One Good Thing About Trump

Yes, you read that title correctly, there may be one good thing to come out of this administration of terror, at least for me, and it is the extra learning it has forced me into. Trump talks about maintaining forest floors, I now am a qualified Ministry of Natural Resources officer. My forest Roomba (patent pending) is being tested in the northern Canadian wilderness as I type this. Trump talks about herd mentality/impunity/developed/immunity, or whatever he said/meant, and I'm now a licensed immunologist. Incidentally, am I the only one who, with my nine-year-old sense of humour, heard (or herd) Donald Trump say "turd" there? Here's the video, you be the judge.

So call it what you will, turd mentality, herd immunity, but coupled with the Woodward tapes in which he clearly shows he knew the dangers of the virus, but didn't care, could this have been his plan all along? And I just have to add here, you're president, you're engaged in all manner of shady dealings and chicanery, "SURE person who brought down president Nixon with tape recordings, I'll agree to a taped interview." What kind of a schmuck... but then again, check my last post. If Dunning and Kruger had a love child... THAT, would be Donald Trump, your turd mentality.

But can we get back to herd immunity? Even with the rosiest of Trump-supporting scenarios, that's advocating a couple/few million deaths! Avoidable deaths. Dare I go as far as to say murders? If you can wrap your head around that, it's not such a huge leap of logic to assume he might also have a plan to implement this herd immunity in blue states before November 3rd and red states after, is it??? "Is that how you plan to win the election, Mr. Trump? Do you mind if I record your answer?" "Not at all Mr. Woodward. Now, if you think THAT'S bad, wait'll you hear my plans to eliminate immigration..."

HEY! Another benefit just came to mind! TWO! TWO good things might have come out of this presidency! I have a lesson on tag questions coming up and it has just occurred to me that Trump has provided all the examples I need. "Trump couldn't possibly have intended that... could he?" "Trump isn't a sociopath, is he?" "Trump didn't call the 15-year-old daughter of Michael Cohen a 'piece of ass...' did he?" And you know I could go on. It's sadly apropos to say, but, God help me, now Trump has me researching the middle east. Along with rocket science, brain surgery and learning Korean as a second language, the middle east is an intellectual challenge that few are up to. Even during my knowledge thirsty youth, which inevitably trundled its way into alcohol thirsty middle age, I don't think I was up to it. Now I'd just be happy to get the gist. But it helps if you would like to understand the ludicrous concept of Trump's latest campaign stunt, the UAE and Bahrain "normalization" show! Is there a better example of a political nonsense word than "normalization?" Well, today I want to try to talk about what it means. Not what that whole political dog and pony show want us to THINK it means, but what it literally means. In order to do that, we need to do something I, and Inigo Montoya, are fond of doing: we need to go back to the beginning. Well, no, check that. Sorry, Inigo, but probably, "Let there be light," was the beginning. Let's go back to - let's call it earlier. 1967, when an old fella like me, was a newborn baby. When Canada was only 100 years old. When the Queen was still pretty hot.

Huh? Not bad eh? I bet I know what Trump would say if he saw this pic. The queen! A piece of... ugh, I can't say it! I've just always thought of her as too queenly. I know Charles, Anne, Andrew and Edward were not immaculately conceived, but the Queen has always carried with her, in my mind, a sexless image. I know my Mother was pretty when she was young too, but... let's move on, shall we?

The 1967 6 Day War was a massive military success for Israel. Oh yes AND God. Israeli forces killed over 20,000 troops while losing fewer than 1,000 of their own. Israel seized the Gaza Strip and the Sinai Peninsula from Egypt, the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, from Jordan and the Golan Heights from Syria. 

The reason? Because they're God's people of course! That land belongs rightfully to them, not the people who've lived there for centuries. Oil, natural gas, shipping routes in the Straights of Tiran FOR those resources, air supremacy, and the "big stick" in an area of the world in constant military and economic competition had NOTHING to do with it. I'm laying the sarcasm on pretty thickly but you can see why nobody in the area was too thrilled about this aggression. The UN Resolution 242 was drafted and immediately accepted by Egypt and Jordan due to its clause that called for Israel to vacate the territories acquired in the recent conflict. But to this day, that has not happened.

Israel claims the war was an act of pre-emptive self-defense, not annexation in the name of God, which has become known by the term, "Zionism." Many have debated this and some call it "complete fiction." Here is a well-written account. Sounds like complete horseshit, doesn't it? Maybe if the gods of Power, Resources and Riches were added...

The total thrashing of a Goliath by a David, is an attractive promotional prospect for religion. Was Defense Minister Moshe Dayan a modern day Joshua? Was he a hero wielding the sword of God? How else could such a resounding defeat have taken place? 

Volumes have been written on the religious and social implications of such an unexpected and thorough victory Israel scored. How did it affect the Muslims? The Israelis? The American Jew? The evangelicals? Even the Mormons? Here's an account of that. 

It is thought that one effect of the war was the secularism of Muslim countries and the relaxation of strict, harsh rules abruptly ended and reversed course to well into radical dogmatism. This, in turn, is believed to have led to the rise of Muslim extremist groups like Al Qaeda and ISIS. Just read the article above. State nationalism is now frequently cast as pro-Western and retrograde, while Islamism is often cast as revolutionary and patriotic, while the opposite was true before the 6 Day War. Amongst Jewish people Zionism was a bit of a lost cause that was raised from the dead by the 6 Day War. And its influence spread well beyond the Jews as I have written about before in this blog. Proxy wars in Syria, Yemen, Afghanistan, all over this area that I prefer to call Pipelinistan, are raging and the reasons that people are given for them are very much like religion. No way we'll ever know, just gotta believe what we're told.

The religious zealots closer to home, we'll call them the evangelicals, also breathed new life into their cause via the 6 Day War. They were seeing signs of the end. A righteous abandonment of mankind by God because of our wicked ways. What else could we see? But then a glimmer of hope. The Jews returning to their "homeland!" It was a sign prophesied to pre-empt the second coming. The Jews returning to their homeland meant Jesus was coming back! 

Even the Mormons were affected! There is still division, but some believe in the return to Jerusalem as Joseph Smith did, others think the treatment of the Palestinians has been indicative of ungodly occupation. And therein lies the conflict for most anybody who studies the Middle East. It looks very much like the Jews were blowing Joshuan trumpets while they set about one of the most unlikely military defeats, and not just defeats, but comprehensive defeats, the likes of which a GOD might just absolutely influence! But to others the time since that war has diminished the godliness of it and laid bare the unholy underpinnings that prove the absence of any benign deity. 

So what the hell bro? I'm sorry to be flippant, but after all this religiosity, what the fucking hell, bro? 

If I could answer that question, I wouldn't be writing a blog that will be read by a dozen people. At best. But what I CAN shed some light upon, what this little history lesson has been leading up to, is the abject frivolity of the Donald Trump nomination for the Nobel Peace Prize. 

Okay... Israel had plans to annex the west bank. The UAE agreed to "normalize" relations with Israel if they didn't. What a wonderfully nonsensical political word, "normalize!" We'll see what it means in actuality in a minute. So the UAE says NO! Don't destroy the Palestinians who are living there, we'll make a treaty with you to avoid violence! Looks like a peace treaty, doesn't it? Looks like Trump was a catalyst, doesn't it? Well he was, but in the exact opposite way you might think. The UAE was not coerced into doing this by Trump's superior negotiation skills. As he would like the world to think. As might be worthy of a Nobel Prize. No, the actual thing that is happening here, the real meaning of "normalization" is the UAE is acquiescing to dignify and honour Israel's claim to all that land they illegally captured during the 6 Day War. 

Most Arab nations have held that they will never do so because the Palestinians, an Arab people, were wronged by it. But the UAE changed their minds. Now what could have led to that? Hmmmmm.... Could it have been an advantage in the stalemate that has kept constantly warring nations from just having it out and killing each other? If you look at the details of the 6 Day War, you will see that the intricacies were like two frightened teenagers who the whole school wanted to fight, but were grasping at reasons not to. Israel decided to invade Damascus. Syria appealed to their treaty with Egypt and the Gamal Abdel Nasser govt to protect them. Jets were shot down. Nasser did nothing. It made him look weak. But he maintained that it was only if Israel tried to take over land that they would defend Syria. Then it looked like Israel was planning to do so. Egypt reluctantly moved troops to Syria in hopes of avoiding a scuffle neither Israel nor Egypt wanted. It worked! Israel laid off. It should have stopped there, but these are big-headed dictators we're talking about here. Nasser, pumped up by his successful show of strength (show being the operative word) decided to cut Israel off from the Straits of Tiran, a key shipping canal between the Sinai Peninsula and the Arabian peninsulas, through which Israel imported oil from Iran. Understand that this is where the masks come off. This is where the politics falls away and reality shows itself. Iran is the arch-enemy of Saudi Arabia. And if you want to talk proxy wars, Iran is backed by Russia and some other usual suspects and Saudi Arabia is backed by the U.S. and some other usual suspects. This WHOLE thing is about, (BIG HUGE SURPRISE) MONEY! Oil, and as I blogged about extensively, and as the world knows so little about, natural gas. Gazprom is up there every year with Microsoft and Amazon with the richest companies in the world. It's a Russian natural gas company and Putin is openly secretly its main shareholder.

I know. This is ridiculously complicated. But if we just go back to the F-35's. Oh, did I forget to mention those? Yeah this PEACE deal that Trump hopes to get a Nobel for, includes fighter jets that could upset the delicate balance of power that has kept the Middle East relatively peaceful for so long. Shit, I forgot to mention that. Oh, and also, Israel has long since been engaged in a treaty with the United States to maintain that delicate balance of power and NOT give weapons or money to any nation in the area that might upset it. Speaking of upset, you can imagine how Israel feels about the idea of those F-35's going to the UAE especially knowing how air superiority was what led to their Davidic win over the Goliath of Egypt and the other nations in the 6 Day War, which was a monumental upset!

What happened? Is there anyone who can explain this? Well as it happens, there is a perfect explanation for it all. And it's far from Nobel Peace Prize material. WHAT A HUGE SURPRISE! There is an expert on the Middle East named Vali Nasr who teaches at Johns Hopkins University. He was asked about what was happening with this "normalization" show. He gave a perfect answer. It has been removed from Youtube because it was so perfect. But here it is on a Facebook page. He says this will change nothing. It only formalizes diplomatic, military and intelligence ties that have been an open secret for a long time. Trump desperately needs a foreign policy victory. North Korea, China and Iran haven't worked out. This will be a popular victory with evangelicals in the US as well. Netanyahu wrote a book in which he stated that he doesn't want to give up land in exchange for peace with Arab countries. Now Bahrain and the UAE can be added to Egypt and Jordan as Arab countries which are okay with Israel's land grab in the 6 Day War. And the UAE? Well they get F-35's. 

So if you think this Nobel Peace Prize nomination was a political stunt that was orchestrated close to election day, you'd be right. The guy who nominated Trump was the same guy who nominated him last time. You know, when he got a broner for Kim Jong Un diminishing the chances of dangerous conflict between North Korea AND TRUMP. "I'm gonna bomb North Korea. No I'm not. I just averted disaster, gimme a Nobel Prize." Now he's basically saying, "I created this peace and cooperation that already existed. Gimme a Nobel Prize." 

Now Trump is talking at his rallies like he's won a couple of Nobel Prizes. In fact, he's been nominated twice. Hitler, Stalin and Mussolini were also nominated, so it doesn't mean much. But he is telling people it does and they're believing him. And who is this guy who twice nominated Trump? Christian Tybring-Gjedde is a far right (surprise surprise) Islamaphobic Norwegian politician. He once equated hijabs to KKK hoods. He thinks that people immigrating to Norway is his county's biggest problem. He probably loves Trump's wall. He's as big a fan of Putin as he is of Trump. He is probably kissing Trump's ass to get a spot in his cabinet because he wants to leave his country where everybody hates him. 

And as if to put the cherry on top of this absurdity sundae, guess who else was just nominated. Yup, Vladdy Poison-Your-Political-Opponents Putin. Putin the war criminal. 

What a whacky world!

And now it turns out there are MORE weapons in store for the UAE as this article attests. Aside from F-35's, they'll get Reaper drones and Growler jets. So you could look at this as the UAE and Bahrain maintaining "peace" in their countries, or, as the article views it, just better enabling themselves to (decidedly UNpeacefully) beat down any insurrection. Also, something I read about but forgot to mention in the article, this gives Trump a better position in case he plans to bring Iran to the bargaining table in the future. And if future talks fail, it may have increased the likelihood of military conflict with Iran. 

I'm not sure I qualify, but I'd like to nominate Trump for an Ignoble War Prize. But, in the attitude I so reluctantly, but often adopt, AT LEAST I'm reading more.

Ignorance Is Bliss

We've all heard the old saying, "ignorance is bliss." I remember my salad days when I was teeming with ignorance and yet I had the confidence of a learned man. Incidentally, but not without import, I hope you read that word in your head with a solid second syllable. You know how if you are not a Phillistine. Learned shall not henceforth be read mentally or orally, unless expressedly otherwise advised, as a monosyllabic word. Perish THAT mispronunciation! Unless I'm just jabbering about something I learned at school, or somewhere our genuine educations take place, well then it's just a lowly one syllable word. But when it's used to indicate intellectual prominence, one must humbly deign the word a poly-syllabic notoriety.

But back to the point, I'm not sure "and yet" were the proper two words in my second sentence. "And so" might have been a better couplet. It seems almost as if, no, check that, it seems exactly as if the people with the most confidence are the numbskulls who know the least about that in which they seem to hold such unassailable certainty. Anybody ever heard of the Dunning/Kruger Effect? Ask that question to a room full of people and it's only the smart ones who'll say "yes" honestly. The other smart people will say "no" honestly. And the blissfully blessed will say, "Hell yeah I know what that means! I wrote the freakin' book on the lemming cooter effect!" Or some such stab at scholarly parrotry. When challenged with, "It's not the 'lemming cooter' effect, it's the Dunning Kruger effect. You really haven't heard of it, have you?" They will not only NOT admit to their ignorance, they will take your challenge as, well, a challenge, and double or triple down on their ersatz erudition. "You callin' me a liar boah? You think just cuz I had two parents with the same last name BEFORE they got married, well yer better'n me ain't ya? You think just cuz you got on that high fallutin' shirt 'n I don't...? You think that I'm dumb cuz I ain't got as many teeth as y'all ain't ya?"

To be clear, this is a woman from northern British Columbia, Canada speaking these words, having no excuse but admiration for her southern U.S. patois.

The Dunning Kruger effect is something I see more and more as accountability dies a cyber death and people can say whatever the shit they want with all but complete impunity from those who might stand some chance of correcting them. So long as they do so on the sites and venues where they feel safe to let their fatuous flags fly! And it seems almost as if, no, check that, it seems exactly as if the people with the most confidence in their confidence are people who are in positions of power the very mention of which invoke an earnest respect for one who has risen to those positions through distinguished behavior, intellect and unimpeachable wisdom. World leaders, CEO's, doctors, lawyers, television news anchors and reporters, good GOD even the narratives you hear from everyday folks on the street, because that's what our words have become since we need to watch them so carefully, even those narratives can't be fully trusted. Regular people now speak in "narratives" and people who used to have to EARN our respect have more often than not fallen into rather than fought for and earned their positions of power. This is a sad fact of life most of us have not yet strayed far enough from our media misled, sports, video game, music, work and self-imposed responsibility stupors to realize: people don't earn riches and power any more, they inherit them. For the most part. Rags to riches is dead. Class mobility is a thing of the past. The owners of you and I have been ordained. And as sickening as it sounds, as much as this world has worshipped capitalism and rising to the top through hard work, cunning, ingenuity and enterprise, these lucky motherfuckers are receiving the dreaded SOCIALISM we've been brutalized with as if it were the hammer and sicle of Communist (or socialis) Russia. They're being GIVEN FREE SHIT! A LOT of free shit! So much that there is no hope that they can fail even if they are lugubrious, priveledge-addled half wits. They hold the reigns of our future. Yeah! And you know a few of them. Not most of them because, we're not in their club and can't hope to be, but we know some on the perifery who hope to gain entrance to the anonymity of the big boys' club. Wannabe's like, you guessed it, Donald Trump. By his NON anonymity, you can easily guess how close he is to securing a place in this club. Even as president, he's just a wannabe. And as such, he's the perfect example of this Dunning/Kruger effect. Anything he says that he isn't trained to say by his well paid handlers is pure stupidity, yet he is so often called smart! He's probably lost more money than any man alive, yet we think of him as a billionaire business whiz who's laughing all the way to any bank he's not suing or being sued by over defaulted loans. He just can't seem to realize, through ignorance-spawned confidence, that people are laughing at him, not with him. Ironically enough, both the ultra rich he wants to join up with to rule the world, and also those he considers to be far beneath him.

As my last post stated matter-of-factly, what the hell is wrong with people being given free shit? It's what America and most countries have as the motivation that keeps all those mice running on those wheels that power those nations. People wanna get rich. The BAD part of capitalism. But people also wanna give their kids easier lives by making THEM rich without all the back-stabbing, deceit, and scumbaggery. The GOOD side of capitalism. Ahem. The majority of the good intentions that have been sacrificed at the altar of the god known as Mammon have been justified by this one loophole. And you can't fault it, really. People will fight, fuck, chisel, con, pilfer, fenagle, you name it, they'll do almost anything after looking into the eyes of their little babies and seeing that innocence. Imagine if you not only were the heartless Mandalorian bounty hunter that stumbled onto baby Yoda, but the parent who had given birth to that adorably innocent, cute, powerful, cuddly... well you can say the same about any kid. We can all understand that protective instinct. Hell, I bet even Donald Trump was a cute kid! No Yoda, but... I myself might have sworn to provide for him through thick and thin no matter what kind of a douchebag he turned out to be, and unconditionally supported him with all my means, if I, (spiritu sanctu the power of Christ compels you) were his father. When you give it a good think, it's really quite something how innocence has so often been the catalyst to its opposite!

So don't come down on the rich too hard for wanting to give their kids easy lives. Did I just say that? At any rate, back to Mrs., hang on, how do you write the plural of Mr.? Mr.s? Hmmmmm.... Anyhoo, misters Dunning and Kruger. So Donald Trump is the example, too easy, I will use to illustrate the Dunning/Kruger effect. Is he, a man many believe to be the veritable antichrist, the apotheosis of this effect? Well, no. The Dunning/Kruger Effect has an upside. Our whole world situation has an upside. Though there ARE scientists from Sweden who say global warming has gone past the midnight mark and we should all enjoy our last few years on Earth before we all taste the flaming hot kiss of global destruction, uh, there is still good news. Though the cream has sunk to the bottom and the top has been occupied by undesirables in every government, corporation, bank, and stock exchange in the world, don't dismay! Watch the following vid:

Okay. I admit, this is a bit of an old vid. The makers probably still didn't know about the education ministress who is an absolute character out of Harry Potter,

or the newly appointed postal reprobate...

But still, the main point of the vid must not be lost. Confidence comes from ignorance and ignorance is drawn to confidence... that comes from ignorance. This in a friggin' nutshell, is the perfect explanation of the Trump phenomenon. Now, how come I, a lowly nobody, might be the first person to lay this out for you? Oh sure, you've thought of it, but haven't put it into words, but what in Sam's Hill, Hell's blazes and Dickens' dick has kept the rest of the SMARTER people from figuring this out? Well, I've got a theory. I think there are plenty of minds who worked this out long before my feeble, vodka and ginger ale-limited mind did. But they are all probably working on books and don't want to release any spoilers. I, on the other hand, am not writing a book, so there you go. Maybe I should write a book...

My original point was going to be how it's easier to be a Trump supporter than not. For instance, if I were to say that "Keep America Great Again" spelled Donald Trump if you rearranged the letters, Republicans ERVERYWHERE would be printing it on T-shirts, caps, truck bumpers, front lawns, internet memes in the months it took them to realize it wasn't true. Oh to be that ignorant! Perhaps a better example is one I covered in my last post. The insistence that the Coronavirus isn't all that dangerous. Not even 10 thousand people have died from it alone. There are comorbidities. Let's get out there! We need to get back to work and back to school! Don't be afraid! (at least not of this very specific fear. Stay afraid of the good fears, but...) Don't be sheep! (well... at least not in this specific instance...) It's ludicrous, isn't it? And it takes but a meme to convince thousands. Even just that one word, "comorbidities," well, that sounded pretty learny, and all that other shit is shit I already (have been trained to) believe in so shit yeah! I'll buy THAT T-shirt! If only there were a meme that could de-program that zeal as easily!



Ahhh, but there's the rub! De-programming the overinvested is a difficult thing. This overinvestment may be the very component of ignorance that has lead to its ubiquity. Ignorant people don't want to be wrong. They dread that as much as the rest of us. But that dread is far behind their collective dread of research. Learning. Fact checking. Even in this day and age when you don't have to do nerdy things like go to a library to be educated and informed, you just need to judiciously surf the ever increasing volumes of information on the internet, but... porn. I gotta say, and there's no UN cringy way of saying this so I'll just blast it out? Come on! Bad blogger! Bad blogger! How much porn does a person need? Honestly! Shouldn't there be plenty of time after, uh, using the porn sites, to find one's way to a news site or an educational post? Granted, there are the various junk sites out there that pass themselves off as educational, but are really fueling the idiocracy, but doesn't everybody have a fighting chance to traverse the labyrinthian cyber world unsullied? If nothing else, shouldn't ignorant people have a website or two where they could at least learn about their ignorance? For goodness's sake, literally, wouldn't it be beneficial, for the good of all mankind, if we could just convince ignorant people that they are ignorant, and that's fine? In fact, as the title of the post implies, or outright states, people who aren't ignorant actually ENVY you! You have a LOT going for you, could you just stop trying to be intellectual; voting; engaging in internet arguments way over your heads; making memes; sharing false information; and running for office? Please?

The very words "ignorant" and "ignorance" are burdened with negativity that in my opinion is a little harsh. "Don't be ignorant," we say. "That's just plain ignorance." The assumption by the person uttering such statements is that it is a deficiency and a character flaw to have ignorance or be ignorant. Yet how many of the smartest people ever haven't wished they'd never become so? “The fundamental cause of the trouble is that in the modern world the stupid are cocksure while the intelligent are full of doubt.” ― Bertrand Russell He's one of the most quotable guys ever isn't he, old Bert? For my money one of the smartest.

Alexander Pope gave us a gem that is oft partially quoted:

“A little learning is a dangerous thing.
Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian Spring;
There shallow draughts intoxicate the brain,
and drinking largely sobers us again.”

Too many of us are drinking shallow draughts and getting intoxicated. Isn't intoxication a state of bliss? Whereas, if you drink largely at the Pierian Spring, (the location of the Muses who inspire all great art and science and a fountain of knowledge), you will receive knowledge, but it comes at the price of sobriety. So if you're not ready for it, just have a little. Leave the thinking to the hard drinkers of knowledge. Being an intellectual lightweight is only shameful when you pretend to have the alcoholic capacity of a true bacchanalian boozehound. So know your limit and stay within it. No shame in that.

Albert Einstein said, with obvious allusion to Pope, "A little knowledge is a dangerous thing. So is a lot."

Confucius said, and I believe this nicely puts my point into a tight package with a lovely bow, "Knowledge without practice is useless. Practice without knowledge is dangerous." It's not the ignorance I question, it's the practices I've listed. Memes. Trolling. Becoming president. I think there is one great thinker who sums up my point with intellectual acuity that is difficult to top. And it's not George Carlin this time, although he DID say, "I'll tell you what the government DON'T want: they don't want an electorate capable of critical thinking. THAT'S what they don't want." It's part of the danger of knowledge. He went on to say, "They want obedient workers, people just smart enough to run the machines and just dumb enough to passively accept their situation." Those are the people I'm talking about, with envy, today. There's nothing wrong with being one of those people. Nothing. So long as you...

Is The American Dream Partially Socialist?

It's the end of August. The whole month has been the hottest and wettest/most humid of the summer, but I'm not complaining. We've had record Monsoon rainfall, a coupla huge storms, but I'm not gonna bellyache. Covid 19 limitations are messing up free time and work. I had two months off, but with travel restrictions, didn't really do much in the way of vacationing. Along with the blood sugar battle, I've had conjunctivitis for a few weeks. Five different kinds of eye drops and it still keeps hanging on. Conjunctivitis what's your function? Makin' eyes goopy and sticky and itchy. Conjunctivitis how's that function? I'm easy to get when yer wearin' a mask and touchin' yer face.

Still and all, I'm not going to let that get me down. I'm seeing positive signs. At the risk of sounding George R.R. Martinesque, FALL is coming. I've given up rationing the air conditioning because I know I won't need to pay for it much longer. Might as well get a bit of a jump on the cool. Remember in childhood how we loved the first days of summer vacation because we had the longest stretch of the year before we had to go back to school? I'm feeling right now like a kid at the end of the school year who knows the teachers are all just walkin' it in now and we're all just living for the bell. We don't have to do any more assignments or tests. The teachers' curriculums are completed, so now we're getting a lot of movies and fun classes. Some of my favourite teachers are just asking, not making us write essays, just asking what we're going to do for the summer. Our former jailors are now being kind to us. We've served our time. Freedom is at hand! I've got a similar sort of feeling right now.

Oddly, the weather is not getting warmer, it's getting cooler, and work is not coming to an end, it's just getting started again. But this IS in adulthood, a time of year that makes me as giddy as the early summer did when I was a kid. Though I AM starting work in a couple of days, and actually have a workshop tomorrow, I feel like Papillon poised on the cliff with a crude and questionable floatation device ready to plunge to liberty or death. Liberty from what, you might ask. Well aside from the stuff in the first paragraph, there are other hardships in Korean summer that make the completion of it feel to me like surviving some Herculean trial every year I'm here.

Mosquitoes. Now I dunno if you can add Covid to the other deadly shit these abortions of creation carry, but they're plenty annoying without it. I've said it before, mosquitoes are my albatrosses. Or I suppose, to give the Ancient Mariner accurate allusion, my eels. The day I can look at a mosquito with appreciation for its nature and not pure disgust - that's the day I'll find instant enlightenment or have my arse raptured right off this planet. I don't see that day ever coming though. You can talk about the biological wonders of their construction and reproduction and flight and all that, but I fear I will see them as superfluous vermin till the day I die. And the small, fast, Korean mosquito that understands silent stealth and camouflage, they're that much worse.

Add to the agita caused by the mosquitoes, packing any compost garbage in ziplock bags or else suffering a deluge of fruit flies a few days later. Throw an apple core into an open trash receptacle at your own peril! Fruit flies will find it and once you have them, it'll be a lengthy battle to get rid of them. Lesser pests like drain flies, water worms, and some others - they will all soon die icy and poetically retributive deaths! YEAH!

Sweat. It ain't the heat, it's the humidity and summer is the rainy season. Clothes take days to dry sometimes here in Korea. You can wave your hand in the air and get it wet. And although there may be health benefits to a four-month wet sauna, I can live without it. Any trip to a location farther away than the corner store requires a bag with a spare shirt, towel and water. I am not kidding! This is why I thank every holy entity for fear of missing one that I didn't have to work for July and August. June was bad enough, and even May is sometimes a challenge. Add to that the extra pleasure of wearing a mask and getting your nose and mouth (and in my case beard and mustache) a mini steam bath from your nose and mouth... well, you can see why I may welcome cooler weather.

But before I start complaining and bellyaching... doo dee doo... I thought I'd tackle a couple more pieces of odd logic I've come across in my cyber travels. Here's the first one. Now, I don't know how long that link will last. I have seen other similar links posted and they've been blocked with the warnings of either "partially incorrect" or just "incorrect," after being fact checked. But if you manage to read the article, what is it saying? Correct me if I'm wrong here, but at its very essence, that article can be summed up by saying Coronavirus/Covid 19 is bad for everyone, but it's only a little dangerous to most of us. It's only super dangerous to less than 1% and most of them are old guys anyways. SOOO let's get back to work. Work is good for everyone, but it's only a little profitable for most of us. It's only super profitable to less than 1% and most of them are old guys anyways.

What? Am I wrong? The over 160,000 deaths in America that have been attributed to Covid 19 are not all JUST from Covid 19. This seems to be proffered, to Americans, as reasoning to be LESS afraid of the virus. It's not THAT dangerous. It's only killed 9,683 people on its own. It's relatively harmless! But let's remember, that's 9,683 Americans. And in a population as large as America, that number might draw comparisons to other things that are considered to be relatively harmless. For instance, the one you just KNOW will come up, (and DID in the article with the HK flu) the flu was associated with 34,200 deaths in America last year. So compare 9600 to 34,000. "We stay working during flu season, don't we? We've been lied to! Conspiracy! Hypocrisy!" Record scratch... Hey wait a minute, did that say "associated with?" Could that mean there are "comorbidities" attached to flu deaths every year too? I think it could. Hmmm... What would some of those be?

A lot of the comorbidities (a word that formerly belonged to the medical community but is a new buzzword amongst Covid conspiracy alarmists) are the same for both Covid 19 and the Flu. If you have heart trouble, respiratory complications, diabetes, kidney trouble, cancer, immune deficiencies, Down's Syndrome, obesity, well, here's a list. I'm not going to go down the list and calculate how many Americans have all of those health issues, but let's have some fun and do just a couple, shall we? Let's start with obesity because I have mentioned it before here, over 70 million adults in the U.S. are obese. That's pretty darn close to 40%. Kids are closer to 20%. Approximately 38.4% of Americans will be diagnosed with cancer in their lifetimes. 34.2 million Americans have diabetes and 88 million more have pre-diabetes. Again we're looking at the 40% area.

If you go down the list and you are an American who can say you are free from any of these "comorbidities," you are absolutely NOT a member of the majority. In fact, the U. S. of A. is statistically the country MOST in danger from Covid 19! This news provided by the folks who are trying to convince you otherwise. lol. Now I'm certain that it's probably the country that TESTS the most for all of these comorbidities too, so if you want to dredge up that Trumpian gem...

But let's read a bit further in the article. "How do we stop this fearmongering?" it asks. I started picturing an author wearing a tinfoil hat when I read, "... a collapsing economy, used as an excuse to get rid of paper money and usher in a worldwide digital currency that will be controlled by unelected parties who will essentially rule the world and needlessly force vaccines on the entire human population." Unelected parties eh? Already happening. Not just in the federal elections either. And aside from the vaccine pushing, which I admit to being partially concerned about given the HUGE money involved and the constant lobbying to allow drugs to be released to the public with less and less testing, the main concern seems to be about money. A very Republican concern. A LOT of the people pushing this type of agenda are Trump supporters, I'm going to say that now. The people I see posting this crap are Trump supporters and I'm sure the majority, and maybe as near as makes no diff, ALL of the people who believe it, are Trump supporters. The same people who have been telling us for almost 4 years how spectacular the economy is! And to be clear, that narrative didn't suddenly stop with the onset of the Coronavirus. Bezos didn't become the first 200 billion dollar man before the Coronavirus.

When confronted with the prospect of disproving Trump and his sycophants, it's been the experience of comedians, political pundits, reporters and myself that very often, the best course of action is to get Trump to disprove himself. And here is an August 31, 2020 press conference in which Trump starts off bragging, as usual, about the economy. Which is it? Is the economy "collapsing," or is it a "tremendous achievement: Best in 36 years."?

And doesn't he then go on to push vaccines that definitely will NOT be fully tested? And you just KNOW they'll be making drug companies rich!


And, oh, by the way, isn't Trump a leader of one of those "unelected parties?" He didn't get the most votes, he prevailed in 2016 due to the fucked up electoral college. And history will probably show he was also PUTIN a position to become president with some assistance from outside sources.

It's a constant source of amusement to me how Trump and his supporters seem to shoot themselves in the foot contradicting themselves so often and so efficiently that they look like they are staging personal debates when they speak or tweet or post memes or argue online. The timing of this illogical logic is its explanation, folks. We're a couple of months away from the election. This is just a sad attempt to make it look like the president knew what he was doing all along. Trust him. You'll notice that in the above press conference he goes on to slag Biden and talk about defending the beloved citizens of America from violent protests by ending them as quickly as the vaccines will be flogged on them... with violence. He condemns protestors who are marching against things he doesn't like, then later defends protestors who violently marched in support of him, but does he ever mention a plan for his next 4 years? Election promises, a party platform, a recovery plan? Nope. He wants America to trust him. He wants them to believe he's got a great plan when in fact he'll just give a lot more dough to the rich and make the workers of America pay for it... again... but this time under the guise of digging America out of the hole Corona has put them in. That's why they won't let him tell you. But Trump hates being told what to do. Keep an eye and ear open, he'll let the cat out the bag soon enough. He plans to tax your asses off if he's re-elected. This "socialism" of Covid relief packages has got to end!

This leads us to the next bit of illogical logic I encountered this week. It is the common dismissive discarding of the very thing that would be MOST effective in digging the U.S. out of its Coronavirus hole. I say "would" because I don't think it "will" happen. The solution, as it was last time the US was in this position, would be socialism. And I am constantly hearing people ignorantly saying things like, "We can't just give people free shit," when referring to socialism. First of all, that's not what socialism is, it's just what we've been socialized into believing it is. Secondly, and since we've all heard the first argument many times, the part I'd like to focus on right now, why the hell CAN'T we just give people shit? Have you ever thought about that? No? Well let's think about that.

What is the American dream? If you say it's to work hard and pull yourself up by your bootstraps and through innovation and enterprise become richer than you've ever dreamed, I'd say you're only about half right. Why do Americans bust their asses working every day? Why did American soldiers fight in all those wars and why do they still fight today? Ask them. I have met a lot of American soldiers and have yet to meet a single one of them who has selfishly said he or she became a solder to get rich. I've met many OTHER Americans and have yet to meet any (although I know they exist) who do their jobs just to get rich. There's a second part to the American dream that people disregard when they are trying to get you to fear socialism. Everybody wants to GIVE their kids the freedom and financial comfort for which they've worked so hard. "Well we can't just give people free shit!" But isn't that what you all (or y'all) want to do?  Is the American dream partially socialist? Oh my GOD! Say it isn't so!

Here's an example of how business can operate fairly. Call it socialism if you must, but when CEO's and shareholders don't get obscenely unfair shares of profits, companies, and that means workers AND management, companies prosper. Better than otherwise. But try to convince greedy people of this.