The History of the World, Epilogue

Ruh-Roh!

Image by JJ Jordan from Pixabay

This weekly column consists of letters written to my perspicacious progeny — the Stickies — to advise 'em now and haunt them after I'm deleted.

Trigger Warning: This column is rated SSC-65: Sexy Seasoned Citizens   

About 

Glossary 

Featuring {Dana}: Persistent auditory hallucination and charming literary device 

"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times..." -Charles Dickens

Dear Stickies (and gentlereaders),

From the Department of Fun Facts: In 1790 most Americans lived on farms; about 90% of our predecessors used a rooster for an alarm clock. 

But then, between 1870 and 1920 roughly 11,000,000 people said goodbye to Ma and Pa and moved to cities to take advantage of industrialization and 25,000,000 (legal) immigrants joined them. Obviously, this was a really big feckin’ deal that changed everything. 

Yes, Virginia, we are a nation of immigrants. 

We’re currently in the midst of a hi-tech/communications revolution that is also changing everything that started late in the last century and continues apace. The more things change, etc.

By the late 1970s, the seemingly unstoppable post-World War Two American economic boom collided with a booming global economy. What seemed like suddenly at the time (trust me, I was there) the American steel industry, which actually had been gradually declining, more or less collapsed. In short order, it was followed by a general hollowing out of the American industrial base. 

The rust belt started rusting and we’ve been arguing over who and/or what the cause was and what should’ve been/should be done about it ever since. 

Jimmy Carter made us feel like it was game over but Ronald Reagan made us feel like it was a new season and we were bound to come out on top. 

The roaring nineties, the result of the rapid spread of the internet and the seemingly endless possibilities for new ways to make money, made us think Regan may have been right. It was only a matter of time before all those economic refugees from the factories and the mills would be reabsorbed into the economy, just like the unemployed buggy whip makers eventually were after the last time something like this happened. 

The whole world was going to prosper by adopting the aforementioned pursuit of self-interest, division of labor, and freedom of trade. The American way (a phrase that I suspect most of my younger gentlereaders may not truly appreciate the meaning and significance of) had triumphed. It was The End of History and the good guys (us) had won.  

Big BUT...

China’s been doing its level best to prove that economic freedom (well, more or less) is perfectly compatible with draconian restrictions on political and personal freedom powered by cutting-edge technology — much of which they purchased or stole (and continue to steal) from the Western Barbarians.

The Pooteen is doing his level best to prove that history's not over and that bloody wars of attrition haven’t gone out of style, particularly for the dick-tater class. 

Meanwhile, here in the land of the free and the home of the brave, it turns out that you can’t print money and accumulate massive debt without unleashing the inflation dragon after all. 

Oopsie. 

Ya’d think this would call attention to the possible long-term effects of a cumulative 2% inflation rate, that’s now regarded as the minimum price we should/must pay for fiat money that’s backed by nothing much, would be getting more attention. 

{I’ll bite, why should we care about that?}

It’s the reason we have to play/are at the mercy of the stock market. Living within your means and saving up your dough is nowadays a suckers bet. You have to bet on the stock market and pray the value of your house (of cards) doesn’t collapse before you do. 

I’m not going to explore the fighting of endless wars… or the fact the Democratic Party has been taken over by relatively tiny groups of Wokies, Greenies, and folx on the sexual fringe… or that the Republican Party gave us the Donald, a gift that just keeps on giving… or that both parties are incapable of compromise on issues normal, everyday Americans would like to compromise on and then move on… or mention that Hollywood, academia, certain corporations and much of the mainstream media, have chosen sides and pursue their agenda like the devoted members of a cult. Or…

{Could we move on, please?}

Point taken, Dana. I’m primarily concerned about the Woke folx, many of them the postmodern versions of Lenin's useful idiots, who think they are changing the world but are actually controlled by duplicitous tech oligarchs with the help of a corrupt clerisy. Folx that take their salaries and bennies for granted, and sneer at the beliefs and lifestyles of people with blue collars who built (and maintain) America. 

Having gleefully “disrupted” millions of people out of a job they’re now working their bums off building robots and developing artificial intelligenci to disrupt millions more. 

I’m concerned that no shortage of techies are telling us that it’s only a matter of time before our machines and technology will be smarter than we are and might decide to delete our dim, inefficient, species -- yet keep working to make it happen. 

I’m concerned that irregardless, millions of us will be out of work and that this will finish off the middle class.

{On the bright side, that could solve the climate change thing.}   

I hope I’m wrong, but this jaded old man has a new reason for getting out of bed in the morning. I'm hoping to live long enough to see if I’m wrong (yet again) before I’m deleted. 

Poppa loves you,

Have an OK day

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The History of the World (Condensed), Ch. 8

Image by JJ Jordan from Pixabay

This weekly column consists of letters written to my perspicacious progeny — the Stickies — to advise 'em now and haunt them after I'm deleted.

Trigger Warning: This column is rated SSC-65: Sexy Seasoned Citizens   

About 

Glossary 

Featuring {Dana}: Persistent auditory hallucination and charming literary device 

“The past does not repeat itself, but it rhymes.” -Mark Twain

{Hey, you used that quote already.}

This is true, Dana, but I think it's perfect given that the world-changing events we’re currently in the midst of are as dramatic as the Industrial Revolution.

Dear Stickies (and gentlereaders),  

The stage was all set. The United States of America was born, smack dab in the middle of the Northern half of the Earth's Western Hemisphere. Most of the country was not too hot in the summer or too cold in the winter.

{That sounds vaguely familiar for some reason...}

Although both North and South America had been populated, more or less, for as long as the rest of the planet they were what a modern-day property developer would describe as radically underdeveloped, a viewpoint also held by the Europeans who "discovered" it.

The H. sapiens who called it home at the time begged to differ. 

Unfortunately for them, some Europeans proved that if one were to sail far enough west from Europe one would neither be killed by sea monsters nor fall off the edge of the world — as had been predicted by some very intelligent people, the Earth turned out to be round. 

Also unfortunately for those who were here first, the European's technology for killing other people (a practice that many of the locals also enthusiastically embraced) was far superior to that of the locals. They firmly believed that God was on their side and that this justified all sorts of barbaric behavior (as it did back home) and they also brought all sorts of diseases with them that the locals hadn't been cursed with but were about to be.

But after no end of false starts here, there, and even over there, they cobbled together a country theoretically based on the freedom to pursue happiness as each citizen so defined it as long as they avoided stepping on each others toes as much as possible. 

They thrived and prospered like nobody's business despite the fact they were as flawed as H. sapiens still are and despite no shortage of bad behavior and hooge mistakes. 

H. sapiens will be H. sapiens. 

{Hold up there, Sparky. Your so-called history of the "world" can be summed up by saying that for thousands of years, all sorts of stuff happened all over the globe but it was all a mere prelude that led up to the establishment of the U.S. I don't think that...}

Balderdash. I've clearly pointed out that all sorts of stuff happened that somehow/fortunately eventually begat Western Civilization which somehow begat the USA (the best the world's done so far) despite the fact H. sapiens are naked apes that frequently behave accordingly. 

I've never claimed that other cultures haven't done/continue to do all sorts of cool stuff from which all naked apes have benefited greatly. However, I maintain that overall, America is as good as it's gotten. My bias has been abundantly clear from the very beginning and I've pointed out that while we should be proud we should also be humble, to which I would add, we should also be grateful.

Now, where was I ... "They thrived and prospered like nobody's business despite the fact they were as flawed as H. sapiens still are and despite no shortage of bad behavior and hooge mistakes. H. sapiens will be H. sapiens." -me

{Sheesh...}

Big BUT...

Native Americans were, and still are, treated abominably.

Slavery was and still is the nation's original sin.

Women were considered by many to be second-class citizens and didn't get the right to vote in America till 1919.

These are merely, in my semi-humble opinion, the three biggies. There are literally thousands of other documented injustices. But slavery, the suppression of women, and the exploitation and slaughter of a given indigenous population by foreign invaders was and still is, in no shortage of locales the rule, not the exception, since forever. 

I maintain that some dramatic progress has been made in America since 1776 but there is, and always will be, a long way to go given the nature of the game and the creatures who play it.   

History is fascinating and illuminating but these are dangerous times, apparently even more than usual given recent developments so we need a little less relitigating of the past and a lot more of looking the present in the eye just now.

We don't have to wait and see if the Artificial Intelligenci will end us. 

We have perfected the technologies we use to kill one another in that we now can kill everyone if the nukes are launched or the right/wrong micro-cooties escape/are released from the labs. There's a Woke Mind virus loose in the world that's causing more than a few people who are products/beneficiaries of Western Civilization to promote cultural suicide.

{That's a lot of something/something elses in the same paragraph... are you/we done?}

Not quite. Next week is an epilogue, Ruh-Roh!, and then I'm/we're done.

{Ruh-Roh?} 

Poppa loves you,

Have an OK day

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The History of the World (Condensed), Ch. 7

How we got so rich

Image by JJ Jordan from Pixabay

This is a weekly column consisting of letters to my perspicacious progeny — the Stickies — to advise 'em now, haunt them after I'm deleted.

Trigger Warning: This column is rated SSC-65: Sexy Seasoned Citizens   

About 

Glossary 

Featuring {Dana}: Persistent auditory hallucination and charming literary device 

History is a set of lies agreed upon." -Napoleon Bonaparte

Dear Stickies (and gentlereaders),  

This is a looong chapter. 

For the record, I've been told by people whose opinion I trust that my columns should be shorter... or longer... or that I should start a podcast or make YouTube videos since nobody reads anymore and I'm wasting my time. Or that...

Well, I'm stickin' with writing columns that are roughly 750 to 1,000 words (not this time though) and have no plans to change since I've reached a point where I'm pretty sure I'll not make any money for my efforts no matter which direction I take so I write to please myself and my biggest fan, my big brother Ed, while I'm waiting to wake up dead. 

Theo was to Vincent as Ed has often been to me.

This is why I've abandoned all the various and sundry ways that exist to "monetize" my work, none of which have gone anywhere. I write for me, Ed, Arletta, and anyone else out there who might enjoy my work and the slight chance the Stickies will benefit from it. 

That said, Chapter 7 is the longest one yet. If you'd like to save some time and get on with your day permit me to summarize: A democratic republic and a more or less free market have made us a very rich and more or less free country.   

Macroeconomists, like all social scientists, are much better at explaining things (or at least trying to) afterward than at making predictions. Why? Variables. Just like your favorite weatherperson, they have to deal with myriad known unknowns, not to mention the unknown unknowns. 

That is to say, they try to make predictions about systems that are so complex in nature that an educated guess is as good as it gets.

This is why a minimally regulated market works better than a highly regulated market. This is why when you go to the supermarket most of the thousands of competitively priced products they carry are usually in stock — literally millions of specialists pursuing their own self-interest and freely trading with each other. 

This is why communism and strict versions of socialism don't work, it's physically impossible for politicians and bureaucrats to efficiently do what the market does effortlessly, and if we’re truly free, we’re free to trade. Common sense suggests that both sides in a given transaction are getting something they want out of it or it wouldn’t happen. 

Life on Earth is what it is in spite of what we would like it to be. There’s no guarantee the result of a given transaction is going to be completely fair and equitable for both sides. Let the buyer beware, but let the buyer buy —if they want to. Prosecute the weasels, enforce the contracts, read Consumer Reports and ask Dad, Mum, or your Dutch uncle what they think. 

Then secure your _____ and jump.

You’ll win some, you’ll lose some, and some will have mixed results. Take comfort in the fact that when you win one the other side may hate and resent you, or at least be thoroughly depressed, often without even having ever actually met you. The entrepreneur that went bankrupt because you didn’t think their world-changing product or concept was worth your money comes to mind. 

There are no unemployment checks for failed entrepreneurs. 

Of course, if you fail on a large enough scale The Fedrl Gummit may step in and save your bum. And that’s not fair — unless of course, your job or business is on the line. But that’s not how it’s supposed to work, and you can’t count on it.

Adam Smith said, “Consumption is the sole end and purpose of all production; and the interest of the producer ought to be attended to, only so far as it may be necessary for promoting that of the consumer.”

In other words, the cut-throat competition in the marketplace usually ensures that the customer wins. The hooge-honking downside is that any given producer — including owners, management, and labor — is subject to being destroyed by its competition.

“The art of economics consists in looking not merely at the immediate but at the longer effects of any act or policy; it consists in tracing the consequences of that policy not merely for one group but for all groups,” -Henry Hazlitt. Notice the use of the word art, not science.

{Oh yeah,? Well, that’s all well and good but NAFTA screwed everything up and now they want...}

Whoa there cowboyperson, obviously anyone who lost a job because of NAFTA may understandably be reconsidering not only the wisdom of free trade agreements but capitalism in general. This was probably on their minds while they were driving to job interviews in their "American" made car that’s chock full of parts manufactured all over the globe (as practically everything is).

Yes, people lose jobs when a trade agreement is implemented and/or a tariff is eliminated. Other jobs are created or expanded, but unfortunately, this is virtually impossible to document with anything resembling precision, which is why both sides can plausibly argue their position. 

Economists disagree on all sorts of things but most agree that free trade will, overall, generate at least as many jobs in a given country as it erases. Also, the consumer (that is, everyone) almost always wins. The producers (and by extension, their employees) may win or lose. We all want good, secure jobs. But we also all want lots of food, toys, and fun — for which we wish to pay as little as possible.

Finally, the Reality Checks, Caveats & Premises department has it on good authority that the global economy is a fact, not a possibility. Adapt or get run over like a cute little bunny that’s incapable of grasping the potential impact of an 18-wheeler passing through the neighborhood.

After WW2 ended America was the beneficiary of a boom that lasted for roughly 35 years during which you could drop out of school and still get a job that would provide a good living, and maybe even a pension. The rest of the world, having been more or less trashed by WW2, watched and learned.

This was a sort of temporary golden age that hadn't been the case before the war and hasn't been since.

More than a few of our fellow Earthlings thought they might also enjoy eating regularly and being able to seal the couch in plastic to keep it nice. Liberty might be nice too but that proved to be a lot harder and much more complicated. Life on Earth being what it is, instead of what we would like it to be (a phrase that bears repeating), there are always gonna be bullies that embrace their inner chimpanzee — and bullies need victims.

Nowadays, the US buys more stuff from the rest of the world than it sells to the rest of the world, but it exports more services than it imports. As of 2022, if you add total imports to total exports you discover that the total is almost $4,000,000,000,000. As of 2022, the GDP of the USA was $25,462,700,000,000. 

We're talkin' trillions, with a t, dude.

Our 35-year-old bubble of prosperity hasn't so much popped as gotten comparatively smaller, so far at least, because the rest of the world is blowing its own bubbles. We export more than we ever have in terms of dollar value even allowing for inflation and because of productivity gains we can do this with far fewer people than would have been needed in the past.

Our GDP would be even higher, but we're simultaneously dealing with labor shortages in certain industries and people dropping out of the workforce. As to exactly why the economists (of course) disagree. My guess is as good as yours, in fact, yours may be better.

Ever wonder if all those um... "undocumented" refugees fleeing political and economic corruption in certain politically and economically challenged countries south of the Rio Grande are responsible for certain other people's wages being lower than they might otherwise be?

Ever wonder if all those women who have flooded into the workplace since the women's liberation movement hit its stride are responsible for depressing wages for everyone who hasn't disproportionately benefited from a truly global economy?

I do, but I have no idea. Believe it or not, the experts don't agree on that either. Shocking, I know. Consult the worldwide web of all knowledge to find the answer you prefer.

And if that ain’t bad/confusing enough, now we have to deal with a communication/high-tech revolution. It’s like the industrial revolution on steroids (and there still isn’t much work for buggy whip makers) in that the rules of the game keep changing and nobody on the rules committee has a clue what the final draft is going to be.

And if that ain’t bad enough it turns out there is no rules committee, there are just H. sapiens hoping it all works out somehow, and that civilization-ending-sized asteroids keep missing the mother ship. 

It may be the best of times, but it might be the worst of times. As noted, not even the "experts" can be relied upon to accurately tell us what's next. Also, they’re acutely aware that throwing the wrong economic lever at the wrong time, considering how complex and interconnected the global economy is, can easily set off a cascade of unexpected and unwelcome consequences.

(To be continued...)   

Poppa loves you,

Have an OK day

Scroll down if you wish to share my work or access my golden oldies.   

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{With a buggy whip?}

The History of the World (condensed), Ch. 5

The United States and modern economics both began in the same year. 

Image by JJ Jordan from Pixabay

This is a weekly column consisting of letters to my perspicacious progeny — the Stickies — to advise 'em now, haunt them after I'm deleted.

Trigger Warning: This column is rated SSC-65: Sexy Seasoned Citizens   

About 

Glossary 

Featuring {Dana}: Persistent auditory hallucination and charming literary device 

"History becomes more and more a race between education and catastrophe." 

                                                                                          -H.G. Wells

Dear Stickies (and gentlereaders),  

In the year 1776, after a coupla hundred thousand years of just scraping by and occasionally killing each other while simultaneously trying to avoid being killed by a somewhat bloodthirsty Mother Nature, some H. sapiens launched the American experiment and a Mr. Smith published a book. 

Adam Smith was, and is, a well-regarded absent-minded professor with a first-rate mind. He gave up his day job as a popular professor at Glasgow University in 1764, to tutor and travel with a young Scottish nobleman (road trip!). 

They spent a couple of years touring continental Europe and met several leading thinkers of the day (e.g. Benjamin Franklin) and Mr. Smith was given a life pension by the grateful nobleman that enabled him to spend the next ten years or so working on his magnum opus, “An Inquiry Into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations.”

In other words, he set out to discover the best policies a given nation should pursue so that everyone could make a buck.

Warning: do not try to read The Wealth of Nations unless you enjoy the writing style of 18th-century academics (I’m thinking this is a relatively small group of people) and you’re much smarter and more patient than I am (I’m thinking this is a relatively large group of people). 

The commas and semicolons seemingly reproduce themselves as you try and decipher the text. Find a commentator that you trust to render Mr. Smith’s ideas into modern English.

In Mr. Smith’s defense, it ain’t easy to be one of the founders of a field of study (modern economics). Also, I must warn any kneejerk anti-capitalists that beating up on Mr. Smith because you think he was just another greed-head will make you look goofy as he’s well known for his belief that accumulating wealth and material goods won’t make you happy.

Besides inventing modern economics, he also explored morality and ethics. He wrote a book titled The Theory of Moral Sentiments that is still highly regarded. Incidentally, both it and The Wealth of Nations were best sellers in their day and literally changed the world.  

Adam Smith wanted to figure out what the optimal system was for a free people to attain whatever level of economic security they thought was necessary and appropriate to keep the wolf from the door. He also warned the world about crony capitalism and rent-seeking, two of the monsters currently attempting to strangle America to death. 

Although he was financially quite successful, he quietly and discreetly gave away most of his money and lived simply. I highly recommend P.J. O’Rourke’s, "On The Wealth of Nations”. Mr. O’Rourke was not an economist, which is not necessarily a bad thing. He was, however, very smart, very funny, and lived in the real world. I highly recommend any of his books, essays, and articles.

“Economic progress depends upon a trinity of individual prerogatives: pursuit of self-interest, division of labor, and freedom of trade,” says O’Rourke, stating the fundamentals of Smith’s thought. 

{That’s it? That’s all it takes for a country to be prosperous? Everdamnbody? I find that hard to believe.} 

Well, more or less, Dana The rule of law is also an essential component if you think that it’s important that everdamnbody should have to play by the same rules and that cheats and bullies should be spanked.  

Disclaimer: I’m a former, unapologetic, unrepentant wild-eyed free marketeer and libertarian who seems to be getting more and more conservative and nationalistic with each passing year in an effort to figure out how to mitigate the negative impacts of the global economy on my fellow Deplorables. 

However, capitalism has provided us with a level of prosperity that almost everyone who lived prior to about 1850 or so could only dream of. So I strongly disagree with the tendency of well-meaning (or otherwise) progressives, socialists, and communists to frequently use the word capitalist as an epithet. 

I describe myself as a sorta/kinda or bleeding heart libertarian (BHL), primarily because I’m all for the rationally designed safety net I mentioned earlier. Many libertarians think that’s wrong-headed or impossible. 

Also, there are political philosophers loose in the world who promote something they call BHL but some use terms like social justice and anti-racism, words, and concepts, that as currently defined by many, I have significant problems with. 

{What's that got to do with the history of the world?}

I guess it's a highly opinionated history of the word given the next three paragraphs. 

Communism, in spite of its adherent's claim that it would work if ever done properly, is an obvious dead end, often literally, as the 80 to 100 million bodies piled up in the last century in its name would seem to indicate. 

Socialism is a great idea, all we have to do is change human nature first and lock up all the screwballs like me that are obsessed with personal freedom. Progressivism and/or democratic socialism, or how to have your cake and eat it tooism, is the current flavor of the month for the Utopianists of the world. 

Many people want the benefits of a free market combined with a big, juicy welfare state with millions of rules and unionized bureaucrats, but someone else, preferably the evil rich, should pay the bill. Unfortunately, there just aren't nearly enough of them.

Back to Adam Smith. Smith’s work contradicted a widely held belief of his time, mercantilism. This is the belief that a nation’s wealth is determined by how much gold, silver, cash, ginormous TVs, etc. it can accumulate, after all, there’s only so much wealth to go around, right?

Therefore, you should export for the cash and block, or at least penalize, imports. This view of the world, which currently is enjoying a comeback, leads otherwise clear-thinking people to believe in the Boarding House Pie Fallacy.  

Say you're living in a boarding house (look it up, kids). It’s dinner time and Mrs. McGillicuddy is serving up her famous caramel-apple pie for dessert. Since there’s only so much pie to go around, and fat Freddie's at the table, it behooves everyone to employ a strategery that will ensure an equitable portion of pie. 

Mr. Smith (no relation to the Mrs. Smith of Mrs. Smith's Pies) contends that boarding house wisdom has limited applicability. 

There’s an easier and much more effective way to get what you want — that has the added benefit of not having to impose high tariffs (which begat high prices) and over-regulate anyone — the pursuit of self-interest, division of labor, and freedom of trade. Skilfully employed, these three ensure that everyone can have their own pie. 

Stay tuned.

(To be continued...)

Poppa loves you,

Have an OK day

Scroll down if you wish to share my work or access my golden oldies.   

I post links to my columns (and other stuff) on Facebook so that you can love me, hate me, or lobby to have me publically flogged.

The History of the World (Condensed), Ch. 4

 

Image by JJ Jordan from Pixabay

This is a weekly column consisting of letters to my perspicacious progeny — the Stickies — to advise 'em now, haunt them after I'm deleted.

Trigger Warning: This column is rated SSC-65: Sexy Seasoned Citizens   

About 

Glossary 

Featuring {Dana}: Persistent auditory hallucination and charming literary device 

"There is only one basic human right, the right to do as you damn well please. And it comes with the only basic human duty, the duty to take the consequences." -P.J. O'Rourke 

Dear Stickies (and gentlereaders),  

Chapter two ended with "And then, in 1776, the planet Earth finally caught a break" but chapter three began with <INSERT THE SOUND OF SCREAMING TIRES IN A PANIC STOP HERE>. I clarified that the end of history hadn't been reached, heaven hadn't come to Earth, and  H. sapiens still had feet of clay. Decks cleared, I present chapter four. I'd refresh my coffee at this point if I were you. 

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

Or...

Self-evidently, although we’re all unique in how we look, how smart we are, and what innate talents we have, nobody is automatically born better than anyone else. 

We are entitled to live as long as biology and fate permit; we’re free to pursue our own path and discover what it is that will keep getting us out of bed in the morning until we won't (or can't) get out of bed in the morning.  

I maintain that this is obvious — self-evident — to any more or less well-adjusted kid on the playground. I maintain that this is obvious to any emotionally healthy, clear-thinking grup. 

I maintain that any well-meaning (or not so well-meaning) king, cleric, or politically correct or corrupt bully that maintains otherwise is delusional and needs to be dealt with appropriately.

{Obvious huh?}

Yeah, Dana, at least to those of us fortunate enough to have been born into circumstances that permit us to take the concept for granted — and even many of us who weren't. Unfortunately, a um... more traditional way, the way of the all-powerful alpha male, is still in vogue hither and yon.    

We have two choices. The traditional way, the way of the alpha male and/or the occasional alpha female, the way of the dicktater, king or queen, the way of the high priest(ess), and the like — or the way of the rational (well, more or less) individual.

Rational people employ reason.

Wikipedia: “Reason is the capacity for consciously making sense of things, applying logic, establishing and verifying facts, and changing or justifying practices, institutions, and beliefs based on new or existing information.”

AKA critical thinking, an enemy of Critical Theory. 

Rationality is a buggy, crash-prone app still in beta testing. But for the dead, mostly white dudes that invented the USA, fortunately for us, reason was a thing, a very big thing. We got lucky. 

Many of them were the "1%" of their day, but back in their particular day something called the Age of Enlightenment (or Reason) was rockin’ the world, and a new meme was going around.

Say you decided that the traditional way of doing things only worked well for a tiny group of people and you could rewrite the rules, using reason, to set up a new system that benefited everyone equally, at least theoretically, what would you do?

What they did, after much wailing and gnashing of teeth, was to set up the USA. The wailing and gnashing continues, as it should in a democratic republic. 

Fortunately, the new system includes built-in mechanisms to fix and/or change what the Citizens of the Republic decide needs to be fixed and/or changed. It ain’t easy to change, and it shouldn’t be, considering how thin the veneer of rationality is.            

Emotionally healthy, clear-thinking kids and grownups realize they’re not the only kid on the playground and that just enough rules are necessary (this is the rule of law, as opposed to rule by an arbitrary boss) to ensure everyone has fun, shares the equipment, and that bullies are not allowed. 

This is called government and it requires that a few conditions be met in order for the people to remain as free as realistically possible. 

First, we the governed, get to decide what the rules are. Second, the rules should be as few in number as possible so that individuals remain as free as possible. Third, great care must be taken to avoid the potential hooge, honking, downside of democracy: a tyranny of the majority.

If a majority of the kids on the playground get together to ban little Timmy from the premises just because of his unfortunate tendency to pick his nose even though he’s not breaking any rules, a grownup (the rule of law) must step in to protect little Timmy’s right to be there. 

This is the why and what of the U.S. Constitution. America's called the American experiment because no one else in history had managed to pull off anything like it and many thought we wouldn’t either. Some still don’t, and there’s no guarantee that it will ultimately end well.

Now, just because we’re lucky enough to have been born members of the species that sits at the top of the food chain in the most prosperous nation the world has seen (so far at least) we still live in a dangerous, hostile world that guarantees nothing but our eventual death. 

It’s up to us to come up with food, clothing, and shelter and defend ourselves from those who want to kill us for fun or profit.

And yes, a nation as well off as America is morally required to install a rationally designed safety net to catch everyone that fate shoves off the trampoline, but not necessarily for those who deliberately jumped off because they thought it would be fun. 

I once heard a nurse that was the head of some organization or other declaring with passion and conviction that, “Healthcare is a right!” in a radio interview.

No, it’s not.

Life, freedom, and the pursuit of whatever it is that keeps us getting out of bed are the fundamental rights everyone obviously should get. But even these natural, fundamental rights are a reality, not just a potential reality, only for those fortunate enough to be born in a country and a culture that acknowledges and defends them. 

You may have noticed some world-class thugs look at things a bit differently.

Everything else you’re entitled to depends on what you and your fellow citizens agree upon and are prepared to work your bums off to pay for. 

If you don’t believe this, try performing the following experiment.

Have yourself stranded on a desert island without a crew from a reality television show. Raise your fist to the sky and DEMAND! food, clothing, and shelter (and healthcare), then wait and see what happens. 

Oh, and make sure you don’t let your situational awareness chops get rusty while you’re waiting because Mother Nature is notoriously oblivious to our rights. Like any good mom, if she has a favorite, she keeps it to herself, and she doesn’t seem to lose any sleep when her kids eat each other to stay alive.

Also, please note that you don’t have to ask nicely for life (however temporary), liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Self-evidently, unless Gilligan and company show up and turn out to be evil, drug-addled crazies (which would explain a lot), you'd be about as free as you can be within the physical limitations of life on Earth.

{Phew... talk about dated cultural references!}

And unless Mr. Howell has brought along a trunk full of fentanyl, you could stay as free as possible (all things considered) if you and the "seven stranded castaways" simply agreed to respect each other's unalienable rights.

(To be continued...)

Poppa loves you,

Have an OK day

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The History of the World (Condensed), Ch. 3

Image by JJ Jordan from Pixabay

This is a weekly column consisting of letters to my perspicacious progeny — the Stickies — to advise 'em now, haunt them after I'm deleted.

Trigger Warning: This column is rated SSC-65: Sexy Seasoned Citizens   

About 

Glossary 

Featuring {Dana}: Persistent auditory hallucination and charming literary device 

"The historian is an unsuccessful novelist." -H.L. Mencken

Dear Stickies (and gentlereaders),  

Last week, chapter two ended in the year 1776. But before moving on, permit me to explain...

{Wait-wait-wait. Company policy clearly states that new columns are to be posted on Friday evenings at 7:11 p.m.}

True, but in Vol. 4 of the S.O.P. manuals, page 39, it clearly states that if some idiot somehow deletes a completely completed post and spends at least an hour trying to retrieve it, he/she/they has 24 hours to reconstruct same and try again before adopting plan B. 

Now, chapter two ended with, "And then, in 1776, the planet Earth finally caught a break" which brings us to: 

Chapter Three

 

<INSERT THE SOUND OF SCREAMING TIRES IN A PANIC STOP HERE>

{Or insert the sound of a throat clearing, to preemptively fend off attacks by far lefties, far righties, Wokies, and the Intersectional Inquisition.}

At this point in our story, I must toss in a few paragraphs from the Reality Checks, Caveats & Premises Department (RCC&P) before proceeding.

The American experiment wasn't conjured out of thin air. The Greeks dabbled in democracy, the Romans ran a republic (at least for a while), and the Brits managed to make a Magna Carta. In my semi-humble opinion, the American experiment can be defined by quoting the most important passage of the Declaration of Independence:

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

If you accept that statement as a fundamental given (whether or not you believe in a creator), perhaps one of the most fundamental of givens… Well, If you don’t accept that statement, I fear it’s time for us to go our separate ways; you can keep the cat but I’m keeping most of the vinyl collection.

Big BUT, I freely acknowledge that the next sentence in the declaration could have been:

“Assuming, of course, that you are Caucasian and male."

That was undeniably the way America worked at the time and it was an undeniable flaw. However, it was the local version of how most of the world traditionally worked, a version of reality that lives on here and there.

However, I maintain that some dramatic progress has been made in the last 250 years or so, particularly when compared to however many thousands of years it was considered normal for a given Fred or Barney to club a cutie down at the waterhole to clean the cave and keep an eye on Pebbles and Bamm-Bamm while he and the boys were partying down at the Loyal Order of Water Buffaloes Lodge while being served and serviced by their slaves.

When my mum and dad got together they, and most other people, believed that a man’s job was to bring home the bacon and a woman’s job was to be a domestic engineer. Period. In light of the way many folks look at things today, including me, they weren't entirely correct. But I’m inclined to not only not judge them but to also say thanks. They weren’t evil, and incidentally, they were part of the generation that survived the Great Depression and won World War Two. 

While they were busy saving the world they didn’t know if there would be a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, an era of unprecedented prosperity that lasted from just after WW2 to the late 1970s and would benefit their spoiled kids more than them. Things started getting weird after that, which I’ll get into later.

Finally, let us acknowledge the elephant skulking in the corner of the room. H. sapiens will be H. sapiens. While I’m profoundly grateful for the dumb luck of being a child of, and living in, a country that’s a product of Western Civilization, I’m smarter than I look.

My gratitude is based on two things. Although I think Western Civilization in general, and the USA in particular, is the best we’ve done so far, both are as flawed and imperfect as the H. sapiens that somehow came up with them. Therefore a — We’re number one! We’re number one! — overheated sports fan sort of attitude can be as tacky as wearing socks with summer sandals. 

Let us be quietly smug. The coolest kid doesn’t have to go around telling people he’s (they're?) cool, that’s part of his/her/their, um, coolness. Also, an economic implosion here, a pandemic there, or an asteroid that's bigger than a bus — "Last stop, Earth!" — and the Dark Ages Digest could experience a sudden, dramatic increase in circulation.

(To be continued...)

Poppa loves you,

Have an OK day

Scroll down if you wish to share my work or access my golden oldies.   

I post links to my columns (and other things) on Facebook so that you can love me, hate me, or lobby to have me publically flogged. 

Update: For those of you who are not native Buckeyes but are wondering if they can legally acquire some weed the next time they visit my little corner of Flyoverland, the answer is still no. You can legally smoke it here, but you still can't legally buy it here. 

The House of Reps. (where the holdup is) returned from their month-long Christmas vacay (for one day, and then got back out of Dodge) to pass an override of our five-foot-tall governor's veto of a bill banning transexual women (dudes) from participating in women's sports, which he actually doesn't have a problem with.

But the bill also bans treating children for gender dysphoria. While he does object to surgically altering children (under 18) to treat gender dysphoria he thinks that doing so with hormones should be between them and their parents. 

Given that the override will not take effect if and until the State Senate returns to town and also votes to override, some rather cynical souls think the return of the Reps was a political stunt.  

In the meantime, some of the Reps are saying it could take they don't know how long to craft a bill to replace the citizen's initiative that passed last November that legalized weed with something more to their liking.  

{Cha-Ching!}

No comment. 

The History of the World (Condensed), Ch. 2

Image by JJ Jordan from Pixabay

This is a weekly column consisting of letters to my perspicacious progeny — the Stickies — to advise 'em now, haunt them after I'm deleted.

Trigger Warning: This column is rated SSC-65: Sexy Seasoned Citizens   

About 

Glossary 

Featuring {Dana}: Persistent auditory hallucination and charming literary device 

"The past does not repeat itself, but it rhymes." -Mark Twain

Dear Stickies (and gentlereaders),  

Chapter One ended with the beginning of civilization. Our story continues. 

...Next, depending on how you look at it, an awful lot of history happened — or a few things happened over and over again — and regularly something really awful happened. 

Rather like the life of a modern-day, average American Joe/Joan/J. Bagadonuts but subject to even more random acts of violence. They attacked us or we attacked them in the name of cash, conquest, revenge, God, the gods, hunger, honor, slaves, etcetera.

Fortunately, God was on our side or it would have been even worse. 

As Hobbes famously pointed out, life is “...solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.” Mr. H. was arguing that this is the natural state of man (he had a point) and that’s why we need an all-powerful ruler to keep us on the straight and narrow. 

He was wrong about that but we do need some form of government. This is how we keep the bullies on our playground in check and defend it from the bullies from other playgrounds.  

Once in a while, peace would break out but Mother Nature provides us with ways to stave off boredom and complacency — natural disasters and disease.

For example, say King Ed is sitting in the privy waiting for nature to take its course and his mind starts to wander because the only copy of Dark Ages Digest on hand is almost a year old. 

He’s been giving a lot of thought to attacking a kingdom just down the road because he’s got his fair share of bloodthirsty warriors and greedy nobles to keep happy and if he doesn’t keep them busy they may turn on him and/or each other for entertainment and booty.

He’s been through that before and knows that even if he and his allies triumph lots of innocent serfs, peasants, and slaves will be slaughtered. 

Collateral damage, sure, but since they're the ones that do most of the heavy lifting, and since lots of them die before reaching the age of thirty, you need to maintain a large inventory to dodge some significant downsides. He’s still short of virtual slaves, actual slaves, and cash from last season, not one of his better ones, and short on potential solutions as well. 

Things are so bad he’s considering hiring one of those expensive consultants his brother King Marty favors. He’s heard good things about a firm called DPD, Diabolical Plots by the Dozen, founded incidentally, by a distant ancestor of Vladimir Putin.

His ruminations are interrupted by a hysterical minion pounding on the door and screaming, “Your majesty, your majesty there are reports of plague (or flood, or fire, or hairy weather, or rapacious insects, or blight, or famine, etcetrine) in the kingdom!” 

This solves the problem, short term at least. Now, survival becomes everybody's Job-1. Assuming this isn’t an apocalyptic-level crisis and assuming that King Ed is one of the survivors he can deal with his other problem later.

This is how things rolled most days in most places. Why? Well, it’s either because we’re naked apes living in a dangerous world, or, someone screwed up the paradise we were provided with by God and he/she/they is still mad (the details depend on which creation myth you subscribe to). It wasn’t all bad though. 

Once in a while, a Joe or Joan or J. Bagadonuts was fortunate enough to have an actual boring day. Once in a great while, something truly cool happened.

Somebody came up with the wheel, someone perfected bronze, iron came along, the printing press was invented, Mr. and Mrs. Beethoven had a baby — that sort of thing. Being the clever creatures that we are, we even came up with all sorts of ways to use these breakthroughs for things other than killing each other.

H. sapiens are religious by nature, including the ones who claim not to be. Various entities, or his/her/their messenger(s), have regularly stopped by to light the path to paradise. This phenomenon continues apace, right up to this very moment. 

Nowadays, the entities and/or their messengers may be politicians, pundits, Greenies, Wokies, Trumpies, etc. The field has broadened considerably.

"We're the ones we've been waiting for" so let's "make America great again!" I think that...

{Whoa, Sparky, focus dude.}

Thanks, Dana, I've gotten ahead of myself. Where was I? Oh, yeah...

And then, in 1776, the planet Earth finally caught a break.

(To Be Continued...)

Poppa loves you,

Have an OK day

Scroll down if you wish to share my work or access my golden oldies.   

I post links to my columns (and other things) on Facebook so that you can love me, hate me, or lobby to have me publically flogged.