Make America Great: Stepping into the Future

While it can't be said that America was ever great in practice, an argument could be made for it having been great in concept. Or, at least, in concept in its own collective consciousness. If that time existed, and I think it did, it was in the post-World War II years and lasted up to around 1970. The assassination of Kennedy and, then, King wounded it, but, really, it was Nixon who drove a stake right into the heart of the idea of American greatness. Then he twisted it around a bit and pissed on the corpse for good measure.

Let's take a quick look at post-WWII America:
First, America had just saved the world. Almost literally. Whether that was actually true or not doesn't matter, because that's how Americans viewed it.
Second, America was helping to rebuild the world, including offering great assistance to peoples who had just been its enemies. Sure, maybe some of that was motivated by the guilt of having nuked Japan but, still, we were doing it.
Third, there was a push toward equality for all. True, it hadn't gotten there, but people began to see it, finally, as a possibility. It brought hope.
Fourth, World War II led the US into a technology boom, which was heightened when Russia launched Sputnik. We had a great focus on education and science and the future, and we really believed that anything and everything was possible.
Fifth, because we believed in the future, we began to build for the future and infrastructure expenditures show it. It was all rather altruistic because it was an idea, not for those doing it, but for those who would come after.

That was the environment the Boomer generation grew up in, one in which there was huge growth, plenty of everything which was handed to them on a platter so they didn't have to work for it, and the future was so bright they had to wear shades. Perhaps, it's no wonder they long for "the good old days."

Of course, their focus is on the physical output of the ideals of a previous generation, ideals they themselves don't hold. They are a generation of consumers and profit and, now, through Trump (#fakepresident), Republicans are engaged in an act of necrophilia. The focus on coal and other dead industries is nothing more than trying to fuck a corpse back to life.

And the worst part? Trump (#fakepresident) is doing it on live TV and twitter for the whole world to watch, dragging us along for the ride. Not that Turkeyneck McConnell, Paul Ryan, and a slew of others aren't humping away with him.

I think the only way to step into the future is to push the Boomers out of power. Probably all of them. Even the "good" ones (and I do think there are some good ones). Leave them to have their orgy of the dead on their own.

It's time to stop letting the future slip away.

Because we are well on our way to not even being on the bus to the future. It's like we were driving that bus, then let China take over, and, now, we're just getting off entirely.

There are so many things on the verge of happening:
Self-driving cars
Flying cars
Sustainable energy
Laser guns! (oh, wait, China already did this!)
a Mars colony
Asteroid mining
Feeding the whole world
Curing cancer
Well, I could go on for a while...

Do you know why none of those things are actually happening? Boomers and their fear of profit loss by not being allowed to rape the Earth and kill species.

It's time to put or focus on the technologies of the future because we can't go there by trying to make coal the fuel of the future. It's the fuel of a long-dead past, and we need to leave it there.

Look, I'm not saying you're ever going to get that personal jetpack, but, if you do, it certainly won't be coal powered. It's time to get rid of the G.Old.P. They are the proverbial weight around our collective neck tying us to the past. Personally, I'm tired of the past.
It's time to step into the future. I want to see it before I'm dead.

The Alphabet of Politics (this week)

Writing the April poem was much more difficult than I thought it would be. Not because it was poetry and poetry is not my strength (I took that difficulty into account before I began and sought assistance from my wife, the Queen of Rhythm (credit where credit is more than due)) but because writing anything about politics right now is... is...
Writing politics right now is like trying to juggle eggs during a major earthquake while more eggs are falling from the sky. You can only deal with the egg in your hand and you can't make any plans about future eggs and you can't figure out why eggs are falling from the sky.

To put it another way: It's chaos.
Needless to say, many things in the poem changed during the month due to changing circumstances.
Like chickenshit Paul Ryan effectively resigning. He wants to run for President, I'm sure, and that will never happen unless he manages to climb out of the shithole he helped create.
Well, I'm not going to go through all the things that manipulated the end result. It is what it is at the moment.

Here's the whole thing all in one place with only a few minor edits here and there; however, there is an alternate version below reflecting things that had been planned then scrapped due to the aforementioned chaos.


Abortion is A, a right fundamental,
the Constitution says it's her choice.

B for the boomers, they've gone fully mental,
only heeding their own selfish voice.

C is for Congress and its very brown thumb
shoved eagerly up its own ass.

D is for data; Facebook plays dumb
while selling you out for hard cash.

E for the Earth, if we don't keep it cool,
we'll sink in a watery grave.

F is for fake news. Your feed is a tool
for Russia to make you its slave.

G are the guns that we buy without limit,
no matter the state of your mind,

and H, the health care and need of a clinic
you'll find you're already denied.

I is for I.C.E. on which they want to put you,
cold storage without any rights

or the J that is justice, which they eschew,
unless, of course, you're skin is all white.

K is for Kushner who doesn't have clearance,
but no one's crying you lost it.

L is the Left and its public adherence.
Be aware, we're not gonna quit.

M is for mass shootings and the Right's lack of care
about our kids dying in their schools,

which is why we have N for #neveragain
and why the Right will all look like fools.

O for Obama whom we'd like to have back.
He was never a laughing stock.

P is for porn star and her breathtaking rack
and Cohen behind a padlock.

Q is for quiet for which I long and pine.
If only they'd learn how to behave.

R is for racists and lyin' Paul Ryan.
Turns out he's like Robin the Brave.

S is for schools where we ought to have guns,
says DeVos, to keep out the bears.

T is for Trump; he believes he's "the one,"
but, really, he's just putting on airs.

U is for under, the water I mean;
Now is your time to go to the coast.

V is for violence which cops seem so keen
to use against black folks the most.

W is for "wag the dog" or maybe for war
all to keep you from looking at

X-rated tapes, but not the ones in your drawer,
the ones with Russian "pussycats."

Y is for you and how you need to go vote;
it's time to get out and fight

for Z, zero tolerance, not just a note
that we're through with this shit from the Right.

copyright Andrew and Sarah Leon 2017

Also this:

Abortion is A, a right fundamental,
the Constitution says it's her choice.

B for the boomers, they've gone fully mental,
only heeding their own selfish voice.

C is for Congress and its very brown thumb
shoved eagerly up its own ass.

D is for Dreamers and how we've left them the crumbs.
It's time to give them a pass.

E for the Earth, if we don't keep it cool,
we'll sink in a watery grave.

F is for fake news. Your feed is a tool
for Russia to make you its slave.

G are the guns that we buy without limit,
no matter the state of your mind,

and H, the health care and need of a clinic
you'll find you're already denied.

I is for I.C.E. on which they want to put you,
cold storage without any rights

or the J that is justice, which they eschew,
unless, of course, you're skin is all white.

K is for Kushner who doesn't have clearance,
but no one's crying you lost it.

L is the Left and its public adherence.
Be aware, we're not gonna quit.

M is for mass shootings and the Right's lack of care
about our kids dying in their schools,

which is why we have N for #neveragain
and why the Right will all look like fools.

Oh Shit! We're all gonna die in nuclear fire!
How are we back in the 80s?!

P is for porn star and her breathtaking rack
and Cohen behind a padlock.

Q is for quiet for which I long and pine.
If only they'd learn how to behave.

R is for racists and lyin' Paul Ryan.
Turns out he's like Robin the Brave.

S is for schools where we ought to have guns,
says DeVos, to keep out the bears.

T is for Trump; he believes he's "the one,"
but, really, he's just putting on airs.

U is for under, the water I mean;
Now is your time to go to the coast.

V is for violence which cops seem so keen
to use against black folks the most.

W is for women and it's certainly time
for #metoo and all their voices heard.

Enough x-rated plant sex from Harvey Weinstein.
C'mon, you know he's a fat turd.

Y is for you and how you need to go vote;
it's time to get out and fight

for Z, zero tolerance, not just a note
that we're through with this shit from the Right.

copyright Andrew and Sarah Leon 2017

Racists (and also Paul Ryan)

R is for racists and lyin' Paul Ryan.
Turns out he's like Robin the Brave.

Voting by Mob Mentality

Okay, so, this is one of those posts where I'm going to be talking some psychology. I'm going to be working from some general principals, and I'm not going to be citing references. That's because I'm not looking up any new information, not that I would probably cite references even if I was. Basically, if you don't trust me to know what I'm talking about, you should do your own research to verify the things I'm going to say. Or even if you do trust me to know what I'm talking about. I frequently do verification research even on people I trust. Heck, I do verification research on myself all the time just to make sure I have the details correct before I actually post something.

Facts matter. Science matters. Stay educated.

Here's an example of why you should research:

Common sense and general accepted practice over the last decade or so says that group efforts results in better work than individual efforts. This is why teams have become such a thing in business and in schools. The problem is that research shows that group tasks result in overall inferior work because the work is dragged down to the level of the least competent member of the group. It's one of those things where you can't go faster than the slowest member of your team. Basically, rather than the work being elevated by the more competent members, the more competent members have to dumb down to operate on a level with the least competent members.

And that goes against conventional wisdom of how these team efforts work, so people keep proponing group efforts over individual efforts because they don't bother to look at the science. So, go ahead, go look at the research and the data, the actual science. Stop listening to conventional "wisdom."

Speaking of humans in groups, one of the principles of psychology and sociology is that people in groups, also, tend to become, let's say, less intelligent as the groups get larger. Groups of any sort tend toward the lowest common denominator. [As a complete aside, this is an important thing to acknowledge when you look at the FACT that Republicans tend to be less intelligent and less educated than Democrats. The lowest common denominator on the Republican side of things is MUCH lower than on the Democrat side of things.] This is how mobs start, because people of lower intelligence are more easily riled up, but, once one gets a few people riled up, it spreads through the group. It is literally like an infection.

Recently, The New York Times published an article in which Satan (oh, I mean, Steve Bannon) is quoted as saying that the media didn't understand the forces that drove Trump into office. I think he's right. The media didn't understand what was happening at the time -- but, then, no one did except, perhaps, Trump and Satan himself (oh, I meant Bannon again) -- and they still don't understand now. However, it came to me the other day, and it was one of those "d'oh!" moments where you have to wonder why you didn't see it sooner, especially since the correct comparisons were being made.

Trump got to office on mob mentality. Seriously, think about every Western you watched as a kid and remember the lynch mob scenes and how the crowd was chanting, "Lock her up! Lock her up!" Oh, that's not what they were chanting? Same thing, though. Trump riled up a mob, formed a posse, and rode out to get himself someone to lynch. And got elected to the highest office in the world on the energy of what amounts to no more than a lynch mob. Only, this time, there is no white hat to step in between the mob and the instigator and talk them down. As if that has ever really been a thing anyway.

The problem with mobs, though, is that they take a lot of energy to keep going. On their own, mobs are short-lived entities that begin to dissipate from the fatigue of the individuals within the mob. In short, it's easy to get a mob all worked up (you can look at Trump's rallies to see that), but they take energy to keep them going. They take somewhat constant agitation.

Trump needs the mob. He needs his posse. His lynch mob. This is not just the energy that keeps him going, that he feeds off of (it is that, too); this is the energy that is keeping him in office. As long as the mob stays riled, the Republicans will fall in line behind Trump and whatever insane thing he is doing. Republicans have come into the realization that to go against Trump is to go against the very people who got them into office, and they can't risk offending those people, because the mob will turn on them just as quickly as it goes after liberals and Democrats.

Because Trump needs the mob, he has to continually agitate them to keep them riled up. This is, at least in part (the rest of it is because he has no impulse control and can't stop his tongue and his fingers from saying whatever stupid thing comes into his head), the reason Trump says and does outrageous things that have no basis in fact or reality, like demanding an investigation into voter fraud. It doesn't matter if the claim is ludicrous, because it keeps his base riled up and mob like. The mob has no logic or thought. It reacts to Trump on emotion and faulty instinct.

What, then, is the answer to the mob issue? How do we get people to slow down and actually apply thought and logic to Trump? [As if most people (and those people in particular) use much thought and logic to begin with.] I don't have a good answer to that. Generally speaking, the way to stop a mob is to let it play itself out, but Trump seems especially good at keeping his base agitated and in play for him. And, honestly, part of that is due to us, those who are standing against Trump. When we react to something Trump has done, like the Muslim travel ban, it serves to foment his followers without much work from him, allowing him to go off and do things like hosting special screenings of Finding Dory [I bet Trump feels a special connection to Dory and her inability to keep anything in her head.] or, you know, put Satan on the National Security Council.

The other thing that can stop a mob is a sudden shock to the system, so to speak, something which instantaneously catches the mobs attention. For that, it's possible that Trump could do our job for us, not that we should count on that.

At any rate, I think it's important to know what you're dealing with and that it's probably pointless to engage with Trump supporters in any kind of rational discussion. You can't reason with a mob. Or with someone in an abusive relationship. It just makes the person defend the abuser, put the person on the same side with the abuser. You have to wait for them to realize they are being abused and be ready to confront it. That's the current state of Trump supporters. Eventually, Trump will do something that will affect each of them personally, then you'll see them get it, get that Trump is a liar and a cheat and has just been using them for his own profit.

Eventually, Trump, already the least liked President a week into his presidency, will have no one left on his side... except Republican politicians (>cough< McConnell >cough cough< Paul Ryan >cough<) whose heads are stuck too far up Trump's ass for them to get away.