THE BUBBLE from Murph

I have met several women recently that expressed the idea that they didn’t want to know about all the bad stuff going on out there, they liked the bubble they were living in. I got to admit that this was the first time it had been stated so emphatically to me. Got me to thinking about this.

On this web site and many others, there are numerous references to the ‘sheeple’ that are being led around by the nose rings they install themselves. These metaphorical nose rings are attitudes and thinking. It seems that in any large population there is a certain amount of the population that would just as soon be told what to do and how to do it and what to think on a constant basis. To be otherwise can be rather disruptive to day to day life. Having to critically examine events and ideas circulating around you is hard work. My favorite quote on this; “Thinking is hard work, that is why it is so unpopular”. And, at the least, it is time consuming.

Taking a look at our society, one of the things we have to understand is that our society has changed a lot over the last 50 years or so. Today, for a substantial amount of our society, people are working multiple jobs, both husband and wife work, and time for examination of events and ideas is rather short to non existent. That I suspect this is a deliberate condition imposed on our society is beside the point.

Another factor to look at is the mental ability to be critical and closely examine what is being expressed and the nature of events. We have to face the fact that at least half of any given population is mentally not equipped for this kind of thinking. That is what average IQ is about. The latest stuff I have seen on this issue indicates that, in American society at least, the average IQ by traditional measurement is less than 100. That means that half the population is under an IQ of 100, or at best slightly more. It used to be that it was figured that to get a university degree took a minimum of 115 IQ. Now this has nothing to do with the moral values and living strategies that people use to live their life. But it is going to have a lot to do with abstract thinking and ability to analyze what is going on around a person. As near as I can figure, it is a sad state of affairs perhaps, but nevertheless true.

So right of the bat, we have 150,000,000 of our population that are simply not able to deal with high level critical thinking. Of the other 150 million, a very large percentage are engaged in so much activity just to stay healthy, raise a family, and keep a roof over their heads they haven’t the time to examine things closely.

I am going to take up one issue to point this out dramatically.

We have had a series of events take place in a relatively short period of time that has given imputes to the advocates of restrictive gun laws. Columbine and Virginia Tech are two big ones. Already, the Democrats are pushing legislation in this area. The idea is that if guns are limited to military and police, violent crime will be reduced. This is an area that is of high interest to me since I am very much opposed to anti gun legislation. So, I have been doing a bunch of research in this area. One of the first things I noticed is that depending on what batch of data is being used, the same data can have exactly two sets of opposite conclusions drawn. If you move into several sets of data, you find very obvious contradictions.

One of the justifications used for disarming the public is the experiment in Australia with anti gun legislation. One set of data indicates that they were marginally successful with it and another set of data indicates a total failure. Here is one analysis.

http://home.overflow.net.au/~nedwood/guns.html

If you Google up Australian gun control you will get more web sites than any of us have time to examine, pro and anti stances. I went through a good dozen of them and found about a ratio of 4 to 1 showing it was not effective. This took me several hours to read and try to analyze the data, and how it was arrived at.

In our own country, this fight has been going on since the Lincoln presidency. In all cases I have found.

1. There are far and away more example of defensive gun use being legitimate than you will ever hear on the popular media. See for a well researched web spot;

http://www.pulpless.com/gunclock/noframedex.html

2. In every society, there are going to be those that for a variety of reasons are going to be violent and will use any means at their disposal to be violent.

3. When you look at the legal ownership stats on firearms in this country, the amount of illegal gun usage against other people is very small. Supposedly 70 million households have guns of some amount.

4. When I look at the role that law enforcement in this country, very little actual effort (despite the propaganda to the contrary) is put into crime prevention. It is mostly a system of punishment. Therefore, a disarmed public is at the mercy of violent crime with no way to effectively resist. To complicate this, it appears that a very significant amount of law inforcement, at all levels, engages in illegal acts on a regular basis. In effect, we have illegal activity being used as an excuse for enforcing existing laws and law enforcement personal engaging in the very acts they arrest people for.
   

5. Our constitution was rather explicit in advocating an armed citizenry to hold off or resist government tyranny.

This is my short list of conclusions. They have been arrived at after considerable time and energy spent in looking at both sides of the argument. Now take a look at the shear amount of issues facing us. The incredible hours that have to be spent examining both sides of a contentious issue. No wonder we have such a large proportion of ‘sheeple’. It is overwhelming endeavor to examine all of it.

This also ties into what is called single issue voting. We each have a favorite area that we are adamant about concerning social and national policies. I know many people that voted for Bush only because of his stated policy stance on gun control, which was none. How many people do you know that voted for him based only on his stance on abortion? It takes a lot of time and effort to do a balancing act for the lesser of two choices of evil, which unfortunately is what we are left with in national politics that affect us all.

So, on the bigger issues, we do the best we can. This web site is interesting because of the large variety of issues that are taken up on a regular basis. Thank you all for your input and research.

Evil Spirits

By freeacre

As I got dressed this morning, I found myself wishing that I had some sort of talisman to ward off evil spirits.

I can’t help it. This Cho Seung-Hui massacre has just sent me over the top of my capacity to deal with the troubles that surround us. Thirty-two people gunned down on the Virginia Tech campus in a shooting spree that seems to have been copied in many respects from the Korean revenge film, “Oldboy,” which it is said that Seung-Hui had watched repeatedly. Additionally, in a Columbine-like milieu of institutional violence, his sister is reported to be working at a black ops support organization after graduating from Princeton. (Link to cryptogon.)

We are horrified to hear of 32 students massacred on a Virginia campus. I wonder how it is that I have not felt so acutely the senseless deaths of innocent bystanders in the hundreds of gang-related murders in our inner cities or the daily deaths of children and their parents while shopping in the Middle East by roadside bombs targeting whatever civilians happen to be walking down the street.

I don’t think that removing guns will in any way solve the problem here. It’s not about the trigger or the trigger fingers. It’s about the minds and hearts so disconnected and resentful of the people around them that they feel compelled to kill. And, it’s also about the ineffectual mental health care system that continually falls short in their efforts to protect the emotionally tortured souls that beg for help.

Cho Seung-Hui became a pain and hate-filled monster who could no longer stand to live another day. He went for years to classes and refused to speak to anyone, and made no eye contact even with his roommates. He wrote violent, hateful, twisted messages in plays, poems, and essays that intimidated his teachers and classmates. It is almost incomprehensible that he was on the verge of graduation with this history of sickness and alienation.

For him, at least on this plane of existence, it is over. But, the parents and loved ones of those killed are experiencing a sorrow that will never go away. Having a son that age myself, it makes me almost physically ill to contemplate it. When I extend my empathy to the mothers and fathers of the victims of the gangs, domestic violence, child abuse, prison populations, soldiers, and “collateral damage” or our assorted wars, it is just too much. My mind TILTS like a shaken pin-ball machine.

Maybe that’s why we don’t do it. Maybe we can’t do it.

What I fear is that we are in for more of the same as our culture continues to deteriorate. The pressures on the maxed-out families that are losing their homes, their jobs, their health care, their ability to cope with the larger forces of collapse and depletion are increasing daily. We usually think of the adults in this picture. But, these adults have children. These children have had no say in the decision-making that has led to their disenfranchisement. Headlines in cryptogon and speakingtruthtopower today report an 800% increase in foreclosures in California this month compared to last year. How many children are going to be turned out onto these mean streets?

After WWII, Americans created the first truly middle class nation. But, all that has changed. The income gap between the the ruling class and the middle class is wider here than in any other advanced country. The least wealthy 50% of families now hold only 2.5% of the wealth of the land.

We are awash in astonishing levels of private debt, adding excruciating tension to family life. The Washington Spectator reports that “American families have amassed record housing, auto, education and credit card debt. In the last decade, the average family’s credit card debt increased by 137 % and its mortgage debt jumped 154%. Debt payments now consume 19.4 % of the income of the average American family.” Public college costs have increased 25% since 2001. Private schools are averaging $29,026 per year. Graduating students are hitting the streets owing around $60,000 dollars at interest rates that are a crime compared to what they were in the seventies.

And, they are going to have to pay off these loans with jobs that are from the service sector, have reduced or no benefits, get little or no over-time pay, have no collective bargaining power, and may be out-sourced anyway to third world countries.

This is not even factoring in the oil and natural gas depletion that will make feeding ourselves much more expensive (already 17% increase since last year) and the all but inevitable collapse of the retail economy which relies on shipping goods thousands of miles, or the environmental challenge of global warming. Oh, and the crisis in social security as us Boomers retire, as well as the crushing debt of the trade imbalance and projected currency insolvency.

So far I have been referring to the squeeze on middle class kids, which is bad enough. The working class and underclass – those children of immigrants and the ghetto, the rural and migrant workers, single parents and the working poor, are the ones who have it the toughest. These are the ones who have faced childhoods of lack and humiliation in the all-too-cruel mall world created by advertising hype and compromised public school systems. These good and honorable kids trying to “Be All That They Can Be” have joined the military in order to feel a part of something valuable, with a future they can be proud of, despite their lackluster childhoods.

We have armed and trained these kids to do battle on the city streets of Iraq. They have been traumatized, stressed, wounded, poisoned with depleted uranium ordinance and god-knows-what-else, had their tours extended and been taken advantage of until they are on the verge of snapping like twigs – and still it doesn’t stop.

The counseling services of one of the best colleges in the country couldn’t deal effectively with the pathology of an upper-middle class kid with a history of watching violent movies and playing video games. What is going to happen if the young veterans come home traumatized from a real war and find that, once again, there is nothing here for them?

One can only hope that their compassion and strength is greater than our own. It is going to take much more wisdom than we have heretofore demonstrated to avoid the consequences of a battle over diminishing resources and opportunities in the coming culture of less instead of more. The potential for race wars, class wars, and undifferentiated hostility in the near future is sobering.

Let us use this tragedy to learn how to reach out to each other in solidarity and support, rather than try to insulate ourselves from the suffering that seems to be in store for our next generation of children.

EXAMINING WHAT IS SUPPORTED BY WHOM by Murph

I have been up to my neck in meetings and a questionable public service duty (Grand Jury duty) for two weeks now; and have two more weeks of it, and have spent precious little time researching what I wanted for my next post. On top of all of these time consuming activities, I have an innumerable amount of home project that either need to be finished or started. However, I feel a real need to revisit some points that I think are really important.

This site has a fairly strong leaning toward a more liberal political ideology. I know that most of the steady readers at this site have little or no respect for the neocon politics. I suspect that most voted for all democratic hopefuls in the last election, and with predictability, they got a majority in the house and senate. I further suspect that most of this voting was a denunciation of the neocon agenda, and not necessarily in support of the democratic rhetoric. I predicted before the election that no real changes would occur, and so far, that has turned out to be true. It is true that the democratic majority is addressing some important issues. However, when you make a list of all that needs to be addressed and what has to be done to reverse the damage to this society that Bush and crew has done, it is an overwhelming job. What I fear from that front is more failing social programs from the liberals that cost lots of bucks. What the future holds is open to question.

It appears to me that few people are willing to take a hard look at just what is happening up on the hill. I further suspect that few are willing to put in the time to examine what the neocon and general conservative supporters are saying about what is happening. So I took a couple of hours and wandered through a bunch of the more conservative sites (there are several hundred at least) to see what their take was on the present shenanigans on capital hill. I went through 22 sites and here is a list of some of the current subjects being written about.

1. Nancy Pelosi wearing a scarf when she visited a mosque in the mid east and how stupid and demeaning it was. Talk about BS politics. 2 sites went off on this one.
2. The now democratic control of the House Armed Service Committee is eliminating the wording of “global war on terror” because the dems don’t like the term. The neocons think this is bad bad bad. Diverts our attention from the war on terror and is more political correctness pushed out by the dems.
3. McCain has a new spot on his head and may indicate a return of melanoma.
4. A new movie put out by HBO on voter recount is feared because it won’t be balanced and fair because it is supported and put out by democrats.
5. The Mike Pence (R, Indiana) made a tour of the Shorja market in Bagdad and his statements concerning progress of the surge and how safe the area is. No mention of the snipers and helicopters all over the place and the fact that all the shops close down well before dark. Lol, safe indeed.
6. Article about Bush ripping into politicians over the war funding.
7. One site spent considerable space attacking the 9-11 conspiracy theories with great vigor. Of course, the site was not into answering any of the questions around the event.
8. The site titled “Atlas Shrugs” (from the Ayn Rand) soundly slams everything the Muslims have to say about anything that opposes American policy.
9. One Conservative site took on Ann Coulter for her “raghead” and “faggot” remarks. Said this was entirely inappropriate. At least I can agree with that one.

Frankly, at this point I quit searching around. There were a bunch of other sites I went to that didn’t have anything significant to say about anything that I could find. Mostly just blather and bla bla bla. So, it appears that the conservative sites are bogged down in nonsense issues as well as the more liberal sites.

So then I started to dig around into what the dems are pushing for in bills. Now this really gets interesting. Take a look at this site listing of the spending bills the dems are pushing.
http://www.floppingaces.net/2007/03/27/the-democrat-bill-to-embolden/

What ya think about this information? Let’s see, 24 million for funding new sugar beets? I had no idea we needed that. 3 million to a single co-op in Hawaii for sugar cane? The next one on the list is interesting. 20 million for insect infestation damage in Nevada. Ever been to Nevada? There isn’t enough farm land to hardly count in that state. Looks like the moon at high noon. Some of the stuff on this list looks viable but a bunch sure looks like pork barrel to me.

On top of that, I see almost nothing anywhere pointing out that Polosi and her compatriots are pushing for a new gun ban law. They want to bring back the Clinton gun bans and greatly expand it. Were coming back into the era of: “---my cold dead fingers” again. What is interesting about the reintroduction of this kind of legislation is that when looking at the statistics around the issue, there is no reason to even consider it for any reason other than to polarize dems and repugs. It didn’t work then and won’t work now. It is another example of taking a failed policy and trying it over and over again and expecting a different result. Pure insanity. Not to mention the cost of enforcing it. Somewhat similar is the policy of “war on drugs” that doesn’t work, cannot work, and drains huge amounts of money that could be used for other things. Aw well, it at least keeps the private prisons making a profit.

Now I will admit that I frequent the more liberal sites most of the time, except when I want to induce a head ache of a stomach ache. It’s my more masochistic side I guess. Today I have both.

Let’s take a look at what some of the more popular liberal sites are talking about.

Almost all of them concentrate on bashing the current administration and its policies and agendas. Some get into the more abstract view concerning general population trends, thinking and problems. A lot of them are presenting ‘surges’ in new age thinking, religious concepts and solutions.

I find it distressing that few are making any examination of causality as an overview of the present state of affairs without getting into religion and philosophy. Not all, but much of what I read impresses me as prayers for intervention by deities, general consciousness changes and just another form of denial.

Only one columnist that I have read gets down to the basic causes:-that is us, all of us. Joe Bageant at least is willing to admit complicity and what he is doing about it. But few of the other liberal sites want to deal with this, it seems. It sure looks to me that in the end analysis, the bottom line, we as a society, have brought on this calamitous situation. We have no one else to blame for those we gave power to and their exercising it. There is no one else to blame for our materialism, our dependence on rapidly diminishing resources, the cruelty and killing that is dominating the world at this time. We have gotten exactly what we voted for as a society for the last 200 years. That we try to claim ignorance of the consequences is a weak and stupid defense. We were warned, over and over again of the consequences of the type of thinking and actions that would lead to what we have going on today. Claiming that those that came before us are responsible and that we aren’t responsible because we weren’t born yet, is not a justification for what has been done at the voting booth in the last 50 years. I fear that the only remedy for this is going to be a world wide calamity. When enough stupid decisions take place, the bill will be paid sometime, and there is strong evidence that the bill has come due.

A good friend has repeatedly reminded me that “humans will be as bad as they are allowed to be” without the extrapolation that “humans will be as good as they are allowed to be” as a counter argument. If we can assume that at least at some time in the past, humans were as good as they were allowed, where did it start to swing the other way? There are tentative explanations all over the place, not expressed in that context of course, but nevertheless being concerned with where we went wrong. We can argue all day long over these concepts, but it does little to solve the problem. Nor does it excuse our personal excesses for most of our lives and our contribution to today’s problems.

So to appease the folks that say that if you are going to criticize something, offer a solution, here is mine. The gross and horrible problems we have generated have no political solution. We do have solutions on an individual basis, but politically it is not going to happen. We have allowed the 10 ton shark into the arena and you aren’t going to convince him to leave nor is a consensus that he aught to leave going to work. Most of his friends are there with him and there aren’t enough harpoons in the audience to end it. Sorry I can’t be more positive. Maybe I’m just too pessimistic for my own good.

So Palooka, denial is a big problem. We simply do not want to deal with the reality of our situation as a society on any level. It will bite us on the ass.