Culture

Hope Apple’s new car comes with a fully armored option

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 The company has apparently decided to pursue a vehicle that would not feature steering wheels or pedals in what sounds like the most futuristic automotive project we’ll have ever seen. Moreover, Apple reportedly plans to launch its first-generation autonomous car as early as 2025.

Apple plans to launch a fully autonomous car as soon as 2025, BGR, November 18, 2021

Because now that our blind (and tone deaf) judicial system has found Rittenhouse not guilty, all the newly empowered gunslingers are going to be aggressively looking for trouble so that they can aggressively stand their ground and aggressively let the bullets fly…

Hence, we’ll need all the armored protection we can get.

Where do all the dreams go

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In the 12-month period that ended in April, more than 100,000 Americans died of overdoses, up almost 30 percent from the 78,000 deaths in the prior year, according to provisional figures from the National Center for Health Statistics. The figure marks the first time the number of overdose deaths in the United States has exceeded 100,000 a year, more than the toll of car accidents and guns combined. Overdose deaths have more than doubled since 2015.

Overdose Deaths Reached Record High as the Pandemic Spread, New York Times, November 17, 2021

~~~~~

where do all the dreams go
when the hope for tomorrow
dies along the way

How could something so violent and callous happen?

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The details suggest that while the military put strict rules in place to protect civilians, the Special Operations task force repeatedly used other rules to skirt them. The military teams counting casualties rarely had the time, resources or incentive to do accurate work. And troops rarely faced repercussions when they caused civilian deaths, [such as the deaths of 80 Syrian women and children].

How the U.S. Hid an Airstrike That Killed Dozens of Civilians in Syria, New York Times, November 13, 2021

I mean, that there is the stuff of Clausewitz, you know, the famed military strategist also known as the God of War…

In his masterpiece, On War (1832), Clausewitz had warned against the “kind-hearted” fiction that a nation could wage a war “without too much bloodshed.” Not only was it useless, but morally reforming war could exacerbate its evil. “Mistakes which come from kindness are the very worst.” Treating the carnage in war as a sin for which to atone or—worse—a blemish on the most beautiful activity in life was something like a moral error. “It would be futile—even wrong—to try to shut one’s eyes to what war really is from sheer distress at its brutality,” Clausewitz explained. Concerns about how gory and gruesome the commitments to intensity could become were petty. “The fact that slaughter is a horrifying spectacle must make us take war more seriously,” he allowed, “but not provide an excuse for gradually blunting our swords in the name of humanity.” As he observed, “Sooner or later someone will come along with a sharp sword and hack off our arms.”

“I Would Not Take Prisoners.” Tolstoy’s Case Against Making War Humane, Literary Hub, September 10, 2021

Maybe such violence and callousness in the U. S. military is because its 1.3 million or so members are influenced by the violent and callous rhetoric and examples of our societal leaders just as much as anyone else…

Obviously Trump comes to mind with all his many, many examples of violent rhetoric and of his openly endorsing police brutality and of his pardoning convicted war criminals and of course of his incitement of a resurrection against our government.

But if we are going to lay blame on our political leaders for our violent and callous national temperament, then we must hold our cultural leaders equally accountable…

Obviously Travis Scott comes to mind for his incitement of fights and riots and, most recently, deadly stampedes.

Certainly, these are issues for consideration when considering the cause behind such violent and callous behavior by all spectrums of our prism-like society, but so are the violent movies and video games we watch and play, not to mention the violent books we read…

But if we are going to blame external violent and callous influences, which I’m not sure I agree we should be doing, for our violent and callous societal behavior, then where does the excuse of influence end and the responsibility for personal behavior begin?

I don’t know the answer to that, except in my mind it should begin as soon as is viably possible, focusing more on the external influences during the early development years, particularly the influences that poverty, crime, and mental health issues have on childhood development.

Nothing new there. And even if we were to raise all today’s children to be compassionate and ethical, we’re still left with the violent and callous reality of now.

When dealing with such abnormal and illegal misanthropic behavior, it’s obvious to me that our societal organizations that hold the legal monopoly on violence — our military and police forces, for example — should be held to a much higher standard of ethical behavior and face a much stiffer penalty when unethical behavior is committed.

I sure would like to take a look at what our military and police cadets are being taught today at their service schools regarding ethics and codes of conduct.

I have some idea, but it’s almost been 20 years since I was on active duty so I’m sure times have changed.

But while education in ethics and codes of conduct for our magistrates of violence is surely important and must continue, nothing in my mind is as important as the education and examples one receives in the formative childhood years.

For it is then our brains get stuffed with the stuff we base our lives on for the rest of our lives…

Such stuff as our prejudices and stereotypes and how to love and how to hate…

You know, the near indelible and indestructible stuff that one university freshman course in ethics can ne’er overcome.

Yeah…

In Celebration of Juneteenth

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I present to you a little insight to the historical hometown hood of my youth…

The Hubbard House was an Underground Railroad terminus station which sets on a hill overlooking Lake Erie. It was instrumental in helping countless fellow humans find escape from the incomprehensible wretchedness of slavery.

It also sets right across the street from where my old high school used to be.

Unfortunately, during my time growing up in my hometown hood of Ashtabula, Ohio, I didn’t know much about the house, only that it had some vague association with slavery.

I didn’t know because back in my time the history of slavery was barely taught in school. And that which was taught about it, was glossed conveniently over… like the whitewashing of rotted wood.

My real education of slavery didn’t begin until 1977 when the landmark television miniseries ROOTS aired, a story which of course is based on Alex Haley’s hugely important book about his family’s history.

No, during my time the house was abandoned and run down and assumed haunted.

While my old high school has since been torn down, fortunately the community of Ashtabula came together to save the Hubbard House from a similar fate and worked to restore it so that it is now a beautiful and important national landmark of which I’m very proud.

#HAPPYJUNETEENTH
#BLACKLIVESMATTER

The Known Knowns of a Known War Criminal

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It’s always magical to be able to throw an asshole’s words back in his face… especially when he is an outspoken representative of so many other assholes.

Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld in 2003. Photo by Roger L. Wollenberg/UPI

While no one condones looting, on the other hand, one can understand the pent-up feelings that may result from decades of repression and people who have had members of their family killed by that regime, for them to be taking their feelings out on that regime,” he said. “And I don’t think there’s anyone in any of those pictures … (who wouldn’t) accept it as part of the price of getting from a repressed regime to freedom.

Rumsfeld: Looting is transition to freedom, UPI, April 11, 2003

#GEORGEFLOYD
#BLACKLIVESMATTER
#RESIST

If You Believe It, You’ll See It

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I really, really wish I could believe all the bizarre hocus pocus things like astrology and palm readings and other pseudo-sciencey, pseudo-religiousy things so I could lay all my blame for all the unpleasantries going on all over this pretty yet petulant planet of ours (those dang locusts in Africa are biblically unrelenting) on a misaligned moon or star…

That said, Claire Comstock-Gay of The Cut has an interesting take on the subject, whether you want to believe it or not.

“Astrology’s skeptics and detractors like to make a fuss about how foolish it is to imagine that, simply by looking to the stars, we can know what the future will bring. But to argue this is to completely misunderstand one of modern astrology’s central purposes — not to find our destinies, but to find our actually existing, living human selves.”

Who Cares If Astrology Isn’t ‘Real’?, Claire Comstock-Gay, The Cut, May 14, 2020

#alonetogetherwiththeskeptics

Empty Words of the Privileged

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It’s hard to believe so many people have to live so miserably in the richest, most powerful country in the world.


This has become cliché and empty to say, especially from those of us speaking from our privilege, but since there are so many pockets of wretched poverty all around the country such as described in the following article, it’s hard not to say it.

Courtesy New York Times

“Hundreds of miles of roads are unpaved, so it can take up to three hours to get a sick person to help. It’s difficult to self-isolate because families live in one-room homes called hogans. Up to 40 percent of Navajo households don’t have running water, making it hard to wash hands. Cellphone service and Wi-Fi are limited, so it’s difficult to keep in touch and to get information about the epidemic.”

A Life on and Off the Navajo Nation, New York Times, May 13, 2020

#alonetogetherwithourprivilege

Any “Weird Christians” Out There?

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When I was a kid a buddy of mine would occasionally drag me along to a Catholic church service with him, seeing how misery loves company, especially as a child. Even though I hadn’t a clue what was going on — being raised Protestant — I was always mesmerized by the outlandish garb, the thick incense, and especially the incomprehensible Latin that still kind of seemed to make sense. It all seemed so surreal, so magical.

I’m not m much of a church-goer, but I’ve never had that wondrous feeling at a Protestant service and I guess deep down I’ve always wished I had.

Perhaps if I had, I would have gone more to church.

Perhaps not.

More and more young Christians, disillusioned by the political binaries, economic uncertainties and spiritual emptiness that have come to define modern America, are finding solace in a decidedly anti-modern vision of faith. As the coronavirus and the subsequent lockdowns throw the failures of the current social order into stark relief, old forms of religiosity offer a glimpse of the transcendent beyond the present.

From The Future of Christianity Is Punk, New York Times, May 8, 2020
Courtesy the New York Times

#alonetogetherbeingweird