There is a certain passive/aggressive intransigence built into the American psyche. For the most part it lays dormant like a virus waiting for the right host or set of events to bring it out. The January 6th assault on the Capitol of the United States is perfect example of the aggressive egotistical character of certain people to poison the normal placid disposition of most Americans. Logic, compromise and sanity goes out the window, leaving ideologies and common values set—like bricks in a wall. 

When these sorts of walls go up they are hard to bring down. In the last year or so there have been various public opinion polls that indicate that Americans believe there is a distinct possibility of a civil war in the near future. It is not unusual to see polls that show 70 percent of Trump’s supporters and 40 percent of Biden’s supporters feel that hostilities are about to break out. The Who may have been prophetic when they sang “we’ll be fighting in the streets…and the men who spurred us on, sit in judgement of all wrong, they decide and the shotgun sings the song.”

This is not a joke.  A North Carolina Congressman, somebody elected to uphold and defend the Constitution says: “Because, you know, if our election systems continue to be rigged and continue to be stolen, then it’s going to lead to one place — and it’s bloodshed.”(I emphasises continue because this is new to me. Does this Congressmen know something we don’t!) Elections in Russia are probably rigged. Here in America, if it is anybody that knows how to rig an election, it is a conservative from North Carolina. North Carolina may not have invented Gerrymandering but they have sure made it performance art.

The irony of all of this talk of civil war in many ways centers around bogus claims that the 2020 election was rigged. It could be argued that the cause of “The Civil War,” I refrain from using The First Civil War, was the 1860 election of Abraham Lincoln—the first president to take a firm policy stand against slavery. It sounds incredulous that in the land of the free that 12 of the first 18 presidents were slave owners.

I do not think there were too many claims that 1860 election was stolen. It was just a plain old loss stemming from demographics and an ever so slight change in the attitude of the American people to slavery. It was an electoral defeat Southern Democrats could not fathom. Much like today, some people cannot grasp the changing demographics and more broad-minded attitudes. In reality it was inevitable. Slavery may have built the ancient world and kick started the New World; but it had no place in the new economics and industrialize world that was coming of age in the 19th Century. But old ways die hard.

Meanwhile, European countries were abolishing slavery.  In 1811 Spain abolishes slavery; in 1833 Britain passes Abolition of Slavery Act, setting aside 20 million pounds to slave owners in  compensation for their loses; in 1848 France abolishes slavery.  By the time of the Civil War most European countries had abolished the slave trade.

Instead of letting slavery go as dying economic system and looking forward to the upcoming 20th Century, the South doubled down on human bondage to get their work done. They decided to take their electoral votes and start a new country. Keeping their slaves and old agrarian ways, as if cotton would be king for ever.  Nothing wrong with agriculture but it seemed like the only culture the South would recognize is agriculture and an enslaved workforce. And those newly approved Constitutional Amendments after the Civil War, they were just roadblocks from keeping freedmen from the polls. 

The South may have won the lighting rounds early on in the Civil War, which may have given them false hope in victory.  But eventually the South took a real beat down, in particularly during the last year of the war from the more economically diverse North. 

In February of 1865 Lincoln and Secretary of State William Seward met with the Vice President of the Confederacy, Alexander Stephens, and several now-long forgotten rebels (one of whom was a former US Supreme Court justice) in Hampton Roads on the steamship River Queen. Their objective, to seek some sort of negotiated end to the war. The four-hour conference yielded no results as both sides, after four years of war, were no closer on slavery than when the war started. Neither side was in a mood to compromise on their views on Southern independence and slavery. 

But when you think about it, the South really did not have any bargaining chips on the table. By this time the North’s stranglehold on the South was an ever tightening death grip.  Slaves were flocking to the US Army, which now was besieging Richmond, the Confederate capitol; The US Navy had every major port in the South blockaded; Sherman had marched to the see and already made “Georgia howl;”  General Phil Sheridan left the Shenandoah Valley “a barren waste” to such an extent that crows would have to bring their own provisions; the western half of the Confederacy was cut off from the eastern half. If  it is believed that the English hang on in quiet desperation then the Southerners fight on in dying desperation. In three months time the Union Army would decide the matter: an end to the Confederacy and slavery. But did it? They may have “drove old Dixie down” but the lingering Antebellum beliefs festered in the mindset of those who refused to see the winds of change were upon them.

Marble and bronze vestiges of the Old South representing their lost cause were erected perpetuating the conviction of a separate but equal United States. Those statues are just now being pulled down from city squares and court houses across the country. These monuments have been around for more than 100 years. It is a representation that  the Civil War narrative still runs deep in the recesses of our national thinking. It comes out easily in what some say is a slip of the tongue. But is it? Take Senator Mitch McConnell’s recent gaffe talking about African Americans and voting, as only a true Southern can. He said, “Well the concern is misplaced, because if you look at the statistics, African American voters are voting in just as high a percentage as Americans.”

That statement can be corkscrewed around like a rollercoaster at Six Flags over Texas.  McConnell said it was an “outrageous mischaracterization of my record as a result of leaving one word out inadvertently the other day, which I just now have supplied to you, is deeply offensive.”  There are a lot of things deeply offensive about his omission of one word. It sounds more like something from Shakespeare: “The (Senator) doth protest too much methinks.” 

It is similar to when President Bill Clinton was skewered for trying to weasel out of his alleged sexual relation by saying: “It depends on what the meaning of the word ‘is’ is.” If Mitch was a Senator from the Pacific Northwest instead of Kentucky it might be easier to go along with his one word omission.  But there is a history of omission.

“Because history gives us the tools to analyze and explain problems in the past, it positions us to see patterns that might otherwise be invisible in the present – thus providing a crucial perspective for understanding (and solving!) current and future problems.”

The University of Wisconsin Department of History web site: Why you should study history?

Mitch’s slip and the January 6th assault on the Capitol are those passive/aggressive yearnings for the days of cotton embedded in our national psyche. There just bricks in a wall that still needs to be brought down. 

What would the American epoch be if when writing the Declaration of Independence Thomas Jefferson wrote that “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that men are created equal… Jefferson was a Southern slave owner. But, in seeking independence from Great Britain those who wrote and signed the Declaration of Independence knew it had to be “all” inclusive. It can be argued that in this case the concept “all” goes beyond Americans. It was a concept that was not achieved with the first stroke of the pen.  It still is a principle that we strive to reach. A simple slip of the tongue reveals more than one might think about how far we still need to go. 

https://www.nps.gov/foth/hampton-roads-peace-conference.htm

https://www.brookings.edu/blog/fixgov/2021/09/16/is-the-us-headed-for-another-civil-war/

https://quod.lib.umich.edu/j/jala/2629860.0021.104/–hampton-roads-peace-conference-a-final-test-of-lincolns?rgn=main;view=fulltext

Whether you are a football fan or not it is impossible to get through the holiday season without seeing a couple of minutes of football. Afterall, there are about 40 college bowl games on TV starting with the Bahamas and Tailgreeter Cure Bowls on December 17 and ending with the National Championship Game on January 10. If baseball is the national pastime than football is the national religion.

I do not mean any disrespect to any particular religion, but according to vox.com, “The popularity of American sport culture is deeply rooted in the history of a particular kind of American muscular Christianity a conflation of nationalism, nostalgia, piety, and performative masculinity. From the football stadium to the basketball court, American sports have been as much about defining a particular kind of male and typically Christian identity as they have been about the game itself.”

Now, I am not a diehard football fan. I am more of a casual observer of the game. It really is hard for me to get revved up over a match between Western Michigan and Nevada. But I probably will watch some of the College Football National Championship Game between Alabama and Georgia–two Southeast Conference teams. I will admit my interest in the game became more intense when I was in college at the University of Florida. It is hard not to get excited about football in a college town. And Gator football, like many other university football programs, has been around for more than 100 years.

Game day in a college town has the same exuberance and exhilaration, and mysticism of a medieval religious holiday. Not that I have been to an actual medieval fair. However, Gainesville does hold annual Hoggtown Medieval Faire with jugglers and such, but not during football season; but I digress. In a college town just about everything is geared for that Saturday game. Gainesville, like so many other college towns, becomes a sporting Mecca as 90,000 people pack the stadium. That is like putting one-third of the county’s population in one place for the better part of a Saturday. People tailgate with generators, set up outdoor canopies. The landed gentry can come from far away in their RVs. The booster elites seated up on high in their sky boxes. And those not in the stadium are at pubs and such; or home in front of a TV. It is a spectacle with a marching band.

It is also a day you can walk into just about any theater in Gainesville and actually yell “fire” without incurring panic. The panic-like conditions comes after the game moving 90,000 people from the stadium. Gainesville lives for those Saturday games. If the University of Florida left Gainesville and packed up like some NFL teams, the city would be just another rest stop on I-75.

The Florida Gators is a team that is in the Southeast Conference. A conference that was conceived in the old Confederacy. It is a conference that takes football seriously. Every Saturday when two SEC teams meet on the gridiron it can seem like the Vidalia Sandbar fight fought on an island in the Mississippi River. The Vidalia Sandbar duel that took place on September 19, 1827. It was the fight that made Jim Bowie a Southern legend. He was seriously wounded, two others were slightly injured and two others killed. It was this fight that started the myths of Jim Bowie and his famous knife. Southern tempers have simmered since then but the ferocity can be just as intense, particularly when two SEC rivals clash. As in the upcoming national championship game.

College football as a fall collegiate contest is undergoing a dramatic economic shift. It is not unusual for head coaches to have $8 to $10 million contracts and million dollar plus buyouts. States are now passing laws allowing players to earn money on their image and likeness blurring the age old divide between amateurs and professionals–as if that even matters anymore.

This concept of amatures has been long debated. For instance, was the Soviet Union National Hockey Team a team of amateurs or professionals? They were so good that ABC News wrote that “In February 1979, they (the Soviet team) faced an NHL All-Star team that featured an astounding  20 future Hall of Famers in a three-game series. The Soviets won two of the matchups, (tied one) including Game 3 at Madison Square Garden in a 6-0 rout.” Today there are 38 Russian players in the NHL. Sort of reverse if you can’t beat ’em join ’em.

The amature status debate goes even further back. Take Jim Thorpe, the best athlete of his time, and a gold medal winner in the 1912 Olympics. Thorpe, a pentathlon winner, was eventually stripped of his gold medals when it was learned that he was paid to play baseball in 1909 and 1910.

It is hard to imagine how “professional” baseball was at the turn of the century. This, in an era where owners, for all practical purposes, owned their players’ contracts for life. There was no collective bargaining and no marketing of players’ images. Take the 1919 Chicago White Sox known as the “Black Sox.” Eight players on this team were accused of consorting with gambler Arnold Rothstein and others to throw the game “for money.” A unique concept. This was a time of strikes: The Great Anthracite Coal Strike of 1902, the West Virginia “mining wars” that took place for 1912-22 and the Steel Strike of 1919.

Although the National Guard was not called in on the Black Sox, none of the eight were convicted in the trial that followed. However, Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis banned the players from baseball for life. Getting paid very little to play a sport back then may have made you a professional; it just didn’t make you rich. But for some college athletes not getting paid at all is about to change.

Some may argue that college football players are already defacto professionals, NFL minor leaguers. NFL teams get to pick colleges’ cream of the crop players while letting the universities develop them for nothing. That nothing is the buffer between professional and amature.

Now, most college football pundits agree that the SEC is the best overall conference in college football. All university programs compete for the country’s best players. To appeal to these young squires universities need to raise millions from boosters to improve football facilities and to pay coaches. It is not unusual for head football coaches to be the highest paid state employee. In return the boosters demand victories. Not just wins but championships for their well-donated money. And the SEC does this extremely well, particularly in football by getting teams into championship games. And, at the beginning of the 2021 NFL season there were 1,696 roster players on NFL teams. Three-hundred and thirty-five of those players, almost 20 percent, are from the SEC.

To keep its preeminence the SEC is pushing out just like the Old South did. In recent years the SEC has pursued a Manifest Destiny mentality in its approach to dominate college football. It may not want to control college football from sea to shining sea but it is definitely preaching its football beliefs and culture. It is pulling in other schools like a traveling minister dunking converts into the healing waters at a camp revival. First it added Arkansas and South Carolina into the league in 1991 as sort of First Great Awakening.

Then Second Great Awakening occurred in 2012. In what seemed like the Missouri Compromise all over again when the conference expanded north of 36 degree latitude to bring Missouri into the fold. It then crossed Sabine River and annexed Texas A & M. Both teams were pulled from the Big 12. This expanded the SEC to 14 teams.

By crossing the Sabine River the SEC had a toe hold in Texas. In its Third Great Awakening the SEC annexed another big chunk of the state pulling in the University of Texas. It then moved north in a “take me to the river and drop me in the water” moment when the conference jumped over the Red River and on to the University of Oklahoma campus. Both teams are scheduled to begin conference play in 2025. Thus, leaving the Big 12 Conference without a big box football program to anchor the league.

According to Forbes “The move means the SEC will have nine of the 12 most valuable college football programs, which generate far more money than any other collegiate sport, while The Big 12 would be left without a single member among the 25 most valuable programs.”

The SEC’s moves have forced the other major conferences to protect their turf. College Football has seen the disintegration of The Big East Conference football and now the disfiguring and stripping away of valuable teams from The Big 12. The other conferences have reason to be concerned, And rightfully so. In the last 10 years the SEC has one seven championship titles with Alabama collecting five of them. Auburn and LSU each of won one. And, oh by the way, we can add Georgia to that list after its 2021 win over who else: Alabama.

https://247sports.com/LongFormArticle/Ranking-college-footballs-most-valuable-programs-Alabama-Michigan-Texas-Georgia-Ohio-State-Oklahoma-178007658/#178007658_1

https://www.forbes.com/sites/nicholasreimann/2021/07/30/texas-and-oklahoma-to-join-sec-in-colossal-shakeup-of-college-sports/?sh=204beb5021d8

https://247sports.com/LongFormArticle/Highest-paid-college-football-coaches-by-salary-for-2022-179113242/#179113242_1

https://www.vox.com/identities/2017/9/27/16308792/football-america-religion-nfl-protests-powerful

One of the many stories handed down about Benjamin Franklin is the one when he was asked coming out of Independence Hall about the new government that was hammered out during that long hot summer of 1787. He replied, “A republic, if you can keep it.”

Just about every news cycle carries at least one story or an editorial about how America’s democracy is in jeopardy. It is not democracy that is in harm’s way. It is our federal Republic form of government that we should be concerned with. Most people will still be able to vote. The question is who will end up representing them.

The government that got the states through the Revolutionary War, The Articles of Confederation, the “Join or Die” motto that held the the states together in war, was a loose confederation and not collectively or commercially effective at keeping them united in peace.

A quick review of 7th Grade Civics and history would indicate that the those who sweltered away in Philadelphia that summer did not trust each other any more than they trusted King George III. In some cases they trusted each other less. At least George III was 3,000 miles away and weeks away by ship. To Marylanders, Virginians were just a ferry boat ride across the Potomac River.

With the King out of the picture it was sort of a Pogo moment between the states: “We have met the enemy and he is us.” The solution: A new form of government. What Franklin did not explain when asked what they came up with was actuality a federal republic. As further review, a republic is a government where the officials are elected by the citizens to represent them. Our republic is designed where governmental power is shared between local, state and federal authority. For instance, FBI agents do not go around issuing parking tickets and deputy sheriffs do not investigate espionage. It is a government where nobody has to much power. It is a government with checks and balances and all sorts of stated and implied, but yet elastic and nebulous interconnected-powers that makes sure everybody is going to play nice. It was, and still is, a unique sharing concept for the times with the various branches and levels of government given specific delegated powers.

However, any document written in 1787 is bound to have holes in it. For instance, the Constitution does not address how governments deal with a pandemic. In many ways that is the genius of the Constitution. It is flexible enough to allow governments to do what is “necessary and proper.”

But here again, what is necessary may not be proper to some. Today, certain politicians are sniffing around the Constitution like Rat Terriers hunting vermin. One hole that they have found is the Tenth Amendment to the Bill of Rights. In order to get the new government approved a Bill of Rights had to be added. And probably the most nebulous amendment in the Bill of Rights is the Tenth.

_{The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people.}

^{Tenth Amendment}

According to Legal Information Institute: “The Tenth Amendment helps to define the concept of federalism and the relationship between Federal and state governments. As Federal activity has increased, so too has the problem of reconciling state and national interests as they apply to the Federal powers…” The power to tax and set regulations like mask and vaccination mandates, which have been argued vigorously at federal, state and local levels across the country. These mandates have been hauled into courts with mixed reviews. Even the ongoing Roe v Wade Supreme Court debate is shrouded in federalism. One of the questions before the Court is can a state overturn a Supreme Court decision along with allowing civil awards to citizens in upholding a state’s anti-abortion law.

It is not my intent to give a Civics lesson because that would be boring. But I once heard a math teacher say he would rather teach math then Civics. His reason was in math everything is cut and dry: One plus one is always two. Concepts like whatever you do on one side of the equal sign you have to do on the other. Theorems, equations can be proven. Math is not like the Senate saying we cannot approve a Supreme Court justice in election year and then turning around four years later and erasing the equal sign from the chalk board saying we moved the equal sign so we can now appoint a justice in an election. With math there is no argument where the equal sign goes. The problem with understanding Civics is that it seems as if variables can be plugged in whenever and wherever it pleases the person, or group, with the power cord. Today, time tested truths are being tested for popular political expediency. And in some cases, disrupt the checks and balances established in the Constitution like the January 6th assault on the Capitol.

The recent claims that the 2020 presidential election was stolen or rigged hinges on variables being plugged in all over the place–literally in states across the nation. It is alway easier to prove something false. In this case, the claim of election fraud has not been proven true but many still ascribe to that belief. What we have witnessed in this case was an attempt to move the equal sign. But moving the equal sign around did not prove a false claim. It would seem that if it was proven true, then it would be easy to invalidate just about every election held since the 1900s, particularly when Jim Crow controlled the voting roost. What we are witnessing is our concept of a federal republic being stretched like an elastic band. Certain groups in various states are changing voting laws that will in effect determine what party has better chance of electing representatives to office.

Under the Constitution voting is not delegated to the federal government. It is left in the hands of 50 individual states. States can decide most everything from redistricting, to who votes, where and how they vote–and how those votes are counted. So much of this is determined by political parties that wield the power in the individual states. And to add another cog into the voting machinery throw in the Electoral College and we are now off to the political races.

The January 6th assault on the US Capitol was a physical attack to stop the federal government, Congress, from certifying elections results held in the individual states. A constitutionally delegated power. However, a minority of elected members believed that it was a stolen election. Now, some states are scrambling to change voting laws and regulations to guarantee a victory, or in essence, legally steel the next election.

What we are witnessing with these changes has nothing to do with voting integrity or security but a frontend-legal rigging of elections to ensure a desired outcome. Changing voting laws at the state level will then affect the representation at the federal level. Especially, when this process his handled under the auspices of political parties.

It is interesting to note that the Constitution does not mention, delegate or prohibit political parties. James Madison wrote about “faction” or what we would call political parties in the Federalist Papers No. 10. He wrote that. “So strong is this propensity of mankind to fall into mutual animosities, that where no substantial occasion presents itself, the most frivolous and fanciful distinctions have been sufficient to kindle their unfriendly passions, and excite their most violent conflicts.” And, boy have we seen some unfriendly passions at public meeting and street gatherings of late.

“The most common and durable source of factions, has been the various and unequal distribution of property….” “A zeal for different opinions concerning religion, concerning government, and many other points, as well of speculation as of practice; an attachment to different leaders ambitiously contending for pre-eminence and power.”

James Madison

He further states, that these factions; or what we would call the bases of the political parties today have created “instability, injustice and confusion (that have been) introduced into the public councils.” Madison calls this a “mortal disease” which has toppled governments everywhere “where the public good is disregarded in the conflicts of rival parties.”

What makes our political situation interesting is that Madison and others of his time were worried about a majority dominating the government and denying the minority the rights embraced in the struggle against Great Britain. Today it is not a majority that is trying to disrupt the the republican established powers of the Constitution. It is a minority political parity. It is the slow tectonic shifting of political power. It is a minority of politicians in various states cheered on by their federally elected brethren to change state voting laws. It is the practice of ambitious leaders “contending for power and preeminence” by changing elections laws ever so slightly to hobble its opposition.

If a faction consists of less than a majority, relief is supplied by the republican principle, which enables the majority to defeat its sinister views by regular vote: It may clog the administration, it may convulse the society; but it will be unable to execute and mask its violence under the forms of the constitution.

James Madison

Madison writes that there are “two methods methods of removing the causes of faction: The one by destroying the liberty which is essential to its existence; the other, by giving to every citizen the same opinions, the same passions, and the same interest.”

Basically what Madison is saying, and neither solution is acceptable, is one side must destroy the other side. This is something we are seeing now with the so-called voting laws to protect the “integrity” of elections. With razor thin margins of victory in many states, creating election laws that hinder an opponent’s supporters from voting may give a minority an electoral majority.

Although Madison was talking about the size of Republics he wrote that “each representative will be chosen by a greater number of citizens in the large.” Thus, making it “more difficult to elect “unworthy candidates to practise with success” their vicious arts.

Benjamin Franklin said that we need to be vigilant about our rights and “if animosities arise” we should look to the party “which unfurls the ensigns of public good. Faction will then vanish, which if not timely suppressed, may overturn the balance.”

It has been a balance of “We the People” and not of “We the Party” that has enabled us to keep our Republic. By constricting voting we can still claim to be a democracy but will we still be a Republic. Rome was not built in a day and it did not lose its Republic in a day either.

https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Madison/01-10-02-0178

It is hard for me to for me to say because I was not around in the mid-1400s when Greek scholars gathered up their books and collective knowledge and left Constantinople for Florence, Italy.  Behind them was the on rushing Ottoman Turk army that just toppled the Byzantine Empire and was sweeping out of the Middle East and into Europe. 

Florence, Italy.  Home of the Renaissance.  Before the rebirth of knowledge Europe was stuck in what we commonly known as the Dark Ages or Medieval times.  A time of feudal lords, knights in armor and the “Black Death” (Sounds familiar). It also was a time when one institution controlled just about all knowledge, information and arts and science: The Catholic Church. (Today it could be argued its FaceBook.)

From that time of rebirth, human knowledge and understanding started to move forward. Take Galileo Galilei, for instance.  He did more with a homemade telescope than most of us could do with an App and a smartphone. Probably the biggest thing he did was challenge the Catholic Church on the Biblical belief that the Earth was the center of the universe. He was not the first to propose this radical change in theory to a heliocentric solar system. Nicolaus Copernicus developed a mathematical model that moved the sun to the center spot in the universe. Later, Johannes Kepler expounded on elliptical orbits punching more holes in the geocentric Ptolemaic system where the sun, the moon and the stars revolve around the Earth. But it was Galileo who took the Church head on over its dogma. His stubborn belief put him under house arrest for the latter years of his life for pushing heliocentric heresy.

The Pope, Urban VIII, along with eight other men disagreed with Galileo’s theories. In the context of today’s reality, we know the Pope and his friends were way wrong in their thinking. In the reality of the time Galileo’s theory showed a lack of faith in established beliefs. But then, from their vantage point, it could easily be argued the Earth was flat.

In today’s scientific thinking, a theory, according to Dictionary.com is a coherent group of propositions formulated to explain a group of facts or phenomena in the natural world and repeatedly confirmed through experiment or observation. Or, a logical explanation on what is going on in the universe. These observations at times can be incorrect as in the case of Ptolemy’s geocentric theories.

The problem is that anybody can string together a series of cause-and-effect observations and facts trying to explain just about anything. The question is, are the cause-and-effects actually meaningful. A scientific law, like the law of gravity, is proven true and predicts what will happen–not likely. In gravity’s case, it is simply what goes up will come down. We all know this and do not dispute this. It is not a theory but a law.

Through time we have used the scientific investigations to increase our knowledge and understanding of the universe. We moved through the Reformation. A time that loosened the grip of the Catholic Church on civilization (for the lack of a better word) only to throw half of Christendom over to the Protestants and their puritanical ways of thinking.

Eventually this gave way to the Enlightenment. This was a time when philosophical thinkers like Hobbs, Descartes and Spinoza challenged the traditional political, social beliefs and privileges put forth by religious leaders, monarchies and nobility of the time.  Adam Smith, the Scottish economist and philosopher, and author of “Wealth of Nations” the father of modern economics, put forth new economic concepts still practiced today. Descartes and Rousseau  brought forth new concepts of government. Locke and others gave us the belief in the rule of law—that no man was above the law. (Concepts put into law and still practiced today–even if in theory.) Newton gave us his Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy—his three laws of motion.

Human technology has moved us from the wheel to rocket ships. Social enlightenment has done away with rigid caste systems of the past, and Medieval thinking like the “divine right of kings.” But somehow it seems in the last several decades we have gotten more stupid with the increase of technology that science has given us. According to Merriam-Webster the essential meaning of stupid is: “not intelligent: having or showing a lack of ability to learn and understand things; not sensible or logical; slow of mind (obtuse); given to unintelligent decisions or acts; lacking intelligence or reason in an unintelligent or careless manner real understanding.”

I may have gone overboard on the definitions but it seems to define certain groups of our elected leaders today. We lack a real effort to do any individual critical thinking. Instead, we snag onto onto non sequitur statements and conclusions proposed without an ounce of investigation like a barnacle on pier post. We hypothetically make things up as we go along; like a nationwide election goes from rigged to stolen. Then we snoop around until we find enough observations to form a fallacious argument as law. This despite court rulings based on legal standards as being false.

It was once believed that Aristotle was the last man to know everything. Today we have vast amounts of information in our hands.  And yes, technology has brought out some extraordinary brilliant people–but your wacky, conspiracy-nut neighbor is not one of them. I don’t believe there are more stupid people today than in any time in the past. They are just more visible. Stupidity is probably a constant just like left-handed people. In fact, it could be argued that we have more educated people in the world today, hence we should have less stupidity around. Sort of a herd immunity protecting us from stupid. It also could be argued that technology has put more information in the hands of some extremely stupid individuals making our times more dangerous than ever before. 

Carlo M Cipolla, a professor at the University of California Berkley, wrote in 1976 “The Basic Laws of Human Stupidity.” In the book he comes up with five universal laws of human stupidity that are very evident today. 

His first law states that: Alway and inevitably everyone underestimates the number of stupid individuals in circulation. Before the advent of social media platforms stupidity was basically confined to local communities. Every town had a village idiot (or idiots) of some sort. But now, the nation at large is subjected to a meteor shower of local stupidity raining down upon us. Take Rudy Giuliani. He once was a leader during 9/11, America’s Mayor. Now he is plays the role of the “nation’s idiot.” Thanks to modern social media platforms we are constantly bombarded with the stupidity of Florida men. If something stupid happens it usually reads: “Florida man”… “arrested after using wanted poster as FaceBook photo.” Social media has put stupidity on steroids.

Tip O’Neill once said that all politics is local. This statement can include stupidity–up to a point. Social media has given local stupid a rallying point. From stupid’s home in “Your Town USA,” social media can muster up and gather like-minded people from across the country. Take the witless, moronic behavior of the January 6th’s assault on the Capitol. People as far as Alaska came to Washington to participate in a “theory” that the Presidential election was rigged and then stolen.

The Capitol attack is also an example of Cipolla’s Third Law of stupidity that says, “A stupid person who causes losses to another person or to a group of persons while deriving no gain and even possibly incurring losses.” The collective mindset of those individuals during 1/6 had no redeeming value at all. It resulted in five dead and effected many other people irrevocably. And for what? To feed the egoistic desires of man who could not face, as ABC Sports once proclaimed in its Wild World of Sports: “the agony of defeat.” It happens every day. As Danny O’Keefe once sang: Some gotta win, some gotta lose
Good time Charlie’s got the blues.

Then there is Cipolla’s Second Law that says: “The probability that a certain person be stupid is independent of any other characteristics of that person.” This also reminds me of the Mark Twain saying: “It is better to keep your mouth closed and let people think you are a fool than to open it and remove all doubt.” With today’s erratic logical thinking, and social media, this can be accomplished easily as witnessed by Senator Ted Cruz leaning into a debate on Twitter over vaccinations with Big Bird, a Sesame Street character. Can it get any more stupidly absurd.

But wait, maybe it can. Take Missouri Senator Josh Hawley recent speech to the National Conservative Conference in Orlando. He proves what Cipolla writes that “that whether you move in distinguished circles or you take refuge among the headhunters of Polynesia…you always have to face the same percentage of stupid people.” Hawley claims that “the Left” has a national “deconstructionist agenda.” That this agenda is an “assault on manhood” and it “has been sharp and prolonged, it has not succeeded” (Thank God). He said the “deconstruction of America begins with and depends on the deconstruction of American men.” This sounds reasonable if you are a man who lost his job when corporate America began shipping their factories overseas. Or maybe the drunk Florida man carrying an alligator into a liquor store–what needs to be deconstructed in getting a six pack for you and your gator buddy.

It is not my intent on summarizing Hawley’s speech or his theory on “the destruction of our republic.” It is his theory and he takes us all down a “slippery slope” of fear mongering. His hypothesis is based on generalized observations that cannot really be proven or disproven. They just sound good to some people. His assumption of “the future’s uncertain, and the end is always near” plays well. It is sort of a Post Hoc, Ergo Propter Hoc or “After this, therefore because of this” If you deconstruct the American male, then all shit breaks loose.

Now Senator Hawley, is a University of Stanford grad and a graduate of Yale Law, a man of letters, and a supposed person of character as is Senator Cruz, a thoroughbred Ivy Leaguer with degrees from Princeton and Harvard. But it now looks as if both are headhunting with the natives, or at least stoking the roasting fires for the main meal spouting off half truths. But, then again, they are lawyer and lawyers are arguers for half-the-truth. Far be it for me to call sitting US Senators stupid. But without a doubt Hawley’s male deconstruction theory will be picked up as law, an Ad Ignorantiam law: or an “argument from ignorance, and passed along from stupid to stupid on social media.

The problem today is we are not doing anything to check the advancement of stupidity. We accept some yammering squawking head’s conglomeration of unproven illusions and delusions as a universal truth. All of these unproven and untested hypotheses gets passed along in a careless manner as real understanding. I would add one more component to the definition of stupid. It is one thing to lack the ability to think straight. It is another thing altogether in not wanting too. As American theatre critic Brooks Atkinson said: The most fatal illusion is the settled point of view. Since life is growth and motion, a fixed point of view kills anybody who has one.” So, look out for stupid with an unproven theory.

Anyone who watched The Muppet Show in the mid 1970s will recall the iconic sketch “Pigs In Space.” The voyages of the Swintrek captained by Link Hogthrob, First Mate Piggy and Dr, Julius Strangepork in a spoof of Star Trek. As if pigs can fly on Earth or in outer space. Today we have three billionaires boldly going where no billionaires have gone before.

Chance are that some of the people who were watching Pigs in Space  grew up in the midst of the the Cold War between the United States and Russia, the former Soviet Union  and our old Cold War nemesis. We witnessed the global tensions between the US lead Nato countries and Russia’s “Evil Empire” of  Warsaw Pact nations.  These two forces spied on each other, tried to destabilize each other economically and politically,  and fought proxy wars indirectly attacking each other on just about every continent except maybe Antarctica. 

And to heat the Cold War up, they  took it to a higher level–to the cold reaches of outer space.  On October 4, 1957  the Soviet Union launched Sputnik, a basketball-sized beeping satellite that turned out to be the starting gun for what would be euphemistically called a “space race.” From there, it only took four  short years for President John Kennedy to up the stakes.  He threw down the gauntlet challenging the US to be the first country to put a man on the moon. 

On September 18th, of this year, Elon Musk’s SpaceX launched Inspiration4  sending an all-civilian crew up for a couple of laps around the Earth.  This seems to be the real beginning of new space race. Sending civilians up into space is nothing new.  NASA was sending non-military trained-scientists from around the world on Space Shuttle missions. Even a couple members of Congress copped a backseat ride on the Shuttle for the the ultimate political junket. We even have had civilian deaths resulting from going into space.

But there is something different with this space race. Space is no longer the realm of fighter jocks turned test pilots to astronauts.  Back then NASA was looking for somebody with the “right stuff.” Now, it appears more about checkbook flying and winning raffle tickets then having the right stuff to get the ultimate ride of the times.

So far there have been seven space tourist who have shelled out anywhere from $20 million to $30 million to take a trip on the Russian Soyuz to the International Space Station. This is more than $1 billion to a country that practices capitalism not so much as free market economic system but more like a controlled substance scheme. This was a country that could not produce a decent road car for a Sunday drive. The Russians may have lost the Cold War and the Space Race but they were cashing in on the demand for space travel. And with limited seating they had the only ticket on Earth. It was first come, first serve.  It was service with an open checkbook.  It really is discouraging when one has to get their space flights booked through a Russian travel agent. 

As Lee Corso, an analyst on ESPN’s College Gameday often says: Not so fast my friend. Today’s space race is not about competing national interest, technical and military superiority over which economic/governmental system is better here on Earth. Although, leave it to the Chinese to explore  Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon. Several countries have sent orbiters, landers and rovers to Mars and other orbiting planets and moons with a degree of success.  All without the nationalistic bluster and smack talk of the first space race. However, it now appears as if the Russians will beat Hollywood with the first ever movie filmed in space. Are the Russians pulling off another space first for the Guinness Space Book of Records?

What we are seeing now is really a nouveau riche space war. It is competition between billionaires and not  so much with countries and competing ideologies. Inspiration4 mission raised $200 million with Elon Musk, founder of SpaceX, putting $50 million for St Jude’s Hospital. The commander of the flight, Jared Isaacman, a billionaire in his own right kicked $100 million. To put things in perspective NASA’s Mercury program ran from 1958 to 1963.  According to the San Diego Air and Space Museum the program cost the taxpayers “$277 million in contemporary dollars (almost $2.2 billion today).”

A big difference is that the Mercury, Gemini and Apollo astronauts were not space tourists. According to Yahoo.com “The minimum starting salary range for the first group of astronauts was set at $8,330 to $12,770 based on level of experience.” This was not a bad wage back then. “In modern money, that would equal a salary range of $73,815 to $113,159.” And, “At the time of the Apollo 11 flight in 1969, Neil Armstrong was paid a salary of $27,401 and was the highest paid of the flying astronauts, according to the Boston Herald. That translates to $190,684 in 2019 dollars.” Not a bad day’s pay but far short of the the $20 plus million today’s tourist are plopping down to get a meteor’s view of the planet. 

Yahoo also says that “Armstrong’s historic moonwalk lasted two hours and 40 minutes. Based on his salary and a 40-hour work week, that means he would have been paid roughly $33 for his time on the moon. Accounting for inflation, Armstrong was paid $230 in 2019 dollars.” Just imagine what a tourist would pay to go to the moon today.

When Virgin Galactic sent its first fully crewed flight up July 11th of this year on VSS Unity, the crew included billionaire businessman and founder of Virgin Galactic, Sir Richard Branson, and five company employees. 

Not to be outdone, Jeff Bezos, the richest man in the world and founder of Blue Origin,  cannonballed himself, his brother, Wally Funk, a woman who trained to be one of the Mercury astronauts but was disqualified from flying because she was a woman and Oliver Daeman, a Dutch student, whose father shelled out $28 million for a seat on the New Shepard spacecraft.  (Their trip into space happened 52 years after Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin landed on the moon.) 

But Bezos is not done.  The Russians might be making the first film in space but in the ultimate space-time twist of sending someone where few people have gone before, Bezos is planning to send  90 year-old William Shatner, Captain Kirk, the original space cowboy,  into the “final frontier.” Sending Shatner into space is definitely ironic since he was the TV pitchman for Priceline.com, the online discount travel agency for airline tickets, trips and hotels. 

The new space race, in some ways is an extension of old capitalistic battles of the past. It reminds me of a William Randolph Hearst/Joseph Pulitzer newspaper war and Yellow Journalism; a Coca-Cola vs the Pepsi generation, or Avis trying to outrun Hertz and OJ Simpson through an airport, Beta vs VHS, and Apple vs Microsoft. It could even be the Dodgers vs the Yankees rivalry with the old New York Giants thrown in the mix. I could go on but what we might be witnessing is a cut throat game of (space) pool between three billionaires, Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos and Sir Richard Branson spending their way into the cosmos.

So now it is not so much about the science and technology of getting to the moon or beyond.  It is about sending rich tourists into space. It could be the beginning of the HBO show Avenue 5 where tourist fly around the Solar System or as Jimmy Buffett would sing: “They soared through the Milky Way counting the stars, once around Venus twice around Mars.” 

It is interesting because it has taken so long for human space travel to become sort of a capitalistic endeavor.  I am sure the focus of those in the 1960s space race were not thinking about selling seats to the moon.  But here we are. It reminds me of Henry Flagler’s efforts to build a railroad to Key West, Florida in the early 1900s.  Flagler was one of the founders of Standard Oil.  He brought is ailing wife to Florida for her health and the weather. While there, he  decided to build a railroad to the farthest southern part of the US. It was not a lark.  The Panama Canal was being built and when it opened in 1914 it was considered the Seventh Wonder of the Modern World.  It was built during a time of American “imperialism” after the French failed miserably in connecting the Atlantic and the Pacific Oceans.  

Flagler’s efforts to connect to global trade using Key West as a deep water port never really panned out but he did attract a lot of rich winter tourist to the state of Florida, particularly Palm Beach where he built his mansion.  It may have never been his plan to create Florida’s “Space Coast”–or “Gold Coast” but Florida is a tourist mecca for the masses.  Within 100 years tourist from around the world come to the Sunshine State.  Florida could be considered the theme park capital of the world with Shamu and Mickey Mouse attracting between 100 million to 120 million tourists a year. But nobody really thinks of Henry Flagler as the man who made it happen. That accolade goes to Walt Disney.

It appears the end result of the manned Mercury, Gemini and Apollo programs, and the race to the moon, was to launch lucrative space tourist program. I am sure at some point the supply will catch up with  demand for seats and the price for a seat into space will come down considerably. Especially when  Carnival Cruise Lines figures out how to get a swimming pool into space. 

 

 

 

https://stacker.com/stories/815/where-richest-americans-go-vacation-within-us

https://www.cnn.com/2021/09/18/tech/spacex-inspiration4-splashdown-scn/index.html

https:// http://www.worldatlas.com/articles/the-most-successful-missions-to-mars.html

https://yahoo.com/now/believe-much-astronauts-used-231238348.html

 

 

 

It seems that we as a country have hit an all time low in determining a collective reality. And much of this has to do with the pandemic we are in and the political reality of the time. I base this on the recent NPR article: Mississippi Is Pleading With People To Stop Using A Livestock Drug To Treat COVID-19. There seems to be a huge gap in the way people are interpreting the reality of this pandemic. The real effect of the coronavirus is the cognitive distortion or dissonance that it is creating in the masses that goes beyond science fiction.

According to NPR the state of Mississippi has seen “a jump in the number of calls to poison control that prompted an alert” from the “Mississippi State Department of Health about ingesting the drug ivermectin.” The poison control center said at least 70 percent of the recently received calls “were related to people who ingested a version of the drug that is formulated to treat parasites in cows and horses.”

The CDC says “a parasite is an organism that lives on or in a host organism and gets its food from or at the expense of its host.” Think of that blood sucking “skeeter” slurping away on your uncovered arm on a hot muggy night; or a roundworm making itself comfortable in your gastrointestinal tract. A virus is sort of like a zombie it is a living thing but not really. It needs a host, a body, to prey upon to reproduce and make more virus.

So maybe there is a short jump in logic from a parasite to a virus. But where did we get the idea that a livestock drug for parasites would work on a virus? Maybe from the same source that suggested we ingest disinfectants to clean the coronavirus out of our system. Or from people claiming that they have the right not to wear a mask–and then compare wearing a mask to wearing underwear. It is not what is coming out of our bottom end that is creating the problem right now. It is the misreporting and manipulation of facts. We keep moving further off into the deep end of mass confusion. I am not psychologist or sociologist but there is some real distortion of the facts and reality taking place in this country that goes beyond the normal “what was I thinking?” It is to the point of questioning the cognitive capabilities of groups of people. This is exacerbated by the belief today that feeling that one is right has now become a “right,” encompassed in the First Amendment. This despite and reasonable, logical and scientific evidence to the contrary.

PsychCenteral.com says: “A cognitive distortion — and there are many — is an exaggerated pattern of thought that’s not based on facts. It consequently leads you to view things more negatively than they really are…” And that is the problem. Our internal thought process is dialed into nothing but negative waves–amplified by certain news and social platforms. Squawking heads filter through facts painting them in black or white and then presenting them in an all or nothing manner with the “end is near.” Remember the Fiscal Cliff of 2012 when our government spending and tax policies would run us off the cliff and into the sea? Financial ruin was awaiting us. To quote the Doors: The future’s uncertain, and the end is always near.

“Our thoughts” according to PsychCenteral.com “have a great impact on how we feel and how we behave. When you treat these negative thoughts as facts, (facts by-and-large are not positive or negative it is the interpretation) you may see yourself and act in a way based on faulty assumptions.” Now this is written concerning one individual’s feelings, thoughts and behaviors. What happens when half the population of a country decides to run off the cliff and into the sea below; or people in one state start using a parasite drug to fight off a virus instead of a scientifically developed vaccine? We are dealing with some sort of collective emotional reasoning that our feelings reflect reality. We have taken Rene Descartes Cogito, ergo sum: I think therefore I am” to I feel therefore it is. Or better yet, As Curly of The Three Stooges once said: I am thinking and nothing is happening.

Oh, there is always something happening despite how we think or feel. The coronavirus has us looking for consistency or way back to normalcy. But what really is normal or consistent in a time pandemic? It is our natural quest for consistency that has crushed and pushed our beliefs or “the way it ought to be” to the limits. The only consistency in this mess is the coronavirus. It does consistently what viruses do–and without feelings and thought. The coronavirus has never read the Bill of Rights or voted in an election. It doesn’t care how you think or feel the way “things ought to be.” According to the National Human Genome Research Institute “Viruses must infect cells and use components of the host cell to make copies of themselves. Often, they kill the host cell in the process, and cause damage to the host organism.” The coronavirus has not only infected our physical bodies it has infected our ability to rationally reason what is and what ain’t. It has created a cognitive disconnect in our thinking.

I am not virologist or an epidemiologist but I do know that any road will get you to where you want to go. For instance, we can mask up and get the vaccine to reach herd immunity or we can follow some of the Southern governors approach that seems to be let the virus consistently do its thing because sooner or later we will reach herd immunity with or without a mask and vaccine. But we will never reach it by taking livestock pills.

https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2016/04/the-illusion-of-reality/479559/

What Is Cognitive Dissonance Theory?

https://www.everydayhealth.com/neurology/cognitive-dissonance/what-does-cognitive-dissonance-mean-theory-definition/

https://psychcentral.com/lib/cognitive-distortions-negative-thinking#types

There may never have been a more conspiratal time in history than now. Fueled by ludicrous theories we have taken up some bizarre beliefs that one day people will say “what were those people thinking.” Some of these wild theories do not even fit into the belief that the Earth is flat or that the Sun revolves around the Earth. Our brains have always tried to fill in the unknown phenomenon we observe with whatever the mind can make up. Some people will say it is this while others will say its that.

The problem we are facing now is we invent the scenario–like Puritan prosecutors finding witches and then burning them– just so we can fill in the blanks and prove a point. We have been inundated with theories on how the 2020 election was stolen right out from under our noses–searching for ballots printed on Chinese bamboo paper. We are being confronted with such newly hatched concepts as woke, cancel culture, critical race theory, and Jewish lasers blasting away from space. There seems to be a greater interest into investigating UFOs then investigating how 10,000 people were able to storm the Capitol Building. Instead, we treat the assault on Nation’s Capitol as if it were some sort of “Black Friday” shopping event at Walmart.

I don’t get any of it. I have no real understanding of being woke. To me woke is when the guy across the street is cranking-up his Harley with straight pipes at 5 am in the morning. And cancel culture sounds bad just because of the word cancel. It’s like going to the airport and seeing your flight has just been xed from the board.

But what is this fascination with culture. I am going to bastardize a quote supposedly attributed to Mohandas Gandhi when asked what he thought about Western Civilization (culture): “I think it would be a good idea.” That’s right up there with the farmer when asked about culture. His reply was “the only culture I know is agriculture.” And herein lies our problem. It creates either a narrow view on the world around us or an over blown condemnation of what we disagree with.

For some reason when I think about American culture I think of how we super-size everything from just a plain old jet airliner to a “jumbo” jet; a hamburger to a “Whopper; and a 16 ounce Coke to a one-gallon bucket of soda with a two-foot straw. “Give me the number three meal deal and supersize it with extra fries.”

The time we live in makes it hard for a good idea to seep up from the primordial ooze that has us wading hip deep in ignorant nonsense. A good idea is like trying to find hen’s teeth in the barnyard. (Or common sense in Congress.) Today, an “idea” gets narrowed down to two choices: this and that. “If you cannot believe this then you gotta believe that.” Nothing expanded in-between. For some reason Mitch McConnell’s face pops into my mind. I am not sure if he is “this” or “that.” I think it depends on who is president.

Take The New York Times 1619 Project. Now I have to admit that I have not read it–but why should that stop me or slow me down from spouting off what I think. I do believe “that” in 1619 the first batch of enslaved people from Africa arrived in Virginia to meet the labor and economic needs of the English settlers. I also know “that” the Project has angered a lot of people who do not necessarily want to believe in “that.” They would say “I do not believe in “that” I believe in “this.” And now it becomes sort of hostile Beta v VHS marketing thing.

But in this age of bizarre theories and conspiracies I find I am no different. I am going to go off on my own theory. I believe all of the troubles and woes that we are experiencing today can be attributed to the English: Great Britain our “mother country.” My theory looks at “Merry olde England” long before it was a jolly good place. It is my contention that England was subjected to some of the most aggressive invaders around and that in 1607 their ancestors landed here bringing those aggressive qualities with them. Qualities that still linger on like a musty smell in a mildewed basement. The North American eastern coast was flooded with some of the most stiff-necked religious fanatics in New England; arrogant aristocratic cast offs in Virginia to plain old convicts and debtors in Georgia.

When you look at British history you realize the Brits come by it honestly. They were always beating back invaders starting with the Romans and all the way up the Nazi air assault in the Battle of Britain. The Romans were the first to come ashore way back in 43 BCE. I am sure it could be argued that they brought with them a certain amount of “Mediterranean civilization and culture” to the Celtic Brits. The Romans hung out in England for the next 400 years integrating and mingling with the local Celts. But once Alaric and his Visigoths sacked Rome in 410 things changed in England. The Romans moved on but no doubt left behind their methodical means of governing and the controlling and managing of foreign outposts and trade. When it came to infrastructure, Romans showed the Brits how to build a 70 plus mile wall in less than 10 years. Something the Trump administration failed miserably at. Good old Roman know how that would serve future Englishmen well.

With the Roman Legions gone a new wave of settlers took up residence in England. As Europe descended into the Dark Ages, the Juts, Angles and Saxons from Northern Germany rowed or sailed across the North Sea. It seems that the Romans built Hadrian’s Wall in the wrong location. In any case, it is this group of Germanic “barbarians” that created the first beginnings of an English country and culture.

However, everything was not so idyllic because the next invasion was bit more vicious. Norsemen, Vikings began raiding England around 790 AD. If the Romans were methodical about maintaining a foreign province, the Vikings introduced methodical plunder and pillage to England. But maybe the most important legacy the Vikings left behind is their seafaring skills. Again, another trait that would serve future Englishmen (and America) well.

The sight of Viking raiding ships coming ashore could create wholesale panic and carnage; but in some cases Viking settlements. This brought the Anglo-Saxons into contact with Viking vitality and leaving them with a certain amount of hybrid vigor. My sense is that Vikings were not shy about taking what they wanted and staying as long as they pleased. If the Vikings were visitors knocking on the door to say hello they soon became house guests that stayed around for the next 300 years before moving back to Scandinavia. If one can say the Romans taught the Brits how to manage government and other affairs of state, the Vikings probably instilled in those Anglo-Saxons that things are always ripe for the picking and taking. And numbers never mattered when it came to conquering indigenous people. Just look at the British centuries-long control of Ireland and India.

It may be hard to believe but by 1066 another group rowed passed the White Cliffs of Dover: The Normans. The Normans can also trace their ancestry back Norsemen. Generally, it could be said that the Normans took their martial skills from both the Romans and Norsemen. A big difference is that the Normans were not the pagans of the past. They had that Catholic zeal infused in them. Not only did the Normans invade England; they invaded Italy, Sicily the Iberian Peninsula, and North Africa. They killed the last Anglo-Saxon king, King Harold, at the Battle of Hastings in 1066 and did not relinquish the British Isle again. It is believed that the Normans introduced the feudal system creating a landed aristocracy and built upon what the Anglo-Saxons had developed.

Of course, all of this is just one giant generalization. But when you look at America history it is laced with Romanesque causes. If anything, America is the modern self-actualization of English heritage. Before Eastern seaboard cities were settled, American explorer like their Vikings forebears, were continually looking for a Northwest Passage. When they finally realized they could not sail through or around North America (this could change as the ice caps melt) they settled down like Normans and came up with Manifest Destiny. It was the destiny of those early Americans (Englishmen really) moving steadily and quickly like Medieval Normans, from the Atlantic to the Pacific. Taking land, like Texas, and most of the Southwest from Mexico, when they could not buy. It was not until 1869, with the completing of the continental railroad, a project like a giant Roman Aqueduct or the Appian Way, that the two oceans were linked. A New World Roman engineering feat done American style.

We also inherited the Norman’s social hierarchy. A landed aristocracy with disgruntled lower classes, like the Scots-Irish, who came to populate huge swaths of colonial America. These are the Americans, like the Hatfields and McCoys, that would fight for years over who owned a free range hog. The Scots-Irish were followed by a myriad of non-English immigrants who would take their place at the bottom of the social pyramid.

I know I have not mentioned some of the finer accomplishments we get from our British ancestors–like William Shakespeare and Jane Austen; the scientific brilliance of Isaac Newton or Stephen Hawking. I would bet that if Shakespeare or Austin were writing today they would be attacked for their lack of wokness or had their book deal or plays canceled. Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations would be considered as a global system of exploitation. So many good ideas would have ended up fossilized to be dug up later like dinosaur bones to be pieced together. Never to be debated or enjoyed.

After the 1890’s census the Superintendent of the Census declared the frontier closed. This did not mean that Americans could not travel into the West because as we have learned in our history classes it was America’s Manifest Destiny to control all the land between the Atlantic and Pacific. Basically, what the Census Bureau was saying is there was no real frontier line like the Appalachian Mountains, the Mississippi River or the Rocky Mountains that could distinguish civilized America from the unsettled wild. The West was always open for business. The hard part was getting there. The country needed roads and bridges to gap the great divides; or the infrastructure to get from one place to another. Today, like in the past, we bickered about what is infrastructure and how to pay for it.

Unlike the British who, without infrastructure, foolishly tried to curb colonial western expansion beyond the Appalachian Mountains. However, our new federal government encouraged western migration, much to the chagrin of native Americans inhabiting the area. In 1811 the federal government began constructing the National Road. The 600 mile road started in Cumberland, Maryland and ended in Vandalia, Illinois. It was America’s first highway west.

Since then the country has built canals, a transcontinental railroad system, as well as a coast-to-coast interstate highway system, and an information highway along with a federally administered air traffic control system. We can also add intercity subway and transit and electric grids, much of it with government funding and assistance.

When Donald Trump was elected president there was a lot of talk about upgrading and improving our nation’s deteriorating infrastructure. The Trump Administration was more concerned about holding back surging groups of immigrants and building “the Wall” along the Southern Border. The one thing Trump realized, as all politicians dealing with infrastructure, is that roads, bridges and walls cost money–tax money. Hence, trying to get Mexico to pay for building the wall sounded like a good idea. But, for all the talk it failed to bring in any pesos. Instead, he pulled money from other government projects. Infrastructure got shoved to the side.

Now that Joe Biden is president, infrastructure has popped back up again. As with Trump’s Wall, the debate centers around who will pay for improving America’s aging infrastructure, with a slight twist on what really is infrastructure in the modern world we live in. And herein lies a problem of perception as to what is a public good.

Generally speaking a public good promotes the general welfare of the country and is free to use–so to speak. For instance, the Interstate Highway system is free for anyone to use unlike a toll road. But we all know that nothing is free. We all put in a our few cents worth with every gallon of gas we buy. The government, however, does not see a return for investors. What gets skewed a bit with a public goods is when we perceive them as a private good for profit. Private companies do not operate and maintain interstate highway systems because there is not profit in doing so. Hence, a public good for everybody; and a cost borne by the public. However, there is a belief in this country that we privatize anything. Just look at the prison system and the space program.

The country in the past has always wrestled with who is gonna pay for such projects. It is sort of hot potato game of passing the buck. Our history is laced with tax avoidance starting with the Boston Tea Party. As the country turned the corner of the 1700s and into the 1800s there was a real need for what was called “internal improvements.” As the country continued to expand getting people and goods from over the mountains and down rivers became not only a political problem but geographical and financial one, too. Thus, internal improvements could be a contentious issue . Projects like Improving ports, building roads and canals and eventually railroads were needed to keep the nation’s commerce growing and expanding. The government always stepped in to help out whether in the form of protective tariffs, land grants to railroad companies or tax breaks for manufacturers.

The financial dilemma, like today, is where to get the money. Between 1790 and 1820 tariffs accounted for ninety percent of the country’s revenue. That has sort of flipped today. According to the St Louis Federal Reserve Bank: “Half of U.S. government revenue in 2019, about $1.7 trillion, came from the public via individual income taxes, of which a significant amount came from payroll taxes, which are paid by employees.”

Tariffs have always been a big deal, as evidenced by Trump’s recent trade war with China; and they were a big deal in the 1820s. Now, I am not economist so trying to explain the intricacies of tariffs and taxes. That is not my intent. The tariff of 1828 created some serious political problems and was called, particularly in the South, “The Tariff of Abominations” because it placed high tariffs on imported goods the South depended on. South Carolina, under John C. Calhoun’s direction tried unsuccessfully to get the state to nullify the tariff causing a huge Constitutional and political spat with President Andrew Jackson.

The complication developed with the North’s expanding commercial base and the South’s agriculture base of cotton and tobacco. The North preferred the higher tariff because it provided some protection for its nascent manufacturing industry that was trying to compete with Britain. It could be argued that an expanding internal improvement plan would help deliver manufactured goods to an expanding country. The South, on the other hand, depend more on slave labor and exporting cotton, took a bigger hit importing the now more expensive British goods. Because the South’s economy was not as diverse as the North’s, Southerners felt they took a bigger hit with a higher tariff. It could be argued that politically and economically that the North would benefit more from “internal improvements” while the South paid a higher cost for those improvements through higher tariffs.

So grappling with internal improvements or what we would call today as infrastructure is nothing new. In May of 1830 President Andrew Jackson vetoed federal funding in the Maysville Road project in Kentucky. This was a pet project of Henry Clay and a project that he felt fit in with his proposed American System. A big part of that plan was a high protective tariff, renewing the charter of the Bank of the United States and internal improvements. Jackson saw it differently. Jackson was not against internal improvements. He was just had no love for Clay. He justified his veto by saying that because the Maysville Road ran exclusively within the borders of Kentucky that it was not an internal improvement that benefited the nation. Since the road was in Kentucky, Kentucky can pay for it. Despite the possibility of the road hooking up with other federally funded roads and canals outside of the state.

Adding fuel to the debate were the normal political and constitutional questions about going beyond the enumerated powers of Congress. But in many ways we crossed that enumerated bridge when Alexander Hamilton created the Bank of the United States and Thomas Jefferson bought the Louisiana Territory from France. Both used Congressional powers not specifically spelled out in the Constitution.

From a political standpoint it goes deeper and personal. It is easy to see why Jackson vetoed the Maysville Road bill. Clay and Jackson, despite being from the same section of the country, Kentucky and Tennessee, did not agree on too many issues of the day. Clay had split with the Jacksonian Democrat-Republicans and became a National Republican, later a Whig. Clay had created the American System and like any proposed government plan it came under fire from those opposed to higher tariffs and renewing the Bank of the United States. Jackson hated the Bank with a passion.

However, a lot of Jackson’s animosity for Clay comes from what Jackson supporters called the “Corrupt Bargain.” The 1824 Presidential Election was a contentious election that was thrown into the House of Representatives. Henry Clay was one of the presidential candidates in the race; but also the Speaker of the House. Jackson, despite winning the popular vote and having a plurality–not a majority–of the Electoral Votes, lost the election when the House, under Clay’s leadership elected John Quincy Adams as President. This was a political burn Jackson never extinguished. And dealt out plenty of political pay back to those responsible for his 1824 defeat. (Some of this sounds familiar, today.)

Today’s infrastructure needs go beyond roads and bridges but the political arguments seem to mark time. Biden is presenting Congress with what could be called a modern “American System.” According to the White House, “This is the moment to reimagine and rebuild a new economy. The American Jobs Plan is an investment in America that will create millions of good jobs, rebuild our country’s infrastructure, and position the United States to out-compete China…The American Jobs Plan will invest in America in a way we have not invested since we built the interstate highways and won the Space Race.” 

Biden’s plan is coming under fire on how to fund his ambitious project and defining what is infrastructure. Biden is aiming at busting the britches of those with seven-figure incomes to fund his trillion dollar plus proposed infrastructure program. This has GOPers howling. Not only is the size of Biden’s proposal beyond their budget comprehension (unless you include fighting an unfunded war in the Mideast) and the tax increases needed to fund it. Some of the proposed projects to them are incomprehensible. And that is understandable. The plan calls for creating “good-quality jobs that pay prevailing wages in safe and healthy workplaces while ensuring workers have a free and fair choice to organize, join union and bargain collectively with their employers.” Build next generation industries in distressed communities Redress historic inequities and build the future of transportation infrastructure.  To a lot GOPers this sounds like the anarchists and socialists demands of the early 1900s or a Stalinist Five Year Plan. And maybe it is.

The Frontier may have been closed now for more than 100 years. We no longer have people walking beside a wagon following behind a team of oxen for three to six month on the Oregon Trail. We have moved onto an internet information highway. The infrastructure of our country is what holds holds the nation together whether if is made of concrete and steel or digital information moving through cyber space. These upgrades go beyond upgrading an app. But it all seems to boil down to what Congress politically deems is a fundable “internal improvement.”

Recently two investment companies sent me ballots to cast my vote for changes to their corporate investing plan. Not being any sort of fiduciary wizard, and not having a single idea on what I would be voting on I ignored their requests to participate. I felt that my voice in corporate decision making, based on how many shares I owned was more of a silent minority thing.

However, that was not to be. Shortly after I trashed one ballot another one arrived in the mail. The other company started flooding my inbox with emails to vote. I relented and voted by mail and computer. It was quick and easy and in both cases I noticed some sort of control numbers on the ballots that would obvious keep me from voting more than once. What they did with my ballots after I voted I could not say.

The recent corporate/GOP fallout over recent voting laws, proposed and passed, on changing voting procedures is interesting, particularly when GOPers like a Senate Minority Leader and governors tell CEO’s to bugger off. The Texas lieutenant governor basically said CEOs were stupid when he told them they have “meddled in a lot of issues lately … stay out of things you don’t know anything about and if you want to get involved then you’re taking that risk.” This seems odd when a lot of legislation is actually written by corporate lobbyists. He also admonished them to “read the damn bill” before they proffer an opinion. This is bold talk for a politician fatted on the corporate larder, particularly when there is a shift away from typical and long-held GOP beliefs to more Trumpian attitudes.

The Texas LT may have a point, though. When I voted for changes to the investment management I had no idea what I was reading. Talk about the fine print. It made me think of legislators reading the numerous bills they are confronted with. For instance, the recent 5,500 plus page pandemic aid bill, one of the longest bills in Senate history, was handed out several hours before it was voted on.

Generally speaking, if you want to memorize something, you’ll need to read slowly. A normal rate for learning is 100-200 wpm, and for comprehension it is 200-400 wpm.

According to MindTools.com The average reader can read about 250 wpm. This a good speed for comprehension. If you crank it up a notch to speed reading, around 400-700 you can turn more pages quicker but you start lose something in the translation, especially when you hit 500-600 wpm. Evelyn Nielsen Wood, a pioneer of speed reading, supposedly hit super sonic speeds of 2,700 wpm. I am not sure if she could have read a 5,500 plus page document in two hours.

Several years ago Senator Rand Paul proposed a bill that would require the Senate a whole day to read 20 pages of proposed bills. Talk about bringing Congress to a standstill.

Kentucky Senator Mitch McConnell took a slightly different tact with those recalcitrant corporations. He fired a warning shot across Corporate America’s bow by saying that “corporations will invite serious consequences if they become a vehicle for far-left mobs,”–code for socialists, communist and other fellow travelers. This harkens us back to the eras of “Red Scare.” That’s heavy duty considering that Corporate America has a history of calling on the government, particularly the military or state militias, to physically bust up left leaning mobs like union strikes against railroad, coal and steel barons; and any other socialist and anarchists gatherings. Right wing mobs, however, are given free reign to tour Congressional chambers of the Capitol.

The symbiotic relationship between the GOP and Corporate America may not be crumbling anytime soon but the feeling that “I’ve got your back on this one,” maybe slipping a little. Georgia’s Election Integrity Act of 2021 just might be the first act in a right wing multi-act play to return the South to its core antebellum attitudes. A desperate play being acted out by desperate white men.

Unlike some of the proposed voting laws, it seems that those corporation managing my investment concerns went out of their way to make sure I participated in their decision making policies; no matter how small my voice.

It could be argued that most of American history can be interpreted through visions of unreality. My family loves to watch The Masked Singer and The Masked Dancer. They get a big kick out trying to figure out who is behind those exotic costumes. I grew up more in era of Sergeant Joe Friday: Just the facts… not cloaked in some shroud of fantasy but a man in a gray suit with narrow lapels and wearing a thin tie taking notes.

Recently I was watching HBO’s documentary on QAnon, Q: Into the Storm. As I watched the first episode I could not help but think how Americans love a good fantasy especially if it is cloaked in a mystery and salted with sexual behavior, particularly if it is prurient. For some reason sex makes it more believable.

Now I do not know much at all about QAnon, nor do I really want to. The internet search for the masked “Q” is beyond me with encrypted messages and social media platforms: 4chans or 8chans. It sounds more like what George Smiley and The Circus would be doing in a John le Carre novel. Or a more complicated game of Clue: Hillary Clinton did it with the Rope in the Pizzaria. And I think this is where we are at in time. Reality reads more like a game or fantasy/spy novel. It makes for great reading or a movie; but really. The problem becomes one person’s fantasy starts to creep into another’s reality.

I think of how Americans love a good story–the truth be damned. We love the missing pieces so much we get reeled in hook-line-and-sinker hitting at anything. We have even fought wars over phantom torpedo boats attacking US Navy Destroyers. We searched high and low in Iraq for Weapons of Mass Destruction and found out that maybe it was just a Saddam scavenger hunt. I really think we want to believe in the absurd. Who killed JFK? Was it the lone gunman in the book depository, Cubans behind the grassy knoll, the mafia or the CIA with exploding cigars? As far as Kennedy goes, it might as well be as the Rolling Stones sing: “well after all it was you and me,” There is always enough truth in the story to get us all fired up. When we cannot figure it out we make stuff up and extrapolate the story from there.

But on more benign level of fakery, take PT Barnum’s Feejee Mermaid. Americans flocked to see this freak of nature. Barnum, like many hucksters today, was media savvy. His use of the 1840’s media, peppered with expert opinions on the poor beast, created an insatiable interest, particularly the rare opportunity to see a bare-breasted mermaid. People were laying down good money and making PT Barnum rich in the process. Afterall, as Randy Newman sings: “It is money that matters in the U-S-of-A.” If anything, that has been the one constant fantasy in America. Who wants to be a millionaire?

As I continued watching the show I became lost in the technical workings of social media. The speculation that Q was sleeping in the Lincoln Bedroom and riding on Air Force One–for all we know he may be piloting it. The more I watched the more it reminded me of the television series Lost. ABC hit the mother lode for a story. People surviving an airplane crash on a tropical island. Nobody ever survives an airplane falling from 35,000 feet. But that ain’t gonna stop us from believing it could happen. Get out the tackle box load up the boat because we are going fishing.

What started out with a an unbelievable plot turned into multiple realities; an island that can move about; a mysterious smoke monster; “others” who also inhabit the island; and characters named after historical figures like Locke, Faraday, Roussou and Boone. I watched that show to the end, and probably like people who follow the Q, I liked it. I was always wondering where the writers and J.J. Abrams were taking us. They tied everything together in science, fiction and mythology. I imagined the writers, sitting around stoned and coming up with these weird plot twists. Every episode required an even weirder plot twists to explain the previous plot twists. Pretty soon the whole show was out there in the ozones and I had to wonder if the only way to make any sense of the show is that you had to be stoned to get it.

After watching the first episode of Q: Into the Storm I felt glad I was living in a state where recreational marijuana is allowed because QAnon seems to be just as bizarre as LOST. It made me feel like I really missed something by not playing Dungeons and Dragons in my youth. I think I would have had better insight to this realm of the reality that is being foisted upon us: pizza with pedophilia toppings. We go in the opposite direction of the Sherlock Holmes maxim: When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.

So who is Q? Maybe he is today’s alter ego of LOST’s Smoke Monster: somebody blowing a lot of smoke up our knickers.