California Free Press

Off the Top of My Head

These Two Things Do Not Compute: Shutting Down the American Government and Lecturing the World About the Virtues of American Democracy

by John Lawrence

The US power structure dominates the world in terms of its military bases. The US controls about 750 bases in at least 80 countries worldwide and spends more on its military than the next 10 countries combined. The US also controls the world's financial transactions. The dollar’s role as the primary reserve currency for the global economy allows the United States to borrow money more easily and impose painful financial sanctions. With the US' dominant position in world affairs, you would think that it would be impossible for a handful of representatives in Congress to shut down the entire US government. But that is exactly the situation the US and the world is in. The US is the leader in world affairs. Yet the leader can't even keep the lights on. Other countries are looking at this. Nixon called the US a pitiful, helpless giant. He said, "If, when the chips are down, the worlds most powerful nation, the United States of America, acts like a pitiful, helpless giant, the forces of totalitarianism and anarchy will threaten free nations and free institutions throughout the world." So what is the US when its government shuts down? Exactly that: a pitiful, helpless giant. Its military personnel on the 750 military bases won't get paid. How's that for demoralizing the military? Service members will continue to report for duty, though they will not get paid during a shutdown. And many of the hundreds of thousands of civilians who work for the Department of Defense will likely be furloughed, says White House National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby. Air traffic controllers will not get paid either although they will be required to report for work as well. Does that portend more close calls at airports?

The world is watching. American diplomats are fond of lecturing other world leaders about the pitfalls and shortcomings of their governments. However, their governments probably would not be caught in the pickle of a complete government shutdown. Nor would the governments of the civilized world, with the exception of the US, contemplate putting a person with 91 criminal indictments into the position of their President. The US is much in the need of updating. It is giving democracy a bad name in the sense that the national dialogue is turning into a clown show. Trump's rallies are providing entertainment for his base which is an audience that is more addicted to being entertained than it is to supporting a leader who is devoted to improving their lives. This reminds me of Hitler's rallies which were designed as pageantry for its entertainment value. It sure enthralled the German people. People are loyal to a leader who entertains them, who moves them, not one who will use the legitimate levers of government to improve their lives or to make the country and/or the world a better place. Joe Biden is the opposite. He has made the country and the world a better place despite not being very entertaining. That's why he's not leading Trump in the poles. Trump's base (cult) are excited by Trump. Biden's base, if you could call it a base, are ho hum. Oh well, I guess he's done some good, but I'm not excited. For Trump's base excitement is the sine qua non.

Getting back to the military NPR reports the following:

Separately, the Department of Defense says post and base services would be closed or limited, while elective surgeries and procedures in its medical and dental facilities would have to be postponed. Commissaries would remain open overseas but close in the U.S.

And certain Pentagon activities, like operational planning and military recruitment, will be paused.

Defense officials warned earlier this week that a shutdown would strategically "play into the hands of U.S. competitors" because it would cost time as well as money. Deputy Pentagon Press Secretary Sabrina Singh called it "the worst thing that could happen."

"The U.S. military's going to continue to do its job and protect our national security interests, and of our allies and partners as well," she said, adding that a shutdown would make those efforts harder. "When you don't have your full operating capacity to be able to help with the mission, to be able to conduct an exercise or training, of course, that gets to our national security and readiness."

Kirby agrees that a prolonged shutdown could harm national security, especially when it comes to delayed management of DOD contracts for things like maintenance, logistics and procurement.

So five Republican representatives can act collectively as dictators to threaten national security as well as domestic tranquillity, and there's absolutely nothing anybody can do about it. This is democracy in action? This is the vaunted "rule of law"? What exactly is this except a fly in the ointment of democracy or in any system that purports to be a democracy and what does this say about the world's military and financial leader? Other countries are watching this spectacle.

Off the Top of My Head

Barbie and Taylor Swift Prop Up US Economy

by John Lawrence

The Federal Reserve has credited Barbie and Taylor Swift with propping up the US economy. The Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia announced this month that Taylor Swift's tour helped boost travel and tourism in the region, a claim also made by several other U.S. cities regarding the musician's widely popular concerts. The US consumer is amusing itself to death. Meanwhile, the earth is burning up or in fact boiling. One would think that, if the climate situation were so dire, there would be an 'all hands on deck' effort to fight the war on climate change. But, nope, Americans are propping up the economy and in so doing are contributing even more fossil fuel emissions into the atmosphere thus hastening rather than retarding climate change. Even as some American cities - namely Phoenix, Las Vegas and Palm Springs - are sweltering under temperatures greater than 110 degrees Fahrenheit, even with the handwriting on the wall, Americans are dealing with this crisis by going to the movies and to Taylor Swift concerts. Taylor had better beware that she may get a container of coke thrown at her or even chicken nuggets while she struts about the stage. Cardi B got so mad when a "fan" threw her drink at her that she threw her microphone at the fan.

Newsflash: Americans attending Taylor Swift concerts aren't the same Americans who fought World War II. The era of Americans foregoing consumer delights in order to commit themselves to a long hard slog in the name of world peace, freedom and democracy is over. In fact, politically speaking, a major portion of Americans, not a majority hopefully, would rather be entertained by a clown like Trump than to have to ask themselves what they can do for their country as John F. Kennedy suggested. "Ask not what your country can do for you," Kennedy intoned. Well, that question has been answered. What this country can do for Americans is to provide them with entertainment like Barbie and Taylor Swift. And "what you can do for America" is to go to the movies and attend concerts spending your money in order to keep the economy afloat.

The U.N. chief issued a stark warning on climate change this week: “The era of global warming has ended; the era of global boiling has arrived,” António Guterres declared in a news briefing, as scientists confirmed that July is set to become Earth’s hottest month on record. But, boiling or not, most Americans just want to be entertained and to consume all the merchandise that goes with it. Taylor Swift and Beyoncé have been moving markets, quite literally. The Federal Reserve has tracked the striking effect of Taylor Swift's tour on host cities. One analysis estimates it could generate almost $5 billion in global revenue. When Beyoncé comes to town, hotels, hair stylists and bartenders all get a boost, according to Yelp. "Despite the slowing recovery in tourism in the region overall, one contact highlighted that May was the strongest month for hotel revenue in Philadelphia since the onset of the pandemic, in large part due to an influx of guests for the Taylor Swift concerts in the city," the [Federal] reserve wrote in the Beige Book, which is published by the regional banks to share information about the state of the economy.

Have Americans degenerated to the point that when given a choice between letting the earth boil and become unfit for human habitation and entertaining themselves, they would choose to entertain themselves. This is literally "amusing ourselves to death." Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business (1985) is a book by educator Neil Postman. Postman sees television's entertainment value as a present-day "soma", the fictitious pleasure drug in Brave New World, by means of which the citizens' rights are exchanged for consumers' entertainment. Postman was on to something. In the current scenario, though, citizens' responsibilities are being exchanged for consumers' entertainment. In America, as we have been promised, our only responsibility is to enjoy our freedom even if that means that we succumb to the future of a boiling earth.

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

Our Grandchildren Won't Have to Pay Back Money Spent on a Green New Deal, But They Will Pay With Their Lives if We Don't Do It Now

by John Lawrence

It's a myth that a sovereign country with a sovereign currency and a floating exchange rate has to borrow money to pay its bills. The US can just issue the money. It doesn't need to tax in order to spend. So why isn't the US as well as all the other nations with sovereign currencies such as Japan, Britain and China going all out to supply as much money as necessary to prevent global warming from "going viral" as they say? The only restraint is the question of whether the human and physical resources to do the work are available. In a society such as China, if the government wanted its people to stop whatever they were doing and become part of the work force to forestall global warming, it would be done. In the US it would not be so easy to commandeer workers to leave their jobs as servers, bartenders, chefs, dealers, workers at Disneyland, workers on cruise ships etc to leave their jobs and go to work in Joe Biden's global warming and infrastructure rebuilding work force. The businesses large and small would have a conniption fit like they're having now getting these workers back to work because their pandemic unemployment has not run out.

The only time when workers went all out to solve a major global problem was World War II. Rosie the Riveter and all the others joined the work force to defeat Hitler. They even were willing to defer consumption so that the financial and material resources that were necessary weren't spent in the consumption market thus letting the necessary physical resources be available for the war effort. Today we have a nation consisting of a bunch of spoiled brats who wouldn't do anything the government asked them to do crying that their "freedom" to do whatever they wanted was paramount. We live in a society composed of consumers who demand to be endlessly entertained by movies, TV, theme parks cruise ships, athletes, restaurants, social media and Las Vegas. Half the country works as servers, baristas, bartenders, housekeepers, actors, athletes, dealers, entertainers and such like jobs to entertain the top half. Some of these are highly paid; most are not. Such was the nature of the "full employment" society before COVID hit. It was a full employment society consisting of trivial jobs at minimum wages for the most part. Biden will have to persuade workers to leave their jobs in the "entertainment" industry in order to create actual results in the real world such as building green infrastructure. The entertainment industry will not be pleased nor will the upper half of society which demands to be continually entertained. 70% of US GNP is consumption and a lot of what people want to consume is encompassed by sports bars, travel and tourism, the leisure and hospitality industry in general. The spoiled brats think its their birthright to have such services available, and the last thing they want to do is to roll up their sleeves and join a union.

Together with the presumed right to be entertained, we have a large percentage of the country that has been processed through the military and developed this consciousness that military prerogatives should prevail uber alles. These are the insurrectionists and Trump supporters that want civilian society to reinforce military values such as command and control. They want an autocrat for President. Freedom is the only value that counts for them. Democracy, equality, fraternity, social equity don't matter. They want to preserve the American way of life which, in addition to a right to be entertained wherever and whenever they have the resources to consume, includes also the right to exclude the prerogatives of minorities for social justice. Is it any wonder that the insurrectionists in January 6 contained a large number of current and former members of the military and police forces? Their attitude is that whatever is good for the military is good for American society in general. The military has become a way of life and consciousness for them. They think that, because they served, they are entitled. Spoiled brat militarists I'll call them. The endless wars, bloated military-industrial complex budget and the military bases in practically every country in the world provides the economic and job base of the nation unfortunately.

Biden thinks he is out to prove that American democracy can compete in the civilian world on an equally competent basis with other countries. That will be a hard nut to crack. The US is dooming itself in two ways: the First and Second Amendments to the Constitution. Let's take the Second Amendment first. In no other major country in the world do citizens have a right to unlimited uncontrolled gun ownership including military style weapons. This is producing news cycles when, hardly is one mass murder out of the way, than another one comes along to dominate the news. The news channels can hardly keep up with them all. No other society including The US' major competitors would tolerate such a situation. The Second Amendment has become toxic and perverted, and in and of itself is enough to doom the US to second class status. In addition to that the First Amendment has become toxic and perverted, and the major reason for that is social media. Social media makes possible the vicious spread of toxic lies and untruths. Witness Trump's use of Twitter to corral and consolidate his followers around the thesis that he, not Biden, actually won the election. Social media allowed him to rally his supporters based on angry themes and memes connected with white supremacy and a return to the good old days when white, Protestant Anglo Saxons ran the country, the good old days when Negroes knew their place in society, the good old days when you didn't have multiple nationalities and religious groups asserting their rights under the Constitution to live freely and enjoy all the perquisites of American society, the good old days when gas guzzlers were the only vehicles in town and no one need be concerned about anything except maximizing their profits and living the American Dream, where the American Dream consisted of having more stuff than your parents did.

Joe Biden's first 100 days have been remarkable in that he has been able to get as much accomplished with slim majorities in both Houses of Congress. Is this enough though to move America forward at the pace that China, for instance, is moving? China is a more or less unified society. 99% or more of Chinese citizens are on the same page as the Chinese government. China is winning friends and allies all over the world with its Belt and Road initiative while the US withers away its resources on endless wars and confuses its allies with the possibility of radical swings with each change of administrations. China's military budget of $183.5 billion is dwarfed by a US military budget 5 times that amount. The US is a divided country where one of the major parties base their appeal on lies and deception, and its supporters are only too willing to eat it up because it's entertaining and represents military values of command and control. Good government, as Biden has illustrated, is somewhat boring because it is based on solving real human problems. Let's hope that Biden's version of reality based on truth and problem solving wins out over the lies based reality of the other side, and the US, even if it doesn't remain the world's dominant power, can become a constructive member of the world community helping to solve problems at home and abroad.

Off the Top of My Head

The Stock Market is Too Big to Fail

by John Lawrence, April 2, 2021

Just as the big Wall Street banks are too big to fail, so now is the stock market. The stock market will never take another radical dive downward because the Federal Reserve won't let it. The way the economy is shaping up Treasury bonds, which hardly pay any interest, are just a safe place to store your money and also for foreign nations which need the world's reserve currency (the US dollar) to have a savings account because they need dollars to conduct business. There is no worry that the US will have to pay off the trillion dollars in Treasuries that China owns because they need those dollars to do business with the US and other nations. If they did want to dump all their Treasuries for some reason the Fed could just create the money to pay them and effectively take the Treasuries on its own balance sheet.

So the stock market is the only game in town for those who want to actually "invest" their money. There is so much 401(k) money in the stock market that that is reason enough to never let it fail. Instead it will continue on its merry way upward while the Fed keeps interest rates at approximately zero so that not much in the way of interest will have to be paid on US debt. There is no reason to fear that Joe Biden's $2 trillion infrastructure plan will bankrupt the US. Since the US dollar is a sovereign currency, the Fed can print as much money as it wants. If international investors don't want to buy this debt, it ends up on the Fed's balance sheet which is an effective black hole from which it never has to emerge.

Then why is there all this kibuki theater about "how to pay for it," the $2 trillion infrastructure plan I mean. It's just that most Americans including most Congressmen are under the illusion that a country with a sovereign currency like the US faces any constraints in paying for anything. Well, there is one constraint - inflation. This is probably of little concern as long as the money is targeted at the lower middle class an the poor which haven't seen wages rise in 40 years. The real inflation in the economy is the asset inflation that the rich are mostly responsible for. That includes the stock market and real estate. Inflation in the stock market will be carefully controlled by the Fed. We've seen that the stock market moved up even during the pandemic. The real problem is inflation in the real estate market which has made housing unaffordable for many. It continues to get worse as the extra dollars the wealthy have to invest are driving up prices. That's why it makes sense to tax the rich ostensibly to pay for the infrastructure bill. The real reason, however, is that inequality is getting out of hand in the American and the world economy. Taxing the rich is the only effective means to reduce inequality to a reasonable level. It will also help to bring inflation in the real estate market under control.

The real problem that Biden's infrastructure bill will have to deal with is changing the nature of the US economy. When the economy was in full employment under Trump, there were still 4% unemployed. 5% unemployment is considered "full employment," but that still leaves about 15 million people out of work. Biden's infrastructure plan will put those 5% back to work. It had been considered by conservative neoliberal economists that 5% unemployment was necessary to ward off inflation, but that theory has been debunked by Modern Monetary Theory. While inflation will still be a concern with all of Biden's stimulus spending, the main concern is restructuring the US economy from an entertainment economy to a constructive labor economy. Trump's economy was arguably a full employment economy (except for the 4% unemployed), but it was an economy the jobs of which were mainly in the entertainment and military industries. In other words, in my opinion, it was an economy based on false unbeneficial values. An economy based on labor participation rebuilding American infrastructure will be an economy based on necessary and fundamentally beneficial values. This might mean that some of those presently employed in frivolous industries might be incentivized to change jobs. Reducing the entertainment and military sectors while increasing those employed rebuilding infrastructure would be, in my opinion, be a good thing.

 

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

Politics as Entertainment

by John Lawrence, June 23, 2020

Trump is entertaining his base with campaign rallies and his other antics. What if, in response to one of his outrageous statements like "We've got the best testing in the world," someone got up and booed loudly? What if others joined in? What if fewer and fewer people came to his entertainment rallies, and everyone booed in unison? What if he had to be escorted off the stage by his secret service contingent? Am I dreaming?

Best testing in the world? One of my friends in her seventies called to make an appointment to get a test. They told her it would be 3 days before she could get an appointment and then 5 days before she would get the results. This makes the test next to useless. She could have died before she got her test results. Best testing in the world? I don't think so. Now UCSD is proposing to have a 24 hour turn around time for testing with kits placed around campus and their own lab for getting the results. This might allow students to return to campus. 24 hour turn around time is reasonable; 7-10 days is not.

Ever since Ronald Reagan the American people have been fascinated with unqualified entertainers as Presidents much to the detriment of American society. Americans are literally being entertained to death. But we demand to be entertained. And we are used to being entertained by uninformed, deliberately misleading information. Consider TV commercials. They don't give us accurate information. They are more concerned with selling us a product by any means necessary so they entertain us. What if a guy got on TV and said, "You know my competitor's product is actually a better value than the one my company is selling." This would be heresy, worse than any form of religious heresy. The perpetrator would be immediately fired from his or her job and banned to the hinterlands.

Entertainers with no expertise in government are in no position to guide this country. Americans elect them at their peril. In the last election Americans had a choice between an entertainer with no government experience whatsoever and a woman with the best curriculum vitae in American history. I don't agree with all the positions she had taken in the past, but there is no doubt she was more than well qualified for the job while Donald Trump was not. At least Ronald Reagan had been Governor of California.

Fake news has led us to a fake President in Donald Trump. The most unprepared and governmentally illiterate President in American history. Yet people bought all his buffoonery and fakery because that is what they are used to. That's what they like. They as well as the President are illiterate in citizenship by and large, at least those in Trump's so-called "base." Critical thinking is not the hallmark of Trump's base. Hitler entertained the German people with torchlight parades and campaign rallies. Trump hasn't gotten to the point of torch light parades yet, but he is getting there.

Off the Top of My Head

The Fed Will Have Given About a Trillion Dollars a Year to Rich People Since 2008 by the End of 2020

by John Lawrence

The Federal Reserve prints money and gives it to rich people. According to CNBC, it will have printed about $10 trillion by the end of 2020. This policy is called quantitative easing. It represents a Universal Basic Income (UBI) for rich people, but so far, despite Andrew Yang's proposal and the Second Great Depression we find ourselves in due to the coronavirus, there is no UBI in the works for the rest of us. In addition the Fed has lowered interest rates to zero for rich people, but credit card rates for poor people still top 30%. So the rich can borrow unlimited amounts of money to buy up all the foreclosures and failing businesses caused by the Second Great Depression.

The economy is not going to bounce back to where it was which was an economy in which consumerism was 70% of GDP. There just is no way when large scale venues and bars operating at 25% capacity will be the norm for the foreseeable future. There is also the possibility of multiple waves or spikes in the number of cases as states and cities try to open too much too soon. Plus people are just not going to feel comfortable going on cruises and going to professional sports venues until there is a vaccine which is not a foregone conclusion that one can even be developed. The economy as it existed pre pandemic was one in which we were entertaining ourselvesr to death. It was an economy built on entertainment, an economy predicated on selling each other lattes. Even though we can still be entertained at home via TV and via the internet, there is still a substantial enough loss of revenues and jobs that the economy will stumble along at half or three quarters speed unless a fundamental change is made in how the economy functions.

Government investment in the economy similar to FDR's New Deal is not only necessary to get the economy working again, it is essential to change an economy of entertainment and titillation to an economy where real and essential work will once again be the norm. We have a multi trillion dollar deficit in infrastructure in the US. This can be addressed by forgetting the defunct economy consisting of selling each other lattes and putting people to work doing real and essential jobs. This will also contribute to a revitalization of the American spirit. America was built by people doing real work whether that was in agriculture or manufacturing and not by people entertaining us to death.

The book, "Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business," by Neil Postman made the argument very cogently. According to Wikipedia,

The essential premise of the book, which Postman extends to the rest of his argument(s), is that "form excludes the content", that is, a particular medium can only sustain a particular level of ideas. Thus rational argument, integral to print typography, is militated against by the medium of television for this reason. Owing to this shortcoming, politics and religion are diluted, and "news of the day" becomes a packaged commodity. Television de-emphasises the quality of information in favour of satisfying the far-reaching needs of entertainment, by which information is encumbered and to which it is subordinate.

Postman was on to something. Entertainment and not religion is the opium of the masses. When people like the Kardashians can make their living by just advocating consumerism and indolence, America has lost its work ethic. A UBI which just allows the consumer economy to reinvent itself would to a certain extent be a missed opportunity for government to create meaningful jobs that the private sector can't create to build a better, more meaningful society, a society built on helping people here and around the world. FDR was on to something. His New Deal can be emulated in a Green New Deal which at one and the same time can address the global warming crisis, build  a stronger and more resilient infrastructure and create meaningful jobs for every American.

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

Are Americans Amusing Themselves to Death?

by John Lawrence, July 16, 2019

I was waiting for Joe Biden to formalize an agenda, but so far his only agenda is that he is the likeliest candidate to beat Trump. That's not good enough. The next President and vice President need to set a bold agenda. The media likes to label that :progressive." So be it. Perhaps the next President can save the Iran nuclear deal and rejoin the Paris climate change accords. But he or she must do much more. While Trump and the media will try to sidetrack the issues and get everybody concerned with his outrageous tweets, Bernie and Elizabeth will concentrate on informing the American people about the real issues: infrastructure, climate change, universal health care, the growing dichotomy between rich and poor and what to do about it.

Trump and the media want you to take your eye off the ball; they want to distract and confuse. They want the issues to be all about superficial nonsense. Even Chuck Todd on Meet the Press tried last Sunday to distract Bernie, but Bernie always comes back to the real issue no matter what the question asked. The American people have to get used to the fact that a Presidential election should not be a circus. It should not be entertainment, but, of course, the American people have gotten used to the fact that practically everything in American life is about entertainment.

The book by Neil Postman, Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business hits the nail right on the head. In comparing Aldous Huxley's "Brave New World" to George Orwell's "Nineteen Eighty-Four ", Postman said that the contemporary world was better reflected by Huxley's book, whose public was oppressed by their addiction to amusement, than by Orwell's work, where they were oppressed by state control. I would have to agree with him. Postman observed that people medicate themselves into bliss, thereby voluntarily sacrificing their rights. Postman sees television's entertainment value as a present-day "soma", the fictitious pleasure drug in Brave New World, by means of which the citizens' rights are exchanged for consumers' entertainment. The opioid crisis can certainly be seen in that light.

Drugs and entertainment are the hallmark of American society. Reckless lifestyles instead of touch football are pursued with vigor as John Kennedy would say. It's Devil May Care in terms of climate change or any concern for future generations. Sex, Drugs and Rock n Roll are the order of the day. A few people are concerned about bettering their own and other peoples' lives, but not very many. Trump is a manifestation of that. Ronald Reagan ushered in the "Me First" age, and Trump has solidified it.

This is from Wikipedia:

Postman asserts the presentation of television news is a form of entertainment programming; arguing that the inclusion of theme music, the interruption of commercials, and "talking hairdos" bear witness that televised news cannot readily be taken seriously. Postman further examines the differences between written speech, which he argues reached its prime in the early to mid-nineteenth century, and the forms of televisual communication, which rely mostly on visual images to "sell" lifestyles. He argues that, owing to this change in public discourse, politics has ceased to be about a candidate's ideas and solutions, but whether he comes across favorably on television. Television, he notes, has introduced the phrase "now this", which implies a complete absence of connection between the separate topics the phrase ostensibly connects. Larry Gonick used this phrase to conclude his Cartoon Guide to (Non)Communication, instead of the traditional "the end"

In the age of social media, rather than the medium being the message, the newsmaker is the message. We're endlessly distracted by the likes of Jeffrey Epstein and his escapades. Who cares? I guess a lot of people would rather be titillated by a scumbag like Epstein than to contemplate the real issues that Bernie and Elizabeth are talking about. The real issues that all the progressive Democrats are concerned with. The American people, large segments of them, just don't care. They want to get on with their selfish pursuits just like Ronald Reagan and George W Bush told them to do. They are amused by the antics of a clown as President of the US where his every word, no matter how ridiculous, is reported on and televised. America is more concerned with rubbish and entertainment than it is with the real issues facing the country and the world today.

Off the Top of My Head

Gamers Killing Innocent People

by John Lawrence, August 31, 2018

Two recent incidents involving gamers: 1) Wrong way driver in San Diego takes out mother and daughter on freeway. 2) Shooter in Florida at gaming event. The question might be asked: is gaming really an unhealthy obsession? The San Diego Union reported:

"The 18-year-old who sped the wrong way down state Route 805 Thursday, crashing into a SUV and killing himself, a 12-year-old girl and her mother, was a YouTube star who had made a small fortune in video gaming gambling, according to authorities and hundreds of gaming fans on Twitter.

"The California Highway Patrol identified him Friday as Trevor Heitmann of San Diego."

So this young dude had plenty of money he made off of gambling on YouTube and a  $250,000 hand made car. Evidently, he knew what he was doing as there were other bizarre incidents involving him that day. Was he on drugs? Whatever his personal circumstances, he had no consideration for the two beautiful, innocent people that he erased from the earth. If he was rich from his ill gotten YouTube gains, his entire estate should go to the family that he destroyed as compensation for this insidious act.

Two people were also killed at a Jacksonville, FL gaming tournament when a fellow gamer gunman opened fire. The occasion was a tournament for competitive players of the football video game, Madden. The winners would go on to a higher level tournament in Las Vegas in October, where large cash prizes could be won. So why is so much money connected with gaming. Most of these guys are young kids, and yet they can make millions of dollars gambling? Is this a healthy lifestyle?

The shooter was David Katz, a 24 year old. According to CNN, Katz went by the gaming name, "Bread", and previously won Madden tournaments in 2017. In February 2017, the Buffalo Bills tweeted out a picture of him after he won the Madden 17 Bills Championship. "Congrats to David Katz, the Madden 17 Bills Championship winner! Thanks for following along, Bills fans," the tweet read. In an interview after the win with former Buffalos Bills player Steve Tasker, Katz talked about his prowess.  "I think personally I'm one of the better players," he said.

Heitmann, described on Twitter as “McSkillet”, regularly posted YouTube videos about his websites, CSGOMagic and skin.game, devoted to the Counter-Strike video game and gambling. He posted a video in December of the black McLaren 650S he had bought some months earlier. Without appearing on camera himself, he shows close-ups of the car interior, back end and full view with open wing-like doors. He describes the car as “pretty damn insane” and said he could afford it because he had “made a ton” of money online, with nearly 900,000 subscribers. Reportedly, the McLaren can reach a speed of 200 mph.

Some friends of Heitmann tweeted that McSkillet had lost his income when the Counter-Strike game developer, Valve, “banned his life’s work” in selling slick decals, or “skins” for virtual gaming guns and other toys. Kevin Hitt, editor in chief of VPesport.com online gaming news outlet, said Valve, under constraints from the state of Washington gambling commission, confiscated about $200,000 worth of McSkillet’s skins and shut down his ability to acquire more. Hitt said McSkillet, and others in the gaming gambling world, would take bets on the potential value of skins, and third-party sites would use software to assign a dollar value to different styles of skins, based on their relative rarity. Other sites would make the payouts to betters, taking a commission.

This is all pretty hard to believe. This guy bought and sold skins for some virtual game and then took bets on how much the skins were worth based on their rarity or how much somebody was willing to pay for them? It boggles the mind that there could be so much money involved in something that has no, I repeat no, redeeming social value. These games are allowing young people to get involved in gambling. They are encouraging gambling with all the seamy Las Vegas culture that goes along with it.

No wonder that innocent people are getting killed. The whole gaming world is looney tunes. And the Pizarro family should get young Heitmann's estate.

Off the Top of My Head

Lock Him Up! Lock Him Up!

by John Lawrence, August 22, 2018

The noose is tightening around Trump's neck. With Michael Cohen singing like a canary, Paul Manifort singing like a canary and Omarosa singing like a tweety bird, how much longer can Trump withstand the pressure to resign provided he's given a no-jail-time deal on the way out. He's in clear violation of all sorts of laws, but paying off Stormy Daniels to influence the election may have been the straw that broke the camel's back. However, there are numerous other straws as well. This guy operates using the same rules as a mobster. He uses money and power to skirt the law. Pay off this one. Sue that one. It reminds me of my attorney, Bernie. If Bernie says sue, we sue. If Bernie says sign, we sign. Bernie's got Dodger season boxes and an office full of foxes.

Oh, but you can't impeach Trump because the market would crash. That's his latest pronouncement. Better to have a mobster as President than to crash the market. We want to keep the US financial machine running smoothly.

The BBC reported:

"I don't know how you can impeach somebody who's done a great job," Mr Trump told Fox and Friends.

"I tell you what, if I ever got impeached, I think the market would crash, I think everybody would be very poor."

Pointing to his head, he said: "Because without this thinking, you would see numbers that you wouldn't believe in reverse."

Cohen says he handled hush money payments to two women during the 2016 presidential campaign.

The two women, thought to be porn star Stormy Daniels and former Playboy model Karen McDougal, both claimed they had affairs with Mr Trump.

Under oath, Cohen said he had paid the money "at the direction" of Mr Trump, "for the principal purpose of influencing the election"

However, Mr Trump insisted the two payments had not broken election campaign rules.

He said that the payments had come from him personally, not from the campaign, but he had not known about them until "later on".

In July, Cohen released audio tapes of him and Mr Trump allegedly discussing one of the payments before the election.

The president also accused Cohen of making up stories to receive a lighter sentence.

He added: "And by the way, he pled to two counts that aren't a crime, which nobody understands.

"In fact, I watched a number of [TV] shows. Sometimes you get some pretty good information by watching shows. Those two counts aren't even a crime. They weren't campaign finance."

Oh, what tangled webs we weave! Trump's highest virtue or ...ahem vice?, is lying with a straight face. Oh, he can make up stories and his base believes them. It's great entertainment. He's no sober faced politician dealing seriously with the issues. He represents the depths to which the US has sunk in being an entertainment culture. We want a mobster to entertain us as President. Who cares if he's paid off porn stars? Look at the shows Americans watch. Look at the publications Americans read. It's the National Enquirization of the US. While the rest of the world is trying to act responsibly and live for some noble cause, even if many of them are misguided, Americans just want to have fun. Americans just want to be entertained. No other serious candidate can touch Trump in that regard. He'll be reelected by an even wider margin. And he'll promise another two bit tax cut for the hoi polloi, a megamillion for the upper class like him.

Off the Top of My Head

The Merging of War and Entertainment

by John Lawrence, February 15, 2018

They get kids started early with video games that are all about war. Then they wonder why young men take an AR-15 and mow down students at a school. How did this guy who killed 17 yesterday get into a school with a loaded assault rifle and several extra magazines? By this time don't most schools have security? This is ridiculous. If it takes kids having to go through security every time they go to school to prevent slaughter, then that's what it takes. Metal detectors?

Video games are all about violence, about killing. I wish my grandson was not so involved in them. But he's so good at it! Then when it comes to movies, popular entertainment, American movies in particular, they are all about gun violence. That's probably why some of the more civilized countries in the world have written off the US as a country led by a fool who spends all its money on militarism and has no money for infrastructure. Many other countries are far more advanced where infrastructure is concerned.

The New York Times reported:

Some believe that, in any case, the verdict is already in. This month, the American Psychological Association called for a reduction of violence in all video games, saying the evidence from 20 years of research on the subject was clear. They based their conclusion largely on the work of Kevin M. Kieffer, a psychologist at St. Leo University near Tampa, Fla., who prepared an analysis of dozens of relevant studies.

He found that, in general, children exposed to virtual bloodshed showed greater "short-term" increases in hostility toward peers and authority figures than those exposed to more benign games. And many of the studies included in the analysis were randomized, rebutting the notion that aggressive people are simply drawn to violent games, Dr. Kieffer found.

Terrorism, both domestic and inspired from abroad, is like the chickens coming home to roost. The US makes and exports weapons and weaponry while condoning entertainment of a violent nature. This is what our kids are immersed in. They will grow up to fill the ranks of warriordom when they're old enough.

Off the Top of My Head

The Deplorable Descent of American Mass Culture into Violence and Depravity

by John Lawrence

The Las Vegas shooter evidently got bored with video poker in don't-give-a-damn sin city so he devised a plan to rev up the excitement in his otherwise boring life. With no checks on how large an arsenal any US citizen can amass, one of his hobbies was to patronize gun stores and spend huge amounts on weaponry. No doubt he wanted to end his nondescript life by going down in the record books with the likes of Bonny and Clyde, Al Capone and John Dillinger.

American culture is all about crime and criminality. It is glamorized and celebrated on TV, in the movies and in novels. "Violence", H Rap Brown said, "is as American as cherry pie." Toxic masculinity identifies manliness with violence. The national pastime, football, consists of huge muscular men, mostly black, violently crashing into each other in an attempt to "win." Being a caring, empathetic person has nothing to do with it in American culture. "Winning isn't the main thing; it's the only thing," according to football coach Vince Lombardi. Winning is getting your name in the history books. Men with no consideration for anyone other than themselves don't mind killing a record number of people in one event in order to do so.

Sin city is a place with no remorse, a town without pity, an empty shell of non-caring, a devil may care, what the hell kind of place. Money talks and shit walks. Of course, that's truer than ever in any large American city until the ever increasing number of "losers," the homeless, start coming down with hep A, something that could endanger the thrill-a-minute tourist industry. Then the caring begins. Once the poor and homeless are a threat to someone's profits, something will be done, not because we care about such people, but because their disease could spread to the general public.

The business of America is tourism and entertainment. A thrill a minute. Once life in Vegas is not thrilling any more, people devise more ways to get thrilled like participating unvicariously in what up till then had been vicarious entertainment which consisted mostly in killing people. If it's touted so much in TV, novels and movies, there must be something to it.

Stephen Paddock perhaps killed out of boredom when he expected a thrill a minute, the empty promise of sin city. He took sinning to a whole new level.