Yahoo now serving......Pure Vanilla

     How do you report the particulars of a human event without offending 49% of your audience?  Humanity is now pretty much in a state of "auto-polarization".  Tribal media, ravenously competing for "souls/sales", has pushed virtually all of us into our opposing corners. Yes, the perils of this state are obvious to many, and from their insight/response is emerging a new "attractor".  Predictably the early adopters of the next attractor will be those who, in the present market/dynamic system have faired least well. Probably it will not be FOX or MSNBC who will start shouting "new news".  Yahoo is more likely.

     Today's Yahoo lead is a screaming example.  "Abducted college student, suspect killed while fleeing from troopers"  The  elaborating report was, no doubt by design, offered in, what I call, "flex-prose".  No matter where Yahoo's audience self-aligns on the identity spectrum, the narrative will confirm their bias.

     I carefully read the article, with as little bias as I was capable, and concluded that Yahoo had told me that either Event A or Event B occured yesterday. I believe that I had been implicitly invited to choose which story I liked more.

     Event A:  In a small Kentucky town an estranged black couple with a history of domestic conflict about their children aroused the suspicion of customers at a store, which led to a police alert and a car chase.  While in chase, the officers heard shots coming from the fleeing car and, fearful for the wellbeing of the woman passenger, returned sufficient fire to kill all occupants in the car.  PS: the deceased female had been enrolled at Ohio State University, in Columbus, Ohio.

     Event B:  An Ohio State University Coed was kidnapped from a local store by an armed assailant.  In a following dramatic car chase to save the student, the assailant was killed. Regrettable the female student also died from wounds sustained in the confrontation.

     Welcome to the age of "flex-prose"

"Little Mobs of Scolds"

     As is often the case, not my words, but worthy of highlighting.  There is an emerging backlash directed against the current wave of public outcry from the "social warrior" subset.  The "scolds" are  ostenibly aligned with the progressive left, but their unrelenting attention to every minute infraction is splitting the left into the "Progressive R's", i.e. Eric Weinstein & Annie Applegate, and the "Progressive E's (emotions)". i.e. AOC & Drake. It is not obvious which of these sub-brands is the better choice, given our perilous times.  Hopefully this intra-progressive battle will not obscure the real war against the regressive right, also sub-branded into "Conservative F's (fundamentalist), i.e Huckabees,  and the Conservative E's (egocentrics), i.e. Senate Republicans.

     Sometime this year, Mueller is going to stop doing whatever the Special Council has been doing. Hopefully, "mum" will continue to be the word until late 2020, because unless Mueller looses his redact pen, unseals everything, publically presents his finding, and at minimum indicted Potus, plus the entire Potus family, and half of the Senate....well, the "Progressive E's are gonna go ballistic. In that this eventuality is extremely unlikely, Humpty-Dumpty, aka Uncle Sam, may well not survive.

     Perhaps, before it comes to this existential faceoff, perhaps the Progressive R's can manipulate the Progressive E's into a more balanced strategy for waging the, us vs. them, dualism driven perenial human war.  Christopher Hitchens said it well:  "Those who are determined to be 'offended' will discover a provocation somewhere. We cannot possibly adjust enough to please the fanatics, and it is degrading to make the attempt....

"Synoptic Delusion"

     Someones phrasing of their critical view offered about "socialism".  The quote is from an article about the failed socialistic economy in Venezuala that argued that there is something recurringly delusional when leadership in a society....."believe that a small group of people can hold and manage all the information spread out over millions of actors in a market economy". History does suggest that this strategy results in "the leadership making disastrous decisions that disrupt production and distribution, leading to a whole series of disasters that result, at last, in a completely dysfunctional economy",  

     The title epithet could, of course, just as well have been used to disparage the many poor socio-economic outcomes that have arisen in "strong capitalism" economies, i.e., sweat shops, child labor, Mara Lago. Perhaps historically, in communication challenged cultures, leaving millions of actors in an economy to their instinctive interactions actually resulted in a definable governing strategy.  However, add technology to laissez-faire capitalism, and what do you get.....well, "defacto socialism,  in that.......in a capitalist economy where top down technology is employed by self replicating elites to manipulate  market demand, the results looks damn close to a socialist nomenclatura strategy.   Except that in classical socialistic economies, the leadership, i.e. nomenclatura,  were required to pretend they were altruistic. As technology inevitable emerges in socialistic economies, the potential increases in efficience appear to be converted to wealth held by the nomenclatura. With or without technology the "class-less society" never seems to emerge.

     In a capitialist plus technology (C+T) economy, the socialist nomenclatura equivalent, the famous !% or  super-priviledged, have no such constraining obligation.  To the contrary, the !% protocol recommends that they take as much resource as they can amass, and offer a small  portion back for discressionary public benevolence.  But, no "wealth tax" allowed.  

     My summary take on the merits/stability of the two opposing governing strategies is that there is not all that much difference. Elites can either lead, having to when revealed selfish,  lie about their hypocracy as a socialist, or, when revealed selfish, lie about just being brilliant/lucky, as a capitalist.  Probably C+T will outperform S+T.  Perhaps the ultimate "synoptic gospel" is that "humans instinctively hate hypocrits".

Hu-A-Wei (who-are-we)......really?

     Who knows if poor little Trudeau is resentful or comp licit in his role as acting sycophant to Trump's 51st State.  Had Maduro's private jet stopped to refuel in Toronto would Pompeo have demanded that he be shot through a revealing window?  Seriously, the "Huawei Incident" is both frightening and stupid. 

     My guess is that Tim Cook has not stepped foot in China after the incident.  Given that the US is certain that we cannot make our own Iphones, or 5G networks to power them, this alone qualifies the "Meng Capture" initiative as Darwin Award Dumb.  Of course, setting aside the cascading economic and social implications of changing the planetary norm regarding sovereignty, there is, a profound moral issue raised by this and similar events.

     Technology has made nationalism damn near impossible. Celebrating sovereignty might have been fashionably when the League of Nations seems like a good idea, and infiltration was difficult,  but in today's Facebook/DroneStrike era there are no borders anywhere.  As such, the moral issue is not that the entire human biome is without sanctuary, but that humanity continues to complicate our mutual security by revering national soverignity, a "fake news" pattern that no longer exists and can never again exist.

     We just need to get over it and start the hard work of birthing a rational planetary order.  But, until the human consciousness is ready for this, it would be prudent for the powerful to be a little more discreet...least we find ourselves playing the last "ring-around-the-rosey".

Das Kapital

     Marx claimed that capitalism was nothing more than a necessary stepping stone for the progression of man, which would then face a political revolution before embracing the classless society. Marxists define capital as "a social, economic relation" between people (rather than between people and things).

           

                  Karl Marx did not forsee CRISPR nor the extensions therefrom.