JackTReason

On Tuesday evening of this week I went to see a local model railroad museum. It had come to my attention in a local online news article. No, I’m not a model railroader, but I do very much like model railroads, and railroads in general. And this makes for a nice diversion from staying home and hibernating, as I am wont to do during Michigan winters.

I had been to this local and small museum many years before, when they were housed in the same building and adjacent to the local heritage museum. But they moved away to, I knew not where, when that museum needed the space for additional displays.

It was a pleasant surprise to find out they still existed and had a new home, in a building they owned.

The news article correctly noted that they were open to the public on Saturday for a few hours, and on Tuesday evenings from 1900 to 2100 (though the news said 7pm to 9pm). But they didn’t mention that the first Tuesday of the month is the date of the club meeting. This wasn’t a problem at all. I happened to show up exactly on time, and one of the members grabbed a folding chair for me and I was welcomed by the president and secretary, after giving my name and spelling it for their record. This was a monthly meeting after all.

As with any proper meeting you may have attended, they followed standard rules of order: reading the minutes of the last meeting, financial conditions, work by various departments (different model train gauge, library, building, etc.), old business, new business, and so on.

The meeting included about 25 people altogether, mostly grown men, with one mature woman, and one boy, though the bulk of the men were middle aged.

They were all congenial, and seemed glad to be present. Perhaps this was a respite from winter for them too.

They even grabbed some tickets and held a 50/50 drawing (which I did not participate for fear of winning), and sold 36 $1.00 tickets. The lone woman won, but donated her $18.00 winnings back to the club to a round of applause.

This was all quite pleasant for me to see. A group of people meeting for a harmless hobby that carried none of the baggage of the outside world with it. Well, almost.

During the meeting, the member who managed social media for the club gave his update, which included a significant uptick on engagement – probably driven by the television news coverage. I’ll note here that the member who ran the club’s social media was atypical of what I’d expect. It was a very heavyset man well into his seventies, whose appearance suggested someone unfamiliar with the workings of cellular phone, much less managing the social media for a club. (There’s me stereotyping!).

When the secretary called for this update, he first offered that he didn’t go on Facebook, as that’s where Taylor Swift was. The reference seemed to go almost unnoticed beyond that, and drew no response, except the president doing a facepalm and a light head shake.

At the end of the meeting, the president introduced himself and showed me around to see the layouts they were building, and made it clear that he hoped I would return. And I will, though I doubt I’ll become a member and participate as such. Again, I like the history of trains. I like looking at the pictures and artifacts. I like watching the trains and seeing the displays, but I’m not really an enthusiast of the hobby.

But the point of this commentary is because of that Taylor Swift reference, and how it shows the idiocy of the secretary.

First, I’ll mention the context, in case you, dear person, are reading this long after the events in question have occurred. This is February 2024, and six days before the Superbowl, and Taylor Swift (the most famous popstar in the world) is dating the star wide receiver of the Kansas City Chiefs, who along with the San Francisco 49ers, will face off in that season ending American football game. She and her boyfriend Travis Kelsey)  have drawn the ire of the Republican media lately. He (to a lesser extent) because he has endorsed vaccination against Covid-19 and subsequent variations but mostly for being the boyfriend of Swift, who has caused such uproar on the right you’d think she joined John Lennon in claiming The Beatles were bigger than Jesus.

I am not exaggerating their response. The right wing talking heads are having conniptions about her, and practically rolling on the floor, thrashing about and speaking in tongues.

Why the anger? She is using her platform as a superstar to encourage her fanbase of “Swifties” to register to vote, so that their voices can be heard.

Yeah, encouraging young people to participate in democracy and perform their civic duty has caused the political right wing to name her enemy number one.

This says a lot about the intent of the political right in America today. Rather than building a platform that will appeal to more people, and especially to include young citizens, they are trying to stifle the civic participation of those who don’t align with them politically. They are not trying to win and gain political power with the consent of the governed, but by denying, discouraging, and disenfranchising those with whom they don’t agree, and thereby hold power from the minority. They seek to rule, rather than represent.

Now back to our railroad fool.

He’s a fool, and as the title of this piece says, has his brains in his caboose, for a couple of reasons.

The first is that he has almost certainly not formed the opinion about Taylor Swift through his own reasoning. How can you reason this out and still come up with the answer that someone encouraging democratic participation in a democracy is bad?

This means he is most likely hating on the woman because the talking heads on his television are telling him to. And their nonsense is evident to anyone who thinks with an actual brain. So, he’s not thinking for himself. A sin in our Republic.

Second, and maybe more telling, is his willingness to say it so bluntly to a crowd of people he only knows mostly through their mutual interest in model trains. And even in front of a person he has never met, and whom he would like to include in their club.

The idiocy of assuming like-mindedness of such an issue is pretty apparent. I was immediately reminded of an experience I had way back in the winter of 1977. Yeah, that long ago.

It was about the same time of the year, not long before or after Groundhog Day of that year, and quite late on a very cold Chicago night. I was seventeen, and was returning home after a Friday night shift as a busboy at a restaurant on Chicago’s north side. It was on Grandville Avenue, and to get there I rode the “L” north to Howard Street, from where I walked less than a mile home.

It was after eleven o’clock, pretty late for a teenager alone, when I climbed up the stairs to train level. There was one other person on the platform, a man who I guessed to be about forty or so. He nodded in my direction as I topped the stairs. I turned to the right and away from him, as a general indication that I didn’t want to engage with him.His nodding wasn’t unusual, Chicago was and is a friendly city.

The CTA has 24 hour service, one of only two cities (the other is New York) in America that has, but trains are infrequent off hours. I think they might have run hourly back then, but I can’t remember precisely. I mention this because it was normal to stand and wait for a train at that hour.

But it is also common to look down the tracks to see if the train was coming. You could see the headlights when the train was at least a couple of stops south, so frequently taking a glance was normal. It was 1977 after all, and there wasn’t much else to do while waiting.

As I took those glances I saw that man doing the same, though he would occasionally turn to look north on the platform, apparently to catch my attention. On one of those occasions he started walking in my direction. I wasn’t generally afraid of people, but from any point of view this was not a good thing. A grown man shouldn’t be approaching a solitary teenager on the train platform late at night. Though I do remember taking into account that I was almost six feet tall, and he might not be aware of my youthfulness.

When it got about 20 or so feet away he stopped, perhaps recognising the intrusion unwelcome. He looked again to the south on the tracks, and then turned back to me and said aloud, “Jungle Bunnies driving the trains” as he shook his head with a disapproving grimace.

I took a couple of symbolic steps away and avoided eye contact. When I peek up I could see him shaking his head again.

Let me be clear, I don’t think the train was late when it arrived, and I couldn’t see the driver clearly through the window, as the headlights of the car blinded the view. I boarded and went home, uncomfortable thoughts of this popping up in my head several times before they disappeared for years to come.

It joined the Navy that summer, and this took me far away from Chicago and the “L,” and was a decade or more later before I remembered the incident and reflected on it. I figured out by then why it was so troubling. Not only was I being approached by a grown man while alone at night as a teenager. And it wasn’t just the racism, which I didn’t like or appreciate back then. It was also the assumption that I could be included in his racism so easily. This has happened often in my life over the years, where racists presume that since I am also white, I must share the racist feelings they harbor. That the mere coincidence of skin color would allow them to insinuate agreement. And when I was seventeen years old and alone on that platform, I was hardly in a position to challenge that racism, but I wanted to. I wanted to tell him that I didn’t like the disparaging racial slur, and didn’t agree with it, nor have a problem with any race or gender being a train engineer.

And here on Tuesday night I wanted to draw a contrast between me and this man, this anti-American troglodyte who can’t understand the basic concept of democratic government. But I didn’t. I’ll save that for later. I will go back to the museum and look at the trains. And I will engage with people there on the subject of model trains, and real trains, and pictures of trains. And if that chap slips up again, I’ll let him dig a little deeper before saying anything. Perhaps a mind can be changed. But if not, it’s best to humiliate someone after they have tossed away their excuses.

If that doesn’t work, I guess I’ll just shake it off.

And Remedy

Section 3 of the 14th Amendment to the US Constitution bars anyone who has formerly taken an oath to support the Constitution and then engaged in insurrection, or gave aid and comfort to anyone who did from ever holding public office in the future.

This seems plainly to apply to Donald Trump, who incited the insurrection which led to the attack on the Capitol on January 6, 2021, and then gave aid and comfort to those who engaged in the attack (actually, he continues to do this last part today).

But there is a provision in that Amendment to allow Congress to remove that disqualification by a two-thirds majority vote in both chambers.

This last provision gives the Supreme Court (which will ultimately have to decide if his disqualification is Constitutional) the ability to declare him disqualified, but require that he nonetheless remain on the ballot in all fifty states.

The argument is that should he win, Congress would then be able to vote on whether or not to accept the will of the People and remove the disqualification or not.

This is dangerous ground, as such a vote against Trump would surely engender greater violence than simply refusing to allow him to run. And it would open the door to the question of whether or not the will of the People is valid in such a case. This isn’t open and shut. The Constitution is the will of the People in a larger percentage than any popular vote could be, as Amendments require super majorities in both chambers of Congress, as well as the legislatures of three-fourths of the states. The Constitution and its Amendments themselves are checks against temporary public support for populist ideas or candidates. After the 18th Amendment was ratified alcohol sales were illegal, regardless of how unpopular the ruling was, and remained so until we scrubbed it with the ratification of the 21st.

This is how the Supreme Court could get around the question of ballot access without facing Impeachment themselves.

The remedy to this is not waiting for the election to decide this issue, but instead to hold the votes as soon as SCOTUS makes this ruling. Thus (assuming he fails to get the necessary votes to remove the disqualification) he can be removed from the ballot in the public’s interest. There being no good cause to give the People an option to vote for someone who is disqualified from serving.

I do not believe that any intelligent life has ever visited Earth, nor has any such life directed devices or craft to do so. Though I do remain open to evidence to the contrary that could change my belief, should the evidence be sufficient.

My reasons are simple: I consider the vastness of the galaxy (and the universe) too great in distance and time to afford an opportunity for physical visitation.

And, none of the arguments for alien visitation have been convincing. This includes all pictures, films, testimony and the like.

There is no such thing as absolute certainty about a claim. We are left only with deciding between choices of likelihood. Which is more likely? We ask. Whatever the subject before us, we can ask that question.

What method do we use to decide what is more likely? Reason or Instinct?

Reason of course, as instinct is simply what you already take to be true. And we gain instinct from environment and experience. We are predisposed to certain assumptions, so using reason will give us some help sorting what is, from what we assume it is. We come with embedded beliefs from childhood, and all the later times when we took something to be true for bad reasons. It is a good practice to examine all beliefs to determine how we came to hold them.

Occam’s Razor is a good tool, even applied casually. It is a question of numbers of assumptions. Sometimes people say it means the simpler, the better. It isn’t that exactly, but more like, in which argument do you have to assume more things without proof in order to get to the result.

A simple proposition might be the statement: I have a brown dog. A person who hears this only has to make one assumption to form a belief. They have to assume I am telling the truth.

Whereas if I said that I had a brown dog that can drive a car and fly his own airplane, they’d have to make more assumptions to form a belief. (Dogs driving cars, flying and owning planes).

But here the assumption that I am joking is enough to form a belief about the statement. (Or that I am crazy, etc).

There are uncountable numbers of stars and potential planets in our galaxy alone, and it seems foolish to believe that we are alone. It must be, we say, that life emerged on many other such planets. And even if a tiny percentage of these potential planets had life, and even if a smaller percentage had intelligent life, there would still be large numbers of such lifeforms out there amongst the stars.

This is a reasonable proposition, at least for the sake of looking and listening to see if we can detect any intelligent life. It is a big place, and we have barely begun to look. Maybe we will find some?

But these numbers arguments are flawed. They all are static, and the galaxy isn’t. The galaxy is 87,000 light years in diameter. Even the spiral arms are 1000 light years thick. Only a relative handful of stars are within 50 light years of Earth. That means that speed of light communication would take a century round trip. If we heard today from an alien race, our answer could be generations before it was received. On the contrary, our grandchildren’s grandchildren might get an answer from messages we sent fifty years ago. That’s just at the speed of light.

The practicality of interstellar travel makes it more likely than not that any intelligent life would not undertake such trips. The distance of time is too great. We look at the night sky and we do not see the stars. We see the light from those stars that has been traveling for a thousand years. That light might have gone out centuries or millennia ago. Time. The distances are time.

I make one assumption: They don’t likely know we’re here, and couldn’t come if they did know. It isn’t a question of simply overcoming the technology. (Which we have to assume they could).

Time traveling? That’s another assumption, and not one that comports with reality. Why assume they have different physical laws? Why speculate about possibilities at all? Each time we allow for a new truth based on speculation, the more assumptions we are making, and the less likely it is true.

At some point we need to realize that we are not making estimate for predictive purposes, but excuses to allow continued belief.

This is sort of my position when it comes to what might be “out there.” We are probably not alone, but it probably hasn’t been here, nor would it come.

But to think it is probable that we are not the only place where life emerged, is not the same as having evidence that it did form elsewhere. And it is a long way from reasoning that it would or could come here.

Let’s examine the rarity of intelligent life capable of space exploration.

Life emerged on Earth roughly 3 billion years ago, a billion-ish years after the planet formed. And hominids didn’t evolve on Earth until about 6 million years ago. It has taken all of those billions of years to evolve the intelligent life we have now. Intelligent life is brand new on this evolutionary scale.

There are 1.2 million identified species of plants and animals on Earth, with estimates suggesting there could be 8.7 million. And yet, only one of those is intelligent enough to create written language or transmit messages beyond our planet.

This is evidence that life sufficiently intelligent for space travel is exceedingly rare. There could well be millions of planets with life that may never evolve to this degree. Millions of possible worlds with life that never reaches the intelligence of even primates. We could be the pinnacle.

And the window of time within that evolutionary timeline where intelligence reached even the ability to transmit radio signals is a tiny fraction of that time, I suspect it would be in the last few seconds of New Year’s Eve if presented on an annual calendar. That is, technologically advanced intelligent life is evident for only an extraordinarily small fraction of time, and only within a single species out of millions.

When we are looking out at space with this evolutionary timeline in mind, we should understand that it may be that none of the intelligent life that may be out there exists now. We not only have to understand the number of potential planets, the rarity of intelligence, and the distances of time, but we must also figure out those windows of time that intelligence exists in – if it exists at all.

Occam’s Razor applied here says that it is more likely that other life does not overlap in time and distance with us. 

There could be vast amounts of life that we will never be aware of, nor could be aware of, because the time lapse of communication exceeds humanity’s period of technology.

Aliens could have sent signals to Earth for millennia to no avail, because while we were here and intelligent, we were not yet technologically advanced enough to understand them. They might have reached out millions of years ago, and since have vanished in the collapse of their own local star, asteroid strike, or internal conflict.

The evidence for alien visitation is insufficient to support belief based on the feasibility.

Claims:

Broadly speaking, the claims of alien visitation are eye witnesses, photographic and video-graphic images, and conspiracy theories.

UFO sightings have increased in direct proportion to the development of manned flight. When human powered aircraft began crossing the skies in earnest, UFO claims became a thing. And they increased as human flight increased.

And what people say they saw has changed too, and chiefly according to the popular conception of what others saw.

In the early 20th Century, aliens of our fictions looked entirely different than they came to look later. The first “saucer” wasn’t a saucer at all. It was a reporter’s mistake that led to that description. Before that they were cylinders. After that, the saucer shape dominated the sightings.
In The War Of The Worlds novel, aliens were octopus-like creatures. And they were Martians. Later, we imagined short men with suction cups on their limbs.

 After the movie Close Encounters Of The Third Kind, the “gray” became the predominant description in UFO claims. And the “alien” bodies being displayed in Mexico look remarkably similar to E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial.

I point these out to show that when we see something we can’t identify, we form in our mind the image we think we should see. Once we start thinking the UFO is alien, we fill our mental image with what we think it should look like. And that appearance is often what is most popular at the time. This is evidence of human error in identification.

I’ve heard it said that these claims are evidence, just not good evidence. This is incorrect. The UFO sightings (all of them, or at least those that remain unidentified) are not evidence of aliens. They are evidence of UFOs. All they tell us is that someone saw something they couldn’t identify, and they asserted it was alien in origin. But none of them have ever crossed into evidence beyond unknown, except when found to be from Earth, which was all of the ones that were identified.

Apply Occam’s Razor to this. If every time we identify a UFO it turns out to be from Earth, what’s most likely true about the next one we see?

When UFOs mostly turn out to be planes, birds, balloons, and atmospheric phenomena, why do we continue to persist in thinking some of the remaining are alien?

“I saw an alien craft,” is an assertion without supporting evidence. To correct it we could say, “I saw something I couldn’t identify, and I assert it is alien.”

A UFO should not prompt a choice between whether or not it is alien to Earth. That’s a false dichotomy. This kind of logical error leads us to think that some number of them could or must be alien by default. This puts an assumption into our heads at the beginning. We assume that some alien visitors are coming here. This is an unwarranted assumption.

Each claim should be treated as if it is likely from Earth, and if we are unable to make such an identification, it is fallacious to presume it is alien to Earth.

The plural of anecdote is not data.

A thousand unproven claims do not add up to one proven claim.

The entire body of ufology amounts to claims and accusations of conspiracy. Anything alien remains speculative.

This has led people who are committed to the belief in alien visitors, to assert that “they” are hiding the truth. This should be dismissed out of hand because it is an unfalsifiable claim. We cannot prove anyone isn’t hiding it, because you can’t prove a negative, so the assertion shouldn’t even be part of the discussion.

The burden of proof is on those making the claim. The claim of government coverup must be shown to be true, not merely asserted as a way to distract from the failure to verify a claim.

The alien believers club has tried to do this in papers, books, films, online and the like, by asserting that various classified government programs exist in order to hide the truth. Of course they have not proved any of that. That our military has secrets about some things is not reason to believe it has secrets about everything. Nor should the lack of evidence be used as claims of hidden evidence.

The most recent has been alien true believers testifying before Congress. This was a fascinating example of how the UFO community uses innuendo and assumptions to mislead the untrained public.

In Congressional hearings about the subject of UFOs, the claimants talk about actual programs, some of them secret, which investigate the phenomenon. It is important to understand how this sounds to the untrained ear.

When most of us hear the word UFO, we assume aliens. We do understand when it is pointed out that unidentified doesn’t mean otherworldly, but for most laypeople UFO is synonymous with ET.

So, when a “whistleblower” tells us that the government has secret programs to investigate and retrieve crashed UFOs, we often assume this means that alien craft have been recovered. This is a logical fallacy called a non sequitur. Unidentified does not equal alien. The US military has shot down unidentified objects. Some very publicly. This year’s downing of supposed Chinese spy balloons were all over the news. These were definitely from Earth. We sent teams to these crash sites and recovered the wreckage. We also shot down some stuff we weren’t sure of (which turned out to be balloons). UFO crash site recovery teams doesn’t mean aliens. That’s a non sequitur.

Anyone in the government familiar with these recoveries are aware that these are from Earth. When they omit that from their Congressional testimony, it is fair to conclude they are doing so intentionally to mislead the public, and perhaps Congress itself. It is deceit by omission.

Even more telling is the use of charged language. The newest is “non-human biologics.” At a hearing where witnesses testify about alien visitation and government coverup (all implied but never directly claimed under oath), this phrase sounds like it means the government has the alien bodies.

I have paid close attention to the reaction to this phrase, from the Congress members at the meeting, news reporters covering it, articles written, and the general public as a whole, and in nearly every case it is clear that people believe non-human biologics means alien creatures.

The use of this phrase is woefully misleading. And the witnesses seem clearly intent on letting it mislead. At no point did the witness attempt to clarify this, or even define the phrase. Here’s a definition of biologic: biologic |ˌbīōˈläjik|

adjective

relating to biology; biological. there is growing interest in the biologic activities of plant extracts in the treatment of disease.

noun (usu. biologics)

another term for biological (noun). these natural biologics can be as potent as manufactured drugs.

When I first looked this up it reminded me of my childhood. I can’t remember the exact age, but some school mate pointed at me and told me my epidermis was showing. This was a good laugh for kids until everyone learned what that word meant.

Non-human biologics could be any other living thing on Earth. At no point should we conclude that this means alien to our planet.

That Congress and the public misunderstood this, is evidence of how easily we will jump to conclusions. We (the people, broadly speaking) are not skeptical. We do not think critically.

And the use of this phrase in the context it was presented without clarification suggests (strongly) that the witness intended for people to make that assumption.

A suspicious drone knocked out of the sky by a trained eagle (yes, that’s a real thing) would have a crash recovery team sent, and the bird feathers would be non-human biologics. A spy balloon that lands in a field of grass would have non-human biologics.

There is zero reason to conclude that this means alien, but nonetheless this is what most people would assume because of the context.

In all, the witnesses made no direct claims that could put them in jeopardy of perjury while under oath. And they were all very careful to qualify that they personally didn’t see any of the craft or bodies, or biologics. It was all hearsay. Someone told them. Even the claim of being a whistleblower is misleading. He merely made statements regarding the existence of activities, and hearsay of others, while implying that evidence of aliens was being hidden. No accusations, but plenty of ambiguous statements implying aliens.

And around that they crafted a story that would set up the listener to believe the tale that “they” are hiding the truth from you.

The testimony was a complete nothingburger. It sounded like every other claim I’ve heard, full of implication and misrepresentation. And the whole thing steeped in the belief of coverup.

I’ll repeat what I’ve said before. The time to believe something is when there is sufficient evidence and not before.

In the case for alien visitation the reasonable burden of proof has not been met. It has not even been approached. When examined critically, none of the claims get past the stage of unknown, except where we found them to be Earth born. And our inability to understand what we saw, or recognize the error in our observation, does not permit us to infer something not in evidence.

Couple that with the known constraints of distance and time, and the likelihood of such visitation becomes even less plausible.

Triple that with the innate human tendency to assert an answer wherever there is a gap in our knowledge, even so far as our own minds forming images, and the idea that any sighting is credible isn’t reasonable.

I’ll keep an open mind, but I don’t know what it was, maybe it is alien, is poor reasoning.

(The Modern Dodge)

Twice this year I’ve heard that phrase directed to me. It came from two different people in two widely separated forums. Both times they were offered when I called out someone for an indefensible and disturbing statement they had made.

I’ll get to the problem in a bit, but first I’ll briefly explain the interactions.

The first was in late winter, February or March, I believe. It took place while playing team trivia at a local pub. A man I’ve known for years (I’ll call him Jim as an alias), and with whom I had previously been a teammate, approached me after one night’s game was over and brought up Alex Haley, the author or Roots.

Let’s be clear, none of the night’s trivia questions or answers had anything to do with Alex Haley, or with Roots the book or Roots the TV miniseries, and there was never a mention of slavery or race relations at all. Oh, and Alex Haley died more than three decades ago. It seemed clear that Jim brought the topic with him to the pub that night.

Jim and I got along well enough, even having rode together to a regional trivia tournament six or seven years before. He is an odd man, perhaps more odd from his life circumstances. He was the last or only child of a mother who lived to be very old, and with whom he lived as a bachelor all that time. She had died a couple of years before, leaving him the house. During those years she guilt-tripped him into staying with her, and keeping her company much of the time. It was impossible for him to form any romantic relationships for the attention his mother demanded, and to which he subjected himself. I sympathized with him, as I was the last of a large litter myself, and knew all too well the nature of life around a clinging mother not ready to have no children at home. I joined the Navy to get away from that.

That night Jim launched into what can only be described as a screed about how Alex Haley had lied about his personal history, and that none of the Roots story was real. (This is not really true, Haley admitted to taking someone else’s story and claiming it as his own. The story wasn’t invented from whole cloth).

To Jim this meant that none of the Roots miniseries was true, and that the entire nation had been misled about slavery because of the popularity of the book and TV shows. And, he further added, none of the whippings and bad treatment were true either. And that the country had been manipulated by “the Jews” in order to make white people hate themselves.
I called him out on it, and told that this was nonsense, and that our understanding of history is built on far more than a popular TV miniseries, which along with the book, accurately reflected both many individual circumstances, as well as the entire institution of slavery. And I made it clear that I understood the white supremacist background behind this gaslighting about slavery, and that it was born from the “Lost Cause” myth that had been invented in the late nineteenth century, and which led to the Jim Crow era. And that such talk had gained new momentum in light of the racist and fascist populism that has risen since Trump came to power. (Even Florida Governor Ron DeSantis has been floating and demanding that his state’s high school curriculum include the skills the enslaved benefited from learning. Yes, the claim is that slavery was like an apprenticeship).

I told him to never bring it up again to me, and that I thought it revolting that he considered such claims credible at all.

I left with the intention of discontinuing associating with him at all.

A couple of days later I got a letter from him. There were many excuses, such as saying this was just something he ran across on the internet, and that he had black friends he would fight for, and the like. But ultimately what matters is that he was sorry that he had offended me.

I wrote back a stern letter advising him to lose my phone number, and abandon any thought of interacting with me in the future, pointing out that men in their sixties don’t just happen upon racism and white supremacism on the internet.

Further, I said that I was not offended, but rather disgusted by his comments.

The second incident happened online and more recently. (The occasion triggered my writing this today).

An acquaintance of mine is visiting Japan and had posted on Facebook a series of photographs he took around Tokyo. Someone else he knows commented on his post asking if he was introducing himself to people as J. Robert Oppenheimer Jr. (A reference to the father of the atomic bomb, whose biopic was gracing the theater screens across the country).
I saw this comment when looking at the post, and responded that I couldn’t imagine anyone finding that funny. It was, after all, a crass joke about nuclear holocaust victims.

We had a brief exchange where he said he thought our mutual friend would find it funny, and suggested that he should have sent it as a private message; and I responded that such a change wouldn’t do anything except hide his trivializing of hundreds of thousands of deaths from the two atomic bombs we dropped, and then suggested he visit the Hiroshima Peace Memorial and the Nagasaki Atomic Bomb Museum for a perspective.

He then said that he didn’t mean any offense, and apologized for offending me.

I said I wasn’t offended, but rather disturbed. And I said that were I to have made such a joke and been called on it, it would lead me to feel great shame, but that “you do you.”

It is this use of an apology for offending me, and the assumption that I was offended by both of these two people that struck a nerve, and made me think about why this had happened.

I realized that what they were both doing is defending their horrific comments, and putting the blame for being called out on me for taking offense. As if the problem wasn’t what they said, but rather who heard it. Like a guy at a bar telling his buddies his favorite Sambo pickaninny joke in his best Uncle Remus voice, and then apologizing to the black couple at the table behind them, by saying he didn’t notice them there. As if the problem wasn’t the racist joke, but letting that joke be heard by black people.

This is what both men were doing. Dismissing their own racism (and additionally antisemitism with Jim) by offering that it was my offense to it that was the issue. It wasn’t.

Over the years I’ve had countless occasions with groups of people where one person starts to say something, before carefully looking over both shoulders to see who might be within earshot before completing the statement. It was rare that whatever came next was not problematic. Almost invariably they are seeking to ensure that something they are saying would not be heard by someone outside of the group, and they are always surprised to find someone within the group calling them out for the comment. Sorry, they say. I didn’t know you were a (fill in blank).

Racism, xenophobia, nationalism, white supremacy, antisemitism, and overall bigotry is widespread in America, and surely throughout the world. But it won’t be curbed until people of good character refuse to let it slide when brought up around them. Joining in the laugh is tacit endorsement of their particular vitriol, and gives comfort and community to those who expound those vile ideals.

Don’t accept those apologies. The problem is what they said, and not who heard it.

“I’m sorry for offending you” is a copout. It is a dodge to avoid facing their own inner evil. A way to blame others for not sharing their bigotry. We cannot control what people think, but we (collectively) can make it so they find themselves alone when they say it.

As far back as I have memory regarding the formation of the structure of American government, the phrase “We’re a republic, not a democracy,” has been part of my education. And once I came to understand those two words I recognized how troublesome the distinction has become.

And it was clear to me that when people said this, they didn’t really understand the words.

For all practical purposes in American, a Republic and a democracy are the same thing. Republic means a government of the people with elected leaders, as opposed to a monarch. A democracy is also a government of the people with either elected representatives, or the voting by all the eligible persons. They’re the same thing until you dig into the weeds. It is the second form of democracy that America is not, at least not wholly.

Generally when people push back against democracy from any knowledgeable position, they are thinking of a pure democracy, where everyone votes on every issue, and every decision should reflect the will of the majority on that issue. And no, that’s not so very good. It is unwieldy in anything larger than a small group or straight yes or no questions. Though is done all across the country in ballot initiatives and millage requests. Here the whole population votes up or down on a proposal or request for funding. This may be at the township level or even the whole state. This really is purely democratic. How many want pizza for dinner, and how many want tacos?

A republic uses democratic processes for the people to choose representatives who will advance their interests, and debate with other representatives to arrive at sound decisions for the whole of the people. In our Republic this comes with two caveats: One is that we can’t always get what we want; and the other is that sometimes your representative must decide differently than the majority of their constituents wish, because that is what is best for the whole of the people. We pick representatives to make decisions on our behalf, with the expectation that they will follow the wishes of the people, so far as this is practical and reasonable.
How many want each of these candidates to speak for us in the legislature? That’s democracy in a republic.

So whenever I heard someone present that phrase to me, I first understood that it wasn’t a cogent argument, but a buzzword made to shut down discussion. But I failed to learn that there is another angle to this concept.

There are those who see the republic/democracy line not as a nuanced pedantry of language, but as a difference more profound. They seem to define democracy as mob rule, and republic as rule by a selected group. And with some thought you can make this work. It takes careful selection of definition of each word to get there, but for someone who just doesn’t want to accept democracy as an option it works.

But the meaning is more nuanced to some. Some saw the founding of America as a republic as opposed to a democracy, was because they were declaring that a certain group would do both the electing and the representing. White men.

It is true that when the founders of the United States sat down to form a government that spread the power out away from the central control of a monarch, they limited that spread to the adult white men of the country, and even at first to landowners within that group. But that wasn’t what “republic” meant.

The history of voting has gradually changed over time, and today we have universal suffrage codified in not only law, but in the amended Constitution. Any citizen 18 years of age or older may vote in elections, so long as they are not prohibited by law. Decades before we opened the vote to women, and decades before that to black men.

In a republic, a minority of the people (representatives) make government decisions on behalf of the whole of the people. We use democratic processes (voting) to choose that minority from among the population. But there are those who hold a more, shall I say, traditional view of who that ruling minority should be. In short, they think it should be white men who make up that minority. Or if pressed, at least those who acknowledge the supremacy of that group. There are those who believe there is such a thing as a “real” American citizens, and those who should not have the same influence.

To speak simply and pedantically, a democracy is all of the people voting on all the issues; where a republic is a small group voting on the issues that all must abide by.

The former is impractical beyond a small group, and could lead to mob rule. The latter is simply when the voting group is endorsed by the whole of the people.

This is what the United States is, and the only thing that has changed is the broadening of the population that selects that minority.

Racial supremacists seek to interpret the Constitution in a way that justifies segregation and hierarchy of race. Often they will view new citizens as being less “real” then the established families of the children of earlier immigrants. They are similar to, and often overlap with those who hold deep religious convictions. In America these are almost exclusively evangelical Christians.

Their lack of Constitutional literacy and their uncritical thinking leads many to accept the interpretation of their pastors and other Christian allies. They don’t know what the Constitution says, broadly speaking, and believe the claims they are told. These claims are typically along the lines of declaring that the founders were all Christian and expected subjugation to God as a matter of course. And, when presented with the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment, they reinterpret meaning into particular words to mean that it is only the establishing of a church of a particular religion that is prohibited, but not following the general religious principles, or making laws reflecting the supremacy of God. Or more importantly regarding the makeup of our current Supreme Court, that the Bible is useful to lawmakers when they are unable to find precedent in law. The Bible is a higher authority, so they claim, which they also claim the founders agreed with.

To say that this interpretation is far from what was intended, is obvious to the plain reading of what those founders said. And it is still not a good idea for exactly the same reason the founders included the Establishment Clause in the first place.

They saw the history of war and persecution throughout Europe, and especially England, over which religion was the right and true representation of God’s will. The Founders were also aware that New England settlements and colonies began with Pilgrims, a devout religious order of Protestants seeking religious freedom. But that freedom was limited to favor them only. They were expressly intolerant of other religions, going way past persecution, and to outright criminal punishment for unorthodox beliefs. Some religions or sects, such as Quakers were banned in places. And only a few generations before, courts in Massachusetts put people to death believing them to be witches.

The founders knew all too well who made up the country. And they knew any interaction between the government and any church could lead to disagreement and even conflict between Americans.

Of all the things that are “America,” it is the supremacy of The People that matters most. This means that we are collectively supreme to any personal belief, regardless of how large or passionate that belief may be. But each still may hold their own beliefs, and practice their religions, so long as this does not interfere with the rights of others.
And that the decision to obey rules (or interpretations of rules) of any religion or any collection of them must be a personal choice. And it must not be one that others are forced to obey. No matter how broadly one casts the religious net, it still must remain an individual choice without persecution or alienation.

The only laws that should be passed, and restrictions that should be placed upon people regarding their behavior, are those laws that can be agreed upon through reason and debate, taking into account the public good, and ensuring the smallest encumbrance upon the liberty of individuals. But encumbrances may happen. Speech that incites violence may be suppressed, and personal beliefs may have to be set aside. If you take a job delivering the Sunday newspaper, you can’t claim religious exemption from working on the sabbath.

On occasion religions and reason will agree. Murder is bad. We are all better off if murder is prohibited against and severely punished. One’s desire to assault someone over a grievance is to be tempered by the wish that one not be also assaulted. There is no need for a commandment from an old book when we can figure that out ourselves. We do not outlaw murder because of some words in an old book. We outlaw murder because it is in the best interests of all, and it protects the individual in their pursuit of happiness.

The problems are when religion proscribes what is not reasonably reached.
Have no other God before me. Hmmm. Is it reasonable to make this requirement of the people? How could it harm individuals? If I accept imposing my religion on others, then I risk allowing others to impose their religion upon me. When I ask if my Bible shall be taught in public school, should I not agree that the religious books of others could be likewise taught to my own kids?
Here we have good reason not to permit such a commandment to become law.

The differences between religions, mostly and especially the Abrahamic religions, is correctness and devoutness of belief.

This is the same thing that led to all that European conflict that figured so prominently in the thoughts of the founders when they formed the government.

So today we have modern puritans, who overlap heavily with those who believe all Americans aren’t “real” Americans, and therefore should not choose the government.

No, the United States of America is not a pure democracy. Though it does have purely democratic elements. And through the democratic process of elections we choose our government agents.

What is common in both words is the supremacy of The People. That means all of the people.

And the government we formed when we drafted the Constitution aspired to a more perfect union of the people. Establishing justice, ensuring domestic tranquility, providing for the common defense, promoting the general welfare, and securing the blessings of liberty for ourselves and our posterity.

Practice democracy and resist authoritarianism. Vote.

It’s June of 2023 and a warship of the People’s Republic of China’s navy has harassed a US Navy destroyer in the Taiwan Strait, and the video of that encounter (taken from a Canadian warship that was also present) is getting wide attention. From what I have seen online, there is some confusion for many about how this all works.

What is Taiwan and why does the US protect them?

Taiwan is an island in the far western Pacific Ocean that the United States recognizes as part of China. The people of Taiwan also see themselves as part of China.

What’s the trouble and why are we involved?

I recently had an exchange with someone in the Youtube comments after a video of the encounter was played on an international news outlet’s channel. The commenter seemed to be from mainland China, based on the assumptions they made and the viewpoint expressed.

The commenter did not understand how the USA was defending Taiwan while also accepting that they are part of China.

That is a fair question. I made an explanation, without any apparent success of it being accepted, but that didn’t really surprise me, as the person I was communicating with believed that this gives the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) the right to rule over the people of Taiwan without their consent.

I thought it was time for a refresher or sorts.

Taiwan is an island that is politically part of China. The political body of the island is officially known as the Republic of China. (ROC).

We only need go back to 1945 and the end of World War II, when Japan was defeated and the island ceded to the ROC. As the war ended, a civil war resumed on the mainland between the ROC and communist forces under Mao Zedong. By 1949 the communists were defeating the ROC forces, who removed themselves to Taiwan. Mainland China became the People’s Republic of China (PRC).

PRC = Communist China

ROC = Taiwan

In time the United States accepted the legitimacy of the PRC, and developed a One-China policy. We also support the right of the people of Taiwan to mind their affairs and determine their government democratically. The apparent contradiction is understandably confusing.

The One China Policy is an acceptance that there are not two separate Chinas, but one with two forms of government until such a time that the people of both entities willingly agree to share, free from the threat or coercion, a single government. If the people of Taiwan vote to become communist, we’ll accept that choice. I doubt they will.
As a matter of public law (The Taiwan Relations Act), the USA supports the governing authority of Taiwan (not officially called the ROC by the USA), and their right to self determination.

China = One country but unification must be mutually accepted for the US to withdraw our influence.

The USA holds that Taiwan has a democratically elected government and the right to maintain that. Since PRC threatens to subjugate them through force, the United States will assist in their defense. (The wording of this can be interpreted to mean either just supplying arms or defending by force.)

In the view of the United States, the people of any country have the right to self-determination. They should have and form a government of their own choosing. In the case of the people of the mainland of China, they never had this opportunity to choose their own government by any democratic means. It was forced upon them through military victory.

But this does not mean that the people of Taiwan need to abandon their own right to self-determination. Taiwan was never forced to accept communism, and as people they remain free to democratically choose their government. This is supported and protected by the USA and other nations. If we can’t force the PRC to adopt a different form of government, we certainly can’t support forcing Taiwan to do the same.

The People’s Republic of China could abandon its one-party communist authoritarian state and open the country to free and fair elections with a republican or parliamentarian government. Should this happen, and the government becomes one chosen by the People of China, it would become more desirable for Taiwan to reunite. The reunification of Germany is a fine example of this being done. East Germany abandoned communism and that country is no longer divided. There is hope that this can happen with North and South Korea as well.

For all practical purposes Taiwan can continue operating separately forever without causing any problems for the PRC, except the ego of leadership on the mainland, and the threat that any democracy is to communism. People prefer to choose their own representative government, so totalitarian states don’t want nearby examples to inspire their subjects.

If one is looking for hypocrisy, one need only look at the relationship between China and the Koreas, as compared to the US view. Here China supports an unelected totalitarian state that continues in its efforts to gain control over the whole of the peninsula, while complaining that the US won’t mind its own business when it comes to Taiwan.

And should someone fail to grasp the geopolitical significance of Taiwan as an ally (of sorts), look at a map of the area and see how should Taiwan be swallowed up by the CCP, this could interrupt the free navigation of the seas both in the Taiwan Strait and the South China Sea, and would negatively affect the rights of other free and independent countries in the region, such as Vietnam and The Philippines.

Taiwan is a well-armed island of 24 or so million people. China attacking them would be like a bear attacking a wolverine. Yeah, it can ultimately win, but will pay an expensive price in blood and treasure. The dynamic of this changes with the US pledging support. China doesn’t want at fight it can’t win. Let’s hope they don’t start believing they can.

The recent revelation of a trove of top secret and confidential files related to the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the defense department assessment of the war situation is a concerning matter. Of course. We cannot be comfortable in this world if bad actors know what we are planning, and what we see as weaknesses. I am not a pollyanna. I am naturally resistant to our government keeping secrets from us, but I am certain that some secrecy must be maintained. We do have adversaries in this world, and those people would like to know where and how they can best bring harm to us.

I’ve discussed this before, but I will briefly state that two main worldviews are preparing for conflict. One side is us. On our side is the idea that power should be spread out amongst the people far enough to prevent the concentration that brings tyranny. Leaders are elected and need to be held accountable by the people.

The other side thinks that centralized power in the hands of an effective single leader is the model for successful nations. The chief problem with their side is that centralized power is difficult to change, and therefore more prone to tyranny. We have countless examples of this throughout history, and it was the direct cause of our own efforts to emerge as an independent nation.

The dictators of the world know that our desire to see democratic style government spread throughout the world is a direct threat to their power. Can you even imagine Kim Jong Un relinquishing his power in favor of democratic reforms? The same is true of Xi, Putin, and others. These dictators are acting in their own personal self-interest, rather than the interests of their countries. So yes, they want to know our weaknesses so that they may better direct their efforts to weaken our democracy.

This is one reason these dictators all liked Trump. He was (and remains) on a quest for personal power. Trump is the would be dictator that they can deal with. Because he puts his own interests ahead of the country’s, he will not step in to aid other democracies that are being attacked or threatened by the authoritarians. That’s why they tried to help him, and why they flattered and bribed him, and why they (most likely) got dirt on him to use when his courage flagged. They also liked him because he is a buffoon.

So they try to spy on us. And since their worldview is a threat to world democracy and therefore a threat to our nation, we spy on them too.

In fact, the whole of the intelligence world is an elaborate game of deceit. Truth is so important that, as Winston Churchill said, “In wartime, truth is so precious she should always be attended by a bodyguard of lies.”

Hiding truths that could advantage our adversaries is done in many ways. Yes, having top secret clearances and restricting access is part of this. But letting lies emerge that masquerade as the truth is also a part of this. Disinformation and misinformation are as important as genuine information.

I remember my time as senior third officer on the SS Cape Florida, tied to the wharf at Al Jubail, Saudi Arabia during Operation Desert Shield and the beginning of Operation Desert Storm. We would listen to the radio and hear these pundits discussing the leaks about our plans of attack. Some said amphibious, some said by ground from the west, and others said up the middle. Still others said these were all misinformation. As myself and other officers listened to these radio talking heads, our conversation revolved around whether we would launch a ground attack and where it would go. One of the engineering officers was apoplectic that these radio broadcasters were so openly discussing possible plans. “Why don’t you just tell Saddam what we’re going to do!”

This sort of conversation went on for days, with each day bringing some new leak of information, or suggestions of the best approach.

Finally one day as we listened to yet another “informed opinion” that engineering office said, “I don’t know anymore which of these things are true.” To which I responded, “What do you think is going through Saddam Hussein’s mind right now?”

There had been so much information and disinformation told and speculated about, with so many obvious lies, and others not so obvious, that it became fairly impossible to make an intelligent guess as to what we would do and when. The intelligence plan had worked.

And later, when we were narrowly missed by a SCUD missile, armed forces radio reported it had missed our area by ten miles. “They got that wrong,” blurted out the Able Seaman that was on my watch. I said, “well, if we assume that Iraq has people listening to this radio station, then it probably wouldn’t be a good idea to tell them how close they were.” The young sailor grasped my meaning. All listening to the other side would tell you is what they want you to hear. And then you don’t know which of the messages is the truth. Was that the truth, or a member of the bodyguard of lies.

Today I am listening and reading about these leaks with much interest. I am aghast as anyone that a person with such clearances would seek to release them and jeopardize the intelligence sources we have around the world, and risk bringing harm to Ukraine or aid to Russia. But I am also aware of the distinct possibility that nonesuch thing has happened, and that this is part of that whole misinformation game. Let them have enough truth that they trust the source, then confuse them with falsehoods and alternate facts.

And while we have greater access to information because of our free press, it isn’t beyond our intelligence agencies to use that path to confuse the adversary.

Is Ukraine weakened and facing shortages? Or is this a ploy to lure Russia into making a mistake?

And how would I know if these “leaks” were real or fabricated? How about real but loaded with phony stuff too? How about partly real and partly fake?

In truth I have no idea. And that is the point.

Don’t let the assumption that American openness has led to an intelligence dump. And don’t let the canniness of our spymasters fool us into thinking that we don’t have bad actors within that community. We put a lot of effort into discovering moles. But once we have found them, the next step is to decide if we arrest them or use them as tools.

I’ll keep listening and reading with much interest. But I’m not going to forget the larger lessons I’ve learned.

We don’t know what we don’t know about what we thought we knew and thought we didn’t know.

I was born to parents who had converted to Catholicism. They had done so for practical purposes, as the small mining town they moved to, which had just been built to mine the taconite of the Mesabi Iron Range, only had a catholic church. I was christened by Father Crispin, who was a friend and golfing buddy of my father, and later in Chicago at a different parish I was confirmed.

I left church – broadly speaking – in my early twenties, as doubts about the claims of the church filled my mind. And though I held onto a belief in deity and the power of prayer for several years, these too failed to stand up to reason. Religion, it seems, was created to give power over the many by the few.

At its most sincere, the church has fed some of the poor and consoled the suffering of many. But it has done so at the expense of reason. And it has done so at the expense of the innocence of countless children.

At this point I should make it clear that I was never molested by a priest or any other church official or member of the congregation. It should be a shock that such a declaration is necessary, but here we are. Here we are reading of another horror of widespread abuse of children by clergy in the Catholic Church. This time in Maryland.

More than six-hundred children.

And this is after decades of complaints, investigations, and criminal charges. Still, after all the public awareness and attention the Church has received. With regular news coverage, films, and television stories it continued – and continues.

This is more than a few bad apples here and there. The church had (and seems to still have) a program of systematically protecting the child abusers in their midst. If parents became suspicious or complained, the priests were simply transferred to another parish, where an unsuspecting population awaited them, and new, fresh children were lured into sexual abuse. And all too often where they would find sympathetic fellows who help them identify vulnerable children.

The conspiracy to hide guilt of these crimes, and to facilitate the furtherance of these despicable crimes was and remains widespread in the church. At each major finding of evidence we hear about how serious they are in their quest to end the abuse. But later it is found to continue. Those who abuse are not deterred by the illegality of the acts, nor the harm done to these children, and not even by the teaching of the Christ who is supposed to be their guide and God.

At this point in time we should stop looking at the Catholic Church as a beneficial body, or as helpful to the masses. The Church is a child sex trafficking organization masquerading  as a conduit to a god, and no one should continue as a member. No one.

The church itself (at least in America where my familiarity lies) should recognize itself for what it is and close their doors permanently. And they should do so in response to empty parishes.

I know this won’t happen, as people are all too inclined to pretend like this is isolated and that it won’t happen in their parish. The true believers can’t (or won’t) see the church for what it is, and will continue to support it with their money and time. All the while gambling that their children won’t be ruined by the abuses of the clergy. A clergy that is protected by secrecy of an organization crafted to foster such abuses, and to a degree protected from the application of law by their entitlement to secrecy.

I don’t have any use for any religion myself. But I fully understand the need for community that churches bring. But people need to find a way of creating these beneficial organizations without allowing pedophiles access to their children. The church cannot be trusted, and has utterly failed in stopping sexual abuse of children. And they have failed because it is the nature of such an organization to foster these monsters.

It is a wonder to me that people don’t better scrutinize the adults who have access to their children. And it is mind boggling that people fail to understand that people who want to sexually abuse children seek out opportunities to do so. Pedophiles become priests so they can have unfettered access to children. Some may believe that a vow of celibacy and life in a cloister will keep them from such actions, but when they get there they find a body organized to aid them in their darkest leanings.

This isn’t a problem that can be solved by the church, as it is made up of a significant number of people intent on continuing this abuse.

People should be quitting the church enmasse. To remain in the Catholic Church today is to support this abuse. You are, with your donations and presence, aiding monsters in their quest to find children to sexually assault.

Those who are in the church and are not abusing children (most people probably don’t abuse children) should recognize that they are still supporting an organization which fosters this abuse. They are helping the pedophiles do their evil. They are like the administrators of the Nazi regime, hiding behind plausible deniability. But though not guilty themselves, they are supporting the horrors that occur all too often.

Quit now.

What Messaging Says About The USA And Russia

There is little doubt about the reality of Russia’s war against Ukraine. The attack, called a Special Military Operation by the Russians, is a war of conquest intended to advance the geopolitical ambitions of the Russian dictator Vladamir Putin. (I say dictator because it is more accurate than any other title we have for anyone in his position. His power in Russia is absolute, and he has effectively suppressed all political opposition. He may well have been elected by a majority of the people, but those people do not have complete information, nor do they have any candidates to effectively challenge Putin.)

The USA during the Donald Trump Presidency warmed up to Putin and denigrated the leadership of Ukraine, as well as the whole of NATO. It is likely that had Trump been reelected, he would have pulled the US out of NATO entirely. This isn’t my hyperbole, but the opinion of former advisors to him, along with numerous international political experts who have watched these things carefully.

There is little doubt that Putin knew he would have a free hand in Ukraine, and that opposition from NATO would be stymied by Trump’s withdrawal from NATO, and the US’s unwillingness to support the democracies in Europe. It is probably true that a combination of things led to his invasion this year, instead of biding his time for a better opportunity. (Which is something that Xi in China is doing vis a vis Taiwan.)

As a dictator, Putin has put his primary energy into keeping power. This has led him to put personal loyalty to him above every other factor in choosing his administration and his military leadership. These people sucked up to him, as we’d expect, and told him whatever he wanted to hear. They told him he had massive numbers of Russophiles in Ukraine waiting to assist in an overthrow of the western leaning government, and that he’d be welcomed into Ukraine as a liberator. They also told him stories about the west that weren’t true. Such as the claim that Biden was a weak and addled-brain fool who would only respond with sanctions and protests upon his invasion, and that Trump was nearing a return to office – even before the next Presidential election in 2024. The wildcard was Putin’s ill health. Though it is clearly a state secret, it is safe to say that Putin faced his mortality when he developed a cancer somewhere in his body. A cancer that had metastasized and threatened his life. His physical appearance and infrequency of public displays of manliness made clear that he has been receiving treatment.

This illness may have been the catalyst that sparked him to act when he did.

To borrow a line from a movie, he chose poorly.

Biden was not only sharp as a tack and wary of Putin’s intent, he was attune to the moment democracy faces globally. He not only committed to supporting Ukraine, but he rallied and strengthened NATO, which has since grown in size following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

To settle a point: Russia has no valid claims to any territory in Ukraine, including Crimea. Russia has no inherent right to territory outside its own borders simply because they once controlled those territories in the olden days, or because some of the people there speak Russian. The idea that world borders can be decided by military annexation is something we rejected last century, and should such a practice return, it would mean the eventual destruction of civilization.

Putin’s defenders in America (of which there are many, including many elected leaders) are quick to accuse the Biden administration of warmongering, and trying to start a war against Russia (and probably China too.) This gets a lot of oxygen, mostly because of those elected leaders, as well as sycophants like the obsequious Tucker Carlson on the Fox propaganda network.

To be sure, Russia is threatening more than just Ukraine. The clear agenda of Putin is to recreate the borders of the former Soviet Union or the earlier Russian Empire. He’s made no secret about it, and has made statements to that effect in the past. He has claimed that Ukraine has no right to exist except as a vassal state to Russia. He has said or implied that other nations are subject to the same claim. The Baltic states, Georgia, Poland, to name a few.

And the USA under the Biden administration has certainly made it clear that we are supporting Ukraine, and more importantly, that we will defend with arms any attack on any NATO member. (A membership which as of today includes Finland, doubling the NATO presence along the borders of Russia.) And this support of Ukraine has included substantial amounts of highly effective weaponry, which has been mirrored by other NATO countries. All along Biden and his Cabinet department heads, such as State and Defense, have been very clear that the USA does not wish to get into a direct conflict with Russia.

But is this true? Are we secretly angling towards conflict with Russia? What about China?

The territorial ambitions of these two countries are antithetical to global democracy, and as such a threat to the peace and stability of the world. Are we looking to fight them now, perhaps to avoid having to face them in the future when they are stronger?

The answer is no, and the way I can tell that is from messaging.

Here I will need to talk about propaganda.

Propaganda is the use of information (or more often misinformation) designed to push a political agenda. It has been used by all countries at one time or another. My own family history was altered by propaganda during the First World War. Though we had been citizens of this Republic since the founding of the country, and had taken up arms in defense of this Republic in every war including the Revolution and Civil Wars, my family faced severe anti-German sentiment because of the national origins of our name. It resulted in claiming that our ancestry was Dutch rather than German. A pointless distinction to actual Americans, but necessary for local harmony.

German-Americans, whether they identified as such or not, faced discrimination, boycotts, and even violent attacks. These were brought on by the anger towards Germans that our national propaganda amplified. The Germans were depicted as apes, and were called Huns in a reference to the historical group that attacked and waged war against European countries in earlier history.

We did this because we were at war. And in the Second World War we repeated these characterizations, and included those of Japanese descent, where this time we locked Japanese-Americans in concentration camps out of fear of the possibility of enemy combatants in our own population. You can go to YouTube and find numerous videos from those war years depicting the Japanese as menacing and evil.

And especially when it comes to that last global war, both Japan and Germany did horrible things in the name of conquest. The Chinese were enslaved and slaughtered by the Japanese, and the Germans attempted to exterminate the Jewish people of Europe. There were plenty of other crimes against humanity committed by those countries, and even some by those defending against them. But the fact remains that they wouldn’t have happened had the wars of expansion and aggression hadn’t been started.

But we can look back on this history and see that it was in the leadership of those countries where the evil lived, and while abominable in their actions, the people were manipulated into those acts by their national leaders. All Germans weren’t antisemitic, and all Japanese weren’t raping and murdering their way through Asia.

But we promoted them as such because we were at war with them, and before that because we were expecting that we may need to fight them. It is far easier to kill other soldiers if we are convinced they are bloodthirsty villains. Today Ukrainian soldiers may well need to apply some of the same propaganda in order to quell any sympathy for the invading army. Sympathy that may be present because the Ukrainian people know that this is Putin’s war, and that were Russia a true democracy, this attack would not have happened.

During those past wars, as well as numerous other wars we engaged in, we promoted the idea that we were fighting against evil people. Now let’s look at today.

The messaging from President Biden, as well as all of his spokespeople, is clear that the fault of this war lies strictly with the leadership of Russia. It is commonplace for us to hear sympathetic words regarding the soldiers of Russia. Not that their cause is just, far from it, but that they are poorly trained and equipped, and that they are being thrust into this war by Putin, and that they are going like lambs to the slaughter. The invasion is a crime, but only some of the soldiers are brutally killing civilians, while the whole of the war is caused by Putin.

And when it comes to China it is similar. It is the Communist party and leadership that has enslaved people in that country, that has arrested and quelled protests, and has harvested organs from political prisoners. It isn’t from the Chinese people, but from the leadership of those people where evil was born.

This distinction is important. If the President was trying to stoke up the people to warfare, the efforts would be to vilify the people of those countries, or at least their soldiers. But what he is doing is separating the people of those countries from the leadership. He is pointing fingers at Xi and Putin, and refraining from blaming their people. If anything, he is encouraging those people to see the benefits of true democracy, with the hope that they will seek to change their regimes.

There is a case to be made for war, but only for one of defense. Defense of ourselves, or defense of other peoples and other countries, which have been attacked and are being threatened.

The global conflict that is threatening us is not one of who controls which borders, but of what kind of governments do people have. Broadly speaking, a collection of democracies where the people decide their future – and have the opportunity to change that decision in time; or one of authoritarianism where power is concentrated in the hands of the few.

All my life I’ve heard people talk about George Orwell and his novel 1984. I have heard numerous persons express fear that we are headed toward such a future, and they seek salvation in the election of a hero who will vanquish the bad guys. This partly explains the rise of Trump. But it is Trump and those like him that are the path to the dystopian future Orwell predicted. Even Trump’s campaign included large images of Trump’s eyes staring out of  a screen. An image eerily reminiscent of the book.

Imagine a world with dictators in China, Russia, and America? With this combined power, who could fight against it? What could the smaller democracies do but bend to the whims of the dictators? What power could the democracies of Europe have to match such global supremacy? Especially with the authoritarian governments that are emerging, and the democracies that are fledgling or failing.

It was Lord Acton of the United Kingdom who coined the phrase, power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

And it was the Constitution of the United States that put the whole of the people above the leadership of those people. The formation of this country was and is an effort to spread power out away from the center in order to keep it from concentration. For it is the concentration of power that causes the abuses we see emerging from dictatorships today.

Let’s be clear: The efforts being undertaken by Biden are not to get us into a war, but to demonstrate that our dispersal of power does not make us weak, and that democracy is worth defending wherever it exists. He’s made it clear and unambiguous that we will defend ourselves and NATO, and that we will support democratic governments.

The messaging out of the White House isn’t propaganda, but even if it was, it is directed at the leadership of those countries where democracy has been stifled, and not at the people of those countries.

Should the effort be to stir up the people to war, the messaging would be disparaging to the whole of those countries, and not merely the leadership. As to that leadership, they have earned our scorn.

It is March 31, which marks the one day anniversary of the news that a Manhattan, New York Grand Jury has voted to indict former President Donald John Trump for upwards of thirty felony charges relating to fraud committed in the furtherance of his political career. The crimes took place when he arranged for payment of money to silence a porn star named Stormy Daniels who had sex with Trump while his wife was wither pregnant or recovering from having Trump’s son Barron. Daniels had planned to go public with the information when Trump was running for President in 2016, which Trump felt could damage his political ambitions.

In this case, Trump recorded the payoff as a legal retainer for his then lawyer Michael Cohen, who has already been convicted for that crime. In that case, Trump was identified as co-conspirator number one, though not named directly. Cohen, for his part, saw the error of his ways and made a full confession accepting his wrongdoing, and has since fully cooperated with law enforcement.

Yesterday’s indictment is under seal, and we expect Trump to be arraigned in Manhattan in the coming days, and we’ll get to know the details of the charges, as well as some idea of the steps going forward.

This is a sober moment for our country, as no President, former or current, has ever been indicted on criminal charges. (Former Vice-President Spiro Agnew was charged and convicted of income tax evasion, and his boss, Richard Nixon, would likely have been charged after his resignation had his successor Gerald Ford not issued him a full pardon “for the good of the nation.”)

But this is also a day of celebration, as we can finally put muscle behind the claim that in America, no one is above the law.

Of course not everyone is happy about this. I spent a couple of hours this morning (while waiting for bread to rise) watching the right-wing media pundits and Trump acolytes go into conniptions over this news. Their responses were predictable, though pathetic. They have taken up the torch of desperation and moved from pearl-clutching to accusations of politically motivated bias. To them, the Manhattan District Attorney, as well as the grand jury are all corrupt leftists, funding by George Soros. (This last is a dog whistle to antisemitism, as Soros is an internationally known Jew of European birth.)

All of this whining both angered and amused me. It angered me because each of their screeds were nothing but gaslighting and lies, but likely to inflame the base they inform. And it is likely that we will see violence perpetrated against Americans by these fascist supporting dupes. While it amused me to see them sweat and squirm.

Their words claimed that this will drive support for Trump, and guarantee his election to President next year, though their eyes told a different story. A story of fear, for some of these people can see themselves facing similar legal jeopardy in the future, and others the demise of their careers.

This is especially outlandish coming from the talking heads on Fox network, who have already been outed for knowingly lying about Trump and his culpability between themselves in private emails – which have come to light as part of lawsuits by Dominion Voting Systems, who is suing Fox for 1.6 Billion dollars over that networks false and malicious claims of fraud by Dominion during the 2020 Presidential election. Yes, Fox knew Trump lost and that Dominion did nothing wrong, but they claimed it anyway.

And I sit here with my spirits lifted by this news, and not a small amount concerned about what might befall our country for this action. Hopefully the MAGA base will confine themselves to kvetching and weeping, and refrain from violent acts. Though here I may be the one who is naive.

And no, I don’t think this will catapult Trump to the Presidential victory in 2024, but I do believe it will inspire and encourage his faithful. What will happen in the next election is unknowable. Trump lost by over seven million votes in the last election (though five million of these were in California alone), and it is unlikely he has gained popularity since then. But the political left isn’t a unified mass. The Democratic party is somewhat fractured, and a substantial portion prone to apathy in elections. On top of that, we have the current President already the oldest man to be elected to the office, and this in the face of a call for more a more youthful Presidential candidate. It remains to be seen if Biden will run for reelection (though he said he would, he hasn’t declared his candidacy yet). And which Democrat might step into that role should he decide not to, or should age and health catch up with him and end his career in Politics, is not apparent.

We may face troubles here at home, and we may yet face troubles internationally, but today we can take a breath and smile. Finally.

Finally, after all these years of watching the bloviating mobster of an ex-President (from before, during, and after his term) get away with crimes, we are seeing justice come home. This has just begun, and conviction isn’t guaranteed. But it has begun just the same, and this gives hope that the State of Georgia and the US Department Of Justice will follow up with their own charges. Charges for more serious crimes. Crimes which weren’t conducted to get elected, but done to stop the transfer of power after he lost an election.

Breathe. Smile. Take comfort that we have laws and independent prosecutors and juries of the people.

Juries made up of We The People.