Who has the largest military system in the history of the human race? And who has the largest corporate welfare system to support the industrial arm of that military? Who has the largest public schooling program in the world? Could it be China, or India? I don’t know, but let me know if you are aware of real evidence that it is not the USA.
Tag: history
Climate Strike
I was the chauffeur last Friday who took my youngest granddaughters to the Climate Strike demonstration in front of the Fayette County, KY, Courthouse. I did this at the request of their mother, my daughter, the hydrologist who works for the Kentucky Environmental Protection Agency. The young women are a teen and a pre-teen on the cusp. These may seem to be odd arrangements and relationships for someone, such as I, who has a very decided stance on global warming.
Social Media Companies “Struggle” to Help Censors Keep us in the Dark
According to CNN Business, “Facebook, YouTube and Twitter struggle to deal with New Zealand shooting video.” “Deal with” is code for “censor on demand by governments and activist organizations who oppose public access to information that hasn’t first been thoroughly vetted for conformity to their preferred narrative.”
Will Elizabeth Warren Take on the Biggest Monopoly of All?
For a “progressive” presidential candidate, US Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) is remarkably, well, conservative. Her proposals are neither new nor of the “democratic socialist” variety. In fact, her aim is, as Matthew Yglesias puts it at Vox, “to save capitalism” with stock proposals from the first half of the last century.
Some Men Just Want to Watch Mexico Burn
If you share this romantic vision, you might even welcome my analysis: “Yes, I’m inspired by revolutionary idealism. At least they tried.” Yet calmly considered, this romantic vision is inexcusable. Launching a bloody war without even asking, “How likely is this war to improve the world?” is as “romantic” as drunk driving at a playground. Giving revolutionaries credit for “trying” is ridiculous. If you combine brutality with wishful thinking about the consequences, your real goal isn’t to make those consequences a reality. Your real goal is just to exercise brutality.
The Peace of Mind in Probabilistic Thinking
It’s very stressful to be confronted with questions and claims about culture, physics, politics, psychology, health, economics, history, ethics, aesthetics, and philosophy and feel the need to have a clear answer. Especially when answers immediately get interpreted as sides and you’ll get lumped in with some tribal collective blob and be associated with whatever bundle of biases they may have, real or imagined. It’s like behind every possibility lurks a mob shouting, “Are you with us or against us?!”
Chelsea Manning: No Good Deed Goes Unpunished Again
One of the 21st century’s greatest heroines is behind bars again, held in contempt by federal judge Claude M. Hilton for refusing to help prosecutors trump up charges against the journalists who published information she paid dearly for giving them.
Don’t Panic: The Retail Apocalypse Isn’t Disaster, It’s Progress
Nearly 30 years after it became widely publicly accessible, the Internet is in the final stages of killing off physical retail as we once knew it. But it’s not killing the economy.
Wish List Politics: Green No Deal
The resolution calls, fuzzily, for “a new national, social, industrial, and economic mobilization on a scale not seen since World War II and the New Deal,” but it doesn’t advertise that as a cost. It calls such a “mobilization” an “opportunity” and claims that its named predecessors “created the greatest middle class that the United States has ever seen.”
Death is Not the Ultimate Sacrifice
At the moment she faced the decision of death or defacement, she heard the voice of God tell her step on the face of the crucified Christ. She, a devoted Christian, was asked by God there, in front of everyone, to disrespect the cross. She was asked to make the ultimate sacrifice.