Seeing Gravity

EVERYBODY LOVES THE SMITHSONIAN, because it is a great monument to human achievement, a lot of fun, and highly educational to boot. Everybody has a favorite building, a favorite memory, and a favorite display. thirty five years ago my favorite thing was a gravity wave detector, which consisted of a beautiful shiny, solid silver colored metal cylinder, about a foot in diameter and a foot or so long, with a small hole through its exact center, through which was threaded a thin wire, with a support beam at both ends. Sumbitch musta weighed a tone. I have no idea how it was supposed to work, maybe because it didn't work. it might be that gravity waves were supposed to gently, slightly move the cylinder, and that the movement would be detected by the way in which it changed its position upon the wire. Something like that. it was an early, primitive attempt at scientific instrumentation. Einstein, who predicted the existence of gravity waves but also predicted that they would never be detected, might have found the whole affair quaint, if a bit silly. I remember how I kept going back to the object, over and over again, despite th abundant and generally more interesting displays throughout the building. My parents thought I was a bit off, as usual. I was attracted to its sleek, shiny, simple symmetry, and maybe to the nobility, and futility, of its purpose. Too bad it didn't work. the good news is that there is evidently one that does work, for verily, just in the past couple of weeks gravity waves have been detected, proving that, once again, Einstein was right all along about the existence of gravity waves, although he was wrong in his assumption that gravity waves would never be detected. If Einstein could be wrong, anybody can be wrong, eh? Einstein was never afraid to be wrong, unlike the rest of us. Most, nearly all of the time, he was right. He's remindful of Peter Rose, who had more hits than anyone in baseball history, and made more outs than anyone in baseball history. You gotta swing the bat. Einstein always said he liked to tackle to tough problems, and that he had no patience with scientists who drilled a great many hole sin a piece of wood where the wood was thinnest and the drilling easiest. he also said: 'I veel a little tink."

Settling Our Differences By Force

SO, maybe there just isn't any solution. Maybe its that simple, that there is nothing that can be done. A nation founded on violence, greed, and racism destined to remain forever trapped in its own bitter paradigm. The United States of Ammorica is a culture which loves guns, even more than it loves competition and conquest. We refuse to give up our guns, and besides, we are told that to do so would do no good anyway, because - and how many times have we been told this - even if we did, the criminals would still be able to acquire firearms. Somehow, there is something strange, simplistic, and twisted about this line of reasoning; as if good guys and bad guys are separate, discreet entities, easily identifiable a priori, easily recognized and categorized. The fact that, no matter how hard we search, we still cannot find a motive for our latest blood letting, may mean that there is no motive, that a motive may not always be discernible or necessary, that sometimes, indeed all too often, people, people who were previously believed to be among the "good guys", just do bad things. Maybe we want too many answers, and we want them too quickly, too easily, and we want them to be too neatly packaged in easily digestible sound bite sizes. Maybe life, and human behavior, is, after all, more complicated than we might want it to be. The intricate, interwoven reasons behind our actions just might be too complex for our minds to discern or comprehend. Perhaps it is impossible for us to ever truly know ourselves. Socrates said "know thyself"... Goethe said: "Know thyself? If I knew myself, I'd probably run away." So would the rest of us, most likely. Our most recent massacre was perpetrated by a person whose father was a bank robber, on the FBI's ten most wanted list. Is that reason enough to massacre as many innocent people as possible? From his point of view, maybe. What about his mother? Was he spanked a few times too often? Was he ignored a time or two too often, at the wrong place at the wrong time? Who can ever know? We do know, however, that early childhood experiences do much to shape our later behavior, and that there is nothing we can do to change our early childhood experiences. We are indeed responsible for our actions, but so are our parents, so is society in general, for they influence us, irrevocably, whether or not we want them to. Half the country wants gun control, half the country wants to zealously protect gun rights. The gun rights protection people are far better funded, far better organized, far more motivated. Half of us are liberal, half, conservative. A nation torn apart by ideals and beliefs. Welcome to the United States of ammunition, where compromise is taboo, where we settle our differences on social media, by name calling, by fabrication, by never settling them, always by force.

Using the Great American Desert, Properly, For Once

IN THE LATE 19TH AND EARLY 20TH CENTURIES, settler flooded into the region between Kansas City and Denver, New Mexico to Montana, looking for cheap land, freedom, and opportunity. When it became evident that making an agricultural living in this vast area was difficult at best and nigh impossible at worst due to a chronic shortage of rainfall,, it became known as "the great American desert". the middle of it, western Kansas and eastern Colorado, the "high plains" or High desert", is far more suitable to wildlife, Buffalo, wolves, elk, prairie dogs, eagles, hawks, than to human habitation. The early ranchers and farmers, in their desperate struggle to scratch a living form the soil, overstayed their welcome, failed to give the land the rest it periodically requires, damaged the land, and now half the topsoil is forever gone. Partly because of this, for decades the human population of the entire region has been gradually, steadily declining. The great America desert has emptied itself out almost imperceptibly. Where has everyone gone? Many, to the huge metropolitan centers in America's true desert; Los Angeles, Phoenix, Los Vegas, Albuquerque. to places where the lack of water make big cities unfeasible, but hasn't prevented us inexplicable, impetuous Americans from founding and over populating them. the lure of big city culture, no matter how ill conceived the location of said city. conquer nature. Ignore common sense. The water problem will solve itself, or somebody will solve it with good old fashioned American ingenuity. There is safety in numbers. suck the Colorado river dry, as its final, melancholic trickles drips into the ground unseen by us ever upperwardly mobile mortgaged commuters. The ordinance of 1763 forbade the American colonists from settling west of the Appalachian mountains. Daniel Boone and the others laughed at this futile attempt by our British masters to control our destiny. Should we have listened to the King? Or should we have settled for the eastern side of the Mississippi, should Thomas Jefferson have presented the Louisiana purchase as a gift to the true natives, in perpetuity? Perhaps. After all, the Indians already owned it, by right of possession. Its too late now. What do do now? Desalination plants along the coasts, using solar energy to make water pure, and pipe it to where it is needed? Think of all those oil pipelines, ready to be phased out of the fossil fuel business, ready to take water to our over burdened western cities! Or maybe a huge new national park, stretching all across the western fruited plain, bereft of human settlement, another Yellowstone, only more immense, a place where the deer and the antelope, and the buffalo and the wolf, can roam again, while we the American people do what we really do best, when we are at our best; observe, study, and appreciate.

Going Heels In Wild West America, 2017

WHEN WYATT EARP (pronounced "arp") was the law in dodge City in the 1870s, anybody who came to town carrying a gun was required to leave the piece with Wyatt. When you left town, you could stop by Wyatt's office and collect it. Throughout the 1870s, the supposed height of the "wild west" era of frontier lawlessness, there averaged about one gun related death per year in dodge city, Kansas. Nobody stood in the middle of Front street, and engaged in quick draw gun fights. Nobody was ever that stupid. Compared to the old wild west, our modern wild west is much, much wilder. There are upwards of twenty thousand murders per year in contemporary America, which on a per capita basis makes the old frontier days look positively tame. Until 1977, the national Rifle Association was primarily concerned with gun safety education, and efficient regulation of hunting. Then, something drastic happened. The organization was taken over by a hard right wing group of extremists, in whose hands it remains today. When my good friend forty years ago was a member, there were roughly one million NRA members; today, its closer to five million. Intense firearm advocacy appeals to a larger portion of the population that simple gun safety, it seems. There is an aggressive, well organized and well paid gun lobby in every state, and the NRA is deeply embedded within the republican, lock, stock, and barrel. Because of NRA lobbying and working in concert with the gun toting right wing, there is now a right to carry guns, either open carry or conceal carry, in nearly every state in these United States. The very fact that some states have a requirement that guns being carried be seen by the world, while other states require that they be concealed from all but God, is itself a cause for alarm, or should be. After all this fuss, why do we not know for sure which system is better? When will we find out? Are we sure that everyone, every one of the millions of heat packing Americans in our midst is in fact a "good guy with a gun", ready at the sound of a shot to defend the innocent, against the 'bad guy with a gun"? My grandfather, who was born in Nebraska in 1887 once said, "put a gun in a man's hand, and the first thing he wants to do is use it". granddad, a product of the frontier west, probably knew what he was talking about. Up until recently, anyone wanting to carry a gun wa required to undergo a background check, pay a fee, and take a firearm safety course to be certified as a gun carrying good guy citizen. But that has proven too burdensome for the NRA. So now there are twelve states in which no permission is needed whatever; if you want to carry a gun, by damn, you just carry one, without any sort of preliminary process of certification. Certification free gun carrying. The NRA is trying to normalize the carrying of guns. They want us to become accustomed to guns being carried on college campuses, day care centers, supermarkets, restaurants; all public places. The NRA wants an America in which most people carry guns in most places, which is exactly what we are becoming, because most people are good guys, and will surely prevent bad guys from doing bad things. Vaguely, an uneasy feeling creeps into the back of one's mind. And one thing's for damned sure: Wyatt Earp would have been appalled at the wild westness of America in the year 2017.

Calling A Spade A Spade

RESEARCH HAS SHOWN that we humans are prone to interpret the world subjectively, through the lens of our personal biases. That fact should surprise no one. Suppose a mass murder is carried out by someone who is later revealed to have been a fanatic Islamic. You are not likely to hear anyone within the Christian community describe the criminal as "psychotic" or "mentally ill", or "deranged". Instead, he will be described as a "radical Islamic terrorist", and woe be to any bleeding heart liberal who refuses to use the words "radical" and "Islamic". Obama was given hell for simply describing terrorists as terrorists, and leaving out the religious part. Obama pointed out that he did this because among Muslims, overwhelmingly, terrorism is rejected, and anyone professing to carry out acts of violence in the name of their sacred religion is not considered a true Muslim, but has forfeited his membership in the faith. that is true. People of the Islamic faith generally hate terrorism and violence as much as Christians. Obama also point out that none of his many advisors had recommended using the term "radical Islamic terrorism", nobody had told him that doing so would help win the war on terrorism. Only Obama's conservative haters remained unconvinced. They were opposed to Obama no matter what Obama did, simply because he was Obama. suppose a white member of the Christian faith commits an act of mass murder, of terrorism. Actually, nearly all terroristic acts in the United States are carried out by extreme right wing criminals professing to be Christians; you could look it up. UN every instance, the American media and public instantly describes the perpetrator as "mentally ill", or "deranged", not as "a radical Christian terrorist". Why is this? Because conservative Christians are members of the "in" group, members of the accepted religious and political faith, and therefore their fellow members are not willing acknowledge any kinship to them. Heaven forbid that a true Christian would commit a mass murder. The very act of doing so reveals mental illness, not Christianity. The Islamic terrorist? well, he was an Islamic terrorist, a typical example of the Islamic faith, a faith in which all members, Christians seem to believe, are perfectly capable of murder, because, well, they are Muslims, and therefore, radical, and potentially violent. Ever hear of the Ku Klux Klan? sure you have. they're still around. Actually, they at enjoying something of a resurgence, like all other extreme right wing groups, under trump, and the evident hatred and racism the American president displays and evokes in others. The KK has murdered more Americans, mostly black, some catholic, some Jewish, some atheists, than members of the Islamic faith could ever imagine, and yet, although the KKK is nothing other than a radical Christian terrorist organization, and has been since its founding by Nathan Bedford Forrest in 1866, heaven forbid that it should ever be described as such, identified for what it is, here in "Christian" America. we are subjective, biased creatures, and we allow our intellects to be captured by our personal biases, hatreds, and group affiliations. for this, we pay a heavy price, and have for a very long time. the price is truth.

A War Between the Rich and the Poor

IN 1932, THOUSANDS OF DIRTY, DETERMINED men walked into Washington D.C. and camped out. They were world War One veterans, and many of them had walked across the entire country. They were hungry and broke, suffering from the great depression, and they had come to collect the five hundred dollar bonus the government had promised to pay them in 1945. They needed it now. They stayed the summer, occupying abandoned buildings along Pennsylvania Avenue and in nearby neighborhoods. As the weeks passed, Washington's aristocracy got tired of their being there. They were unsightly... President Hoover grew frustrated, and labeled these war heroes "communists", "troublemakers". agitators". he had no intention of meeting their demand. Holed up in the white House, hoover had no idea what to do, as the bonus army waited. finally, something had to be done. Hoover felt the pressure. Douglas McArthur, Dwight D. Eisenhower, and George S. Patton led a military unit which drove the bonus army out of town, killing several of them. Hoover's presidential opponent in 1932, Franklin Roosevelt, remarked to his wife that he would not even need to bother to campaign for the presidency; Hoover had handed it to him. Riding in the back of a limo was seven year old gore Vidal, sitting next to his grandfather, Thomas gore, the first ever senator from the new state of Oklahoma. Senator gore was blind, and Vidal's job was to assist his grandfather. According, his grandfather, a Republican, didn't believe in giving anything to anybody, ever. He later remembered rocks and tomatoes being thrown at the car, and realizing, for the first time, that in America, a war between the rich and the poor was quite possible. Fast forward eighty five years. Gore Vidal has been dead a few years, after a successful career as a writer. Everybody has a smart phone, even poor folks, who are poor, we are told, because they are not smart enough, don't work hard enough. Fair enough. In 2017, one half of one percent of the American people own twenty five percent of the wealth, and ten percent of the American people do not know if they can afford supper. Everybody seems angry, at something or other. if you haven't noticed, you haven't been paying attention. We are stressed, medicated, angry, and we vaguely sense that things are not right, that we are going nowhere. A war between the rich and the poor? never in a million years. Not in this country. how could the American people ever have any sort of war among themselves? maybe not in a million years. maybe in five, or maybe in ten.

Looking At Ourselves

THE MASS MURDERER was mentally ill. A freak. An outlier. A lone wolf, angry and alienated. Nobody is his right mind would do such a thing.....We utter such nonsense repeatedly until we begin to believe it. And the truth is, we are never deceived, we only deceive ourselves. It comforts us, makes us feel superior, provides us a neatly packaged explanation, easy to understand, easier to assimilate into whatever our personal agenda, and then dismiss, until the same nightmarish scenario happens again, as it will, and always does. Kill the killer, and forget he ever lived. Grieve, utter hollow platitudes about the beautiful lives lost, then move on, having learned nothing. Learn nothing, remember less. It will never happen again, we say, knowing it will. My dead son was covered with tattoos, with a full beard, strong arms, and a penchant for cocktails and an occasional game of blackjack. In a city which, according to nature, should not exist for lack of water, souls and wallets are sucked dry, as we seek to escape our hollow lives of quiet desperation in our lonely angry culture. When all hell breaks loose, we compare ourselves to the killer, and celebrate our moral superiority, and what we vainly call "normal". Steven Paddock was sixty four years old, and perfectly normal. A retired accountant, nondescript well to do real estate investor, and high stakes gambler, without strong religious or political convictions, narcissistic; what could be more normal in America? He slipped on a casino floor, sued, and lost. Again, perfectly normal. He had a veritable arsenal of weapons. Normal. We are not prepared to accept his complete normalcy, to accept how similar to the rest of us he was. We resist the truth only because we fear we might perish if we accepted it, and indeed we might. If thou gaze long into the abyss, the abyss will gaze into thee. When we gaze into the mirror, we see only our beautiful selves, and we snap a picture, for all the world to see. Self absorbed, we see little, and invent the rest. In the twentieth century one hundred million people were shot and killed in military combat, which we refuse to call murder, instead ascribing it to love of God and country, and turning the killers, and ourselves, the murderers, into heroes. It requires denial, and effort. We are all angry, we are all normal, and we are all killers. There is more, much more in the mirror than a beautiful face. In his famous novel, "In Cold blood", Truman Capote tells the true story of two transient, shiftless men who murder the Clutter family in Kansas, looking for money, and come away with only a few dollars. they are caught, tried, and hanged. Capote's point in the story is that blame for the tragedy belongs to society in general, as well as the two murderers. Capote, using subtle literary skills, shows how the two men were shaped by their environment. He often said that he die not believe in individual guilt, for anything, but only societal guilt, and that society, acting as a single, complicated, many faceted organism, produces all human behavior collectively. Whether we agree with this, we must admit that although individual responsibility for all our actions is fundamental to an understanding, of human actions and moral consequences, all of us, in concert, do indeed create a set of conditions in this world, and that these conditions are very much with us, and they impact us. guns don't kill people, people kill people. but like my grandfather said, put a gun in a man's hand, and the first thing he wants to do is fire it; we would not drive fast cars were we not behind the steering wheel of a Corvette. Individuals act individually, but only because they are able to do so within the framework of the rest of us, whoever and whatever we are as a whole.

Living In the United States of Ammorica, Quietly, At Trump's Request

PRESIDENT TRUMP,, his impeccable sense of appropriate behavior and speech on full display, tells us that now is not the time to resume our never ending national debate on gun control. It would be inappropriate, says Trump, America's conscience and arbiter of morality. Implied here is that there indeed exists an appropriate time for this discussion, a magnanimous implied concession to free speech, an and acknowledgement that perhaps further discussion is needed, appropriate - sometime in the future. Presumably, because the issue has not yet, after all this time and all this violence, been satisfactorily resolved. Are we free to suggest that now might in fact be the appropriate time, but that if it is not, then are we free to ask when that time might be? When, precisely, Mr. President, might that time arrive? A week? A month? A year? Can we with any degree of confidence trust the president to enlighten us? Nevada is a state in which it is perfectly legal to carry a weapon, and many encourage people to do just that, in order to protect the public and keep America safe. Had one, two, or twenty, or a thousand concert goers entered the building with gully loaded semi automatic weapons, intending to commit mass murder, nobody could have legally prevented them from doing so. congress cannot infringe upon free speech, but the president can attempt to. So, we aren't talking about it - yet. At the risk of violating the president's admonition curtailing, temporarily we hope, our first amendment rights, permit a statement of mere fact. In the United States of Ammo, it is relatively easy to acquire firearms, and the rate of gun violence is among the highest on the planet. Our current killer, an ordinary American, owned an arsenal. In great Britain, on the other hand, guns are virtually impossible to obtain, and gun violence is an extreme rarity. As our conservatives say, a killer can use a knife or a baseball bat of a knitting needle; and yet, they all seem to choose guns. There may be a causal connection here, and just as soon as our president, himself a paragon of proper and appropriate speech, tweet tweet, lifts his moratorium on everybody else's self expression, somebody will perhaps point this out. In the meantime, with the president's presumed approval, we mourn, yet again, a seemingly senseless mass murder of biblical proportions, over fifty dead, over five hundred wounded, far fewer,, fortunately, than the fifty thousand Philistines Jehovah dispensed with because somebody got curious about the law in a box. this has become disgustingly customary here in the wild west of uncivilization. So, we await further instructions from our president of proper protocol and propriety, her in the great American shooting gallery, where citizens wanting to keep America safe arm themselves just in case.

Killing The Killer, Before the Killer Kills somebody, if We Can, Which We Can't

IT HAD BEEN A LONG TIME since an American mass murder. We were due, tragically. A dysfunctional society will produce dysfunctional results at a rate which is probably predictable using algorithmic methods. They average, what, about every few weeks? A mass murder is defined as a murder in which at least three people are murdered. Accordingly, there is at least one such event every day in the U.S., and there is one involving dozens of victims every few weeks, or every few months. This one rises immediately to first place in killing efficiency, ahead of Pulse, Sandy Hook, and Virginia Tech. They can be expected to become increasingly frequent and deadly, as techniques are perfected, as will-be killers study and learn from their predecessors. What can we do, other than heal the anger and alienation pervasive in American culture, and either arm everyone, or disarm everyone. Your guess is as good as anyone's. Let us consider the argument that American society would be safer if good citizens carried weapons in public. Suppose someone in the Los Vegas crowd had been in possession of a weapon Sunday night. What good would it have done? Suppose everyone had been in possession of a firearm, twenty five thousand armed country music fans, ready to stop crime in its tracks, revved up by songs about pick up trucks, dogs, guns, beer, ammo, and girls in Daisy Dukes. How long would it have taken someone in the crowd, one person, a good well intentioned well armed citizen, to find the man doing the shooting, up there on the thirty second floor of the hotel next door? Probably longer than it took the killer to empty his ammo into the crowd, and kill himself. Probably longer than it will take the hundreds of injured victims to recover and return to a full and healthy life. Suppose everyone had been armed, twenty five thousand good republican conservative second amendment NRA citizen defenders. They all, in theory, would have been skinning their smoke wagons, looking for a shooter, aiming, ready to fire. They all would have seen each other, weapons drawn. Most if not all of them, hearts racing, feeling the urgent need to do something, most likely would have seen the shooter in an adjacent row, at the end of the isle, in the seat right down the row, or this person, or that person, one of them, since they all are holding weapons, making eye contact, with weapons pointed. What would likely have ensued is a shoot out the likes of which never were seen in a Clint Eastwood or Bruce Willis movie, or a video game. Twenty five thousand dead folks at the scene, the victims of mass panic, self protection, and good intentions. The real killer, looking down from the thirty second floor of his room, amazed that the crowd is cooperating so completely, doing his work for him, smiling. I reckon I'd rather go to a concert where nobody had an automatic or a semi automatic, and take my chances that the one bad guy way up above all alone with a gun will jam his weapon, miss, trip and fall, get a phone call, or spontaneously aim at himself.

Forgetting What policy To Pursue

YOU MAY RECALL, unless you prefer not to, that when former Texas governor Rick Perry ran for president, he made himself look foolish during a G.O.P. debate, which is easy for anybody to do. He proclaimed his intention, should he be elected, to trim our bloated government by eliminating no less than three cabinet departments, and then was unable to name the three he had in mind. He got two, but that was all he could remember. The one he left out was the Department of Energy, which is the one he now is in charge of. Thanks to Donald Trump, whose sense of irony and humor is greatly underrated, a man who not only wanted to eliminated a vital executive department but couldn't remember it, now heads it. Trump has a way of appointing to positions of power people who have no interest in the job to which they are appointed. Now, Perry is having yet another memory lapse. He cannot remember the basic principles of free market capitalism, an economic philosophy to which he devotedly adheres, like most conservatives; when they can remember to do so. Perry wants to use government money to subsidize the coal and nuclear power industries, which are failing, due to free market forces. Both are being priced out of the market by natural gas, wind power, and solar energy, but Secretary Perry, conservatively, sentimentally attached to the old planet destroying traditional energy sources, is not willing to let them go and die a natural free market death. When the free market does not yield the correct result, does not benefit big money contributors to republican political campaigns, let socialism save the day! Maybe this has something to do with personal stock portfolios, and Texas wealth and republican benefactors. Maybe another factor is that people like Trump and Perry cannot possibly imagine how fossil fuels could ever hurt the environment, pollute the air, or cause climate change. Or, maybe they are merely hostile to safe, clean energy sources, like wind power and solar power. Whatever the case, Secretary Perry, most likely, cannot remember which it is.

Leaving Class and Dropping Out, Intellectually

LONG HAVE I MARVELLED and waxed amazed at my conservative brethren and sistern. I refer here in particular to those with whom I attended high school, all those years ago. class of seventy three. Go Eagles, valiant and strong. We have an online discussion group, sort of a perpetual class reunion. I was the token liberal, until I was driven to distraction by a "steady storm of correspondences" (Theodore Roethke "In a dark Time"), invariable insipid, filling my email box with unadulterated banality. One of my right wing classmates said "God bless the Kock brothers". The Koch brothers, I should have said but didn't, are cold blooded killers. ("Dark Money", by Jane Mayer). Plus, they purchase high political offices for right wingers, which makes them devils incarnate. Another classmate, speaking of America, said" "what empire?". So much for him, he's an idiot, who doesn't understand eight hundred military bases, overthrown governments, and foreign wars of occupation do an empire make. Then, he dug deeper, and said "I'm not so sure about this climate change crap." (are you starting to see what I mean?). When another, more bigoted member suggested that Michelle Obama is a transgender with two adopted children, I laughed, but didn't cry. against stupidity, the Gods themselves contend in vain. (ancient Greek). So, I broke and ran, punted, bowed out gracefully, whichever fits. On my way out, transgender accuser accused me of being a "self inflicted intellectual". I'm an intellectual, and its my own damned fault. At least he didn't accuse me of being a self proclaimed intellectual. that would've really hurt. OK, I confess. I own up to being an intellectual, but don't blame me. Blame it on those reprehensible professors, that insufferable doctoral program, and thousands of pointy headed books penned by eggheads. My parents also share the burden of guilt. As a parting shot, a senseless act of self inflicted retribution and olive branching, I invited them all to write for this website. All declined, shockingly. Guess they didn't want to become self inflicted intellectuals. Can't say as I blame them. Its a brutal way to exist. I almost snared the bigoted one who exposed my self inflicted intellectualism. He agreed on the condition that I impose no conditions, including editing. I agreed, and told him that I only required that submissions be reasonable and intelligent. "No conditions", he repeated. Well, at least I tried. I'm still glad I went to grad school, even though it ruined me. At this point, I almost wish I hadn't gone to high school.

Liberals, Killing football

AMERICAN FOOTBALL was invented in 1869, as a from of rugby. Princeton and Rutgers played a four to two game, I forget who won, for the championship of New Jersey. Every play from scrimmage was a leather helmet dog pile scrum, and the injuries were rugby style bumps, bruises, chicken scratches, and your occasional chipped tooth and bloody nose. Harmless stuff, by modern standards. Within a few decades things began to get serious. forward passing was legalized. helmets and pads got hard. Football became a collision sport. Considering current circumstances, brain damage, broken bones and such, it might have been best had the game remained a form of rugby, but in America, that simply wasn't good enough, violent enough. There are some today, including coaches, who think it might be a good idea to re-rugify the game even now. Of course, that'll never fly. Not in America. Permanent brain damage is endemic, and has been for a long time. Finally, we are beginning to acknowledge and study it, and it may be that we will take the drastic plunge and begin to do something about it, but don't hold your breath. I'm America, we love our violence. Conservatives in particular are reluctant to affect change, not surprisingly. Political conservatives have the same attitude about head injuries in football that they do about climate change, racism, and other social ills. Let the free market take care of it. Unless they can be persuaded to join the better health in sports crusade, it might not happen. The pattern is clear: first, they deny the problem exists. Then, they obfuscate its causes, and understate it severity. then, when it becomes obvious that there truly is a problem, conservatives, in desperation, blame it on liberals. Liberals, and the mainstream liberal media. Here's how it works from the right wing perspective. A few guys get their bells rung, and don't know what day it is for a day or two. Liberals, who already hate football because its an American mainstay, go ballistic. Ballistic over nothing. Two or three former players commit suicide, and the damned liberal media, stirring up trouble, has the audacity to report on it. When the helicopter soccer moms get wind, all hell breaks loose. Little boys begin behaving like little girls, clinging to mother's skirts. Homosexuality increases. Grandpa, who played at Dartmouth in the late forties, can no longer drool or speak in tongue without drawing a crowd of liberal do goo meddlers. Next thing you know, stadiums are half empty, quarterbacks are wearing pantyhose, and three hundred pound men are spending more time eating quiche and sipping latte in reading rooms than lifting in weight rooms. America is in decline, all because the hysterical left is politically potent but physically and morally weak. Some guy in Gary can't get the big strong good looking ones to even pay attention, and America is never again the same..

Voting With Feet, Reaganomically

RONALD REAGAN, not known for his compassion after he abandoned the New Deal Democratic party, encouraged people to "vote with your feet", by which he meant: if you can't find work in your hometown, move. If the free market injects life into your local economy, fine, if not, the free market has spoken. Vote with your feet. True compassion. For this attitude, which included a generous offer to permit some wealth to trickle down like descending bread crumbs from the extremely wealthy to the extremely poor, a multi billion dollar aircraft carrier was named the "USS Ronald Reagan". A big ship named for a big money man. Big dollars for big power. Now that Puerto Rico needs help in large amounts,, and has for a while, even long before the hurricane, one might imagine the Ronald Reagan ship of state, fully loaded with bottled water, Meals Ready To Eat, blankets, medicine, and helicopters taking a brief hiatus from duty off the coast of North Korea, or Iraq, or Iran, or Venezuela, or wherever, and cruising into the Caribbean voting with its nuclear power, to help the poor. Might. Imagine. No, Gipper, the three point four people of Puerto Rico cannot vote with their feet without getting them, and everything else, quite wet. Since the Republicans haven't tried to repeal Obamacare again today, yet, although its still early, they need something to do to keep them off the streets, out of trouble. To kill time, they might turn to the next item on their you're on your own agenda: reducing taxes on the very wealthy, what they tongue in cheek smirkily smugly call "tax reform". In bygone days, when America was more civilized, the middle class was visible, and prevalent. The wealthy, who back in the day were far less numerous than now, used to show their love of country by actually contributing to it. Then came Reagan, voting with his feet, moving to Washington, and dispensing bread crumbs unto the unwashed masses. the crumbs are still descending. we still stand below, mouths agape, powerless, waiting. The good news is that the good ship Reagan has been sighted "off the coast" of Venezuela, fighting socialism, or at least threatening it. Regrettably, socialism isn't Venezuela's problem. Venezuela's problem is a far too great dependence on the oil exports, and falling oil prices. The Venezuelans can't vote with their feet either. Ronald Reagan has them hemmed in, and has for a very long time.

Losing Too Much

MY FAVORITE COLLEGE FOOTBALL TEAM is experiencing hard times, which means it isn't winning enough games to satisfy its greedy fan base, which means it isn't winning all of them. The millions of avid fans who love the team are in an uproar, demanding that the coach be fired, demanding that the athletic director be fired, demanding that the faculty be fired, and that the entire student body be expelled. Demanding, in a word, improvement. Petitions are circulating. Teeth are gnashing. Local sports talk radio programs are aflame with anger, indignation, vile, and spleen. Meanwhile, the university has raised ticket prices to all time highs, adjusted for inflation, concession stand items are priced as if the supply were on the verge of permanently vanishing, and taking a family of four to a football game can cost upwards of a thousand dollars. Scalping, in the hallowed halls of academia, officially sanctioned. Winning coaches are paid millions of dollars, and star athletes are "loaned" expensive sports cars, bar passes, pretty escorts, cash, and summer jobs which entail no actual responsibility. By doing all this, a university with a successful athletic department can make tens and even hundreds of millions of dollars, and administrators can line their pockets. About a hundred years ago brainy college administrators realized that a financial bonanza was to be had. The college athletic community jumped into bed with the corporate community, and a marriage was made in heaven, unto this very day, stronger than ever. The athletes themselves, meanwhile, get none of the huge pie. They get room, board, and free tuition, plus all the goodies that come under the table, but no legitimate pay. A couple of years ago the Northwestern football organized a labor union, with limited results. There is now the meager beginnings of compensation for athletes. the late great but tainted by scandal football coach Joe Paterno urged that college athletes be paid, and this, in an embryonic form, is starting to happen. within recent memory is the sight of star college athletes strolling from class to class, and seeing their names on the backs of sweat shirts, and seeing nothing but pocket change on their persons. Now that the great basketball scandal is upon us, we as a society might be motivated to step back, take a deep breath, and take stock. is it possible that we the American people place a bit too much importance on winning, and on being entertained? that we spend way too much money for it, and that by so doing, we are the driving force in a vast system of corruption, above board and below the surface? Is it perhaps time to reduce the amount of time we spend in front of our flat screens, and on the telephone ranting our disappointment that we missed that last second field goal, and lost by a point?

Seeing Ourselves On Facebook

SEVENTY PERCENT OF AMERICAN ADULTS have a Facebook page, and over a billion worldwide. One hundred and ten percent of American millennials and teenagers spend at least six hours a day staring lovingly into their smart phone screens, and punching their smart keyboards with both thumbs, while walking, driving, or anything else. The market for social media is robust. A nation of narcissists, we delight in taking pictures of ourselves, our lovely upper middle class homes, our well behaved children, our pets, our vacations. We delight even more in posting these for all the world to see, as if the world gives a rat's ass. I have a Facebook page, only because my girlfriend, a generation younger than I, thought it objectionable not to have one, and probably because she wanted to assure herself that I am keeping track of her pets, children, lovely face, and lovely upper middle class home. I'm not, but I won't tell if you won't. Soon as I figure out how to delete my neglected page, I will, and I'll blame it on the Russians or the mainstream liberal media, to deflect responsibility away from me. My primary objection to Facebook, other than the narcissistic behavior it enables, is that by becoming a member, a member voluntarily, usually unwittingly, turns into a commodity to be marketed to large corporations for purposes of advertising. your pretty house and kids, all the info you post, analyzed, scrutinized, neatly plugged into patterns of consumption to determine the best approaches to separate one from one's money. Now a new and even more serious and nefarious problem is revealed" Facebook, it seems, was a primary vehicle through which Russian intelligence agencies displayed advertising designed to assist in the election of Donald Trump. the Russians wanted Trump elected because they perceived, strangely, that he is a nit wit, easily manipulated. The Russians spent hundreds of thousands of dollars disseminating what used to be called "false advertising", or "bullshit", but is now called "fake news". Fake news all targeted at Hillary Clinton, to show the American Facebook electorate what an evil, law breaking, communist, or whatever, she truly is, in the world of the right wing imagination. The FBI is all over this, and Mr. Zuckerberg confirms it, having previously denied it. Its easy to place ads on Facebook, and easy for Facebook to tacitly allow any kind of ad to appear. You just design the ad, submit it, and in it goes, without much prior examination of it by censors. Ads go where they will have the greatest impact, according to computer programs. Facebook, now under scrutiny by congress, has pledged to upgrade it "vetting" process ("vetting" in another of our current word of the month nominees). Unfortunately, this comes too late to prevent a foreign power from influencing and possibly determining the outcome of an important American election, but, better late than never. Too late for Hillary Clinton, too late for the American people to make an intelligent, well informed choice of leadership. All in all, maybe this is a small price to pay for the privilege of showing billions of people, who really don't give a rat's ass, our pretty new curtains in our pretty house.