Things I Think About (2)

If you're new here, this is a weekly column consisting of letters written to my grandchildren (who exist) and my great-grandchildren (who aren't here yet) — the Stickies — to haunt them after they become grups and/or I'm dead.

[Blogaramians: Blogarama renders the links in my columns useless. Please click on View Original to solve this problem and access lotsa columns.]

Irregularly Appearing Imaginary Guest Stars

Marie-Louise -- My beautiful muse and back scratcher 

Iggy -- My designated Sticky

Dana -- My designated gentlereader

       "If everyone is thinking alike, then somebody isn't thinking."
                                                              -George S. Patton

  
Dear (eventual) Grandstickies & Great-Grandstickies,

This letter is actually directed primarily at my gentlereaders but there is content here that you may also find useful.  

All Infomercials Great and Small

Alrighty then, is that everything? Is it finally time to grab our naughty parts and jump?

All but... we've never decided if we're going to offer free shipping or not.

You know what? it's just the right thing to do. If people are nice enough to order our product the least we can do is pay for the shipping.


The preceding dialog is fiction squared. I not only made it up, there's just no way such a conversation has ever taken place. The phrase free shipping is pure, unadulterated, bonkercockie. Free shipping is to infomercials as hand-dipped is to an ice cream parlor.

[However, I'll admit that robot-dipped is at least theoretically possible; robot-pumped is a thing. I don't want to offend any gentlereaders so I won't mention that in my semi-humble opinion "soft-serve" ain't ice cream.]

There is no such thing as a free lunch. If it's too good to be true it's too good to be true. The cost of the shipping and/or handling/processing/whatevering is built into the price.

Obviously.

I'm not a marketer but if I were I'd try something like "With the exception of Uncle Sam's cut -- as you know, Uncle always gets his cut -- $19.99 is what it's going to cost you to buy our world-class electric toothpick and have it delivered to your door."

I freely and willingly offer up this concept to anyone willing to try it. All I ask is that you mention theflyoverlandcrank.com when they hand you your trophy at the awards dinner.

No Trump No Way Day

10:00 a.m., Saturday morning.

Next up on the Sludge Network, the Ralph Infammy Report. The Sludge Network, all infotainment -- all the time.

Good morning and welcome to the Infammy Report. As you've probably heard -- or at least I hope so since we've promoted it hard enough (warm chuckle) -- Today is NTNW day here at the Sludge Network. NTNW stands for No Trump, No Way.

As promised, we will do our best not to mention the Donald or his family. No discussion of, or interviews with, past or present minions, wives, or lovers. No, not even her.

Fear not. In the event of important breaking news involving the Donald, we'll abandon this temporary format faster than the Donald fires flunkies and will follow our standard practice.

To wit, endless coverage wherein we will report every unconfirmed rumor as soon as we hear it while reminding you it's an unconfirmed rumor. Each and every unconfirmed rumor, if it's juicy enough, will be expanded on by our Sludge Network analysts following the usual formula.   

That is, if this turns out to actually be true then this might be the result. 

We hope you enjoy your Trump free day and may we suggest that if you wish to maximize your enjoyment that you also attempt to avoid thinking about any president since Hoobert Heever.   

Coco Is Still Adrift in a Cultural Wilderness

As regular readers and my Dear Stickies know, I self-identify as a sassy black lesbian woman named Coco who is trapped inside the body of an old white dude a member of the white heteropatriarchy.

The reason I came out of the closet, after a lifetime of denial, is twofold. First, American culture has finally turned its collective back on the outdated notion of rugged individuals employing rationally negotiated compromise because we're all on the same team and we all want the team to win.

We've embraced the power of victimhood.

Second, we've discovered that bonding with like-minded victims dramatically increases our ability to air our grievances and demand redress.

The second phenomenon has been elevated to an art form by advanced thinkers of the Social Justice movement. Intersectionality, the technique of adopting several different victim profiles instead of putting all your angst in one basket, allows any given victim to radically expand their victimhood.

In addition to the obvious psychological benefits, this technique also has practical, real-world ramifications. The more egregious the victimology, the better the chance any given victim will be the beneficiary of a lawsuit or at least a program of some sort provided by The Gummit.

[Poppa, sometimes I think you have too much time on your hands...]

Iggy, I'm just trying to make the world a better place for you and your fellow Stickies. Poppa loves you.

 Have an OK day.


[P.S. Gentlereaders, for 25¢ a week, no, seriously, for 25¢ a week you can become a Patron of this weekly column and help to prevent an old crank from running the streets at night in search of cheap thrills and ill-gotten gains.

If there are some readers out there that think my shtuff is worth a buck or three a month, color me honored, and grateful. Regardless, if you like it, could you please share it? There are buttons at the end of every column.]


©2018 Mark Mehlmauer   (The Flyoverland Crank)

If you're reading this on my website (where there are tons of older columns, a glossary, and other goodies) and if you wish to comment — or react (way cooler than liking, and Facebook doesn't keep track) — please scroll down. 















           







  

May You Live In Interesting Times (3)

If you're new here, this is a weekly column consisting of letters written to my grandchildren (who exist) and my great-grandchildren (who aren't here yet) — the Stickies — to haunt them after they become grups and/or I'm dead.

                                   THE AGE OF UNLIGHTENMENT?

[Blogaramians: Blogarama renders the links in my columns useless. Please click on View Original to solve this problem and access lotsa columns.]

Irregularly Appearing Imaginary Guest Stars

Marie-Louise -- My beautiful muse and back scratcher 

Iggy -- My designated Sticky

Dana -- My designated gentlereader

"Giving money and power to government is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys."  -P.J. O'Rourke

Dear (eventual) Grandstickies & Great-Grandstickies,

When I compose these semi-humble missives that are mostly directed to your future selves — although two of you (S1 & S2) are on the verge of being able to make sense of at least some of my bafflegab — my mind/imagination often projects what impact current events that at least appear to be a RBFD will have on your (eventual) everyday lives.

[Is that a sentence or what? It may be a personal best/worst...]

I don't write much about politics. Currently, the Republic is enduring all politics all the time. What follows is my impression of what's going on so you can contrast it with whatever makes it to the history books.


We are currently knee deep in, and the Infotainment Industrial Complex utterly obsessed with, one of the myriad reality shows the Donald is starring in: The Donald vs. the SP and the FBI. Those of you that are actually here, although still callowyutes, are experiencing this even if only peripherally. Those of you who have yet to arrive will be studying the subject in history class.

Plot summary: did the Donald collude with the Pooten to become our national CEO?


According to Wikipedia, "... a special prosecutor (SP) is a lawyer appointed to investigate, and potentially prosecute, a particular case of suspected wrongdoing for which a conflict of interest (my emphasis) exists for the usual prosecuting authority."

The Justice Department ("the usual prosecuting authority") and our federal police force, the FBI, are part of the 1/3 of the republic that the Donald runs so Robert Swan(?) Mueller III was appointed SP to avoid a conflict of interest.

Mr. Mueller served with distinction in Vietnam and has a sterling reputation. But for most of his career, he worked for the Justice Department — as a prosecutor. Also, when he got his current gig it had only been roughly 3.5 since serving as Director of the FBI — a division of the Justice Department — for 12 years.

Being a multipotentialite and current events maven, I know this kind of shi shtuff.

I don't know what the history books will say; I hesitate to predict the future under any circumstances. I predict that when you read this, though, you will immediately ask the same question I and many other current Citizens of the Republic are asking.

Who in their right mind thinks Mr. Mueller could be impartial and unconflicted? And this was before the subsequent kerfuffle concerning double-dealing, high ranking FBI officials who appear to have colluded to get a special prosecutor appointed in the first place.


Here's where things stand at the moment.

There is no current law that specifies who has the power to appoint a Special Prosecutor. Justice Department regulations, created by the Justice Department, gives the Attorney General (or acting AG) this power. Hoo-boy.

The current AG recused himself from investigating whether the Donald or his posse colluded with the Pooteen to get the Donald elected as he was a member of the Donald's election posse.

Deputy AG, Rod Rosenstein, appointed Mr. Mueller SP -- one day after Mr. Mueller was interviewed/rejected by the Donald. He was trying to get his old job back, director of the FBI.

The evidence that was used to determine why it was determined a SP was needed -- real, fake, and where/who it came from -- has been in the news and the subject of endless debate ever since.

Congress has demanded answers. Apparently, they feel guilty about the fact they've never gotten around to renewing the law that specifies just who has the power to appoint an SP and under what circumstances.

The Justice Department and FBI have elevated foot-dragging and stonewalling to an art form. What info they do release is always heavily redacted. The redactions, when revealed, often turn out to be info that's embarrassing to Justice/FBI, not legitimate secrets.

The Information Industrial Complex has created a lucrative industry out of the resulting mess. Evidence-free speculation and my personal favorite -- if this should turn out to be true then that could happen -- comes at us 24 x 7 x 365 (.25). By the way, there is no speculation in this letter, only facts.


Mr. Mueller has been on the job for just over a year. A couple of people have been charged with crimes unrelated to Russian collusion. There's been collateral damage. For example...

Michael Caputo is a former communications advisor to the Trump campaign who keeps getting summoned to Washington. He has run up legal bills of over $125,000, is about to lose his home, and has been subject to death threats. He has been charged with nothing.


In other The Gummit news... Congressman Lamar Smith wants The Gummit to spend $10,000,000/year of other people's money to search for evidence that we're not alone in the universe. Poppa loves you.

Have an OK day.


[P.S. Gentlereaders, for 25¢ a week, no, seriously, for 25¢ a week you can become a Patron of this weekly column and help to prevent an old crank from running the streets at night in search of cheap thrills and ill-gotten gains.

If there are some readers out there that think my shtuff is worth a buck or three a month, color me honored, and grateful. Regardless, if you like it, could you please share it? There are buttons at the end of every column.]


©2018 Mark Mehlmauer   (The Flyoverland Crank)

If you're reading this on my website (where there are tons of older columns, a glossary, and other goodies) and if you wish to comment — or react (way cooler than liking, and Facebook doesn't keep track) — please scroll down. 

Trump Announces the Fourth Reich

If you're new here, this is a weekly column consisting of letters written to my grandchildren (who exist) and my great-grandchildren (who aren't here yet) -- the Stickies -- to haunt them after they become grups and/or I'm dead.

[Bloggaramians: Blogarama renders the links in my columns useless. Please click on View original (above↑) to solve the problem/access lotsa columns.]

Irregularly Appearing Imaginary Guest Stars

Marie-Louise -- My sublime, drop-dead gorgeous muse (right shoulder) and back scratcher 

Iggy -- Designated Sticky

Dana -- Designated gentlereader (left shoulder)

"Republics decline into democracies and democracies degenerate into despotisms." -Aristotle


Dear (eventual) Grandstickies and Great-Grandstickies,

Humbug Alert: This is the third, and last, of a series of columns with outrageous and/or bogus headlines designed to capture an influx of new and unwary gentlereaders. In my defense, the big boys do this sort of thing all the time. This particular column has the unique distinction of having virtually nothing to do with its headline. It's a literary Hail Mary pass -- my humbugery, so far at least, has failed.

However, since it's standard procedure in some quarters to name the Donald as the poster child for anything/everything that's wrong/ever was wrong with the USA, there's at least a tenuous connection. See, this letter is actually about yours truly watching America, politically and culturally, decline in the course of my 39 years, but I don't blame the Donald.


My dear Grandstickies, that is, the four of you that currently exist (who knows what'll be going on when your kids are growing up), at the moment you are in the process of growing up in a wildly chaotic, politically/culturally polarized era. We haven't seen its like since the legendary sixties.

Let me clarify that a bit, modern America hasn't seen it's like. I hesitate to speak of/to/for other locales. The planet Earth has seen its like/is in the midst of witnessing its like -- often, and often much worse.

I was unaware of just how wildly chaotic and politically/culturally polarized the legendary sixties were even though I was busy growing up in the midst of them. I mean, I was aware there was a lot of wild shtuff going on but frankly, I thought it was, well, fun, and exciting. Give us a minute and we'll fix all the shtuff the grups screwed up. Most of my fellow Baby Boomers and I had no firm plans beyond that.

[Hey, wait a minute...]

Relax, Dana, I see it, I'm on it. Dana was about to object to the fact that the last paragraph implies that the Baby Boomers were an idealistic, united front for positive change. Nope. In spite of stereotypes and how some remember the period, culturally and politically speaking we were, and are, all over the map.

We came of age in the midst of an imperfect storm of cultural/political/economic/technological and who knows what all-i-cal developments. But we didn't conjure them out of thin air. We just happened to be there. And most of us didn't turn on, tune in, and drop out. Most of us weren't at Woodstock. Most of us didn't participate in, or get anywhere near, a protest or a riot. Etcetera.

But the thing is, as I've written repeatedly, the tot did get tossed out with the Jacuzzi water. The culture fragmented and the fragments are fragmenting. It took a long time for Rome to die. I can't help but wonder if all of our vaunted technology and wealth will help to destroy us in record time.


Being a callowyute I had no real appreciation of just how fragile civilization actually is. It wasn't until I was a grup that I had any notion that things could have gotten out of hand. Things got out of hand. Things are getting worse.

My fellow boomers and I were familiar with terrorism, but mostly from the comfort and safety of our living rooms. The Palestine Liberation Organization was founded by a world-class terrorist but they specialized in murdering Jews, overseas.

When your parents were coming up things got a bit more personal. and a lot more dangerous. Al Qaeda dramatically expanded on the concept, murdering any and all infidels. Also, inadvertently murdering fellow Muslims was considered acceptable collateral damage.

You're coming up in the ISIS age. They openly advocate murdering and/or enslaving anybody that doesn't believe in their nasty little version of Islam via any means at hand. A car or a knife is as good as a bomb, if less productive.

In the not too distant past the existential threat posed by those who embrace this cult of death, these Muslims in name only, would've united us. Though flawed, hypocritical, and having committed no shortage of sins (rather like the average H. sapien), America could (more or less...) play as a team, when they had to. Could (more or less...) compromise, when they had to.


BIG BUT.

The American body politic is suffering from two different but potentially deadly strains of bacteria that are coming at us from the (alt) left and the (alt) right.

As to who exactly belongs to what side and what they're advocating is impossible to define. Fragments of fragments are perpetually at war with each other as well as anyone identified as the other.

"At this shank end of a summer that a calmer America someday will remember with embarrassment, you must remember this: In the population of 325 million, a small sliver crouches on the wilder shores of politics, another sliver lives in the dark forest of mental disorder, and there is a substantial overlap between these slivers." -George Will

[Man..if I could write like that I bet I'd have more than a single patron.]

Unfortunately, the slivers are given outsized coverage by the salivating media. Keeping the pot stirred 24 x 7 is where the money is. Having a tendency to see my glass of beer as half empty I have to admit I sometimes don't share Mr. Will's optimism ("...America someday will remember with embarrassment..."). I hope for your sakes he's right. Poppa loves you.

Have an OK day.


[P.S. Gentlereaders, for 25¢ a week, no, seriously, for 25¢ a week you can become a Patron of this weekly column and help to prevent an old crank from running the streets at night in search of cheap thrills and ill-gotten gains.

If there are some readers out there that think my shtuff is worth a buck or three a month, color me honored, and grateful. Regardless, if you like it, could you please share it? There are buttons at the end of every column.]


©2017 Mark Mehlmauer   (The Flyoverland Crank)

If you're reading this on my website (where there are tons of older columns, a glossary, and other goodies) and if you wish to react (way cooler than liking) -- please scroll down.

Purposeful Polarization (& Beguiling Bonkercockie)

If you're new here, this is a weekly column consisting of letters written to my grandchildren (who exist) and my great-grandchildren (who aren't here yet) -- the Stickies -- to haunt them after they become grups and/or I'm dead.

[Blogaramians: Blogarama renders the links in my columns useless. Please click on View original (above↑) to solve the problem/access lotsa columns.]

Irregularly Appearing Imaginary Guest Stars

Marie-Louise -- My beautiful muse (right shoulder) and back scratcher 

Iggy -- Designated Sticky

Dana -- Designated gentlereader (left shoulder)

Dear (eventual) Grandstickies & Great-Grandstickies,

Purposeful Polarization (corollary -- beguiling bonkercockie), I stumbled on this phrase in a Wall Street Journal article. I've been following the seemingly endless attacks on the Donald, via the media and the Depublicans, fascinated by the deluge of if/then stories (if this should turn out to be true, then...) and unattributed (but trust us, we trust the leakers) leaks.

I refer specifically to (insert a few bars of dramatic music here) the Russian Conspiracy. It turns out the Donald isn't the Hitler of the 21st century (well, so far, it's early yet). It turns out that he's not crazy after all (well, so far, it's early yet), at least not consistently. While he does regularly say (or tweet) crazy shtuff, even some of his many enemies have begun to figure out it's often crazy like a fox/strategic in nature.

While the crazy and Hitler memes were only base hits, (insert a few bars of dramatic music here) the Russian Conspiracy is a home run. Our left-leaning infotainment industrial complex and the Depublicans are having a good deal of success tying the Donald to the Pooteen and (insert a few bars of dramatic music here) the Russian Conspiracy.

They've managed this in spite of the fact no actual crimes, so far at least, have yet to be uncovered. That's world-class Purposeful Polarization using a where there's smoke there's fire attack. However, the smoke, in this case, may just be a fog of spin and dizzinformation

 [Gentlereaders, please, bear with me. If you're sick of hearing about (insert a few bars of dramatic music here) the Russian Conspiracy you might be contemplating clicking off to elsewhere in cyberspace at this point. However, this letter/column isn't about (insert a few bars of dramatic music here) the Russian Conspiracy, it's about Purposeful Polarization.]



The WSJ article referenced above, Anti-Trump Democrats Invite Chaos, is a short editorial written by Ted Van Dyk who doesn't work for the paper and is described as being "...active for more than 40 years in Democratic administrations and campaigns..." succinctly states a list of reasons why our good friends on the left consider our newly appointed special prosecutor and calls for the Donald's impeachment to be justified.

He also succinctly demolishes them as there's no there, there -- the if/thens and leaks referenced above. He warns his fellow Depublicans that if they are successful in sidelining the Donald they could wind up with a true conservative in charge, which he considers to be a step backward from what they want. The Donald ain't a conservative, he's, well, the Donald. Personally, I think he's as surprised as the rest of us that he got elected, but that's another story.

Mr. Van Dyk's point is that the Depublicans (and America) would be better served if they were to find a way to compromise with the Donald on solutions for America's problems instead of perpetually pursuing Purposeful Polarization. (Sorry -- OK, not really.)

Mr. Van Dyk doesn't define purposeful polarization. In fact, he uses it only once, and towards the end of his article. He states that if we're to find some sort of rational compromise, "...purposeful polarization must give way to constructive engagement." Somebody needs to put that message on a t-shirt. To quote me (someone's gotta do it), "Compromise, don't demonize."


And then, talk about perfect timing (for my purposes at least), the Donald's proposed (he ain't the king, the 535 selfless representatives of the people have to pass it) 2018 budget hits the street. Let the games and the bonkercockie begin!

The Donald's man at Management and Budget, Mick Mulvaney, unleashes the $4,100,000,000,000 buck beast upon the world and takes his show on the road to promote it. Like most of its modern predecessors, and in the time-honored tradition of The Gummit, it's a vast tome containing some truth and a lot of lies financial projections and assumptions extending out for a decade. In other words, it's chock full of guesstimates and ignores the fact we choose an administration every four years, not ten.

Cue the Cacophony.

The opposition party, and everyone/anyone who will, at least theoretically, be receiving less largess from Uncle Sugar, predict the end of civilization as we know it. The Infotainment Industrial Complex (IIC) tends to agree.

Fortunately, the objectivity and truth obsessed contingent of the IIC, the press, steps in to save us from ourselves. "Trump seeks to slash $3.6 trillion of spending in austere budget" according to a reuters.com headline from 5.23.17.

"By Roberta Rampton | WASHINGTON

U.S. President Donald Trump asked lawmakers on Tuesday to cut $3.6 trillion in government spending over the next decade, taking aim at healthcare and food assistance programs for the poor in an austere budget that also boosts the military."

This is not an editorial, this is allegedly straight news. Note she (I hope I'm using Ms. Rampton's preferred pronoun and honorific) also uses the decade (five congressional and two presidential elections from now) gambit.

Ms. Rampton and Mr. Mulvaney (the budget whisperer) crunch the same numbers. He predicts a balanced budget -- ten years from now. She slyly, but clearly, informs us that the Donald is going to expand the military and abuse the poor to pay for it -- over the course of the next ten years.

So, my dearest grandstickies and great-grandstickies, I wish you luck. At the moment the adults seem to be leaving the room at an ever-accelerating pace. Oh, I almost forgot to mention, my favorite part, spending cuts by The Gummit aren't spending cuts. They're cuts to the amount of scheduled spending increases that The Gummit automatically increases each year. And no, I'm not making this up.

Two-thirds of, The Gummint, spending occurs on autopilot and includes scheduled increases. For example, the Donald's draconian, austere budget calls for spending $408,000,000,000 on Medicaid in the 2018 budget. This will be "cut" to only $688,000,000,000 by 2027. And no, I'm not making this up either. Poppa loves you.

Have an OK day.


[P.S. Gentlereaders, for 25¢ a week, no, seriously, for 25¢ a week you can become a Patron of this weekly column and help to prevent an old crank from running the streets at night in search of cheap thrills and ill-gotten gains.

If there are some readers out there that think my shtuff is worth a buck or three a month, color me honored, and grateful. Regardless, if you like it, could you please share it? There are buttons at the end of every column.]


©2017 Mark Mehlmauer   (The Flyoverland Crank)

If you're reading this on my website (where there are tons of older columns, a glossary, and other goodies) and if you wish to react (way cooler than liking) -- please scroll down.

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This Is Embarrassing...

This is a free bonus post. You will not be charged extra.

It looks as if the fact that I accidentally rendered what should've been this weeks post into Tralfamadorian is just the tip of an iceberg of issues. Having spent the better part of last week as a guest of the Tralfamadorians has caused even more problems than I realized.

The guys assured me that their excellent, high speed, WiFi connection was totally secure and that I should feel free to use it and the Chromebook they loaned me to do anything that I would be comfortable doing in my highly fortified lair here in the Ohio mountains.

But now I've got cascading problems because everything I did on their ship was rendered in to Tralfamadorian and I sent out some emails, among other things, written in a language that is used by only a handful of secret scholars that work for the actual powers that be on this planet and the resulting mess is much worse than I realized.

Also, the post in question was a collection of short subjects but I can only remember one of them. You see the Tralfamadorians have, what they claim, is a much more sophisticated version of a Neuralizer, the device the Men In Black used in the movies of the same name to erase memories of people's encounters with the MIB.

I was assured, by no less a person than the Braylyn him or her (it's complicated) self that only stuff they considered to be classified would be blocked out and that any side effects would be negligible. Well, I'm here to tell you, I'm having all sorts of memory issues and as to other side effects, well, don't get me started.

I was left with a customer service number to call in case of problems but when I call the phone is answered by what I can only assume is someone from Tralfamadore's equivalent of a third world Asain country. They speak a language that sounds like squeaks and whistles to my ear and the only thing I can make out is an occasional, "Hello, my name is Sally."

The only topic I can remember is that I wanted to recommend Scott Adam's blog to my tens of gentlereaders.

Now, pointing my limited readership to the blog of one of the world's most successful cartoonists (he's the guy behind Dilbert if you didn't know) might not be the best possible marketing move on my part. I mean, being a successful cartoonist with a strip that's literally published all over the world ought to be enough for anybody.

But no, he also publishes books and writes an interesting blog. But as I clearly state under my Welcome Who Is This Guy Anyway tab, my goal is to provide enlightened infotainment to my gentlereaders. Mr. Adams offers the best explanation I know of for the success of the Donalds current reality TV project, The Republicrat Primary Show

Scott Adams, a trained hypnotist, and both a student and master practitioner of what Dale Carnegie called how to make friends and influence people, uses the Donalds rise to explain and illustrate how to sway the masses primarily via emotional manipulation.

He even provides his readers with the titles of the books that can serve as textbooks if you wish to put your own home study course together.

At this point, I could easily generate several paragraphs, and I think I did, giving you my take on Mr. Adams take but since he does it so well it would be like putting legs on a snake. Instead, permit me to take a shortcut around that potential mountain of bonkercockie and arrive in Bottomlineburgh having saved us both some time and trouble.

As you're probably aware, it's settled science to state that we homo sapiens react to sensory input, of any sort, gut first brain later. This, as far as I know, is my own term, and it's also a deliberate, vast oversimplification on my part that reduces the results of multiple fields of study to a catchphrase.

I'm not embarrassed to go even farther and reduce a catchphrase to an acronym, GFBL. A man's gotta do what a man's gotta do in the service of his gentlereaders.

GFBL simply refers to the fact that, on the whole, we react emotionally, instinctually, physically, intuitively, automatically, etc. (this is a measurable phenomenon) before we (hopefully) react rationally and logically.

Mr. Adam's thesis is that the Donald, as well as no shortage of other folks, deliberately employ techniques that take advantage of this knowledge. The only defense we have is to know how it's done and who is doing it. I will be exploring the subject in future posts but Dilbert's creator can easily explain the Donald to you in the meantime.

Have an OK day.


[P.S. Gentlereaders, for 25¢ a week, no, seriously, for 25¢ a week you can become a Patron of this weekly column and help to prevent an old crank from running the streets at night in search of cheap thrills and ill-gotten gains.

If there are some readers out there that think my shtuff is worth a buck or three a month, color me honored, and grateful. Regardless, if you like it, could you please share it? There are buttons at the end of every column.]


©2015 Mark Mehlmauer   (The Flyoverland Crank)

If you're reading this on my website (where there are tons of older columns, a glossary, and other goodies) and if you wish to react (way cooler than liking) -- please scroll down.

Round and Round and Round We Go

I'm a tweaker. No, not that kind of tweaker, I'm a post tweaker, by which I mean that I tweak my posts, not that I'm a consumer of recreational stimulants. I'm sorry to bother you with this but due to the fact my readership has snowballed (there are literally tens of people reading my work) I feel that I must be transparent about how I do things so as not to violate the trust of my readers. The fact is, I don't hesitate to make changes to anything you'll find written here.

Why? Kaizen. No, that's not a battle cry (KAI-ZEN!) it's a philosophy, and an attitude of sorts. I define it as continuous tweaking, the purpose of which is continuous improvement. I'll spare you a lecture on the who/what/when/where/why of the word because it would be boring and besides, I'm eminently unqualified to do so.

Let's just define it as a Japanese business philosophy that posits that continuous improvements (tweaking) are one of the best ways to deal with one of life's immutable laws, rust never sleeps. Toyota is really good at this sort of thing, I try to be. I don't think twice about changing my words around if I think that a given change enhances clarity or meaning, or might be funnier. So if you should have occasion to reread something you found here and it's different, well, don't be alarmed, it's me, not you.

Finally, it may be worth your while to reread anything you happened to have liked in the past, it might be better. It might not, but then you can rant about what a hoople-head I am. Kick me, spare your dog.

In my personal version of Kaizen, facts are very important. Sometimes, what is written in stone may turn out to be false and may require the services of your stone carver of choice for updates. However inconvenient this may be there's no way around it, not if you believe, as I do, that continually tweaking facts to reflect reality as it is, not as what we'd like it to be, is of the utmost importance.

I would like to rent a larger, nicer house than the one I do but if I refuse to acknowledge that I'm living in the best house I can currently afford, I risk creating a downward spiral that could end with me living in the back of my van. Though the van is paid for, my house is more comfortable and has a bathroom.

Now, when I, my snifficant others and/or the other kids on the playground have to hammer out how we're going to solve a given problem or deal with a given phenomenon, trying to agree on the facts of the matter is the place to start. If we can't agree on what's actually going on, we can't agree on a rational course of action or a solution.

The Donald, the preferred presidential candidate of wrestling and reality show fans everywhere, has assured himself, at the very least, a place in American history in part by exploiting recent violent tragedies perpetrated by illegal immigrants. He, along with our who needs context when there's blood in the water media, often ignore one inconvenient fact.

Multiple studies (feel free to google among yourselves) have come to the conclusion that immigrants, legal or not, are less likely to commit crimes of all sorts, than the natives. Round and Round and Round we go.

So, are cops deliberately killing African Americans? Is the Black Lives Matter movement correct in asserting that they are and that this justifies people chanting, "Pigs in a blanket, fry 'em like bacon," during protest marches? We don't know.

There are no legally mandated national reporting requirements for the FBI to create a database to try and answer the question. This doesn't prevent people on either side of the question from quoting from what statistics there are in order to promote their cause. But not only do we not truly know, there's no objective effort underway to find out, at least that I'm aware of. Round and Round and Round we go.

We do know that African-Americans, roughly 13% of the population of the US, commit slightly more than half of all murders and that they are mostly killing other black folks. More than 90% of murdered African-Americans are killed by other African-Americans.

Obviously, the average black citizen is just as unlikely to be a killer as the average white citizen, considerably less than 1% of the 13% I would think. Finding a solution to this factual problem would seem to be of benefit to both blacks and whites. So what. If you bring it up you're a racist if you're white, and if you're black, an uncle Tom. Round and Round and Round we go, where we stop, nobody knows.

"Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passions, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence." John Adams

Have an OK day.


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©2015 Mark Mehlmauer   (The Flyoverland Crank)

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