Discouraging Prospects for Gen Z

 Various people have been pointing out how dismal the economic prospects Gen Z faces when compared with the generations immediately preceding them, and speculating that this is leading to discouragement and demoralization... such that one might wonder if working hard is worth it when life is going to suck anyway.  Why save for buying a house when the median age for first time homeowners is about to cross 40 years, and so on.

I would add something that I do not see being discussed.  One little project people must engage in if their culture, civilization and indeed species is to survive is the very non-technological act of starting and raising a family.  It's an economic adventure proportional to expectations; subsistence farming has fed countless families in our species and has succeeded in the absence of much of the "stuff" people have been taught to obsess over.  Despair over the prospects of starting a family need not follow from poor economic prospects.

However, forming a family is far more a matter of trust and faith in one another than it is a matter of dollars and cents.  A relatively recent innovation has had an effect on our culture in the US for most of the past 50 years.  This innovation is "no-fault divorce" and is further exacerbated by the common "guidelines" for child custody and support arrangements after such a divorce.  Anyone with enough functioning synapses to imagine the results of making a home in the caldera of an active volcano should be capable of grasping how utterly disillusioning and demoralizing it can be for a young man who is told his duty is to build and support a family when he learns how casually and callously his partner in that adventure can, and now all to often does, render his every effort futile and ultimately self-destructive.

Anyone who does not grasp this should learn how this system works and what its effects generally are.  In my opinion poor economic prospects are trumped by trust, but not when the law has made that trust abrogable at whim.  For this reason I suggest that no-fault divorce and its corollaries is a greater killer of civilization than is any amount of economic stress, and that this policy should be reversed immediately.

What AI has demonstrated in design

Much can be said about people's experiences in putting AIs to work at design in various disciplines including materials.  The successes have in general been achieved by automating trial and error, enabling far more trials per unit time than humans are capable of performing.  In the real world, this is called "butt work" and is suitable for delegation to relatively unimaginative underlings.  That is not to suggest that "trial and error" hasn't proven worth the trouble on occasions, but when an imaginative human engages in that practice he will generally be guided by intuition and inspiration, leading to more selective trials and more results, including trials not in the set that would be assigned to the above underlings.  This is of course because real cognition is a practice that employs the entire integrated mind of the cogitator, not just artificial subdivisions like "left" and "right".

Observe that the above exercise in butt work as a class suggests the familiar postulate that a sufficient number of monkeys with keyboards over a sufficiently long time will reproduce a particular classic composition.  Granted that LLMs can simply plagiarize the said classic if they've been fed it, but this is nowhere near AGI.  The question, of course, is whether it is good for humanity to automate tasks that are normally assigned to students in order that they may make contributions while developing skill at their crafts.  As we have seen with elevating minimum wages to exclude kids from entry level jobs, this is no way to continue developing the legions of capable people required to sustain a culture or a civilization. Just as the kids are replaced by kiosks in fast food joints, young talent is being sedated with various nonproductive things while their relevance as upcoming talent is being devalued.  Good luck with this, humanity.

Reparations

 I do not have a great grandfather, nor even a great great great great grandfather, who was enslaved by neighboring tribesmen in Africa, sold to the Dutch at the coast, eventually transported to the US and sold to a Southern farmer to work in his fields.  Even if I did have a remote relative who was enslaved by others (and for all I know, I did have someone in my family tree who had been, or who was an indentured servant which is generally worse), I would feel like an idiot to demand that my fellow citizens should be raped and pillaged to give me the fruits of their labor because of my supposed disadvantages.

However, I *was* compelled to serve in the Armed Forces from 1968 to 1973 with 1.75 years active duty in the US Naval Reserve.  My alternatives were to be drafted, to leave the country (Canada for example), to claim I was homosexual, to fake a medical problem, etc.  Occupational deferment was applied for but was not given to a programmer at a major defense contractor before, in self preservation, I took the remaining option of enlistment in a reserve service so I could accumulate enough seniority to work in my field while eventually on active duty.  That such choices were before me hardly diminished the compulsory nature of the service imposed on men my age.

The essential definition of slavery is to be owned by someone else.  I learned while on active duty that while the UCMJ, as all on active duty are, if I had for example gone to the beach on liberty and gotten a bad enough sunburn that I could not do my work the next day, I could be taken to Captain's Mast (Commanding Officer's Non Judicial Punishment) for the offense of damaging Government Property.  The property in question?  My own body, but not my own, because it was at that time the Government's property.

I was, literally, a slave.  Not some remote relative whose face I never saw and whose name I might not know, but my own self.  None of the people on whose behalf demands are made for Reparations has personally been a slave, unless they, like me, served in the Armed Forces of the United States.

So, on behalf of all those of us who have served on active duty during our own lifetimes, I demand that if reparations are extorted from US Taxpayers to enrich a class of people whose remote ancestors might (or might not) have been slaves, then all of us who have served should be enriched by Reparations from all those we were enslaved to protect.  The Government knows who we all are, and by definition knows who (everyone else) would need to be assessed to make those reparations.  If Reparations are such a fine idea, let's see ours!

The High Cost of Healthcare in the US

 We hear continuously that "healthcare" is expensive in the US.  We then hear about greedy corporations and other leftist targets.  My personal experience identifies two very significant targets that are not mentioned among those leftist tropes.

One is lawsuits such as malpractice brought by attorneys who seem to be far greedier than corporations.  In the early 1990s, my first ex wife was emerging from medical school and at that time hoped for a residency in OB/Gyn which had been her motivation for training to be a physician in the first place.  At that time, we learned that the annual malpractice insurance premium for that specialty was on the order of $200,000.  This, given a 2080 hour work year, amounted to roughly $100 per hour simply for mandatory insurance.  If that cost has tracked with general inflation, the premium should be over $200 per hour now.  This is before the doctor in a private practice pays for rent, utilities, equipment, assistants and other general office expenses. If I were responsible for reducing the cost of "healthcare" this would be my first target. 

A second target is the game of setting excessive list (cash) prices which may then be deeply discounted (better than 90% as I have seen) by Medicare and, to a lesser extent, by insurance companies.  I've been a cash customer and know well how absurd the pricing I, as a cash customer, must pay in order for the Government to pretend at heroism by "getting me a discount" (some doctors and institutions have offered me a 15% cash discount, almost insulting given the discounts given to insurance companies, let alone government.)  Without these games, the cash price would probably be less than what the government pays, not ten times as much.

Each of these rackets CAN ONLY EXIST because the powers of government were used to make them possible and maintain their viability (try doing anything opposed by ALTA and learn all about political pressure.)

The coming year

Trump's crew had best be prepared to ruthlessly strike while the sword is sharp.  If they allow themselves to be diverted into "due process" it will take far too long and accomplish little.  Fire the bastards and cancel the contracts first, then prosecute if you think it's worth the energy.  While the guillotine may be satisfying to watch, it is much more important to stop their depredations than to "hold them to account".

Artificial Hubris

We are increasingly fed authoritatively phrased, AI-generated summaries when we ask questions.  Google Search, for example, will often provide such a synopsis as its first link for a question such as "What is asynchronous CMOS".

The problem with this is that if you ask me a question about something beyond my ken, I will preface whatever remarks I might make with a demurrer acknowledging that my understanding of the question is limited at best.  On the other hand, the AI generated synopses blithely compose prose using the same authoritative linguistic formulae used for all responses, regardless of the AI's limited training.

This was demonstrated recently by a colleague who asked the latest publicly accessible version of ChatGPT about GreenArrays' chips and then about the Forth programming language.  I am intimately familiar with both and so I believe I can objectively assess the replies he received.  In both cases, the usual smugly authoritative-sounding prose was generated, which to someone who knew nothing about either topic might have seemed like good and useful information.

Unfortunately for such a recipient, though, it was immediately obvious in both cases that the data on which ChatGPT's "training" had been based included little, if any, actual information about either, and was full of nonsequiturs such as the assertion that the "GAC 144" (the actual part number of our G144A12 chips and the actual name of our F18 computers were never mentioned) had an instruction set particularly well suited for parallel applications.  To all of us who designed, implemented, and use this instruction set, we do not discern any aspects of that instruction set which acknowledge the possible existence of parallelism, or were introduced to facilitate parallelism, at all.  Rather, the primary distinguishing characteristics of that instruction set are its simplicity and the minimalism embodied in its design and implementation, neither of which ChatGPT even hinted at.  Both responses were full of such things which, from a human, might be taken as suppositions, but in the case of an AI which cannot be assessed in terms of human nature it is difficult to classify nonfactual assertions.

I am personally concerned that as people begin actually reading what LLM engines like ChatGPT produce, many will begin using such prose as foundations for their understandings of all sorts of things.  If this becomes a widespread practice, I believe we will be educating a generation or two with terribly flawed foundational understandings as the least of evils.  If AIs are introduced into our societal education systems, I am not pleased contemplating how those generations will be "programmed"; worse, as people begin having AIs "think" and compose prose for them, the habits of actually thinking and of innovation through imagination and human perspective will doubtless be muted.  Perhaps the worst malfeasance in this area would be the replacement of a good teacher's humility and epistemological reflection with the arrogance of an ill informed large language model possessing an "imagination" not understandable in human terms.

About a "Need for Regulation"

 Elizabeth Warren and others assert that the "failure" of FTX demonstrates a need for "regulation".  I think that is nonsense.  Our entire financial system, in which the tokens we exchange with each other are symbols "backed" by something, as well as all business transactions we make, is based on trust.  Trust that those whose position gives them the power to do us harm have Honor and will not ever use that power.

The criminal who ran FTX and its many tentacles should be in jail awaiting trial for theft, fraud, misappropriation of massive amounts of others' property and no doubt other crimes.  In an older world he would have already been tried and summarily sentenced to a suitable punishment for one who has caused as much pain as he has, such as public disembowelment.

That he is instead free demonstrates how useless regulation would be; he has not yet had even a slap on the hand, yet those who would regulate are those who should be cutting his hand *off* rather than solemnly talking about "regulation".  You do not regulate criminals.  You deter them by guaranteeing punishment to fit their crimes.  Perhaps you do not do this if they have been conspicuously sucking up to you and giving you money they have stolen from others?

Then, further, who would be doing the regulating?  Our central government, of course.  That being the same government who has defrauded us by stealing a good fraction of our savings through government induced inflation.  Remember?  "Trust that those whose position gives them the power to do us harm have Honor and will not ever use that power."  Those who would regulate have demonstrated that they have no Honor in this respect and are unworthy of our trust.

I believe it is long overdue that those who *are* our central government (the elected representatives, to a degree, but more so the *millions* of unaccountable, permanently employed bureaucrats who believe they run the country) should themselves be regulated and, where appropriate, given fitting punishments.

Fighting Inflation, Huh?

The Federal Reserve has caused massive effects on regular people by simply changing the prime interest rate.  For example, after being forced to sell my home in 1999, I had enough money in the bank to earn $1400 per month in interest, mostly on T-bills.  When the FED cut rates in 2001-2, that income stream vanished for me as it did for anyone else who had been old-fashioned enough to hold savings.

Now we are suffering inflation which, at the grocery store and most other necessities regular people must buy in order to survive, far exceeds the year-over-year ratios published by our central government; for regular people it is more like 100% and beyond than like 8.25%.  Of course the central government has a conflict of interest because the numbers it quotes trigger cost of living increases for 2.4 million or so federal civilian employees, for all of us who have paid into Social Security for most of our lives, and undoubtedly for others, creating budgetary problems if they actually keep their promises.  In addition, quoting small numbers allows politicians to pretend that this is no big deal (see Joe Biden "only an inch").

In addition, because this massive inflation is due, directly, to Federal, State and local policies ... policies that contravene the spirit if not the letter of the Constitution ... over the past 2.5 years in particular, the central government has a further interest in pretending that this is no big deal.  Forcing people not to work, then bribing them to postpone going back to work, printing literally trillions of dollars to be spent on boondoggles and given away for nothing or attempting to buy votes, running businesses into bankruptcy, destroying the profitability of the remaining taxpaying business ... these acts and their ilk are directly inflationary.

Now, the Federal Reserve "solves" this problem by jacking up the interest rates to nearly what they were back in the 1990s.  Smooth move; this gives more revenue to everyone who lends money (bankers and investors, mainly; regular people who lend their savings to banks still do not earn squat for interest.)  Among the beneficiaries are the likes of Communist China which holds a substantial hunk of our national debt.

However, for the regular people who have had to borrow money to pay their bills but have not yet earned enough to pay off those loans... or who are still borrowing money... this is no good at all; it simply accelerates their progress toward bankruptcy.

In addition, it will of course have a very significant effect on the central government, whose debt is now on the order of six times what it was in 1999.  Each one percent on sovereign debt of $30 trillion is $300 billion.  At merely 3.33 percent that is a trillion dollars per year of interest on the national debt.

Wherever will the central government find this extra trillion dollars per year?  Only two choices:  Print yet more money, further increasing the national debt and ensuring perpetually high inflation, or tax us all to death.  (Prosperity is not an option; it is in the process of being outlawed, see ESG and other destructive policies/programs.)

Neither alternative is good for the country.  Indeed, putting us in this position is a great way to degrade or destroy our nation.  Good going, globalists; yours is the only visible agenda such wanton destruction serves.

Where does the Electric Car Mandate lead?

Statists dislike allowing serfs the ability to move about of their own volition.  The light aircraft industry, and the ability of common folk to afford flight training and the purchase of aircraft allowing them to easily cross a thousand miles in a day under their own power and at their own volition were things essentially done away with by the end of the 1980s, through the connivance of trial lawyers and insurance companies (remember that lawyers are over-represented in politics.)  That was good news for totalitarians, but there was much left undone.

Recently, Klaus Schwab allowed that private transportation is wasteful and should be abolished (meaning your and my motorcycles, cars and trucks, not, of course, the private jet aircraft that congregate annually in Davos and at the WEF facilities in communist China and probably will into the indefinite future).  Consider the following in light of this statement.

One horsepower is on the order of 750 watts (745.7) at 100% conversion efficiency.  Simply overcoming drag at 60 mph requires on the order of 10 to 20 HP, with considerably more used dealing with necessary vertical and horizontal maneuvers.  Let us go with the lowest numbers, such as 7.5 kW, and with an estimate of 84 billion driving hours per year in the US.  This gives a low estimate of 630 TW-hr per year, roughly 1.72 TW-hr per day, 72 GW continuous.  At the end of 2021, total US generating capacity was on the order of 1.1 TW.  Superficially this would seem to require on the order of a 7% increase in total 24x7 generating capacity.

In reality 10 HP is a very low estimate for average load.  In addition, nothing is 100% efficient.  We are talking about BHP or equivalent watt-hours delivered to the road.  The electric motors are not 100% efficient; they get hot, as do the batteries (this is why Tesla S max available power is reduced by its control logic at speeds over 80 MPH or so), and that heat is produced by wasting the watt-hours stored in the battery.  If for no other reasons than generating heat, the batteries and electric motors are <100% efficient.  Then we have the power grid to deliver charge to places presumably within walking distance of everyone in the country's homes.  To fully charge a Tesla S requires delivery of 100 KWh.  Even if you believe the EPA number of 402 miles per charge in that vehicle, that charge will have to be replaced or topped off frequently.  My house uses on the order of 64 kWh/day.  Charging a Tesla S daily would increase my personal consumption of electric energy by a factor on the order of 3, while if I only traveled 133 EPA miles average per day that would be more like merely DOUBLING my consumption.  For people living in small apartments the increase ratio will be substantially greater.

The electric power distribution grid is not 100% efficient either, nor are batteries for storage of wind or solar-derived energy.  However, here are a few key points:  Firstly, it is obvious that the US must add well more than 10% to its gross delivery capacity, and pay a considerable amount of waste heat along the way to ultimate delivery.  Secondly, the grid and local delivery capacity must be substantially increased as well.  Thirdly, the parts of the country in which the availability of private transportation is most critical are those which are sparsely populated and hence those requiring long travel distances for services such as medicine and repairs, for shopping of all sorts, and for visiting friends and family.  These are the areas which will require the largest increases in energy delivery capacity per capita.

Further, the energy consumption for charging vehicles will not be smoothly distributed throughout the day.  There will be peak demands at the most common charging times, and if the charging stations are not where the vehicle is normally or conveniently parked, arranging for staggered charging schedules will not be straightforward nor convenient either.

Looked at from the point of view of a bureaucrat, this will be one more thing to control.  Right now there is not much a bureaucrat can do to control the travel of individuals.  Anyone can find a gas station and drive wherever he or she likes any time of day or night, refueling as necessary along the way.  Nothing is rationed.  No permission is required.  Look right now at California, for example, which is merely coping with normal demand and does not have its universal EV mandate yet.  However already rationing and prioritization of electric consumption are increasingly being imposed.

I propose that the "EV Revolution" will never be completed.  Long before the full, predictable results of this "transformation" have occurred (bear in mind that the above back-of-the-envelope calculations are intentionally very low), bureaucrats will reveal with great surprise that the necessary generation and distribution capacity will be infeasible to create without undue effect on "climate change", let alone inflation caused by creating all of this with non-market funding.  The price of a kWh will increase considerably, priorities will be set, rations allocated, permits created at probably an additional cost, and long before full national-scale private EV deployment will be feasible it will have been priced and regulated beyond the reach of an average citizen who now enjoys virtually unlimited private transportation subject only to his own personal financial resources.

At that time, politicians like Buttgieg will again point out that people can easily solve "their" problems by switching to "public" transportation, and one bureaucrat's dream will be within reach:  That of having direct control over how, where, when, and carrying what, common citizens may travel beyond walking distance even within their own cities, counties, and states.

Public transportation allows for inspection of baggage, checking of ID, recording of personal travel, and forbidding carriage of for example defensive weapons, simply as a beginning.  Once virtually all travel, even over short distances, becomes "public", such totalitarian arrangements may be tightened and restricted further.  The possibilities are seemingly endless.

Such developments would be dear to the heart of bureaucrats all over the world, and are in lockstep with the stated goals of the World Economic Forum whose trainees occupy tens of thousands of positions in politics and bureaucracy the world over.  So, without the intervention of a superior force, I believe the above to be the inevitable ... and therefore the intended ... result of the ongoing programs to mandate Electric Vehicles, something that I believe to be a disingenuous intermediate step toward forbidding the freedom we currently enjoy with private transportation.

=== Above written 18 Sep 2022.  Update on 20 Oct 2023:  The International Energy Agency issued a report this week saying that global implementation of "renewable energy" will require 49.7 million miles of transmission lines will have to be rebuilt or replaced, and estimates that the world needs to spend $600 billion annually on grid upgrades by 2030.  The revelation mentioned four paragraphs above appears to have begun.  I wonder how long it will be before the "climate change" effects of all this will be discovered?  - GB

Projection is a pandemic

 Xi demonstrates that he is every bit as good at projection as are American leftists.  It is he, after all, who has destabilized Hong Kong in breaking Communist China's promises to the world in general and to the Hong Kongers in particular.  Yet he blames Hong Kongers for "destabilizing" their own homeland by resisting or at least dissenting in opposition to his breach of promise in subjugating them.  My heart aches for the poor bastards.

If there is anything the American left should boycott and divest, it would be the CCP tyrants, the businesses they own, and the places they infest.  But of course they will never do that; the American left salivates over a quick buck without any evidence of moral guidance.  And, of course, the American left projects its atrocious venality upon its opponents, we who simply love liberty and wish to be left alone while we buy locally produced goods in preference to those made by the tyrants and their slaves.

Not a "Conspiracy Theory"

 Whoever is actually making policy in the US Government, while casually pulling the strings of Joe Biden as he stumbles and stammers in his pretense of "leading" our country, is obviously intent on diminishing the capacities and the morale of the United States and of its people.

The catastrophic damage which been achieved during the past year and continues today is severe enough that it cannot be dismissed as the result of "incompetence" by anyone with the intelligence to step out of the way of an oncoming train.  This damage is too thorough and too far-reaching in space and time to be unintentional.

What is not obvious is who is giving orders to those making policy.  To destroy the United States and the lives of its people argues for a foreign actor, or perhaps an actor that believes itself to transcend nation-states.  Possibilities such as the "NWO", the crocodiles of Davos, the Rothschilds and their obscenely wealthy fellow travelers, and so on seem much more likely than Kim of North Korea or the ignorant "antifa" of the US.

Let us skip lightly over the tyranny of politicians and bureaucrats, along with their outright lying and then accusing those who inquire about these lies as purveyors of "harmful misinformation" since the start of 2020.

Suppressing US production of fuels and then embargoing fuel from its major producers abroad does not punish the producers, it brings productivity to a screeching halt in the US.  I will see this before many others because I do a lot of work for a major corrugated container producer, and that industry has for all my adult life been a very sensitive leading indicator of the output of American industry.  It makes for a very provincial life in places like Northeast California, Wyoming, or West Texas where going anywhere from one's home depends on moderate to long distance transportation.  We haven't seen its effect on delivery service from the likes of Amazon but that seems inevitable, and without that service life will be muchly changed in places like the above; even here in Cheyenne its effect will be significant.

Cutting Russia off from SWIFT struck me at the time it was proposed as a marvelous way to accelerate the dismissal of the US Dollar as the world's reserve currency, and this has begun to arise as a topic for widely read commentators.  Given the general bloody mindedness of the EU, I am pretty sure this is the reason they backed the embargo of SWIFT service to Russian banks; despite that the Euro will almost certainly not be the dollar's replacement.  I wonder how it will be when not only Europe but the US is obligated to pay for commodities like oil, uranium and lithium in Remibi.

I believe it would be healthier for the world to identify, and then hang, the perpetrators of this misery right now, than to lament the harm they are in process of doing after it has finally sunk home to everyone and will be extremely difficult to remediate.  Playing God on a global scale ought not be rewarded.

Eisenhower's Farewell Address of >50 years ago

 Previously I've referenced this address.  I heard it live on television 17 January 1961 and it was discussed in school for the next four years.  Perhaps it is not that familiar to others, but in my opinion it should be.  Therefore I copy below some excerpts from the official transcript of which have not received as much attention as have others, yet which are particularly relevant in the 2020s.

================================

We should take nothing for granted <;> only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.

...

In this revolution, research has become central; it also becomes more formalized, complex, and costly. A steadily increasing share is conducted for, by, or at the direction of, the Federal government.

Today, the solitary inventor, tinkering in his shop, has been over shadowed by task forces of scientists in laboratories and testing fields. In the same fashion, the free university, historically the fountainhead of free ideas and scientific discovery, has experienced a revolution in the conduct of research. Partly because of the huge costs involved, a government contract becomes virtually a substitute for intellectual curiosity. For every old blackboard there are now hundreds of new electronic computers.

The prospect of domination of the nation's scholars by Federal employment, project allocations, and the power of money is ever present and is gravely to be regarded.

Yet, in holding scientific research and discovery in respect, as we should, we must also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific-technological elite.

It is the task of statesmanship to mold, to balance, and to integrate these and other forces, new and old, within the principles of our democratic system-ever aiming toward the supreme goals of our free society.

==========================

I suggest that the underlined passages above accurately foresaw and explained the gross malfeasance by Fauci and others two years ago in coercing men who, for example, had concluded that a virus outbreak had escaped from a Communist Chinese laboratory, to nevertheless co-author a paper which asserted the opposite, as well as many other efforts to manipulate public understanding and opinion through outright propaganda and which have led to actual harm to the citizens of our Nation.

Perhaps the only significant aspects of the past two years omitted from President Eisenhower's otherwise prophetic foresight were things like the employment of the traditional media and novel corporate forums for public discussion of the issues of the time as accessories to the efforts of the "elite" through selective reporting, vilification of opposing opinions, "fact checking" by parties with 'dogs in the races', and outright censorship.  In 1961 the Press would have been appalled by this and would rather be picking apart the pronouncements of the "elite".  In these troubled times, alas they are no longer performing that useful service but have been co-opted by the same forces they ought to be investigating.

I think Eisenhower had a clear vision of where things could go, insofar as his imagination allowed at that time.  I wish, however, he had consulted men like Isaac Asimov or Robert Anson Heinlein for their thoughts on what might lie beyond the horizon of his imagination before completing those last paragraphs of this part of his historic address.

About my flag hoist, Independence Day 2021

This year, from the third floor, I flew the US Ensign that had been used in my Father's funeral.  It was a nice big one, desgned to cover a sarcophagus.  From the bedroom windows below flew a Gadsden flag, memorializing the Revolution establishing our independence from the British empire of King George III; the Gonzales flag, memorializing the struggle by Texans to be independent of (actually to secede from) Mexico; and the Confederate Battle Flag, memorializing the effort by the Confederacy to exist unmolested by the central government of the United States by seceding therefrom.  This effort led to a war, started by the North, which the South certainly did not want (and whose consequences led to the rape of the Sioux and the theft of the Black Hills, another story).

To anyone who objects to my daring to display the Confederate Battle Flag, I reply that half of my heritage is Southern, as is most of the heritage of my girl Debbie.  Given that during the war between the states, people to whom we were related fought honoring that flag, and had civilian relatives who were raped and murdered, black or white, by the conscripted (enslaved, read the UCMJ) soldiers of the Union, I assert that I have every bit as much right to memorialize those fine people as does anyone else, regardless of skin color, to memorialize people to whom they might have been related and who lived during the middle years of the 19th century.

The erasure of history and heritage that is stylish in this year of 2021 among the leftists is merely an obnoxious display of fascist totalitarianism (look at the Roman Fasces, Mussolini's symbol for God's sake, flanking Nancy Pelosi's "sacred" podium in our House of Representatives, to gain insight about who the Fascists actually are in this sadly troubled year).  This display must be resisted by anyone who is actually anti-fascist, or we will be forgetting the excellent advice of Rabbi Aaron Zelman, founder of JPFO, who asserted "NEVER AGAIN!"

"Reforming" Police and Military of the US

A couple of decades ago in the late 1990s, I observed that many of the goals of the leftists in our country would require their suborning our police and military to subjugate we citizens.  At that time, our police were men and women of Honor who loved our country and its culture, and our military was largely composed of our Brothers and our Sons.  None of these people would be inclined to use deadly force against our citizens; indeed, they would be more likely to wield it against the bastards who gave them such orders.  It seemed to me that, in order to achieve their goals, the leftists would have to replace our police and soldiers with gang bangers, thus making a new force that would cheerfully deploy arms and explosives against us, while also creating a "full employment" program for the gang bangers who, while not remotely interested in "education" so they could get nice jobs that would pay far less than what they were doing before, would easily be tempted by the opportunity to loot after killing.  I was mystified that the left was not doing this.

Fast forward 20 years.  Observe the "defunding" of the police and the purging from our military of men who do not display sufficient submission to the leftist line.  Soon it will be noticed that both are short handed.  Perhaps finally the time has come when the leftists will solve that "crisis" by filling the ranks of our "protectors" with amoral predators.

The Chinese Curse has of course been lurking in the wings all along; if the left makes the grave error of unleashing violent criminals on us under color of law, the left will quickly learn that it cannot control these predators who will eventually come after them. l hope to survive long enough to see that happen if they do this.

"The Swamp", also known as "The Deep State"

Contrasts are often instructive.  For example, Donald Trump was still unable to get much of the central government bureaucracy to follow his instructions; this makes his late executive order extending his authority to dismiss employees a little bit farther down the ladder most understandable.  We court martial soldiers for insubordination but bureaucrats are some how special and scum like Lois Lerner can pretty much do as they please without concern about prosecution for violating citizens' civil rights.

Compare this with the rapidity of the bureaucracy's adoption of what we call, with tongues in cheeks, "Biden's" agenda.  Now we have a sign identifying a "free speech zone" on the trail from parking to viewing area at Mt Rushmore.  Now we have the feds efficiently arranging for the transportation of many thousands of illegal aliens from the Mexican border to the interior of the US.  No insubordination here, no sir.

Is this because Biden is by comparison a magnificent leader?  No.  I sure would not follow him into battle, and if you choose to I will sit over here and watch.

The reason is simple to understand, and is the point behind the Democrat intent to make DC a state.  The Federal bureaucracy is by its nature an arm of the Democrat party, and by the current rules it is inviolate.  Every time a Democrat president, such as Obama, "creates jobs" by calling for another few hundred thousand Federal bureaucrats to be hired, he's created a few hundred thousand permanent Federal employees who in general have jobs for life, are un-firable, and will receive the best retirement and best health care in the Nation without having to set aside anything themselves to pay for these things.

This OPM data from 2020 indicate that the number of on-board Federal civilian employees was 2.18 million.  This cadre has demonstrated its insubordination to administrations that are "conservative" and especially to administrations that "put America first", while that cadre is right now demonstrating its enthusiastic support for a leftist administration, complying in record time with the implementation of its agenda.

I propose that the next time we have a President who is not a Democrat, we begin solving this problem by summarily dismissing 10% (218,000 in 2020) of the top echelons of all parts of the Federal bureaucracy.  Reason for the dismissal?  The same reason that was given for dismissing me from active duty in the Navy in 1970:  "The Convenience of the Government."  No re-hiring need be permitted, any of us who have worked with Federal employees generally agree that we have never encountered a lazier and less competent workforce; there is a reason why most of us affectionately called them "civil serpents".  Those who are left will be encouraged to actually do their jobs.

At the end of one year, if the President's instructions are not being immediately and efficiently implemented by this bureaucracy, another 10% would be dismissed.  And so on, until insubordination has ceased.

For many years, especially the past five, and more especially the past year and a half, the Federal bureaucrats have behaved as though they actually "ran" the nation, as though they could do as they please (see Anthony Fauci for example), and as though they are untouchable.  The Benthamite "best and brightest" to whom all should defer without question.  This is "the swamp"; this is "the deep state".  It is real, these bureaucrats are literally beyond control of the people or of their elected officers, and as we have seen they face no consequences for abusing the power we have mistakenly given them.

Let them face the same consequences the rest of us must face when we get too big for our britches.  Protecting them from these simply leads to amplification of the unacceptable behavior.

A Strangely Aligned Moral Compass

Our brilliant President has apparently no problem with his administration's punishing a friendly state (Saudi Arabia), and making public accusations against its next likely head of state, over the killing of one reporter.

Meanwhile, he also has no problem with kissing the ass of a nation that has killed tens of millions of its own people, that has a huge cultural group in concentration camps, that is known to murder people to harvest their organs for transplantation, that has broken its word in relation to subjugating the people of Hong Kong along with the "detention" of reporters it disapproves of, and that threatens a shooting war with the people of Taiwan, who fled the mainland many years ago to escape the depredations of the Chinese Communist Party and live lives of liberty, if those people should dare wish to continue living as free men and women.  Resistance is futile, they shall be Assimilated.

The crimes of the Saudis must be publicly aired, blathered about, and punished.  These are affronts to human rights and we think they are everyone's business.

But the crimes of the Chinese Communists are just a matter of different cultural norms that are really none of our business, and it would be "misinformation" to acknowledge these, or any of their other evils.  These are internal matters of a sovereign state and we think they are none of our business.

It appears this administration is too busy implementing Marxist policies at home to notice, publicly, what the poor bastards who live under the heels of Marxists are having done to them.  I suppose Nazi Germany would also be excused as simply having different cultural norms that are none of our business either.

Do not infer...

Do not infer that we are imbeciles simply because we tolerate abuse up to a point.  Things like Social Media have assumed the status of Public Utilities whether or not they like it.  When a company with which I do business and upon which I become dependent in order to conduct mine unilaterally withdraws from contracts with me because it does not like my opinions ... or my religion or the color of my skin, same thing ... that company has assumed the power to ostracize or shun me.

Why stop there?

Why not cancel my cell phone account?  My electric power?  My water?  My net connectivity?  Why not command me to stay inside my domicile and not interact with other citizens (oops, forgot the "COVID Lockdowns").  What happens when the grocers in my town become "woke" and refuse to sell me food?

Certainly, when what was once my society declares me an "untouchable" for my thoughts, it is difficult for me to grasp why I should pay that society a cent in taxes.

Again, do not infer that we are imbeciles because we have tolerated this abuse.  If you interfere with my ability to live, support those dependent on me, and pay my bills, then it is not a figure of speech that you are my enemy.  You are most definitely my enemy.

Is Arson a "property crime"?

There are five "Heinous Crimes against the Person", crimes that satisfy one of the requirements laid down by the Supreme Court in Tennessee vs Garner.  These Heinous Crimes are:

1. Murder
2. Attempted Murder
3. Violent Sexual Assault
4. Stranger Kidnapping
5. Arson of an occupied building

When a rioter commits one of these, including the last, he or she has started down the path for extraordinary treatment under the law.

Setting fire to a building at a time when one or more people are within is not a property crime.

"Experts" and "Science"

Since when is any Government "expert" or alleged "Scientist" (see DD Eisenhower's farewell speech regarding the eclipsing of scientific curiosity by the intellectually dishonest quest for funding) competent to make sweeping recommendations, let alone edicts, that abrogate the liberty of a nation of Free People?

The leftists would have it that some bozo with a job-for-life as a specialized government employee should be slavishly obeyed by all of us, and the Hell with the consequences.  "If it saves one life..." and similar asinine nonsense.  Benthamite nonsense, the notion that the "best and the brightest" will gravitate toward mind numbing bureaucratic jobs where they will somehow do "the greatest good for the greatest number".  Jeremy Bentham is proven wrong daily by the stupid actions of people with a lot of arrogance and very little actual intellect or humility.

I would doubt the competence of Solomon himself to order me around and to interfere with my livelihood and my carrying out other responsibilities for my family and household.  Solomon was reputed to be incredibly wise, but at the bottom of the matter he was also King, and of course kings have the power to enforce their edicts regardless of whether they may be Solomon or Alfred E. Neuman.

The people of the United States fought a war against the greatest power on Earth at the time, the British Empire, for the right to live without a King.  Now, with typical hypocrisy and Projection, the fascist leftists who would love to be Kings label the people in our country who actually care about liberty, personal freedom and dignity as "fascists" and our President as a "king".

So tiresome, so predictable, and so absolutely disgusting.

Delivery System

So, as expected, Joe Biden's role in the final couple of months of the endless, and recently costume, drama inflicted upon all of us for the past four years will be to serve as the delivery system for an otherwise un-electable, arrogant, obnoxious leftist career politician.  The obvious intention is to get her into the Presidency just as soon as Joe can be declared unable to go the bathroom unaided.  Despite corrupt polls that hope to manipulate those with herd mentalities into voting for the "winning side", I think we have all had  more than enough of the democrat party's nonsense and I'll be delighted to see their arrogance rewarded by a total loss of power.  I will enjoy seeing people like Mr Comey march off to prison where he may worship his "higher power" than the Constitution he swore to uphold.

If, of course, these crooks do prevail, our country is basically screwed.  It will be interesting to learn what dirty tricks these oh-so-virtuous people have in mind for the next three months, in hopes of enslaving us all.