kids can grow up wanting to emulate them. This culture has to change in order that black and white kids grow up with more positive role models, but the root cause of this criminal culture is poverty so, if you want to change the culture, first change the culture of poverty. Give incentives for black men to stay with their families. Give them good jobs. It's not only black people who have lived in a crime culture due to poverty. Take the Mafia. White Italians looked up to the mafia dons because they were financially successful at a time when many Italians were in poverty. Black or white, poverty breeds a criminal culture. Problems with the police are going to persist as long as there is a huge amount of poverty and homelessness in the US. Progressive and enlightened government policy could start to change that for poor people, both black and white. Positive incentives to do the right thing go a long way to dispel poverty.

Off the Top of My Head

A Jobs Program for Inessential Workers
by John Lawrence, April 30, 2020

Turn inessential workers into essential workers by putting them to work building green infrastructure. This is essential work that is not getting done. Much of the previous inessential work they did is better left undone even in a recovery. It is still inessential. It'll always be inessential compared to what needs to be done in creating and building green infrastructure. Building out solar and wind renewable energy could employ thousands if not millions of people. Repairing roads, bridges, waterways, clean water systems, airports, railroads and all other infrastructure could employ millions. This is essential work that has remained undone despite the fact that the American Society of Civil Engineers has given the US a D rating for infrastructure. High speed rail needs to be built. The widespread adoption of electric cars has to be mandated, and construction of a national electric vehicle charging network to power them has to be built.

Unemployed people still need jobs. Mark Cuban said on CNN this morning that there should be a jobs program similar to that of the New Deal. He is exactly right although he didn't make the necessary connection about the essential work that's still being left undone and the inessential work that doesn't need to be done even in a recovery. Forget Cuban's sports and entertainment enterprises. I hate to tell you that they are basically inessential. What is essential is greatly expanding the public health undertakings of the Federal  government which has been totally behind the curve in this pandemic.

We must ask ourselves what is essential and not go back to a new normal in which all the inessential businesses of the past are brought back just in order to provide employment to the millions who have lost their jobs. The pre-pandemic economy was 70% consumerism. The economy post epidemic should be much less a consumerist economy and much more an investment economy. The four components of gross domestic product are personal consumption, business investment, government spending, and net exports. Of these government spending must be ramped up to provide the essential jobs in infrastructure building as well as in the areas that the pandemic has made clear are indeed essential: health care, education, transportation, agriculture.

Government spending must go up; personal consumption must go down. It's as simple as that. As for business investment, it's a lost cause as business will only do what's profitable for itself as has been made abundantly clear. Investment in fossil fuels and plastics which the big oil companies are making is only destructive to a green economy, not constructive. As far as exports are concerned, the dollar has already been weakened as much as it could possibly be by zero interest rates, so increased exports, although desirable, are not likely to happen any time soon.

Private enterprise knows only one thing in terms of the economy "reopening": get back to consumer spending. It ain't going to happen. People are still afraid of the virus. The pandemic is not over. They will use their money to pay off debts instead of going in debt to the hilt like they are used to. People will save their money instead of entertaining themselves to death. Why? Maybe they have learned their lesson that a high employment economy predicated on the fact that people will always have a job and always have a prepensity to consume is just a chimera. Rather than living paycheck to paycheck, I hope people will understand that there may come a rainy day, and they need to save for that. That lesson has really been brought home by the coronavirus pandemic.

The true heroes are essential workers not the military. The military itself was brought to its knees by COBID-19. There is a lesson there. It's more important to spend our collective money on preparing for the coming pandemic of global warming than on a bloated military. It is more important to house the homeless and guarantee the economic rights of shelter and health care to all Americans as in the 1948 UN Declaration of Human Rights. It is more important to help people all over the world escape from extreme poverty because poverty breeds health crises which then can spread all over the world. It's more important to make peace with our rivals rather than try to control them with military threats and sanctions.

May the next President (and I hope to heaven that it's not Donald Trump) see the light of a more rational, compassionate and humane world, one more concerned about the health and welfare of all the world's peoples. I hope Governor Cuomo's values of being tough, smart, disciplined and most importantly loving spread to every corner of US and world society, and we get on with essential business instead of the inessential business of amusing, entertaining and consuming ourselves to death.

Off the Top of My Head

All Those Americans Who Didn't Have $400 to Cover an Emergency Now in Food Lines

by John Lawrence, April 17, 2020

If you don't have $400 to cover an emergency, you sure don't have enough money to cover a pandemic. Ten thousand cars waited hours in line for emergency food assistance in San Antonio last week. Meanwhile lawmakers are deadlocked over a bill to create more money for small businesses. Democrats want money also for hospitals and states and local governments. Governor Cuomo has stated that New York state is totally broke, and expenses are only increasing. San Diego Mayor Kevin Faulkner announced that there would be a $250 million budget shortfall which would be partly made up by laying off city employees. San Diego relies on the tourist industry and the Tax on Transiency (TOT taxes) which are collected by the hotels. Right now tourists are staying home and self-isolating.

Almost 40% of American adults wouldn't be able to cover a $400 emergency with cash, savings or a credit-card charge that they could quickly pay off according to the Federal Reserve's "Report on the Economic Well-Being of U.S. Households in 2018" published in May 2019. This gem is from the report's executive summary:

Results from the survey show that many adults are financially vulnerable and would have difficulty handling an emergency expense as small as $400. In addition, volatile income and low savings can turn common experiences—such as waiting a few days for a bank deposit to be available—into a problem for some. At the same time, there is evidence of coping strategies, such as supplementing income through gig work and seeking financial support from family members.

If waiting a few days for a bank deposit to be available creates a hardship, how much of a hardship must it be to lose your job and not know where your next meal is coming from with a pandemic going on for months. Even though Americans, as many as 40%, have little or no savings, they are encouraged to go out and spend, spend, spend. Maybe the government should run ads encouraging Americans to save, save, save. Most Americans are in debt up to their eyeballs, yet they are encouraged by all the propaganda on TV to buy more stuff. It's practically a criminal enterprise, and yet consumer spending comprises 70% of GDP. There is no incentive for Americans to save. Banks are paying zero interest and threatening  to go to negative interest rates. That means you would be encouraged to spend your money at an even greater rate or put it in the stock market. The Federal Reserve will do whatever it takes to prop up the stock market because, if it tanked, the 50% of Americans that have 401ks would see all their accumulated wealth go down the drain. The government has a vested interest in seeing that that does not happen.

The function of the Federal Reserve used to be "to take the punch bowl away just as the party got started." Otherwise, the economy would overheat and inflation would take off. Now the last thing they're worried about is inflation. They pump as much money into the economy as necessary to keep the economy going, and, since consumers are the main engine in energizing the economy, the Fed is suddenly concerned about consumers. But consumers don't have huge amounts of reserves, and neither do small businesses which provide about 50% of the jobs. So the Fed's job now is to just keep pumping more punch into the punch bowl. Inflation is not a problem any more since unions don't have the power to demand higher wages as they used to do. The union movement has been incapacitated by corporations which have moved jobs to China and elsewhere - wherever they could get the cheapest labor.

In the 2008 Great Recession it was banks, not consumers, that needed a bailout. Most consumers did not lose their jobs so they could continue to consume, and the Fed as well as the Federal government ignored the plight of Americans who lost their homes since there weren't that many of them comparatively. Now it's a different story. Banks are flush, and vast hordes of people are wondering where their next meal is coming from and when the pandemic will be over.

Off the Top of My Head

In the Age of Pandemic Has War Become a Luxury?

by John Lawrence, April 12, 2020

Saudi Arabia and Yemen have declared a cease fire. Sailors are becoming infected on aircraft carriers. War planning requires groupings of military people. So has war become a luxury we can no longer afford? Are we really "all in this together"? Does the pandemic require cooperation among all nations since the pandemic doesn't respect national borders? Will the pandemic, when it's over, have changed the way human beings conduct their affairs in the world or will we get back to business as usual. If the pandemic engenders cooperation instead of rivalry among the nations of the world, does this mean that we will all be socialists or communists? Does it even matter?

If the pandemic makes us realize that war is a useless exercise with few benefits, will the US military-industrial complex be defunded. Will the money then go to health care workers, to Peace Corps and AmeriCorps workers who will attempt to bring clean water and modern sanitary systems to developing countries? Will there be a push to create more sanitary conditions in the world so that pandemics don't get started? Plagues and pandemics before have motivated people to build modern sanitary systems in places like London and New York in the 19th century where urban populations in close proximity created the conditions of cholera and bubonic plague. Is homelessness a social situation we can no longer afford?

Will the meaning of 'essential services' become normalized in the economy post corinavirus? What then will be considered essential and what could we live without? As long as there is no vaccine for coronavirus, new cases will continue to crop up even after the economy has "reopened." The flu epidemic of 1918 lasted 10 months and had several spikes. We can expect more spikes in the current pandemic until there are widespread vaccinations available. So what is essential? Sports events? Cruises? Rock concerts? Movie theaters? Now with Netflix and Amazon prime we can watch movies at home. Any movie we want to see. I'm catching up on all the great movies I've missed over the years. Last night I watched "To Catch a Thief" with Cary Grant and Grace Kelly. Free on Amazon Prime. The fidelity  both video and audio was excellent on my smart TV. I have no need to go to a movie theater where I can't control the volume. Hint: they are too loud.

Perhaps now we can grasp the concept that cooperation among peoples and nations is more important than manufactured rivalries over some nation's form of government. Perhaps now we can grasp the concept that diplomacy is more important, getting along is more important and winning isn't everything. Maybe now public health and human rights can be seen as more important than having everyone pull themselves up only by their own bootstraps. Maybe we can get on with the business of cooperating to combat the real enemy - climate change and even future pandemics. Maybe we will bring the US infrastructure into the modern world with a Green New Deal. Maybe we can finally grow up and have a consensus about what is really important, what really matters. Maybe doctors, nurses, caregivers, and social workers will come to be seen as more important that Wall Street brokers, the Peace Corps and AmeriCorps as more important than the War Corps. As Governor Cuomo says, "Love will conquer all." Happy Easter.

Off the Top of My Head

Maybe the Shut Down of Non-Essential Businesses Should Be Made Permanent

by John Lawrence, March 27, 2020

As long as we have electricity, the internet, clean water, waste water disposal, full grocery markets, pharmacies, excellent health care, gas stations, trash collection and other essential businesses, perhaps the shut down of non-essential businesses is a good thing. Already it has cleaned up the environment and significantly reduced the emission of greenhouse gasses. What about all those unemployed people, you say? Put them to work in the Green New Deal building and repairing infrastructure throughout the country. If this COVID-19 thing lasts till January 20, 2021, I'm hoping President Joe Biden will do just that. And we should help build essential businesses in other parts of the world instead of engaging in military adventurism. Billions of people don't even have clean water, adequate sanitation, the internet, full grocery markets and other essential businesses.

Once these essential needs are taken care of for the entire world's population in such a way that GHG emissions are reduced to zero, then maybe some non-essential businesses could be reestablished. The pandemic goes to show that much of the US economy is based on non-essential businesses and the provision of non-essential goods and services. In fact not only are many of them non-essential, they are downright deleterious. Consider the gambling industry: downright deleterious. The movie and TV industry: about 70% deleterious. The fast food industry: 90% deleterious creating obesity and diabetes. Why isn't the school system educating people about nutrition? Many people have essentially a fast food diet. The food is cheap and ubiquitous, and people don't have time to create nutritious meals any more the way Moms used to when they didn't have to work to pay the mortgage and car payments.

The American way of life including may non-essential businesses is sickness producing. The profit oriented health care industry makes money off of sick people, not keeping people healthy. If everyone were healthy or were encouraged to lead healthy lifestyles, there would be far less sickness. But the stress induced by both spouses having to work leads to unhealthy lifestyles. Some families need 2 or 3 jobs just to make ends meet. The children are also subjected to a competitively oriented style of learning in which they are forced to compete with other children to get good grades so they can get into the best colleges. Instead maybe they should be encouraged to think in terms of what they want to do in their lives which would be a service to society in addition to affording a comfortable living for themselves.

More businesses considered to be non-essential:

Theaters, Salons and Spas, Racetracks, Shopping malls, Bowling alleys, Sporting and Concert Venues, Liquor stores, Bars, Cruises, Golf Courses, Resorts, Hair and Nail Salons.

Highly polluting industries and activities which are non-essential:

Most airline travel, the cruise industry, the travel and tourism industry, most automobile travel (use mass transit instead), most of the trucking industry (use rail instead), the beef industry, the hog industry, agribusiness (encourage small organic farms instead), most military and military-industrial complex, the plastic industry, the fossil fuel industry.

In Coronavirus Will Change the World Permanently. Here’s How. Mark Lawrence Schrad writes:

America has long equated patriotism with the armed forces. But you can’t shoot a virus. Those on the frontlines against coronavirus aren’t conscripts, mercenaries or enlisted men; they are our doctors, nurses, pharmacists, teachers, caregivers, store clerks, utility workers, small-business owners and employees. Like Li Wenliang and the doctors of Wuhan, many are suddenly saddled with unfathomable tasks, compounded by an increased risk of contamination and death they never signed up for.

When all is said and done, perhaps we will recognize their sacrifice as true patriotism, saluting our doctors and nurses, genuflecting and saying, “Thank you for your service,” as we now do for military veterans. We will give them guaranteed health benefits and corporate discounts, and build statues and have holidays for this new class of people who sacrifice their health and their lives for ours. Perhaps, too, we will finally start to understand patriotism more as cultivating the health and life of your community, rather than blowing up someone else’s community. Maybe the de-militarization of American patriotism and love of community will be one of the benefits to come out of this whole awful mess.

The same sentiments hold true for teachers and other caregivers. People that take care of people and encourage people to have better lives are the true heroes. The Peace Corps and AmeriCorps should be the preeminent national services not the Army, Navy, Air Force, Coast Guard and Marines. We need to spread good will in the world by spades instead of bullying the rest of the world with US sanctions. We should develop the equivalent of China's Belt and Road initiative and start building clean water plants, sanitation plants, industries which decrease pollution and plastic trash in the ocean. We need to clean the environment around the world not contribute to dirtying it. We need to help bring home all the refugees in refugee camps and guarantee the safety and security of Latin Americans so they don't become migrants and refugees.

Off the Top of My Head

Civilization and Its Discontents

by John Lawrence, March 22, 2020

Are we becoming more or less civilized? What does civilization even mean? Doesn't it mean that there is less conflict and more harmony among all the 9 billion human beings that inhabit the world? Doesn't it also mean an increased knowledge about how to care for the planet which is our common home? I don't think it means more and more stuff. There is something to be said for material well-being, but, after a certain level has been achieved, further increase only represents gluttony especially if it is not more or less equally distributed among all the earth's population. Progress towards civilization means less conflict, less war, not more freedom. Freedom is a component but is not essential to civilization. Love and diplomacy are.

By any measure human society is becoming less civilized and more solipsistic. The emphasis on extreme individualism and ego-centrism in the US has meant that the US has gone from the world's savior after WW II to the world's dominant and ruling empire placing itself and its prerogatives above the welfare of the world's people. The slogan for the French revolution was "Liberté, égalité, fraternité" and it's France's motto to this day. Although the American and French revolutions happened at about the same time and were based on many similar values, the US totally forgot about the fraternité part. It was replaced with "every man for himself and "don't tread on me." This emphasis on individualism without a corresponding emphasis on compassion and social responsibility was increased during the Reagan and Alan Greenspan era. Greenspan was an acolyte of Ayn Rand who brought a flower arrangement depicting a dollar bill to her funeral. Rand was an extreme individualist whose views didn't recognize any other validity than that which was central to her own mind.

Extreme individualism has found its latest proponent in Donald Trump who might have been a character in one of Ayn Rand's novels, a hero whose only interest was himself and his own interests without any regard for anyone else. Trump has projected this philosophy onto an entire nation with his motto of "America First." However, his real motto is "Trump first." Fraternité or brotherhood has nothing to do with Reagan's or Greenspan's or Ayn Rand's thought processes and there is a direct line among them and their influence on the US turning a once compassionate nation into the equivalent of the Roman Empire, but, whereas the Romans only sought to rule Western Civilization, Trumpism and the American Empire seeks control over the entire planet.

In recent days even Trump has uttered the words "We're all in this together." That's nice to know Mr Trump, but it took a global pandemic for Trump to realize or give credence to this sentiment. However, there is another pandemic that makes the coronavirus pale by comparison, and that is global warming and climate change with respect to which Trump has never uttered the same words and is not likely to. Instead Trump and his Republican progenitors have consistently sought to make America the world's preeminent nation and ruler of the world.  Civilization has retreated since the high point of the FDR administration. Even Democratic administrations other than that of Jimmy Carter have triangulated with the devil.

I come back to fraternité. Wouldn't there have been more progress towards civilization if this word had been taken more seriously and not just among Americans or Frenchmen, but among all human beings in a globalized world. Globalism in terms of civilization should lead to peace on earth and a reasonable distribution of material goods instead of a US which hoards everything for itself (the hoarding of toilet paper is symbolic!) and tries to dominate other nations with its military and its economic prowess in terms of the dollar being the world's reserve currency. Since the dollar has been weaponized by its application to sanctions, other currencies are seeking equivalency and will probably soon have it if not dominancy.

It's taken a world wide pandemic to make US leaders realize that we are all in this together. When the pandemic subsides, will this be the takeaway? Will it mean an increase in civilization in terms of understanding and compassion for all peoples of the earth? Will it mean an increase in diplomacy and a reduction in weapon caches? Will it mean a reduction in the size and expenditures on the military-industrial complex? Will it mean some sense of humility instead of hubris on the part of US leaders? In other words will the coronavirus pandemic have resulted in an increase in civilization? Hope springs eternal, but don't bet on it.

Off the Top of My Head

The Collective Sins of the Male Gender Visited on One Man: The Martyrdom of Harvey Weinstein

by John Lawrence, 2/20/2020

As part of the redefinition of male sexuality, we have the example of Harvey Weinstein, a man who thought he was having consensual sex except he wasn't. So has even the meaning of consensual sex been reversed? What does it even mean any more if someone wakes up the next day and decides that the sex they had the night before was not consensual? I'm sure that many of the women who had sex with Harvey Weinstein had in the back of their minds that it might lead to a job in the movie industry or even a role in a movie. Isn't that the way Hollywood's famous casting couch worked? When those potentialities didn't eventuate, some might have reinterpreted what just happened as sexual predation.

Marilyn Monroe wrote in her memoir, "My Story," “I met them all. Phoniness and failure were all over them. Some were vicious and crooked. But they were as near to the movies as you could get. So you sat with them, listening to their lies and schemes. And you saw Hollywood with their eyes — an overcrowded brothel, a merry-go-round with beds for horses.”

“The womanizing habits coming out that Harvey was prone to have a long history in the film business,” film critic and historian David Thomson said. “Attitudes change. We’re shocked now.”

“Once upon a time,” he said, “the general feeling was that women going into the movies to get a job as an actress … should not be surprised if they were propositioned, if they had to do pretty nasty things to get ahead. It happened across the whole film business. It’s regrettable.”

Jan-Christopher Horak, director of the UCLA Film & Television Archive and a professor of critical and media studies said that “Louis B. Mayer was known as an unbelievable satyr, the Harvey Weinstein of back then. Harvey Weinstein was doing it at a time when you couldn’t do it any more. You had the women’s movement in the late 1960s, early 1970s."

So what about the situation when a man using all his powers of persuasion convinces a woman to have sex with him. You might even consider this a seduction. She might have thought that this relationship was going somewhere - he might have even suggested that - and when it didn't, she might have felt betrayed. Who wouldn't? If she had certain expectations, if she had been led to believe certain expectations, and then, when they didn't pan out, she might have reinterpreted the sex part of it as predation or harassment. Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned. No one is angrier than a woman who has been rejected in love. She may have not even been thinking that her partner was going to give her a job or a role in a movie. She just may have been visualizing a relationship leading eventually to marriage and a family. That may not be what the man had in mind. So in her mind he was a scumbag. In his mind he was an excellent salesman, and , like all salesmen, he was essentially selling himself.

Mores change; sexual morality changes. Not too long ago it was considered sinful to have sex outside of marriage. "An American Tragedy" by Theodore Dreiser told the story of a woman, not only betrayed but pregnant and drowned by her lover. It's a recurring tragedy in American life. It was made into a movie, "A Place in the Sun" starring Montgomery Clift, Elizabeth Taylor and Shelley Winters, the pregnant woman betrayed. It was based on the real life murder of Grace Brown by Chester Gillette in 1906 which resulted in Gillette's conviction and execution by electric chair in 1908. The birth control pill changed sexual mores again. It was now possible to have sex without the potential consequence of pregnancy. I suppose Harvey Weinstein and many other males figured that they were off the hook, that now sex without responsibility was really possible. This after all is what most males wanted. Women went along because they didn't have to fear getting pregnant, and their expectations might have been that sex was the initial part of a relationship that would go somewhere.

Somewhere along the line women started to feel taken advantage of. Most of them wanted something more than a one night stand. No matter how long the relationship lasted, when it ended they felt resentful and bitter. All of these feelings have been collectively visited on the head of one man - Harvey Weinstein - for whom consensual sex is not an argument considered by a court of law to have any validity any more. You can't go back and prosecute Jack Warner or Louis B. Mayer, but you can make Harvey pay for all the collective sins of the male progenitors of the movie industry and by implication all the rest of the males that were influenced by the Playboy philosophy that Hugh Hefner so ably represented. The #MeToo movement sounded the death knoll for consensual sex.

Once again sexual mores have shifted. There is no such thing as consensual sex, or, if there is, it is no longer a no fault situation. Fault and blame is to be attributed, most likely from the woman to the hapless man who thought he was off the hook because he thought the sex was consensual. Even if the sex has not led to pregnancy, a man can no longer be assured that there are no consequences. Jealousy rears its ugly head. Resentment rears its ugly head. Women and men are definitely not on the same wavelength regarding sex. Women feel taken advantage of even when they evidently consented. Consensuality is no longer a meaningful term. In fact it is meaningless, and in the case of Harvey Weinstein, he must become a martyr for the male sex for all their sins, for all of the outrages that have been visited by men on the female sex.

Off the Top of My Head

During WW II, Cars and Gas Were Rationed. Would the American People Accept Such Sacrifices in the War on Global Warming?

by John Lawrence, March 10, 2020

Evidently not. Despite warnings that we have less than 10 years to do something before there is runaway global warming, nothing much has been done. Yet the coronavirus has set the world's consciousness on fire in just a few short weeks. Why hasn't global warming gotten the world so up in arms? During WW II everybody had a job; everybody worked, yet there were government mandated limits on consumption. All kinds of things were rationed especially cars and gas. Yet economic activity expanded due to ramping up the war effort. Today the economy is going into a tailspin because large crowds have been proscribed. All the money that has been added to GDP by music events and professional athletics has gone bye-bye. This is not necessarily a bad thing because people might be better off staying home and reading a good book rather than being out at a sporting event. I know. I know this is a very unpopular opinion.

The point is that, during WW II people had the basic necessities, and everyone was employed. They just couldn't have the icing on the cake until after the war when rationing was lifted. Then the economy boomed. Perhaps there is a lesson here for how to mobilize a society to get a handle on global warming.  In the few short weeks that government spokesmen have decried cruise ship and airplane travel, green house gas emissions (GHGs) have actually decreased. If the government proscribed these and other activities such as automobile travel (think gas rationing), GHGs would decrease even more rapidly. Then, if the government went on an investment spree in terms of renewable energy the way it did on planes and battleships during WWII, there would be full employment. People would just be limited temporarily until this war is won in how they could actually spend their money just like in WWII.

Then after a totally green economy is achieved fueled by green renewable energy, the barriers on spending money would be lifted. Could this even work? Some authors don't think so. William Greider writes in "Secrets of the Temple":

World War II was a model of the possible. In theory, if a national consensus of purpose developed, if people would accept temporary limits on their economic choices as well as regulatory controls on wages and prices, the nation could literally rebuild itself, almost overnight. With the right choices, America could practically double the productive capacity of its economy and advance innovation and dramatically multiply new wealth and incomes. These economic choices, however, were really political questions: who would take the sacrifices and who would take the rewards? Whose consumption would be restrained and whose production would be encouraged. All this consigned extraordinary powers to government, perhaps tolerable only in war. No one, including the most ardent Keynesian planners, has ever figured out how to recreate a comparable combination of creative sacrifices in peacetime or how to sell it to a free society.

And that, dear reader is the crux of the matter. How do you sell the necessary war time effort to combat global warming to a free society? Sure the coronavirus has had the salutary effect of decreasing cruise ship and airplane travel with the concomitant decrease in GHG emissions. At the same time the stock market has gone into a tailspin. If the same kind of effort were made in behalf of global warming, we could expect the stock market to go into the mother of all tailspins. Is it worth it or should we consign future generations to the fate of runaway global warming and an uninhabitable planet?

Abraham Maslow wrote a book, "Towards a Psychology of Being" in which he identified a pyramid of needs starting with D-needs. D-needs are the basic needs of food, air, water, housing and clothing. You might throw in medical care.Then, as you ascend the pyramid, higher order needs are revealed once the lower order needs are met. At the top he identified B-needs or self-actualization which might mean developing all your latent higher order capacities such as becoming a great musician. What seems to me to have happened though is that society has intervened in this process to impose superfluous needs on people. Let's call them S-needs. These needs have to do with all the materialistic consumption that a commercial society imposes or tries to impose on people through advertising so that Maslow's higher order needs are really short-circuited. That's why I say that staying home and reading a good book might be more beneficial in and of itself than attending  a professional sporting event in addition to protecting one from the coronavirus.

What an enlightened society would do to combat global warming is exactly what America did during WW II. D-needs were well satisfied due to a full employment society in which certain kinds of consumption were discouraged while making sure that everyone was fed, clothed, housed and had adequate medical treatment. Could in Greider's words a " national consensus of purpose develop" in which people felt it was more important to delay certain kinds of consumption in order to develop the green infrastructure needed to get global warming under control? The world needs America's leadership on this because America is largely responsible for the GHGs already in the atmosphere, and, if America will not have a sense of urgency, why should any other nation which is just starting to develop a consumer culture?

Off the Top of My Head

If Biden Wins, Amy Klobuchar Will Be His Running Mate

by John Lawrence

Amy is already campaigning for Joe in Michigan which will be the pivotal state that will determine whether it will be Biden or Sanders. After Tuesday we should know who is going to be the Democratic nominee. Biden won some states on super Tuesday without even having campaigned there or bought one TV ad. His impressive showing on super Tuesday seems to indicate that Democrats want the safe middle of the road candidate to represent them against Donald Trump. Bernie's young voters didn't turn out in big enough numbers. Well, if Joe is the candidate, they won't get their student loan debt forgiven. That's for sure. And we seniors won't get any big increases in our social securitychecks. Joe will mean business as usual even if he beats Trump which he probably won't. I think Trump will beat him like a drum rather than the opposite which Joe proclaims all the time.

For Bernie this will be his last hurrah. One thing is for sure: he has gotten his message out there. The Dems went for the establishment candidate in 2016, and Trump beat her like a drum. The same will probably be true this time around especially if the economy is good. Joe Biden has an absolutely uninspiring message: more of the same from the Obama era. It wasn't that great in the first place. Obamacare was a mishmash thanks to Obama's determination to compromise with Republicans and Republicans turning Obamacare into a bete noir. Obama also is notable for bailing out the banks while not bailing out the many homeowners that went into foreclosure.

Joe Biden will try to coast along for 4 years. That's not what America or the world needs. Trump, for all his mendacity is slightly more mentally alert than Biden and more likely to land punishing blows if there is a Biden Trump debate. Then again Trump may decide not to debate, but to rely on his acolytes like Fox News and numerous devotees to carry his water. With all the ad money at his disposal that would probably win the day. Too bad Bernie's supporters just didn't show up to vote. Maybe they will in Michigan. The country and the world really need Bernie at this critical juncture.

So what will we get with 4 more years of Trump. Four more years of climate change denying which is really what the American people want from their President because they value the American lifestyle more than they value a habitable earth for future generations. Wall Street emphasizes short term profits, and most Americans are imbued with the short term profit mantra. They don't really care what happens to the earth in the future if they have to make sacrifices in their lifestyles now.. It's the American way. Just maximize your profits.

Off the Top of My Head

The American Dream Better Realized in Democratic Socialist Denmark

by John Lawrence, February 20, 2020

In the other night's Democratic debate Pete Buttigieg mentioned that the American Dream is alive and well ... wait for it ...  in Denmark. As for America itself, there are 10 other countries in which it's easier to realize the American Dream which is that the children "do better" than their parents. "Doing better" has the dubious meaning of having more money. Leaving aside the fact that there are other dimensions to "doing better", America seems to be falling behind other nations when it comes to children starting low and achieving high. Democratic socialist Bernie Sanders should have jumped on this as he's often put down as a democratic socialist. But, heck, if the American Dream is more easily achievable in a democratically socialist country like Denmark, this sort of makes Bernie's case, doesn't it?. By the way they have universal health care as a human right and free college education which are things that Bernie never fails to mention as a part of his debate spiel.

In an article in Politifact Steven Rattner said: "The United States is behind many countries in Europe in terms of the ability of every kid in America to get ahead." The article went on:

Families at all earning levels were growing together after World War II but have been growing apart since in the decades since, Krueger wrote. The country’s top earners have pulled a lot further ahead than the middle and lower class, he said, and the trend line suggests the future earnings of today’s children will be tied more and more to the income level of their parents.

"Not since the Roaring 20s has the share of income going to the very top reached such high levels," Krueger said, according to prepared remarks.

Krueger compared income inequality of 10 developed countries with the correlation between a parent’s income and their children’s (it’s more complicated than we described, check out the details in Krueger’s presentation or this Bloomberg infographic). The "Gatsby Curve" showed economic possibilities for children in European countries such as Finland, Norway, Denmark, Sweden, Germany and France were much less connected to their parents’ income than in the United States and United Kingdom.

MarketWatch reported in an article entitled Sorry America, Norway ranks No. 1 for ‘life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness’:

The U.S. doesn’t rank among the Top 10 on a list of 155 countries

In fact, Norway ranked No. 1 for happiness and personal freedom, according to an analysis of three separate studies on life expectancy by the World Bank, on civil liberties from Freedom House, a New York-based nonprofit that conducts research on advocacy and democracy, on happiness from the Sustainable Development Solutions Network (SDSN), a group linked to the United Nations, and on rule of law from the World Justice Project, a Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit.

The analysis was released by information-analytics firm LexisNexis [which] found that countries that have established a strong rule of law have significantly more success in securing measures of life, liberty and happiness for their citizens. Sweden ranked No. 2 and Canada was No. 3, followed by Australia, the Netherlands, Finland and Austria. The U.S. ranked No. 19 just behind the Czech Republic, Japan and France. Afghanistan ranked last at No. 98.

Norway ranked No. 1 for happiness, the U.S. was No. 14

Norway was also No. 1 out of 155 countries on the 2017 “World Happiness Report,” up from No. 4 the year before, followed by Denmark (last year’s No. 1), Iceland and Switzerland. The U.S. was trailing at No. 14. These four countries rank highly on all the main factors found to support happiness: caring, freedom, generosity, honesty, health, income and good governance. “Their averages are so close that small changes can re-order the rankings from year to year,” the report said.

These kinds of reports should add fuel to the fire of Bernie Sanders' message that not only do people in these countries have a better chance of attaining the American Dream, these countries are socialist democracies which guarantee health care as a human right and offer free college education. No one in these countries has any student loan debt.

Not only that but, whereas the US is $20 trillion in national debt, Norway has a sovereign wealth fund.  It has over $1 trillion dollars in assets, including 1.4% of global stocks and shares, making it the world’s largest sovereign wealth fund. In May 2018 it was worth about $195,000 per Norwegian citizen. It also holds portfolios of real estate and fixed-income investments. Many companies are excluded by the fund on ethical grounds.

Bernie Sanders should have driven Pete Buttigieg's point home. Now only are democratic socialist countries better off in terms of education and health care, they are also better off in terms of the wealth they own, a far cry from a debtor nation like the US that spends all its money on military adventurism. Each man, woman and child in America is responsible for $61,124.69 of that debt. The denouement is clear: US citizens are net debtors in terms of the national debt. Norwegian citizens are net creditors.

Off the Top of My Head

Cognitive Dissonance: Oil, the Basis of our Economy, Causes Global Warming. We Must Stop Using Oil. What Does This Mean for our Economy?

by John Lawrence, January 29, 2020

It's unthinkable that we would just keep using fossil fuels and let the earth burn up, but fossil fuels are the basis of our economy. The solution is to totally restructure the economy as we have known it. That's a big task which not everyone is in favor of. In stark terms would you like to lower your lifestyle by a factor of 2 in order to save the planet? Not many people would, and not many people would vote for that. Global warming is already impacting the planet in terms of extreme weather and climate catastrophes. Fires, floods, hurricanes, tornadoes, extreme heat, drought, loss of habitat, acidification of oceans, these are just a few of the anomalies besetting our planet.

Up to now, however, all these disasters collectively have only affected a minority of the people of the earth. Those who have been affected have suffered greatly. The loss of a home to a fire, the loss of a whole town as in the Paradise fire, still the majority of people have not been affected. Puerto Rico, Haiti and other Caribbean islands have been wiped out, but still the majority of people in America have not been affected. Crop failures and habitat loss have affected people elsewhere, but still our supermarkets are well stocked, our economy is still booming, FedEx trucks roam the streets delivering packages. There is no shortage of consumer items.

There is not a sense of urgency regarding climate change, and there is a sense of foreboding regarding the sacrifices that must be made to restore planet earth to some sort of natural balance. Fossil fuels need to be replaced by renewables, but will this change be shockingly abrupt or will it come about gradually. If it comes about gradually, it may be too little, too late, to prevent the dreaded "tipping point" at which planet earth will not be able to recover from runaway climate change. Must drastic action be taken and how will this affect the stock market? How will it affect a consumer economy like that in the US? Will there be a recession? A depression? How will this affect property values? Taxes? The stock market?

The economy must be totally restructured, but not only in America ... in the entire world. The world economy is predicated on the dollar being the world's reserve currency. What is the meaning of a reserve currency when major parts of the world are burning up? What happens to property values when large areas of property are suddenly subjected to huge increases in insurance because they are either in a fire zone or a flood zone? What happens to the stock market if Wall Street is under water for weeks at a time which is entirely thinkable because it has already happened but not for weeks fortunately. Will the President use sanctions to make sure Americans have the resources and products they need at the expense of other peoples and nations? Will he call out the military to make sure we are adequately supplied when there are scarce supplies?

During the Great Depression radical measures were taken to get the economy back on its feet again, but there was no need to address the destruction of planet earth concomitantly. Now there is a need to do both, but half the population is in the thrall of a climate change denier. We're definitely not all pulling in the same direction. That means that at least 50% of Americans want things to stay as they are and don't believe in, don't care about or refuse to consider the consequences of climate change. Some people allow that climate change is a reality and want something to be done about it as long as it doesn't disrupt their lifestyle too much. How many are willing to put their lives and their lifestyles on the line to forestall climate change?

The people really affected are children and young people who will have to bear the brunt of the disruption if it happens in an uncontrolled and unplanned manner. If it happens because their elders were mainly interested in maintaining their lifestyles and keeping their level of prosperity and didn't want to take radical action, then youth, rightly so, will heap opprobrium and castigation on their elders. They will lose all respect for them. They will say much harsher things than "How dare you!" which was uttered by Greta Thunberg in a recent speech at the United Nations. She also said:

You have stolen my dreams and my childhood with your empty words. And yet I'm one of the lucky ones. People are suffering. People are dying.

Entire ecosystems are collapsing. We are in the beginning of a mass extinction, and all you can talk about is money, and fairy tales of eternal economic growth. How dare you!

She also might have said that we are still giving subsidies to the fossil fuel industry and spending trillions on the military and military-industrial complex. Greta's condemnation is a harbinger of the condemnation which will ultimately be given to those who will maintain the status quo at all costs including the cost of consigning their children to a horrible fate.