Time....musings from the softer side

     We long for things that hold story. pieces that bear history, ripen with age, last through thick and thin and then become all the more beautiful because of it.  The leather chair that held the shape of my dad.  The copper pots turning different colors because of loving use.  The wooden cutting board etched and marred by years of family use.  A story passed  from mother to daughter, to neighbor, to print... perhaps a long told love story.

     This is the patina of life, layered onto objects and places and people themselves, memories that speaks of legacy and the great passage of time. Whether it’s a chair or a song, a seed, or a story, we are surrounded by a whole world of accessible moments, of collected memories. 

Trumpers on Steroids

Yes, Palestinians are raining rockets on Israel, and Gaza is ablaze, but with 20+% of the Israeli population being Arabic, the conflict escalation has created a domestic nighmare in Israeli cities.  Bebe, pandered to right wing elements to maintain his power and now has tens of thousands of  "Proud Boy" look-alikes openly terrorizing fellow Arabic citizens.  Given the governments priority attention to defending against Hammas, the roving mobs are out of control.  This violence has today reached a level only hoped for by ....what was his name!  

Seriously....Bamboo!

      Arizona,, the land of "harmonic convergence" is converging on Bamboo, persuaded that the Chinese made thousands of counterfeit Arizona ballots that were clandestinely added to the 2016 Presidential Election Results. The conspiracy alleges that these ballots caused Trump to loose the election.  Fortunately, according to the Republicans adhering to this story, the Chinese made a mistake....the paper used by the Chinese to create the counterfeit ballots contained a detectable level of bamboo fibers.  Now hundreds of Republican volunteers are carefully investigating the actual 2016 ballots searching for fraud confirming bamboo.

                                         This is Really True

Vaccines & Intellectual Property

     Yes, millions around the globe are dying from Covid, but the first obligation for Pfizer and Moderna is to their stockholders. We have always traded off deaths for profits, but perhaps never so publicly visible as is the case involving Big Pharma and the unvaccinated world.  Should the "haves" share with the have-nots"?  The options are obvious, and the outcome is apparent.  

     Woke West, having invented the vaccines, can produce, deliver, and administer them to the Un-Woke world at a cost based price or put the "formula" on Facebook, either way conceding the billions in private profit. Of course no one forced Coke and KFC to offer up their secret formula, and private shareholders are remote to the moral obligations of the collective. Given our "capitalist way", most likely sharing either vaccine or "Intellectual Property" will not happen.  So, in that the 3rd world has damn few dollars, the majority of the planets humans would only reach "herd immunity" the very hard way.      

The more likely solution.... the haves will buy the vaccine at maximum market price using tax dollars, extracted mostly from those least capable of paying, enabling the Woke to offer "foreign aid/freebee vaccine" to the have-nots.  Of course this will perpetuate the have-not's faiil to thrive impoverishment, and at the same time limit the resource freedom of those who force funded the cost of the Woke's benevolence, but.... for Big Pharma it will mean a bunch of billions more.

                                 Is it never enough!

Woke vs. Based

     Political and Social are no longer separate realms...everything political is expressed socially and everything social is tagged political.  Unlike the historical polarizations within Religion and Politics, which has emerged only periodically and in certain sectors, the fusing of Politics and Culture makes the "great divide" a moment to moment issue, perhaps only less present than foraging and peeing.

     Unlike our recognition, acceptance, and  integration of a multitude of identity markers ranging from sport fans, to music preferences, to wealth, to nationality, the "woke vs. base " divide is omnipresent.  Many would argue that today's polarization is just an extension/amplification of a biological mandate for racial preference. My sense is that the divide is more fundamental....the early phasing of a a bifurcation of our species.  There is nothing evolutionary that says that survival adaptations are confined to physiological attributes.

     Perhaps, a solar system teeming "exclusively" with a the latest and best humanoids, the ______ (Wokees/Basees).... take your pick!