Trash of the Count's Family, As Promised

 Okay, first of all I have to give a spoiler warning - if you care about spoilers and plan to read the webnovel (or  a translation of it really, since it's Korean) don't read any further.

Trash of the Count's Family is about a man who transmigrates into a minor character in a fantasy story. The character he becomes is a wealthy noble called 'trash' because he's known for getting drunk and breaking things. His name is Cale Henituse, and in the story he gets beat up by the protagonist for saying something awful about a village where everyone was murdered.

What you don't find out until much later is that our character came from an AU of the real world, too. An earthlike world where monsters suddenly appeared and created a bit of an apocalypse. Although that world doesn't have the agencies I mention, the way he acts makes me think of a CIA agent or intel officer who decides to change everything (so he can live a quiet and peaceful life, though he's not doing so well at achieving that).

It's fascinating. Both for the overarching themes (like the one I mentioned before, about good leaders taking care of their people, as well as hope and despair and found family and dragons and other things) and for the story itself. Which is complex and hard to explain.

It also makes me think about, well... politics and how we deal with people. Cale comes to the attention of the crown prince in his kingdom, who becomes one of his strongest allies, and there's quite a bit about how you can use political power to help your kingdom. I rather like it because it portrays the various nobles as... well, people. Some are good, some are bad, some are self-interested. And aside from some real villains most of them create the framework the crown prince and our character operate in. It offers some interesting examples of how to do that for good, as well as bad.

There are things I question about it too, though. The character tends to be very transactional, which I normally say with a very negative connotation. Ofc, that could be because I come from a farming family, even if it's my grandparents generation and not my own. My college class on social trust and cooperation says such families tend to be more cooperative. There's a sense that you have to help each other out, not because you know of any specific benefit for doing so, but because that's just what you do. (and it generally does pay out, because your neighbors may help you harvest your crops during a rough year, or other similar things). 

Really, it's that 'pay it forward' mentality where you try to do lend a helping hand because we all need one at some point. (Like the guy who helped us out back in college when our car broke down.)

That's one of the things citizens like me find disturbing when we hear stories about the rich and powerful. That sense that they always have to ask 'what's in it for me?'. That they keep track of who owes who what.

It, frankly, sounds exhausting. I don't want to have to think about which friends will benefit me, or who will give me a leg up. I just want to spend time with the people I enjoy being around, whether they're going to help me get ahead or not.

But... the way this guy does it isn't all that bad. Some of it actually seems to help. Like a pair of orphaned siblings (Cat people. They can change into cats or look like human kids) that he takes under his wing. He tells them that they have to be useful, but it's almost more like a way of giving them something to be proud of. After all, they'd been kicked out of their tribe and told they were useless, and here's someone who wants them around and has things for them to do. (In age appropriate fashion. He's pretty good at taking care of the people under his wing, and trying not to put young kids into situations over their head.)

You can even see how nice it can be, in the sense that the people he comes to an agreement with are clear about what that agreement is, and what they're getting out of it. It's kind of sad that he doesn't seem to trust more altruistic people, and even finds it suspicious.

He's funny though. Doesn't seem to realize how the people around him grow to care for him, and talks about wanting that 'slacker' lifestyle while continuously putting himself in danger. (you later learn that the 'slacker lifestyle' he wants is basically one where there's world peace so he can freely be a slacker. Like, he's not going to run away from bad things so that he alone is fine... he wants to create a place where everyone is. Which I also relate to rather a lot... )

He reminds me a lot of the whole 'the best leader is smart and lazy', because he knows how to delegate and tends to get the people around him to get things done. Builds a good team. Tries to keep anyone from being put in situations where they feel they need to sacrifice themselves for the greater good.

It's interesting for a number of reasons. For example, at one point he ends up back in his past on earth. Right before some of the worst monster events happen. And you see him use the knowledge and skills he has to build people up to the point where they can handle the worst.

See, in his monster filled Korea people starting getting special abilities. And he makes a point that it's not just about finding the ones best able to fight. Some of those abilities are things like the ability to record everything they see. To watch and remember... an ability he has, and can use to analyze the threat and help come up with a better way of dealing with it. During that time he finds a use for everyone. Fighters. Analysts. Healers. Shields. Communication (some abilities let someone act like a megaphone, which he uses to share information during the fight.)

There's some parts where the translations are rough, and I really hope it gets popular enough to get a more professional translation. Also would love to see it animated. 

I may or may not go into more detail here. I started reading it because some friends on discord got hooked, and I'll probably do more character analysis and scenario specific discussions there. But I encourage anyone who thinks they'd like it to go ahead and pick it up.

Covid Update

 Over 370K new covid cases yesterday, and almost 500K today. Even though I know, from Denmark and other highly vaccinated countries, that the death rate in a week or two won't be as bad as it was before the vaccines it's still pretty nuts.

Fuck every single person responsible for helping create this mess.

Every one that is willing to gain political power through the pain and suffering of our citizens deserves to lose any of the political power they have. They don't deserve it.

There's also the disturbing lack of snow, even though we're now heading to the end of the year...

Ah well, hopefully there's enough others that feel the way I do to make a difference. 

To get back to harmless escapism... this is part of what I like about Trash of the Count's Family. Over and over we see powerful people willing to let their citizens suffer, and it's obvious they're the villains of the piece.

I'll probably write some more on that shortly. I've kind of been promising to, but that's one of the ongoing themes that I rather liked about it.

Trash of the Count's Family

I binge read about 700-some chapters of Trash of the Count's Family in the past week, aside from visiting the family for Christmas.

I'll probably write something more about it, but I've got to handle the shift handover call and if I really get into writing I'll lose track of time. 

Anyways, here's one of the quotes that really resonated with me:

"Compromise against power to a reasonable degree, accept irrationality to a reasonable degree. At the same time, live as I please within limits." 

I should probably add this is right before he mentions a rather intelligent plot for addressing someone's abuse of power. 

Update

The world is still pretty nuts right now, but there doesn't seem much to do beyond what I'm already doing.

So I got sucked into reading a Korean webnovel, Trash of the Count's Family, and I'm sure I'll be posting some thoughts and reactions to it.

Probably after the holidays though. 

Also

Wondering why we almost seem to want an apocalypse. 

And also thought about how the cover up truly is worse than the crime. Or rather, I hate how once someone has made one bad decision (like the antivax BS) they often double down. Like now they think if they admit they were wrong it'll be the end of everything, so rather than show they actually care about American lives and doing the right thing, they double down on lies and craziness (thereby proving they really don't deserve to have power. For those paying attention to that sort of thing. Kind of makes the issue as world ending as they were afraid of, but more because they just can't change course than because of the initial mistake).

One of my commanders had a cute little anecdote that probably isn't scientifically accurate. About how lions hunt, and how the lion roaring is trying to scare you into the paws of the rest of the pride, and how it's better to face the roar.

Seems somehow pathetic that so called 'leaders' don't understand that, and will do everything they can to avoid responsibility and accountability.

Rot. I don't know how we went from "the buck stops here" to "I don't take responsibility at all" in less than a century... But the fact that people still seem to consider the latter a viable leader is... Disgusting. 

For Discussion

I've been thinking about posting something to try and capture this feeling, but it hasn't come together yet.

It just feels like all the negative consequences of bad decisions over the past few decades are growing blatantly obvious, while the same forces that prevented us from doing anything about it back then are trying to take over and prevent us from doing anything. Still.

Even now. 

I just don't know which part of the whole thing I wanted to focus on. Like, our biases and the frustrating way people fool themselves into believing things that just aren't so?

The arrogance behind people who made up their minds about an issue forty years ago - and then never revisited it. Never considered that hey, maybe they were wrong.

The shortsighted selfishness and greed that has people who benefited from the current system block any attempts to make it better. 

Or the way these shortsighted fools are probably not going to suffer the consequences of their actions. How they'll flit off to some survival bunker in New Zealand, or use their money to recover from tornadoes or hurricanes or floods or fires. 

They've successfully blocked all efforts at fixing major problems, and now we all have to suffer for their idiocy, and nothing quite captures the sense of helpless rage when you realize that. 

But what's the use? We've got powerful people so lost to any sense or reason that they made a fucking powerpoint that goes against everything our system stands for, and apparently none of the people who saw it realized - not just that it was a bad idea, but that it was potentially illegal. Seditionist, treasonous, I'll let lawyers sort out the correct legal terms, but they apparently didn't see what's wrong with it. At all.

What can you do when that many people have lost their moral compass?

When the rot is that widespread? 

Surprisingly Good Article

Stumbled across this and just wanted to jot it down here. 

Addendum

Mulled over a few more things, but work starts soon so I'm not sure when I'll come back to it. (started thinking about operations, and how some of the cabinets aren't naturally forced to work together to pull off a specific operation the way that unit deployments and field exercises force a military staff to.)

Regardless of whether I follow up on that, I found myself thinking of Woodrow Wilson's seminal piece on public administration.

Its interesting how he disliked monarchists, and felt that "In such governments administration has been organized to subserve the general weal with the simplicity and effectiveness vouchsafed only to the undertakings of a single will. . . ."

And basically argued that we can learn to use their better organized processes while Americanizing them and making them serve the public interest.

NSC and Cabinet Talk, Cont.

Been mulling it over a bit more and I suppose I'll ramble a bit, not sure I'll get done before I have to go somewhere.

I talked about line units and staff, and the federal government doesn't quite map on to that. 

In the military... Well, there's a reason they say good generals talk about logistics, logistics, logistics. 

Yes, we need our combat arms. Our shooters. Infantry, cavalry. The king of battle (artillery). I'm mostly talking army here but also jet fighters and battleships and the like. But as that book about the eastern front showed rather horrifically, your soldiers - no matter how brave - won't be able to fight well if they're starving. Or don't have bullets. Or their tanks get broken and they don't have the equipment to repair it. The classic 'beans and bullets' 

Which is why a very, very, very large portion of our armed forces are really support for the shooters.

Most of the line units are the shooters. And then there's all sorts of bureaucracy tied up with assigning the right type of support (maintenance, engineers, finance, etc).

Military intelligence, for example, doesn't have that many platoons and battalions and the like. Most of them are assigned staff positions with the line units rather than forming a unit of their own. Many officers actually start in another branch, where they get to be a platoon leader as part of the typical officer pipeline, before changing branches. (I requested my transfer from Air Defense, but many did something similar as part of the plan.)

The maneuver units have some pretty predictable planning requirements, hence the staff titles. S1 for personnel. S2 for intelligence. S3 for operations. S4 for supply. S6 for communication. And so on and so forth (J1, J2, etc at the joint level, but the same breakdown. They may have other numbers since they may require things at that level that a battalion or brigade don't.)

So there's the line units, and then there's all the stuff tied up with getting them in the right place at the right time with the right equipment and training and resources to succeed. 

Now, with the federal government we don't generally have that sort of thing. Well, other than the armed forces themselves. The rest of the federal government is not tied up with outfitting and mobilizing units. 

You could maybe say FEMA are like that, though iirc it's more like deploying a staff to help organize local resources on the ground. With some logistics thrown in for federal resources. 

The executive branch is supposed to execute, that is make the legislation passed by Congress actually happen. But quite a bit of that is the military, ofc, or the paperwork involved in funding medicare or social security. Or paying for the secret service or IRS. Or managing national parks. 

Its not really operations. 

Well, and then there's the State Department, which definitely doesn't fit any of the stuff I just described. It has bureaucracy ofc. Plenty of it. And there are diplomats 'deployed' for key negotiations (could we call a deployment of diplomats a bale? Since some turtles live in swamps, so they'd fit right in to the Foggy Bottom?)

I digress. The state department reflects the nation as a whole. Embassies are considered the territory of their government after all. So even though there's lots of staff functions, they're really more like the face we present to the rest of the world. And they should have a coherent foreign policy that reflects our collective goals. ('should' is carrying a lot of weight there).

So, in that sense the whole line unit/staff distinction doesn't really fit.

However. We do have a cabinet, with secretaries ostensibly serving the president (who should reflect our collective will, and is putting into practice the wishes we agreed enough on to actually legislate).

Tbh, I kind of thought the NSC was a little strange when I heard about it. It seemed like a way of working around the cabinets rather than fixing them. It seemed to work well enough for Harry Truman, but it also seems to have done what almost any organization does when given a chance.. Grow larger and take on more duties. I understand a small core of special advisors that can help coordinate across cabinets, but why weren't the cabinet heads able to do that themselves?

That's mostly idle rambling on my part though. I am not an expert on how things work in DC, so maybe I just don't understand what their proper roles are.

Anyways. According to the White House website there are 15 executive departments. Headed by the Secretaries of Agriculture, Commerce, Defense, Education, Energy, Health and Human Services, Homeland Security, Housing and Urban Development, Interior, Labor, State, Transportation, Treasury, and Veterans Affairs, and the Attorney General.

They won't map onto military staff functions, but make sense for things a nation should worry about: defense, the economy, food, trade, energy, finances. And quite a bit that overlaps with those (ie transportation actually helps trade and the economy, but is specialized enough to be its own thing. Labor and education are similar.)

I suppose I need to clarify - ultimately all of this is about taking care of the American people and serving our collective interests. A good economy generally does that, though as economic critiques of common measurements show its not always one and the same. Also, if too many of the benefits of that economy go to the 1%, then it doesn't actually reflect our collective well being. But it used to be a fairly decent way of measuring such things. (people inevitably start playing to the metrics so they might not any more. But you can get an economist to go into that in greater detail).

So the economy matters for two reasons - as a rough measurement for how well we're doing, and because a strong economy is important for national security. That goes back to the beans and bullets... You can have ships and planes and tanks and trucks, but those things get destroyed rather quickly in a war. To sustain and last, you need an economy that can continue to build said ships and tanks and planes. As well as the food to keep feeding your troops, and the people who are making those ships and tanks and planes.

That's part of why I keep saying national security is very broad. You have to have the resources, plus the ability to sustain your efforts. Plus a population educated enough, in all the right ways. Not just for military might, but for the type of economy that can support it. And they have to be healthy enough to do so. (not that these aren't worthy goals in their own right, and I care about education etc for the public goods they provide us in peacetime. Just... They also are extremely important if we ever get into a sustained total war. Same thing for racial tension. An army could fall apart pretty quick if you're forces hate each other. Got to nip that racism shit in the bud or you never know when your forces might fall apart. Seriously, it's very frustrating that people in power don't seem to see white supremacy for the serious threat it is). 

I'm digressing again though, and I'll probably have to leave soon. 

15 executive departments that, for better or worse, are supposed to help implement our laws and the various things we've collectively decided are important. Even if certain people in power think they know better, and actively sabotage them. 

Maybe they need a department of operations to coordinate their efforts. Maybe that's what the NSC essentially has become. 

I get the impression, though, that they're all a tangled hodgepodge of a mess that's grown in fits and starts over our nation's history. (with a large part of the population that resents that entirely, and hinders any effort at making it work). 

NSC and Cabinet talk

I thought this was a fascinating take, partly because of my own misconceptions.

I know a bit about the National Security Council - why it was created and the purpose it serves. The disconnect with execution here makes perfect sense though, because if the NSC did that then what's the point of the president's cabinet? The Secretary of State and the like?

I had thought that a president's cabinet acting like the staff in our military chain of command. Ie each was responsible for their area of expertise, but they met regularly (under the commander or his executive officer in the military, and if not them then the S3 or J3 as the head of operations) and they'd basically get all the different parts working together.

But the article indicates that cabinets are more isolated than I thought, probably because they're scared of looking weak or incompetent and don't want to kick things up to the president, which... Idk. Seems foolish, but we're tending to deal with giant egos at that level so whatever. Seems presidents don't want to spend all their time managing that, and I'm not sure about the xo or s3 equivalent. The VP historically is actually a token role (used to be it was the opposing candidate from the other party even, so they're not really the XO. And a president's Chief of Staff is more about managing the president's staff (kind of a 'duh' statement), but it's more like the guy who manages their household rather than cabinet wrangler and alter ego for managing the entire business of executing what Congress has legislated.

They keep trying to make these 'czars' for interagency coordination, but really maybe they just need a head cabinet wrangler.

Then again, the executive branch is not truly like a military chain of command. What with congressional oversight, political appointees from other parties, and the bureaucrats who run things while political appointees come and go, it's a sprawling bureaucratic nightmare where even the person who supposedly commands it can't always make things happen like they want.

Edited to ramble a bit more: on second thought, a battalion or brigade or division commander has his/her staff, and executive officer... And then the subordinate units (companies, battalions, etc) headed by their respective commanders. And the cabinet secretaries may be more like those commanders...

That doesn't sound right though. The Department of State supports the president more like staff officers do then like a line officer in charge of combat troops. 

Its just that they serve a different enough purpose from the military that it's not exactly a purely staff situation either. 

Still wouldn't hurt to have the equivalent of a good XO though. 

If All Your Friends Jump Off a Cliff...

I don't know if this is just a sign of the times, or it's some nasty attempt at manipulating teenagers... But these TikTok challenges are disturbing.

It's probably the former, it's just all the media manipulation these days makes me want someone to at least look at the possibility.

I had to pick Little up from school yesterday because there were 10+ fights. I heard about some of the other challenges mentioned in the article too. (She said the fights might have been a challenge). 

Where Is The Light?

 

My friend of over 25 years is starting hospice care. She's been dealing with cancer for the past couple of years, and it's metastasized. I was able to visit her at the beginning of November, and we watched Anna and the Apocalypse (in addition to a whole bunch of other movies). And this song...

She told me the filmmaker behind it was battling cancer too, and basically had no fucks left to give. This song is a mood. 

And a rather fitting one, I think. Not just because of my friend's situation. I think back to where we were a year ago, and I do think things are better now. Trump lost the election, he's no longer president, and we're not dealing with his madness on top of everything else.

And yet...

And yet, just as many people said, Trump was more a symptom of the problem than the problem itself. We're still struggling, far more than I had hoped or wanted, to make the changes we need.

I find myself thinking about various projects I've worked on. Like the one in Iraq, where we were trying to improve our biometric collection processes. When a later class discussed change management (and how you needed support from people at the top) it resonated... because I have seen how hard it is to do anything when you don't have the support you need.

I've seen the reverse as well. At my current company there seems a decent amount of upper level support for change, but the people themselves seem to be resisting it. You can see it in how people just sort of stop joining meetings, or get busy with other things and say they can't participate any more.

Some days I wonder what it would be like, to be part of a success story. Changes with the support they need, both at the top and bottom. You'll never have everyone on board, of course. Change management is probably one of the hardest things any organization can do, and any change will benefit some and harm others. But... having wise leadership pushing the right changes, doing so in a way that persuades people to get on board with it, leading to an organization that's doing things right.

It sounds almost magical, actually. 

I try not to be too cynical and negative, but I think a certain amount of skepticism is realistic. Because far too often the changes are only cosmetic. (Like all the jokes in the military about how someone renamed a project or organization, just to get a bullet point for their evaluation report. Or the way the receiving department changed the layout on their floor, twice at least, both times supposedly part of process improvement. Lean six sigma stuff. Except if it was so efficient the first time, why did it need changed a second time?)

Not that those things are wrong, or bad. I've read about them, and other industry buzz words (like SRE for tech now). But implementing them effectively often requires a deeper level of change that I just don't think most organizations are truly willing to do. Which means people do something cosmetic that they can put on an evaluation, without actually changing much of anything. (Again, change management is hard, so that's not meant as an insult.)

 I suppose that's part of why I'm so interested in systems, and organizational structures. Most people are average. It's kind of the definition of 'average' actually, and a good system will ensure that the important things get done. Any officer or soldier in their proper position can do the paperwork needed to make sure we have the supplies and equipment we need. Battalions have staffs that ensure proper training is done. And most of it doesn't require true excellence (though of course everyone wants it, and tries to develop it).

Nations are also organizations, and the rise and fall of nations is an ongoing fascination of mine. Why do some start to stagnate and fall? Why do some blossom and grow? Is the cycle truly inevitable? How do you stop or change it? 

I read a fascinating history on the Mongols, I can't remember which book... but one of their subsequent empires seemed to be declining, until a really impressive leader took charge and helped restore it for another hundred years or so. 

I like to think I have a good sense of what's needed, but... well.

Doesn't everybody? Isn't that part of the problem? All the companies Jim Collins wrote about in How the Mighty Fall wanted to succeed after all. And the ones who made the decisions leading to decline didn't think that was what they were doing. 

The only real way to know is to see what happens afterwards, at which point it's generally too late to change anything.

The point of that is that regardless of whether I know what I'm talking about or not, it doesn't really matter if the people who have the ability to change things disagree. 

And that's the crux of the matter, isn't it? I think we're headed in a rather terrible direction, but the forces pushing us that way seem far too powerful. I'll still do what I can, most especially by voting, but sometimes I get the sinking feeling that it just isn't going to be enough. 

Climate change is one example of the problem. It's December already, and although I appreciate not being cold... this weather is ridiculous for this time of year. But good luck doing anything about it. 

Just like there is apparently nothing we can do about school shootings.

Or growing wealth inequality.

Or the way most Americans support decriminalization, if not outright legalization, of marijuana.

Or the disastrous coronavirus response.

The forces resisting change seem far too powerful, and the end result is utterly crappy. For everyone.

I'm not saying it's hopeless, necessarily. It's just that the consequences of failing seem worse than ever. There's a very narrow path to a happy ending. (I thought about going into more detail about why these things are so terrible, or what a 'happy ending' entails... but honestly if you don't already understand why these things are a problem it would take a LOT of typing to lay out the arguments. I think I'll keep this post short and sweet instead.)

We've got a lot of work to do.

Stiff Necked People

 I have often pondered the contradiction between valuing democracy (and the social contract) and the abundance of evidence that the general public can be... foolish.

I generally don't write about it because it's practically impossible to do so. When you decide that the general public shouldn't be trusted then who do you trust instead? History has shown that 'experts' often cause just as much trouble, if not more. (i.e. they're so certain they know what's best that they can make disastrous mistakes and refuse to admit or learn from them. Or are unwilling to listen to anyone who contradicts their notions. If anyone wants some reading recommendations I can pull them out.)

The pandemic has made me think about this a bit more often than normal, for obvious reasons. 

And I found myself thinking that rather than calling it 'foolishness', the better description is 'stiff-necked'.

There's all sorts of biblical examples where Israelites were described that way, and I like it because it seems less judgmental. Almost admiring. Like, of course it's annoying and frustrating and it hurts to see people make hurtful choices... but you also kind of have to admire the sheer cussedness. That determination to do your thing, right or wrong. Stubborn, argumentative, unwilling to change what you think just because someone else is telling you you're wrong...

I actually rather like that in people, especially subordinates. Even if it makes you feel like tearing out your hair, and causes all sorts of frustration when it comes to leading them.

(if they bend too easily, it's a bad sign. Like they're too afraid to speak their own truths, or are giving in just because you came on too strong and not because they actually agree. Or can be. I would hope that they're willing to change their minds when presented with good evidence or a good argument, but I'd rather work with someone who forces me to make those arguments and try to persuade them over someone who isn't confident enough to argue back.)

So anyways, I normally don't bother  blogging about that... but I wanted to discuss our stiff-neckedness (a term that applies to a lot more than ancient biblical Israelites) and ramble a bit about some odd connections I've made.

The first of which comes from Islam. 

The very word is supposed to mean 'submission to the will of God', and the early history shows (yet again) the struggle to get a very proud and stiff necked people to submit to the will of God. 

I feel as though there's something important about this... I'm not sure what word to use. Concept? Interaction? Relationship?

Like, if I'm trying to develop a subordinate (or raise a child), I would want them to be confident and capable of standing up for what they believe, while being able to think critically and change their opinions if there's good reason to do so. 

And so brute force is bad, because you haven't actually changed anyone's mind. You have persuaded anyone. You haven't convinced them of the rightness of your action, or made them internalize it and work to support your goals whole-heartedly.

You've just made them believe that they have no other choice, and have to do what you want.

But deciding to ignore it and leave people to their foolishness isn't exactly an option either. At least, not when we're talking about social dilemmas and public health. 

I don't just mean the pandemic here, or the absolutely unnecessary death and suffering that's come about from all this anti-vaccine nonsense.

Nor is it just climate change, and the stranglehold nefarious actors have on any sort of effective response.

It's just that some things really do require mutual cooperation, and avoiding bad outcomes is not a given.

I say that, because well over a decade ago I'd had a discussion with one of my more conservative relatives about climate change, and they basically seemed to think that God wouldn't allow it.

(This was a very long time ago and I forget the specific argument, but I've heard some similar arguments over the years and practically every one of them is wrong. There's the 'we're not so powerful we could actually affect the climate of the entire world' and the 'somebody will think of a solution, it won't be so bad' and the like.)

And the thing is, while on the one hand I do think there's a way out of almost every situation...  I don't think it happens by magic.

For example, when the Crusaders were attacking Salah Al-din at the Battle of Hattin, God didn't miraculously make a spring appear to give their forces water.  Assuming God would have wanted them to succeed in the first place (which is definitely an assumption, I'm not saying He did) He would probably have made it happen by convincing someone to actually... you know. Plan properly? And secure some logistics? He gave us brains so we could do that sort of thing. Not so we can refuse to do any sort of planning at all, and then sit around waiting for a miracle to save us.

Salah Al-din was better prepared, planned better, and won. As they say, "God favors the prepared".

This is part of why I'm so interesting in decision making and organizational behavior. Good decisions may occur by accident once or twice, but no organization or nation can consistently choose wisely without a good method for ensuring the right people have the right information, have the wisdom to weigh and evaluate said information and use it to come up with good policies, and the power to put said policies into practice.

This is my main concern right now, actually. 

It's not just that more and more people are struggling. That rent is often more expensive than a mortgage, which people can't get because of various other systemic issues, that inflation is eating up more and more of the average person's income even as wages still don't rise enough to make a difference, even as people are unable to afford basic healthcare needs, even as the poor decisions made over decades have made things harder and more uncertain for anyone other than a very small percentage of the population. It's not just about climate change, or the pandemic, or any of the other disasters just waiting to hit.

It's that we don't have our collective shit together. That we either don't have the right information, or the right people getting that information, or the wisdom to actually evaluate that information and create sound policy, or the power to actually put said policies in place.

And the thing of it is, even though I can see the likely consequences of that... I still don't think it's inevitable.

But only if we're capable of changing whatever it is that's blocking us. Whether it's removing the obstacles to putting good policy in place, or getting wiser people in the right positions, or making sure those people get the right information... 

And to tie this back to where I started... I do think a lot about Jim Collins works, and especially the type of leadership he described in How the Mighty Fall. We don't need egotistical know-it-alls who think they're our saviors.

We need people with the humility and level five leadership, ones who are able to ask the right questions and build a high performing quality team that can tackle these issues, and have the power to do so.

Ones who know how to listen and learn, monitor and evaluate and adjust their plans as needed.

Perhaps, if we didn't have quite so many stiff-necked people, we'll be able to deal with the challenges of our time.

Systemic Issues

Every time I'm reminded of stuff like this - not so much that specific example, but the reminder that powerful people have such a stranglehold that we're unable to make needed change - it pisses me off.

Its like we're becoming 'the sick man of America', as opposed to the old Ottoman Empire. And these fools would rather see us stagnate and fail then loosen their grasp even a little.

I just hope that things aren't as dire as it feels. We survived an earlier gilded age. Surely, no matter how bad it looks, we can make the changes we need?

Just seems like the stakes are high, and these f***wits are determined to make things worse. 

Huh

That's a fascinating take on the ultra-wealthy , though ofc I have absolutely no way of evaluating it.

I'll probably read some of the reactions to it before trying to figure out my own opinion on it. 

Colin Powell

This seems like a fitting tribute. 

Change

The pandemic, climate change, growing idiotic authoritarian BS, crappy managers like this...

Its unsustainable. And it feels like we need wise systemic change it we're going to suffer through needless disruption when the pressures on the current system become too much. 

Change is coming, one way or another. 

 Some days the news is so depressing that I wonder whether I'd be better off closing the apps and ignoring it.

Not that there's anything particular about today's news. Budget fights, ugliness towards the Haitians, more proof that our system is failing us in all sorts of ways (healthcare expenses, inability to hold Trump accountable, and of course the raging pandemic). There's compassion fatigue and people are exhausted - and often grieving.

What's even worse is that far too much of the focus on things that are only making everything worse. The stupidity. It astounds me. (Vaccines in salad dressing? Really? Do you hear yourself?)

Yes, I know that sounds like the exact same complaints someone from the other side would make.

I don't want to talk about it, as it's getting harder and harder for me to care about their opinions too. (There was a NYTimes article I haven't read, because I don't really want to give them the click, but it seems to be discussing why and how men without a college education are getting left behind, and like... it is really hard to care. They still have so many advantages, and they could have supported systems that would have helped them. Helped all of us. And instead they've doubled down on insanity, and somehow we're still supposed to care about them rather than all the harm their insecurity has done.)

But railing about all that foolishness wasn't why I wanted to write this.

It's more... I dunno. I'm tempted to try to ignore all of it, really. But I don't think it ultimately helps.

Or rather, I think it's a bit like sticking your head in the sand. You might be able to pretend things are fine, for a while. You may even be lucky enough to spend your entire life thinking that.

But I do think there's an observable, objective truth. And pretending that everything is fine - when it clearly isn't - just leaves you at the mercy of others.

Hmmm.

That's not quite the tone I wanted to get at.

I've been thinking a bit about hermits. Ascetics. People who give up on society and go live a simple life in a cave or a desert or something. 

And there does seem to have been some value in that? I am not honestly criticizing the people who have made that choice. Sometimes it's important to make space for yourself, to gain perspective... and there's a rich history of meditation and other traditions associated with all of that.

But.... it's somewhat easy to do certain things when you're living in a way that is designed to encourage that. It's a lot harder to find that sense of inner peace when you're dealing with the typical modern life, with all it's demands and distractions.

Easy to sit in a cave and talk about how we should love one another, or the universe or God is love. Less so when there's some idjit who just cut you off in traffic, and you forgot that thing, and you have twenty different things to do before it's time to figure out dinner and maybe (just maybe) get twenty minutes to yourself before heading to bed. (I am somewhat lucky to have more space to think about certain things, but that also comes at a cost. As in, if I'm reading a book and typing a blog post there are other things I'm not doing. And while I've enjoyed working from home, I totally understand how much more challenging that can be for parents whose children are either remote learning or too young for school.)

It seems to me that someone who can maintain that inner peace while dealing with all the usual stresses is probably a bit more solid in their beliefs than someone who only achieves it through isolation and cutting themselves off from society.

I'm kind of doing that stream-of-consciousness thing though, and I'm getting sidetracked.

I'm more concerned about becoming a hermit because it seems like I'd be abandoning any effort at changing things. 

Plus it'd leave you unprepared and unable to do anything about other people's decisions.

That is... you might live peacefully for a while. Perhaps even get lucky enough to do so for the rest of your life. 

But let's say climate change is real. Eventually you will feel the impact of that, no matter how remote your cave. Maybe your cave is in a region that isn't badly affected, but then it might draw the people displaced from regions that are. Or you'll have to change your diet based off what starts growing in the new climate. 

Sort of the same thing with other potential disasters, like nuclear war and the like. We're increasingly interconnected, and you would have to go to great lengths to be somewhere NOT affected. 

Better to be involved, and help prevent any such disasters before they happen... then to ignore it all. Like what, you think the powers-that-be aren't insane enough to let such disasters unfold? The last couple of years have made it hard to believe any such thing.

So I don't think hermitage is really the answer. But I'm not really sure what is. I don't mean to dismiss the forces for sanity that do exist. They're out there, I see them...

It just feels like it's not enough. 

Is that how people felt during the height of the robber barons' power?

Why is it so frigging hard for the people willing to spend gobs of money on everything except loving thy neighbor and treating their employees with decency, respect, and a reasonable living wage that their priorities are not just wrong but that they're sabotaging themselves in the process. 

Why are so many of us forced to suffer because of these nincompoops?

Very Good Points

https://twitter.com/TheRaDR/status/1438127210976718850?s=19

Disturbing Take - Wish I Knew If It's True

Saw this discussion on our foreign policy establishment. The picture it draws is... Not good. 

9/11

 I debated writing anything about 9/11 today, on the twentieth anniversary. My thoughts are, as always, complicated... and it also felt a bit performative and obligatory. 

So many people are sharing memes or posts talking about where they were that day, what they were doing, and how they felt. 

I'll probably do some of that as well, but all those thoughts and feelings are overshadowed by where we are now.

Twenty years later...

We left Afghanistan, a nation we invaded in the first place because of 9/11.

We are in the midst of a pandemic. One that has killed 220x more Americans than died during 9/11. 

And it doesn't feel like the world is better, or safer... but rather has grown increasingly more dangerous and darker.

I don't know how much of the latter is just... growing up, I guess. It could be it was always like this and I just wasn't aware of it.

It had felt though, for a brief moment between the fall of the Berlin Wall and 9/11, like there was hope and reason to believe we'd build a better future. 

It is harder to believe that, now. And I don't know how to convey that to the young adults (they're adults now! The children who grow up in a post 9/11 world). 

On 9/11, I was a junior officer at Fort Bliss, TX. In El Paso. 

I was driving to work when I heard it on the radio. I didn't believe it at first and switched radio stations, only to hear the same thing there.

My brother and I talked about how the impact differed... for him it was tragic, but he was in school at IU at the time and didn't really know anyone affected. The next day was pretty much like any other day for him.

I, on the other hand, saw an immediate change. Security to Fort Bliss immediately was ramped up, and the line to get onto base was looooong. They were now doing 100% ID checks (if your car had been registered and had the sticker, you hadn't needed to before. As an officer my sticker was blue, and the gate guards would just salute and allow me through) and random car inspections.

Even as we adjusted to those changes, a buzz went through our units. We all knew the US would respond somehow, and it was just a question of who'd be sent and when. 

I don't know how to convey to civilians what the threat of impeding war means when you serve. Of course there's the risk of death and injury, and you'd have to be a fool to truly wish for or want a war. (Not saying there aren't such fools, especially when young and convinced your invincible.) 

But at the same time, a peace time army is like a baseball team that constantly trains and never actually has any games. It's all training, and paperwork, and vehicle maintenance and more training and more paperwork and more training...

Peacetime service is actually rather boring. Well, not exactly. We do try to make our training exercises as realistic as possible, and you can definitely wind up in high stress and/or dangerous situations. But everything is just rehearsing and practicing for if or when it's needed, as well as doing the regular bureaucratic stuff that keeps equipment maintained, soldiers equipped, people promoted or disciplined, etc.

But 9/11 happened, and someone was going to be going somewhere, and that someone might be us.

That all seems clearcut and simple, but you can't really talk about Afghanistan without talking about Iraq. 

Even if you wanted to ignore all the bad decisions and problems of Iraq, you can't deny that Iraq drew off resources that could have been used in Afghanistan.

Afghanistan became the forgotten theater. 

Not by the soldiers sent there, of course. Not by the people living there. 

But Afghanistan got a fraction of the coverage Iraq did, as well as a fraction of the troops and supplies. 

It is impossible to imagine what would have happened if we'd kept our focus on Afghanistan instead of getting distracted by Iraq, but it's hard to believe we'd have been in the same place.

That's part of what was so annoying about all the negative coverage for our withdrawal...

You'd had twenty years to take Afghanistan seriously and do something different. Nobody was covering it, nobody was reporting it, the average American tended to forget we even had troops there. 

And now suddenly it's this super critically important place that we shouldn't abandon? 

Sure, whatever. 

There are still terrorist networks, and it's possible that we'll face another such attack because of the way we mishandled everything. 

But we need an honest and unpartisan look into just how we got where we are today, and I don't have much confidence that we'll see that. 

It's either pseudo-patriotism where people wave the flag and act as though any criticism is an attack on America, or it's a rejection of the notion that we could have done anything good. That it's all 'imperialist behavior' or aggression or whatever and that we should never have invaded in the first place. 

It seems to be impossible to find any sort of nuanced, knowledgeable analysis that doesn't ignore our mistakes but doesn't assume any action on foreign soil whatsoever is a mistake.

It's like all the problems with the Iraq news coverage all over again, and I'm heartily sick of pundits and decision-makers from both sides - left and right - who have such biased and flawed thinking that it's almost impossible to actually do things right.

Over and over and over again.

9/11...

I, like many Americans, was caught off guard. Had to ask myself 'why do they hate us'? 

And so I read, and studied, and learned that it wasn't actually some random act of madness. Learned more about how and why al Qaeda attacked us that day. 

I do not have confidence we've really resolved the root causes.

Also...

Even though the pandemic is not related to 9/11, the callousness and willingness to do nothing when over 600,000 Americans have died vs the demand for action when less than 3,000 did...

It's hard not to feel like we've grown more callous and cruel. 

So yes, 9/11... I remember that day. And I feel for all the Americans who lost a loved one.

I'm not sure I want us to 'never forget' though. Not when it's led us here, to the America of today. 

Emergencies

 Tomorrow is the 20th anniversary of 9/11, which naturally brings up a lot of memories. We also had Biden give a speech yesterday, essentially pushing for vaccines or weekly testing... to varying degrees of approval. And word is that there's some sort of protest 'on behalf of those arrested after Jan 6th' next week. It doesn't seem to have gotten much buzz, and the worst groups seem worried about it being a trap by the Feds, so it may or may not amount to anything. (I'm hoping it won't, but as an indicator that these f*ckwits are still trying to cause problems, it's concerning.)

But I wanted to jot down some of the thoughts that have been flitting around in my brain, and I wanted to discuss emergencies.

There's a lot of weight to some of the concepts I'll throw out here, but in the interests of staying somewhat on topic I'll probably touch on them lightly.

I've written before about the difference in how decisions should be made when you've got plenty of time, vs when you're in a high stress situation where you have to act quickly. It makes sense for the military, as just one example, to encourage obedience and discipline. You don't have time to argue about which way to go if you're under fire, and sometimes even a bad decision is better than no decision. Especially if the unit moves in the same direction, and works together. 

But ideally? 

Well, I like my pizza analogy for a reason. If you have a small group of friends trying to order pizza, most people will try to find something everyone will eat. There's compromise involved, and some of the decisions may depend on who is paying for it and who is ordering, but for the most part a good group of friends will try to listen and respond to everyone's wishes. (And maybe people don't always get exactly what they want, but if they spend time with this group on a regular basis, then it's likely that their wishes will be catered to at some future time.)

This gets at the heart of my philosophy, if I were to call it that. "all men (and women, and non-binary... really all humans) are created equal". All have worth, and value. If you want to get religious, since I think a lot of this view came from my Catholic upbringing, you can say that "if God made this person and they're still alive by God's grace, then God must see something of value in them."

Which is... hard, sometimes. It's hard to remember humanity's inherent value when we see them doing things that we find outrageous. Awful. Mean and cruel. But God bless 'em, He seems to see something of worth even if I don't always. 

Deciding things that way might work in a small group of friends, though it can also be exhausting and time consuming and frustrating. Especially if people's tastes don't match. But the important part is making sure people know that their concerns matter. (And if they're overridden at that particular moment, it's not something that happens Every. Single. Time.)

That is, in a nutshell, what the social contract and democracy is all about. It's a way of letting a large group of people decide in a manner in which everyone has a say. It ideally has clear rules, consistency, and would avoid 'the tyranny of the majority' and various other pitfalls. (The concept of 'the greater good' has some weight, but you have to be careful since it's far too easy to justify forcing people to do things they don't want to. For the greater good. Really, the greater good is best served by also protecting individual rights and freedoms.)

That's easy to say, but a lot harder to put into practice. The point of all that, though, is that for the most part I do believe in the 'marketplace of ideas'. In the importance of persuasion to resolve our differences, and elections to show who cares enough, in enough numbers, to decide what we do. 

As part of our Great Experiment.

I don't like the tendency to think that one group of people knows best, or that we should ignore the masses because they're dumb and ignorant. Sure, if I think I know better it's tempting to dismiss everyone else as fools. (I use the term often enough). But deciding that you know best in such situations means ignoring the wishes of the majority of people who also live in this society. It means you probably ought to brush up on your skills at persuasion, and organizing, and getting out the vote. Even - or perhaps especially - if you think most citizens are wrong.

Seriously, we can communicate complicated concepts. And even ones that go against our immediate wishes. Just look at the success Republicans have had with persuading Americans - most of whom aren't even close to millionaires - to support their economic policies.

But this is in an ideal situation, much like the decisions made when you're far from the battle front and have the time to truly work out a good solution. (Perhaps not a lot of time. But in most circumstances delaying a decision in the Pentagon by a day or two won't have the immediate consequences it would have out at the front... and taking the time to do it right is worth it.)

But I mentioned 'emergencies', because the rules change then. Since I like using other examples before going into current circumstances, I'll use a city under siege. Back in the medieval era.

Back then, castles were strong defenses that couldn't be ignored... because if you left them behind you they might send out their forces to attack you from the rear. So what tended to happen is an army would besiege them, sometimes for years. And most of the time they fell either because of starvation and thirst, or betrayal from within.

Having an army outside your city is a pretty clear indicator that you're in an emergency, and there were things a city would do that they wouldn't otherwise. Like declaring martial law. Rounding up all critical supplies (food, metal for weapons and armor, etc). 

They would ration food, since they had no idea how long the siege would last and they'd all starve if they didn't.

And they would crack down on price gouging and war profiteering, because of course in a city under siege supply would shrink and demand would rise, and an unscrupulous merchant could make a lot of money charging people for rare goods.

I say 'unscrupulous' because for the most part everyone in the city is in it together. If the city falls the enemy forces would pour in, looting and pillaging and raping and killing. Merchants could lose everything, as could common laborers and armsmen and the lords and ladies in the castle. (Betrayal can come if one of them worked out a deal to save themselves... at the expense of everyone else.)

The rules change in an emergency, but there's also a clear indication of when the emergency is over, and when things can go back to normal. No army camped outside your walls? Then the emergency is over. 

Also... you should ration food because pretty much every able body might be involved in the defense, whether it's bringing water to the soldiers on the walls or helping pour boiling oil on the attackers. If you let normal market forces work, you may see a select few eat their fill while the people you need to help defend the keep starve... and starving people a) aren't going to do a good job of fighting and b) have more of an incentive to betray everyone in order to live.

In other words, merchants would have to be especially foolish or unscrupulous to protest when their goods are taken, their forced to sell at lower prices, and various other consequences of living in a castle/town under siege.

Some of the same dynamics apply to other situations, though perhaps not with the same threat of violence.

A shipwrecked crew, for example. 

And yes, a pandemic. 

The debate over mask mandates and vaccine mandates has me thinking about this, because in an ideal world I would love to respect the 'my body, my choice' argument, and to let people choose for themselves. I would also love to see persuasion used to convince people to do the right thing.

However, when hospitals are overloaded and people who don't even have covid die because there aren't any beds available, we don't exactly have time for that.

Your ability to act the fool ends when it gets other people killed.

Which is about where we are right now. 

The people who don't take covid seriously see all these as signs of tyranny. It's like they're in a castle under siege but can't see the besieging army. I don't find their arguments persuasive, because until hospitals stop being overwhelmed we're still in a crisis. (If we get the pandemic under control and politicians still try to enforce mask mandates or vaccine mandates then that would be a different story. But we're definitely not there yet, so their argument is moot.)

So yes, I do support mask mandates. And vaccine mandates (though offering to let people remain unvaccinated so long as they get tested on a regular basis is better, I think.When there's not a clear reason for enforcing something against people's will it's better to respect their autonomy. And if they're stubborn enough to get tested every week rather than vaccinated then so be it. They still shouldn't be going out and about, and definitely not masked, but whatever. People are worked up and emotional and it's not ideal but makes sense.)

It is... frustrating. I empathize with the people who are fed up. It's a lot of work to keep reminding myself that everyone has value... even the fools making terrible decisions right now. 

Some of them are family. Not my immediate family, thank God, but family nonetheless. And while I don't like seeing them parade their ******* foolishness on social media, I don't really want them to suffer for it. 

And I don't think they deserve the worst consequences (especially when some of the problem is that they're foolish enough to trust the wrong sources, or are shaped by the opinions of those around them.)

On Shaping Public Opinion

This was thought provoking, and I may come back to write more about it.

Or not. (Various ideas have flitted by for posting, one of which related to how we interact with the news and media we encounter, but it's late. I won't go into it now, and as other topics have also been flitting around I'm not sure I'll write about this one when I finally set fingers to keyboard). 

Liberalism

 I've been thinking about how Putin said liberalism was 'obsolete'.

Okay, more seriously I was thinking about how there seems to be a concerted effort to undermine liberalism, and while he's not the sole person behind it I'm sure he's part of it.

And I understand why Russians would dislike 'the West'. I understand that after two major invasions of their country they really wanted satellite nations as a buffer, and there was the whole NATO thing, and they feel threatened... (I don't claim to understand it at an expert level, but I get the broad brushstrokes)...

But I don't really see what that has to do with liberalism, or why Putin takes issue with it. You could even argue that the problematic parts of 'the West' aren't their liberalism. It's more the imperialism, colonialism, and non-liberal elements that are softened by liberalism.

But that term gets thrown out a lot, often as a dirty word, and I decided to actually look up the definition. (I kind of get confused about liberal vs. progressive vs Democrat vs whatever other term is used for various factions on the left. So much of them seem interchangeable, but they're clearly not. At least, not to the people arguing over what the Democrats should do.)

Here's the definition that most closely fits how I understood it: "a supporter of a political and social philosophy that promotes individual rights, civil liberties, democracy, and free enterprise."

I suppose the vitriol is reserved for the other definition: "a supporter of policies that are socially progressive and promote social welfare."

I don't really see why either of these deserve so much hatred, though I suppose the second one is just a handy way of describing whoever conservatives (who don't want to promote social welfare, apparently. And oppose progressive policies on principle) hate.

But let's go back to the first one.

Individual rights, civil liberties, democracy, and free enterprise.  

That sounds very American to me. As American as apple pie. Like, I have a hard time understanding how anyone who considers themselves a patriot would say that they don't support these things.

Individual rights? Like freedom of speech and the right to bear arms?

Civil liberties? Also includes freedom of speech, right to assembly, right to a fair trial, and more.

Democracy? I can't not believe that supposedly patriotic Americans have actually started using the 'we're a republic, not a democracy' line. I mean, it's something I've known for decades... 

but only because it had been the sort of nitpicky thing political scientists cared about. It's not exactly one or the other, or that having one means you can't have the other. We're a republic, yes. But we use democracy to choose who represents us. And democracy is a very important way of choosing who represents us. 

They should represent the will of the people. There's a whole very long history behind all of this. The social contract, the importance of having a government that governs on behalf of all its citizens. I don't understand how you can claim to care about Western values and history and ignore some of it's better achievements. 

The problem is that these people don't seem to care about the social contract or the will of the people when said will might go against what they, personally, want. (Do we really have to prove all over again why minority rule is so bad?)

Free enterprise? Liberals aren't against capitalism. Not by this definition. Now, we can go into the second definition (progressive policies and promotes social welfare), but that's the sort of thing I'd expect to get resolved in a healthy fashion. Through debate and elections. 

It hardly seems the sort of thing that justifies the hatred and knee-jerk reaction conservatives use. (I've seen takes that focus on extreme opinions on said progressive policies and use it to claim modern liberals have given up civil liberties and democracy... but in my lifetime none of the people pushing those ideas has gotten into a position to truly threaten that. Conservatives don't see it that way, I know. But no... your children are not being indoctrinated by 'liberal' professors and your concerns about 'cancel culture' are highly exaggerated. There's always edge cases, doesn't mean that's the reality for most of us. Plus there's the problematic way that their efforts to control the narrative lead to the very same suppression of ideas. Like trying to outlaw teaching true facts about our history, just because they make white people look bad. Apparently we can't handle learning the truth.)

I think what shocks me is this.

I knew there was a lot of debate over those edge cases. Over 'political correctness', or now 'wokeism', or 'critical race theory'. But every time I see a story that seems concerning - by which I mean it's not overhyped and overexaggerated, and you have to wonder why the hell anyone thought it was a good idea - it generally gets a lot of attention and then gets fixed. Or we learn that there was more to it than that, and maybe it actually was a good idea. Either way, it's not going to destroy America.

But overturning an election? Voter suppression? Creating a system that caters to a minority and ignores the wishes of the vast majority of Americans?

That will. That absolutely will. 

I don't understand how people who claim they value 'freedom', claim they value America, claim they love our country... can then turn around and justify putting in place a system that will destroy all of that.

Do the morons arguing that we should forcibly remove elected officials who don't do what a small minority of the people who elected that official want honestly think that's freedom? 

That's basically what the brownshirts were. They use violence to suppress dissent... and you can't do that and claim to care about the rule of law and democracy. Not with any integrity.

The reason we use elections to settle these issues is that it's a hella lot better than deciding by whoever is the most violent. Once you open that door, it's not long before the people who disagree with you follow your lead and do your same, and we degenerate into infighting and possible civil war.

It's a terrible idea, and the people behind it are terrible people. I don't care why they think it's justified. Whatever it is, they are wrong. 

Anyways, you really have to wonder why there's such a concerted effort to undermine liberalism. What's so scary about it? What are you offering that's better? 

Because all I'm seeing are forces hell bent on forcing us to prove all over again how terrible authoritarianism and minority rule are.

Minor Update

 I suppose I ought to post something about Texas (or the flooding on the East Coast, and climate change. Or the continuing toll covid is taking on us. The world is such a mess.)...

but tbh it kind of snuck up on me. I didn't really know anything was going on until I started seeing stuff on Twitter, hours before the legislation went into effect.

And I don't want to downplay the damage this will do... but I'm also kind of curious about who's going to be the first to try the snitching part of it out.

Because here's the thing. 

You can put laws on the books, but that doesn't mean people actually act like they exist. 

Take sodomy laws, which are still on the books in some states. Has anyone actually tried arresting someone for breaking them? In the last decade?

I imagine most people a) don't even know if someone is getting an abortion and b) probably aren't going to report it if they do.

Which means the first attempts to actually put this in practice are probably going to be edge cases. Probably either some abusive man who impregnated someone and is upset they're getting rid of the baby (some really do try to tie their significant other to them that way. Like the one who tried giving a woman I knew fake birth control pills. Or that whole 'stealthing' BS) or some terrible arch-conservative parents willing to put their daughter (or trans-son, it's possible) in jail. Because they've bought the BS about abortion being the same as murder, and consider their child a murderer. (Overlooking the role they probably played in creating that situation, since such parents probably also didn't want their children taught about contraception, and taught their children that unmarried sex was a sin and therefore made it far more likely that the child hid their sexual activity from them and didn't take precautions.)

So it's a mess, and y'all can read about it on the news, but I don't really have a lot to add on it.

Oh, except that I saw  a headline today that captured so much of what most of us hate about MSM. It said "Texas law could flip script on abortion politics, with Democrats eying gains". 

As if that was the most important and relevant thing here.

Perfect example of 'horse race' reporting, and how damaging it can be. (Perhaps the article itself handled it better, but with a headline like that I wasn't interested in reading it.)

Anyways, I was mulling over something else and will post about it shortly. I just didn't want to start today's blogging by ignoring the news of the day.

Russian Trolling

This post reminds me of this joke.

Curious about what's going on in Russia these days, though I don't have any good sources for reliable news. Just seems they've been underreporting their covid cases, and they didn't have as many people in the first place. (Plus, iirc Russia also has an aging problem. As well as a huge problem with alcoholism, mostly the men I think.)

Also have heard China's had some flooding or a dam breaking or something. Maybe.

Again, accurate reports are hard to find. 

Worth a Read

An interesting look at some systemic issues behind our problems in Afghanistan. 

The Software Industry Gets Away With A Lot

Could you imagine if car manufacturers treated they're new product lines the way tech companies do?

'Oh, your new Ford Pinto caught on fire? Too bad, so sad... You accepted this really long and arcane set of terms and conditions stating that you won't hold us liable. Good luck with your next car!'

(for today's motivation for this post, read this thread, actually... It started here.) 

Mad

I saw a post on Facebook, and initially passed it by the way I usually do when it's a bunch of people I don't agree with, but don't really know and don't see any good coming from trying to educate.

But it really bothered me, especially the more I think about it, so I'll vent here a bit.

The post was about Afghanistan, and given today's attack and the loss of life anger is reasonable. So no, I don't want to try and argue that everything is fine. It's not.

But some of the commenters were also talking positively about Trump, and here's the thing - 

Even aside from all the glowing promises he failed to deliver on (infrastructure, and Republicans had control of the Senate and House his first two years. The wall, where he stole money from the pentagon, the wall that's already falling down, and the wall that honestly was a lousy idea for reasons I posted about before - put up sensors and have a quick reaction force, and other such things, The fucking pandemic. Which even if you've fallen for the propaganda hard, you ought to remember he claimed would just 'disappear'. Oh, and the Kurds he abandoned.)...

Even if you ignore all of that, he fucking lied about the election. For MONTHS. And he's still lying!

He lied, and held a rally pretending that the vice president could change the results, on a day that should have been ceremonial, and the events on the 6th of Jan happened.

That right there should make anybody who actually cares about this country furious. It really boggles my mind that so many people want to just shrug and move on.

That undermined our entire system, and I'm sick and tired of people still acting like that PoS is worth supporting. Or even listening to.

Hate on Biden all you want. He's got a tough job to do and seems to be doing it as best he can, so I'm not really going to complain.

But you would have to find someone a helluva lot worse before I'd even consider Trump.

He should fade into obscurity and never be heard from again. 

Shareholders and Economics

I thought this was an interesting read, though I can't really judge the accuracy of their argument. 

A Media Post

 After writing about the media response to the current situation in Afghanistan, I felt I should go into a bit more detail.

It's just that I'm not sure where to start.

I feel like anything I write would mostly be based off my rules of thumb, guesses, assumptions, and observations... and rather short on fact.

Plus, well... I don't watch cable news. Ever. I haven't done so in years, maybe even a decade or more. It started because I hated being at the mercy of whatever story they wanted to tell (I did not need 24 hr coverage of Anna Nicole Smith, thank you very much), plus the way that they would fill up air time with pretty much nothing. 

With online articles I could read whatever caught my interest, and follow up with new information when a new article came out. 

As for online news... I do favor what I consider credible sources, but even there you still have to use your head to sort through the opinion, framing, and spin. And, well... the paywalls mean that I limit myself on some of the bigger names. (NYTimes, for example. There's only a limited number of free articles so I really have to be interested in the story to click. I suppose I could get a subscription, but I'd probably need multiple subscriptions - Washington Post, The Economist, etc - and that adds up. If we weren't dealing with the squeezing of the middle class and we all had a bit more spending money I suspect they'd see more subscriptions from people like me. That, btw, is also a classic example of why failing to pay workers in accordance with inflation means there's less people willing to spend money on things. In a consumer society you'd think they'd realize their hurting themselves, but alas the potential future economic growth isn't enough to make businesses pay their people more. We saw that with Henry Ford already.)

The other odd thing about the media is that we all have this idea of what it should be. i.e. fact-based reporting on important issues, willing to do in-depth investigations that speak truth to power and bring problems to light, etc. etc.

Except I know a little bit about history, and I'm aware that that's there's a lot of history where that didn't happen. 

I suppose there's always been an element of information warfare there, and given the current mess with bots and trolls and people deliberately trying to manipulate the news it might be worth trying to read about more historical examples. If I can find a good book recommendation. (No promises on when I'd get to it though. I truly do have an ever expanding list of books that I want to read.)

So take this for what it's worth from someone who doesn't watch any sort of cable news, and only occasionally reads the news articles from major publications. (Which does beg the question of where and how, exactly, I learn anything. I'm not sure how to explain that though... I like using a news aggregator to get a sense of the big issues news junkies are talking about. Mostly the headlines. And if I'm interested in a topic I'll try to dig up multiple sources. Maybe read two or three articles or blog posts about it, see what people are saying on Facebook and Twitter, check out a fact-checking site... it just depends on the issue and sources available. I consider certain sources unreliable enough that I don't bother with them, though. I try to have a diverse feed, but tbh the conservative side has gotten so bad that it's hard to find counterbalancing opinions worth reading.)

So anyways. Media is biased. I don't think that's really debatable right now. The issue is 'how'?

Conservatives claim there's a liberal bias, liberals claim there's a conservative bias (see 'Hillary's e-mails'), and tbh I don't think it's quite so clearly one or the other.

It's more like... most mainstream media represents 'the establishment', however you want to define that. And some of the reporters do seem to have a liberal bias, but a lot of their editors and whatever-the-position-is-called within the organization seem to have a conservative one. Let's also not forget that Jeff Bezos owns the Washington Post. I do not know how much influence he exerts over that, and whether that means the Washington Post won't ever write anything critical of Amazon (though it seems rather likely.)

'The Establishment' is a handy term that isn't very well defined, kind of like the powers-that-be, but it doesn't necessarily mean there's some group of people chilling in a cigar smoke-filled room plotting how to divide potential opposition and support the status quo. 

It's more like - the people who get into these positions tend to socialize with each other and gain a common understanding of the world around them. That shared view has biases and inaccuracies that they really don't question (like this idea that poor people are lazy and you need to keep them hungry in order to get them to work for you. Practically a recipe for terrible leadership, but good luck convincing the people who believe it to question it.)

So there does seem to be an element of groupthink, and I normally do follow the 'never attribute to malice what you can attribute to incompetence' rule of thumb... but that isn't quite enough to explain things.

After all, there's documented evidence of business owners using agencies like the Pinkertons to break up strikes. Just like there's documented evidence of the feds trying to disrupt the Civil Rights Movement.

Thus there really are people with money and power who use the tools at their disposal to tackle anything they consider a threat. (The long term negative consequences of that are not so clear to them, or they wouldn't keep doing it.)

It's hard to say for sure what all is going on today - information truly is a prized commodity, it seems. But I have heard of people hiring agencies to, as one example, push internet links they don't like to the bottom of search engine results. 

And, ofc, there's all those nasty bots and trolls trying to manipulate public discourse.

There do seem to be some people who are capable of influencing the media (i.e. Hillary's team seemed to consistently have some sort of fluff piece saying good things about her immediately after any sort of negative reporting. Ofc, given that she lost in 2016 that doesn't necessarily mean such efforts can force the results they want. Any more than a bot army, or whatever we want to call that since I think some of those actually have real people paid to spread lies. It's important to address sources of misinformation, but we shouldn't give them more weight than they really have. Example - most of the posters that I suspect are paid to argueTrump took covid seriously are rather laughable. It's such a ridiculous rewriting of the last year and a half.)

So anyways. The thing about Afghanistan, and Biden,  is there was an article I can't seem to find now, that basically said anybody who disagreed with the line they were pushing wasn't asked to give their opinions on the news. In other words, they weren't even trying to get 'both sides', or cover it in depth. They seemed to want to run with 'Biden has hopelessly screwed up in Afghanistan'.

Which, well... first of all foreign policy has almost never registered with the average American. I mean, I care... but I'm kind of weird like that. The perpetually online news junkies I tend to see on twitter care... veterans care...

But most Americans barely even remembered we had a presence there. Sure, it looks bad now and Biden's ratings took a hit, but I seriously doubt it's going to matter once the news cycle moves on. 

I'm not sure how much of that illustrates the difference between the news junkies and 'establishment' types vs the average American. (What was that quote about Biden's speech? 95% of the establishment will hate it, 95% of Americans will appreciate it? Says something about the discrepancy.)

I am not sure why the mainstream media would be so determined to push that story line, though. It doesn't seem like the thing the 'liberal media' would do. (I did see someone speculate that they were thrilled to be able to criticize Biden for something, to try and show they weren't biased and were holding him accountable or something. Idk, it's the kind of thing where I can see some patterns but don't really know the underlying causes.)

There do seem to be some darker, more malicious forces at play... the consistent efforts to undermine trust in the vaccine, and covid prevention protocols, demonstrate that. I'm just not too sure who's behind it, and why. I can speculate about it plenty, but without facts it gets a little too close to conspiracy theory for comfort. 

The thing is, I know and have seen the disinformation army at work. It exists. And that makes it easy to make assumptions about who is behind the coordinated effort we're seeing. That they are essentially getting people killed proves it's malicious. That some of their same arguments come out of the mouths of conservative politicians implies some coordination (one day I saw multiple accounts suddenly making the claim that covid was rising in Florida because Biden was secretly sending illegal immigrants there, and it was only a day or two later that DeSantis rather publicly made a milder version.)  

So. Malicious disinformation, probably but not necessarily in coordination with conservative 'leaders' like DeSantis.

Seriously, we're under attack. It's just not a kinetic strike. (I can say that as a blogger with no consequence, but I would hope our national security team is thinking long and hard on how to address it. Hopefully without escalating it into a more physical confrontation.)

The attack on Biden's Afghanistan efforts seems... somewhat connected, but I'm not entirely sure. Especially since it's hard to believe the more credible news agencies would be on board with that.

It could just be something about the way their businesses make money. (I understand they want the stories people will click on, but I'm generally not the target audience for that. Otherwise we wouldn't consistently have wall-to-wall coverage on topics I couldn't care less about.)

I'm not really sure what I'm getting at with all this. There's far too much I don't know, and too much of the current milieu is hidden. 

That's a large part of why I wish I could see the history books that will be written after a lot of whatever is going on has been declassified and open to historians.

 

Also

Frustrated that law enforcement doesn't take white supremacy seriously, or see the massive threat they pose to America.

Afghanistan

For the most part, I haven't wanted to write anything further on Afghanistan. Like I said in my earlier post, it's been well over a decade since I was there.

However, there are things about the news coverage that bother me.

First, I know a little about what's required for that operation. I helped my division deploy to Iraq back in 2004, and there was a lot of work involved in coordinating that movement. Granted, Afghanistan is landlocked so there's no sea port or ships to coordinate, but flights are also quite complex, and this was when we had months to prepare, a decent time range to move everyone over, and SAMS graduates helping.

I'm sure the agreements we have with allies for refueling and layovers don't necessarily apply to refugee flights without coordination, either.

I can not even imagine what it'd be like to coordinate all that (plus what to do with them once they're out, and the food and housing and processing they'll need) in a frenzied rush, for civilians with no real chain of command to work with.

That's a large part of why I refrain from judging. Sure, it looks bad right now... And I hope everyone gets taken care of with a minimum of pain and suffering. But this is a major logistical operation, and I don't know enough to point fingers.

Which is part of why I find our news coverage so disturbing.

Sure, logistics is boring... And the media wants to make money, so ofc they like drama.

But the ferocity with which they launched a 'Biden screwed everything up' seems a bit sus.

I'll probably post something later, trying to puzzle out what's bothering me... For now I have work to do. 

The Right Connections

I saw this tweet today mentioning the importance of having the 'right' connections, background, degrees, and it reminded me of something I don't think I got around to posting.

In Princess Weiyoung, the main character is impersonating the daughter of the Prime Minister, and ends up in a rather long and drawn out power struggle with the Prime Minister's first wife and children.

The way the mother and her daughter are portrayed is particularly interesting, to me at least. Because while they definitely show some psychopathic tendencies (like starting a fire to target Weiyoung, not caring who else might suffer in the process) you also kind of get their motivations, and almost have to admire them. At times. Even though they are quite clearly villains in the show.

Anyways, I think a bit about how the people around them enable their behavior. The Prime Minister, for example. The loyal servants, who are aware and support their mistresses.

And the Crown Princess, who only seems to see the facade - the connections, 'right' background, etc - and doesn't truly investigate when the daughter lies to her face. (This also reminds me of an article that said Bernie Madoff got away with his shenanigans because he seemed to have the right background. People with money trusted that, and thus trusted him when they shouldn't have). 

Its basically classism. This idea that coming from the right family, or right school, or whatever somehow makes someone a better choice.

And it's also BS, the kind that lets abusers and liars get away with their behavior. 

Fictional Theologies

 The Curse of Chalion has become one of my comfort reads. I don't really want to go into the why's and wherefore's, but I came across a passage I wanted to share here. So I suppose I have to give at least a little background.

Fantasy novels often worldbuild, and how they handle religion is a huge component for it. For the most part I don't really care about that... they're stories, and if sometimes a world has gods and goddesses that seem mostly to be just superpowered humans, well. That's what a lot of Greek and Roman mythology was. (and, in fact, quite a few stories use those gods and goddesses in particular. Like Percy Jackson.)

Others will have pseudo-Christianity, though some is more blatant than others. (You have to read the Silmarillion to discover Tolkien had a rather elaborate Genesis story, and that the names the elves mention are more like archangels and that Gandalf, in fact, is an angel himself.) 

Some have actual Christianity, to various degrees. (Someone said the Harry Dresden books actually portray Christian theology rather well.)

I think portraying deities is one of the harder parts of writing a story. Have them interact too directly and you risk having too many 'Deus ex Machina' plot devices. It can be nice to have more direct contact then we see in real life, but you don't want to overdo it. The opposite extreme is also... well, it won't necessarily ruin the story. You can have them be distant and inaccessible and just come up with some of the philosophical and socio-cultural elements that may influence your world. But that's not really portraying a deity so much as worldbuilding.

So anyways, the Curse of Chalion is a fantasy world with five gods and goddesses, and does one of the better jobs of portraying them.

Actually, what I like is that the characters have these encounters... and they are generally left confused and uncertain, and yet somehow (as it's storytelling with a happy ending) figure it out. 

Anyways, I think I want to share the passage (or maybe break it up and mix up the order and share two) and discuss it a bit before going further. 

Umegat inverted his clay cup upon the cloth. "Men's will is free. The gods may not invade it, any more than I may pour wine into this cup through its bottom."

"No, don't waste the wine!" Cazaril protested, as Umegat reached for the jug. "I've seen it demonstrated before."

Umegat grinned, and desisted. "But have you really understood how powerless the gods are, when the lowest slave may exclude them from his heart? And if from his heart, then from the world as well, for the gods may not reach in except through living souls. If the gods could seize passage from anyone they wished, then men would be mere puppets. Only if they borrow or are given will from a willing creature, do they have a little channel through which to act. They can seep in through the minds of animals, sometimes, with effort. Plants... require much foresight. Or" --Umegat turned his cup upright again, and lifted the jug--  sometimes, a man may open himself to them, and let them pour through him into the world." He filled his cup. "A saint is not a virtuous soul, but an empty one. He - or she - freely gives the gift of their will to their god."

 Obviously this is fictional theology, and shouldn't necessary have anything to do with the real world... but I really like the point it makes about free will. About how we can open a channel and allow God to work through us. 

And I like that the people are are doing this are not somehow having God whisper in their ear, removing all uncertainty and doubt. It's more like upheaval and change, upsetting all their plots and plans. (There was some thing going around on twitter the other day about the Wiccan community trying to hex the Taliban, and really I think  the bit in the Bible from Matthew 5:44 is more appropriate. "Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you" not so much because you're so benevolent and saintly, but because if God comes and disrupts their life it's a blessing that acts a bit like a curse anyway. And ultimately for the better. Like yes... I shall pray for the people  I sometimes call assholes here, and fools. Because if God reaches through to them they'll probably start hearing that blasted inner voice that starts making them question what the hell they're doing and why they're doing it. And if they listen and hear it they'll probably wind up having to leave their asshole ways behind. And really, that's far more disruptive... and ultimately better for everyone... than any hex.)

And yes, I know that's all sorts of mixed messages. "Let me curse them with my blessings" 

That's sort of the dynamic captured by this book, and the other books and novellas in this particular setting.