IT'S A "LAW"...run, run!

      I feel much safer this morning having read that Alan Alda,  Morgan Freeman, Elon Musk, and a band of "tech elites", self styled as the Future of Life Institute, have passed a "resolution, ratified by 26 nation governments, that they will not design/manufacture/deploy "LETHAL AUTONOMOUS WEAPONS", aka, "KILLER ROBOTS".

     Announcing that the Institute had recently quashed a South Korean initiative purposing "autonomous missile development" (true), and continued their strong vigil over Papa John's "assess and rebuke delivery protocol", (not true), the self-aggrandizing Institute Members delivered another "cyber-sedative" to we, the at risk masses. 

     Personally, I am distrustful of preemptive pledges, but I am at least happy to know that the nations of Ghana and The Holy See, (true) are affirming that they prefer victim to perpetrator. 

     PS:  Neither, Trump, Putin, nor Bezos, were reported to have supported the resolution.

"trigger the libs"

     In our ever more polarized conservative/liberal culture the media Semiotics Initiative is in high gear.  Our "flash populous" ripens in the shallow soil of bias memes offered by both sides.  Most promoted memes are simple and forthright, so as to spread rapidly. Few audiences are unclear as to which tribe "MAGA" or "me too", belong.  

Increasingly, however, my sense is that we"re  getting hit with more subtle and covert offerings delivered not just to advance identity causes, but to bolster tribe defenses against persuasion strategies from the opposition. A case in point is "trigger the libs", a phrase gaining some recent traction.  Who is promoting this complicated signifier?  Is it the Conservatives seeking to taunt the Liberals or the Liberals seeking to manage their tribal reactions to Conservative taunts, or both? 

     Regardless of the "base" with which we identify, we can all be certain that we are daily being played by a bunch of semiotican geeks dreaming up new "psycho-shots" to keep our culture at 51/49 polarization.  You see, they have to do it to "grow the economy" thereby availing "freedom for all". 

     Screw "free will".... we genuinely want to dedicate our lives to the further aggrandizement of the privileged elite....not! 

SOB...(State Of Being)

     Perhaps SOS (State of Self) would have been a better title, but the acronym was all wrong, not that the choosen acronym points to anyone in particular,  it just reasonably conveys the situation we all are in.

     Anyway, this week has for anyone living outside the basket (basket of deplorables), been a "soul searching" time.  For 7 decades I believe that I did not consider that in my 8th decade, I would be earnestly reflecting on how to live in a society that had morphed from a modern social democracy to a totalitarian socio/political structuralism bent on reclaiming 19th century morals, but....

     now 250 years into this "all men are created equal" embrace, it would appear that the majority do indeed long for the presumed safety in a "strong-man" configuration, where the three branches of government have effectively consolidated into just the Executive.  No doubt some groups that historically have acquiesed to, or outright supported "marshall-law", have at times saved the day. Possibly with a less culturally and genetically diverse populus we will reclaim the "shining light on the hill" status and ushering in a more bountiful period in human history, or....

    we will stumble and fall like all of the mega-villans in the old James Bond Movies. 

     Whichever be our fate, my sense is that the outcome will have little to do with either of the two still standing estates,  the public and the press.  Neither hand wringing, hollow admonishment about violations of the "old law", nor reverie women marches, will likely turn the tide.  Best hope is that capital market scions jocking for advantage in the changing wealth world order will self destruct taking the "Music Man Enabler" with them.

    When you digest the likely options informing our current SOB,  a global depression seems not all that bad!

I am in hiding...Now be honest, aren't you?

     Once in a land not so far away there lived a prosperous and prolific species.  They were dualist, having noted that their realm was divided into day/night, hot/cold, etc.  They learned to embrace this splitting strategy and commenced to divide everything into "twoes".  They divided their peers into friend/foe, their agendas into work/pleasure, and their undertakings into success/failure. 

      In not so long they came to know that their species was blessed/cursed with divergence, in that some of their kind were strong and others weak, while some were smart and others were, well...dumb!  In that they were social creatures it took but a Plank Moment for the quadrants arising from strong/weak and smart/dumb to coalesce into a natural four tier hierarchy.  The hierarchy yielded bounty for 75T+, survival for 25B- and uncertainty for the middle.

     Soon there were corporations and cartels, and governments and LLC's, all with hierarchies moving bounty up and pain down.  But throughout the spectrum there was this unwavering knowing that their realm was dual and that where one found pain most likely there was comfort at the opposite.  Those aligned to the T chose "seek" and those aligned to the B chose "hide".

    Again, in not so long, the imbalance favoring the T's, for whom "the good of the few outweighed the good of the many" resulted in unrestrained "hiding" throughout the realm.  The realm went to hell!  Then, in not so long, as in "ring-around-the-rosie", they all fell down....and then..... the game started over!

              The moral of this story is that "HIDING" is a powerful fucking strategy!

enragés...not so much!

     Media pundits, correspondents, contributors, hosts, and anchors, all pushing some brand of Libertarianism in fair exchange for advertising revenue and thereby their personal slice of the American Pie. One might guess that a laissez-faire (right) libertarian is culturally more tribed with an anarchist (left) libertarian than with his base, i.e., the silo dwelling deplorable down in Booger County, or conversely, the equally silo comfortable  progressive waiting in a Marin County queue for a latte. 

     Seriously, the #MSNBC and the #CNN crews never stop reporting that Trump has turned America into a TV show.  Indeed they seem to delight in recognizing that they are supporting actors in RealityTrump.  "Hurray, for the news tonight, we will offer up the latest about how "we" create the news"....bad metaphor-Russian Dolls.

     Enough said.  Even the push-back is tired and trite.  No "enragés here.   Save that a Deerslayer/DiNiro type goes radioactive, were pretty much screwed!