I worry about the degree to which we let things get out of control, plunging to a vanishing point. In Douglas High School, in Parkland, Florida, we built an optimum security detention center for more than 3000 inmates. What could go wrong? Well, if a number equal to 1% of the day detainees of the school were of a bent similar to that of Nikolas Cruz, that means at least 30 potential perturbers are related to the school at a given moment.
Tag: consequences
Umbridge Galore
One type of statist wants to protect society from some liberties, while other statists want to protect society from the other liberties. Until there is no liberty left– and the moralizing bullies still will never be content. It’s never enough for them.
“Peace Through Strength” Is a Racket
“I’m going to make our military so big, so powerful, so strong, that nobody — absolutely nobody — is gonna to mess with us,” Trump says. On other occasions he’s said similar things: “We want to defer, avoid and prevent conflict through our unquestioned military strength” (same link) and, a year ago, “Nobody is going to mess with us. Nobody. It will be one of the greatest military build-ups in American history.”
“Shoot for the Moon…” Fuck That!
We live in a culture that thinks building people up and giving them self-esteem is what leads them to greatness and happiness. I am much more inclined to think that it sets them up for failure, delusions, and cynicism. I think joy in life comes from acceptance of who we are while pushing for something just a little better than what we have … and this isn’t a lesson that is taught in school.
Partitions IX — Abstract
As a software engineer, I learned that there are only two things that you can do with entities, combine them or separate them, sort them or collect them. In the real world, one has a third option, leave them alone. This works well as long as there is no principled reason to engage with them.
Partitions VIII — The Mexican Border Wall
There will be a partially completed money pit on the US-Mexican Border for ever more. No POTUS nor COTUS nor SCOTUS will ever finish it, because 1) the political budgeting process never finishes anything, and 2) no one who could possibly take the blame for the failure and unintended consequences of a completed wall will allow the wall to be completed.
Partitions VII — The Iron Curtain
Joseph Stalin always had the annexation of the world — the Iron Curtain — in mind. It was at the Yalta Conference where he finessed FDR and Churchill to make his dreams come true. Maybe it was because he had the home court advantage, since Yalta was the major resort city in Crimea, Ukraine, USSR.
Dreamers’ Parents Never Sinned
I made a comment on a friend’s post on Facebook, which turned into quite the exercise in the Socratic method toward challenging Federal jurisdiction over immigration.
What Kind of Hole?
Yes, there really are “s#!thole countries”. Living under those conditions– created almost exclusively by States— can definitely have a negative effect on the ethics and intelligence of the population (but that has zero to do with the rights the people there have). Government has consequences.
Manners
“Laws are always unstable unless they are founded on the manners of a nation; and manners are the only durable and resisting power in a people.” – Alexis de Tocqueville