Author Archives: rporath

Lazy in Language

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Abetting Donald Trump’s rise in popularity and power is a social media slackness of in-depth thought and discussion. Communication is limited to short outbursts. Acronymns replace understanding of what institutions actually delineate as their duties. ICE, DOJ, DOH, DEA, FBI, FDA, FCC and SCOTUS are being molded into a single law enforcement arm under the direction of Presidential order. Politically, laws are decreed, not enacted by legislative deliberation. All this requires laziness of language. DEI is an easy target for attack. Understanding what Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion mean requires real thinking, not a quick dismissal. Using the President’s fondness for capitalization, “WOKE” is his racial slur for anyone believing in the ideals of DEI, the antitheses of which are White supremacy, concentration of wealth, and antipathy to human empathy. Having recently spent a few hours in the cafeteria and surgery waiting room of a major hospital in Denver, I had a sudden realization that I was sitting in the middle of a DEI institution built around the declared ideals of the nation. “Wokeness” is America’s true Greatness.

– RP

Check the Kool-Aid

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If Iran had actually wanted to build an atom bomb, it could have done so years ago. They were using that threat as a bargaining chip in getting sanctions lifted against their economy imposed by Western powers. The existence of Israel has been an irritant to Islamic nations since it was forced on the region. The hidden issue, as in most things in the Middle East, is oil. Iran is a founding member of BRICS, a consortion of nations including China, Russia, India, and Brazil, challenging America’s dominance of the world economy, and has called for a Muslim embargo of crude oil into Israel. For those who remember when members of the Bush Administration were sharpening their knives to divide up the oil fields in Iraq, there are untapped oil reserves in Palestine. Meanwhile, the starvation and ethnic cleansing of Palestinians in Gaza rages on. Iran’s real threat to Israel was not nuclear; it is economic. Controlling the production and flow of oil is the reason behind Israel’s attack on Iran. For Donald Trump and the Art of the Deal, “having the cards”, in this instance overwhelming military intelligence and air power, made his choice easy, and we are now “all in” on climate change and global warming denial and the continuation of fossil fuel extraction and burning. Our modern world was built on its power. Mother Earth is now clearly casting doubt on the wisdom of that choice, but no one wants, as in “whistling past the graveyard”, to pay heed to those voices. Power over the flow of oil must be maintained at all costs.

RP

Christian Values vs. Political Power: A Critical Look

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It is becoming difficult not to feel cynical about the trajectory of the nation and the world as propelled by the “visionary” concepts of Donald Trump. A first concern is the environment. Climate change and global warming will not cease to exist because he claims it is a hoax, nor is it the inevitable cost of having a vibrant economy. Droughts, floods, and violent storms are the new everyday life on Earth. Denial of reality is an addict’s path. A second is the Conservative Right’s claim that America is a Christian nation. In my Sunday school education, I learned that the Beatitudes of the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus’ stress on compassion, forgiveness, empathy, and charity, were the core essence and distinguishing exception of Christianity over earlier religions. This is in sharp contrast with hard-right beliefs, be they evangelical or Catholic, which are more in line with the exercise of vengeance and power portrayed in the Old Testament, wherein humanity is a tooth-and-claw struggle for dominion. Care of the Earth and of those less fortunate are dismissed in today’s social and economic stratification. The power of wealth is valued above all. That this ethos thrives foremost with the President, in the halls of Congress and Justice, and in corner corporate offices leaves little optimism for the future of humanity in America, or, for that matter, life on planet Earth.

RP

Understanding the Capitalist Grift: Lessons from Trump and Musk

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The Art of the Deal in America began with the perhaps mythical exchange of a basket of beads for the island of Manhattan. As the First People of the Americas were to learn in the many treaties they signed, it was more truthfully the Art of the Steal, one side getting more than the other, which is the holy mantra of Donald Trump. Losing in a deal (or opinion) is worse than death. His predictable response is to swiftly unleash an army of lawyers to reclaim the high ground, “I dare anyone to oppose my thirst for power.” Elon Musk is equally a capitalist grifter operating at the highest level. His billions have risen from tapping into taxpayer dollars. Tesla got its start from government subsidies, and buying a Tesla still awards a tax break to those who can afford one. Newly from Trump, it has been given a contract to build future armored military vehicles. The company could not survive in a peaceful, global free market economy. The big rockets and dreams of space travel of Space X are federally funded by NASA. That these two egomaniacs, aided by media moguls destroying people’s right to privacy, are ruling over the governing of the United States, claiming it is their Constitutional right, frighteningly resembles the mind-numbing omniscient rule of Big Brother in George Orwell’s 1984, right down to the double speak and omnipresent face on television. What is lost in that world is the possibility of love and caring for others

RP

Racing apace

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Everything everywhere all at once. The breakneck speed and urgency of Donald Trump’s first days of imposing his will on government and the American people is dizzying to anyone trying to analyze and comprehend what is emerging. Confusion is enervating and Trump is the master of manipulation, adept at bending anger and mass hysteria in his favor, and tweeting doublethink for and against nearly every issue. All the while, Congressional members are trembling in their suits in fear of stirring his anger. Welcome to 1984. George Orwell was eerily prescient in showing the overwhelming power of Doublespeak in propaganda messaging when it is omnipresent and unquestioned. With the rise of social media and data mining, personal privacy no longer exists, and Big Brother, aka Donald Trump, is ever watchful and demanding.

RP

Wave Boarding

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Leaders of nations around the world, autocratic and/or elected, are all riding varying waves of political and cultural history and momentum. The United States is no exception, but what Donald Trump has ingeniously done is change the American ethos from one of being an amalgam “Melting Pot” of diverse peoples and cultures to the earlier one of “Manifest Destiny”, the belief that the bounty of New World was God’s gift to enterprising, primarily white immigrants claiming ownership of land and utilizing the newly arriving labor to create personal wealth and build a nation of winners and losers based on capitalist exploitation. Black slavery was eventually abolished, but “people of color” and women have long belonged to a distinctly lesser class to be put to use. In Donald Trump’s view, America has always been a white man’s world.

For those who thought and hoped his semi-coherent rambling was merely political bluster and posturing are today waking up to the realization that America has elected an ego maniac who fully intends to do everything he said he would do in leading the free world into the 21st Century. Those less zealous riding his coattails into the future should be questioning just what exactly they have signed up on.

When the unelected million/billionaire Tech titans are seated in the front row with the incoming Cabinet members behind them at the inauguration, it is clear who Trump sees as the best Americans to be rewarded, those making the most money. His pardon of the Capital rioters indicates his concept of law-and-order is that criminals supporting him are heroes, not criminals, and he intends to “weaponize the Justice Department” against his perceived enemies. The talk radio spin and doublethink on all this is mind boggling, but having January 6th made a national holiday looms as an actual possibility. Further, on the subject of mania and beyond, Elon Musk, the Buck Rogers dreamer of space travel and the colonization of Mars and self appointed Czar of government efficiency is not the first genius mind in history to go off the rails. His dalliance and embrace of Adolf Hitler and Nazi Germany is more than sadly disturbing. It is dangerous in our next four year journey into the future.

RP

Money

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Year after year, election after election, it is increasingly clear that the most significant Supreme Court ruling was not overturning Roe v. Wade, but granting unlimited power to money as a weapon of free speech. Money is now a dominant force in politics, leaving Parties racing to raise money. Combined with our toxic concentration of wealth and the ability of media platforms to control information, this further weakens public influence in political dialogue. We no longer have a government “…for the people…” but one controlled by a wealthy elite legislatively protecting its hold on power. To a degree, this is exactly what the Founding Fathers had in mind in writing the Constitution. The Declaration of Independence applied only to British rule.

RP

Pac-Man

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My initial exposure to today’s technological revolution was occasionally playing Pac-Man in bars around town. Great marketing strategy no doubt there, but it didn’t hold my interest long. There were more interesting things to capture my mind. I imagine this distinctly marks me as a gaming and techno dodo bird, but what comes to mind now is just how prescient this simple introductory game was. The tech world is constantly racing to gobble up, with profit ever in mind, everything in its path, our shopping, communication, work, entertainment, homes, cars, leisure time, sanity, money, and war, in short everything integral in modern life, creating on its way constant distraction from the realities of the physical world around us, often with addictions that further diminish our singular human capabilities. This is not to say there are not positives in technological advances, but the mass collection of personal data, our likes and dislikes, is an invasion of privacy from which we have virtually no protection. It matters not if one calls it Big Brother, big government, or corporate greed and power, the feeling of losing control has entered everyone’s life, on both sides of the political spectrum. Further, technology’s thirst for electricity to function and store all that data is insatiable. Just trust us, we have all the answers you need for life today. As a cautionary warning, however, the substantive definition of “artificial” in AI is “not real”.

RP

Destiny in Question

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Donald Trump, his MAGA acolytes, and his millionaire/billionaire supporters are simply a continuation of America’s “Manifest Destiny”, the belief that this New World continent was God’s gift to White men. That the birth of the United States included the genocide of the America’s First People, slavery, women regarded as second class citizens, and the exploitation of the Earth and human labor is not important to these “true” American patriots. Everything was for the taking, a concept that has not left the country. With its belief that racial and cultural diversity leads to the undoing of American values, the Trump phenomenon has deep roots in our history and heritage, and can be seen as an heirloom fruit of the Founding Fathers. Countering that embedded cultural momentum and its resulting concentration of wealth and power, and addressing human-caused global warming will require a monumental shift of national and human ingenuity and identity. It is not just us, the entire world faces a daunting future. There will be no easy sailing for whoever is the next President.

Media Machine

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Between Elon Musk’s Twittersphere and the country-wide talk radio echo chamber Donald Trump’s Republican Party has a media propaganda machine equal to that of the Communist Party in China, Vladimir Putin’s autocracy in Russia, and Big Brother in George Orwell’s 1984. Information available to the public is to be tightly controlled and manipulated to favor the ruling regime. 1984 explores, in combining Orwell’s experience and insights expressed in two earlier novels, the callous oblivion of British capitalism in Burmese Days and Stalin’s betrayal in the Spanish Civil War of a truly populist people’s rebellion in Homage to Catalonia, the end of truth, love, and caring in power politics. Like Big Brother, Trump continually expresses an aura of absolute certainty of his correctness. More than ever Orwell should be required reading for everyone of voting age.