Walkabout Thoughts #42

My thoughts, Stream of consciousness, rough and ready, while walking off long Covid and listening to podcasts…from day of Thursday, June 15, 2023. 

Tomorrow is the Fourth of July! I'll be talking about my screenplay, "The Teenage Bodyguard" and wishing ALL a happy Fourth!

Weather for the day… 52 and overcast and 62 when I finished my 5 mile walk.

Podcast for the day...first up, "The Intercepted", then, Pod Save The World


So it appears the Russians did blow up the Ukrainian dam. And they’re shooting people trying to escape the disaster. Strikes me that if I were Ukrainian, I would plot to blow up a Russian dam and make it look like the Russians blew up their own damn dam. As a false flag operation. But all this tragedy needs to start up within the Russian borders and seem to be done by the Russian government. 

Make it happen? Somebody just stop this stupid war?

For people, wondering if and what Russia would do to escalate things if they’re not winning… Which they’re... not winning… Blowing up a dam and harming their own people along with Ukrainians seems a pretty good indicator of the war crimes they are willing to commit. So it’s not just tactical nuclear weapons to worry about. What do you do when you have a nation state acting out so badly? It seems there’s got to be more we can do and then part of that would be getting those who are aiding and abetting in Russia, in anyway whatsoever possible, to change their minds and wake them up to realize there’s more to life than simply profiting for your own country. Or of your own bank account as it seems to be.

Sadly, on that, America really needs to walk the walk and not just talk the talk. We’ve made some bad decisions in the past decade because, you know... "America first! Baby!" Obviously, we need to protect America in the, "put your oxygen mask on first, in order to help others on an airplane", when under duress. We also have to see a parallel in our humanity as also being important.

Generally speaking, the American soldier and citizen is important to our government. Because we have high self-esteem, I suppose. But in Russia, the Russian soldier and citizen are pawns and mere cannon fodder for, if not the government, certainly for Vladimir Putin. Who with his past, if you haven’t heard, in being born around the time of the siege of Stalingrad, he should know better. He should have some compassion for his own people, instead of just an ideology and consideration for the greatness of mother Russia and "Papa Vlad".

Robert F Kennedy, Jr’s contention that America is responsible for Russia invading Ukraine is ludicrous. Putin did this. This is on Putin, and his personality disorder. It’s on the books. He read history books during Covid when he was in lockdown, by himself. He's going against his own childhood experiences. This is why ideology and religion along with absolute power in a leader, are so very, very dangerous.

One could argue that binary thinking, especially if closed off with a lack of real historical context and world issues is responsible for much of this immature libertarian, anti-woke, anti-government nonsense. People think this "push button" culture concept of a revolution in their romantic notion of "instant change", is how you fix things. First off, things aren’t as broken as they think, in the ways they think. Second, things are broken in ways they don’t think they are. Prime example is that they’re part of what’s broken. God, I’ve said this to the point that I’m sick of saying it… Children, CHILDREN break things to fix them. Adults do the hard work, take the effort to fix what there is. To proactively enhance things and better things over time BEFORE they break. But what we’ve seen with the Republican Party is they do everything they can to break things. Then turn around and point the finger away from themselves and say you did this and this is how we fix it… By destroying it completely and building from scratch. That is the mindset steeped in the present with no concept of history or awareness of how that relates to now with no concept of how that relates to our future. It is a weaponizing disregard and selective ignorance, which is the epitome of sheer stupidity and narcissism. Which makes it clear how Trump is such a darling of those types.

I just saw a sign saying "class of 2023 Bremerton". It's been 50 years since I graduated in 1973 from high school. In many ways I feel like the same person, just wiser with a lot more life scars. It occurred to me if we could just go back in time and inject some of our knowledge into our younger selves, maybe at different stages in a little bit at a time, maybe at five, just a little bit. Then, like every five years. How far humanity could advance? How much better everyone’s lives could be. Not about foresight in a window into what's coming. But some of that which you learned from those things that happened in order to make better choices and to enjoy life more. To perhaps have more of life to enjoy.

Pod Save the World episode is talking about countries in the heart of Africa after years of drought. One country where there’s two warlords fighting it out who could use some UN peacekeeper types. Which are disallowed because of the chaos and violence still going on. One wonders if actual soldiers went in from many countries and overwhelmed that country and killed anyone who is fighting until there’s just those who want peace left. Ludicrous? I’m sure. But at what point in our history, if we did that consistently, would humanity have eventually given up their violent ways?

North Korean hackers in the past few years have stolen $3 billion in cryptocurrency and are using it to fund their nuclear program. It started in 2018. Apparently NK has workers around the world who will apply to cryptocurrency companies to work on their software and then apply back doors left open to be used from elsewhere at some point in the future. Companies are scrambling to counter that effort. Apparently NK has shifted from espionage to theft. I suspect this might be a good argument for using a hardware wallet for the bulk of your crypto investments. NK's the next step forward in this? AI.

A couple of weeks ago my adult son asked if my calling for capital punishment for Donald Trump for his crimes, which isn’t on the table, if that’s showing a pattern. Am I headed that way more than before, in saying that perhaps too loosely about people? Which, if you know me, is ridiculous and he should know better. But he’s just being careful and pointing it out because he wondered about it. And that’s good, better to speak than be quiet on these things. So thanks. But the only other time I remember calling for that in the past was Pres. George W. Bush with his Iraq war. I think that was war crimes. I think he had people set him up with plausible deniability. According to things I read from people who knew of those things, Bush did a “force" on our Intel community in order to get enough information to be able to go to war in Iraq. Something which he had long wanted to do, finishing up what his father had begun over the Iraq/Kuwait issue. What he long hoped to do. Perhaps planned to do long before he became president. Yes, "Sadman Insane", was a bad guy. But he was right in saying "if you remove me...chaos". And that’s what happened. Yes, he had to go. No, war was not the best way. But a week or so after 9/11 hit, I remember telling people that I’m worried. Because America has been hurt, on American soil. That’s never happened before, except when we did it to ourselves in the Civil War. We'll have to lash out, we'll have to punch somebody in the face. My concern at the time was that it was going to end up being someone inappropriate. We rightly immediately entered Afghanistan to go after bin Laden, who had attacked us. But just before we got him we were pulled back and allowed him to enter Pakistan. Functionally speaking, that’s what happened. And then we attacked Iraq! Queue the Iraq War.

Why am I so against Donald Trump, his MAGA crowd of sycophants and worshipers, QAnon, and conspiracy theories? My conspiracy theory awareness goes back to 1973 after I graduated high school. I read a book by the general who ran the Vietnam War. Interesting book, until he just dove straight into conspiracy bullshit. It was a shock. But rather than going down conspiracy rabbit holes that he was preaching, I did what I usually do. I delved right into studying conspiracy theories themselves. If everyone in America had done that? Donald Trump would’ve never become president. At that time, when I was 17, I was very oriented towards going into espionage work. I ended up in the Air Force, and eventually joined their version of the FBI, the OSI, The Office of Special Investigations. Then rather than go to Berlin, I left the service. I was going to be stationed and had asked to be stationed in Berlin, because it was the most dangerous place in the world, of OSI Officers. But you could learn the most about espionage tradecraft there, I was told by the OSI CO who interviewed me. I would’ve replaced the agent who had been blown up getting into his car one day...by the KGB. I would’ve undoubtedly ended up coming in contact with Vladimir Putin, a mediocre KGB agent at that time. I would not have been mediocre. But instead, I got out of the service and ended up at a University. Then another. But I spent two decades studying the Soviet Union and their KGB in their expert efforts in ESPIONAGE and OBSTRUCTION JUSTICE. As well as UK’s intelligence services starting around 1900 through World War II when they were teaching America about espionage through among other things, the "ABC Group", of America, Britain and Canada. Look it up. I read about our OSS and its evolution into the CIA. So it turned out that I’d been studying KGB tactics and disinformation for decades before Newt Gingrich picked up on it and started following their playbook of disinformation. Which led into the autocratic playbook and Donald Trump becoming president and eventually, today’s Republican spawned mess. So that a third of America has been overtly propagandized and delusioned into sheer an utter nonsense. I mean, how else did Donald Trump ever become elected POTUS?

Why do I listen to "Pod Save the World" podcast? Things like what they said in this episode today. The two of them are talking, remember that G7, (or was it a G8) meeting they had to fly to and were getting drunk one night with a bunch of Brits. They had a meeting the next morning they had to fly to and it turns out it wasn’t that G7, but it was a later G8 or something… But then they realized they were partying with a bunch of British MI5 or MI6 officers. Then the next day they had to sit in a meeting with Medvedev and Sergey Lavrov and others, and they were hung over too! At one point one of them looked over at Lavrov and said there he was sitting in "his shame and hangover, and I realized... he looks just like I do, the Russians must’ve been up late drinking too!" That stuff is gold!

Dear America, we have ways of changing our government and voting and protesting, and we have a free and fair, or “Free Press“ anyway. Even as much as Donald Trump wants to kill all that for his own selfish autocratic political fetishes and desires. Or an armed insurrection when necessary. But no, let's not. Not when you’ve been lied to, disinformed and propagandized for the desires of our enemies, via a Republican Party that’s lost its fucking mind by way of a populist, narcissistic cult, leader, and mob boss. We all want things to change instantly. But here’s an actual truth, and not one from Trump's disinformation “truth social faux social media platform". When you change things too quickly, even if you get exactly what you want, since everything is intertwined to everything else in government, and in our population and in our international relations... The reason government moves like a "lumbering giant" is for good reason. Move too fast, you can break the "babies neck". The issue is we that move too slow for some who see it as never moving. Because they’ve been pumped so full of rage they think nothing ever changes. And then when things change, for the betterment and evolution of our citizens and government, and so our country at large... but when you've been raised and propagandized to be freaked out about other citizens being different than you, be they having gender differences, or cultural ones as immigrants, you’re allowing yourself to be set up to be the "ugly American", within our borders. Look it up. "Ugly American", the model GOP citizen, certainly the model MAGA citizen. Embarrassing to America, internationally.

On Saudi Arabia in all that mess. Here’s the thing about so many countries like that. It’s so much the government. Our governments are different than our citizens, MAGA not withstanding, perhaps. I heard a Saudi woman talking a couple nights ago and she had a good point. She said, "We want to be in the world! But what's stopping us is our government and our leadership in our form of government. Shouldn't we want women’s women’s rights? Things are changing with this leader who everyone calls a murderer. And valid point. But what about the citizens?" Isn’t that the issue with so many other countries? The only exception maybe is North Korea as they are so brainwashed after generations that, that is a real problem. Russia too. So severely (though not as severe as NK) propagandized. But they’re waking up, just too slowly. We want countries to come out to the world to be world citizens. As Nixon did with China in the 70s. Which worked. Those who say bringing democracy to China failed in that effort? They have no consideration of how much it worked, yes somewhat in that, but also in other ways. He mostly took them off the platform Russia's on still today, still locked in their (Putin's) Cold War mentality. So if we had times have to forgive abuses for the evolution of a country to become a world citizen, maybe that’s what we need to do? I’m not referring to Russian here at all. When you disrespect another country's borders, you’re NOT being a world citizen. You’re being a bad actor, a war criminal. But these are indeed things to think about. International relations is extremely complicated. So much so that people far smarter than you are I, even have trouble thinking about it and working it out. Even with their groups of experts and professionals, and extremely well educated and knowledgeable professionals who’ve done the work for decades. And the best of plans will always go wrong and then you work them, massage them into fruition and production. As they say, "the plan is 100% perfect until it’s executed. So we need a little compassion and understanding and...wherewithal (the painful part). Our government and government workers are not perfect, but just people. Most of them are doing their very best and are very good at their job, or they wouldn’t be there. The problem is navigating, as it is with companies, international departments, and international rules and regs. Petty kingdoms within some of those departments. Progress being contingent upon such fools within those departments. As we’ve also seen with seditionist types who, when their favored despot raises his head, they will lean in his direction. This is a failure of our American priorities, and our education.

Interesting how the same day that Donald Trump gave a talk a while back, when Boris Johnson was UK PM, Trump used the term "Kangaroo Court" about somebody who was bugging him, and then later that same day, Boris used the same exact term. Not like he was mimicking Trump. But quite a coincidence, yes?

Here’s the thing about mottos. A good idea can be turned into a nightmare. "E Pluribus Unum" was Americas motto and in my book, still is. Changing it because of the fear of communism decades ago in the 1950s to "in God, we trust", was not only foolhardy, it was insipidly stupid. It’s also proving to be abusive and being weaponizing, in recent years and before. "Out of many, one"... "E Pluribus Unum"… That long worked well for us and we seriously need to get back to it. Because religion, especially Christianity, especially American evangelical Christianity, has been weaponized against the US Constitution and our United States of America and citizens. It’s opened the autocratic bigot door for so much fucking abuse, we really can’t even count it. Women are losing their rights. They don’t have autonomy over their body in some states anymore. Which is a ramp that will only allow more to come. Divisive conservatives stack our courts. Deliberately gerrymandered and suppressed votes from specific minorities in order to swing elections and to implement illiberal and abusively idiotic laws. They’ve changed the meaning of things like "patriotism" and "freedom". They apparently hate and are working to destroy our democracy for wont of autocracy and theocracy. And that’s not America. It’s just not American. And no one should want it to be.

Did you know that not just Donald Trump wants to be POTUS again, but Boris Johnson in the UK wants to be PM again? ARE adults that stupid?

What we are seeing both in the UK and in America with conservatives with this delusional nonsense of supporting obvious criminals, here, specifically in the form of Donald Trump. I started warning about this when I graduated university back in 1984. I started in talking to people about the dangers of “corporate thought“. It’s a closed minded concept of winning at all possible costs. "Full speed ahead damn the torpedoes!" Shareholders in the company, over concerns of the employees, or citizens, or the environment. It's why we've seen so much damages done by corporations worldwide. Pairing that with the travesty we’ve received into our institutions, bring evangelism into it which evolved out of the south Christian community and has led to many leadership with too many charlatans and grifters who built and led Mega Churches. Some of them going to prison. Those are powerful things to combine. And it’s exactly what we’re seeing when we watch people support people like Boris Johnson, or Donald Trump, or Erdogan in Turkey. One has to wonder how and why would people support such clowns. Well, there’s your answer. 

It’s a toxic social disease. And it got in through ways that were not obvious. When I first stumbled across this in my university days, I started to see this thing forming in my mind. The more I looked around the world, the more I thought about it and worried that it might evolve from where things were back in the early 80s. And evolve it has, beyond my worst nightmares. Until now it’s nearly torn this country apart. It could do so again, or finish the job next time if we don’t do something about it. The biggest thing we can do is to become aware. That’s all people like BLM wanted when they talked about being “woke“. Just know our/your history, know your/our place in the world. Experience compassion and work toward the best of the whole group and not just your specific and for some, greedy desires. Sometimes we have to suffer for others. It’s part of being in a family, the human family, or in a country, part of a species. Yes you have to survive, but when you’re surviving and doing better, when you’re living a life and other’s are hurt and, I’m not talking communism, or socialism here... because that’s where the "toxic" conservative mind goes immediately. out of a desire to "win" the argument, the debate, in order to continue their greed and lack of empathy. It's "Corporate Thought". It's shallow thinking. It's low information. It's dumb.All  I’m just talking about doing here is our fair share, our part to pay our fair share. Yes, most of us are. But many aren't and fight hard not to. The GOP is there to protect and enhance their lack of paying their fair share. They define that fair share as far less than is reasonable and disingenuously define that in ways of "Corporate Thought". And we can’t even get Republicans to make those who have more money than we can EVEN conceive of to give their decent and fair share to our country and the people who laid the foundation for them to be that wealthy. It is disgusting. It is anti-human and it is "Corporate Thought" at its worst, and strongest. We can do better. If not always, at least to a fair and reasonable degree.

That being said...

Cheers! Sláinte!