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!

Walkabout Throughts #41

My thoughts, Stream of consciousness, rough and ready, while walking off long Covid and listening to podcasts…from Tuesday, June 13, 2023.

Weather for the day… 58 and overcast and although I can’t see it, I can feel I’m walking through a very sparse mist. It has 20 or so percent chance of rain in the afternoon so I’m hoping I don’t get rained on and want to finish 5 miles today like I did two days ago.

Podcast for the day podcast “Pod Save America“ episode, "Re-Indicted And It Feels So Good (with Hillary Clinton!)".

Interesting about January 6 in the 1930s in France, today known as "January 6" as it is here in America now, because of a similar occurrence. Interesting how damaging binary thinking is. It forces non-gender specific people painfully into a mold they don’t fit. It leads to religious abuses. It leads to, as we see today, toxic conservatism and overtaking of the Republican Party by whatever group is able to subvert it. The Tea Party, MAGA, whatever the hell they've got available in some whiny autocratic abusive cruel criminal. As we all know this time, it’s Donald Trump. 

I’m not saying we need to dive into absolute non-binary thinking. Myself I am a confusing mixture of ideologies founded in the concept of right and wrong, but as a guideline only. As heterosexual, cisgendered, somewhat old-fashioned in many ways in my fundamentals. I was raised out of the 1950s and having moved to autocratic Franco, Spain in 1958 with a stop from Tacoma in Philadelphia where the bulk of our family lived. Perhaps also being born ADHD with a mother who had a very interesting character herself, but very accepting of others. I've tried all my life to see outside of standard, black and white, binary thinking. Some of that came from my solid foundation in my nuclear family being repeatedly broken up in various ways, moving at three years of age to another country, which alone was interesting I suppose. 

After a couple of years with our family in Philadelphia, in 1960 we traveled back to where I was born in Tacoma, Washington with our mom’s new husband (whom at 4, I begged not to marry), with a new baby. Have you ever been introduced to the marvels of a modern city and then taken back a backward town and told this is your new (old) home (again)? That was Tacoma, Washington, in 1960. The Seattle Worlds Fair in 1963 was a saving grace.

Before we moved back to Tacoma in Philadelphia, mom and her new guy took my sister and I to see a museum. We actually walked through the giant heart and saw an exhibition where you could literally get into a rig and feel like you’re walking on the moon, with a moonscape as background. Then we move to  Tacoma and we go to the town museum. It had various standalone wood and glass displays around an empty wooden room. To me at the time, at 5, it was horrific. 

I learned (and acquired) my mom’s love of vampire movies in the late 50s when I entered the world of horror, films, and science-fiction via late night movies on TV when I woke up one night and watched a film with her in her room (alone, no new husband yet). Later in Tacoma, as soon as I could get someone to teach me to read, so I could read the Sunday newspaper comic section to myself without having to wait for everyone else to read the newspaper first… I dove into learning to read better as fast as I could. Eventually, in my grandmother reading me sci fi fiction novels, I got into reading some of the greatest science-fiction writers of all time. 

These were mostly men who presented advanced concepts, not well established in the human society of  America in the 1950s or 60s. But they also did their best to explore the world and the potential universe at large taking us beyond our petty beliefs and mores. Offering us insight through alien encounters, and venturing into other dimensions. As a parent. when my youngest declared they were gay and then trans, through difficult and at times scary, high school years, these were all things not in my experience as a kid, or an adult. 

As miserable as my childhood could be at times with a stepfather who really didn’t like me much, and could be a scary SOB, I refused ever to even think about suicide. Self harm? Just never came to mind. And I never knew anyone who did that as a kid. I never heard about it until a couple of decades ago. Though I have to say, one of my kids did point out I seemed to have had suicidal tendencies growing up. However, I pointed out back to them that what I did back then in my risk seeking behaviors, was to do it professionally. 

An adult once told me when I was a child, when I said I was scared of going in our basement… "Face your fears or you will forever be running from them". Well, I wasn’t gonna put up with that! So I faced my fears, which eventually led to thrill seeking behaviors. Or “dangerous behaviors“ as some saw them. But I also saw it, as my grandmother taught both my mother and I, to find the best and most professional teachers and instructors you can to learn from. 

So I learned from some of the best. My risks were calculated and thought out, while others may have seen them as, dangerous behaviors. I don’t see how that’s being “suicidal“. While to the outsiders, it may have appeared suicidal. This has a parallel to our non-binary thinkers today. I was different because of ADHD. As in my failing math in grade school. I could calculate math in my head, but I couldn’t do it on paper. So we in our binary, cookie cutter, 18th or 19th century, anachronistic, factory oriented school system to feed industry, I was told I had to show my work. They couldn’t correct my math if I didn’t show it. If you don’t show your work, you can’t see where your mistakes are. 

That’s great and everything. But it caused me great misery over a long time. I have to wonder, had they not thought in a binary fashion, had they taken what I had intrinsically and built upon those skills, what could I have done in my head and would I have succeeded in math/ Rather than failing math all through K through 12? Recently, I read in my DNA analysis that I have exceptional mathematical skills. If that’s true, then they were squashed as a child. Because I couldn’t do in it the way other kids did. I thought, differently...and that was "wrong". Why?

But they needed me to be the same as everyone else. Back in the 60s, the deficient or seemingly deficient, and the exceptional, had to bring themselves into the center of their class as an average to make it through that cookie cutter style of education. It happens when you don't have enough money in a school system to deal with all involved and that was the model and today still is in many ways, in many places and from how many thing. It's very American Republican. 

I learned recently through Temple Grandin in a talk she gave recently that in my spectrum of autism being ADHD, I’m a visual thinker. Which I actually tried to explain to others when I was younger, but it made no sense to anyone. She said in her talk that when you’re like that, you’re a bottom/up thinker and you need a lot of information up front. Which is exactly what I’ve seen. When I would share that with others, I would typically lose them. 

So yeah back around to the beginning… I get what non-binary thinkers are saying, in many ways. I understand where the LGBTQ+ people are coming from. I was long an advocate of alternate lifestyles, at least for a heterosexual cisgendered orientation, my orientation. Well, I don’t understand many of their provocations and insistence on being overly focused in sexuality, eroticism and performance but it's a choice, to be sure. The older I get, the less I find that interesting or fascinating. 

Though I get what They're doing, pushing back against the tidle wave of everything against him. And they’re doing everything they can to explore and exemplify their differences. Doesn’t mean anyone needs to hate them, doesn’t mean anyone needs to pass thousands of anti-trans bills, some of which can kill them. Or the tide of ignorance that literally has killed them and still does. Or in not even thinking outside the box just allowing women to have their rights over their own bodies, rather than oppression if not death, in anti-abortion laws. Taking something fundamental to females and skewing that into abuse through religious, nonsense, which we should’ve matured through hundreds if not thousands of years ago, is ridiculous. And many of them know that, but they do this for power and political purposes, disregarding our citizens and their rights.

If you wonder why non-binary people can be so extremist or hypersensitive? Let me kick you hard any place you prefer and then let me kick you repeatedly until you can’t take it anymore, then let me walk away and sneak up on you and kick you there again, and see then if your version, your reaction, isn’t extremist and hypersensitive. That’s what we're seeing with these people, these non-binary thinkers, these LGBTQ+ people, who go through this abuse every day of their life, making them ever wary and more frightened, literally because their friends have been beaten to death. It all becomes much more understandable under those considerations, doesn’t it?

So while I don’t live their orientation, I don’t get all of their world? I get my own, and there's room for others in it. Since childhood, I have not just tried to think outside the box as they say, but wonder why we’re thinking in or around a box in the first place? I never saw that a glass is half full or half empty. Rather completely full and always, unless it’s out in space somewhere, in a cold vacuum. In which case it’s half full of frozen water and half full of a vacuum. (I should say here, as some don't get this concept, the original question is, "is the half glass of water half full or half empty?", which is another question altogether but people take advantage of being asked the question incorrectly, so... what I'm saying here is relevant)

But, can you see where I’m going here? One could argue that’s non-binary, but in our binary thinking society, it’s non-binary to them. And that’s the point. Much of non-binary thinking really is binary. You just have to be seeing it through the filter or a paradigm, that isn’t anachronistic and preferred by the majority.

Wow, if that wasn’t a brain dump…

From the new Rachel Maddow, MSNBC data and news podcast talking about the French, January 6, 1934. Apparently flyers went out that said things like "you should show up it will be “wild“." Echoing from our past with Donald Trump's, January 6 insurrection, and today with his indictment of the tweets that went out saying to "show up and be wild!" Seriously. Fuck these people and their corrupt idea of America and their anti-democracy ideology, fetishizing violence, autocracy and theocracy. Those are in no way, American. But they are indeed, concepts of our enemies. Both foreign AND domestic.

We have thought since our reason for creating this country in the first place, and in seeking independence, and fighting a war, and breaking away from what was once our great Britain...then fighting a Civil War for similar reasons, against an oppressive south (who saw the north as oppressive), whose entire economy was built on slave labor. To be fair, the south saw the north as oppressor as they wanted to change the status quo. While the north was evolving into the understanding that slavery was indeed, bullshit. Things needed to change. We were America. Past time to act like it.

Slave labor, which the country profited from, but finally through grassroots efforts, people started to see how slavery didn’t fit what we saw as our country based on our US constitution and our civil rights, granted by God? An anachronistic concept that was used since the birth of humankind, in order to wrest power from unruly groups, to establish some kind of order, so as to allow for evolution in farming and cities and  society. Why would we now be going against all that for a populous belief in a politically fetishized desire for one narcissistic criminal, from a damaged (Trump) family, whose patriarch (Fred) once worked with Hitler?

Understand, these "Walkabout Thoughts" blogs are done through voice to text, as I walk, fighting off long Covid, while listening to podcasts and just ruminating about things they’re talking about and, things in my life. Some things from my past and some about my creative endeavors. Do not in anyway think though, that what's contained in these blogs are in any way indicative of the quality or substance of my other non-fiction, fiction, or any of my professional works. These random stream of consciousness, are my sharing my thoughts with you, and not to be any kind of a academic, or well-formed or presented set of considerations. Easiest way to read them is to just zip on through them, maybe reread something if you don't get it right off, and then move onto the next item. 

If you can get by that, I think you’ll find some interesting things in these. Cheers!

From Rachel’s podcast: All my life I thought, probably because of old movies about the French WWII Vichy government in France, they they were a bunch of cowards who surrendered to the Nazis. Now I know better, because of this podcast, that it was a bunch of French wannabe Nazis before Nazis existed, who signed up with invading Germany to become that notorious Vichy government in France. Which might explain the strength and endurance of the French Resistance during that time. How would we feel if Trump’s MAGA took over and turned us into their Handmaid‘s Tale version of "Gilead" or Hitler’s Germany? I wouldn’t doubt we'd form a resistance, and eventually we'd end that nonsense?

This is cool. I mentioned in a previous blog that I put my latest non-fiction book, "Suffering. Long Covid" in a little free library that’s on the road that I walk here on my street. Last week somebody put a book out so you could see the face of the book from the street. A big bigger book about houses and remodeling or something. The next time I passed it, I put it away, replaced it with my book. Later on that walk, someone had already reset my book, side-by-side with the rest so you could only see the spine of the books. I thought, I’ll just put my book back out front. But then maybe that’s not cool? So I just left it. 

Today when I started my walk, I saw it still there. No one had picked it up yet. On starting my 3rd mile I noticed someone had pulled it out a little bit, which was what I had been thinking of doing. Not setting it out front, just pulling it out from the crowd a bit to make a little more noticeable. But somebody else did that. My feelings on that were that it either showed others had looked at, or had looked but not taken it. So, which is worse? Make it look like it’s repeatedly not being taken? Or make it more obvious than the others to be seen? 

I didn’t touch it, but left it pulled out a more noticeable by a couple inches than the others. So I’m good. Also, there’s some important new information about long Covid that’s recently come out that I was thinking of putting out in a second edition. Or leave it? Not sure yet. One could be doing this all the time and that's not really cool. But, maybe I will. I mean… they have discovered that Covid makes nerve cells conjoin, which might explain things like a loss of smell. Until the brain pathway/route is replaced to go around that or that they are somehow re-separated, which is something else they’re working on being able to do. Pretty important as information. And a little terrifying.

On January 6… It’s interesting to note in 2021 that there were journalists in France who were gearing up to report on the reoccurring 1934 French January 6 insurrection date and celebration, when suddenly in America... our nonsense happened. When they noticed what was going on in America lit completely blew the French version out of the water, as far as news to be covered at that time. Sad, but interesting.

Just to add a caveat to all my blogs going back to about 2010 and now at around 1500 of them so far, I’m always saying what I believe in. Frequently, I’m saying what I believed in all my life and applying it to current issues today and insights about today or pointing out growth I have made intellectually or emotionally. But I’m also a writer. A nonfiction and fiction author. A screenwriter. And a filmmaker. With a university degree in psychology and phenomenology. And I understand communications. So while you may be able to pick apart some of my blogs to point out where I'm being problematic, I would argue that you may well be right. You may find I’ve changed my mind in later blogs. But also that I may be showing a window or a filter, or shading in somethings in such a way so as to communicate what I’m trying to get across to people. 

Especially when I know sometimes that it won’t get across and I have to frame something in a way that people will understand in order to see or accept, the rest of what I’m saying in the light of that, and maybe it will click in their minds in how I state it. But if you were to grill me about that, I might say that in my actual belief, I would say it a different way. I’m just pointing out that one should understand that what I’m publishing here is, communication. And no matter who does that, when you later question them? You’re going to get at least a slightly different insight into what they actually believe. Although I doubt it would change in substance, if they’re honest and have any kind of a craft in writing.

To be clear about the French national front movement, it is basically the dark ugly underbelly of French society, showing its diseased genitals to the world and yet... some praise them for that. Pretty much an exemplification of what we see with Donald Trump's MAGA in America.

More January 6 news about France in 1834... Between the fascists taking over in 1940 when the Nazis invaded France, those who were not fascist, all came together across the country and decided that this is just nuts! They started pushing back. Had Nazi Germany not invaded? Well, you get it. So the hope there is that with what we’ve seen here in America, we will go through the same kind of thing which... we’re already starting to see. Trump and MAGA are decreasing. Barring an invasion by a massive force like Nazi Germany against France in World War II, we may well just put this down and evolve beyond it. MAGA is an evolution into less than we are. That’s what autocracy is. It’s an ant hill society, and as power corrupts, absolute power in an autocracy, always eventually corrupts completely and utterly.

I’m on mile four now walking. I just switched podcasts as the Rachel podcast ended. Excellent podcast and I look forward to the next one about Florida and how they’ve seen this nonsense they’re going through, before. 

I’m switching now over to Pod Save America a show from last night which is a live version probably on stage and with an amazing guest cast, including Hillary Clinton. So I guess what this podcast episode is about? Trumps indictment today. So on this indictment, not the previous one he lost, or the next few coming up, he could either go to prison for the rest of his life for 100 years, which ever comes first, or become president. Or potentially be president within prison. What a country.

Jon Lovett on the podcast said he sides with Trump on one thing, that he’s more willing to go to prison than to clean out his closet.

About that one box at Mar-a-Lago, displayed out across the floor with at least one classified document visible, which in the photo they redacted a line on it indicating it’s important. One wonders who knocked it over? Agent of Trump? Would they have picked it up? Or agent of a foreign enemy? If they were caught or if they had to leave quickly and didn’t have time to fix it because they sure wouldn’t want to leave evidence and would only if they had to. So the possibility of agents of foreign enemies of America haven’t gotten in of their being there in having filmed at least some of the documents. This is so close a bet to have already been done that it's nearly at 100%. It’s almost not worth discussing or debating. I mean to disagree with Donald Trump‘s contention by so many of his supporters, some in Congress, who shouldn’t even be in Congress, the risk assessment of a foreign agent accessing these documents at Mar-a-Lago is so close to 100% that one might just as well just except it as having being done.

So if you remember, they did arrest one woman at Mar-a-Lago for trespassing. They checked her room and found basically spy equipment, your basic spy equipment. And as you know, it’s spies if you find evidence of one there’s more. And if you find evidence of an attempt you have to except out of operational procedures that somebody got in and got what they were looking for. As for that woman’s accoutrements, they found nine jump drives, a Sim card, etc., I mean, come on. From the article:

"When she was picked up at Mar-a-Lago, Zhang was carrying four cellphones, a laptop, an external hard drive and a thumb drive later found to carry malware. In her hotel room, investigators found nine USB drives, five SIM cards and a “signal detector” device, which could possibly be used to detect hidden cameras."

According to John Brennan, the CIA assessment may never be concluded about the danger of these documents at Mar-a-Lago. Because the only way to prove it was compromised (other than to just accept it must have been, Occam's Razor...) is to have someone tell what happened. Which could happen with an eventual agent/defector, etc. It’s happened before. The only time someone takes a physical document is if they can’t make a copy. And if these were originals that Trump had box after box after box of, there is your person that couldn’t make copies and just took the originals. There is your national traitor. There is the crime. There is the damage to America and our agents across the world. We have to wonder of those who have died since Trump left office, how many deaths are on his head? And how many on our head? And on our government's excuses for a criminal former POTUS, offering him the respect only a POTUS deserves. But he was never a real and actual POTUS in understanding that title and procedures he refused to follow like a petulant child. He was in essence, a foreign agent of industrial espionage.

Jon Lovett has a good point for those who think Donald Trump has evidence of extraterrestrials. No he doesn’t. Because if he did, he would’ve tweeted it out or told everyone even if he was warned that he might destroy the planet.

Totally off-topic… You know psychics always seem to be reborn from someone famous or a famous person speaks through them, or they were once a Napoleon, or something? I did my family tree years ago on ancestry.com and believe it or not, it was traced back to a once king of England, which in a way, is that so unusual over this much time? As a kid, I felt there was something weird about my life and that would explain it. When I got my DNA done by them and another group, the new lab (CRI Genetics) had some very interesting things to say on that, regarding my mtDNA Haplogroup (Mother Lineage) which linked me to some very interesting people. Who? 

Ötzi the Iceman, Mike Nichols, Craig Venter, Meryl Streep, Katie Couric, Stephen Colbert, Harry Connick Jr., Maggie & Jake Gyllenhaal, Ramesses III, Nelson Mandela, Sir David Attenborough, Lyndon strong. Johnson, Caravaggio, Giuseppe Garibaldi, Napoleon Bonaparte (I know, I KNOW!), The
Wright Brothers, William Harvey, Albert Einstein, Steven Pinker, Nicolas Cage, Larry Page, Zinedine Zidane.

Weird, right? Not to mention my lineage tracing led back to Alfred the Great (848/849 – 26 October 899). Good grief.

Jon Lovett has a good point on the podcast, don’t bother talking to any MAGA friends and family you have about this stuff. Talk to those who are MAGA curious or somehow on the fence about it. And obviously reinforce the support for those who believe in reality and democracy. Oh yeah, and that other thing what is it? Oh yeah, the rule of law.

Wow, a newer Chevy Impala just drove by me. Looks a little different than my first car in 1972, a 1967 Impala.

OK! I am at mile 4.5. That means I’ve done 10 miles this week so, far walking. I think I can say that without finishing the last half a mile yet because I still have to walk home and it’s actually after this last, half a mile, then another 2/10 of a mile from the stop sign down to my house :-)

Oh, so Pod Save America is in New York, because they say they’re bringing out "your attorney general Tish James", now. To thunderous applause! She takes Trump to trial on October 2, 2023 in New York.

What’s so funny about Trump's defense of his crimes is they’re all based on lies and ad homonyms. While those prosecuting him are basing their indictments on facts and evidence. Gee, I wonder who has a better chance of winning in an actual court?

MAGA lone wolves are no longer 100% Lonewolves, nor have they ever really been, when they’re being inflamed by lies and propaganda online and in media. But now there’s also unconstitutional private militias involved with their own lies and propaganda, and in some cases, even equipping people.

Wow, that's enough for this time...

Cheers! Sláinte!

Walkabout Thoughts #40

My thoughts, Stream of consciousness, rough and ready, while walking off long Covid and listening to podcasts…6/11/23 Sunday

Weather for the day… 65 and haze and very light clouds lots of blue sky

Podcast for the day podcast “The Mary Trump Show“ June 9, 2023 episode, “Donald Trump Indicted - EMERGENCY EPISODE"

The True Crime/Biopic screenplay, "The Teenage Bodyguard", has been misrepresented by those covering the topic and  misperceived by a few directors looking to shoot the film. The true life protagonist who this film is about refuses to have it done in what has been so far, a sensationalist orientation. This film was first proposed, and pitched to a London producer who said not to change the title, and asked if I write it, please send it to me first. That was his selection among my finished screenplays and several pitches I had sent to him to review.

Nineteen days later, I submitted my first draft to him. Sadly, he had simply disappeared  I never heard from him again. In searching for him online I couldn’t find him. I don’t know what happened there. The screenplay has since been rewritten multiple times. Including once with input from known producer, Robert Mitas, who has also produced films with Michael Douglas. Several directors he got interested had showed interest and took phone calls. But their vision didn’t match with the person who lived through this story. Or that of the original London producer's comments who had said it reminded him of the film, "The Place Beyond the Pines". A 2012 film with actors Ryan Gosling and Bradly Cooper, produced for $15 million and directed by Derek Cianfrance. 

That concept stuck and was in my mind when I wrote the screenplay. While others saw it merely as a typical teenage boy who was merely caught up in an usual situation. But this was a singular teenage boy, a  young man really, who is not a typical teenager. For a variety of reasons. From a stressful, broken home, a family that moved every year from Tacoma to Spain, to Philadelphia, then back to Tacoma and around that city through multiple homes, and his living his life skirting around a dismissive and at times abusive stepfather. This was a kid with ADHD, who had a doting older sister, and a loving mother who herself had her own personality issues. A woman who had recognized quickly that this was a kid who had far too much energy and trouble getting to sleep at night as a young child. She had quickly learned that he always needed to be involved in some kind of after-school activities. 

He bounced through various social programs through elementary school until getting into martial arts in fifth grade and fighting tournaments around the Pacific Northwest in Washington state in the 1960s. He joined the USAF auxiliary search and rescue organization, Civil Air Patrol, in junior high where he learned search and rescue, and taught drill and discipline to cadets under his command as a flight commander. From his first after school job in ninth grade, until graduating high school when he moved out at 17 into his own apartment. Then through a drug culture connection he was pushed into meeting a murder witness and waitress at Tacoma’s first topless venue, "The Tiki", run by the local mafia crime family. Pleading with him to stay with her for a week, armed, to keep her safe until she could leave town, he agreed. He agreed for variety of reasons. Boredom among them. He gave it careful thought, considered that he was capable of protecting her and in the end he did successfully accomplish that. "The Teenage Bodyguard", is that story.

Changing topics into the silly Trump world of his seditionist wizards and fools...tweets such as this one in this limply disguised, Mil-speak (military lingo/lexicon) in speaking to unconstitutional private militias, who in their small minds, have abridged themselves through social media to fantasize and fetishize that Civil War is afoot, or that they should invoke it, or that it's already been invoked against them in disallowing Donald Trump, their “r“ POTUS, as in “real“ POTUS, as if he'd been kicked out of office, bizarrely in an undemocratic fashion (thought he lost the 2020 election), all while they’re against democracy, for their autocratic or theocratic desires (only because they lose democratically). These are not stupid people, but are forcing themselves into the "idiotic " column of the great spreadsheet of humanity. Something weaponized by Donald Trump (their, shall we just call it, "foolishness"?), and by large by that kind of talk to the conservative movement, enhanced whenever possible by Russian active measures or anyone who wishes to for the Donald Trump they bizarrely love so much, fetishizing his sedition and insurrection, in order to bring chaos to America and western democracies.

Donald Trump is going down. While his Trumpism, as with any kind of populist mental illness such as this, will continue for sometime, until finally humanity has had enough of it, and through education and awareness, compassion, democracy, and perhaps the time may come when even religions will actually stand up for what they believe in, rather than gluing themselves to this vile populist bullshit. Many will be shown to be the cause of our pain, just plain old assholes who want to play the "tough guy", merely being the war performers they are. This is all really nothing but broken and bruised ego's, givien venue to self-actualize and inflame one another in an ever spiraling loop into insanity, the destruction of governments and the detriment of the human race.

Many of us prefer to call Donald Trump a traitor and in many ways he fits that description. However, that’s setting him up on a pedestal he doesn’t belong on. He’s just a criminal. A mob boss running street thugs. We allowed him to advance into the presidency, where he upgraded his street thugs, beyond lawyers and  accountants, to US Representatives and Senators and Governors and subsuming the GOP charter, which he shat all over onto their political platform, which he ended, tossed completely out, during their already spiraling downward ethics and morals, all of which he reconfigured into his criminal behaviors

America was fostered and grown on a healthy mix of fertilizer. Donald Trump however has spawned his MAGA and criminals in his typical, unhealthy, toxic MAGA mix of feces, blood, sputum, and human bodies.

Trump's valet, or body man, who attended him and who left the White House to stay with him, allegedly, drained the Mar-a-Lago pool, which flooded the server room, which contained security camera footage, which that body man had questioned IT about, for how long it’s retained, because of evidence they didn’t want the FBI to see, regarding their moving boxes of classified docs and anything Trump may have been involved in doing. There’s really only one question. Why would Trump's body man be draining any pool, even if it was Trump's actual home residence, even if it was not a public/private facility that he was living at? More on the body man below... Maintenance does all that. So? It’s interesting how Trump supporters claim actual legal issues are political when this much crap is going on, obviously needing to be investigated and charges brought.

We hear the right trying to scare the left and all of America with a question: can America handle Trump being indicted? Yeah, pretty much. They can. Tuesday 6/13/23, he will actually be fully indicted in court. The question is, can America, can American democracy, can western democracy stand Trump's NOT being indicted, tried and appropriately charged.? What's interesting in this scenario is how the right is using tools they use to frighten... the right... against the left. Who obviously aren’t frightened by such things or they would BE... on the right. The biggest element of conservatism today is as it always has been, only ever more so, in being based in fear, based in trying to prove negatives, based in excepting false positives, and overly utilizing selective ignorance...generally considered to be, stupidity. It’s not gonna work on the left. What’s even more confounding is that this fear evoking is not working on the left and that confounds the hell out of the right because hey, it works just fine on them and they ARE after all...everyone else, in their minds. That IS after all what narcissism does and does as a toxic culture.

People ask, how could someone like Trump have taken over the Republican Party? A Party based on fear and narcissism? How can you ask how a man whose life is steeped in fear and narcissism, could take over a Party dedicated to those primary characteristics, which are some of the worst humanity has to offer? Which religion has weaponized for millennia. Which has worked hand-in-hand with political endeavors by monarchies the world over through all time. Which are still in play today by autocracies, kleptocracies, theocracies and oligarchies, all of which are being attempted to be incorporated right here, right now, in America, today. Let's just not let that happen and hang on for a bit long to the US Constitution and our separation of church and state. The GOP seems to think getting rid of religion eliminates the GOP. OK, I could be good with that. They've demanded being put into that category that begs the question, do they have a place today in America? Oddly yes, but more oddly, they are indicating themselves a big fat, NO. They are if nothing else, a massive collection of contradictions because confusion and chaos have been working quite well for them for some time now.

Consider this. All this obfuscation and distraction that Trump supporters are throwing out about his being indicted for crimes that he  even admits to committing, that is all how actual functional democracy works, and our three branches of government, works. So essentially, these people are arguing against actual democracy and how the US Constitution has set up our government. All because of a populist idol they have. How does that make non-Trump supporters the enemy? Because it doesn’t. It makes these people in very least, our domestic stochastic terrorists, and violent insurrectionists, as we’ve already seen them do.

I stated repeatedly in 2020, begging for somebody to get an international election commission involved to monitor our election. The comeback to that was? No. What would that say about America? Well, we’ve already seen what it said about America in 2016. Had we done that, we would be further down the road back to democracy today. And maybe Trump would’ve been charged a lot sooner.

Donald Trump has written his own eulogy, politically and criminally. All America has to do now is trust that. Believe him. Accept the obvious evidence and let the trial go forward, the judgment to be adjudicated. It’s curious how Trump supporter support so many of his lies, but very few of the very few times he’s actually open and honest about things. Evidence proves his lies are lies. Evidence proves his very few truths are true. His admissions in public of crimes is, "Yes I did this, so what?" Once to the shock of Sean Hannity on camera. So what?! Indictments. That’s so what.

If Hillary were criminal or guilty, she’d have been indicted by the Trump administration, by the Bill Barr DOJ. She wasn’t because they could find no evidence. Trump has been indicted. Not by the Biden admin. Whereas Hillary would have been indicted by the Trump administration... if they could have. Trump is indicted not by the Biden DOJ. Or by the Attorney General Merrick Garland DOJ. And if you know anything about him, he’s not a Bill Barr who would "kow" to presidential pressure. I do believe Garland would quit first. Barr bent to Trump's will. His spoiled little shitheel will. AG Garland can only let Jack Smith continue, as legally he can only tell him to stop and only if he’s doing something wrong. There’s so many firewalls involved here, whereas under Trump he dismantled firewall after firewall. Which Joe Biden put back in place since beginning he re-entering the White House as POTUS46. Definitely points to one thing about Trump supporters. Selective ignorance is indeed stupidity. Supporting a criminal in legal parlance makes you a co-conspirator. If you and three people commit a crime and somebody’s murdered, you’re charged with murder, too. Right?

OK so apparently Trump's body man, who’s been indicted along with Trump, did not drain the swimming pool. He “drained the swimming pool“ by telling the maintenance guy to drain the swimming pool. One would suspect though that he would know how to do it correctly, so as not to flood the building proper. Also, I bet every person who is a minimum wage earner, or has worked at Mar-a-Lago for more than a couple days, quickly notice d what a lowlife Trump is, and how distrustful he is. So if you want to avoid prison time, you might go up to the Secret Service and ask them a few questions before draining that pool when he doesn’t need it. Or having drained the pool, you might now happily turn states evidence against Donald Trump, our first criminal.

One of the things that's so curious about Trump supporters is that everything he’s been claimed to have done, is so very within his wheelhouse. It’s all within his character. Many other things, are things he has done before. He’s the Roy Cohen self proclaimed king of the debt and has for decades. He's bullied contractors, taken people to court when he was 100% wrong. But because of his having way more money and so many attorneys and time, these are things always weighing against the small contractors especially, People would have to give up in court, or go bankrupt, even when they are in the right. And then sometimes they may have to go back into business again with Trump, because that’s how bullies are. And that’s a reoccurring situation he worked people into. Which he has done with personnel around him on his side, all his life. Work people into situations where they have to support you, so that when you fail, you forever will fail upward, leaving new others, who don’t yet know how you think, to believe you succeed on merit. Which regarding Trump, is laughable.

Remember always, Donald, Trump and his, are not saying he did not do these crimes he’s claimed to have done, but that he’s allowed to do those crimes which for any other person in America is indeed a crime. The presidency protects a POTUS from things when you do them in the national interest. None of the things Trump's done like this, had anything to do with anything other than Donald Trump’s personal self aggrandizement and wealth building. Which he will continue doing in anyway possible until someone stops him..

In the beginning of the Trump administration, people rationalized that it was OK, since there was nothing they could do about it, and besides, everyone was shocked that it happened. “But there’s adults in the room with him,” they'd say. Well, he got rid of all those. Now there’s just grifters in the room with him. And now the grifters are fleeing. Which needs to tell you everything. Pay attention to the digression of the Trump administration in The Donald Trump Criminal Endeavors and the violent seditionists and insurrectionists in that room now with him. And those out around in America, "hiding under rocks", waiting to stick their necks out for Trump's call to arms. We better be prepared to cut those necks when they shoot out from under those rocks, reading and willing to support a domestic terrorist, who at one point we had foolishly made POTUS and our first criminal though hopefully, our only "first criminal" ever again.

We need journalists who will interview Trump and his supporters, and when they are asked but avoid answering questions, will simply say, "I’ll await your answer. I’m still awaiting your answer to the question. Sir/ma’am/MAGA moron/stocastic terrorist/insurrectionist/criminal follower of first criminal Donald Trump, I'm still waiting for you to answer the question, which they won't. And every interview when they walk off we can hear that journalist say, "Thank you, we now have to conclude you refused to answer the question because that answer... is quite clear and obvious to all."

At CNN. Don’t get rid rid of people like Chris Licht, get rid rid of people like John Malone the problem is systemic and it comes from the top.

It is sad that it was the Lindbergh baby and could not have been the baby, Donald Trump, instead. America and so many would have had such better lives in his not being there. Much as with the Adolph Hitler baby. The difference therein lay only in a matter of degree.
According to Ari Melber, Donald Trump has been involved in over 4000 lawsuits. When you claim rich people go through that as businessman… Come up with another one like that. Then you can say that.

Speaking of Jeffrey Epstein… When you point to everyone who has a picture of them hanging out with him, you have to understand how many people hang out with wealthy people. But people who are accepted into his close association who are doing serious crimes are only a few who are allowed into an inner circle like that. That doesn't sound like a Bill Gates to me, or a Rob Reiner. But it sure as hell sounds like a Donald Trump.

When you’re a person of color, you see two rules of law in America. When you’re wealthy, especially a wealthy criminal, you see one and wonder why those who see two aren't judged more harshly. Something that leans more especially on wealthy criminal types such as Donald Trump, and oddly enough, those who support him, and at just about any economic level.

You have to ask yourself, if you’re a Donald Trump supporter… Why are you so titillated by cruelty? Because all the rest of us are asking that.

So for those who say Donald Trump won the 2020 election, how do you explain his losing the 2018 election? And the 2022 election? Everything he’s being indicted for follows his personality and his history. You can’t explain it all, rationalize it away, because it’s just who he is. A criminal and a loser. People become criminals because they are losers and want to be winners. And so they hate winners who get there honestly. How does that not clearly explain Donald Trump and what we’ve seen?

White Christian nationalist, white supremacists have chipped away at our democracy for decades we have to start chipping back. But we gotta start by knocking some big chips out first. And Donald Trump right now, is that biggest chip.

I read as many great books of wisdom as I could get my hands on decades ago. My older brother got me started on that in my late teens, to read books by great men, or compendiums of books about great men, or women. Though he said men. And there are indeed far more men in history than women, for obvious reasons. But then he is a chauvinist, too. Although I started doing that long before he told me that. When in fifth grade I started reading Aristotle, having found his book at the library and was fascinated by it. It altered my life. One of the books I read was, Machiavelli's, "The Prince" (instruction guide for new princes and royals). I have not heard that Trump read that book, but he seems to live his life by it. While I took it as a book full of wisdom to protect yourself around power, some take it as a how too guide for how to apply power in as illiberal and cruel a fashion as possible in order to become, power.

We have the numbers. In numbers of decent Americans. Voters and Republicans came together to denounce a school board in Florida about book bans. They succeeded. We have the numbers. We merely need to do what the vocal minority did for Trump. Come together, and then these illiberal and even criminal actions from our domestic enemies simply cannot succeed, if we just opened our eyes and act.

I’ve done this before, but to define that word “act“, to act as you can, and as often as you can, but as you can and are able to. Certain Christian groups did that as a fundamental. To go out and preach their beliefs. We don’t need to do that. We don’t need to preach or lecture. We don’t need to be aggressive. We need to live our lives in liberal democratic ways of decency and compassion, understanding, and wisdom. We need to go for quality over quantity. People like Trump are quantity over quality. He’s gauche. He’s gross. He’s a nouveau riche goofball. His homes are what a poor person thinks a wealthy person should live like. Where for many more educated and acculturated see less is more, those unlike that believe more is more, and evermore is better and they want ever more to allow their "id" to take over allowing their inner child to never mature into adulthood until one day they can become our first criminal president. Don't be that guy. Don't support that guy.

I wondered about this for many years. There is not a 50-50 split or Republicans and Democrats and yet how close are our elections anymore? They repeatedly come down to few votes either way. How? Voter suppression, gerrymandering, and a mostly fucked up electoral college.

How is anti-trans, anti-LGBQ+ not our latest form of eugenics while it’s not really any new form at all. Bigotry is bigotry.

 

Cheers! Sláinte!

Walkabout Thoughts #39

My thoughts, Stream of consciousness, rough and ready, while walking off long Covid and listening to podcasts… from June 8, 2023

Weather for the day… 65 and haze and very light clouds lots of blue sky

Podcast for the day podcast “Pod Save world “ episode, “

Instagram post for the day

Regarding Henry Kissinger’s 100th birthday, I think his celebration of being alive is worthy. I think his celebration for his position in history is worthy, but I also think rather than completely denigrate them. There should certainly be caveat to make us aware because of current and future issues. There’s many of his critics now as he points out weren’t even born when he was in the White House advising President Nixon about the Vietnam war, and the Cold War at large against USSR. I think they made many decisions based on global issues rather than Vietnamese Chinese regional ones. But I think a lot of humans died during that weren’t necessarily and that at some point American did go off the rails. That includes domestic central and south American political issues of America, disregarding our support of democracy for that of a cold war between us and another nuclear power. They were simply times when you see something that would be functional beneficial, but it’s so goes against who you are and report to be that you don’t do it or are you listen to her better angels and her best mine to do something possibly more effective and certainly less harmful I left destructive of humanity.

All this “cancel culture“ was a necessary evil to get us to a point of awareness. But now that it’s been in place for a while, we need to evolve beyond it to something better and less destructive. Even the best of things and intentions can be destructive when overused or taken to extremes points. we want to cancel the bad. I get that. But it goes along with the whole concept of free-speech that we should hear the evil and have counter steward in order to neutralize it rather than ignore it or push it underground working faster. As we found today with technology and social media and new political models of affecting change, typically destructive change, we need to find our own new models, so we don’t force things underground for it to faster, forth, cancellation, of what we need to hear encounter, and just allow or have new laws in order to support our democracy and free-speech. Free-speech is been weaponization against democracy and citizens worldwide. Democracy has been weaponization against citizens, worldwide in support of autocracy despotism, and in the theocratic the kleptocratic in the oligarchy. American Christian evangelicalism and toxic capitalism have affected humanity. What is our inoculation against that? It’s not Socialism. It’s not communism. It’s not even pure democracy. It’s a hybrid perfected balance of social structures and political ideologies, in order to support humanity and not the god capital. That is, the filthy lucre.

Thanks to Trump pulling out of the Iran nuclear treaty then I have 10 times to capabilities in our building under a mountain facility that are weapons designed to take out such facilities won’t be able to destroy. Still trying to figure out what it is people like about Trump that they would give him even a vote. I run is now going to reveal its new hypersonic missile.

It may well be time to let Ukraine into NATO. To tell Russia we’re going to bring Ukraine into NATO in 30 days. If we see any escalation by Russia, or anyone else in Ukraine, they will immediately be incorporated. We could also say stop now and leave Ukraine and we will not bring them in within 30 days. And leave it at that. Do not agree that they won’t be brought into NATO. And then bring them in the NATO at some point in the near future.

It’s like leave it, the physical attrition of resources, for either country won’t end. This war in Russia started that Putin started. Politics has obviously failed it. So this needs to be something in between. And decisive. And then Putin hast to leave office within the next six months in anyway possible. Most reasonably removed from office by Russia themselves in anyway possible. The more brutal for better. With all to prejudice.

I’ve been busy the past month or so I’m starting this streaming video channel. Many changes of came about to the beginning when we started in January and we’re in pre-planning Q4 of 2022. So I’ve done my long Covid health walk about after a rough winter and a bad long Covid flareup. I’m up to 4 miles every other day this week. Trying to get to 5 miles. Trying to walk early enough before it gets too hot. I haven’t released my last three blogs and whine about my screen play “the teenage bodyguard” I just won best crime screenplay at the lotus international film and screenplay contest. I’ll be working on releasing these which are already released by time. You read this the last of them so far.

I’m now listening to the last episode podcast of the Intercepted with Jeremy Scahill. I read his ratings before I have some of the books Siri good. But this is on things like the American dollar and comments like the power and singularity of the American dollar or waning. Which is why I have half my portfolio little more in stocks, a few of those international and the rest in cryptocurrencies. Regardless of the issues going on now crypto has got to get some regulations some laws. For all those who are trying to kill it I just don’t see it happening. With the current mass between finance and coinbase, with one guy in particular in the government bringing lawsuits, I’ve considered, dropping the bulk of my crypto into a hardware wallet. And continue with my small monthly automatic purchases. I’ve also got some money up on prospect.com which makes loans to people and you collect the interest and control that over and to make a new laws. It’s slow you can choose your risk. As always, you don’t invest money you can’t afford to lose. But we also can’t afford to not save for the future, and invest in something with acceptable risk to each one of us individually as we can bear.

Cheers! Sláinte!