JackTReason

I didn’t listen to Trump’s Mount Rushmore speech, as I have had enough of him. But what is being reported is not a surprise to me. The surprise would be words of unity and cooperation. He continues to play the same card as in 2016. Blame the left with overt language, and those of brown and black skin with covert hints and dog whistles.We hear and will hear more implied calls to violence, couched in the language of hatred, pointing his racist finger at those who look different than his aryan ideal.
But what is different is that the America has rounded a corner. A new card and been flipped. The worm has turned. People who turned a deaf ear to his worst messages are starting to see him for what he is and they don’t like it.
There are many who are what I call “soft racists.” They fear groups of the other, and they believe that inner-city blacks bring the police problems on themselves with lawless actions. They have accepted the con that things are basically equal, and that institutional racism doesn’t really exist except in some small towns in the deep south. But they don’t consider themselves racist. They reject that appellation outright.
What Trump has done recently is take racist stands that are less covert. His defense of Confederate Statues that were placed during the apex of the Ku Klux Klan of the 1920s or in response to the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s, his denunciation of Antifa (which only stands against fascism), and his claim that Black Lives Matter is a symbol of hate; all demand that those who do not think themselves racist accept the label and fall in line.
This, for many of them, is a line they will not cross.
Some are truly digging deep to analyze their own feelings and prejudices, and others are simply learning some truths about how our world looks through the eyes of minorities; but many more still are simply rejecting what they cannot ignore. They are troubled by what they cannot un-see. His call to dominate American citizens. The dismissal of the right of The People to protest and seek redress of grievances, setting loose bands of armed blackshirts on peaceful protestors so he can get a picture with a bible someone leant him.
They may want a conservative country, and they may never embrace radical or even progressive reforms, but they won’t call themselves racist, and they increasingly can’t ignore this President displaying that he is.
They are walking away from him.
They are rejecting his divisiveness. They are accepting that something is wrong with this man and that his occupation of the highest office in the land is harmful to us all. MAGA has been revealed to mean take America back to before we had a black President, to before laws against red-lining, to before America’s broad acceptance of equality, and to before the Civil Rights Act. We are seeing now that it means nothing more than this.
And America has caught on.
The only way Trump stays in office after January 20th is through fraud and usurpation.
I call now for all Americans to reject by whatever means necessary any election outcome in 2020 that does not remove Donald J. Trump from The Presidency.

A couple of years ago, and in the aftermath of a different murder of a black man by police under the color or law, I was asked by an African American co-worker about Black Lives Matter. Actually, the way he phrased the question was: “Do you think black lives matter or all lives matter?”

This was an excellent question and a perfect opportunity for me to answer the question honestly and with clarity.

I told him my answer is yes, but the explanation is important.

You see, it is all about context.

If you’re in a conversation about the death penalty, health insurance, sending people to war, or what have you; and someone asks if all lives matter, the answer is yes, of course they do. But Black Lives Matter is a movement in direct response to the epidemic of extrajudicial killing of African American men in this country, and a statement that these people are just as worthy of their life and liberty as all the white people who are not being murdered by police. So when someone asks if you think black lives matter, and you respond that all lives matter, you are exposing racism. What you are saying, whether you mean to or not, is that you don’t think there is something unjust and tragic happening, and that we shouldn’t single out black people as worthy of life. You are dismissing the response to the police killing African American men and the national response, protests, and demands that this change. You are responding as if instead of hearing “Black Lives Matter,” you are hearing “Only Black Lives Matter.” This is not the message, and it requires racism (though perhaps subtle racism) to hear that. Because the statement that black lives matter is to draw attention to the killing of black men, not to make some milk toast aphorism about life.

All Lives Matter, as a statement in response is inherently racist. It is racist because it is meant to dismiss the complaint that people have about what is going on, and to replace it with a statement that denies the very truth BLM protests.

The same can be said for Blue Lives Matter. And here it isn’t because the lives of police don’t, but because it is the police who are killing black men. To say that blue lives matter is an equivocation fallacy. It makes it out that it is the police who are at risk in these situations. You may be a supporter of law enforcement, but you should pick a different phrase if you want to announce your support of them. BLM is taken, and to use it to support those who are doing the killing is endorsing those killings.

The Blue Lives Matter movement is in response to Black Lives Matter. It is a challenge to the legitimacy of the complaint about the police murdering African American citizens. It is couched in support of police, but it is a poor attempt to deny the wrong doing they are guilty of.

I happen to think that law enforcement, criminal investigations, and emergency response by police are a good thing. I am grateful when the police are there to serve and protect. But turning our cities into police states, where anything other than immediate compliance to police orders when no such orders appear necessary is not acceptable. We are in need of justice reform in this country as a whole, and a complete review and rewrite of how our police and our citizenry interact.

I keep reading and hearing that it isn’t all police, just a few bad apples. I would love to believe that this is true. And while I’m certain that there are many who are not racist psychopaths willing to murder, I am less certain whether they are even a majority. The numbers of killings by police that not only go unpunished, but that get the protection and cover by fellow police and departments suggests that the “good guy” cops are unable to stop them. All too often they don’t. It is either that they are unable or they are unwilling. Either way, it speaks not of police departments that are mostly good, but with a few bad apples, but of departments where the bad apples hold sway, protected by a system that supports and maybe encourages their actions. Where the good guys are powerless to speak out or stop it.

Last week we saw the video of a police officer calmly crush the life out of a man with his knee while several other police stood by and did nothing. Was this one bad apple? Were the other three cops in agreement with this murder? Or were they just indifferent? And is there really any difference?

If good cops can’t or won’t stop the bad cops, then we might as well concede that there really aren’t any good cops, for all practical purposes.

America needs to regroup and address equality and inequality. We need to take off the rose-colored glasses and see how it is, and work to make things right. And it is more than just our leadership, all though the failings of our President in these matters are horrible and he needs to go away. But this needs to begin with each of us starting with the simple act of acknowledging that there is deep injustice in our country. We need all of the American people to say that Black Lives Matter. Full stop.

No caveats, no all lives, blue lives, or other lives. Just stop it.

Acknowledge the problem.

Here we are again talking about critical thinking. I would love for this to be a course taught at primary school, junior high, high school, and then tested before college or university admissions. Maybe then it would be widespread enough to do some good.

The latest is regarding the current pandemic (coronavirus, covid-19, or more precisely, Sars-CoV-2), and when and how to reopen the country’s economy.

There’s a letter that’s been delivered and is making the rounds instigating for the rapid reopening of the economy. What’s different about this letter is that it is signed by 600 doctors. Yes, these are 600 physicians advocating for abandoning the stay at home orders and getting going.

Of course when I first saw the headline I thought, ‘600 doctors? Perhaps I should read what they have to say?’

It didn’t take long before I figured out that these were 600 pro-Trump doctors who were responding to his call for medical people to get the word out to open up. Their message was tainted with politics, as if their medical credentials have any bearing on political thought, and full – no chock-full – of anecdotes and assertions. No real science behind their claims to begin with, and the two people cited in the news articles were both conservative bloggers, one of whom has a decidedly conspiratorial flavor to the posts on their blog.

This came to me on a Facebook post, and after reading the article and doing a bit of research (again, I didn’t need much), I responded with my critique of their claims, and pointed out their blatant political bias. I compared their insertion of political opinion (including references of losing freedom and becoming accustomed to “Government handouts”), to the CDC’s measured and science-based approach that is void of any political messaging. The response that I got from the original poster called attention to how I had advocated trusting experts, and questioned why I wasn’t doing so now. It also challenged that the government experts must have bias too.

The short of it is that I broke down how and why I came to my conclusion, and how and where I saw bias. I pointed out that while these were indeed doctors and had relevant knowledge, they weren’t experts at all. Maybe I should say, not the best experts. At least not compared to those who work at the CDC and spend their careers studying infectious disease and epidemic spread. Just asking the simple question of “which do you believe?” I will place my bet with the CDC over a group of doctors whose claim aligns with and seems to respond to the request of a narcissist looking for help in his November re-election bid.

The longer of it is that in her questions and response was this underlying assumption that since they were all doctors I should accept their claims and their expertise. There was also this certainty that the government (insert boogeyman music here) is lying and has their own hidden agenda. And further, though not stated directly in the relevant response, the belief that this is a matter of choosing who we trust based on whether or not they align with pro or anti government platforms.

It is in these dialogs that I hear non sequiturs, false equivalencies, and other logical fallacies. And of course heaping helpings of conspiratorial nonsense.

So I have to ask, why don’t people think critically?

I have often been accused of having a closed mind, of not doing my own research, of blindly believing the “official story.” But of course the opposite is mostly true. Both in my approach and in theirs. I do read and listen to government claims critically, as I do with most claims, especially if they line up with something I feel like I’ve always known to be true. The point with this last is that the more certain I am about some old belief, the more I wonder when was the last time I questioned that belief. This leads me to careful re-examination of the subject to ensure that I am not deceiving myself, or building an argument on a false premise. But like I said, the error in on their side too. It is most often they who do not critically examine the claims that inform their beliefs. They are too quick to assume anti-government means truth.

I’ve been there in the past myself. Someone blows your mind with a revelation about something that heretofore you had little of no knowledge, and you feel like a window of truth has been opened to you. Without critical thinking you may be in for a lifetime of using that old assertion to view the subject. It can indeed blind you to other views, and convince you, as evidence against becomes harder to refute, of a greater and greater conspiracy. Soon the “enemy” is seen as duped, then as corrupt, then as evil, and eventually shape-shifting reptilian overlords.

It bodes of a mindset that demands acceptance of a viewpoint without critical examination. The claims made against the government agencies, whether it be the FBI, the FED, the CDC, or others, are all accepted and those agencies actions must be scrutinized for small signals that reveal their guilt; but at no point do they ever critically examine the claims that inform their suspicions. Things that should be obvious with Occam’s Razor in mind are instead warped into increasing levels of hoop-jumping to believe. The simple question of “which is more likely to be true?” is answered so poorly it is clear that they cannot consider the question rationally. They are the blind followers. They are the close-minded. They are sheep that they so very much like calling others.

Which is more likely to be true?

The CDC, which has a mission of protecting people from disease, and is staffed with career scientists and doctors who specialize in this very field, and has consistently provided beneficial warnings, advice, and action in these goals; along with all of the other national and world bodies who are so created, are putting out the best advice available? Or are they actually intensionally misleading the public in complete coordination with those aforementioned other bodies to deceive the public for some as yet un-evidenced nefarious intent?

Sure it is important to be skeptical of any organization, especially one that has governing authority over you, but in lacking actual expertise in disease control, do you trust them, or 600 doctors (a tiny fraction of the medical community) who have a clear political agenda?

This isn’t hard.

I have found a gross misunderstanding of what skepticism is amongst the conspiracy minded. All too often they equate skeptical thought with resistance to learning. They constantly say or imply that I do not have an open mind.
This couldn’t be further from the truth.
Skepticism is not denial of evidence. It is the withholding of belief until sufficient evidence is provided. And here we must first understand that assertion is not evidence. Examining someone’s claim to determine if they have provided sufficient evidence to accept the claim is skepticism. Demanding that an assertion be supported by evidence, and that the evidence so provided is valid and provable rather than speculative is a reasonable minimum. That is being skeptical.
Refusing to accept the evidence when provided is not skepticism; it is irrationality. This is what most of the conspiracy minded people I’ve encountered do.

There is nothing wrong with being prepared. I cannot imagine a scenario that could occur where I would regret preparedness. To be prepared is the most reasonable stance one can have. It is literally the motto of the Boy Scouts. Do you have a spare tire and a jack? Then you are prepared to change a flat. Get a AAA membership and you are prepared for a variety of road emergencies. How about some candles or an oil lamp? Now you are prepared to have some light in a power outage. The very idea of preparation in advance of adversity is as suitable a concept as any I can think of. If all of this is true, then why am I about to drop paragraphs against prepping for doomsday? Because it is most often done at the expense of more necessary actions. It is prioritizing one’s preparation that needs examination.

When you hear the word “prepper” you may immediately think of some guy stockpiling food and supplies in his bunker under an off-grid cabin in the mountains. You may have seen some of these sorts highlighted on some cable TV show doing exactly that. I am aware of those shows, but without a television or the inclination to watch, I’ve never seen one. But I get the idea and know or have met several – no, many – people who consider themselves preppers. The thing is, every prepper I’ve met has his priorities out of whack. They’re all preparing for a worst case scenario while failing to prepare for obvious and likely occurrences.

I did some prepping myself. In the face of the Y2K scare I laid up significant amounts of food and water, along with a variety of goods that I felt might be hard to get if we did have a catastrophe. You may laugh if you like, and many did when the calendar turned to the year 2000 with no significant trouble, but for a time serious people were very concerned about what would happen. To me, and some others I knew, it seemed prudent to hedge our bets and stock up on supplies and food. And over the counter medicines. And ammo. Okay, I admit it. For a time back then I got caught up in the moment and started to think the end was nigh.

Two things happened. First, clever programers found a solution to the computer date code issues. And second, I didn’t need to buy much food for most of the year 2000. In fact, buying all that canned food and bagged rice was cheaper because it was in bulk and purchased when on sale. Oh well. I am surely glad that I was prepared, but more glad that nothing bad happened. And since preparation for it resulted in nothing more terrible than having plenty of food that would last a long time (food that I could and did eat,) I consider the preparation worthwhile. Especially with the memory from the previous winter where, while living near Chicago, we experienced one of the largest snowfalls on record. The massive blizzard shut down the roads and highways for several days, and by the time I got to the supermarket the shelves were empty. Literally empty. I took pictures to work to show people, but they all had their own pictures from their supermarkets.

1999 supermarkets (and today’s) were much different from how they were in 1969. In those thirty years “just-in-time” delivery replaced grocery warehousing on site. As a child if a product was not on the shelf a clerk might check in the back. As an adult I found that if it wasn’t on the shelf it was most likely on a truck on its way. If the trucks can’t get there, the shelves become empty. After Y2K I have never worried about running out of food during a winter storm again. Evermore I would be prepared.

But that experience ran me right up against the world of prepping.

I’ll first clarify that when I say prepper, I am making a distinction from someone who makes preparations for rare but predictable scenarios. Preppers are not laying up some food and stores against a tough winter. Preppers are hoarding ammo and dehydrated foods for when the zombies attack. Preppers are reading books on bushcraft and how to run trout lines for post-apocalyptic survival. Preppers are spending hours in online forums discussing barter economy and what will be used for money after hyperinflation destroys all fiat currency.

What happens when you take a dive into that world is you discover the near universal belief that doomsday lies ahead. Maybe just ahead. In no time you are repeating the mantra that doomsday isn’t an if, but a when. And the when is wide open. Doomsday’s arrival is like the explosion of the Yellowstone caldera or an asteroid strike. It could be a thousand years from now or it could be before I finish this sentence. At that point you start to think that if it could happen any second you need to go deep and start prepping post haste. Better to get some of the prepping done right away.

But what, exactly, are we preparing for? Will it be civil war? Regular war? Nuclear war? A pandemic? The dreaded zombie apocalypse? The possibilities seem endless. At each step of prepping you find many more things to prep for. Once you start to plan for hunkering down at home you learn that you might not be at home when it starts. So you need prep gear for getting home. Then when you get home you might need to flee to another location, so you need a “bug out bag.” It’s for when you have to flee to the hills. And then you need to stockpile wherever it is you think you’re going to bug out to. After going to a prepper convention I decided that the hills are going to get mighty crowded.

What I realized is that we can’t really know what doomsday will look like and what we will need when it comes, or rather if it comes. The “if” part is much harder to comprehend once you’ve walked in prepper boots, but it is the more reasonable conjunction. What experience do any of us have with doomsday? Apart from personal life tragedy that could claim that moniker, there aren’t many doomsdays to use as examples. Hurricanes have hit, volcanos have erupted, and invasions have happened; and in each of those events and some several others great tribulations were visited on the masses in certain areas. I’m sure the denizens of Pompeii would be just in stating autumn of 79 AD is when doomsday hit. And we’ve all seen film footage of streams of refugees pushing carts and carrying babies as they flee the ravages of war, both past and current. But Vesuvius was quiet for hundreds of years before the eruption of 79, and how do people know if they are going to be welcoming refugees, or if they themselves will be the refugees seeking welcome? And for all the destruction that earthquakes and hurricanes visit on people, we’ve always started picking up the pieces shortly after it was over and got back to our lives more or less as they were. None of them ever turned into doomsday. Some preparations for the sort of weather emergency likely where you live should suffice without hoarding two years supply of toilet paper and organizing a private militia.

But the chances that any of the doomsday scenarios will happen within the normal lifespan of an adult in urban or suburban America are very low. So prepping for them is not a good use of time and money unless those preparations coincidentally cover other, more likely needs, such as power outages and winter storms.
The real problem is that much of the time and money preppers spend working out solutions to unlikely doomsday scenarios is time and money that could have been spent preparing for likely future needs.

Most preppers that I’ve met are unprepared for a loss of a job. They have mortgages or pay rent, they carry credit card debt and a loan on their car. Most would need to replace the lost job with one at least as good within a few weeks time. They’re prepping for bugging out to the hills when they aren’t prepared for a recession. And we have historical recessions and depressions as examples. We know they happen. Doomsdays are theoretical.

Most of those preppers I’ve known are not prepared to send their children to college. Yet we know that children often wish to go to college and that it is often advantageous for them to do so.

Preppers I’ve met expect to confront doomsday by barricading themselves in their compound and returning to a lifestyle reminiscent of how they believe it was in the olden days. But in truth most of them are permanently tied to the modern world through medicine. The sad truth is we live in a country at a time when the obesity rate nears 50% and chronic health problems abound. And many people, all too often including the preppers, are going to spend the rest of their lives dependent on prescription drug refills and follow up appointments. If it isn’t diabetes it is hypertension. Or they’re on blood thinners, or other drugs to help their heart conditions. Not all but many preppers, certainly most that I’ve met, have chronic conditions that require medical attention and drugs, or will soon enough because of their poor health. They make their appointments with their doctors, they arrange for prescription refills by mail, and then they go back to prepping as if all of what they just did will somehow no longer matter after the apocalypse. They are not prepared to function without modern medication and expertise while they prepare for a world that will have none. If there is a single thing I would point at to illustrate the cognitive dissonance in most preppers it would be this.

People get sick, and divorced, and adopt puppies. Companies relocate and towns flourish and decline. Technology makes obsolete the previous new technology. Some amount of preparation is a good idea. Especially when preparing for things that we know happen. But prepping for things we fear but have never seen is imprudent.

As I write the world is in the grips of a pandemic. COVID-19, a novel coronavirus, is leaping in numbers around the globe. The virus, which appears to have come from bats and jumped to humans through some other transitory animals at a market in Wuhan, China, has reached the US. The numbers are growing in terms of cases and deaths, and our CDC (Center for Disease Control) is not optimistic about its spread. There are aspects to this virus and how easy it is to pass that it alarms even the most staid viral pathologists. This could be terrible.

One of the answers in combatting this virus is quarantine. Isolating those who have the disease, and those who have come in contact with those who do can be effective in slowing the spread. The slower spread will help the hospitals address the cases they see. As the virus spreads the risks rise for those who continue to mingle in crowds. We have official travel restrictions in place and stay at home orders. Companies are laying people off or insisting on working from home if optional. It is becoming more apparent that staying home presents less risk than standing in a queue at the supermarket wondering if the last person at the register had washed their hands.

Suddenly people aren’t laughing at preppers. Preppers, after all, can self-quarantine more easily.

But let me be clear: I never laughed at preppers. I have been concerned about them for reasons that I mentioned above, but laughing isn’t nice. Or helpful.

A century or so ago, and for most of time prior to that, the trip to the store was a planned event. People hitched their wagons and piled the kids aboard for a trip into town they might make once or twice a month. They would load their wagon with a variety of goods to last them until the next trip, and visit all the other services they needed while there. Blacksmiths, pharmacists, barbers, the post office, etc. When you were at home and time came to prepare dinner, if you ran out of something, you would not dash to the corner store or hop in the car. You would just do without.

I worked in ships at sea for many years of my life. Crossing the Atlantic Ocean is a poor time to find out you are out of something. Like sailors over the years, and farmers of old, what you have is what you eat.

If you keep some of those habits and buy more things less often. And if you focus on keeping enough on hand that you will need to make fewer trips to the store, you will be able to more easily stay home and weather the storm, meteorological or epidemiological.

Stocking up on groceries is not the same as hoarding. And being prepared is not the same as Prepping.

Sure, as we watch to see how this pandemic affects us it is easy to wonder if preppers are the smart ones. I say the answer is no. In their efforts to prepare for the end of the world as we know it, they have inadvertently prepared for one aspect of a really bad virus. But the simple task of stocking your larder and cooking more of your own meals would take care of that too. And it would leave you more time and money to prepare for how you will pay for your daughter’s college now that she wants to go to medical school and become Surgeon General.

March 19, 2020 is the first day of spring, as marked by the apparent sun crossing over the equator heading north. We call it the vernal equinox.
But it hardly feels like a day for celebration, and even optimism seems imprudent until we grasp the full measure of what we are in for.
I will look instead at what we might already recognize as lessons. I see these four as most important.

One: The stock market isn’t nearly as important as we are told.

It has troubled me for some time now how hourly and half-hourly news broadcasts include several mentions of the Dow Jones stock average including how many points it is up or down. On a market valued above $20,000 dollars we hear even the smallest incremental change. The Dow is up two and a half points, or down a half-point. These are inconsequential numbers. Even if it is hundreds of points, these are intermediary numbers referencing only what is transpiring on the trading floor at the time. It will have almost no bearing on what the end of the day trading will be, nor effect in any meaningful way the lives of all but a few people. It would be like a semi-hourly update on the number of cars on an expressway in your city. Or checking your blood pressure every half-hour. It is only noteworthy if it is significantly lesser or greater than typical. But it is treated to this position of importance as if it is relevant to our daily lives and economic vitality.
The last weeks have been devastating for the stock market indices. The fear of economic recession in concurrence and in the wake of the pandemic has caused the markets to lose all of the gains, which were considerable, made since Donald Trump took office. And for all of those who have been buying stock during that stretch, they now own stock worth considerably less – on paper – than they were a couple of weeks ago. And many millions of people are counting on having that stock to sell in time for their retirement. Millions have their pensions and 401K plans invested in the markets and are watching their paper wealth vanish before their eyes. Of course it is only paper wealth. Or perhaps we should call it digital wealth these days. But in either case it isn’t real wealth. You have to sell those stocks to use the money they are worth. You still own the same stocks. Or better put, you haven’t lost anything until you sell them at a loss. And the money you sell them for needs to buy what you expect it to buy for it to matter. Hopefully people heed sound advice and avoid volatile markets when they are close to needing to withdraw money for retirement.
But while there may be some wailing and gnashing of teeth amongst the investor set and some fretting about retirement from others, most people are much more concerned about how they are going to survive if and when they lose their jobs.
With all the people in the country whose lives are balanced on a blade of competing credits and debits, the immediate future looks bleak. Almost instantly their children are home from school on a long term basis. I don’t have exact numbers, but it may be that most households have both parents working, and then you add in the single-parent ones and that is a huge number of people who need to become homeschoolers. At the very least they no longer have a place where the kids will be guided and guarded for six or so hours a day. Even daycares are closing. Many parents are going to have to stay home.
As it happens many of those parents are going to stay home anyway, as thousands of businesses close their doors. Anyone whose job it was to serve people, entertain people, arrange travel for people, or mind the places where people go to visit such as museums or sports venues, are already out of work or will be very soon. The people who make things that are not essential will also be sent home. Perhaps this will be short term, but it doesn’t look like that. And while some companies are keeping people on the payroll, most are not or cannot.
These people are in serious financial trouble. Paper wealth in the markets is not their chief concern. Paper money in their wallets is.

Two: Gathering our needs on a daily basis is imprudent.

People seemed to be woefully short of everything it takes to run a household. The moment the idea of quarantine became news, people rushed to the stores in panic mode and hoarded everything they feared running out of. People fought over toilet paper. This, by the way, is a product that a hundred or so years ago people didn’t even want at all. It isn’t that we didn’t wipe our bottoms, it’s just that we had millennia of experience with other utensils and contrivances. And many of these people were buying far more of that product, as well as many others, than they could use in a year, as opposed to the month or so they might be facing.
Panic buying and ill-conceived hoarding is endemic in a culture used to instant gratification and on demand access to goods. In the past several decades it is rare to find our markets short of even one or two items on our list. On these rare occasions we simply choose from another brand to satisfy our needs. To reach a store and find empty shelves in America is so rare that people are taking pictures of those empty shelves to share on Twitter and Facebook.
And based on the propensity for people living from paycheck to paycheck, I have little doubt that much of the hoarding was done on credit. People borrowing money to buy things they should have had already.
A far cry from our ancestors of even a few generations ago. There was no running to the corner store for most people in America at the turn of the previous century. Excepting those numbers who lived in the bustling cities, most people made trips to the store on a weekly or even less frequent basis. They had staple goods and made food from scratch. What they didn’t have they did without.
And not having money to buy things is another problem. While real wages for working people have remained flat or declined over the decades, Americans have had it fairly stable since WWII. Yes, the 2009 recession was rough and many people were out of work, but unemployment insurance, and other social programs did much to help avoid the kind of national distress we had during the Great Depression. And few remain who remember the rationing and general shortages of WWII. In fact, it is that ignorance of history that has exacerbated the current crisis.
As a child of the 1970s, I remember asking the supermarket clerks and managers to check in the back for items absent from the shelves. This was possible because stores still warehoused stock well beyond what the shelves held for commonly sold items. Since then stores have switched to “just in time” delivery. Trucks come in daily and stock hits the shelf every night. There is no back room to check in. Products are automatically ordered when the inventory lowers to a number that varies based on sales history. There is no back room storage.
People are running their homes in much the same way. They eat more and more prepared meals, and cook fewer and fewer things themselves. And by cook I do not mean heat pre made meals in the oven, or slap together burgers or sandwiches. Like sewing, cooking is becoming a lost art, practiced as a hobby by home chefs. Many people I know use their microwave oven more than any other appliance, and it is mostly used to heat foods prepared elsewhere. For years now Americans have spent more money at restaurants than at supermarkets. This means that many people have no more food in their house than enough prepared meals to last until their next shopping trip. And that trip is often just stopping at the store on the way home from work to pick up dinner. Holding stock goods and staple products at home for meal preparation is part of our past for many in this country. At their homes, just like the supermarket, there is no back room storage.
Our habit of devoting as much of our paychecks as we do to pre made meals would stagger our great-grandparents. Our grandparents too if we are old enough. But we do this in part to allow more of our time to be spent on entertainment. Whether it is sports, movies, gaming, or the vast spectrum of cable and subscription channels that deliver shows of every imaginable sort to our homes, we watch or play at a great deal of it. And we can do that while waiting for food delivery or for the microwave to beep. And a generation ago it was a rare treat to have Pizza or Chinese food delivered, today nearly all restaurants offer delivery and people take advantage of that service frequently.
In these ways, along with our compulsion to own more stuff, we now manage our lives in accordance with the world we are in. When we want it, we order it. And instead of saving for the things we want, we charge it against future earnings and pay over time with little thought to the premium we are paying in the form of commercial interest. Only the very rich and the very poor own their cars outright. Everyone else is servicing a note. Four decades ago car notes were 36 months. Today some loans are 84 months. 7 years to pay for a car. Most people who make such a deal will trade it in far short of that date with outstanding debt rolled into their new purchase. Many people are paying monthly to buy their cell phones.
Between the debts incurred for ownership, subscriptions to monthly services, and paying others to do the cooking, Americans are dependent on that next check. Add to that the tendency to whip out a credit card whenever the balance is low enough, and we have a people with a cost of living as high as their earnings with little or no room for error. The classic advice from financial planners is to have six-months savings put away for emergencies. For most Americans that is a farcical notion. Many can’t go two weeks. Most can’t go more than a month.
We are learning that having our outgo match our income does not work.
And having a lifestyle designed around convenience leaves us vulnerable.
Expecting to be able to get what we want at any time is a poor plan to follow.

Three: We are learning that our base health standard is terrible.

Our national obesity rate is approaching 50%. That puts half of the people in the country at risk of diabetes, hypertension, and heart disease just to get started. And this also puts us at greater risk from COVID-19.
We are tied to prescription medicines for our very survival. We must add to our concerns of having enough food to sustain us in quarantine, sufficient refills for the drugs we depend on to keep us from needing critical care. It is speculative to wonder what our ancestors would think if they could have looked into a crystal ball and seen our conditions today, but it seems to me that shock would best describe their reaction. For a hardy people who bore up in the face of disease and famine, it would be a shock to see what we have become. With the incredible surplus available and the advantage of so many conveniences, that we have turned into an obese people tethered to a stream of drugs and debt is a shock to me, and I am watching it in real time.
Our health is more important then we realized.

Four: We are learning that individualism and isolationism are of less value than cooperation and community.

This lesson seems to be one that we need to learn again and again throughout history. While we may aspire to the ideals of Emersonian self-reliance and stand tall to salute our local and national banners, through the ages it is the community of people and the cooperation of nations that has mattered most to our survival. From the small group of boys who bind together against the single bully on the schoolyard, to the formation of governmental plans to aid the most people in times of crisis, we are best and accomplish the most when we work together. We need each other. Even the strongest individual can be brought down by adversity. And even when the sole man survives, the world he is left with is diminished from the deaths of so many others. We are learning again that it is in our best interest to ensure that everyone can get and afford healthcare, and that everyone has protections against economic failure and famine.
Going it alone is an unwise policy.

One: The stock market doesn’t matter that much.

Two: Preparing for emergency is valuable.

Three: Get healthier.

Four: Embrace social welfare.

Jack T. Reason.

Why We Should Not Believe

Some of the smartest people I know believe in some form of reincarnation. They contrast mostly with people who believe in a heavenly afterlife. And those people who believe in heaven mostly also believe in a less than heavenly afterlife for many others. Some many millions believe that reincarnation is a repeated process that ends when one learns all the lessons of the many lives we live and go to nirvana, which is a kind of heaven, I guess. It seems that when you put all of these people together you get a massive majority who think there is something beyond or after the corporeal existence we now experience.
In the vast majority we reject the idea of a permanent extinction of ourselves. The body dies and rots. We don’t deny that. But across time and culture we separate our bodies from ourselves, or at least we believe that this happens at our physical death.
There’s a whole lot of stuff to unpack in that, from the how and why to the when and where. I’ll take that up in force another time, and only touch on it here. Today I’ll mostly stick with reincarnation. And to be more narrow, I’ll skip entirely the versions of this belief where each new life is in the body of some different creature. A dog in one, a mouse, a fly, a bird, etc, in others. I’ll stick only to the concept that a person lived as a person in a previous life, and that they will become yet another person in the next, and so on.
Let me get out early that I am not claiming it isn’t true, but I believe a careful look at reason will likely bring most people to the rejection of the claim that it is a real phenomenon. Or more simply that the idea is implausible and does not meet the burden of proof.
Let’s get started.

Most of us have heard claims of reincarnation. Whether in books, TV or film, or personal anecdotes; they range from the absurd to the compelling. But the problem with these claims is that they are not falsifiable. That is one of the distinctions between science and pseudoscience. I can say that I have never heard a reincarnation story that held up well to scrutiny. But I can’t say that I never will. I can’t prove a negative. No one can. (Yes, one can be inferred under some circumstances, but it is unlikely.) And so when someone claims a previous life, you can’t prove them wrong. And since you can’t prove any claim wrong, and since all claims cannot be true, we are left with all claims being possibly true and possibly false. This makes every claim worthless from a truth perspective. If a claim could lead to either a true conclusion or a false conclusion, than it is not a reliable path to truth. Ultimately, all claims of reincarnation are stories that are impossible to prove from the evidence available.

To our minds there is no difference from an experience we had, and an experience we believe we had but didn’t. Vast studies have been done and shelves full of books have been written about implanted memories and our inability to distinguish between those and actual memories. What we remember about our past life could well have been learned about or invented during this life. I could go on about this for a time, but to learn more please research false memory.
But what about the things that would only have been known to that past person? Throw them out. There is no way to tell the difference between a fact known only to the deceased person and the imagination of the claimant. You cannot verify it a true claim without admitting it could have been learned. If only the dead know, then you can’t prove your claim true; and if the claim can be verified, then someone else knew it and could have been the source of your knowledge. To add to this thought I’ll say that whenever I hear or read the claim of knowledge that only could be known to the dead person I suspect deceit and fraud at work. It is the ultimate unprovable claim, and is offered to overcome objections of learned knowledge.
What about young children, too young to have learned, who relate details of a known person and their life?
This is where a skeptical mind can be helpful. Have you really heard such a story as described? Or have you heard a similar story from an adult claiming that he knew all this when he was a young child? Or a parent claiming it was what they heard from a child? The simple idea that a child started revealing details about a past life into a tape-recorder when they were just able to speak unprompted by an adult strains credibility. The idea that an adult could reflect back to his or her early childhood and remember themselves remembering a past life cannot be treated as reliable. Perhaps their tale is compelling, and maybe even makes you wonder. But as to the truth of that claim, how could you do to prove it? You couldn’t, which makes anecdotes such poor evidence. But there are so many stories, surely they can’t all be false! But if each one is unreliable for its unfalsifiability, then collectively they aren’t evidence of reincarnation. A thousand bad pieces of evidence do not add up to one good one.

Try it this way: If I say that I am the reincarnation of Napoleon Bonaparte, can you prove I am not? No, you can’t. I could spend all evening enlightening (or boring) you with amazing details and insights of Napoleon’s life, even from a first person perspective and you would still recognize that I could have learned it all. I could claim to know something that only the emperor himself could have known, but how would you know I wasn’t making it up? If only Napoleon could have known it, how can you verify that my claim is true? And because of the obvious supposition that a person might make such a claim in an attempt to gain notoriety or fame, your incredulity of my story would be just. But there are five-thousand guys out there claiming that they were Napoleon, surely they all can’t be false! Sure, I don’t believe this one, and that one, and that one; and I’m not going to check them all, but one must be true, right? This is where we acknowledge that lots of bad evidence doesn’t add up to some good evidence. That should be re-read. Millions and millions of believing children does not make a real Santa Claus. You can take the example and apply it anywhere it fits. Five-thousand stories of being reincarnated from Cleopatra does not prove that one of them is true. It could be a million claims or three, and we are still left with an unfalsifiable claim.

But the whole idea of reincarnation is implausible at the start. When did reincarnation begin? There are something like seven-point-seven billion people on the planet at this writing. At the time of Napoleon (er, I mean me, or one of those other guys) there was less than a billion. If reincarnation began then, that means less than one out of seven people could be reincarnated. Or did it begin at the beginnings of civilization? Or when man began walking upright? Was Napoleon reincarnated from a caveman? No matter where you begin, it is mathematically impossible for everyone to have a past life. Do people develop the ability to reincarnate, or is it just some people alway reappearing in a new body? Either only some people reincarnate, whether selectively or randomly, or reincarnation is spread like a shotgun blast into future generations. Believers in reincarnation always begin their argument with unfalsifiable claims, when what they need to do is offer a model of how it works. They need to show a mechanism to explain it. They need to begin with what it is that is being passed on.

Countless studies have shown that what we think and know are products of our brains, and that our brains cease to function when we die. (As in permanent death, not simple heart failure prior to revival.) There has never been anything evidenced to show that any part of that brain function, our thoughts, or feelings carries on outside of our physical selves in the present, or continues after death. Does the essence of self float up into the ether and waft around until picked up by some new person? And what if they find that new person occupied already? In trying to imagine how it would work I’m left with the feeling that silliness was not considered when reincarnation was first proposed. A reasonable claim for reincarnation needs to identify and prove the existence of some extracorporeal intelligence and a method for transmitting it forward into another being. Without that the stories and claims are nothing but fanciful tales built on false premises and poor reasoning.

The simple assertion that people are reincarnated is not a complete logical syllogism. To work the claim of reincarnation through logic let’s build one. A syllogism is a short form logical structure to demonstrate a conclusion from two or more premises. If the syllogism is structurally sound and the premises are true, than the conclusion must be true. A common example goes like this:

 Premise 1: All men are mortal
Premise 2: Socrates was a man
Conclusion: Socrates was mortal.

The structure is correct as are both premises, therefor the conclusion is true.
We could change this syllogism to make it not correct.

Premise 1: All men are mortal
Premise 2: Dogs often bark
Conclusion: Socrates was a dog.

Here the two premises are true while the conclusion is false. This is because of a logical fallacy known as a non sequitur. The conclusion does not follow the premises.

Another would be:

Premise 1: All men are card sharps
Premise 2: Socrates was a man
Conclusion: Socrates was a card sharp

Here with have structurally sound syllogism that reaches a false conclusion because one of the premises is false.

So to make a claim for reincarnation we might state it thus:

Premise 1: The human soul is made of energy
Premise 2: Energy cannot be destroyed
Conclusion: The soul continues on after we die

In this there are two fallacies. The second is that if it did prove that the soul continues after death it does not prove that it begins in a new body. But the first error is that premise 1 is an assertion without evidence. There is no evidence that such a thing as a soul is real, let alone what it might be made of. Prior to accepting that our soul, our consciousness, or whatever one might call it returns to another life after we die, we must first prove it exists at all separate from what was created by our brains during our lives. This is the opposite of what has been found in serious study over many decades. We have good reason to believe that consciousness is a product of a functioning brain in a living person and that it ceases to exist upon the death of that brain.
This makes premise 1 unproven which leads to a false conclusion. You could try and structure a syllogism in a variety of ways, but in the end no claim of past or future life can be treated seriously without first proving the existence of an immortal conscious and a means of transfer. Simply asserting that it is true and relating unprovable stories cannot be considered a reliable path to truth.

It seems to me that life is a wondrous thing. A once in forever thing to be dealt with as we wish and with awareness of its finality, and our immortality is the spread of our DNA throughout the collective whole of us. I’ve done a lot of genealogical research. One side of my family is well documented and a unique surname appears so far and wide in the United States that I cannot count my cousins so numerous are they. And that is only going back a couple and a half centuries. Our collective interconnectedness boggles the mind. Unless you are from Africa, you probably have two-percent neanderthal DNA. The interbreeding between humans and neanderthals began after humans migrated out of Africa. From over thirty-thousand years ago they remain immortal in you. And in me. And if any of us die without producing offspring (and I hope many do for the sake of the planet), we can rest assure that the genes in us are a lot like the genes in everyone else. But having genetic history is not the same as conscious history, and it should not be inferred. I make mention of DNA to give comfort to our desire to outlast our bodies.

We may feel like we have always been conscious and it may seem impossible to imagine not being so, but we haven’t any good reason to think otherwise. Questions about why we are here, and what happens next may entertain and stimulate our minds on long winter nights, but they remain as unanswerable as ever. At least in any way that could be called reasonable. We are here. We will die. Momento Mori as the stoics of ancient Rome would say. We do not (and maybe cannot) know if anything is beyond, but we have no evidence that there is and no reason to think it so. That we don’t know leaves us unsatisfied, but it doesn’t give us license to invent something to fill in the space. “We don’t know what happens, therefore this happens” is a logical fallacy. Reincarnation is an assertion without evidence born from our finite brains attempting to deny mortality.

If you really just need some kind of answer to the meaning of it all, Douglas Adams helped us all out years ago. That answer is 42.

I’ve written about the Deep State Conspiracy before, but here’s a quick recap:
There are those who believe that a secret cabal of international “globalists” are controlling the US government (as well as most national governments and all international governmental agencies, i.e., the World Bank and the United Nations). In the US they do this by giving orders to entrenched government bureaucrats and career employees with the assistance of some willing elected officials. The conspiracy believers call these people the “Deep State.” As such, the country is not run by and for the benefit of the American people, but rather by these globalists who have as their aim various nefarious goals of world dominations and enslavement of the once free people of America.
To sell this conspiracy to each other and the likewise gullible, they cite actual governmental and international organizations, but they reframe what those agencies do to conform to their conspiracy beliefs. Further, they invent powers for these agencies that they do not possess, misrepresent actions they have taken, claim knowledge of information that is invisible to the rest of us, and assert motivations for these actions and inventions.
That all of these theories rely on first cause belief that such a conspiracy exists and that every action no matter how benign is part of the conspiracy calls for the rational mind to immediately dismiss them. And that each and every agency and department has a historically verified reason for its creation that responds to needs that existed when they were created adds to the reason why these conspiracies should be rejected as unsound paranoia.

Russia, under the governorship of Vladimir Putin, and under KGB influence during the Soviet years, recognizes that fostering these conspiracies in the US is to their advantage. By doing so, they seek to sew division and distrust among the American people for their government and for its international involvement. The hoped for result is the US taking an isolationist posture, thereby weakening the international groups that rely on the might of the US to maintain global cooperation. The Soviet Union did, and Russia now, continues to foster these conspiracies while promoting itself as a helping hand in the fight against globalism. A broad view makes it easier to see that this long term goal is not to stop globalism, but to stop only the globalism that threatens Russian influence.

Putin has been trying to regain the reach that Russia had during the Soviet era. The chief and obvious threat to that expansion is the international organizations that offer support and protection to those countries who don’t wish to fall under Russian sway. Think NATO. The North Atlantic Treaty Organization is a large block of countries, chiefly bordering the North Atlantic Ocean and strengthened by the membership of the United States, which maintains treaties of mutual defense with members. To attack one is to attack them all, and NATO is far too strong a force for Russia to attempt to fight. It is the treaties and cooperation between world governments that pose the most effective resistance to Russian aggression and expansion. For Russia to get its way, NATO needs to be weakened and the US needs to get out of Europe. An isolationist America is in the best interest of Russia. They have been spreading propaganda along those lines and support any American voices who agree wherever and whenever they can. Russia recognizes that offering platitudes to “the good old days” and endorsing separatist views will divide America. They encourage sexism and racism, nationalism and xenophobia, and of course the grand conspiracy of the International Banker and the One World Government to aid in sewing that division.

Donald Trump, President Donald Trump, most probably believes those conspiracies. It is almost certain that many of his advisors past and present believe them. From Steve Bannon and Stephen Miller, and Trump’s affection for Breitbart News and InfoWars, to his resistance to rejecting the support of alt-right and white supremacists groups who he knows believe in these conspiracies, it seems more probable than not the he sees them as real. It may be, and I think probable, that Trump walks around the White House convinced that within the US Government there exists a clandestine power seeking to foster the globalist agenda. He sees himself as the great hero, placing himself in the midst of the jungle where he will tear it down and save America from enslavement. He will make America like he thinks it used to be. He will MAGA. That he is flatly ignorant of our history and accepts the revised conspiratorial version is apparent.

I was watching on YouTube a clip from a news program where former CIA director John Brennan expressed dismay at how Trump refuses to listen to the intelligence experts and instead follow his own instincts. If I had Mr. Brennan’s number I could call him and give him this thought: Trump thinks the Intelligence Community is part of the deep state. He is trusting that other piece of the conspiracy theory, the part where Russia is our friend helping us fight off the globalists. Yes, he believes Putin rather than American intelligence agents. This seems too wild to believe until you consider it from the perspective that he is onboard the conspiracy train. It seems evident to me that in Trump’s mind he is resisting a full out assault on him by the globalists. He may consider any action fair game. Whether that is an executive coup or a call for uprising and even civil war, there may be no line that Trump will not cross. The idea that he could be disabused of the absurdity of this conspiracy is not realistic. It would require him to admit he was wrong. He is a narcissistic, insecure, paranoid sociopath and is incapable of even recognizing his own fault, much less admitting to it.

Currently the House of Representatives is conducting an impeachment inquiry. Should they find sufficient evidence to support they will vote to Impeach him. This would send the process to the Senate where a trial would be held. As long as Trump holds that the Senate would not convict him, and as of right now there is little chance they would, he may restrain himself from his worst impulses. But should that change, we need to look out. I believe, based on the view that I’ve written here, the Trump would rather tear down the entire US government than give in to the deep state.

*And Why It Is Silly To Criticize Others For Saying It.

If you are an American resident and not in a cave or under a rock, the phrase “Thoughts And Prayers” should be familiar to you. It is a common exclamation made by elected officials and other public figures when a tragedy takes place at some location removed from them. It is uttered most notably when a mass shooting has taken place. For the average person will likely see the comment first posted by someone critical of that very response. I’ll walk through this to better explain the path of my thinking.

Somewhere in America, perhaps at a school or a workplace, an armed individual opens fire on unarmed persons. These people may be known to the assailant directly or tangentially, or perhaps randomly chosen because they are present. The usual news cycle follows with announcements of the attack having just happened or maybe even still unfolding. In the immediate aftermath, some elected official tweets their concern for those at the center of the assault with the titular phrase. Soon after, and often before the rest of the country is aware of the attacks, and almost always before most are aware of the tweet, response tweets leap to Twitter, and then to the news cycle, attacking the tweeter for his/her empty gesture. This scenario has played out often enough that I must believe that my readers are familiar with it. So here we go:

They are right, Thoughts And Prayers is an empty gesture. Exactly like any comment about any tragedy made my anyone unrelated to the incident trying to express care and concern. It does one thing only, and that is to draw attention to the english speaking world that the tweeter is a caring person. Yes, that is the point. The tweeter is trying to make the story about them and how caring and concerned they are. The correct response? Well, nothing. That is, unless the tragedy occurred in your district, or because of your position in leadership it is expected that you should acknowledge you are aware of the incident. Then, the response should omit any reference to prayers, or hope, or wishes, or any sort of non-factual based affirmations. You are concerned. Of course you are. Everyone who hears of this is concerned. Everyone hopes for the best. It doesn’t need to be said. Instead try: “I have just been informed of an apparent fill in the blank at XZY location, and I am contacting local officials to see what I can do or what resources I can provide.” That’s it. You are aware and you are finding out what actions you can take. You’ve informed your constituents that you are doing your job. Everyone knows you care. Or should know, and an attack on you for not offering caring thoughts should be dismissed as trolling.

But I said that it is also silly to criticize someone for saying Thoughts And Prayers, didn’t I? Yes, I did, and yes, it is. At a moment of tragedy, it might be wrong to trumpet what caring person you are, but it is also wrong – for the exact same reason – to trumpet about how someone’s gesture is empty. If their Thoughts And Prayers are only to draw attention to themselves, then the critical response is only to draw attention as well. “Your thoughts and prayers are an empty gesture. Look at me calling you out!” It is a naked attempt to claim moral superiority. It is trying to make the tragedy about how you feel about someone else.
But most often when people come to criticize others for saying Thoughts And Prayers, the criticism is used as a platform to suggest that they should have done something else, and that had they done that something else this tragedy would not have happened. That too is an empty gesture. It is usually formed along the line of, “You took money from the NRA, and that makes you responsible for this killing!” That is, don’t give us your thoughts and prayers, commit to the impossible task of disarming the American people. It could be logically rephrased, “You get support from beer companies, and that makes you responsible for the drunk driver who killed someone!”
Whether a politician supports gun rights or not; whether he or she receives campaign support from the NRA or not; they are not responsible for the actions of another person. The absurd notion of tying someone’s defense of gun ownership and the the Constitutional Amendment that protects it to someone committing murder with a gun should be rejected by any reasonable mind. And the person making that claim should be treated as an empty-headed rabble rouser. To allow a person to the table who makes such imbecilic statements, is the equivalent to putting a flat Earth proponent on a panel discussing missions to Mars. They have demonstrated unreasonable and unsound thinking, and should be dismissed.
Even if the person who states Thoughts And Prayers were an NRA member, or even an executive of the NRA, it would be the same. The NRA does not endorse using a firearm to shoot innocent people anymore than AAA endorses driving a car into a crowd of people on the sidewalk.
You can both support the right of an adult to drink alcohol and be against drinking and driving. You can be pro freedom of speech and against hate speech. You can favor armed citizenry and oppose murder.

Does this mean that we can say nothing? No. We can follow the news of these events. We can discuss them and advance our opinions of the causes and methods of reducing them, when and where appropriate. There should be local, regional, and national dialog taking place with the goal of finding workable solutions to the causes of these tragedies. But when it comes to Thoughts And Prayers, we should curb our tongues.
The correct thing to offer is help if you are in such a position to facilitate it. The correct response is no response. One might think they are calling someone out for their hypocrisy, but in truth, they are only calling attention to themselves.
Let’s stop pretending that our response to a tragedy is more important to the tragedy itself. Stop saying thoughts and prayers, and stop confronting people for doing so.