The Movement Away From Reality

I hate to put it in political terms because delusion seems to exist across the political spectrum...science denial is rampant...but it is just easy to see the phenomena when you realize that the Democrats have the policy positions of Republicans of yesteryear...and the Republicans literally have Nazis marching for their policy positions on the regular. Many historians call it "shift to the Right" but really it's just a shift away from accurately seeing reality.

When we fight fascism...the fascists cry fascism...it's bizarre. When we try to fight economic insanity...the cult of neo-liberalism cries that unsustainable, hyper-self-interested, infinite growth paradigms are the only viable systems. When we try to get peace...the neo-cons scarily shout that war is peace and peace is war. When we peacefully protest, the "brown shirts" meet us with violence...then call us violent. The answer to gun violence is more guns... The answer to ignorance is more censorship... The answer to poverty is more austerity for the poor and more welfare for the rich... We have gone insane and have lost sight of all reality. We must go back to first principles...logic, reason, evidence based beliefs, intellectual honesty, learning to determine motivations...and generally questioning everything. We should all be lifelong students...always learning, always becoming more ethical, always striving to be less biased, always growing our understanding of the universe and our nature.

The Great Siphoning

The private FED and the fractional reserve ponzi scheme have always been mechanisms to siphon money from the public back into the pockets of the wealthy power elites...but with the hyper government corporate payouts, in conjunction with the mass crushing of small businesses due to COVID-19...we are seeing a siphoning of wealth that could very well tip us into Feudalism 2.0. For the first time, even some in the Wall St. cult are questioning more tax cuts for themselves because they see economic collapse and pitchforks in their future.

Deep Learning Amnesia

I just listened to the TED interview with Yann LeCun, and as he explained how Deep Learning works...it became apparent we are throwing away the most important data we are generating. He says we write small programs, feed them into neural networks, which then spit out some probabilities...BUT, all the patterns and simulations that were generated are essentially thrown out...it becomes a black box. In other words, he isn't researching AI, he is generating a black box oracle. All the critical insights into WHY answers are generated, the interconnected UTILITY of those answers, and the EFFICIENCY at which those answers were generated are discarded...what!? Those would seem to be the most important parts. We need to be able to "distill" some algorithmic wisdom from these "neural networks." No surprise he works for Facebook, a company that doesn't give two sh*ts about improving the quality of society, but instead extracting all the value from it. Sad to learn we are not growing the field of AI, we are creating data abusing machines.

They Know And They Are Fighting You

I used to think that my opponents just didn't know better...while I still think ignorance is a huge issue, as far as POWER goes, they are not honest actors. The perfect example is the fight for black lives...you peacefully kneel, you are disrespectful...you take to the streets, you are a lawless thug...they are not honest actors...they don't care how you disagree, how reasonable you are, they are fighting you and there is no reasoning with them. This is why we can't only "start conversations"...not only "protest"...not "write letters to our congressmen"...and instead ORGANIZE FOR POWER, vote, put people with our values in decision-making positions, build our resources, change the fundamental mechanisms of society so that the public has a working democracy (ranked choice voting, open source electronic voting, getting rid of money in politics, banning gerrymandering, etc). Stop shouting into the void on social media, stop whining to politicians who don't care about you in the least, stop virtue signalling proclamations and platitudes...we must take back all segments of the government, from local to federal...we must build more democratic businesses, unions, and co-ops...we must FORCE change, not beg for it.

Some organizations that are starting this movement are: Our Revolution, Brand New Congress, Justice Democrats, etc. It need not be these specific organizations, but please get organized somehow, vote EVERY TIME, get people registered, get people informed, stop letting these politicians and mainstream media corporations set the narrative...and if you have the means, please get involved directly in your community.

The Hard Work Of Our Dear Leader

What is the most powerful person in the world doing about the Pandemic? or the economic Depression? or Climate Destabilization?

https://www.trumpgolfcount.com/displayoutings

Priorities

Today I turned the "assistant" on for my phone to see if there were some useful features I could use...and it gave me a list of trending "queries"...top of the list was:

"where is the nearest food shelter?"

...what kind of dystopian nightmare do we live in? People have "super-computers in their pockets" and they have to use them to find food and shelter!? What are we doing people...have we lost all sense of what is important? Society needs a priority reboot; a complete examination of what we want and how we're trying to accomplish those goals.

American Self-Genocide

I was listening to "health officials" on the news today...and they are now saying Corona may just be like seasonal flu now. What kind of irresponsible talk is that? Why not seasonal Tuberculosis, or Bubonic Plague...what other things are we going to just let spread uncontrollably because everyone with any power is corrupt, stupid, and lazy. Politicians, Media, and the Public...is everyone willing to just fold to this bullshit? Fuck you, if you all want to die, go off yourself, this CAN'T be public policy.

Another 4th Of Burning Toxic Chemicals

I would have thought that maybe the cleaner air we've seen due to isolating from Corona virus would give us pause to reflect on how we're treating our planet...nope. This 4th we continued our unsustainable tradition of burning noxious chemicals so that we can see pretty colors and recreate the explosion-ridden war scenario of the revolution...heaven knows why. We already have (questionably) necessary processes that create air pollution, like micro-rubber particles from car tires (a huge health risk for people who live near major streets), do we need to create additional, unnecessary pollution? Look, I'm all for remembering our history, or setting aside days for celebration and/or reflection...but can't we update it? Can we not find a better way than 300+ million people setting toxic chemicals on fire, on the same day every year?

Stay In The Basement Joe

Nobody who is sane likes Joe Biden, but everyone on the Left is feeling the pain to hold their nose, vote neo-liberal, and not let Trump destroy what little rule of law remains. That said...Joe is creating alliances with every Neo-con he can find...the Lincoln Project is doing ads for him and GOP PACs are raising money for him. Meanwhile, he is getting tons of military talking heads to speak for him, and about him. He is giving nods to regime change in Venezuela...the guy is begging the Left not to vote for him. Please stop Joe.

FFS, stay in the basement and stop giving us reasons to question our nose-holding. I think I can do it if you just STFU and stop signalling that you will hand the government over to neo-cons the moment you are in power. If you keep signalling it, I'm going to have to assume it's not just a campaigning gaffe...at which time the onus will be upon me to prevent it.

Responsibility Austerity

We've long known that our politicians are captured by corporate interests and we are regularly subjected to economic austerity:
The first thing that was done for this pandemic was complete socialization of our banking and finance system (for corporations)...trillions of dollars given to corporations...public money was poured into private pharmaceutical and medical research companies...and what do we have to show for it? No testing, no tracing, still a huge shortage of protective equipment for our medical workers (no supply chain action), companies telling us they will charge us a fortune for treatments/vaccines (if they even create one)...even though public money was used and fast-tracking of testing was given to them.

But now the government won't even do common sense things like address a pandemic. The newest push is for them to put all responsibility on mask wearing. Let me be clear, masks are very effective and I'm for people wearing them, voluntarily or mandated for the duration of this pandemic. However, this signals the complete acceptance that our leaders are doing nothing...and we are going to let them do nothing. I'm not just talking about Trump either...we've known from the start we can't trust his leadership...but what about governors, mayors, senators...where are the meetings between all of them to get nationwide testing, tracing, and quarantining coordinated and implemented...nothing.

We've allowed the economic elite to impose economic austerity on us, and now we are allowing the political elite to impose responsibility austerity on us.

Hope Is Learned

Not only should we be mindful of OUR own political choices, but we should be mindful of how our tactics affect the next generation of like-minded people. Look at Trump's poor example...even though he was a complete failure (even by his own metrics), he energized racist right-wing fervor and indoctrinated a whole new generation into the cult of tribal delusion...infused with the hope of white nationalist uprising, glorified military conquest, theocratic culture, and trickle-down fantasy. Similarly, when the neo-liberals decided that they would reserve all their vitriol for crushing the next generation of "Progressives" so they could retain their corporate power...they destroyed the ability for the next generation to have hope; to believe the System could produce anything but the status quo. Thus, you see it in many policies of the "young left"...they are afraid to plan STRUCTURALLY, they rely too heavily on exhaustive protest, they want to scrape for patchwork in pockets that only affect the identities they have...their predecessors have created a generation of cynics, that will make too many concessions out of fear, who will be reluctant to participate in elections, and who will soon join the Right in "victim culture," learning to ignore/avoid power but incessantly complain that they have none.

Pragmatism is one thing, but you must always be mindful of your example too. The poisonous philosophy of "short-term gain" and "individualism" has destroyed every facet of society, and we must stop allowing it to destroy the future of our children.