Racism Rots the Brain, II

I highly suspect that our demographics underpin the current insanity of Trump/Miller.

It's funny. Decades ago I remember articles about "the browning of America", and everything I've seen indicates those trends are reaching a tipping point soon.

Projections predict white people will be less than 50% of the population by 2045.

The younger generation is already there.

I personally don't see this as a problem, but for fearful racists who care about such things it's a pretty big deal.

Given the way the administration is treating Afrikaner immigrants as opposed to the ones from less melanin-challenged populations as well as the way Elon Musk's Twitter has been spreading the term remigration, I think the desired agenda is pretty clear. 

They want to reverse or prevent that demographic trend. So far it's kind of hidden, in so much as they obfuscate it enough that they can deny any accusations. Pretend they're only focusing on deporting illegal immigrants, for example. 

But I think by now it's pretty clear that the only reason they aren't doing the same to legal immigrants is because of the pushback they've been getting. And if they weren't getting such pushback already, I would not find it surprising if they proceeded to try and mass deport US citizens too.

So far it hasn't come to that, and if they continue to face pushback it may never happen. I'm just pretty sure the only thing holding them back has been that resistance.

And since to their racism rotted brains out current demographics are a huge problem, they'll continue to pull out all the stops as they desperately try to reverse it. 

What Makes Me Mad...

 This is going to be a bit convoluted, but bear with me.

A class I had discussed how to build quality healthcare organizations, and the lessons relate to more than just healthcare.

What they noted was that if they focused on punishing people who made mistakes, it led to bad results. Basically things turn into a blame game, there's incentive to try to cover up or hide your mistakes, and it doesn't tend to lead to quality outcomes.

What is better is to focus on identifying mistakes and then looking at how to improve the system in order to prevent them from happening again.

For example, a nurse may give a patient the wrong medicine. A punitive system would fire that nurse, but wouldn't necessarily prevent similar mistakes in the future.

If you look at it systemically, though, you can think of other ways of preventing the mistake. Like making the medicine a different size and/or color, so it's visually distinct.

That is why, in my last job, when a mistake was made and the team started to go down the path of finger pointing and blaming, I interjected and tried shifting the conversation more to a discussion on what we could do to make it harder to make such a mistake in the first place.

Now, here is where things start to get more convoluted.

See, I've talked before about how leaders set the tone and shape the environment. They can help shift discussions (like in my example above) to be more solutions-oriented, and to look at ways of improving the system.

This plays out in more ways than just how we handle mistakes. See, a funny thing happens when people work together. They combine in a way that makes an organization act like a person.

Companies have their own culture, citizens of a particular nation tend to be more open or closed, etc.

It is easier to influence a culture at the start, and hard to shift it once it's already been established a certain way, and they are often influenced significantly by key personalities... though said personalities are not always the head of the organization.

Really, it's kind of like magic.

Anyways, there are certain things that seem to be the key to success and I've mentioned them before.

1) Having a sense of what your desired endstate is

2)  An accurate assessment of where you are

3) Accurate feedback on how your policies and strategies are working

4) Course adjusting as necessary if those policies and strategies aren't leading to the results you want

Seems simple, right?

But... simple isn't easy. And when you dig into these things, they aren't actually all that simple either.

Let's look at 1. Knowing what your desired endstate is. To me, when it comes to a nation, I generally say something like 'be a good shepherd', because generally we want our people to be happy and healthy and able to live a good quality life. But how do you define that? How do you measure it? And I specifically avoided talking about a 'greater good' because people have the ability to justify some pretty horrible things if they think it benefits 'the greater good', so you have to be careful with that.

Then look at 2. How do you get an accurate assessment? How do you make sure people are telling you what's really going on, rather than what you want to hear? In order to get that you have to make sure you reward people for telling you the truth - even, or perhaps especially, when it's a truth you don't want to hear. And you have to mean it. Your people will pick up on your cues, and if you even hint that they'll get in trouble for telling you something you don't like then they just... won't tell you anything they think will get them in trouble.

3 is similar to 2, but it's focused more on checking on what your policies are actually doing. This is hard because people tend to get attached to their ideas and plans and if they're not mature enough they can see a report that something isn't working as intended as an attack on them. It's saying they're wrong, or made a mistake. 

It's like... people have talked before about how we tend to get attached to a specific plan, and fail to recognize when the situation has changed and the plan is no longer going to work as intended. 

Plus, you have to recognize when bad results indicate some sort of flaw in your thinking. Like... people get attached to all these -isms. Capitalism, communism, authoritarianism... most of these are just ways of looking at things. Like a map, they will ignore irrelevant details to help draw attention to key factors. You can have a topology map, a map of political borders, a map of highways or train routes, a hydrology map... they're all useful for the right situation. They help simplify a complex situation.

But the map is not the territory, and if you get too focused on interpreting something through the lens of your particular map you can easily make a mistake. A map focused on political borders may miss important context when you're dealing with hydrology, or vice versa. 

But people get attached to their ideas, get focused more on proving they were right than on getting accurate feedback and assessing the situation, and it turns more into a fight over bruised egos than it is about actually fixing things. (This is why I like evidence-based principles, and think it's important to investigate when the evidence-based principles give you results that don't match your expectations.)

And then we have 4. If what you're doing isn't working, try something different.

Again, simple. Right?

Except doing so may mean admitting you were wrong. Again, egos get involved, people will try to find evidence explaining away why something didn't work without admitting they were wrong, and then it turns into the blame game and finger pointing instead of, again, fixing stuff.

When I evaluate presidents, that's generally what I'm looking for. First - are they a good shepherd? i.e. are they trying to find solutions that are good for all of the nation. All of it. Not just one political party, not just the business leaders, and also not just the average citizen (because a solution that benefits the average citizen in the short run but also makes it difficult to run a business can ultimately hurt those citizens even more. It's a complicated system that you have to handle carefully, while trying to understand the long term consequences of your decisions.)

Then it's all about their decision-making policies. Or rather, it's about how much they encourage a system that emphasizes honest and truthful assessments of a situation, and a willingness to course correct as needed.

Like - if you think privatization will help improve the education system? Go for it. Get the evidence. Show that it works.

And if it doesn't, do a course correction.

The end goal is to ensure a quality education for all our citizens, and we all benefit from having that educated workforce. I don't actually care how you achieve that, so long as it doesn't overly impact some of the other factors that ensure we all have a good quality life.

I'm not too focused on whether it's the federal government, state government, private sector or public. What I care about is the end result - a well-educated population.

You could say the same for other things - a healthy, well-educated population that is able to earn enough money to live a comfortable life where they are free to raise their families, practice their faith (or lack of faith), and speak and think how they will, with a good economy with jobs available and the skills needed for those jobs, and the ability to switch between jobs so that we can adjust as needed for ever-changing needs.

Yeah, okay... those are all complex topics with quite a bit of subjective values thrown in, but you get the idea.

So what bothers me, what makes me mad about the current administration - is not just all the ways they lose sight of our hard-earned lessons and make the quality of life for the average American worse.

It's also just the sheer stupidity. The inefficiency. The waste. 

First, they don't seem to have the goal of being a good shepherd in the first place. Or rather, they only seem focused on taking care of a small segment of our population. And even that isn't the portion they claim they're taking care of. 

They don't care about truth. Don't care about accuracy. Are not evaluating the results of their policies and adjusting if needed. 

More than that, it's the immaturity. All the stuff I described above requires a level of maturity that understands that criticism and negative feedback is not an attack, and does not mean someone is your enemy.

Here's what happens when someone immature is in a role like that -

They hear someone criticize what they have done, and instead of taking it as honest feedback they see it as an attack. Instead of course correcting, they focus on defeating their 'enemies'. Enemies they often created themselves, simply by treating anyone who disagrees with them or says something they don't like as hostile.

They think they'll magically get their desired endstate if they could just...

Get rid of all those pesky obstacles. Get rid of the annoying enemies blocking their way.

And so instead of course correcting, they focus more on gaining power. On getting into a position where they can get rid of those 'obstacles'. Install loyalists that are on board with their plan.

Except that their plan is flawed and they're not willing to accept any feedback that points that out.

They turn it all into a game of control, of who can gain leverage points and put their people in key positions of power, but in the process they lose sight of what they're trying to achieve and how to get there.

The malevolence or incompetence question comes down to two things.

Is their endstate actually a good one? (malevolence implies that their goal is bad. Discouraging vaccine use means more and more people will die when their deaths could have been completely avoided. Is their goal to have a lot of people die? Or are they just so incompetent that they don't realize that's the consequence of what they're doing?)

If their endstate is a good one, if they truly wanted to 'make America great again', then the steps they're taking show a tragic level of incompetence. They're not assessing whether their policies are actually going to achieve their goals, and they aren't course correcting when they're not.

Instead they're wasting time creating unnecessary enemies, trying to consolidate control in a centralized fashion, suppressing dissent as though anyone who disagrees with them are 'enemies', and basically doing a thousand and one little things that will make it impossible to achieve their goals.

Assuming the goal is a good one in the first place.

It's so stupid. Wasteful. Inefficient. Especially since if they bothered to actually learn more about what they're trying to do they could avoid some pretty well-known problems.

Or maybe they just don't care at all about making America great again.

Saying Again, With Emphasis

https://www.theregister.com/2025/10/20/aws_outage_amazon_brain_drain_corey_quinn/

Incompetence of Malevolence?

 "Leadership is an art and a science"

That's what they taught us in ROTC. It's true, though. Leaders develop their own style, their own quirks... and they set the tone. They indicate what they expect, what their standards are, and each can have their own unique take on that.

For example, I've said before that "there are no stupid questions" is an important standard to set... not because there truly are no stupid questions. But because the minute you ridicule someone for asking a question, everyone else on your team sees that and thinks 'I don't want that to happen to me', and they decide not to speak up unless their confident they won't be ridiculed for it.

So maybe you don't deal with stupid questions any more, but you also don't deal with important questions that people are worried will seem stupid.

Learning how to understand how your people will respond to you is part of leadership. Which is part of why leaders learn to be more careful with what they say.

For example, I remember a high-ranking individual mentioning how surprised he was when people took a casual statement wishing for something as a command and went above and beyond in trying to get him what he wanted.

Or at least, what he hinted at wanting. They wanted to make a good impression and please the boss, of course. But when it really was a casual desire, it meant they spent way more time than he expected on something that wasn't actually that important to him.

Anyways, I've talked before about how Trump raising unsubstantiated questions about the results of the election undermined the legitimacy of Biden's government. We still, today, have people who trust that Trump was telling the truth and doubt the results... and all because that oathbreaker cared more about his need to deny a loss than he did about the country.

But that wasn't the point of this post. 

The point was this - either Trump is so incompetent that he didn't understand what he was doing, or he knew and did it anyway.

Incompetence or malevolence?

Is he really clueless about the impact of his own words? Or is he deliberately using the trust bestowed on him to lead his followers in this direction?

And now we hear him constantly talking about the 'Radical Left', constantly dividing us against each other, constantly claiming Democrats (and anyone who disagrees with him, really) as the enemy.

He talks about how the left has incited violence with the assassination of Charlie Kirk, but he incites even further violence. Like the judge whose house was set on fire. (And all this was after those Minnesota legislators were murdered, too).

So I ask again - is he incompetent? Or is he one of those 'violence entrepreneurs' deliberately stirring the pot?

Leadership

This fit surprisingly well with my earlier post. 

https://www.bonnycode.com/posts/just-people-in-a-room/

I also have something else I'll probably type up shortly.

'The Warrior Ethos' talk

 My last post reminded me of something I wanted to say about Hegseth's speech. I know I already shared someone else's commentary on it and iirc it covered this, but I wanted to add emphasis to it.

When I was reading up on counterterrorism, I wound up reading a book about the Algerian fight for independence. What I recall, and what I have seen repeatedly when dealing with terrorism in general, is that governments lose when they overreact.

See, when the government decides that the terrorists are so bad that anything is justified - then the abuses they tolerate start to radicalize previously neutral people. If the government arrests everyone near an incident, some of those people are innocent. And as they sit in jail wondering why they're there, they tend to get radicalized...

As does the friends and family around them. (Sort of like we're seeing in Chicago with ICE, from what I hear).

Basically a government fighting a terrorist organization will often stalemate - the terrorists can make citizens feel unsafe, insecure, and unhappy with the government but they can't really force the government to do much of anything. 

It's only when the government overreacts that terrorists really win. Because the government pushes citizens into their arms.

So that whole speech he gave about Rules of Engagement?

It's bullshit. Childish bullshit. I think it came from a common misperception from the Vietnam War, tbh.

There was a genuine feeling in the military that they 'won every battle and lost the war', that our fighters were better, and that if they just didn't have to deal with all the rules of engagement they could have kicked the Viet Cong's asses.

Now, I don't know enough about the reasoning for some of the decisions back then. For why the Air Force was refused permission to bomb certain targets or not...

But blaming the loss on those rules of engagement sounds to me like how baseball fans always blame the refs when their team loses.

It's just something to make you feel better about a loss. 

Some of it may be legitimate, in which case the rules of engagement should be modified. But not having them at all is a very, very, very bad idea.

I want to emphasize that again - it's a very bad idea.

Because here's another little thing you learn about leadership - you set the tone. When you take over a new command and you give your little speech, you tell your people what you care about and what you don't. You tell them where the lines are drawn. You set expectations.

And the thing of it is, although I loved my soldiers and they were all amazing men and women - many of them are also dumbasses. Many joined straight out of high school, have a steady income for the first time ever and a nice little sign-on bonus, and they will do the stupidest things.

Plus, there's always that small fraction of the population that is outright sociopathic and/or sadistic. 

Like - you set expectations and establish boundaries because if you don't, there's always going to be someone who goes too far.

There's a reason so many militaries are known for raping and looting, and it's only good leadership that prevents it.

So when you have a president who pardons someone who went too far, when you have a SecDef who tells his senior leaders that we "don't fight with stupid rules of engagement" - without ever clarifying which of those rules are 'stupid' - what they are doing is giving a green light to any dumbass or sadistic soldier who will totally use that to justify going too far.

The alternative, the brute use of power to stomp out opposition, basically puts you in the position where you have to put the boot on their neck and never let up.

It's the road to tyranny, if you don't provoke a counterreaction that puts you out of power entirely.

Now, perhaps the SecDef only was referring to some of the rules of engagement, but without clarification he just sounds like a childish cartoon villain who doesn't know what he's talking about.

But he sure is giving fan service to the wannabe war criminals.

Bad Feeling

 I am developing a bad feeling about current events - though given it seems like a continuation of what we've already been seeing, I'm not sure why it's happening now.

I figure I'll type this all out to see if I can get some clarity.

First, as usual - fear and hope both make it hard to think clearly. I personally try to set those aside and look for real world indicators. See if they support or refute that intuition.

Second, and I think I've said this before - inertia is a powerful force. If you're going to try to predict the future, more of the same is generally the most likely course of action.

Right up until it isn't. We're pretty bad at figuring out what's actually relevant and what isn't, which is why history is full of surprises. Surprises that, in hindsight, always have clear indicators and could have been predicted if we had known their importance. Examples include the fall of the Soviet Union, 9/11, World War I, the Russian Revolution, the French Revolution, and so on and so forth.

So what indicators should we be looking at?

That gets complicated, but I do think this article lays out some of them. The violence entrepreneurs, which I think is a great phrase and probably explains some of what led to the fighting in Bosnia-Herzegovina. The way leadership is escalating rather than toning down the tension. The increasingly bipartisan violence (i.e. we have had right-wing inspired violence for ages now, which people conveniently seem to overlook. Left-wing inspired violence is beginning to grow now. It reminds me a bit about how the Shi'a ignored Sunni provocations right up until the al-Askara mosque was bombed, which is when the Sunni-Shia conflict really took off.) 

And finally, the politicization of law enforcement.

Underlying all of this is a giant blind spot that far too many Americans have. 

I've touched on that blind spot repeatedly, but it was only in response to my uncle's post on Facebook that I really got to thinking about it.

There are times when we collectively just seem to... pretend something isn't happening. Or doesn't exist.

I don't really know how to say it any better than that, and it feels like talking about it doesn't help because the people who overlook the things I mention will overlook my own mentioning of them.

Which is why I sometimes use the term 'cognitive dissonance'. When confronted with something that doesn't match the narrative, that disrupts what's expected... there's dissonance and people get uncomfortable and just... look away.

Sometimes I think how people handle information like that is the true test of character, and integrity. 

Like, is that what happens when someone in the oil industry is confronted with their environmental impact? Cognitive dissonance, discomfort... and rejection. At best it leads to just pretending the evidence doesn't exist. At worst, they will discredit the evidence and try to come up with some justification for continuing on as they have been.

It's so much easier than having to actually deal with it.

I think it also happens with sexual harassment cases. 

Let me explain.

When I have been in leadership positions, there have been times my people have brought to my attention something that I know is going to be a pain to deal with. Accusations from person A regarding person B, though the instance I'm thinking of was more about workplace bullying.

These things are really hard to address as a manager, because I don't actually know who is telling the truth. Addressing it and getting it wrong will make things worse, ignoring it will make things worse, but getting it right? Is almost impossible. I was not actually there when the incident took place. And both parties generally have their own friends who will back each other up, making it impossible to know the truth. And yet I am still supposed to address it in a fair and balanced manner, and I definitely do NOT want to make my employees feel like bullying is acceptable behavior. That would just create a toxic work environment.

And there is this temptation, perhaps for a split second, where I do kind of resent them for bringing this mess to my attention. Where I wish it would just go away.

But see all of my prior statements. Doing so will make things worse, and create a work environment I don't want. Even aside from moral right and wrong, it tends to be bad for business, you know? Leads to turnover and poor performance and all that.

This is what I think happens with sexual harassment accusations sometimes. The person it's reported to is probably like "I just want us to do our regular jobs and why do I have to deal with this mess and why did you have to tell me this?"

Which can lead to covering it up, blaming the victim, and basically making the person who reported it feel like they were retaliated against.

I've learned to pay close attention to moments like that. Moments where something disrupts everything and is going to be a real pain in the ass to deal with.

As an aside, I think that's part of why I liked the Untamed so much. The main character was confronted with a moment where he either had to act and do the right thing at great cost to himself, or just... look away. He chose to act, which ultimately led to his death (he got better! It's kind of what the whole plot is about.)

In his case, many others in the so-called 'righteous' sects looked away instead. Well, righteousness and the hypocrisy of sects that claim to be righteous is a pretty common theme in xianxia novels.

To bring this back on topic - I think the events of Jan 6 trigger that sort of internal conflict. I've talked about it before. About how Trump never had evidence that the election was stolen, how he repeatedly claimed it was for months leading up to Jan 6. How nobody would have even been there on that day if he hadn't used his political power to push that narrative, to the point where many Americans genuinely believe him. (You wouldn't need all those youtube videos and that blasted documentary if there was real evidence. No, 60+ judges weren't in a conspiracy to cover it up. If there was anything solid, it would have been admissible in court and we would have known. But that's not what Trump's supporters want to hear, is it?)

Yeah, Jan 6 happened because of deliberate action on Trump and his supporters parts. The fake elector plot makes it 10000x worse. I know most Americans don't really understand this tedious sort of civics, but the states determine how many electoral votes a president gets. They do this whole certification process that can take weeks, that includes comparing the voter lists to the death list (since deaths can take a while to get updated) which is how they catch the voter fraud cases where someone voted on behalf of someone who died, and all of that stuff is decided ahead of time. 

Then the states determine send the results to Congress and Congress reads the results in. 

There is, apparently, a provision for questioning the legitimacy of a state's results from the Electoral Count Act of 1887 after a disputed election, and that if there was a dispute the two houses of Congress would separate and debate the question for at most two hours. Then vote to accept or reject the objection. And if both houses support the objection?

Then those votes are excluded. Not handed over to the other candidate. They just don't count at all.

Anyways, the news didn't really discuss how Trump and his allies sent fake electors, ones NOT certified by their state to give the results.

The results were not in question, but they sure tried their best to make it look like they were.

But think about what that means. Think about what we would have to do to address it.

We're talking about impeaching and maybe even arresting and putting on trial a very popular political figure. One whose base is known for targeting anyone their leader dislikes.

It would have been a real pain in the ass to deal with, and it really could have led to more political violence.

I personally still think we had to do it, probably for some of the same reasons I felt I had to address some of those workplace issues.

Ignoring it makes everything even worse.

But I watched. Watched how horrified everyone was the day of - and how quickly it dropped off everyone's radar.

How quickly people didn't even say 'move on', but just... didn't really talk about it. 

How quickly the partisan divide cropped up, how easily people convinced themselves that it was just some protest that got out of hand.

Nothing to see here. Nothing we need to actually do something about. 

And oh, by the way, the completely incompetent leader who manufactured the belief that the election was stolen in the first place?

He got re-elected only four years later.

That same dissonance, that same willingness to overlook things, it keeps cropping up again and again.

The lack of outcry over the NSPM-7 stuff? Looking the other way as Trump uses the Charlie Kirk assassination to escalate things even further? ICE detaining US citizens? That horrific speech to all the senior military leaders?

I look around, and this isn't the America I thought I knew.

Though, knowing what I know of history, perhaps I shouldn't be so shocked.

I don't know how this is going to end, but I am pretty sure of one thing - we're not even through Trump's first year.

It's only going to get worse, and it won't stop unless or until we make it stop.

Or maybe Trump's bad health will finally catch up to him. Who knows?

But those violence entrepreneurs? They're really working hard. And far too many Americans don't even seem to realize it.

Such a Depressing Change

This is how I know that the powers-that-be have failed us.

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2025/10/decline-ohio-working-class-towns/684467/?gift=38QCMBr4X6CmPSrr52RIqv13bEJJJgS6vsaXtGU0r7g

Addendum

Perhaps 'inciting civil war' is not correct. 

More like 'making any opposition sound like a threat so I can justify cracking down on them, and if they resist I can justify even more'

Which, oddly enough, has a high likelihood of starting a civil war.

Predictions

I should be focusing on my job hunt, yet I big red warning signs are blaring every time I check the news. So I figured I'd type some stuff out, try to get a better sense of what I think is going to happen.

I do not claim to be able to predict what Trump et al will come up with next, but I do think we can make some educated guesses.

First - as we saw in his first term, Trump has a tendency to say or attempt to do something wildly crazy. Then when (or if) he gets pushback, he flip flops. For some reason this seems to make it easier for him to get away with shit, because people learn to ignore all the outrageous stuff...

But the thing of it is, he only flip flops when he gets pushback. I am quite certain that if people went along with whatever crazy thing he suggested, that he would not tone himself down on his own. If anyone had actually listened to him when he tweeted 'stop the count' the night of the 2020 election, I doubt he would have said 'I'm just joking, finish counting the votes like you're supposed to'.

In other words - he pushes. He tests. He tries. He isn't holding himself back, isn't restrained, won't stop because something is illegal or 'not the way it's done'... he only stops when he faces too much resistance.

As a defender, btw, this is a notorious problem. In cybersecurity, in counterterrorism - you have to defend everywhere, whereas the attacker has the ability to pick and choose and put their efforts into wherever they detect a weak spot.

So anyways - Trump pushes. He prods. When he gets a reaction he flip flops and pulls the 'what, I wasn't going to do that!' bullshit.

But you can see the direction he's pushing us in. That was obvious even before Jan 6, because he took every opportunity to yell about how the election was stolen. It wasn't just something he complained about in private, he actively pushed the narrative.

Never provided proof for it, but that doesn't seem to bother his supporters.

Anyways. He actively pushed the narrative that the election was stolen, which frankly had predictable results - a large part of the population doubted the results of the election, doubted Biden was the legitimately elected president, and were open to suggestions to take action to 'fix' things.

It's a bit like when a mob boss orders a hit, or perhaps the better term is 'stochastic terrorism'. No incriminating command, no direct order... but he shapes the environment so that what he wants to happen is highly likely to. He praises those doing what he wants, condemns those that might get in the way, and his loyal followers pretty much know what he wants anyway.

So now let's look at where we're at today. Now, the strange thing about the US is that we have a long tradition of 'the citizen soldier', we have things like the Posse Comitatus Act, and if Trump truly tried to activate the military to perform some sort of tyrannical takeover he is highly likely to fail.

If he were obvious about it like that.

I'm pretty sure Jan 6 happened the way it did in part because he knew just ordering the military to step in would fail. (Though he sure has taken steps to replace anyone who would refuse, so with his current cronies in place who knows if that still holds true?)

So instead we have this stuff about activating the National Guard... which is weird, because they actually belong to their respective states. But there's the Insurrection Act of 1807, and so we're seeing a lot of Trump claiming he needs the National Guard to suppress civil disorder, and state governors' denying that, and then a lot of this has gotten tangled up in court. (DC is a separate case, because the District of Colombia isn't a state and their National Guard actually does report to the president.)

Oh, and this is also why ICE is important. It's basically the military he wants rather than the military he has, though because it was specifically created to deal with immigration he can't use it the way a military can. Instead he can use them to create a situation that justifies calling in the military. (And also why protesters are being very careful right now. Taking a stand while also refusing to incite further violence is a tricky place to be, though so far I think they're doing well.)

Right now this all just means that everything is a confusing mess. Trump is saying all sorts of shit (like usual), the National Guard may or may not be activated, it might end up a nothingburger where they clean parks or it might be the next stage in inciting a civil war... who knows?

We've all been given that Chinese curse to live in interesting times, because the times sure are interesting!

Oh, did I say something about 'inciting a civil war'? Right... going back to how he shapes the environment to get what he wants?

What do you think he's been doing today?

What's with all the rants about the 'Radical Left'. The way they just glomped onto the Charlie Kirk assassination to start talking about left wing violence - even as right wing violence continues unabated. Even escalated, we might say. If you doubt what I'm saying, check for how many of the people upset about Charlie Kirk's assassination speak out at all about the home of a judge who ruled against Trump burning down.

He is stoking the divide with every speech. Building up anger at blue states, the 'Radical Left', Democrats, all of it. He's threatening major cities, blaming any violence on the left...

He's not even subtle about it.

But... as I've mentioned before, there's a relationship between leader and led and people are not all mindless minions that blindly follow along.

Which is why I'm not sure about what happens next. Perhaps that escalating tension will continue to rise and we're headed for a violent and bloody civil war.

Perhaps governors will call up their National Guard, and Trump will use that to justify calling in the US Army.

Or perhaps someone will refuse to obey an (illegal?) order, and the attempt to incite further violence will get bogged down in the courts like so many other things.

Maybe Trump will be ousted under the 25th Amendment.

Maybe things will just remain awkward and strange but mostly the same (except for the immigrants and the detention camps) until we have another election and successfully get this kakistocracy out.

I don't know... what I do know is this.

He and his people will keep pushing, keep testing, keep probing and prodding, and the only way it will stop is if people remain firm and make them.

Yep

https://robertreich.substack.com/p/how-trump-gets-and-processes-information

He Said It Better

Some great commentary on the 'warrior ethos' fiasco earlier this week. 

https://claireberlinski.substack.com/p/the-wisdom-of-secdef-douchenozzle

Drowning

I hate job hunting.

I hate the doubt that creeps in. The worry.

Not just the stress of 'will I find a job before my money runs out?' but the fear of failure - and worse, that it'll be my own fault.

That I'm not as good as I think I am. That other people are out there tracking down recruiters and creating GitHub repos and mastering the GCIH cert and polishing up their resumes with AI and getting calls and interviews and everything...

And that I'm failing, not because I'm not capable, but because somehow I really struggle with creating that AI ready resume. And I do kind of enjoy coding, but I just... don't really code just to code. I need a project, an idea. And generally not just 'here's my take on the exact same thing that's been coded by people much more experienced and capable than I am'. Like, I'd want it to be something useful that I couldn't just use someone else's code for.

Why spend all that time doing something that's been done already? Multiple times even? Why re-invent the wheel?

But then the projects that do interest me look like they'd mean going down a rabbit hole that... I'm not really sure I have the resources to go down. By which I mean I need something that will pay the bills, which also means hunting for that thing that will pay the bills, and if the project is going to eat up too much of my time then it either has to have a good return on investment or it risks making it even harder to pay the bills.

If I didn't have to worry about the necessities of life, then all those calculations would change. But I do, and I know how I get when I'm hyperfocused on coding something, and I don't think I can really afford that right now. (Except, ironically, that could be the thing that draws attention and gets me a job... so maybe I should?)

In case it's not obvious by now, I am illustrating just how hard it is to decide where to allocate my time and efforts.

On top of which...

On top of which, every time I see the news or scroll through social media and see posts about current events, I can't help wondering if I'm focusing on the wrong thing entirely.

Trump and all the fools enabling him are probably the biggest issue right now, and I don't really like ignoring it.

Except what can I do, really? What can I do - that will also lead to my being able to pay the bills?

Maybe I should head up to Chicago for some of the ICE protests. Except... I've also seen people from the area discouraging that? Like, on the one hand we want enough protestors to make it clear things are not okay. But on the other hand we don't really want to help create the justification for Trump to escalate things even more.

I don't know. It's also pretty far from here, and would also take time that isn't being used to, you know, job hunt.

I have been thinking about that especially hard lately, because I've had a few interesting engagements on social media with the conservative uncle I've mentioned before.

I am - not sure how much he truly wants to hear things. I know we all have a tendency to close our minds, to hear each other only so that we can prepare arguments to refute them rather than an open mind trying to understand. I sometimes think it's counterproductive to try to explain when someone doesn't want to hear it, so I may post all about something here but will try not to bore you in person (if we ever met.)

But if someone genuinely asks? Or just asks, perhaps not so genuinely? Things will never change if I fail to take that opportunity.

Anyways, he had asked for our 'belief origin story', and although I have plenty of other beliefs I stuck with the Jan 6th spiel because I genuinely think it's the most pressing issue in our democracy today.

It took a while to get a response, but when he did respond he mentioned that he didn't think my beliefs had only settled by then, and that I must have had earlier experiences.

Which was completely true, though even the things I chose to respond to that post with are only a fraction of them. I mean, my beliefs have been shaped by what... three decades now? More than that if I count younger experiences, but let's start with college. 

My experiences doing ROTC at a midwestern liberal arts school while studying political science, then joining the Army. Deploying to Iraq, getting out. Going back. Coming home and staying local while Mom battled cancer, studying public affairs. Not finding a damn job with that at all. Going to Afghanistan. Leaving all the military and military adjacent stuff and going completely into the private sector as a shipping supervisor. Shipping. Deciding it wasn't for me and going back to school for Computer Science. Stumbling into DevOps. And now... searching for my entry role into cybersecurity.

All of it has shaped my beliefs. Most of it involved quite a bit more research and studying than just listening to whoever is on the news, or seeing memes on social media.

But most of it is too long and boring to tell people who don't really care. So I post it here and engage when someone seems genuinely interested, and so I gave some long responses that were still just a fraction of an answer.

He has not responded yet, so who knows how he's taking it. But - there is a part of me that feels like that sort of engagement could be even more important than the job hunt.

I mean... it can't be, right? I need to pay the goddamn bills. And it's not like I have the reach to engage with enough people to genuinely make a difference, right?

But anything that helps burst this bubble of support for the current situation is a good thing. I can be like that little rock that forces the carriage to jump out of its ruts.

I don't see how I could do that and make a living though. I blog enough about it all here and I'm well aware that it's all probably tl;dr for this day and age. 

No cutesie videos or engaging podcast either. You're stuck reading my ramblings with whatever the hell I want to ramble on about, and it's definitely not popular enough to make a difference in our escalating political divisions.

But just feeling that impetus to do something makes me wonder if I shouldn't restrict my job hunt to just the cybersecurity roles I'm looking for.

Maybe try to get some use out of that Public Administration degree. But... nah. I didn't have any luck back then, why would it change now?

sigh

I really have no idea what I'm doing anymore.

Dynamics Between Leader and Led

When you see an advertisement for a car, do you immediately run out and buy it?

I'm pretty sure the answer is 'no' for most of us. Advertising obviously does have an impact - perhaps we just remember the branding, and when we do decide to get a new car we look for that brand specifically. Or maybe the ad reminds us that we want a new car, but we don't want that specific car and we look for something else.

The point is that we're not mindless recipients. Advertising doesn't automatically make us buy the product being sold...

And the same is true for political arguments.

There's a lot of finger pointing and a lot of people asking us how we got where we are today, and while we can point to cynical manipulators and misinformation and disinformation campaigns, those explanations have always felt a little off to me.

Because we don't buy the car in the advertisement when we're not in the market for one.

That's why I look to my conservative friends and family. That's why I ask myself - why do they think the way they do?

And it's been quite the struggle. I get that we have differences in opinion on all sorts of things. Healthcare. Taxes. The role of government.

But the very foundation of our system, the defining feature of our Constitution, is that we resolve those differences at the ballot box.

Don't like what the current government is doing? Vote for the other side in the next election. Like what they're doing? Keep voting for them.

All of this depends on letting elections determine who is in charge.

That's why Jan 6 is so important to me.

Or rather, not Jan 6 specifically so much as everything that led up to it. The insinuations and accusations that were never, ever, backed up by evidence (though Trump's supporters sure believed they were!).

Trump's 'car advertisement', in this case, was that the election was stolen and that he was the real winner.

And his supporters were in the market for the product he was selling.

It boggles my mind. The very foundation on which our government rests, and he attacked it over and over and over again...

And everyone just sort of shrugged and looked the other way.

Even worse, now we've got the gullible fools that believed Trump's lies getting rewarded for behavior that undermined our own government.

Which.... wasn't actually what I intended to write today. Yet another rant about Jan 6? Everyone who sees the problem already knows. 

Everyone who doesn't see the problem... well, that's the question, isn't it?

Why do my conservative friends keep focusing on graffiti on the sidewalk when our entire house is on fire?

Why don't they even notice the smoke? The heat? 

How can they post about things that, relatively speaking, are barely a problem compared to the giant, raging, fire?

Once you see what Trump's been doing, it becomes pretty obvious. Not just his constant claims about the election.

Now you see him go on and on about the 'radical left', all his rhetoric is meant to divide us. To villainize anyone who disagrees with him. To dehumanize them.

There's no room for centrists or independents in his political worldview. If you don't agree with him, you're the 'radical left'.

And God forbid you criticize Christianity (even though many so-called Christians don't seem to have read their own Bible), nor criticize capitalism (even though the current failings are a large part of why he was elected in the first place), nor show hostility towards those who hold 'traditional' views on family, religion, or morality...

I guess those views are too fragile to deal with any dissent or disagreement.

He threatens to send troops to our cities, sticks his nose in things that shouldn't even be his business, and participates in a wasteful in person talk to military personnel where he talks about domestic enemies...

But conservatives aren't saying a word about any of that. 

Just... ugh. 

Warrior Ethos

On Tuesday, Secretary Hegseth has called an in person meeting of senior military leaders, supposedly to talk about the 'warrior ethos'. 

This is unusual for a couple of reasons - first, modern technology makes it easy for people to remotely attend a function like this. If all it is going to be is a speech, there is absolutely no reason why anyone should have to be there in person.

Second, the logistics and security risks are unusual. The military will have to fly everyone there, plus pay for food and hotels. 

Meanwhile, they are unable to do their normal duties... And given this is ALL the senior leadership, it raises questions about who is going to be handling everything back at their duty stations. (Plus it's creating a really nice target of powerful people gathered in one place, though it'd obviously be an act of war if anyone actually acted on that.)

It is definitely strange, and I would question anyone who is trying to deny or downplay that.

There's a lot of speculation about what's really going on, though it could be anything from an actual speech as promised (despite the utter waste of giving it in person like this) to some announcement about future activity, like a declaration of war or something (which shouldn't be the case, but when has this administration ever cared about laws and norms).

What seems most likely,to me at least,is something historians have already brought up - a loyalty test of some sort. Maybe even an attempt to get these senior leaders to swear an oath - not to the Constitution, which we all already did when we joined the service. 

But perhaps to Trump directly. In which case I hope and pray that they unanimously refuse.

The Constitution is more important than any single political figure, and our current oaths should be enough. Asking for anything in addition to that should be a large, red, neon warning sign blaring a siren call. 

No president loyal to America would ask for such a thing.

Whether this administration is actually going to try that or not? I guess we'll find out on Tuesday.

Venting

My uncle shared a post on Facebook the other day.

Perhaps I should elaborate a bit.

My deeply conservative uncle, the one who listened to Rush Limbaugh, had received enough pushback (from other family members according to my cousin, his son) that he posted to Facebook saying he was "open to hearing differing opinions on war, crime & punishment, taxes, the economy, sports teams... But it really helps to know where people are coming from when they express their beliefs" and he asked us to share our belief origin stories.

Now, I have had a lifetime leading up to my current beliefs, and tbh I'm not sure how sincere he was in this, but I took the opportunity to share what has become my spiel on Jan 6.

I have no idea how it was taken, as there was no response from him - or what I presume is his conservative friends who may have read the post. Just some things from my cousin and another random person.

Still, it got me thinking.

The military leans conservative, and part of that is our whole awareness on the importance of unity. On "supporting the chain of command" and "good order and discipline." 

That sure, you can have your own private opinions on all sorts of things... but unless it's an illegal order (or, personally, if the stupidity is enough to get people killed and you're willing to take the consequences of disobeying) then you follow orders. (As an aside - I have no idea if Hegseth is calling all those generals and high ranking officers in to try and force some sort of loyalty oath, but if he did then that is the definition of an illegal order and I pray to God that all of those officers refuse.)

Anyways, I've made the argument before, but I want to say it clearly and with emphasis again - claiming that the election was stolen without the evidence to support your claim is an attack on the Constitution. At least, when it's coming from a sitting president (or former president) and not some dumbass drinking beer in a bar.

It undermines the legitimacy of the government that did win. It undermines the agreement that we resolve our differences at the ballot box.

It is even more of a threat to American than any flag burning imaginable.

Every time Trump says his bullshit about a stolen election it feels like he's taking 100 American flags and burning them in a giant heap.

And all those people who claim to be patriots, but ignore that? Everyone who focuses on some stupid shit?

All of them are enabling Trump as he attacks our very foundations.

And it just keeps getting worse. We are not even a year into his second term in office, and he's been escalating the violence. 

Charlie Kirk's assassination is, of course, terrible. But so was the attack on those Minnesota legislators. The way Trump is using that assassination to try and drum up support for further attacks on the left is horrible.

And, just like Jan 6, something his supporters willingly ignore.

The part that bothers me, the thing that has me questioning my fellow Americans, is how blatantly obvious it all is.

For Jan 6 - months of unsubstantiated claims that attacked the results of that election. Anyone paying attention knew some sort of shit was going to go down that day. 

And all of the nonsense we're dealing with today? Predictable. 

Maybe not the exact shape or form, but it was obvious (if you were paying attention) that Trump didn't actually care about the Epstein files, or know how to make America great again, or have interest in doing anything that would help the average American. 

He hadn't even started his second term before we started hearing test balloons checking on whether they could change the law preventing a president from serving more than two terms.

There is practically zero chance that he is going to peacefully leave at the end of his current term in office.

And yet - it's like we are living in two different Americas.

One where this is blatantly obvious and we're all horrified and scared and wondering what new fresh nonsense is going to come our way...

And the other where they act as though nothing is wrong. Or act as though what's wrong is the Left, and completely ignore anything the Trumpists (formerly 'the Right', but they're not really conservative any more either) did to create the situation - and cheer Trump on as he continues his madness.

How can any veteran, anyone who understands the problem with 'undermining the chain of command', not see what Trump has been doing?

Not see him constantly undermine the legitimacy of Biden's elected government, and in the process undermine the legitimacy of any elected government. Unless, of course, he wins. Then it's all fair and aboveboard. (Except that's not how legitimacy works. If you undermine it when it means letting your opponents win, you're also undermining the results when you win.) 

It's also obvious that he constantly belittles his political opponents. Constantly uses his power to inflame our divisions, dehumanize any opposition, and tries to use any and every lever in his reach to take out any opposition. Threatens and bullies anyone who doesn't kiss the ring.

I don't know how to even look at the Americans who still support Trump. I can't stand more than skimming Facebook, because all too soon I'll find some post that might have been interesting in a normal political environment - but in the current one? It feels like someone whining about the weeds in their garden while their house is burning down.

It makes me sick.

AI

Someone made a post discussing which jobs will be made obsolete by AI, and it raised some concerns for me.

See, most people seem to forget that if you want someone capable of doing complex tasks that require experience - they need a path to gaining that experience.

That's part of why I talk about pipelines so much. 

Okay, I generally talk about leadership pipelines, but it applies to practically every task that isn't an entry level role.

Companies keep putting out these posts asking for '5-10 years experience', but where do they find the people with that experience?

Generally by hiring someone who got that experience somewhere else... which means that if they're not growing their own talent then they are compete for the (limited) pool of talent that someone else developed.

Basically, any time people complain about a shortage of workers you should ask yourself where the pipeline to building that talent is. And if the company doesn't have one, then they're honestly part of the problem.

But let's get back to AI.

AI takes some of the same challenges with automation and escalates it to the nth degree.

What I mean is this...

Automation is fantastic. I love it. It makes my job easier. Any time you have a repetitive task that needs to be done in the exact same way, the exact same order, repeatedly - automate it! You are only limited by the time and effort it will take to create the automation tools.

Heck, you can even create some type of 'self-healing', where you even automate a response to certain events.

At the same time, there's a very real problem that occurs when whoever created your automation moves on to a new role and the people remaining don't understand the tools they're using.

Need to update your automation in order to take into account changes to your business? Somebody has to understand what your tools are doing, so they know where and how to update it.

Have some bug that causes your automation to error out? Somebody needs to know enough about it to troubleshoot the issue.

Anybody can go to a CI/CD resource and click the button to run a pipeline that does whatever they're configured to do.

The real problem comes when that's not enough. 

When it breaks, or needs updated, or requires knowledge that goes beyond just going to your Jenkins site, or Azure DevOps, or any other CI/CD tool and running it.

You cannot get away from human involvement. You may reduce the need, maybe one super-experienced DevOps expert can do what used to take 5 people to do, but you. will. always. need. someone. who. understands. it.

Someone who knows what your application or program or pipeline is supposed to do, how it does it, and how to revise it as needed.

And here's the thing... if you use AI to take away the first tier jobs, those entry level jobs?

Where are you going to get the people with the experience needed for the second tier? The ones who maintain your tools?

I don't have a problem with AI per se, I do have a problem with people treating it like some miracle tool that will allow you to get around basic people management.

Tech keeps getting more and more sophisticated, which is awesome. It also means that there's more and more places where things go wrong (to quote Murphy's law), and the more that complexity is hidden away in layers, the more difficult it is for the people maintaining it to understand the problem.

I think that's part of why I did so well in my last DevOps role, tbh. We've got all these complex tools to do all sorts of things, and once you get past the superficial basics like running pipelines or monitoring dashboards and alerts, most of the issues require a deeper understanding of the application. Like understanding why a bad record in one particular kafka partition will eventually stop all consumption in that consumer group. Or understanding how to check those partitions in the first place. Or understanding how to update your consumer so that it skips a bad record.

In some ways, this reminds me of qualitative and quantitative analysis. See, quantitative analysis deals with cold, hard facts. At least, it does if you're doing it right, for example by successfully creating questions that aren't biased and try to push survey takers to give a certain response. 

Quantitative analysis let's you say 'oh, 56% say x' or 'there's a relationship between income, education, and support for y'.

But the thing of it is, quantitative analysis requires you to already know enough about the topic to know which questions to ask. If there's a relationship between income, education, and support for y... but you never ask your responders for information on their education level, then you won't ever be able to tell whether there's a relationship or not.

This is where qualitative analysis starts getting important, because it allows you to have focus groups and in-depth interviews with people involved with a topic, which can give you a much better sense of what questions to ask and what factors might have relationships worth investigating.

This is not an either-or thing. One is not better than the other. They are complementary, and work together.

In the same fashion, human judgment and computing technology is complementary and should work together.

I am absolutely for anything that helps reduce the stuff I hate doing. The boring, repetitive tasks. Especially ones that are easy to screw up if you're having a bad day and aren't thinking too clearly.

Using a pipeline to make sure our application is created correctly, in the right order, every time? Yes, please. Even using one to run through the thousands of calculations and steps needed to prepare a daily report?

Yes please.

But that does not and should not mean you can replace people entirely. Especially if you ever want to update your pipelines, or migrate to new technologies... or ever need anybody who actually understands what your application does and how it works.

And all of that? Applies to AI, to an even more exaggerated degree. 

My last company tried getting us to use a company AI for a bit, and yes... it's nice when it can clearly summarize and articulate something about our application. Makes it a lot easier for me to understand things that were kind of hard to figure out.

Except...

It's basically making up for the loss of tribal knowledge. And given its ability to 'hallucinate', it does a poor job of making up for that loss. I mean, it's better than nothing? It can be convenient? But... it'd be even better if there was a good onboarding program to make sure everyone knew what they needed to know. (and yes, we did have one. We had a whole list of videos on relevant topics, as well as multiple company wiki pages. Much of it quite disorganized, and you could search the wiki to find some of what you needed to know but the pages were often made for quite specific issues and didn't necessarily give the broad overview. And as for the videos? You had to have the time to work through them, which... well, is kind of hard to fit in sometimes.)

Anyways... it just seems like people are pushing these things because they don't understand or want to deal with the basics.

Build your team. Create your talent pipelines. Capture institutional knowledge and make sure it gets passed along to new members. 

And make sure you have people who understand what your tools are supposed to be doing, how they do it, and how to fix it if needed.

Feels Fake - Addendum

 When my Catholic school talked about abortion, they talked about the sanctity of life. They said that you can't pick and choose when to value life, basically. And that if you wanted to be pro-life, you also needed to be against the death penalty and other things.

I am not sure I agree with some of their arguments - mostly about end of life. I can't help feeling that the last round of chemo hastened my Mom's end, and that quality of life matters. That, for example, if you can't survive without life support that extending your misery for a few days with life support isn't really worth it, but at least their arguments are consistent.

Which is part of why I find it fascinating when 'pro-life' people also support the death penalty. Seems they don't really agree with that argument.

Anyways, to get back to Charlie Kirk's assassination. The point I was trying to make with my earlier post is that you have to be consistent. That if assassination and murder is bad, it's bad in every case. All the time.

It's bad when it's Minnesota legislators.

It's bad when it's school children.

And when we've created a callous society that shrugs and moves on when those people are murdered, it seems inconsistent to suddenly be upset and start caring just because it was a right wing influencer.

I said that if you actually cared about his death that you wouldn't want to escalate things... but that's not quite true.

Or rather, given some of what Charlie Kirk has said... maybe he actually wanted to escalate the violence, even if it meant his own death?

I personally find it hard to believe. I think it was probably more along the lines of 'it's okay for other people to die, but not me'... but I can't claim to know him that well. Given what he said about the 2nd amendment, maybe he'd understand that his own death was also worth it.

Still, the outrage feels fake. Feels more like people are just upset when the natural consequences of their positions affect people they actually care about.

Feels Fake

I feel like I should say something about Charlie Kirk's assassination, but tbh I never paid attention to the guy. 

What I do find interesting is that the right is really getting spun up about it. I say 'interesting' because we already had legislators shot in Minnesota, and yesterday also marked yet another school shooting. 

Why is this any different? 

No, seriously. If you're actually upset about Charlie Kirk's assassination, were you also upset about those other shootings?

The responses just feel kind of performative and fake to me. I mean, if they were genuine than they'd also want to deescalate the violence. 

After all, deaths of people you care about is a natural progression of escalation and only a fool would think they wouldn't be affected too.

Rules of Thumb

 I figured I'd write some rules of thumb... guidelines for what to prioritize when deciding how to get from where we are to where we want to be.

These aren't in any particular order, but I'll start with the one I talked about earlier:

• Make decisions at the lowest level possible
• Lower levels should have the freedom to add on to, but not take away from policies and decisions made at higher levels

In addition, I'll add the following:

• Any policy that you don't want applying to yourselves is a bad idea (or needs refinement)
• Think of this as a specific version of the Golden Rule. If you think that more people should give up on higher education and focus on trade schools, consider whether you are truly okay with letting your children - or yourself- do so. If you want other people to go to a trade school, but you would be upset if your child gave up on a college degree in order to become a plumber, then maybe that says something. Maybe you're really just trying to stop other people from competing, or you want other people to do the jobs you think are beneath you. 
• It could just need refining, in that if you aren't willing to see you or your loved ones doing whatever... that means you're missing something critical about what you're proposing
• Seriously - if you wouldn't want to live under that policy, then you shouldn't try making others do so
• This applies doubly so for the fools who seem to think a great die off is a good idea. Like Prince Philip here. Fools like this always seem happy to hear about other people dying, but we all know that they don't want their own loved ones to die of disease. Or if they're truly okay with it, then you have to wonder about whether they truly loved anyone in the first place. Enough with these fantasies of making something good out of mass suffering, it's sickening.
• Empower people wherever you can
• A good parent helps their child grow into adults capable of making their own decisions. Your focus should be on helping people make their own choices, hopefully wise choices, rather than trying to impose yours on them
• Yes, sometimes that means they will make choices you disagree with. Either work on persuading people, or look at the incentives and motivations that prevent people from making better decisions. If that doesn't work, consider whether you're wrong. Or are missing something critical. Quit worrying about control, and focus more on leading and building
• A thriving middle class creates stability and prosperity
• This seems pretty self-evident, considering that's one of the things we consider when we assess a nation. Two much wealth disparity tends to mean a country isn't very stable, plus there aren't as many people with the money to buy things... so less prosperous. I'm making a point of it because we've had numerous reports on the hollowing out of the middle class, the growth of wealth inequality, etc... and yet the powers-that-be don't seem to take that seriously. They even support policies that make it worse.
• Nobody wants to die because they bought poisoned food
• This is a dramatic statement to describe a whole category of things. Basically the idea that people unknowingly suffer because unscrupulous businesses sell things that hurt them. If you don't want people solving that with federal regulation, make sure you have an alternative that addresses the root cause. 
• No, expecting unscrupulous businesses to go out of business as the public catches on is not a reasonable alternative. You can consider non-profit rating schemes or other alternatives, but then they will need funding and some method of accurately rating things. Basically it doesn't have to be the government, but whatever your alternative is will probably do similar things, so why duplicate the effort? If your 'de-regulation' leads to more people dying then the root causes for that regulation are just going to keep coming back. Don't expect people to just accept suffering when it's something we can prevent.
• You can't make good policy if you can't accurately assess your environment
• If you've mistaken the root causes, your solutions won't fix anything.
• If you don't assess the results of your policies, you won't know when they need adjusting.
• Everything depends on getting accurate and reliable information. If that information is considered a threat for some reason, then take a long, hard look at yourself. Trying to prevent us from capturing statistics on gun deaths or getting accurate information on climate change doesn't change the underlying truth, it just makes sure all your policy proposals are going to be bad because they're based on faulty information.
• Honestly, quit it.
• Nobody knows everything. 
• Good decision-making involves seeking out different sources of information. If you rely on only one source, then you won't make good policy (see the previous bullet point). Just make sure to evaluate those sources for accuracy and reliability, too.
• People are not robots
• First, that means they react better to stories and anecdotes than 20 page reports full of facts and findings. Keep that in mind when trying to persuate people
• Second, people will not always do what you expect. Be prepared for that.
• Third, this is why counter-intuitive policies sometimes work. It's like how a computer programmer who stops to take a break can come back and suddenly see how to program somethign that was stumping them... productivity is not just a matter of work hours. In fact, trying to force people to grind through some boring and tedious task can make them less productive then letting them have breaks. Learn how to manage people, don't expect them to act like robots.

I'm sure there's plenty more, but that's enough for today.

Side Note

 Coincidentally, I was reading a book (Learning Systems Thinking) and this section right here was remarkably relevant to my recent post:

We expect the people who build software to behave in predictable, procedural, top-down controlled ways. Our preferred communication style reflects these expectations—straightforward, concrete, and concerned with control.

I had not thought there was anything IT specific that was affecting this push for centralization, but that is perhaps because so much of my more recent IT experience has dealt with micro-services and distributed systems.

If the author is true, and I think they understand the programming culture better than I do, then perhaps the tech-bro foolishness is even more related to their original career than I thought.

Centralized vs Decentralized (Prequel to Rules of Thumb)

 I was thinking of some general rules of thumb to use when deciding what paths to take towards our future America, but I think I would have to spend too much time explaining one of the bullet points. So I'm going to go into that explanation first.

There is something almost organic about how groups or organizations develop, and I think they are affected by two countervailing trends.

It works a bit like centripetal and centrifugal force. For those of you who need a physics refresher, centripetal force is the force that moves something towards it's center and centrifugal force pushes something away from its center.

In a similar fashion, as collections of individuals grow, there's pressure to centralize it and a countering pressure to decentralize it.

There is no 'good' or 'bad' here. It's more a matter of strength and weakness. For example, centralizing can lead to consistency and interchangeability. Standardization. Picture nuts and bolts that are all standardized so that you can easily go to a hardware store and pick the right size, as opposed to having to custom-make each nut and bolt for whatever you're trying to use.

On the flip side, centralizing means losing flexibility and customization. It tends to create one-size-fits-all solutions, which may loosely fit most situations but are imperfect and don't do so well for more extreme or rare situations.

There's more to it than that, too. Consider organizational structures...

While we now have the technology that allows one person (like a CEO) to communicate with hundreds, thousands, and even millions of people at once... human limits prevent the reverse from being true.

By which I mean, that CEO can not easily read through and respond to everyone if they replied to his or her e-mail.

The reason I bring that up? 

It's because organizations generally require some sort of hierarchy. Not in the sense of 'better' or 'worse', but in the sense that one person can not directly manage everyone. There's a limit to how much we can manage at once, and part of the reason the military has the structure it has is that we know (through experience) that that limit is somewhere around 7 objects. A platoon leader may have three or four squads, a company commander may have three or four platoons, a battalion commander may have three or four companies, and so on and so forth.

When you add in additional units (such as a headquarters staff or attached special support units) each command will roughly be managing at that limit.

So... we need hierarchies and layers in order to properly manage large organizations, but doing so has it's challenges.

Each additional layer is another potential block in getting a task done. It's another place where someone might be away on vacation and a petition is sitting on their desk. Or maybe they deliberately block something they don't like. Basically, it can slow down the speed at which an organization can respond.

There's also an element of 'telephone' in play, and communication can get garbled as it moves through those layers.

So centralization tends to make an organization slow, inconsistent, and if too much is pushed towards the center than the center can get overwhelmed and start dropping things.

On the flip side, decentralization comes with it's own problems. Like lack of coordination. Situations where the left hand doesn't know what the right hand is doing, and two groups might be duplicating the same work or working at cross-purposes.

The general solution, though this has it's own difficulties and is more suited to some situations than others, is to blend the different styles together.

That is - keep some form of coordination and centralization, but try to delegate and push decisions down to the lowest level possible. That also keeps some level of customization, improves response times, etc.

I think that's pretty much exactly what the American government is supposed to do, in an ideal environment.

Let decisions be made at the lowest level possible. Cities can do whatever the citizens of that city want, and if it's something that requires state-wide decision making it should be done at the state level, and if it requires nation-wide coordination it needs to be at the federal level.

That does cause problems sometimes. That's part of why you might have to brush up on state-specific laws when you move to a new state. But it also allows us to customize our lived experiences. Like how Illinois has legalized marijuana and Indiana has not.

The Constitution lays out what our Founding Fathers thought should be handled at the federal level, and they pretty much left anything else up to the states. 

That's part of why states run their own elections. And states decide the speed limit of their highways. 

But, as I think many of you may have noticed by now, there is pressure to centralize everything, and it's not just because it's inconvenient to have fifty different sets of rules.

It almost seems psychological. People want some decision made, and they almost naturally seem to want it made at the highest level possible. Or rather, they want some big and powerful person with authority to make the decisions and enforce it on everyone else. Which is great when they're making decisions you agree with, and terrible when they make decisions you don't... but the real problem is that you're putting all the decision-making on that one, single person.

And so people clamor for the federal government to dictate the minimum wage, or healthcare, or the legality of certain drugs, or speed limits, or educational standards. And they fight over who controls the power to dictate those things... rather than trying to empower lower levels to make their own decisions on such matters.

The funny thing is, this is what the conservatives I grew up with always seemed to complain about. That the federal government was doing all these things that weren't actually supposed to be handled at that level, and that these decisions should be left up to the states. (States rights... has it's own long and sordid history, and yet again we're touching on racism... but I'm leaving that for later).

What Trump and his allies are showing us now, however, is that they don't actually care about that. By which I mean - they are trying to use federal power to dictate what states should and shouldn't do. 

Big government at its worst.

They've shown this in other ways too. Like Florida trying to use state power to override city-level decisions.

There's more to this topic that I can't really remember right now, but it all feeds into one of the rules of thumb I wanted to mention - 

Let decisions be made at the lowest level possible. 

And a bit of a corollary -

You can add to, but can't take away.

For those who have never heard that before, that's another thing I heard in the military, and the gist of it is this.

A higher command may set a certain policy... like the policy on blogging back in Iraq. A subordinate commander can't remove any of the parts of that policy. They can't overrule their higher command and decide that their soldiers can disregard that part...

But they can add on to it.

The way I picture that is this:

We believe our citizens have certain inalienable rights, and that's at the national level. It applies to every US citizen, and no lower level of government can take away those rights. A city or state can't decide that they can restrict speech in a way that the federal government can not.

On the other hand, a city or state may decide for themselves that they want to fund public healthcare even if the federal government does not. We've already seen that with certain states from before the ACA.

States can add laws restricting the sales of alcohol on Sunday, even though the federal government does not.

This allows us to customize our rules and laws at a lower level, allows people to have their cities or states make decisions that differ from others... while also ensuring that national level decisions are enacted across the nation.

A few weeks back someone asked me why their city couldn't set up some funds to create an emergency stock of food and my answer was that there is absolutely no reason why they couldn't.

It's just that we have generally done such stockpiling at the federal level. I suspect that it's cheaper and easier to do so, since one large stockpile is probably easier to manage than thousands of them (as well as the inconsistency I mentioned above with decentralization - i.e. if you left it to each individual city than there's going to be duplication of effort, as well as some cities that never develop a stockpile in the first place).

Anyways, I wish people focused on this more... because there's quite a few policies we debate as a nation that I think we should really be asking - at which level of government should this decision be made?

And with slightly different nuance 'if we really want X, can we make it happen in our city or town?'

Purpose and Direction - More Musings

There's two ways of considering the path from where we are to where we want to be -

I can focus on the start (i.e. where we are), or I can focus on the destination and try to work backwards.

Focusing on the start is complicated - because that means having a clear-eyed view of where we currently stand. 

And there's not actually a lot of agreement on that, other than that - for whatever reason - we are dissatisfied.

Nobody is happy with the status quo. I don't think someone like Trump could get elected if people were happy with the current situation.

The problem is that everyone has their own ideas as to what's wrong and how to fix it.

I think that's part of why key moments in time are so chaotic, actually. The status quo has some inertia, it just kind of keeps going and going, even as problems continue growing without being addressed.

But once something finally breeches that wall? Puts a crack in the dam holding things back?

Chaos ensues. Only the truly arrogant believe they can control that chaos... over and over and over again we see unpredicted results once that status quo is disrupted.

Consider Iraq. Saddam was a horrible ruler, and his sons were even worse. But there was predictability and stability - of a sort. And our invasion disrupted that.

And we were not prepared for the chaos we unleashed.

Major disruptions to the status quo tend to come with a period of uncertainty, where multiple different forces and factions compete to influence and shape what comes.

It tends to be a messy and complicated process, sort of like how the French Revolution had the Reign of Terror and Robespierre, before Napoleon and many more years of turmoil.

The Russian Revolution also had quite a bit of unrest and violence after the death of their royal family, the Bolsheviks were just one faction in it.

Part of the reason I have so much contempt for the Boogaloo movement is that they don't seem to have any understanding or respect for the violence they're trying to incite.

They probably think that if the upset the status quo, they'll get to control what happens next. They don't seem to believe or care that they and their loved ones will suffer too.

I can and probably will dig a bit deeper into the 'here is where we are the start', but I wanted to explore things from the other end before getting bogged down in that.

Because if we look at our goal, we also get a better sense of what direction we should build in.

Our destination, to draw on all the sources I mentioned in a previous post and consolidate it a bit, is this:

• A nation where people have control over their own government. 
• That control can mean different things at local, state, and federal levels. I've got some rules of thumb I was thinking of that will touch on this in more detail, but let's just say that if people get together and decide that they really want a law, they should be able to make it happen. But that law might be more appropriate as a city law vs state or federal law. We benefit sometimes from having a national standard, but we also benefit by letting each city and state do things their own way.
• Where people can succeed through their own efforts. That success requires:
• Access to education and training
• Sufficient pay so that if you are willing to work hard you can pay your bills and save up enough for that education and training, or even just a nice vacation from time to time
• A meritocracy, where you can get promoted or get the training and education you need based off your own talents. (I can talk a lot more about that, too. But later.)
• Freedom 
• To state our opinions without worry that the president - or some other big and powerful individual - will punish us if they disagree
• To practice our faith as we wish - though with restrictions if that faith infringes on other people's rights (i.e. you don't get to use your religion to justify making other people do things they don't want to do.)

Working our way backwards from this, we can already see some of the challenges we'll have to face. We already know that our government is not truly representative. Since this is a quick overview I'm going to go into depth on that some other time, but there's been plenty of discussion about it already.

We also know that it's getting more and more challenging for people to succeed through their own efforts. Education is more and more expensive, housing prices keep rising, it's harder and harder for people to save up money... oh, and a meritocracy? lol.... yeah, sure. Funny how people like pretending that they succeeded by merit even as they keep supporting policies that block any real competition. Methinks they might not actually believe they're the best of the best.

And as for freedom - well, Trump really has had a chilling effect on that, hasn't he? 

I'm sure there's more I could add to this, it feels like I have to be skipping some key points somewhere. But you get the gist.

Purpose and Direction

The challenges I'm running into in writing this come from a variety of things.

First, for 'purpose and direction', I think we already have some fine goals laid out throughout the course of American history. 

- We are all created equal

- We all have the rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness

- Slavery is flat-out evil. Anyone trying to minimize that or claim it isn't that bad is frankly lying to you, or doesn't know their history well, or doesn't consider the people who were enslaved to be real people. Like, seriously... historians risk serious mental trauma when they study it! 

- Martin Luther King, JR's 'I have a dream' speech is inspiring, and a worthy goal too

Let's also add in the American Dream, the belief that every American should be able to reach their full potential if they're willing to put in the effort.

Honestly, we've got a plethora of worthy goals to work towards... and it's very frustrating, to me at least, that so many people today are actively working against these. Can you truly call yourself an American, even?

But even though I know there are people questioning what used to be the American consensus here, I think there are still more Americans who agree with it than don't, and so writing out the reasoning doesn't seem like the best use of time. For now. 

What's more challenging, I think, is 'how do we get from here to there?'

That question brings up a whole slew of issues, too. For example - in pursuing our goals, should we work at the state level? National level? Local level?

Private sector or public sector? 

I can quite easily agree with the goal of creating an America where everyone can succeed by their own effort, but putting it into practice means figuring out how you're going to make it happen, and deciding if you're going to push for federal legislation or try some sort of grass roots campaign at the local level, or perhaps create a non-profit and try to get funding from other members of society.

It's complicated. At least, it is if you want to take advantage of our republican structure and let the lowest level deal with the issues they can. (I can give a whole long speech about Hobbes' Leviathan and the challenges and failures involved with that, but I've written about it before. I might revisit it when I finish mulling over this current question. Oh, and those challenges are exactly why this Dark Enlightenment push for a more centralized and authoritarian system is so stupid.)

And of course any good plan needs to take into account the current political situation and navigate a path forwards. Which means you have to figure out how to deal with the people who benefit from the current system...

As much as I like the idea of ranked choice voting, for example, and believe it's a more systemic fix for the terrible incentives of our current political system, I know that it'll be difficult to convince the people who benefit from the current situation to support any changes.

So any good plan needs to a) accurately assess where we are now, b) figure out how to get from where we are now to where we want to be, and c) do a good job of executing that plan. Build support, maneuver around obstacles, do all the hard work of monitoring and adjusting as needed to make sure we get from our current situation to our desired situation.

And it has to be clear and concise enough to be actionable, but not so detailed that it's inflexible and unable to adapt to circumstances.

Yeah... I'm going to need to think on this one.

Leadership Sleight of Hand

 I was thinking of yesterday's post, where I mentioned that leadership "provides purpose and direction", and have been mulling over the purpose and direction I want to see.

That, however, is a very large topic I'm not sure I'm ready to start. Or, well, I wanted to focus on something else first.

There are all sorts of anecdotes and pithy phrases on leadership, ones you may have heard before.

"Lead by example"

"Don't order anyone to do something you're not willing to do yourself"

"Mission first, people always"

But there's something a bit more foundational that I wanted to discuss. A bit of sleight of hand, you might say.

See - people will live up to your expections. (And down to them, too). This isn't just wishful thinking, either. If you weren't already aware, Harvard did a study where they told teachers they had identified students who were destined to succeed. And lo and behold! Those students did succeed. 

But there was no actual test, no real way of identifying who would succeed or not. The kids succeeded because the teachers thought they would, and so they supported the students more and it turned into a self-fulfilling prophecy.

This applies to more than just school children, and I will also state that subordinates are pretty good at picking up on their leader's thoughts and feelings.

So if you think all your people are incompetent and lazy idiots, chances are you are always complaining about how you're surrounded by incompetent and lazy idiots.

But if you think your people are all talented and brimming with potential? You may just find that they are, in fact, quite talented and brimming with potential.

It's not just wishful thinking, or manifesting reality with your thoughts. It's because when you create an environment meant to help people succeed, most of the time people will succeed. 

Think of every single one of your people as someone full of potential. If, for some reason, they don't meet your expectations, then ask yourself -

• Did I clearly communicate what's expected of them?
• Did I give them the resources they need to succeed? The training, the tools, the funding, the time?
• Did I check in with them, find out if there were any blockers I wasn't aware of? Did I then work to remove the blockers I can?

I would say that for the vast majority of people, just providing those three things will lead to success. And as for the rest?

Well, now you know that they are a bad fit for the role. NOT 'incompetent', or 'lazy'. NOT incapable. Just that the role you hired for them isn't a good fit for their talents and capabilities.

And, if you've done it right, it shouldn't be too hard to document it for HR. What is a Performance Improvement Plan (PIP) if not a way of documenting that you've clearly explained your expectations? Documented that you've given them the training and resources needed to succeed? Documented that you've met with them periodically and given them a chance to tell you what's going on with their life?

It's all a painful bureaucratic process that helps document what you should already be doing.

I also wanted to talk a little more about that third point, about blockers. This is probably where leaders have the most room for their own judgment, because blockers are not just things like 'the task relies on someone or something else'. It's not just trouble coordinating with an outside agency, or an inability to test some process because you're still waiting for approval to open the firewall, or some other obstacle within the company.

Blockers can also include "my employee is going through a divorce and unable to focus on work."

We all know that businesses expect employees to do their job regardless of whatever personal crap is going on, but it's also true that people sometimes have temporary situations that affect them, and they can still be valuable and skilled employees.

I've seen this in more tragic and dramatic situations in the military, as well as civilian life, and I will say that people remember how they're treated at times like that. They also remember how their fellow employees are treated.

That soldier who horrifically received news that his son fell into a river and drowned while he was in Iraq? And his ex's boyfriend jumped into the river after him and drowned too?

You'd better believe that getting that soldier back home as soon as possible was more important than any sort of contribution he could make in a combat zone.

And in a later civilian role - that employee who had a heart attack on our warehouse floor? Letting his co-workers take paid time off to process it, and having a grief counselor meet with them later that week was more important than trying to force them to meet business needs in the short term.

Blockers can also be personal issues, though how you handle them can differ depending on the time, situation, and company policies.

What I will say is that you won't get much loyalty by just haranguing people for not doing what you want.