Chaos Manor View, Wednesday, July 13, 2016
If a foreign government had imposed this system of education on the United States, we would rightfully consider it an act of war.
Glenn T. Seaborg, National Commission on Education, 1983
I’m way behind, but I’ll catch up. The good news is that there’s a lot more Mamelukes; I’ve been working on that. The ADSUS Zen portable keyboard is a godsend to two finger typists who had been touch typists before a stroke: the keys are big, and well separated, and it’s much easier to produce creative work on it. I have it and a 25” monitor up in the Monk’s Cell, and when I can get up there – when the distractions down here slow up a bit – I go up and work, and I can write a lot faster. I don’t have Outlook on it yet, which means I can’t do these essays up there yet since I need access to mail with cut and paste when I do them.
Access I have: I can control this downstairs computer with the Zen. But I have forgotten how to cut and paste between the machine I am controlling and the machine I’m controlling it with. I also need to install LiveWriter on the Zen, and Microsoft has put LiveWriter on the DNR list and left it abandoned. I’ll get up there. It will just be a while before I get there, because events tend to eat my time.
All of which is an explanation for why I have neglected this place. Apologies.
I note that Trump is catching up to Hillary in the polls, although Trump has done almost nothing while Hillary and the general media have been frantically spending money denouncing Trump I’m not sure that needs comment. After all, neither is yet the actual nominee of any party. We haven’t had the Conventions yet. The Party structure – unknown to the Framers or the Constitution – has been put into Federal Law, and the formalities have to be followed.
Meanwhile, the rage for diversity as opposed to assimilation – what I was taught in school as the “Melting Pot” that was the foundation of Americanism – has taken off. The original goal of Abolition was the assimilation of the Freedmen into American society. Where it worked – and there were only a few places where it worked – it worked well. And for groups – races, nationalities, cultures – other than African Americans it worked well. Sure, there was some conflict over Wops, Hunkies, Paddies, Italian-Americans, Greek-Americans, Irish-Americans, but the Melting Pot was triumphant. The denigration of national origins was fading out. The last major group to benefit from that was Orientals – Asians, since I am told that Oriental is now considered a denigration – have become a major factor in university admissions (as Jews once were), and places like Chinatown are pretty well transformed from ghettos to tourist attractions. The Asian American family down the street from us organizes annual Fourth of July children’s parades attended by everyone with children and many including local Movie/TV stars.
It was beginning to work on African Americans, despite the Great Society’s effects on the Black Family, but then came diversity. Now assimilation into the American cultural equality is denounced.
When I was in 10th grade in the then legally segregated South (Tennessee), I became convinced that the law and the government ought to be colorblind. I was considered weird, a left winger, even a communist, for that belief. I haven’t changed that view, but now I am considered a right winger, a Fascist – odd, because the Fascists proclaimed themselves socialists, and socialists are supposed to be left wingers. I haven’t changed much. I had no black friends when I was 10 – legally I couldn’t really have any – and I’ve acquired a few since. Legal segregation is no more; but now equality is not the goal. Diversity is, but no one seems to know its limits.
And now we are compelled by government to respect diversity. Again no one defines its limits. Are we to accept as cultural diversity the mutilation of female children by their parents (or doctors on instruction from their parents)? Honor killing? Sharia Law? Stoning of adulteresses? But I digress.
I have for years written about possible social effects of robots. I will say again: by 2020 over half the people employed in these United States could be replaced by robots costing about the same for the robot as the worker currently makes in wages. The operating costs of the robot will be about 10% of the cost of the robot. As a rule, a human will be required to supervise about ten of these robots, although the supervision will not require any great skill.
This trend will continue.
I understand that Japan has a population decline problem. Their alternatives are few. One, import workers who will undermine their culture, is not attractive to their leadership. Another is to bring in more robots to keep up the living standards of the aging population. There are a lot of implications to this. Few are thinking about it.
Fred has some thoughts on the subject of robots: http://www.unz.com/freed/ready-new-rossiters-universal-robots-toward-a-most-minimal-wage/
You can also find it in his regular Fred on Everything column, but you might find other interesting matter at the above site. I urge you to go read it and think about what you have read.
Saturday, July 9, 2016
I started this on Saturday the 9th, after which my time was devoured by locusts.
It needs work, but it isn’t going to get it. What you get now is an essay in embryo; I’ll try to finish it another time.
The one thing we don’t want. If you think about it, is the nationalization of the police. We may have hired to New York Chief of Police – Commissioner there – to come head our Los Angeles constabulary, and he did a good job; but we did not hire him to make LAPD into an image of NYPD. When I was in city politics, a very long time ago, an odd thing happened: New York, then as now larger in population (but not area) than the City of Los Angeles, but not multiple sizes larger, laid off more police officers than LAPD had cops – and still had a larger police establishment than we do.
I don’t pretend to be an “expert” in city government (and I don’t have a lot of faith in those who do), but I think I’m on steady ground in saying we do not want over twice as many police as we have. We have problems meeting our standards now; to double the size of LAPD we would have to admit a lot we turn down now. There are a lot of political jurisdictions in southern California, many have their own local police forces, and rather than operate their own police academy it’s much cheaper to tempt seasoned LAPD cops by paying higher salaries and benefits. We couldn’t possibly afford to double the size of LAPD.
There are many other peculiarities about policing Southern California, as I am sure there are in thousands of other communities in the United States; and the notion of a national police code, nationalizing police methods, is absurd on the face of it. It is also dangerous.
I won’t pretend to know all the details of the various cases that arouse the ire of Black Lives Matter (BLM), but I would think that protest marches designed to infuriate the police in Los Angeles is probably not the way to gather sympathy for black people in Baton Rouge, Baltimore, or Ferguson; particularly so if those protests attract participants who work themselves into throwing rocks at police, jumping up and down on police cars, breaking windows, looting athletic wear shops, lighting bonfires, and in general defining “peaceful” as doing anything one likes except deliberately beating people up. (Of course those who try to prevent looting liquor stores or sneaker shops deserve what happens to them.) Of course such thuggery was not planned by those organizing the protest event, nor were thugs invited to participate, and security people are expensive and it’s hard to get effective ones to work for protesters, and things just got out of hand. We tried. We really tried. I’ve heard all those stories, and I believe those who told them to me in the hopes that I would use some political magic to make the out of hand incidents just go away truly believed what they were saying. I was told to believe them, for that matter. The Mayor wasn’t looking for a fight. But the LAPD wanted their patrol cars replaced and some kind of compensation for losing their time off duty. The shop owners wanted compensation. And so forth.
Now make it all national. LAPD – the piggies, they were called in my day – were supposed to respect and apologize to the protesters they had inconvenienced, let alone those who had suffered accidents, and as to those actually injured by a police baton! Well the least we should do is fire those cops! No pension, just turn them out the door.
At least that is what it was like out here in those days. And we are now told to nationalize this; make LAPD pay for what the driver of a Baltimore paddy wagon did.
I don’t think the United States would survive a nationalized police force, with all its members held responsible for what any of its members did. There may or may not be problems in some local police forces. Perhaps in many of them. But they will not all have the same problems, and they will definitely not have the same solutions. If you want to protest police actions in Los Angeles, do so in Los Angeles, with Los Angeles people; don’t try to hold Los Angeles responsible for Baton Rouge or Baltimore (and note I am not commenting on the merits or demerits of those incidents; I wasn’t there and I haven’t studied them). If you believe in self government, then be a part of self government. Last I heard, Baltimore wasn’t even in California, much less Los Angeles County. It’s not in Dallas, either.
Forcing the police into the defensive is not a good idea. If the police are any use at all, they will stand together; the surest way to have them oppose you is to demand they stand with you against other police. You may get some takers, but the results are not likely to be what you expected or want.
Yes: I would prefer police be as they were when I was growing up: your friends, someone to turn to if you got in trouble. Community policing, they call it now, but I don’t think that phrase was in use in my day.
I write about Alton Sterling and Philando Castile. Both were African-American males; both were armed, both are dead by police. I submit that they prove that there is no Second Amendment for African-American males.
Sterling and Castile were street-executed by killer cops for the crime of PWB: packing while black. Otherwise they were entirely innocent; their killers are murderers under color of law. This is though open-carry is legal in Louisiana, and concealed carry is legal in Minnesota. What’s more, Castile had a concealed-carry permit, and had told his killer this just before he was shot. The NRA, so jealous of open and concealed carry rights, have been conspicuously silent on this point.
So, hypocritical legal promises aside, do black men actually have the right to open carry in Louisiana or or concealed carry in Minnesota? And will the self-proclaimed defenders of second amendment rights defend those rights in their case? Evidently not. Who speaks for the Second Amendment when the NRA is silent? Is the NRA really about gun rights, or about gun sales?
So it appears that, for at least two black men, the Second Amendment does not exist.
Ah, but what of the supposed political purpose of the second amendment; as a armed-populace bulwark against tyranny? Well first of all, that’s absurd, for the Constitution is not a suicide pact. Certainly George Washington did not favor the Whiskey Rebellion, nor did Abraham Lincoln favor Southern Secession. And the case of Micah Johnson gives the lie to that as well. Micah Johnson was far from innocent; he killed five cops; but he did so explicitly as armed resistance against police tyranny. He said as much during the standoff. The police did not accept this argument; nor has BLM; nor has the NRA.
So does the Second Amendment exist? Not for black men, not for resisting tyranny. And if the Second Amendment is fictitious for some, then isn’t it fictitious for all?
And speaking of fictitious legal protection: a _bomb_robot_? For police work? So long 5th Amendment! Sure, Micah Johnson was a cop-killer, and the Blue Gang is tribal about that sort of thing, but couldn’t they have waited him out? I see a barrier being crossed here; yet another step in the militarization of police.Paradoctor
I draw a different lesson from the Dallas attack on police. I do not spurn yours .
Have you a comment on Fred and the Baltimore Riots? http://www.fredoneverything.net/Ballmer.shtml
sc:bubbles]
Military Purge
I wrote to you on the military purge. Many top officers and generals were fired; here is an example of one at DIA with decades of service who sees our enemy as radical Islam. He was relieved of duty; he’s not alone:
https://nypost.com/2016/07/09/the-military-fired-me-for-calling-our-enemies-radical-jihadis/
I’m on my way to a negotiation course, but I have some links I can try to find on my phone and elsewhere with a small list of influential officers purged under Obama with many generals. And then I told you about the hearings to allow illegal aliens to serve and become citizens even as we downsize our military. So we take out our good officers and then we want to direct commission off the streets, which they say they need to do for the officer shortage they created.
They fire enlisted folks and want to bring on illegal aliens while purging generals who understand who the enemy is? This is a coup and our military has been purged or is in the process of being purged. We have a chilling effect on media, we have a government that has members who engage in criminal activity (AG Holder the latest demonstrable example), and a purge of the military. If people can’t see what this is then maybe they will never see until a military boot crushes their testicles and it won’t matter?
Take me to my dictator.
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Most Respectfully,
Joshua Jordan, KSC
Percussa Resurgo
Sandboxboy II: Son of Bin Laden
Like a bad Hollywood film, we have the Son of Bin Laden; I’m just laughing at how much like a script this crap is reading. Bin Laden just kept getting younger and younger in all his videos until they killed him and dumped his body in the sea just before a dozen of the folks that killed him all died in a helicopter crash. But, now, from the depths of the Sea…..
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The son of Osama bin Laden has threatened revenge against the US for assassinating his father, according to an audio message posted online by Al-Qaeda.
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“You never kill them all, son”. LT Dax
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Most Respectfully,
Joshua Jordan, KSC
Percussa Resurgo
‘The sad reality of autonomous car technology is that the easy parts of have yet to be proven safe, and the hard parts have yet to be proven possible.’
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Roland Dobbins
I make no doubt that robot drivers can be made to statistically be safer than above average humans; but can we restrict drivers licenses to above average drivers?
A new way to look at faraway places. https://www.theguardian.com/travel/2016/jul/12/sheep-view-360-faroe-islands-google-mapping-project
Freedom is not free. Free men are not equal. Equal men are not free.
