Representative Government would be okay......

......if it weren't for the representatives. I happen to believe that the best form of government would be a benevolent dictator. Unfortunately history has shown us time and time again that absolute power corrupts absolutely. Democracy is probably the next best thing but it is terribly inefficient, primarily because it calls for the attempt to satisfy the needs/wants of conservatives, liberals, seniors, generation Xs, the affluent Knob Hill group, the sandhillers, the blue collar, the white collar, the homeless and on and on. It's really a hopeless task, at best ending up with everybody being partially satisfied and partially dissatisfied. And it's made worse when elected officials, from the President down to an alderman lose sight of the purpose of their positions.

In my view the purpose of government is straight-forward. To protect the population against external and internal enemies, and to insure the right to pursue success and happiness as defined by the individual within the bounds of societies well being. It is not the job of government to provide success and happiness...to relieve the population of their responsibility to provide for themselves. And yet in my opinion that is exactly what Biden's budget in part is seeking to do. And why I'm glad that Senator Joe Manchin has dug in his heals. I don't think that he's grandstanding or playing to his constituents. I believe that he sincerely has what he believes to be the best interests of the people and the Constitution in mind by taking the stance he has taken. 

An article I read this morning prompted this post. As I see it this isn't an article about serving the people. It's an article about people wanting to keep or win jobs in Washington. It's about the Democrats worrying about their image because of the infighting regarding Biden's budget. I think that the two paragraphs excerpted below illustrate both the socialist agenda and the focus on personal political ambition.

"I'm obviously upset -- pissed off about what happened," said Rep. Tom Malinowski, a Democrat who represents a New Jersey swing district. "We certainly are not going to win an election spending the next year bemoaning the fact that Joe Manchin didn't do Build Back Better in December. We win by sprinting out of the starting gate in January."

"I think it's imperative that Democrats pass a measure to support children and families and the economic wellbeing of the American middle class and to take steps to address climate change," said Rep. Dean Phillips, a Minnesota Democrat. "If we do nothing, it would be a terrible reflection on Democrats."

So Tom Malinowski is pissed off. Good. Maybe when he gets un-pissed off he'll look at Manchin's budget objections and see them objectively for what they are about...more steps along the path to socialism.

Citation Needed

There are several physics/cosmology forums that I enjoy reading. The posters are mostly scientists and/or educators. Most of the threads/posts are over my head but I do occasionally learn something, and part of that is due to the way in which the forums are moderated. The forums deal with fact, or at least the best evidence available at the moment.

In the thread-opening and reply posts, all assertions, allegations and opinions must be supported by a credible, peer reviewed source. The moderators are quick to edit a post, indicating where a citation is needed, or issuing a warning if a statement strays too far off-topic or is offensive, and will ban a poster permanently for repeated warnings or a personal attack. I'd like to see the news media and public figures held to the same standard. It would be so refreshing to see the political far-left and far-right, and the leaders of the seemingly innumerable special interest groups be permanently muzzled, or at least compelled to stop their unsubstantiated claims.

I've chosen at random, a portion of a recent article by Tucker Carlson...it could have been an article by any number of extremists, to illustrate what I believe would have happened had the article been posted on one of the physics forums I mentioned. Actually, the post title alone would have gotten the post deleted and the poster permanently banned. My 'moderator' comments are in red. 

Tucker: Liz Cheney is lying to you about Jan. 6

"If you live in Manchester, New Hampshire, first of all, congratulations, it's a really nice place. But second, we thought we'd give you an explanation for what you may have just seen. So if you live there and last month, you thought you saw Liz Cheney wandering around downtown Manchester, no, you were not hallucinating. Liz Cheney was there. (Citation needed) And that's pretty weird if you think about it. Not a lot of people go to Manchester, New Hampshire, in November, so it probably wasn't a family vacation. Nor is it likely that Liz Cheney went up there by accident. Manchester is an eight-hour drive from her home in the D.C. suburbs, and more to the point, it's also eight hours from the CNN studios in downtown Washington that she inhabits more often than most of us go to church and much more reverently.  (Warning)

Manchester is also, not that it matters to her, more than 2,000 miles from Wyoming. That's the state that she supposedly represents in the U.S. Congress.

So the question is: What was Liz Cheney doing in Manchester, New Hampshire, and of course, there's only one conceivable answer. Liz Cheney plans to run for President of the United States. (Citation needed)

Now, if that sounds demented, yeah, it’s because it is, but it's also real. (Citation needed) Now, you may be wondering if Liz Cheney were to run for president, what exactly would she run on? She doesn't like Trump. OK. But what would her platform be? We know the answer to that because Liz Cheney only cares about one thing and only ever has, and that is starting pointless wars in faraway countries. (Citation needed - ban warning) The more pointless the war, the farther away, the better it is. (Citation needed - warning) Droning peasants makes Liz Cheney feel powerful. It's been the great cause of her life.  (Citation needed - ban warning)

But you have to ask, do a lot of voters agree with her on that? Is there a massive national constituency for more Iraq invasions? We've seen the polling on that, and in a word, no. There's not a massive national constituency for Liz Cheney's foreign policy views. Just the opposite, in fact. People live outside D.C. do not support more pointless wars that do nothing for the United States or its core interests. (Citation needed) They're not eager to send their kids to die for eastern Ukraine, and the reason they're not is they've already done it. They fought a lot of wars like this because Liz Cheney told them to (Citation needed - warning - entire paragraph unsubstantiated) and they've had enough. 

Yet apparently, Liz Cheney is the last person who doesn't know this. She has literally no idea. She believes she has a shot at the Republican nomination for president, (Citation needed) and she believes that fervently enough to fly to Manchester, New Hampshire, in the middle of November. So what can we conclude from this behavior? Not looking at what she says, but what she's doing? And the only answer is Liz Cheney is delusional. (poster is permanently banned) She's living on another planet, and on that planet with her is the Republican Party's fading leadership class. The people who stopped assessing reality are having new thoughts of any kind, right, around 2003. That's the era in which they are frozen in amber."

                                                     *****

This article would never have seen the light of day on a professional forum. I often wonder if Tucker and those like him really believe the vicious conspiratorial spins that they spew on people and issues. Is it just a ratings game? Have they lost, or did they never have a sense of truth and decency? Do they teach their kids this kind of behavior? 

Speaking of kids, I read that Trump's own son messaged Mark Meadows on January 6th that Donald had to stop the incident. Meadows apparently replied that he agreed and was working on it. Why does a son have to go through an intermediary to appeal to his own father? As I said in my previous post, Goebbels would be proud.

Goebbels Would Be Proud

Last night we were watching Storage Wars reruns on television. We watch that program occasionally because we like to see if our price estimate on a vintage item is close to the "official" estimate. Actually, I was switching channels between Storage Wars and the Steelers/Vikings football game. I wouldn't normally do that because I am a football fanatic, but the game looked like a non-competitive rout so I kept checking back only to see if the score had changed.

It was at 9:00 PM that Storage Wars ended and we expected to see a continuation with another episode. Instead what was being shown was what I thought was the weirdest advertisement I'd ever seen, but it didn't end and instead kept going on. I felt uncomfortable, and asked Maribel if she knew what we were watching and had she changed the channel. When she answered no to both I thought that somehow the television had been hijacked and that we were being subjected to wild conspiracy theory propaganda. Ten minutes into the program - titled While The Rest Of Us Die, I realized why I was feeling unsettled.

During the years 1933 to 1945 Joseph Goebbels was the Reich Minister of Propaganda for Hitler's Nazi Germany. During that time period Goebbels utilized every source of information dissemination available to him...the news media, the arts, school curriculum, and radio and film to promote Hitler's favorite theme...that the Jews were responsible for Germany's and the world's problems and that Jews and all Slavic people were "sub humans" who should either be held in slavery or preferably eliminated. Through the use of pamphlets and film Goebbels would use misdirection, insinuation and outright lies to convince Germans of the truth of Hitler's beliefs. And it worked. The vast majority of Germans; over 90% supported Hitler. Goebbels realized that an appeal to emotion trumps an appeal to reason, and that if you tell a lie loudly and long enough people will buy it. Many of the educated Germans saw the danger and emigrated, but the average German was all-in. 

The program While The Rest Of Us Die uses the same misdirection, spins and insinuations  that Goebbels was so familiar with. Apparently Jeff Bezos's flight into space and being a billionaire takes advantage of the rest of us and perpetuates the Covid pandemic. And there is a shadow government apparently analogous to the High Table organization in the John Wick films that is controlling us, or at least the circumstances we live in. And there was so much more fluff that, if I did not know that it had worked in Germany, I would find laughable. Instead I find it disturbing.

Over the last two years a large segment of our population has demonstrated their susceptibility to misinformation, misdirection and conspiracy theory. Sowing the seeds of doubt while appealing to emotion is a powerful methodology. It worked in the 1930s and 40s, and it's working today. Goebbels would be proud. 

The Tools and the Art of Splitology

I've spent a lot of time during the past six months learning the art of Splitology, and I'm happy with my progress. Actually, Splitology could be considered as much science as it is art which makes it all the more interesting. The neat thing is that you don't need expensive, complicated equipment. Just a few simple hand tools will do, and I find that the process (it's too much fun to call it work) is relaxing and the end product is certainly valuable. And I needed relaxing.

I am definitely showing the symptoms of political and cultural burnout. On both the local and national scene I've lost track of who is against/for what and why. I do know that history on several fronts is being rewritten, and one of those fronts is the Civil War. It saddens me to see statues of Robert E Lee...arguably one of the most noble and principled men that this country has ever produced being taken down. 

I don't understand why supposedly thousands of teachers and hospital workers are quitting their jobs, or why the 'supply chain' is busted, or why inflation is rising or why businesses are closing or scaling back because they don't have workers. I don't understand why Covid and the past Presidential election are still contentious issues, when the evidence and facts are so clear. About the only thing I'm sure of is that both political parties agree that America is broken. To fix it the Democrats are pushing their Build Back Better bill, while the Republicans wave their Make America Great Again banner. The base assumption is that before the country was broken, it was solidly united. Which is wrong. We have never been solidly united on anything, going back to the founding of the country. 

When it was decided to declare independence from England, historians estimate that between 40 and 45 percent of the white population in the Thirteen Colonies supported the Patriots' cause for independence; between 15 and 20 percent supported the Loyalists, and the remaining 35 to 45 percent were neutral or kept a low profile. The great majority of the Loyalists remained in America, while the minority went to Canada, Britain, Florida, or the West Indies. Less than half of the population were openly in favor of independence. 

No war since the revolution, no social issue, no election has ever had an overwhelming majority of supporters or detractors. Given that constant division, what has made America great is the Constitution, democratic rule and the willingness to compromise. Too many people have either forgotten or are ignoring those principals. Political and celebrity ambition takes precedence over the good of the country. Reason takes a back seat to deceit and fabrication. Anyone who is not a player in these intrigues has got to feel bewildered and beleaguered. Splitology can help to deal with the anxiety.

Splitology is the art/science of splitting a log. Mechanical log splitters are available, but they're expensive, need to be stored, and remove all the fun/creativity from the activity. The usual manual method involves swinging a hefty splitting axe. It works well if you're a younger man and your back can stand it. I've come up with a method that is safer, is less strenuous, requires creativity and is just plain fun. 

To do it my way all that is needed is a log, two or three railroad spikes, and a 16oz hammer. I get the logs from trees in my yard. Railroad spikes are easy to find. Just drive to some small town with a railroad track - most towns in my neck of the woods have railroad tracks and a 'historic railroad depot museum'. Walk the tracks for a little way and you will find more spikes laying loose than you can carry. All you have to do is drive the spike into the log until it splits. If you have a stubborn log you may need two or three spikes at different locations in the log to split it. Rather than kneeling to drive the spikes I use a stool. It is the right height and much easier on my back.

Not all logs are the same. This log has aged a bit, cracked, and clearly shows you where to place the spike. It will split cleanly into four pieces and more if desired. Others are more dense; show no sign of cracking, and require many hard blows just to get the spike started. I have even had occasions where a spike has 'jumped out' after minimum penetration. I hold the spike in my hand while hammering and can almost feel the log pushing it out - rejecting it. But stay with it and sooner or later a tiny crack will appear, and then it's game over.

If you have a lot of logs and become bored, make a game of it. What I do is imagine that the head of the spike is the head of one of my least favorite people. You would not believe how many times I have bonked the head of Nancy Pelosi, AOC, Bernie Sanders, Chuck Schumer, Elisabeth Warren, Senator Jon Ossoff, the governors of Tennessee, Georgia and Florida, and my favorite hammer blow recipient, Donald Trump. I've not bonked Marjorie Green because it's obvious that she's already had too many blows to the head.

Splitology won't cure the ills of the country or make them any more understandable but it sure makes me feel better. And I've got a wood shed full of cooking fuel. Can't beat that. 

The Other Guy

I wasn't aware of this article when I wrote my previous post. It states much more clearly what I was trying to express. The other day there was a female celebrity speaking at an abortion rights rally, I forgot her name, who said that America is more f....d up than it's ever been. I can't disagree with her. Yes, there is football and baseball and Fall festivals and theatre to give us respite from the mud slinging and name calling, but all of the media outlets continually draw us back to the political and cultural conflict in this country. 

We know who has brought us to this state of affairs. It's the other guy. It's the other guy who is wrong, evil, deceitful, and wants to take control and silence us and destroy democracy. What is so disappointing is that, as the poll from the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics confirms, we are the other guy.

 WASHINGTON POST

Our republic is gravely sick. A new poll confirms it.

Opinion by Henry Olsen  |  October 1, 2021

Many Americans are increasingly concerned that our national heritage, our democratic republic, is seriously in danger. A new poll from the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics confirms that we have reason to worry — and that the fault is in ourselves, not our political stars.

We can see the signs of the fraying bonds of citizenship all around us. The increasingly hostile tone of mainstream political speech. The inability of our two parties to find common ground in cases of clear national interest, such as raising the debt ceiling. The way that leaders of each side accuse the other of intentionally subverting the election process to ensure their hold on power. The fact that partisans increasingly isolate themselves in information bubbles where they only hear their side of an argument and often only the extreme elements of that side.

That’s why the Center for Politics poll is so worrying. It surveyed 2,000 voters on a host of issues related to democratic health, especially how each viewed members and leaders of the other party. It found that large numbers of Joe Biden and Donald Trump voters view the other party with fear and contempt.

The most frightening findings show that supermajorities of voters in each camp believe the other side is bent on destroying the country. More than 80 percent of Biden and Trump voters agree that elected officials of the other party “present a clear and present danger to American democracy.” More than 70 percent of both sets of voters believe that some extreme media voices on the other side should be censored “despite the U.S. Constitution’s First Amendment.” More than 75 percent of Biden and Trump voters believe that Americans who strongly support the opposite party also threaten the American way of life. In short, politics has stopped being about how to govern a shared country and is more about a naked, “Lord of the Flies”-style struggle for power.

It should be no surprise, then, that voters on both sides of the partisan divide are embracing views that are inconsistent with democracy. More than 60 percent of Biden voters and roughly 80 percent of Trump voters believe things like “true citizen[s]” should “help eliminate the evil that poisons our country from within” and America “needs a powerful leader to destroy the radical and immoral currents prevailing in society today.” Nearly identical shares of both sets of partisans — about 45 percent — say America would be better off if the president could take “needed actions without being constrained by the Congress or the courts.” There’s a word for a strong leader whose word is law: dictator.

Substantial numbers of Americans in each camp are even willing to break up the country. Forty-one percent of Biden voters and 52 percent of Trump voters say the “situation in America is such” that they would favor Blue or Red states “seceding from the union to form their own country.” That would surely fail if only one side wanted a separation. The dissolution of Czechoslovakia into the separate states of the Czech Republic and Slovakia in 1993, however, shows what might happen if enough people want it.

Note that this is not a case where one side holds problematic views while the other does not. Democrats and Republicans harbor hatred for members of the opposing party in nearly equal measures, and both view anti-democratic practices with nearly equal regard. This corroborates data from the Pew Research Institute, which has found that partisan animosity has risen and is widely shared by each party’s supporters.

The poll points to a frightening future, but we have resolved such moments before. We have done this peacefully, aside from the Civil War, because shrewd leaders such as Thomas Jefferson defused conflicts by persuading large numbers of the other side’s partisans to defect to new coalitions. Supermajorities of Americans supported these coalitions over many elections, establishing a new political order democratically. The new regime also did not suppress the basic rights of its adversaries, maintaining commitment to free speech, free elections and the rule of law. That political understanding and skill is why America’s experiment in self-government has endured for so long.

The cup of conflict will not pass from our lips no matter how much we pray. We will pass through this trial strong and intact only if we imitate Jefferson and are guided more by what we will build than by whom we will destroy. Our edifice must have as its cornerstone the fundamental American truth: “that all men are created equal … endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights.” Only dedication to that principle will enable us to transcend our present division into warring tribes and recover the shared sense of citizenship we so sorely want and need.

Wisdom from the Ages

Voltaire, whose real name was Francois-Marie Arouet was one of the most prolific writers of the 1700s. He used his pen to write plays, poetry, and to express his views on a host of political and social issues, some of which earned him time as a prisoner in France's infamous Bastille. My impression of Voltaire is that, though he was strongly opinionated, he had the intelligence to realize that opinions are preferences...beliefs not usually based on fact. He stated that concept most clearly when he wrote: 

"Doubt is an uncomfortable condition, but certainty is a ridiculous one.” 

Think about that. Think about that in terms of today's issues in the United States - Afghanistan, immigrants at the border, Biden's present administration, Trump's past administration, Covid masks and vaccinations, Roe vs Wade, racism, the economy, freedom of choice, etc. According to many polls roughly half of us Americans know the truth about these topics. We are absolutely certain of our positions. The truth and certainty that the other 50% of us espouse is false. And nobody knows the truth better than the Democratic far-left...and the Republican far-right. Both are passionately certain that they know the truth and will spin a topic to any extreme to prove it. 

I don't know who coined the term RINO - Republican In Name Only, but I suggest that the definition be changed to Reasonable In Name Only. A friend recently wrote to me that the present situation is not just a political war, that it is also a cultural war. I think that there is probably some truth to that viewpoint, but to me it's more than that. It's not difficult to sit back, take a macro view of the present turmoil in this country and see it for what it is...a war on reason. A war to defend one's opinions and beliefs come hell or high water, regardless of whether they can be supported by evidence. 

I don't think that it is 100% of us Americans who are actively involved in these wars on politics, culture and reason. I want to believe that there is this vast silent majority who is sitting back, shaking their heads and thinking that we should be so much better than this. 

Back on Track

I've never really been a collector of anything. I have lots of books, and have acquired a few Civil War articles but I don't consider that as collecting, not like people who have accumulated oodles of stamps, shot glasses, Coke memorabilia or key rings. That sort of changed when I bought a pitcher and two goblets dated 1880 and engraved with the initials CC. Being 140 years old appealed to my sense of history, and I've always been fascinated with anything silver. The goblets polished up beautifully - the pitcher was a disaster so I let it go back to it's tarnished condition, which surprisingly took only a couple of months. Somewhere in this blog I wrote a post about that set so I won't go any further with that subject except to say that it did inspire me to see if collecting goblets might be a fun and interesting thing to do. 

The first thing I did was to give some thought to what I meant by goblet. The criteria I came up with was first, the goblet had to be metal and preferably silver. Engraved and jewel encrusted would be a plus, like the goblets I envisioned King Arthur and the boys swilling ale from at the round table. Secondly, the goblet must be of a certain age. In the antique world anything older than 40 years is considered vintage but that makes me vintage x 2 and I refuse to acknowledge anything made in 1981 (or 71 or 61 or 51 or 41) as old, so I settled on pre-1940. 

Armed with my requirements I started haunting antique shops in earnest. The first thing I discovered was that there are not a lot of metal goblets in antique shops. Glass yes, plastic yes, wood yes, but not metal. In my eagerness to start a collection I quickly lost my focus. Without realizing what I was doing I started purchasing any metal, silver-plated bowl shaped vessel I came across, regardless of size or intended usage. As of three months ago my collection consisted of six legitimate goblets meeting my criteria and nine other items ranging from sherbet goblets to I-don't-know-what. 

Many of my 'mistakes' have already gone to Goodwill and the remaining five in the above photo will follow them as I find real goblets to replace them. The good news is that my most recent purchase of two days ago is sitting on the shelf directly beneath the pitcher.

This is what I had in mind when I started collecting. It's not jewel encrusted but you can't have everything. Examining it in the shop there was no indication of where or when it was made or by who. Stamped on the bottom is a trademark I had never seen that appeared at first to my old eyes be Asian. I passed on it the first time I saw it, but a week later when it was still there I bought it. It took a few hour's worth of research to identify the stamp and when I did I was surprised. 

The figure on the left is the town symbol of Edinburgh, Scotland. The two middle figures are supposedly the first and last initials of the manufacturer. I have not been able to identify them so far. The same stamp on an antique website claims they represent Carrington & Co. of Edinburgh. I am not convinced. The figure on the right is a date symbol indicating the goblet was manufactured in either 1893 or 1894. I will enjoy the coming hours of trying to identify the manufacturer, but if I never do I am content knowing where and when it was made. 

It is very heavy, apparently being silver plate on steel. A little silver polish had it looking like new. For anyone interested the price was $17 plus tax.

If the predicted storms hold off I'm going to grill some burgers on the wood grill later this afternoon and accompany them with some ale from my new goblet. King Arthur would approve.