The New Passover

Fueled by money from right wing groups, spin from ultra right media,  Russian trolls, and inflammatory tweets to his rabid base from the current resident of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue , right wing protesters, unmasked, heavily armed, and angered, took to the streets the other day to protest the "shutdown" that has been slowing the spread of the Covid 19 virus.  Their protests, typically, carried with them the threat of violence, of revolt, and of "liberation" of labor to continue making money for the corporate rich.  That is, of course, my take.  They blocked traffic, including ambulances.  They screamed at the closed doors and windows of state offices.  They marched up and down with their assault rifles and their fake military gear.  In general, they did what they've always done:  a parade of machismo and hatred of the "gubment".

And in so doing, they are laying the groundwork for a new Passover, a new legend for human history.

The protesters, firm in their conviction that the viral plague that currently is killing an American every 90 seconds, is a "hoax" and that "re-opening the economy" is fully worth a few percent of the population dying, will scream and chant with one another cheek by jowl, showing their machismo and contempt for faggoty "liberal" things like masks and gloves during a plague.  They are the new flagellants, coming from far and wide to show their devotion and piety to their glorious leader and their ideology, and then returning home, reinvigorated and recharged in their fight for righteousness, racial purity. . .

. . .and, I suspect for many of them, now carrying the Covid 19 virus.  They will carry the disease to their homes, to their spouses, to their parents and grandparents, to their children and neighbors and friends.

Some of whom will die.

Those of use who view the rational policies of shutdown and social distancing as our duty to our neighbors, our nation, and to the human race, will likely be spared.  The grim reaper will pass over our homes where we have sheltered sensibly with our families.  He will pass over most of our parents, our children, our neighbors--though, sadly, many innocents will be swept up in the contagion brought by these arrogant and selfish children back to their communities.  They will not understand that their amiable MAGA hat wearing fishing buddy has now returned home with a plague that can sicken and occasionally destroy the ones that they love.  They will pay the ultimate price for human neighborliness shown to the uncaring and immature.  They will suffer and weep, and I will weep with them, for every sick child, every passed Grandmother, every absent family member that didn't need to suffer.  Not for this.

This new Passover, driven by arrogance, ignorance, ego, and greed, will, I suspect, fall into legend; will become more symbolic and more mythic with each telling of it, more so than even the Jingoistic display of Patriotism in 1918 that returned the Spanish flu to stalk this country.  It will become, in its time, an object lesson, a fable, as much respected as it is doubted, as much accepted as hygiene and vaccines, and as much a litmus of logical competence.

I really hope I'm wrong.  I really hope that my native streak toward hyperbole and drama has gotten the best of me with this one, but something grim and certain in the back of my mind whispers that I may have even underestimated what I've just seen.  If I am right, however, then those who survive will have the tools and the metaphors to build a better world, one built on respect for nature and humanity and not on greed, arrogance, and privilege.

And in that kinder, free-er new world, the wise parent will tell their children of the new Passover, and of the people who put their own convenience, egos, and privilege ahead of the lives of their neighbors and of the survival of the rest of the whole of the world, and of the awful price, in the end, that they paid for it.

If this happens, so mote that be.

WDBX Interview 1/31/20

Author and Ecology activist Treesong will be interviewing me about my writing, the environment, and a host of other things this next friday, 1/31/20 on WDBX, community radio for Southern Illinois, Carbondale, IL at 10:30 AM Central/11:30 Eastern.  Should be a really interesting show.  If you're in the Carbondale area, it is, of course, at 91.1 FM.  Otherwise you can listen to the stream HERE.

Author, Radio Host, and Ecologist, Treesong.

Looking forward to this.  Southern Illinois is old stomping ground for us.  Tune in!

M

Electronic Editions of "The Coyote Trilogy" are at long last available.

After years of trying, Wild Shore Press has FINALLY gotten an electronic edition of my trilogy of Cyberpunk plays available. The book includes production notes and the original produced scripts of "Coyote," "Cyberpunk Opera," and "Dub for Babylon."   To snag your own copy, click HERE.

FINALLY!

 

 

The Book Proofs are Magnificent.

Got the proof copy of the paperback of Zarabeth's World the other day, and It's really nice.  Wild Shore and the printer have done a great job on this one, just, as they say, in time for fall reading.  You can pop over here and grab a copy. if you like. I know I would certainly like you to.

Fall reading regimen.

BOOK DISCOUNTS SEPT. !st

In celebration of my new release, "Zarabeth's World," Wild Shore Press is putting all the rest of the electronic editions of my novels on sale for just $.99 cents, for one day only September 1st.  So if you wanna go stock up on some reads for the fall (and I'm assuming you like my writing, of course), drop on over to my Amazon Author Page on the first and grab yourself some novels.  Perfect for anchoring out on a lovely fall evening.

I love Odile's cover for this  Can't stop looking at it.

M

Zarabeth's World is out!!

The new novel is out on kindle and in book form.  Please click on over to Amazon for details.  I'm really quite proud of this one.  One of the best pieces of writing I've done.

Full details Here.

From the back cover:

The Island was, quite simply, a place of wonder. It began as the fanciful drawings of a dying American artist known only as Hiro, then became series of stories by his belov'ed, and from there an online video game and then, through some magical collision no one quite understood, a real place. It was a world of stunning beauty, of music and kindnesses, of witches and mermaids, talking bears and magical transformations, and Zarabeth had found, unbelievably, a way to get there through the shower in her apartment. Just a short while ago, she had been firmly a member of the uninteresting proletariat: a young woman waiting table and working in a bookstore in a small tourist town. Now she had a foothold in two worlds: One full of the calm safety of her old life, one of adventure and magic, with good friends and happy times in both.

There was just one catch: Spend too much time in either world, and she could find herself stranded, or, worse, so transformed that she wouldn't remember that one or the other ever existed.

That could be a de-convenience.

But Zarabeth is a woman of some resources, with friends she doesn't even know she has, and the Island itself has plans for her far beyond anything she could imagine.

Welcome to Zarabeth's World.

From the author of An Alien's Guide to Sears and Roebuck and The Ganymeade Protocol comes this off-kilter tale of love, transformation, and finding your voice.

Did I mention there were mermaids?

More HERE

Why I don't need you to sell fries to me.

The Quandary of Work, or : Why I don't need you to sell fries to me.

I have a dear friend to whom I speak on a regular basis. We've known each other forever, but haven't been on the same end of the continent for decades. Still, I value his opinion even when we disagree. The other evening we were having one of our typical conversations. “People need jobs” he said “and we need to penalize those companies that take them abroad so our people can have work.” Then he went on about worker productivity and salaries and the dignity of work and the like.

Sounds fine, I guess, but I have a problem with all of this “job” thing. Not that I don't work. I've worked 60 hour weeks for most of my life, generally in businesses that I created. I've spent a lot of early mornings and ridiculously late nights working to make things happen. I've worked myself to the point of falling over more than once. I mean that literally. Work, I can do.

But here's the thing. In my little galley (we're liveaboards, a life that I recommend) I have a stick blender. We do a lot of cooking. We use the thing for making sauces and gravies, for mulching a must for hard ciders when we brew, for whirring up frozen drinks in summers and hot soups in winters. Doing that stuff by hand would be an utter pain. I could do it of course, but why?

My point is: I use the blender so I don't have to do the work. At no time am I thinking about it being an enhancement to my productivity (I'm not cooking for 40, and if I did, they wouldn't fit on the boat). I have the device in order to avoid work, and avoiding bashing my knuckles pounding ice into a slurry is a good thing, I think we can all agree.

From blenders to electric drills to computer word processors to cars to aircraft, we build stuff in order to avoid effort, to keep us from having to do the work, take the risk, spend our limited lifetimes, and exhaust our energies. We do it so that we can turn our attentions to those things we find fulfilling, be it writing or family or hiking or building houses or staring at a turtle.

This isn't new. We've been building dedicated machines to do work for us since the dawn of the industrial revolution, probably since the dawn of humanity.

So the desirability of automation or lessening labor costs isn't the issue. The issue is: who benefits from it? The elimination of labor is a natural result of automation, as machines take over the tasks we once labored to do. I remember 1950's adverts heralding appliances as “ending the drudgery” of housework, and who wouldn't want that?

Now, to the investor class, those for whom “the market” is the only arbiter of labor and productivity (as well as of human worth), the current round of automation based layoffs and job exportation is not only just fine, it's the rightful way things are. There is, of course, historical precedent. The invention of the Jacquard loom in 1804, for example, laid off a lot of weavers (and created a host of anti-automation protests and actions, here see: Luddite). Despite the mass layoffs, the profits for the weaving industry in that era went nowhere but up. Now (having shipped a lot of American jobs to China where the labor is cheaper) companies in China like Foxxcon are laying off thousands of workers as they automate. The already massive industrial profits are headed for record highs (just look at the stock market). The investor class makes more and more as automation decreases costs and increases productivity, and the displaced workers...well...they can just go find another job. The trouble is, the only jobs available, manufacturing (and soon materials handling, programming, clerical work, truck driving, and delivery) being removed, are service jobs, and with a smaller and smaller class being able to afford the services, there is an unavoidable failure built into such a system. It becomes a feudal nightmare, ever feeding of itself, with collapse inevitable.

Which brings me back to my original point. Taking a broader view: turning our labor over to machines is a good thing. It frees us from tedium and drudgery and danger and allows us to seek fulfillment in our lives, be it to immerse ourselves in wildly productive fields which fascinate us or merely to spend our time in introspection, hedonism, or adventure. The “every man must toil” thing not only isn't needed, it isn't practical. I don't need 350 million people trying to sell me fries or clean my windshield. I need new approaches to physics, new music, new artwork, better ways to heal, more beauty. . . The job disruptions of the industrial age led to the creation of political movements including the growth of Socialism, seeking to redress some kind of balance in society.

Then as now, the answer is, of course, to let those who have toiled share in the productivity of the machines that freed them from that toil. It means decoupling income from the work of the individual and replacing its source with the productivity of the machine that replaced it. Those who are driven to find riches will always find a way to do so, but there's no reason the rest of us must suffer and struggle and starve because of it.

To be sure, if we institute a scheme like Universal Basic Income or the like, some small number of people will choose to sit on their asses for the rest of their lives, and I'm okay with that (those are unlikely to be very productive employees anyway). But humans are restless creatures, and most will find something to do, something for which people will praise them, something that will increase their social capital, because that's how we're wired.

What I'm Not okay with is a world full of windshield washers and fries sellers, scrabbling about in poverty and desperation so that a tiny number of us can live in unimaginable wealth. My friend across the country, moving as he does in corporate boardrooms, is still very much wedded to the “job” mantra, but having worked all my life, I've come to a different conclusion: Let the machines do the work. Let the rest of us get on with the business of being human.

The New Paradoxes of Defense

George says Hi.

In 1599 the English swordmaster George Silver published a work called “The Paradoxes of Defense.” Part analysis, part rant, the work had one major target for his ire: the Rapier. For those of you not history buffs ( or Renfair geeks like myself)  the rapier is a sword; a particularly long, thin one, and in the late 1500's it became a kind of deadly fad as a tool for dueling. Like an example? Go re-read Shakespeare's “Romeo and Juliet.” Those are rapiers leaving teenage blood all over the stage. Silver's point about the weapon was singular: the long, narrow blade was deadly in attack and difficult to stop, but, because of its length and fragility, it was virtually useless in defense. It could kill your opponent, but could do almost nothing to keep you from being killed. The winners in such contests tended to be difficult to distinguish from the losers, and the public death toll, particularly among the young, became alarming.

It occurred to me the other day, in the midst of the March for Our Lives and our national discussion of guns, that firearms are rather like the rapier. They are lethal in attack, but there is absolutely nothing you can do with a gun that will have any effect on an incoming bullet. Like the rapier, they are useless in defense. There is nothing they can do to protect you, and while attacking an attacker (long a military dictatum in cases of ambush) may lessen the damage, only being proactive and attacking first could possibly render you any semblance of “safe” with a gun.

This makes somewhat problematic one of the main solutions posed to our recent epidemic of school shootings by the NRA and gun aficionados (often dubbed “ammosexuals” their opponents); the idea that arming large numbers of school personnel--teachers, janitors, coaches—will somehow protect the children by getting the “bad guy.” How do you protect with something that has no ability to shield? By their nature, school shootings are an ambush, they occur as a surprise, so your valiant defenders, leaving their classrooms and lunchrooms and presumably leaving their charges behind to engage the villain, will not, by the very nature of the event, get off the first shot. And given that even trained police only have a hit rate of about 18% in live fire situations, the potential for collateral damage—that being bunched up groups of terrified children—is very high. We risk, still deep in George Silver's “Paradox,” placing our school students in the midst of firefights, all in the name of protecting them. Clearly, the only way to prevent this scenario—and the shooting itself—is to be somehow proactive about the attacker.

In Silver's day, the reaction of government was proactive and unequivocal. Like Shakespeare's Prince in the play, they acted. Fed up with the carnage, the wearing of the rapier was banned in numerous cities, and dueling itself was made illegal. Sword lengths were regulated (particularly in Spain, where the fad was rampant), or they were simply banned within city limits. Those who broke the ban were punished, the weapons confiscated, and the combination of law and outraged public opinion allowed reason to be reinstated, and the death toll faded.

In our day, being proactive may mean a number of things. Certainly, a rational ban on high capacity magazines, controlling the widespread ownership of military grade semiautomatic weapons, and ending the easy acquisition of such weapons by the dangerous and incompetent are reasonable actions that might be taken. However, the idea that flooding our schools with more guns in the name of protection is as ludicrous in our time as flooding the streets with rapiers as a way to end dueling would have been in the 16^th Century. Teachers and those who support their work, by their nature, have nurturence and protection as a focus of their lives. Their job as shields for our children should never be altered to make them shock troops on their behalf. Let us take actions before the fact to keep it that way.

George was right.

Is It Time for a People's Crypto-Currency?

Watching the amazing ups and downs of the CryptoCurrencies over this last week (driven, I think, in part by an understanding that the unstable fiat currencies run by the nation states are largely controlled by large banking and investors) has been sobering.  Even the likes of Goldman-Sachs have said that investment in them is a better and more secure bet than speculating in gold.  People have become overnight millionaires or overnight paupers, businesses have added the more well known of the Cryptos to the pallet of currencies they'll accept online or at the counter, and the nation states have, in general, struggled as to how to respond to these international, uncontrollable, and largely untraceable currencies.  The Cryptos have become in recent weeks the thing that we were always told they would never be:  Real.

Given that, and given that we're right on the edge of the blockchain revolution, maybe it's time:  Time that We, the People, us huddled masses yearning to breathe free, us guys, used that opportunity to create something decent, a way around the dominated economic system to which we all seem enslaved.  Something incorporating some of the best elements of social financing like Universal Basic Income, but minimizing the vulnerability to manipulation and monopoly, something like that.  None of this is rocket surgery, so to speak.  The blockchain programming that underlies most all of the CryptoCurrencies is available free to anyone on the web, and any programmer with a decent knowledge of C++ and yen to do so can make the modifications necessary.

Here's how I think it could work:  We create a People's Crypto (let's call it, since I'm an Egotist, Mungobucks for the moment).  You download a unique wallet similar to the ones used for Bitcoin and Litecoin and the rest.  Here's the difference, though.  Instead of the blocks being "mined", at the beginning of every month, your account is automatically charged with 1000 Mungobucks.  You don't have to do anything.  January 1, you look at your account, and there they are.  You are free to spend them on anything you wish:  food, rent, videogames, hookers, great literature, base literature, (or, of course, any of my books) education for your kids, tools for your new startups, single bottles of REALLY expensive wine, it's all up to you.  Here's the catch:  at the end of the month, the Mungobucks expire.  You can't roll them over.  You can't sit on them, you can't save them, and they can't be used for any financial investment or institution, because those entities can't own wallets for them.

But If I buy your poetry chap for a Mungobuck, something wonderful happens.  When it's transferred to your wallet, it gets another month of life, another 30 days added to it's lifespan, and in that time you can spend it on whatever you wish.  Spend it on a new bicycle and, voila, the bike vendor's account is credited with new Mungobucks, and those new bucks enter their account with 30 days of usefullness.  The money MUST be spent, must be circulated, or it dies.  The currency is created automatically (just as current fiat currencies are created by public expenditures) and destroyed by time (just as the current fiat currencies are destroyed, if you buy Modern Monetary Theory, by taxes).

It would spur entrepreneurism, it would fund art and education and child care and any number of positive things attributed to UBI, but without government interference or corporate dominance by financials.  Might people set up multiple accounts to get multiple charges of Mungobucks?  Probably, though it would be fairly easy to make that complicated and difficult.  As long as it wasn't pandemic, it wouldn't matter.  Would people accept them as currency?  They'd be insane not to.  Since I have them and YOU have them, why would we not both accept them for food or work or goods?

 It would also do a great deal to address the gap between the elites and the rest of us financially, making it possible for human beings to simply live without selling themselves into slavery to do so. Now,  there are doubtless a billion things of which I've not thought.  There are probably a hundred pitfalls and potential failings (as well as an equal amount of potential successes and advantages) that I haven't seen, but one thing is, to me, certain:  The current economic system, run as it is by the biggest players and the richest accounts on Earth, has ceased to serve the bulk of humanity adequately.  Maybe, just maybe, the democratization of the currency system can go some distance in ameliorating that.

Besides, it would be fun to watch the big boys scramble for once.

M

Stop using Oil. . .No, i mean you personally

Let me explain to you what's happening:  Oil production is in the midst of an absolute frenzy right now.  Fracking goes on apace, despite the poisoning of drinking water and the creation of man-made earthquakes, some quite destructive, worldwide.  Hired goons and militarized police are willing to use violence and in some cases what amounts to lethal force to destroy demonstrations against the wrecking of our environment.  Oil rich state legislatures vote in laws that classify environmental activists and divestment fans as "terrorists".  Hundreds of millions are pumped into climate denial propaganda.  Scientists are intimidated, silenced, moved aside.  Wars rage in Iraq and Syria, largely over the construction of two proposed pipelines to deliver oil to Europe and over who will control them.  Canada's tar sands sell for less than the cost of extraction.  Whole countries are swamped with crude oil leaks in Africa in the mad rush to get it out of the ground.  Shall I tell you what is the origin of this frenzy, this madness?

The oil barons have known since the 80's (and concealed it) about the effects of fossil fuels on global warming.  They have known since 1993 about peak oil and what it meant.  Yes, they are rich as Croessus, but those riches are invested in oil and gas, in the mining rights and the equipment, and are not in any sense liquid.  Solar and wind, electric vehicles and environmental awareness are coming on like a juggernaut, and the oil Barons are terrified--TERRIFIED--of their assets being stranded, of the oil being left an asset with effectively no worth, something no one wants to buy no matter how much you paid for it.  It's like trying to flip a house, only to have the housing market plummet and here you sit with your prize, something no one wants even at half what you invested.

The captains of the world have spent their whole lives being right, being madly wealthy, being privileged, being special.  Now  they're like the investors of the past, having sunk billions in buggy whips and hoop skirts, and soon to be a joke of history.

They know what is coming.  They know that if we are to survive, that the oil and coal, the shale and gas, must stay in the ground.  But not THEIR oil and coal.  Theirs they must get to market, as fast as possible.  No matter what it destroys, who it kills, what the cost.  They are amoral children, so convinced of their nobility that they can't allow a future without them running it.  They have to be stopped before they destroy the world, even they know this, but the reckoning can't be allowed to apply to them, not to them personally.  If they can just get out from under this, just liquidate their assets and get them to market fast, perhaps they'll be able to retain their pampered positions. Perhaps their buddies in the banks will still write them sweetheart loans and cut them backroom deals. 

Want to stop them?  It's very simple.  Stop using their oil.

And, yes, I mean you personally.  Dump the car and start using transit, like you've been talking about.  Bite the damn bullet and buy the Tesla or Bolt, put in the freaking solar panels, change the bulbs to LED's.  You know what has to be done, do it.

Drop your carbon footprint, and you drop demand.  Drop demand and you drop price.  Drop the price and you strand the assets of the companies in the ground where we need to keep them.  Drop the price and the investors and the banksters will turn away to more fertile ground, and some of those grounds will be solar and wind and new technologies of which we've only begun to speculate.

There are two roads ahead for us all.  In one, we live in a green world of plenty, with healthy people, green forests, clean seas, clear air, and a future.  In the other, we have a blasted landscape and your children will spend their lives either as serfs or cannonfodder.  The barons have made the decision which is acceptable to them.  One only has to look at the Trump cabinet choices to see that clearly laid out.

You--YOU--must make clear the choice you intend.  You know what has to happen.  I've done my bit.  It's your turn.

M

It All Comes Down

It all comes apart now. We have at minimum two years of feeding frenzy by the corporations, by the white nationalists, by big fossil fuel, by big pharma and big medicine and big defense. We have to hang together (despite the parade of trolls on here trying desperately to sow dissent and argument) to block, to delay, to obscure. . . we must zen them out, must throw shadows, must do everything possible to keep them from destroying the nation and the Earth. Our biggest advantage is that the pack of jackals coming in with the Trump administration is a roster of neo-con has-beens, religious nutbags, racist wackos, pampered rich boys, and Goldman Sachs suckups. These are not the brightest crayons in the box, and the likelihood of utter incompetence is high, and we will certainly benefit from that.

But in the end, that will NOT BE ENOUGH. Listen. . .

As long as these guys have their hands on the controls of society, as long as we are dependent on the corporations for food and medicine and transportation and housing, we will only be doing a holding action. We've been staging an orderly retreat in the face of these forces for years. We have to stop.

Ultimately we have to get off the corporate teat, to develop our own systems, relationships, and networks. We have to render them, not merely obsolete, but irrelevant.

Every leaf of lettuce you grow, every watt of power you generate, every piece of clothing you make, every work you self publish, every appliance you repair lessens their hold on you. Every gallon of gas not burned, every package of processed food that goes uneaten diminishes their power.

We are more than capable of fighting, but until we get ourselves free, we are only slaves, negotiating for better treatment.

Bears Repeating

I think this bears repeating:

NO politician that takes huge contributions from oil, coal, gas, or fracking companies will ever do anything for the environment.

NO politician that takes huge contributions from defense contractors will ever do anything to bring peace.

NO politician that takes huge contributions from the private prison industry will ever take any positive steps on judicial reform, police reform, or to end the drug war.

NO politician that takes huge contributions from Big Pharma or Big Medicine or Big Insurance will ever do anything to get good, affordable healthcare for the American People.

NO politician that takes huge contributions from Hedge Fund Managers, Big Banks, or Wall Street will ever do anything to reform our banking system.

NO politician that takes huge contributions from CEOS of megacompanies will ever do anything to guarantee working men and women in America a living wage and decent working conditions.

IF you think they will, you're either willfully delusional, on the gravy train, or just plain stupid.

Politicos who accept these checks from donors and superPacs are bought and paid for. They will work for the interests of those who paid them the most, not for the American people.

The ONLY reliable politicians running for office or serving are those who accept only small, personal donations from supporters and public funds, and who are content to live on the rather opulent salaries we pay to our legislators. Anyone else is a crook and a con artist and is lying to you when they say they're on your side. Supporting them isn't "pragmatic" or "grown up", it's just dumb, and if you do, you deserve what you get.

Most Excellent August Book Promotion

Rather pleased to announce that Wild Shore Press, Grindlebone Art's in house publishing company, is running an August promotion on many of their Kindle titles, including most of my works and Ian Witcomb's excellent Memoir, "Letters from Lotusland", which I had a hand in editing.  From Aug. 20-27, 2016, most of those titles will be a mere $.99 for Kindle downloads.  Feel free to rush right out in a downloading frenzy.

Uncomfortable Truths for Americans

I rather hate to do this, but I feel I must.

We're not the good guys anymore.

There, I said it.  We're not the good guys anymore.  We were once.  After WWII, we were the heroes of the world.  We rebuilt Europe and Asia, we went into space, we cured polio, we were freaking fantastic.

But then came the cold war, and multinationals, then came Vietnam and Panama and waterboarding and endless corporate promotion of American interests, even at the expense of the culture or environment or economy of other countries, then came decades of blind support for increasingly right-wing and fanatical governments abroad, especially in Israel, where our massive military assistance is, even now, creating genocidal conditions for those living in the Palestine.  We're not the good guys anymore.

This is not, of course, to say that Russia or China ARE the good guys.  No, no, no, their human rights records, economic imperialism, and environmental destruction are generally even worse than ours.

At best, we are the same as they are:  Wealthy corporate run oligarchies with little interest in anything that isn't profit or power.

The vaunted two party system of America is run by two degenerate and corrupt political organizations.  One, the GOP, has, in the quest for power, turned it's back on conservatism as a philosophy to endorse racism, hatred of women, xenophobia, and jingoistic nationalism as a means to power.  The other, the Democratic Party--once the bastion for the working man and woman--has embraced Wall  Street, disasterous trade agreements,  voter suppression, and fracking as a means to power.  Both will do any amount of back room dealing, lies, voter suppression, vote rigging, even violence, to silence voices that object.  Both will drop to their knees for whosoever writes the biggest check.

The two parties stay in power by being progressively worse than the other, using fear that the OTHER party might win to encourage votes, even if it is against the best interest of American citizens and their families and futures.

The American press, now owned mostly by only 6 gigantic corporations, is complicit in this.  As exposed by recent Wikileaks revelations, they cooperate and coordinate with the two parties to suppress dissent, stifle criticism, and further their corporate aims.

You are not the good guys anymore.

Police in America, heavily armed, tattooed, and armored, routinely humiliate, beat, and even kill members of the public for no other real reason than that they can.  Most of the victims are Black or Hispanic, and the line of racism in Policing runs deep in the U.S., but they also are certainly not above beating, framing, torturing, or killing those they deem "uppity."  No penalty is ever paid, no justice ever offered to the victims.  Police cruise through minority neighborhoods and target some poor slob who then turns up dead because the police felt "threatened."  That's normal.  Anyone striking back is a "terrorist."

American corporations, once welcomed abroad and adored, are now almost universally hated.  Their coming in the third world means corruption, environmental devastation, economic extraction, and death.  One of the DNC's most vaunted "pro labor" candidates received nearly $24m for making sure sweat shop workers in Haiti didn't get a raise to 61 CENTS an hour.   Not a 61 cent RAISE, mind you, 61 CENTS AN HOUR.  That would be, I should note, up from a minimum wage of $.21 an hour.

We drop bombs, we do drone strikes, we pay for death squads, whole families die, communities are wiped off the map, and yet we are told that "they hate us for our freedom".  No, dumbf**k.  They hate us because we killed their children.

We are not the good guys anymore.

But we could be.

We could be the good guys by disenfranchising the two corrupt parties that run America, by refusing to vote our fears and instead insisting on voting our morals and convictions.  By voting FOR something rather than against a false and manipulated choice of boogeymen.  We could be the good guys by standing FOR something for a change, rather than just profit or strategic position.  The world would welcome us, and with the strength of all the world, we would triumph without even trying.

We could be the good guys by demanding our allies and correspondents and client states and trading partners play fair with their people--with ALL of their people-- or we will walk with all our considerable skills, resources, and astonishingly large market.  We could do that.

We could be the good guys by making sure our people--AMERICAN people, American citizens--have good lives, healthcare, clean water, safe streets, safe food, and good educations.  We could be the good guys by treating our own people as something other than corporate cannon fodder.

We could be the good guys, you know.  We could be the people we've always been told we are.  We could spend a few pennies of our fantastic wealth to clothe kids and give them clean water, to treat the sick and help people to find their own voices rather then insisting that ours be the only one heard.

Now you can feel free to tell me this isn't practical, that it isn't realistic or "the way the world works."  That's fine, I guess.

But the world, ours and everyone else's, was better when we were heroes.

We could do that again.  I still have the cape.

Really.


M

Hilary Clinton, and the existential threat

I have never seen, in my 6+ decades of life, an election season like this one, with all the utter disfunctionality of the last three decades on such awe-inspiring display.  We have seen the GOP essentially self destruct, disintegrating into a party of madness, raciscm, and corporate greed, electing a carnival barker for a candidate.  We are now watching the Democrats in the same process, drowning in quid pro quo payments, arrogance, and privilege.  It seems that both parties are about to create a new first:  fielding two candidates that are not merely disliked, but absolutely reviled by the American people.

One could see the GOP debacle coming:  With the growing power since Reagan of the most angry, racist, discontent wing of the party, the GOP fielded in 2015 what had to have been the most spotted and weak field of candidates in the party's long history, only to devolve into picking the absolute worst of them:  A reality TV show host with no governmental experience and the emotional control of a nine year old.  Win or lose, Donald Trump is auguring the party in at a high velocity, and the fallout of that impact will go on for decades.

For their part, the Democrats are especially sad:  This election was theirs to lose.  After years of Republican intransigence, overt racism, and obstructionism, and riding a new populist wave on the left, this should have been a sweep for the Democratic party.  Both houses of Congress and the Presidency should have been a cinch.  Clinton, with the embrace of the new left, was to have ridden in glory into office.  Now it is questionable if or in what form the party will even survive, and I look on in astonishment. Dirty tricks, back room deals, a corrupted and complicit mainstream media, and outright vote fraud have so poisoned the waters, so fouled the downy bed that the Dems hath made, that it is approaching lethal toxicity, and they have only themselves to blame.

The DNC, though their own mechanations, have now three utterly unenviable choices:

1)  Elect Hilary Clinton:  always the presumptive front runner, Clinton has proven a deeply flawed candidate, and, to be honest, person.  Her acceptance (and the party's) of almost unbelievable amounts of money from some of the most venal of corporate sources, along with huge amounts flowing from foreign governments into Clinton Foundation coffers, have left her motives and veracity deeply suspect.  Faced with a revolt from her left from what must be regarded as one of the only truly honest people in politics, Senator Sanders, the Clinton campaign responded with backroom deals, paid internet trolls, a cavalcade of dirty tricks and slurs, all accompanied with a patently deliberate mainstream media blackout on the Sander's campaign, voter suppression campaigns, suspicious vote tallys, and what I suspect will wind up being found to be deliberate vote rigging fraud.  All of this has had the opposite effect on the Sanders' campaign from the one I suspect was intended:  The Sanderistas became angry and energized.  Originally mildly supporting Clinton at the beginning of the campaign season, the Sanders supporters--composed largely of the young, the well educated, and a huge number of independents who joined the party to support him--now hold her in such contempt that anything up to and including the possibility that witnesses against her have been murdered is now openly discussed.  Somewhere between 40 and 90% of the Sander's supporters (depending on which polls you believe) say they will, under NO circumstances, support or vote for Hilary Clinton.  As this comprises about half the Democrats and most of the left-leaning independents, this is a disaster for the DNC.  And, as it includes a very large number of young, first time voters, it may continue to be a disaster for decades.

2)  Bring in a "White Knight":  Faced with such a wildly unpopular candidate, the DNC inner leadership could choose to broker the convention and bring in someone else, likely Joe Biden, to save the day.  Biden would likely win.  He's the kind of unoffensive and fairly competent party politician that parties love to run.  He comes across as serious, vaguely working class, and relatively untarred by scandal.  But his selection, with not a single vote being cast for him, would drive most of the Sander's supporters out of the party (if that hasn't happened already), leaving the Dems with the White House and Senate, but with no remaining party for future elections and with a Progressive Caucus that views the Dems as being as much an enemy as they view the GOP.

3)  Nominate Bernie Sanders:  This would seem a natural.  If one removes the favoritism shown by the DNC toward Clinton, the dirty tricks, the voter suppression and the like, the likelihood is that Sanders actually won this primary.  Indeed, as I write this, the California vote count edges him closer and closer to parity, and some 30 lawsuits across the country may result in significant changes to the vote tally.  With the support of the young, easily half the party, and most independents and a career utterly untouched by scandal and huge corporate donations, Sanders would give the Democrats a generation of control in the government.  But Sanders is a Social Democrat, despised and feared by those--especially large Banks and the fossil fuel industry-- who have written the DNC and the Clinton campaign HUGE checks in this election cycle, and foreign governments who have had such influence in US Politics, especially the Saudi's and Israel's powerful money funnel, AIPAC, appear to despise him, as much as he is beloved by most of the rest of the world.  Regardless, this would seem a natural choice, but to party insiders, the choice would be impossible.

There will be winners, of course.  The Green Party, long languishing as a "fringe" party in the press's eyes, has made a very smart move (largely due to Dr. Jill Stein, who is becoming more and more a force with which to be reckoned) in inviting the Sanders supporters (with whom they have much in common) to join, up to and including inviting Sanders, himself, to join their ticket.  The Greens will likely, at minimum, have a showing this fall in the millions because of disgusted independents and the Sanders disaffected, and are likely to become a viable third party in the years to come, perhaps displacing the Democrats much as the GOP displaced the Whigs.

Trump, regardless of outcome, will make millions and will bask in the limelight.  Sanders will rise in influence and respect in the Senate if not nominated, and will continue to affect US politics for a decade.

But the Clintons, even if they win, will never be trusted or respected again.  The Democratic party, even if they win, will likely remain shattered, never trusted or respected again.  No one has respected or trusted the Republicans for years.  The losers, the big losers, will likely be the American people, who will have to deal with the outcome of this sorry mess.

NEW BOOK RELEASE

Well my newest novel is finally, FINALLY to press and available hardcopy and on Kindle.

It's a very different kind of Steampunk romance, featuring transdimensional travel, interspecies dating, Teddy Roosevelt, and mail order shopping.....no, really.

I'm very proud of this one.  This and my earlier "The Ganymeade Protocol" are my two strongest works to date.  Please go check them out.  You can find "An Alien's Guide to Sears and Roebuck" here.


M

Them Intertubes Process

The Interwebs Process:

On the posting of any idea, concept, or invention, the web reaction will be as follows:

1)  There's no problem.  There's no need for this.  This is just the reaction of (insert group you hate here) trying to (insert nefarious intent here).  You're an idiot for disagreeing with (insert group you respect here)

2)  Okay, there is an issue, but it won't work.  You don't understand the (science, cost, politics, mechanics, will of the divine) regarding this.  Who's gonna pay for this?  You're an idiot for disagreeing with (insert group you respect here).  You don't have the (money, skills, education, credits, cajones) to do this.  If this would have worked, someone else better than you would have already done it.

3)  Okay, it might work, but They (the government, the corporations, the police, the illuminati, the bankers, the reptilians, the minorities, the people with hamsters taped to their foreheads) won't let you do it.

4)  It'll work just fine.  It's brilliant!  I've always said so. You and me, buddy!

Mungo's Epistle to the Preppers

Okay, so this has been coming a long time.  I apologize in advance, this is going to seem like an attack. It honestly isn't meant as one, but I think it's something that needs to be said.

The world has it's problems, I'll freely admit.  Governments are corrupt or stupid, corporations are out of control, the climate is out of whack, the seas are polluted, everywhere, it seems, there is crime, want, violence, disease, and general weirdness.  I get that.

Your response is entirely logical.  You want to create a safe space for you and your family, fill it with food and medicine and guns and whatever else you think you'll need to deal with what is out there, and survive.

The question, in my opinion, that you don't seem to be asking is:  And then what?

And then what?

Then do you crawl out of your shelter with your camouflage and assault rifle and eke out some miserable existence in what is left of the world?  Do you see yourself, somehow, and the leader of some Mad Max future by virtue of having the foresight to "prep" for it?  Have you thought about it at all, about what happens when the freeze dried food gives out and the Kero for the lanterns is gone?  And then what?

Let me make a suggestion.  You may not like it.  It's not romantic, it's not macho, it's rather pedestrian and lame, but here it is.  Why not use your capital, your considerable talents, and your inventiveness to help fix the world in which we're living, to help make it a better place?  I know you probably won't be able to do it alone, but if you do and I do and a bunch of us do, then maybe, just maybe, we can avert the horrible future for which you are "prepping".  Maybe we can image a world as we would like it, set our sights on that, and work toward it.

I know our visions would not match, but some parts of them surely would, and those are the ones most likely to come true.  We could make a future, you and I and everyone else, for ourselves and our kids and the planet.  We could do that.

Just a suggestion.

M

Of a Trip to the Grocery, Lurking Police, Ferguson, Lord of the Rings, and the Ghost of Robert Peel

Sir Robert Peel was one of the powerhouses of 19th Century England.  He was Home Secretary, twice Prime Minister, legislator, and was all round hip deep in the issues of his age.  I mention him because, among other things, he was responsible for the reform of the London police force and was the father of what is often called "Policing by Consent".  If you've ever wondered about why London police are called "Bobbies" or "Peelers", he's your answer.

Sir Robert Peel.  If you don't know him, you should.

What brought Sir. Robert to mind at all was a walk this morning to my local grocery store.  It's a walk I make a lot, down a couple of back streets, then down a busy highway.  This time I noted, lurking behind a building some distance from the road, a patrol car, radar at the ready, laying in wait for speeders.  They do this all the time along this strip, but today, something about it irked me, got under my skin, got me thinking about American Policing, about things like Ferguson Missouri, and about Robert Peel.

Here's the thing:  Speeding is bad, and it happens a lot around here.  If you don't drive on the East Coast, you may never have experienced this sort of mix of aggression and inattention we seem to have out here.  Speeding is stupid, it's dangerous, it's a public safety concern.  Where I grew up in Ft. Walton, Florida, in summer when the tourists were in, the city used to park a disused police car--I'm not even sure the thing ran--in the median strip with a dummy in the driver's seat.  It worked.  The touri took one look at it and dropped their speed before hitting the main drag of town.  The public safety aspects were met, simply and inexpensively.

But this officer behind my grocer was far too far off the street for anyone to see.  There was no deterrence.  Instead, he was there to "catch" a speeder.  To apprehend and ticket a law breaker.  As opposed to preventing a law from being broken.  One of Peel's "principles" (gleaned and collected from his writings by others, I should note) was: "that the test of police efficiency is the absence of crime and disorder, and not the visible evidence of police action in dealing with them."  In other words, a police department with a lot of fines, tickets, arrests, convictions. . . .that police department was one that had failed, because they had failed to prevent the crimes from happening in the first place.  I realized that it had been YEARS since I'd seen an officer of the law parked in such a manner to deter speeding.  All of them had been lurking like trolls under bridges and overpasses, just past the crests of hills or around bends, waiting to "catch" someone.  Why?

Perhaps the term, "troll" I just used has some information here.  Mythologically, a Troll was a powerful, dangerous, often stupid supernatural creature that lurked under bridges and the like and extracted fees for passage from the unwary, 'troll' and 'toll' sharing some of the same linguistic roots.  That "fee" concept may lurk at the heart of this.

With the release of information from Ferguson, Missouri, a lot of people were shocked to discover that the second largest source of the City's budget was fines.  That amount was high, but by no means remarkable in the area.   The Police Department Emails from Ferguson made it clear that they were being pressured and judged on their ability to rake in funds. 

To look for who is responsible for this, one only has to look at the current crop of chest thumping politicians who proudly proclaim that they will "never raise your taxes."  They won't.  Taxes tend to come from property holders, large businesses, and folks with large incomes.  You know, the guys who write big checks to political campaigns come election time.  What they WILL do is crank every usage fee, license fee, and fine on the books to make up for the shortfall.  So the $25 fee to apply for a variance for your back yard fence is now $150.  The $50 speeding ticket is now a $250 fine, plus $150 in court fees, plus a requirement that you take a privately offered traffic safety course for $500 (and the company that offers them is a major political contributor to the mayor, you can bet, as are companies who do now mandatory drug tests and background checks).  This transforms every Policeman, Safety inspector, Code inspector, and Clerk from being a public servant seeking the public safety and public good into being a part of a shakedown squad, and these fees and fines fall disproportionately on the poor and middle class.  The working poor are often ground up and spit out by this system, left with massive ongoing fees and payments, arrest records, and destroyed lives.

The second and equally pernicious problem is the increasingly macho and aggressive nature of policing.  I'm reminded of the line in "Bladerunner"(or "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep" for you literary types) in which the Chief tells an unwilling Rick Deckard (Harrison Ford in the film)"There's two kinds of people in this world:  Police and Little People.  Which do you want to be?"  I lived in Los Angeles when Chief Darryl Gates (for my money one of the authors of this mess) declared LAPD to be "the biggest, best armed gang in the city," and ran things that way.  The attitude is as diseased as it is contagious.  In my distant youth, police looked like well groomed citizens in uniforms, very much along the lines of what Peel had in mind.  They approached policing with an attitude that said "I'm here now, you're safe now, how can we help?"  Now, shave-headed and tattooed, they more resemble a marine combat unit, and come swaggering in carrying enough firepower to take on the NAZI hoards and a "comply or die" attitude that says "mess with me and I'll kill every fu*king thing in this building."  I should be noted that Peel even insisted that the London  Police have special pockets in their uniforms for truncheons so they were not visible and threatening to the public.  Ironically, armored and very heavily armed, the excuse used by most police when using deadly force was that "they felt threatened."  Apparently, there is very little that doesn't threaten them lately, including unarmed, nonviolent offenders walking away.

It's a mess.

So here, dear reader, are my ideas on how to address this.  How to clean up America's Police Forces and restore to them their good name and rightful place in society.

First of all:  Robert Peel.  Before we go any further, stop over and read about Peel's ideas of policing, particularly the "peelian principles" of policing.  I'll post that list at the bottom of this, but if you have the time, drop over to Wikipedia and read the full entry.  You may be amazed how far we have drifted from these ideals.

Then, in terms of practical legislation:

At the Federal Level:

1) Support legislation making it illegal for any municipality, county, or state to acquire more than 15% of it's income from fees, fines, and licenses.  If you want community services, man up, tell the public how much it will cost, and what it will accordingly do to their taxes.  You want lousy roads? Fine.  Vote for them.  This will give the public a far more accurate idea of the expense of civic projects and governance, a better idea of where the money comes from, and it will stop governments from using police as the equivalent of schoolyard bullies shaking kids down for their lunch money.

2)  Direct the Department of Justice set forth a universal set of national standards for the use of physical restraint, pain compliance including tasers, and deadly force.  Make the guidelines conservative and clear, and make it clear that violations will be investigated by DOJ at the Federal level and vigorously prosecuted.

3)  Make sure that all Federal funding for local policing is responsible, including an emphasis on crime prevention and peace keeping; making sure the police departments are not too dissimilar in racial makeup from the public they serve and setting careful standards for programs for police training that have a component of taxpayer funding at the Federal Level.

4)  Stop the unfettered transfer of military equipment from the Federal Government to Law Enforcement agencies, making such equipment available only to special units within law enforcement and including periodic review of the recipients to make sure the use is appropriate and controlled.

5)  Require that instances of deadly force or complaints of violence against police be investigated by citizen panels independent of the Police Department, Prosecutor's Office, or Local Government.  This assures confidence in the integrity of such investigations, and makes their findings far more palatable to the public at large. Make sure that the collection of accurate data on police use of force is possible  and readily available, so that we will know when departments are developing problems.

On a local Level:

1) Insist that your local politicians hold Police--since they have a position of high public trust--to a higher standard of competence, honesty, and performance.  Hold supervisors and office holders responsible for police with a history of violence and complaints remaining on the force.

2)  Make sure that the police in your community LOOK like your community, and not just in racial makeup.  Police should look like the people they serve, not like hired killers or shock troops.  An effort should be made to recruit police from all walks of life, not just from the ranks of the military.

3)  Develop non-policing alternatives as an adjunct to traditional law enforcement.  New York's Guardian Angel movement or the Burning Man Festival's Black Rock City Rangers, (full disclosure, I was a Ranger for a time at Playa Del Fuego, one of the regional "burns") while not perfect, may serve as a model for a controllable, non intrusive way to increase public safety and security without further stressing already overstretched Police departments.

And on a Personal Level:

Step up.  Film bad policing, call your mayor, the chief of police, the press. . . .refuse to tolerate bad police, bad police policy, and those who place our Law Enforcement officers in no-win positions where the honest performance of their duties are at odds with official policy, political convenience, or monied interests.

Police should be deserving of our respect and admiration, a trusted and reliable resource for the entire community.  If we're willing to all get busy, raise our voices, and do the work necessary, we can restore them to their deserved and lofty place in the pantheon of those that make a civil society work.

M

The Peelian Principles

Nine Principles of Policing

The following nine principles of the role of police were set out in the 'General Instructions' issued to every new police officer in the London Metropolitan Police from 1829.

1. To prevent crime and disorder, as an alternative to their repression by military force and severity of legal punishment.
2. To recognise always that the power of the police to fulfil their functions and duties is dependent on public approval of their existence, actions and behaviour, and on their ability to secure and maintain public respect.
3. To recognise always that to secure and maintain the respect and approval of the public means also the securing of the willing co-operation of the public in the task of securing observance of laws.
4. To recognise always that the extent to which the co-operation of the public can be secured diminishes proportionately the necessity of the use of physical force and compulsion for achieving police objectives.
5. To seek and preserve public favour, not by pandering to public opinion, but by constantly demonstrating absolutely impartial service to law, in complete independence of policy, and without regard to the justice or injustice of the substance of individual laws, by ready offering of individual service and friendship to all members of the public without regard to their wealth or social standing, by ready exercise of courtesy and friendly good humour, and by ready offering of individual sacrifice in protecting and preserving life.
6. To use physical force only when the exercise of persuasion, advice and warning is found to be insufficient to obtain public co-operation to an extent necessary to secure observance of law or to restore order, and to use only the minimum degree of physical force which is necessary on any particular occasion for achieving a police objective.
7. To maintain at all times a relationship with the public that gives reality to the historic tradition that the police are the public and that the public are the police, the police being only members of the public who are paid to give full-time attention to duties which are incumbent on every citizen in the interests of community welfare and existence.
8. To recognise always the need for strict adherence to police-executive functions, and to refrain from even seeming to usurp the powers of the judiciary of avenging individuals or the State, and of authoritatively judging guilt and punishing the guilty.
9. To recognise always that the test of police efficiency is the absence of crime and disorder, and not the visible evidence of police action in dealing with them.
   

Conservatives and Liberals

Just a bit of musing late last night:

Conservatism:

"Daddy, can I have a cookie?"

"No, you have not EARNED a cookie

but

if you will wash my car, you will have earned one and I will give you a cookie and you may do as you like with it."

Liberalism:

"Mommy, can I have a cookie?"

"Of course you may, sweetheart, we're family and I love you and what's mine is yours

but

you must share it with your little brother."


Pater Severus, Alma Mater: The strict father, the compassionate mother: Both teach a kind of discipline and self-restraint, with one you get self-reliant individuals, with the other, you get functioning, compassionate societies

but

get the balance wrong, and you get neither.