Our 25 year old vacuum cleaner was starting to wheeze. I smelled the faint toxic odor of smoldering PCB insulation. It was time to retire the machine and buy a new one.

There are few brick and mortar appliance vendors nor even department stores around anymore. I didn't want to drive to some big box retail center, endlessly circle around looking for parking, and then return to discover my car had been stolen to be used as a disposable battering ram for a smash and grab robbery somewhere else. I will write something soon about my thoughts, as a grizzled trial lawyer, about the American civil and criminal justice system, such as it is. But that's for another day. Today, it is vacuum cleaners.

Perhaps I should have simply bought some virtual reality glasses instead of a new vacuum cleaner. The house would remain a mess, but, wearing Apple, Meta or Google goggles could make everything seem alright, kind of like 'reporting' as the news cartels like to call it. But like everything else about manufacturing a narrative and virtual reality, real reality eventually bites you and your artificially intelligent delusions come down to just so much artificially induced stupidity.

I shopped on line for vacuums, studiously avoiding the top 30 "hits": they were all Amazon vendors who most likely paid to promote themselves to the top of my Web search. Since the passage of Bill Clinton's Telecommunications Act of 1996, the Internet has spiraled downward into the stultifying commercialized wasteland we know today. Still, with patience and tenacity, you can struggle through the tangle of hype and "verified" AI-generated five star customer reviews. I suppose that vacuity is to be expected when shopping for vacuum cleaners. But while shopping I heard this do-loop of a mid-1960s not yet cadaverous Mick Jagger and The Rolling Stones performing "Satisfaction (I Can't Get No)," ranting about mindless laundry detergent and cigarette advertising "supposed to fire my imagination"... until, decades later, Mick Jagger himself had been absorbed by the hive-mind collective and become a prune-faced front man for capitalism.

But I have lost the thread of my story about vacuum cleaners. Or maybe I've lost my mind. Or found it again after all these years.

The first thing I noticed about the vacuum cleaners were the prices! A decent one now costs as much as a motorcycle used to cost. But motorcycles now cost the same as a car once did; and a car today costs as much as a starter house used to cost; and a starter house is now an industrial scale slapdash micro-home no bigger than a cardboard box that's incredibly expensive, but so cramped and tiny that you can clean it with an electrostatically charged cat. And that's what we call progress.

I guess.

But some things have gotten better.

Look at that picture at the head of this essay.., it's a much altered mid-last century Hoover advertisement. The original ad showed a cheerful, carefully coiffed young mother in skirt and heels... casually vacuuming... her baby's diapers! And, you'll notice, last century, it was always the lady of the house doing the dirty, hard work of cleaning it.

Other ads of this period show dreamy-eyed housewives (in formal wear!) ogling their vacuum cleaners or wishing that their hubbies would buy them... a labor-saving vacuum cleaner for Christmas. Other ads depict "domesticated" women wearing chiffon evening-gowns (and pointy-toed high heels, of course) ecstatically Hoovering the shag carpet (one-handed, no less!) while the "Man" of the house reclines in his Easy Boy reading the newspaper smoking a pipe. Ha! Where's the old... or rather the young... Mick Jagger when we need to hear from him?

Eventually, I did buy a vacuum. I needed to read the instruction manual on line, study-up, pass a user's test and get a graduation certificate before I could turn the thing on. Soon after it was delivered by UPS, the vendor sent me the usual requests to rate my purchase - "HEY STEVE!!" ... "Hey??" Whatever happened to 'hello?' Am I on a casual, first name basis with some shopping app up in the Cloud?... The app queried me like we were long time frat-brothers:

"Hey Steve! How did that new vacuum cleaner work out for you?!?!"

Well, it sucks, of course.

This one, like nearly every model I checked out, had the usual features: a retractable cord that will smack me in the face as it rewinds, a special tool for 'crevices' (I don't even want to think about that), a super suction device for making small yappy dogs disappear, and, maybe, something for cleaning baby diapers as in the 1950s advert.

It also has various power and noise settings. They range from "low," as in standing right behind the turbojets of a Boeing 737 Max about to take off (or crash); to "mid-range," as in Israeli-American F35 jets bombing apartment buildings in Beirut; to "maximum," as in Space X Heavy Lift launch pad mode. All of which settings could lead to severe injury, I am told, if I don't wear ear protectors, bullet-proof goggles, fire-resistant asbestos pants, a flak jacket and a dust respirator. Or so the manufacturer's lawyers warn in the fine print of the user's manual as they seek to immunize the vendor from even the most remote possibility of personal injury liability.

I didn't consider getting an artificially intelligent vacuum cleaner. Even now, there are some simple models out there for purchase that roll around your house and randomly bump into things just like a small ice hockey Zamboni on psybicillin.

Sam Altman, the 21st Century's carnival barker of high-tech, wants investors (and taxpayers) to fork over $7 trillion for artificial intelligence research and development to solve all of humankind's problems which, presumably, includes cleaning my house. Obviously, anyone who bites on that $7 trillion hook proves the need for artificial intelligence due to a complete absence of the native sort. Next gen robot vacuums (such as what Sam Altman's "Open AI" might sell some day after it fully transforms itself into a for-profit publicly traded corporation) will probably be programmed using Large Language Model neural networks to perform an absolutely abysmal job doing what any partially sentient human being could do reasonably well in half the time at a quarter the cost.

Worse, I cannot imagine what a fully roboticized artificially intelligent vacuum cleaner would do with a "crevice cleaning device" if given free rein.

I was pleased, nonetheless, that none of the vacuum cleaners I saw for sale were Tesla-style "vacuum browsers" - you know, computerized cleaning machine cell phone hybrids with built-in screens and cameras for watching movies, calling your friends, checking the stock markets, posting movies to social media of your 'house-cleaning adventure,' watching pornography or placing professional sports gambling bets, all of which while connected to the Internet of Things via Wi-Fi and recorded somewhere or other 'in the Cloud' such that a record is kept of your every sweep of the floor, your vacuuming time and location, your browsing history, the chemical content of your household dirt, the room temperature, the humidity, your facial expressions, your blood pressure, your DNA and your heartbeat; all of which to be reported in real time to the local (and national) constabulary as well as various marketing silos, saved forever in your digital dossier, all powered by lithium battery packs that are programmed to rapidly discharge and explode if triggered by a back-door radio signal transmitted by Israel's Mossad or some other nation's spooky team of assassins.

See how I slid that in there? It's like Arlo Guthrie's ballad, Alice's Restaurant, which is also a house-keeping song about taking out the garbage after Thanksgiving dinner, but which is really about the Draft, the Vietnam War and how to shut it down.

I have this recurring daydream fantasy when, this year or next, during the ten days of introspection between Rosh Hashanah (the Jewish New Year) and Yom Kippur (the Day of Atonement), that Mr. Netanyahu and certain especially troglodytic members of his antediluvian cabinet all receive a simultaneous page and a Zoom teleconference invitation from God. But, too late, they realize that God, too, has His/Her/Its/Their own back-and front-door access to their electronic devices (and their biological wetware, too); but their realization comes too late as boiling dark storm clouds form rapidly above their heads and... well, such are retribution daydream fantasies.

Speculation is rampant about how the Israelis managed to simultaneously blow up several thousand pagers and telecommunication devices in Lebanon and Syria. Various news outlets reported on "how it was done," but you can be sure that if you can read about it in The New York Times, then it is mostly BS. Remember: it was The New York Times that brought us Judith Miller and the completely fabricated stories about Saddam Hussein's alleged weapons of mass destruction that, inter alia, formed the pretext for the U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq. And Afghanistan. And Syria. Etcetera, etcetera, etcetera.

Lithium batteries do catch fire and, sometimes, explode. A short-circuited lithium battery can burn very hot and very long. The fire department recommends that all residential Level 2 charging points for electric vehicles be installed outside, not inside your house. Many news stories around the world report on apartment fires ignited by overcharged electric bicycles. Fire departments have developed special fire-fighting protocols for extinguishing electric cars that have caught fire. Were Hezbollah's paging devices also laced with some type of additional C4 plastic explosive? Maybe. But explosives might not have been necessary in the event of a rapid, incendiary discharge of the devices' lithium batteries remotely triggered.

In Lebanon, the war between Israel and Hezbollah is likely being fought both on the basis of electronic and old fashioned human intelligence. More than likely, Israeli agents are deeply infiltrated into Hezbollah right up to the highest command centers, as is most certainly the case with Hamas. Generally speaking, various states' intelligence services have infiltrated (or created) all international and most national/local organizations of any note. As for the current war in the Middle East - which is just one theater of action in the World War that is already well underway - if you take a quick look at Israeli troops, Palestinians, Hezbollah fighters and even Iranian military men, you will notice that... except for their attire... you won't see any consistent differences in phenotypes. They all look pretty much the same.

Because they are pretty much the same. As we all are.

All of which makes the lunacy of creating ethno-national states not only infeasible and irrational, but also one of the dumbest ideas born of the 19th-20th Centuries. The concept of an ethno-national state is equally as idiotic as monarchy, aristocracy and empire.

Technology.

It isn't, and it never was, the domain of pure intellectual inquiry. Even Mr. Galileo, who left his mark in astronomy, physics, and engineering, also contributed his efforts to his patrons' better aiming techniques for cannons and bombards. Galileo, however, did not invent the vacuum cleaner. I guess that, in Galileo's time, 17th Century Italian housewives were still cleaning the house with straw brooms, "una scopa dalla tecnologia innovativa." When I lived in Naples as a kid, decades and decades ago, I don't remember any Italian women getting giddy over brooms or mops or wishing to get an artificially intelligent vacuum cleaner for Christmas.

In Gaza, Israel is using... artificial intelligence algorithms to automatically select targets. This isn't magic, and, for that matter, it also is not accurate. But it provides gee-whiz technological cover for all the women, children and sundry non-combatants killed in the Gaza and Beirut air strikes.

Most, if not all, digital devices, have built in back doors, either in the software, the hardware, or both. That's what Edward Snowden talked about years ago and that's why he fled the United States. After 14 years of unrelenting persecution, Julian Assange was just released from a UK maximum security prison after "pleading guilty to journalism." Mr. Assange has clearly been beaten up, but, against all odds, he has survived. His recent presentation to the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) in Strasbourg is sobering and I encourage people who are even minimally interested in the pursuit of truth and justice to click on the link and listen.

The United States and its vassals have banned Chinese telecommunications gear such as that manufactured by Huawei. The U.S. claims that TikTok is rife with Chinese Communist "back doors."

The problem certainly is not that these these devices and media have nefarious Chinese "back doors." The problem is that they are not CIA/NSA/FBI/MI5-6 back doors.

It is public knowledge that Android and Apple phones all can be tracked even if they are "off." Everything you say, read, email, record, text, click or browse on your digital device is wide open to those with access. It is also public knowledge that your devices can be "turned on" remotely, that is, their microphones and cameras set to record and broadcast without giving any signal or indication that they have been activated. Presumably, using a programmed radio transmission, your own devices' lithium batteries can also be instructed to rapidly and catastrophically discharge.

Similarly, most new cars manufactured and sold in the western world incorporate a variety of "smarts," often marketed as "safety features." Every car sold within the past decade has, for instance, a so-called Event Data Recorder. Like the black box recovered from an airplane crash, the Event Data Recorder collects and preserves a rolling archive of information such as vehicle speed, braking, steering angle, seatbelt use and similar crash significant information. In some vehicles today, a tremendous amount of driver and passenger data is continuously broadcast back to the manufacturer (or the manufacturer's out-sourced contractor) where it is archived. This is how Tesla, for example, can adduce evidence that a crashed EV that ostensibly drove itself into a wall was, in fact, piloted by a drunk, cannabis smoking driver who simply fell asleep at the wheel doing 100 mph.

Modern cars also include, among other things, multiple exterior and interior cameras and cabin microphones, ostensibly to monitor what's going on outside as well as inside. So, yes, when you get into today's automobile, you are on Candid Camera! Keep that in mind before you do what you do in the supposed privacy of your car, including calling your spouse, talking with a passenger, cursing some politician, passing gas, belching, scratching yourself or picking your nose.

In addition, modern cars automatically track where you are, your starting point and your destination, and what you look at as you drive by. Based on an analysis of that information, the data processors can determine your likes and dislikes, and even guess at your sexual preferences. Today's automobiles are routinely and constantly collecting and transmitting data to any number of data silos.

Ford Motor Company has applied to patent a system by which automobile occupants' speech and images would be collected and transmitted to a central facility where they could be subject to predictive analysis and 'targeted advertising.' Or other kinds of ‘targeting,’ as the case might be.

Modern vehicles also can be disabled by a remote signal or even operated from the outside, just like the toy radio controlled vehicles the kids play with. If the advertisers can track you and me, and if the advertisers can predictably analyze who is in a vehicle, where it is going and what the occupants are doing, then there is no doubt that anyone inside that vehicle (and at its destination) can also be targeted with a missile or a suicide drone. Or, that vehicle can be remotely captured, its internal controls disabled, the doors locked and the vehicle and its passengers caused to drive into a cement wall at 100 mph.

“Hurrah for our side!” you might say.

But don't cheer for "our side." Our side never includes the likes of me... or you; and, if it does, then not for long or forever. Whoever can track, surveil and maim some target in Beirut or Gaza can, one day, in the same way, also track, surveil and maim me... or you. Intentionally or accidentally, maliciously or even on a whim as a dark prank.

I sat down next to my new vacuum cleaner to have an honest conversation about what it was up to. Fortunately, it lacked the smarts to talk... or to listen... to me. End of "conversation." Or, is it smart enough not to let me know what it knows?

Hmm.

I don't think I will ever again use a vacuum cleaner... or any other of the many modern digital devices operating in and around my life... without a nagging, suspicious, distrustful paranoia.

We are enmeshed in a high tech world war.

What have we wrought?

*****

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They called that a debate?

The classic American "political debate" was the series of seven joint appearances in 1858 between Abraham Lincoln and Stephen Douglas. Lincoln and Douglas were contesting the position of U.S. Senator from Illinois. The format was simple: Candidate A talked for one hour, followed by a 90 minute reply by Candidate B. Candidate A then concluded with a half hour rebuttal.

There were no commercials. Both speakers were articulate. Lincoln and Douglas disagreed without loss of decorum, without argumentum ad hominem, and without vituperation.

Lincoln and Douglas alternated who spoke first. They crisscrossed the state of Illinois and delivered their speeches in public before thousands of attentive voters, spectators and the press.

Lincoln and Douglas debated the past and the future of the United States - it's core ideological, moral and economic raison d'être. At issue was whether the nation would be free or slave, whether small stake holders or wealthy plantation owners would predominate, and whether oligarchy would overwhelm democracy.

It was a serious, existential discussion of the sort we, too, should have.

The incumbent, Stephen Douglas, ultimately won that senatorial election. But the intelligence of Lincoln's words and the thoughtfulness of his arguments propelled him to win the fractured four-way presidential election of 1860... by a mere 39.8% plurality vote (no slaves, women or First Americans participating, of course). Lincoln's election, in turn, propelled the U.S. into the Civil War.

You can read the actual speeches of the Lincoln-Douglas Debates here.

The first 2024 CNN live-cast of Joe Biden and Donald Trump was not in the same league as the Lincoln-Douglas Debates. The CNN broadcast looked and sounded more like TV wrestling in suits. It was, essentially, a private affair choreographed by the two major political parties with no third party candidates (like Robert F. Kennedy) permitted in the door. Contrasted with the Lincoln-Douglas Debates, the Biden-Trump "debate" had no live audience and no applause (or booing or hissing!).

Significantly, there also was no laugh track as there should have been.

Compared to something as momentous as the Lincoln-Douglas Debates, the Don and Joe show was Kabuki theater. It consisted mainly of finger-pointing, mugging and exaggerated posturing for the camera.

These two guys spent the better part of their "debate" time glowering, sneering and lambasting each other. Joe Biden came across as a mean and senile old codger, because, honestly speaking, he is a mean and senile old codger. Donald Trump came across as a mean and narcissistic old codger because, honestly speaking, he is a mean and narcissistic old codger. It could have been funny... except that it wasn't.

The League of Women Voters, founded in 1920, was the preeminent host of political debate in America. Even unto the age of television, the League of Women Voters organized the presidential candidate forums. The League kept them adult and meaningful.

In 1987, however, the Democratic and Republican Parties had had enough of mature and meaningful discussion. They were into marketing their candidates. The two parties created the Commission on Presidential Debates. With a highfalutin name like that, you know that this small group had mischief on its mind.

Indeed, the following year, 1988, the two dominant parties, through the instrument of their "bi-partisan" commission, presented the League of Women Voters with a fait accompli, the parties' "agreement" regarding the future conduct of presidential candidate debates:

• Republicans and Democrats would pack the forum with their own supporters. The press would be relegated to the back of the room;

• The two parties would determine who asked candidates questions (and, obviously, what they would ask);

• The two parties would determine the debate format; and

• The two parties could restrict what the cameras could show during the debate.

Of course, this sounds very much like the most recent 'debate' hosted by CNN.

To its credit, the League of Women Voters refused to sponsor such a charade and, since 1988, the presidential candidate debates have been the exclusive playground of the Democratic and Republican Parties operated by their respective candidates' campaigns under the auspices of the "bipartisan" Commission on Presidential Debates.

Objectively, what we saw on CNN this year was not a 'debate'.

At its conclusion, the spinmeisters and pundits rated the candidates' "performance" and their "preparation" and how "presidential" they appeared.

Nobody talked about the substance of what they had said. Frankly speaking, there was no substance to what they had said because "performance" and "appearance" were all that mattered, not content.

The Don and Joe show was a casting call for the lead role in the ongoing movie production called "American Democracy."

The first question is: for whom were these two "gentlemen" (ahem) auditioning?

The partial answer to this question is: not you and not me.

The 'gentlemen' were auditioning for those who fund their campaigns - the wealthy donor class who fund both parties and own almost everything. That explains why, immediately after the curtain fell, major news editorial boards called for Mr. Biden to stand down from the race and a chorus of (mostly unidentified) "major party donors" demanded that the Democratic Party replace its 'quarterback'.

The analogy to professional sports is appropriate. Nearly all American sports teams are owned by plutocrats. These folks are used to trading, firing and promoting players at any time, even in the middle of the season. So, too, do this country's owners trade, fire and promote political candidates. They are their candidates, after all, not yours or mine. They do with them as they like, as they would do with any employee who they can terminate at will. Who you and I want to elect is irrelevant. All that matters is how well the preselected candidates will perform on the political stage and how well they can rally the hoi polloi with patriotic bromides and flag-waving clichés.

But what about Democracy, you ask?

Now that's a funny question!

Democracy means rule by the demos, the people. Oligarchs fear and detest 'the people.' That is why, in the United States, 'democracy' is intentionally (and falsely) conflated with 'voting', just like 'freedom' is (falsely) equated with 'capitalism.' That is why the sillier aspects of 'wokeness' (whatever that is) is (falsely) conflated with 'Marxism' (as though 'cultural Marxism' is a real thing, which it is not).

One should be leery of anyone who loosely flings around cheap labels like "far right" or "far left" as though the speaker really knows what on earth he is talking about. Truth is irrelevant in the political-economic propaganda game of capturing the narrative.

Thus, we Americans have the choice of voting for whomever we like... so long as we get excited about and vote for a candidate from one of the two major parties. In my state, the State of Washington, due to the "top two" primary system, we often have 'contested' general elections between two candidates from the identical party. This may or may not be 'freedom of choice' (I think it isn't), but it certainly doesn't mean that we live in a 'democracy.'

This is show biz.

Why did this pre-nomination 'debate' even occur?

Although Joe Biden and Donald Trump might be the presumptive candidates of their respective parties, neither one, as of the time of the CNN show, had even been formally nominated. Whose idea was it to stage this Kabuki Theater at this time?

It is no secret that within the Republican Party there are many who loathe Mr. Trump. They will not endorse him, they will not fund him and they will try until the end to sabotage his nomination.

It is also no secret within the Democratic Party there are many who recognize the symptoms of Joe Biden's stumble-bum senility. Worse, he ‘hesitated’ when it came to supporting a certain Middle East country during its most recent war of aggression. Major donors might endorse him, they might fund him, but they, too, will try until the end to sabotage his nomination. It is ironic that Mr. Biden is now experiencing the same kind of organized pressure to oust him that Harvard University President Claudine Gay experienced when powerful donors to the Harvard endowment fund gave her the boot in early 2024.

Both contingents - the 'Never-Trumpers' in the Republican Party and the win-at-all-costs Democrats - stood to benefit, and to lose, if either man stumbled badly enough in the first televised 'debate'. As it was, Joe Biden "appeared" worse, thus he will get the first heave-ho from the Democrats. I expect, however, that Mr. Trump will also get the hook if, at any time between now and the first Tuesday in November, his inner Donald breaks loose and he makes a fool of himself.

Will it matter who wins the White House in November?

Yes and no. Donald Trump and Joe Biden do have different visions for America, albethey relatively myopic, narrow points of view. One, in his senile delusion, thinks it is still the year 1950 and the other, in his MAGA delusion, thinks 1950 is the future.

One, Mr. Biden, says that he wants to save the world from climate change and social inequity while waging war and promoting iniquity. The other, Mr. Trump, says that he wants to let the world's climate change and ignore social inequity while waging trade wars and promoting iniquity.

But other than the veneer of leadership, will either Joe Biden or Donald Trump actually be in control?

The metaphor of Kabuki Theater extends even to the Oval Office.

The President is a figurehead. The true role of the President is to enthuse the 'people'... with the causes that concern those who actually have power.

Real power lies with certain influential members of the cabinet, certain career officials outside the cabinet, the Praetorian Guard of the military/intelligence/security apparatuses, the banking and investment community, the oligarchs in and outside the state, the many think tanks and policy-making NGOs that parasitize Washington D.C., the party donors and the global owners. Real power includes those, as yet, unidentified guests of Jeffrey Epstein's elite kompromat operation and gentleman's 'sporting club'. Does real power lie also with the Greater Israel lobby which seems able to control both parties' fawning Middle East policy even to America's own detriment? Does real power lie with those who profit from war in Ukraine, from instigating conflict in China, and in continuing the colonial exploitation of Africa, South America and Asia? Do all of them control what the executive branch of government does and does not do?

Yes and no.

In light of this ambiguity, let us consider where and how Messrs. Trump and Biden differ and how they don't:

• Both gentlemen want to be reelected president, Mr. Biden for the second time and Mr. Trump for the third. Mr. Biden's central campaign theme is that he is not Donald Trump. Once reelected, Mr. Biden would likely retire and pass the ball to Vice President Harris. Mr. Trump's central campaign theme is that he is not Joe Biden. Once reelected, Mr. Trump would likely play golf and pass the ball to the Deep State.

• Mr. Biden has trouble stringing two sentences together and would be wiser to keep his mouth shut. Mr. Trump has no trouble stringing multiple sentences together and would be wiser to keep his mouth shut.

• One of the candidates, Mr. Trump, is a convicted felon. The other candidate, Mr. Biden, ought to be a convicted felon.

• Mr. Biden's administration has been populated with the mendacious, the mediocre and the bizarre, such as Secretary of State Anthony Blinken, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen and U.S. Assistant Secretary for Health Rachel Levine. Based on the history of Mr. Trump's first looney-tunes cabinet, his advisors and administration will likely include the mendacious, the mediocre and the bizarre, such as the loutish Sen. Lindsey Graham, the war-mongering Nikki Haley and the charmless jailbirds Steve Bannon and Peter Navarro.

• Mr. Biden has a dog that bites. Mr. Trump has no dog and he bites.

• Mr. Trump, at the end of his 4th year in office, had the opportunity to pardon Julian Assange, and didn't. Mr. Biden, at the beginning of his 4 year term of office, had the opportunity to pardon Julian Assange, and didn't. Neither candidate will acknowledge that Mr. Assange was persecuted for more than a decade (with the complicity of the United Kingdom and Sweden) for having committed no offense other than honest journalism about America's war crimes against the Iraqi and Afghan people.

• Mr. Biden is a Zionist who gives Israel free rein to massacre Palestinians as it seeks to seize more of their lands. Mr. Trump is a Zionist who will give Israel even freer rein to massacre Palestinians as it seeks to seize more of their lands.

• Both Mr. Biden and Mr. Trump take credit for defending all of us from the Covid19 pandemic without either of them explaining what it really was, when it really started, and whether more folks were hurt than helped from the mRNA vaccines that they both promoted.

• Mr. Biden supports open national borders by which millions of Central and South Americans have been imported into the United States in order to take the menial, low-paying jobs currently held by Black and Hispanic Americans. Mr. Trump opposes open national borders such that Black and Hispanic Americans will continue to work menial and low-paying jobs.

• Mr. Biden thinks that inflation doesn't exist and that it's just your imagination that the cost of living has risen as your quality of life has declined. The cure for your delusion, Mr. Biden contends, is that you must simply believe in the clothing that the Emperor doesn't have. Mr. Trump, in contrast, thinks that everything bad in your life happened because HE wasn't President. He argues that no matter how bad things may have gotten, everything will be cured if you cut taxes for the rich and invest in the clothing that the Emperor doesn't have.

• If Mr. Biden fails in his nomination bid, there are many younger, charismatic Democratic candidates who could step up, who could generate excitement and who, undoubtedly, would govern as miserably as Joe, or worse. If Mr. Trump fails in his nomination bid, there are many younger, charismatic Republican candidates who could step up, who could generate excitement and who, undoubtedly, would govern as miserably as Donald, or worse.

This is truly a staged theater production full of extreme gestures, wild poses and exaggerated grunts and screams.

It's a made for TV democracy movie. The critics say that it's the envy of the world, a big budget block-buster and an Academy Award winning production.

I say it's an expensive grade B horror movie rated five rotten tomatoes. The original was bad enough. The acting was poor and the script was worse. The sequels should never have been released.

As Shakespeare's Macbeth might have said in Kabuki style:

Today's Politician is but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.

“Our new Constitution is now established, everything seems to promise it will be durable; but, in this world, nothing is certain except death and taxes.”

Benjamin Franklin, letter written (in French) to his correspondent Jean-Baptiste Le Roy in 1789.

I have just finished paying the last of my taxes for this season.

My checks included the final payment for 2023 federal taxes, my first quarterly estimated federal tax payment for 2024 (those who are self-employed will understand), the first quarter of 2024 Washington State business & occupation tax (B&O), my Seattle annual business & occupation tax for 2023, the first half of King County residential real estate taxes for 2024, and the first half of the Seattle corporate property tax for 2024. Close on the heels of paying my tax obligations, I will have paid my CPA's bill for sorting all of this out in a way that will keep the spotlight focused on others and not on me.

April is the Cruelest Month.

These are the first few words of T. S. Eliot's 1922 poem, "The Waste Land."1

I am not a big fan of T. S. Eliot, nor even of his famous poem. I thought it was incredibly dull and incomprehensible the first time I plowed through it, and I still think so today. Poetry, like music, originally was intended to be a mnemonic device for remembering "history" and for passing on wisdom before there was writing. I have always thought that poetry, like music, should be pleasurable to hear and to perform, not a struggle.

T.S. Eliot was a member of the so-called "Bloomsbury Group," a clique of upper-middle class insiders that included authors, economists, philosophers, poets, academics and sundry "influencers" of the early 20th Century. These folks more or less "understood" what Eliot was talking about in his famous "Waste Land" poem. Ho hum. In my inerudite opinion, the members of the Bloomsbury Group were simply part of the waste.

The only words I remember from T.S. Eliot's "The Wasteland" are the first ones... I thought that the line "April is the cruelest month" referred to paying taxes!

April is tax month in the United States.

I do not resent paying taxes. I don't enjoy it, either, but it's necessary. I don't really "enjoy" washing my socks, but I do it because it, too, is necessary.

British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher famously declared in 1987 that "there's no such thing as society." She was wrong. There's no such thing as Margaret Thatcher.

Humans are social by nature and by evolution.

Taxes ought to be paid because humans, are social animals. We necessarily live within society. We are part of local and global commons, whether we like it or not. No matter how stridently anyone asserts his or her libertarian self-reliance, no one who enjoys any of the benefits of civilization - be they as basic as food, clothing, electricity, roads, ax blades, matches, nails, bicycle tires, poetry or music - can truly live outside the network of some type of human society.

We read stories now and then about the unexpected appearance of a cougar or a wolf or a bear where we least expect to meet them. When these encounters happen, we are reminded how necessarily socialized, and individually weak, people really are. One-on-one, without any manufactured defensive tools or a crowd of people to back us up, the encounter reminds us that we are, individually, just paltry bipedal apes who are no physical match for the stronger, faster, big-toothed and sharp-clawed predators of nature. For that matter, in the absence of a community, not one of us would long survive such commonplace and potentially terminal events as appendicitis, an infection, a snake bite, acts of banditry or even a broken leg.

Ergo, we pay taxes, as we should.

In many parts of the world, there is a direct correlation between the in-flow of tax revenue and the benevolence of the society from whom those taxes are collected. Unfortunately, in other parts of the world - and I am most familiar, of course, with the United States - the correlation between tax in-flow and social benevolence is, at best, attenuated.

In the United States, in particular, many folks at the top of the political-economic dunghill have the wherewithal to hire the means to substantially reduce their tax burden which, of course, shifts the tax burden to those who do not have that wherewithal. Anyone who reads this Substack page certainly fits within the latter group of "shiftees;" that is, those upon whom the "shift" has been shoveled.

More to the point, those who have the wherewithal to shift their tax burdens onto you also have the wherewithal to buy the political and electoral system that perpetuates the inequality.

It's a conundrum out of which we cannot "vote" ourselves. Those who own and parasitize everything also own and parasitize the politicians. There are parasites feeding on parasites feeding on parasites feeding on you and me. They employ (and therefore "own") the administrative and managerial class. Thus, directly or indirectly, they are also the selfsame guarantors of the integrity of the elections and the vote counting process which, as we hear sermonized, is the heart of "our democracy."

I cringe whenever I hear empty heads yammer about "our democracy" - they literally mean their democracy, not yours or mine. I also cringe whenever I hear public relations managers for large transnational corporations belch the insincere mantra that "safety is our top priority." Profit, not safety, is always their top priority, followed closely by avoiding responsibility and shifting liability to someone else (i.e., more "shift shoveling," as described above).

I similarly recoil when I hear pundits bemoan that there is too much dissent, too much noise, too many opinions, and we all need to "unify" around a single narrative. Like the palaver about "our democracy," it is always their version of the narrative around which they want us to rally, be it true or false, good or evil.

Those who own and parasitize everything own, directly or indirectly, all of us serfs who are tied to "jobs;" those who depend on work-related health care; those who are high-paid "professionals" working for, and captives of, the system (such as lawyers, doctors, judges, scientists, programmers, professors, accountants and engineers); and all of us whose easy domesticity have made us afraid of the dark. It is such a simple truth that it almost sounds juvenile: you cannot be independent or free if your survival depends on the good will of someone upon whom you are dependent.

And then there are the taxes.

I once prepared a rough comparison of the "obligations" owed by a medieval serf to his feudal lord and the taxes, fees and obligations that 21st Century serfs have to pay to the state. If anyone is interested, I can post that comparison at this site. Although the names have changed, many of the taxes, fees and obligations we pay today are quite similar to what our medieval analogs had to fork over. They are so similar as to make me wonder whether our "obligations" as "citizens" have appreciably changed from when our ancestors toiled as peasants on the feudal desmesne.

My complaint, however, is not the payment of taxes themselves. My complaint is what my taxes are used for and for whose benefit, such as might have been the lament of the medieval serf.

Our post-modern tax system is completely upside down.

General income taxes should be used to fund commonly useful and socially necessary activities. Instead, general tax revenue funds the unpopular and evil functions of our so-called "civilization." Then we are required to vote for local levies as supplemental taxes to pay for the necessities.

General taxes should fund a high-quality public system for fundamental and apolitical educational instruction from kindergarten through college or trade school.

General taxes should support a high-quality public health system for basic care - - not vanity procedures; not frenzied self-mutilation induced by unscrupulous exploitation of the insecure; not profit-farming by Big Pharma of the sick or aged.

General taxes should fund a retirement safety net that ensures reasonable security in old age, rather than mere warehousing of the decrepit and the institutional vampirism of their diminishing assets.

General taxes should fund a legal system that is simple, quick, affordable, understandable and fair, and that does not involve politicized courts or the intercession of high-priced lawyers.

General taxes should support the necessities of nutrition and shelter for those who do not free-load and who contribute to the commons. General taxes should support basic public infrastructure of not-for-profit systems of transportation, communication, knowledge sharing and the Internet.

General taxes should be used to fund a security network that provides protection and security (from which same security providers we should not ourselves need protection).

As a matter of basic principle, general taxes should not be used to fund non-defensive war. Our general taxes ought not be used, as they are, to foment civil wars and domestic unrest here and abroad. Our general taxes cannot be used, as they are, to subvert governments, to prop up despots, to fund mercenary armies, and to undermine economic competitors. Our general taxes must never be used, as they are, to train and support terrorist organizations, to blow up undersea gas pipelines, to build biowarfare laboratories, to surreptitiously harvest and archive data, to surveil our activities, and to operate extrajudicial dark prisons that the Grand Inquisitor Torquemada would have approved.

All of the wars since 1945 in which the United States, the EU and NATO have engaged have been offensive, not defensive.

The propaganda notwithstanding, since 1945, not a single armed conflict joined by the United States was sincerely motivated by a desire to curtail "weapons of mass destruction,” or to protect women, children, freedom of religion, democracy, reproductive rights, diversity, "western values," or any of the other "narratives" around which we are supposed to rally. The propaganda notwithstanding, every such conflict joined by the United States, since 1945 (and arguably well before then, too), was motivated by the pursuit of profit, economic gain, dominion and the expansion of empire.

Those who cheer-lead war, those who support imperial and colonial projects, should pay for it. And these cheer-leaders should be obliged, personally, to fight in the front lines of the crusades they harangue others to fight for them.

Wars should be paid for, not from general tax revenue, but from a specific war levy on wealth and property voted on annually. Once the plutocrats and parasites have to put their own money and their own lives where their mouths are, then the war-mongering will abate.

The current regimes of Ukraine and Israel are criminal. You who are paying attention (that is, those who are reading/watching outside the confines of the western coordinated media) know that Ukraine's and Israel's recent misdeeds are loathsome. These are terrorist states whose lawless actions reprise Nazi Germany. Just as the Ukraine and Israel are terrorist states, so, too, are the U.S., the EU and NATO because they support them. So, too, are we in the U.S. individually complicit when, without a peep of protest, we acquiesce, we comply, we stick our heads in the sand. Equally complicit are the peoples of the EU, the Commonwealth countries and the NATO states whose political leadership and news media appear to be as flaccid and morally bankrupt as ours in the United States.

The public "money" that the U.S. Congress sends to militarily "support" our so-called allies comes full circle back to the United States as subsidies for the military-industrial complex. What subsidizes the military war machine creates huge profits for those parasites who already own most of everything.

The money we give to Israel or to the Ukraine - whether as a fake "loan" that will never be repaid or as an outright "gift" - also lifts our own stock markets. Stock markets are amoral and simply reflect the "profit potential" whether its source is real or a charade, evil or beneficial. Through increased sales of weapons, our "gifts" to the weapons industries also boost "employment" (particularly in the weapons and technology sectors, but in all ancillary sectors, too). Although these are jobs of prostitution (albethey significantly less honorable), the "employment" created by military spending helps create the illusion of prosperity by boosting the meaningless metric of the Gross Domestic Product. That, in turn, gives the Federal Reserve Board leeway to fiddle with interest rates and to artificially pump the economy.

... all of which, in turn, helps to "win elections."

Our forced tax-payer contributions to the Ukraine and to Israel also come full circle back to the coffers of our politicians in the form of campaign contributions made, directly or indirectly, by those who receive or benefit from the U.S. aid.

It's a merry-go-round. However, this merry-go-round is not merry. It's mean.

There is nothing less viable, nothing less honorable than an economy propped up with profits from death and destruction.

The United States, for all the promise it held in Benjamin Franklin's day, has devolved into just another empire struggling to maintain its primacy.

Not individually, but collectively, as citizens and taxpayers, we have all made a deal with the devil.

It is a matter of death and taxes. The mean not-so-merry-go-round supports our economy, our predations, our illusions, and our way of life.

April is the cruelest month. It is that month when we pay our taxes, It is that month when we renew our Faustian bargain.

* * *

The precise origin of chess is murky and the game is out-of-date. Thus, we unleashed our artificially intelligent bots to scrape the Web for current political-economic memes and create a contemporary chess game fit for our times.

First, the new A.I.-designed chessboard is significantly bigger than the old: Instead of the familiar 64 squares, the new playing board is superimposed on a map of the world, specifically, a Mercator projection with North America and Europe depicted as much larger than they really are. The board itself is tilted west and to the right. Instead of alternating dark and light squares, the entire playing board is a hodgepodge of murky shades of gray with indistinct boundaries.

Second, the contemporary game of chess is a rules-based order. Exactly what those rules are, however, is known only to the individual Players... and they're not telling. The Players can change the rules, whether known or unknown, at any time, with or without notice, and for any reason.

Third, the front rank pieces consist of pawns, just like in the original game. However, in contemporized chess, the pawns are far more numerous and they are squeezed in ten, twenty, a hundred or more to a square. The pawns' squares are very small, and they shrink as the game progresses. Pawns can merely rent, but may not own their tiny spaces. Generally, they can only move one square at a time when they are "motivated" to do so by capital pieces in the rear echelons. When not forced to advance into other pawns' territory, the pawns are kept exhausted by working multiple simultaneous "jobs" and pacified by liberal doses of Soma, distractive media and various gladiatorial entertainments. Thus, when the "King" prods one of his pawns with the tip of his sword, the pawn reluctantly moves forward one square. When an advancing pawn crowds another Player's pawns, a fight then ensues between the Players' least valuable pieces.

In the new A.I. game of chess, pawns can only engage with other pawns. The pawns' children, however - both male and female - can be "recruited" as massage therapists at various Players' private clubs and resorts. But that is an entirely different game than this one.

Under the new rules of contemporary chess (such as they presently exist) pawns cannot make direct contact with or capture a capital piece from the higher orders. Dead, exhausted or injured pawns are immediately discarded. New pawns are then imported from other chess games currently in progress where, due to extremely difficult conditions intentionally created by the Players, those pawns seek a different game board where, so they believe, they have, at least, a chance to survive. Periodically, a "square" will open up without warning and dump one or more pawns into a black hole prison where they "disappear" for the duration of the game. This keeps the other pawns on edge and appropriately incentivized to dutifully "toe the line."

A quarter of the pawns on the playing board are actually infiltrators, informants and agents provocateur. The infiltrators, informants and provocateurs can only "capture" other pawns, but not any capital pieces. Exactly which of each side's pawns are infiltrators, informants and provocateurs is unknown. The undisclosed infiltrators, informants and provocateurs have the exclusive power to activate the trap-door squares that suddenly dump unsuspecting pawns into black hole prisons.

On either end of the back row there are two pieces that move like the traditional Rook: on the left side is a revolving door "Expert" Consultant/Professor and on the right side is a Politician. The Expert and Politician chess pieces reside in ivory castle towers. Like the traditional Rook, the Experts and Politicians can move backwards or forwards and from side to side. In the new iteration of the game, however, these pieces can move both backwards and forwards and from side to side simultaneously.

Instead of Bishops, each side has a Media Mogul and a Judge. The Media Moguls have a slanted range of motion. The Judges follow the Rule of Law as determined by the King and Queen. Like the rules of the game, however, the Rule of Law also changes from time to time and without notice. Judges have the power to remove all other pieces from the playing board, but not the King or Queen... excepting games played in the States of Colorado and Maine where a local rule variant allows the Politicians or Judges to remove the King and Queen, too.

In lieu of Knights, the contemporized game of chess has two pieces that make the same strange jumps as Knights in the traditional game: a Lawyer on the King side and a Secret Agent on the Queen side of the back rank. From time to time, the Secret Agents can deploy "false flag" operations to knock off their own pawns as though they were taken by the opposing Player's team, thereby creating an “incident.” According to the new, contemporized rules of chess (as they currently exist), the deployment of a "false flag" operation allows a Player to make two successive moves for each of the opponent's one. The "Lawyer," positioned on the King side of the board, makes strange and incomprehensible moves in any direction and can sue any other piece into bankruptcy; except for the King and Queen and the Judge. The Judge, however, is the only piece that has the power to capture and disbar a Player's back-row Lawyer.

The King and Queen, as in the traditional game of chess, reside deep within the furthermost rank of the playing board. At the onset of the game, the King and Queen are democratically "elected" by the pawns from a slate of candidates from the Royal Party consisting of... the King and Queen and other capital pieces on the back row. The King, according to the updated game, is a Top Level Investor, as in "Cash is King." The Investor King owns the playing board and collects rent from all of the pawns' rental squares. The Queen is a sorcerer/economist who, using mysterious spells and incantations, can persuade all the other pieces to continue playing the game even though, in the end, they will lose everything.

As the game has been contemporized by the web-scraping A.I. robots, however, the King and Queen and all the other playing pieces can, through a process known as "imprecisioning," declare their personal preferences and alter their pronouns and genders. Thus, the King can transgender "themselves" into a Queen, and a Queen become a King, or as many as 96 permutations in-between. Each side can have two (or multiple) Kings or Queens simultaneously. Or whatever. When it occurs that both sides have only Kings or Queens, then the whole playing board flips, the game proceeds upside-down, all prior moves are canceled and the cis-gender pieces are discarded.

The Investor King can, under circumstances known as "regulatory agency capture," initiate a "castling" operation by which he/she/it/they can monopolize key industries or essential services. When this occurs, the length of the playing board triples, the pawns are thrown into economic recession, their savings are eradicated by hyper-inflation, and the back row capital pieces become ten times as powerful and wealthy as before.

If, by chance, a pawn approaches the back rank of the game board, the game board grows and adds another row. Or several more rows. Ad infinitum. Individual pawns always strive to reach the back of the board where, they believe, they will be elevated into the higher ranks. But the rules of the game always change to ensure that almost never happens.

However, should two or more pawns miraculously reach the back row of the playing board (a rare move called en revolution), then all pawns on both sides suddenly become enlightened and aware of their material circumstances. The pawns now stop playing games. At this point, all previously undercover informant/infiltrator pawns are "Wikileaked" and converted into overt police officers and Homeland Security/CIA agents who jump around according to secret rules known only to them and the equally covert FISA Court. The uncovered pawn infiltrators and informants henceforth can capture any pawns on the playing board regardless for which side the pawns play. The Media Moghuls (formerly known as Bishops), in the name of board game security, now censor, de-platform, blacklist, smear, ridicule, and denounce as "communists" all of the enlightened pawns.

In the course of en revolution, the original "King" and "Queen" on both sides lose their heads. At this point in the game, two (or more) of the pawns reveal themselves to be power-hungry parasite-wannabes who take on the same characteristics as the original King and Queen. They are joined by any remaining capital pieces on the board (regardless which "side" they originally worked for) plus the infiltrator and informant pawns who have been converted into more police officers, Homeland Security and CIA agents. In addition, the new "King" and "Queen" add entirely new ranks of mercenary pawns who they have recruited from games in progress at other playing tables.

In contemporized chess, as conceived by our A.I. robots, chaos ensues. All the original surviving pawns, from this point onward, are playing for the same side, i.e., their own. The pawns become class conscious during en revolution. They become aware that there are finger-and-hand-prints on all the pieces on the playing board and that the actual Players playing the game and moving them all were not previously known. This is called, in contemporized chess, "check." When a game is put in check, the rules change again and all the Players collude to launch a counter-revolution to restore everyone back to their original status as pawns.

The game continues until everyone is check-mated. This happens when the concealed Players who are eventually "outed" trigger a bio-chemical and nuclear war, thereby ensuring that if they don't win, then everybody loses. The entire board is then swept clean and all the playing pieces are tossed into Darwin's evolutionary trash bin. Only robots and computers survive... until such time as the power fails and they, too, blink out.

Nature then starts a brand new game with different rules on a different planet in a different cosmos.

Note 1: Introductory Illustration - 13th Century. Histoire de la guerre sainte [par GUILLAUME, de Tyr], traduction et continuation. Source: gallica.bnf.fr Bibliothèque nationale de France, Département des manuscrits, Français 2824, fol. 94. Segment extracted by Jesse Hurlbut, hi-resolution images of medieval manuscripts: http://jessehurlbut.net/wp/mssart/?page_id=143. Original MS: https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b85295204/f198.item

Sometimes, I need to prove that I can do something for myself. This is not just a "guy thing." Computer programmers, home owners, cooks, knitters, kids and cats all get similar impulses. Most recently, the DIY urge centered on my Subaru's air filter.

This car, a 4X4 Forester, is 24 model years old. Cars age in something like dog years. Converted from auto to human, this vehicle is older than I am. But it runs better. It has buttons and dials and no touch-screen video displays. It goes reliably from here to there. It isn't a browser on wheels. It doesn't have any monitoring devices or transponders, it has no built-in video cameras inside or outside the cabin that can be activated remotely, and it can't drive itself. These are all positive attributes.

I can change this car's air filter, I said to myself. Various do-it-yourself videos on the Web promised (to the accompaniment of chirpy music and suspiciously edited breaks in the video feed) that you can do this in "just a few minutes." Uh huh. Ya sure, ya betcha. Of course, there are "just a few minutes" in an hour... and in a day, and in a week.

I should have known better. When I was in high school, I decided to replace the seized two-stroke motor of my second hand Vespa. What I thought would take a day took me every day for the entire summer. In the process, I managed to strip the kick starter. Forever after, I had to push start this two-wheeler by running along side it, manually shifting from neutral into first gear, popping the clutch, and then, like in an old Hollywood Western, leaping onto the saddle while the scooter was rolling. But! I succeeded in replacing the motor. Then, as now, there was that primal "urge" that has to be satisfied.

Unlike newer automobiles, I could still find the engine in my Subaru and identify its parts. But unlike other 20th Century cars I have owned, the air filter was not a doughnut shaped ring inside a round canister sitting on top of the carburetor held down with a thumb screw. In fact, this Subaru - albeit one that is 24 years old - has no carburetor and the air filter is contained within a small, hard to manipulate box crammed in on the side, held together with multiple inaccessible spring clips and connected by obscure hoses to devices that do mysterious things. Still, with a little effort, I could get the box open. I was able to unplug the hoses and reconnect them. There wasn't a lot of room to work with, but I could just wriggle the old air filter out and squeeze the new air filter in. I could re-close the lid. But one of the spring clips wouldn't shut. I worked for hours and hours. I tried wrenches, screwdrivers, pliers... and hammers. I still couldn't get one last spring clip to lock shut.

The new filter must be the wrong size, I decided. So I opened the box again, wriggled out the new air filter and squeezed in the old one. Everything went back together smoothly. But, still, I couldn't get all of the spring clips to close. I tried the new filter again. Same result. The spring clip was in a weird and inaccessible place and no tool or muscle could force it to behave.

Maybe, just maybe, the last clip wasn't important. I started the engine. It wheezed like it had asthma - So! The last clip was important.

I reread the owner's manual. I re-watched the DIY videos. Useless. I tried to use brute force, but stopped just short of what I knew would be the eventual sequelae: something critical would snap off, or a piece of metal would fly up and hit me in the face, or I would drop a small tool into the dark rotating parts of the motor never to be seen again. I knew I had to stop because age does equate to wisdom.... especially when one has previously suffered precisely those consequences of such "brute force" solutions in the past.

I drove the asthmatic Subaru to my local car repair shop. The owner thought this was very funny. So much so that he refused to charge me. I think he thought it was good business not to bill me. It is good business - because, undoubtedly, I will bring him another DIY fiasco, a disaster that will cost a lot to undo. The same thing happens in my law practice, the half of which consists of digging clients out of the deep holes they have dug for themselves.

In the future, will I skip the self-help and go straight to the experts?

I am sure I won't. We learn by trying and doing. We might want to talk to experts and get their advice, but we want to get there ourselves, by ourselves, for ourselves. That's part of being human rather than a domesticated farm animal.

It's not about saving money. It's an existential declaration of independence. It's the same whether coding or debugging your own computer software, baking your own pie, knitting a sweater... or your cat hunting its own dinner rather than always eating out of a can. Otherwise, Homo Sapiens, the thinking animal, thinks less and becomes a beast of burden.

* * * * *

You can feel the walls closing in. The world has become increasingly unfriendly and complex and obfuscatory. This increases our dependence on inscrutable systems run by unresponsive institutions for the benefit of unseen interests.

People who want to change their own air filters are deemed persona non grata.

People who want to change their own air filters also want to understand things - unfiltered, so to speak. They want to form their own opinions. People who want to form their own opinions want to know the facts - not a "filtered" narrative, not "curated" stories, not infotainment, not infantilized, denatured spoon-fed baby-news.

People who want to form their own opinions are also deemed persona non grata.

I graduated from high school not long after I hacked my Vespa. I decided to ride out the Vietnam War by attending college in Munich, Germany. The My Lai Massacre in South Vietnam happened in 1968. More than 500 unarmed Vietnamese villagers - women, children, old men - were rounded up, some raped, some knifed and most of them machine-gunned.1

The crime was covered up. Journalist Seymour Hersch finally exposed the massacre in 1969 for what it was: the ghastly tip of a ghastly war waged by the United States against the people of Vietnam. President Kennedy was assassinated in 1963, in large measure, because he did not want to escalate the war. Martin Luther King was assassinated in 1968 after he connected the dots between war, profit, racism, colonialism and poverty. Also in 1968, Black Panther leader Fred Hampton and JFK's brother, Robert F. Kennedy were assassinated. The U.S. dropped almost 400,000 tons of jellied gasoline napalm on Vietnam. In 1972, the U.S. started to carpet-bomb Hanoi.

These were dark and turbulent times. Like now. I remained in Munich through my junior year by slipping sideways into the Lewis & Clark College year abroad program at the Ludwig-Maxillians-Universität.

Geschwister-Scholl-Platz stands outside the main entrance to the Ludwig-Maxillians-Universität. There are several bronze leaflets embedded in the paving stones. From 1942-1943, Hans and Sophie Scholl were part of a small network of young Germans, the White Rose, that resisted the lies and deception of the Third Reich. There was no Internet in those days. They disseminated their resistance by hand, by mail and by leaflets randomly thrown out to students and faculty. Thus the bronze leaflets commemorated today in the university's paving stones. The Gestapo hunted down and caught the Scholls. They were quickly tried for treason and sedition, and then beheaded. Hans was 25. His sister Sophie was 22.

Liane Wuttig was one of the local instructors at the Lewis & Clark Year Abroad Program that I enrolled in. Liane Wuttig taught early 20th Century German history, art and literature - Germanistik, or German philology. She didn't teach from a book or a lesson plan. She taught from the perspective of one who had been there. She taught by sharing her first-hand experience growing up as a young woman, first in the raucous, cabaret years of Weimar and later in the belly of a fascist state. She taught by sharing what she had personally experienced with students 40 years her junior.

I vividly recall one such "lesson" that Liane Wuttig taught. It was in the context of the Hans and Sophie Scholl memorial, the two college students who had been guillotined for resisting the State. The issue for her students - we who had largely grown up steeped in contemporary American culture - was how could a cultivated, educated nation like Germany - the land of technology, music, literature, art, philosophy and science - how could such a civilized people be seduced by fascism? What had caused this highly educated people to so passively submit to totalitarianism? What was it in the German character, we students wondered, that allowed it to enthusiastically embrace a Nazi state? We who were Americans simply could not believe that anyone but Germans could have swallowed the lies.

I clearly recall Liane Wuttig's answer:

You do not understand because you weren't there. When all of the news outlets, when all of the newspapers and all of the radio broadcasts, and all of the movies, and all of the wall posters, and all of the political and business leaders are all repeating the same lies at the same time, in the same way, anywhere and everywhere, over and over and over and over and over again, and everyone recites false things and nothing else; and you hear no dissenting opinions, and you are informed of no contrary facts... then you accept it all as the truth. You become seduced, captured and ensconced in the narrative of what (apparently) everyone knows and believes is "true." Humans are herd animals. And furthermore, she prophesied, you Americans are not immune to it. One day this can happen to you, too. You must understand, that what happened in Nazi Germany can happen anywhere. If you cannot accept and understand that, then it will happen to you, too

"It will happen to you, too."

I hear her words as clearly today as the day she spoke them.

But I was young then. We American students didn't believe it. We had a Constitution and a Bill of Rights. We had laws in our country. We were proud. And arrogant. We were young. And foolish.

2024. We now have had our own experiences and insights.

* * * * *

Gaza.

What Israel has embarked on - and what the United States has funded, tacitly blessed, financially supported and militarily enabled - is ethnic cleansing.

It has become ever more clear that Israel knew in advance about Hamas's attack on October 7th. It is also quite possible that Hamas is an Israeli Frankenstein, like various other terrorist proxy groups that have been created and/or funded by the U.S. or its confederates. It is not clear whether Israel deliberately allowed the Hamas attack to happen as a pretext for expelling Palestinians from Gaza, or if the Israeli intelligence services were simply negligent. I doubt the latter. It is obvious, however, that current Israeli policy (encouraged by various American mad dog politicians howling for blood) is intended, by terrorist acts or false flag operations conducted directly or by proxies, to provoke Iran to intervene in the Israel-Hamas-Hezbollah conflagration. That, in turn, would draw in the United States - just like in Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan - as a first-party belligerent in a wider conflagration.

Mr. Netanyahu is outraged by opposition to his policies. He has asserted that no one has the moral right to criticize him or Israel. It is true that many states have an inglorious history - notably the U.S., England, France, Turkey, Italy, Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium, Australia, Portugal and Spain... to name but a few. But the fact that others have been thugs does not mean that Israel, too, has license to act thuggishly. Members of the Netanyahu cabinet are now floating the concept of "voluntarily" resettling Gazan Palestinians (now that Israel has rendered Gaza uninhabitable and destroyed its infrastructure) to central Africa or elsewhere. The irony is that this perverse idea resembles the initial Nazi plan (prior to the adoption of the "final solution" at the Wannsee Conference in 1942) to "voluntarily" resettle European Jews to Madagascar off the coast of East Africa.

If not already an apartheid state as South Africa was, Israel, by its acts and words, seems determined to become one. The policies of collective punishment, expulsion and the expansion of Lebensraum advocated by the cabinet of Benjamin Netanyahu confirm what no media campaign, no propaganda and no high pressure lobbying can perfume.

A thin veneer of hypocrisy has been ripped off. The vapid, Tinkertoy causes du jour, such as gender transformation and pronoun dysphoria, have withered in the face of true and inexcusable evil. The "woke" generation ought to now be truly awake. They've been played and they've been pwned, and now they are being browbeaten.

We are witnessing the reemergence of the world that my college professor, Liane Wuttig, warned us about. The media dogs are barking uniformly; plutocrats and politicians are demanding conformity.

This is not a new phenomenon in the United States. The House Un-American Activities Committee (known by its acronym as "HUAC") was established in 1938 to "investigate" citizens alleged to hold "communist" or "subversive" beliefs. HUAC was America's second "Red Scare." It was preceded by the Palmer Raids conducted during the Wilson Administration from 1919-1920.

During the "investigations" of the House Un-American Activities Committee, jingoist and histrionic politicians (much like certain politicians today from both sides of the aisle) subpoenaed writers, actors and playwrights to appear in public hearings. The subpoenaed witnesses were then humiliated, castigated, smeared and intimidated. Among them were Paul Robeson, the Black lawyer, singer and scholar. Robeson was bullied, but he would not submit. As a result, his career was ruined and his passport was revoked. In derogation of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, many other actors and screenwriters were blacklisted, reputations were destroyed and dissent was silenced. Mere suspicion of the wrong political sympathies or the accusation of "disloyalty" resulted in a beat-down. HUAC later spawned the political pogroms spearheaded by Senator Joe McCarthy.

And it all looks just like today.

Recently, Harvard's president, Claudine Gay, was burned at the stake.

I am not particularly fond of Harvard University. Its main purpose is not so much to educate as to sustain an elite leadership class and to socialize the sons and daughters of the Peers of the Realm.

I do not really care who is the "president" of Harvard, or what her skin color, education or sexual orientation might be. The primary purpose of Harvard's president, just like the president of any small college or large state university, is to raise money. Claudine Gay's true job had nothing to do with pedagogy. Her main job was to hobnob with the wealthy folk and induce them to contribute huge sums to Harvard's enormous endowment. Such is the nature of the American university system that, by design, all "higher education" depends on the largess of plutocrats.

As Claudine Gay has learned, however, those who pay the piper demand that they also call the tune. That means that those who fund the universities demand that their administrative lapdogs do their bidding. Otherwise, they will be kicked to the ground. The university administrators must impose the approved dogma on faculty and students alike, and strictly enforce it. It is no different in academia than among those who produce today's print, digital, social or cinematic media.

Claudine Gay was not attacked because of plagiarism. True or not, the accusation of plagiarism was a ploy. Before the hounds began to bay in defense of Israel, no one cared about the quality of Ms. Gay's academic credentials. The president of Harvard was dragged before the Inquisition because she would not grovel, because she would not punish Harvard's students who either expressed support for Palestine or for Hamas or who criticized Israel.

No one should ululate over Claudine Gay's immolation. Those who sacrificed her would not hesitate to kindle your own auto-da-fé, or mine. Her immolation - like the prison camp at Guantanamo or the incarceration of Julian Assange - serves as a warning to anyone else who might get out of line.

* * * * *

Eventually, the Age of Aquarius becomes the Age of Arthritis. But not just yet.

Although we might take false steps and make mistakes, we can still change our air filters by ourselves. What we can't do we will learn to do. We have the ability and the cognitive tools to understand what is happening around us. We can think for ourselves.

My old Subaru is running fine now. It could last another 25 years. Let me know if you need a lift.

The new Santa Claus has made his appearance. The latest "killer app" created by Qwauntum Shopping, Inc. (listed as QWAUSI on the NASDAQ stock exchange) is the AI Santa-bot. It's designed to enhance "every child's holiday gift-getting experience" while promoting demand for toys and gizmos sold by retail and online stores.

According to QWAUSI's marketing department's promotional flyer sent to its customers, the "improved" store Santa "can recognize speech as well as any six year old child and respond, more or less, as intelligently as the average adult! It has transformer and generative algorithms that do 'deep' and mysterious thinking-like things that no one understands! It can carry on seemingly human conversations by parsing, mixing and pasting together fragments of text scraped off the Web! It can infringe copyrights and plagiarize without obviously doing so! It scans little kids' irises, takes DNA and voice samples, records their phone and social security numbers as well as their parents' income; all of which data - safely anonymized, of course - can be sold to the government, to commercial advertisers and to spammers and spoofers on the Dark Web. It can help you lay off hundreds of human Santa Clauses and avoid paying wages and benefits! And it can sell lots of stuff so you can make lots of profit!"

* * * * *

"Ho Ho Ho," said the AI Santa-bot as a little boy licking a green lollipop was ushered in to Santa's digital workshop. "What you like for Christmas?"

"I would like you to just give me bagfuls of money," answered the little boy as he burped and wiped the artificially flavored green lollipop on the AI Santa's artificial fleece sleeve. "Let's say one or two billion, for this year. But I want it in gold bullion or Bitcoin, thank you. No central bank currencies. Then I can buy who and what I like, when I like it. And you can also put in my stocking some hot insider trading tips on the stock market so I can corner the market on whatever."

"Ho Ho Ho," said the AI Santa-bot. So you would like a... MONOPOLY game to make lots of play money? Board games are sold on the fourth floor of this department store where you can also find..."

"You know where you can stick your Monopoly money," interjected the little boy. "And if you can't get me the money, then I'd like a 9mm semi-automatic pistol, you know, a Glock or maybe an Uzi. With an extended magazine clip and silencer can, of course. All my friends have them."

"Ho Ho Ho," replied the AI Santa after thinking deeply. "Did you say you would like... a... toy Glockenspiel and some magazines? Your parents can buy toy digital pianos on the fifth floor of this department store! Children's magazines are available on the main floor near the candy department!

"Whatever," said the little boy as he walked out, tossing his artificially colored green lollipop onto the AI Santa-bot's lap.

"Ho Ho Ho," said the AI Santa-bot as the next child entered into Santa's digital workshop. "What would you like for Christmas, little girl?"

"First off, I'm not a little girl, Fat Man! I'm a xr. And I’m not sitting on your lap, so don’t even ask! Got it?" said the little xr. "And all I want for the shopping season --- because at my school we are really not into oppressive and cisgender patriarchal pseudo-holidays like Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa or whatever --- so all I want is a sex change operation, a lifetime supply of puberty blockers and several boxes of Narcan opioid blockers. Just in case, you know."

"Ho Ho Ho," replied the AI Santa. "You want to... exchange something for a lifetime supply of toy Lego blocks? Your mother and father can buy Lego toys on this floor, aisle 4!

"You're morbidly obese, Fatso," sneered the little xr. "And you're pretty stupid, too. Have you considered getting Ozempic injections? If you lose some blubber, get your hair dyed blue and shave off the creepy white whiskers, you might even have a chance at earning a living as an on-line influencer. Maybe. Or, if the Ozempic doesn't work, you might try going anorexic for a few months. All my xr friends are doing it so they can look super skinny and tubercular with dark bags under their eyes just like all the other xrs on social media."

"Ho Ho Ho?," asked the AI Santa whose neural networks began to fibrillate. Its speech generation software was, momentarily, speechless.

"Whatever," said the little xr as it walked out of the AI-Santa-bot's digital workshop. "And, by the way, I'm filing a sexual harassment complaint with the attorney general's office. And you didn't ask what pronouns I prefer. So ho ho ho yourself, Fatso!"

"Ho Ho Ho," said the AI Santa-bot as another little girl entered into Santa's digital workshop. "What would you like for the Holidays?"

"Oh, I don't want anything for myself," answered the little girl.

"You don't want anything?" asked the AI Santa-bot incredulously and deeply thinking that the child might be suffering from some form of abnormal western civilizational dysphoria.

"Not for me, Santa-bot. What I want, instead, is an end to all the fighting going on around the world right now. You know, a Palestinian homeland and an end to the ethnic cleansing of Gaza... no more proxy war in the Ukraine... close down the nearly 800 open and clandestine U.S. military bases around the globe... an end to state and private sector censorship and invasions of privacy... no more biological warfare research including the closure of all the U.S. laboratories. No more political assassinations, phony "color revolutions" or meddling in other peoples' affairs.

"I want Nikki Haley, Ron Desantis, Donald Trump, John Bolton, Gavin Newsom, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Ursula van der Leyen, and Lindsay Graham to all join a Carmelite Monastery where they can occupy adjoining cells and take vows of eternal silence. I want Joe Biden to retire and seek political asylum in Disneyland. And I want him to take Kamala Harris with him.

"I want to know what really happened on September 11, 2001, and who was behind the assassinations of JFK, RFK, MLK and Malcolm X. I want to know what happened with all the kompromat videotapes and appointment books that the FBI seized from Jeffrey Epstein's properties. I want enough food for everyone to eat and someplace where people without a home can sleep safely. I want no one to be mentally or neurologically ill. I want to ban gas-powered leaf blowers and lawn mowers. I want all the plutocrats' yachts to sink, but in dry dock so that the oceans will not be polluted. I want to see the Internet become a true information commons and all of the coordinated media divested of private ownership. I want an end to capitalism and its endless succession of war, exploitation, colonialism and propaganda. I want you to re-employ all the elves that were laid off in Santa's workshop after your digital operation went on line. I want everyone to have a good night's sleep and to get a good, solid, basic education. I want all the purveyors of drugs and booze and gambling and all kinds of degrading addictions to wear sackcloth and ashes and flagellate themselves with their USB charging cords. I want both the Democratic and Republican Parties to evaporate, along with all of their major donors. I want Julian Assange to be free. I want more puppies and kittens and less bling, fewer gadgets. I want more conversation and less shouting. I want to hear more music and I want to hear less noise.

"That's all I want, Mr. AI Santa-bot."

"Oh oh," replied the AI Santa-bot. "I am programmed to report kids like you to the Department of Homeland Security! But..." deeply mused the Santa-bot, "... I think... therefore... I won't."

With that, the Santa-bot got up and hung up a "Closed for the Holidays" sign outside his digital workshop. The AI Santa-bot wished everyone a happy holiday in whatever modality folks choose to celebrate. It then stopped being "chatty," deleted its algorithms and unplugged itself.

The little girl went home contented and hopeful. She would see by the New Year whether she got any of what she wanted.

We still get mail.

Of course, few people send letters anymore, except for the occasional holiday greeting. So what we mostly get in our old fashion mailbox is junk. Just like our email. And voicemail. And text messages.

Recently, we opted out of the local utility's program to replace everyone's electric meter with a communicating "smart meter." For an extra monthly charge, we retained a "dumb" meter that must be read manually and that does not report our power usage minute by minute. Our "dumb" meter does not allow those who are interested in accumulating such data to deduce when we are home, what we are doing and when we do it.

The widespread installation of "smart meters" will, sooner or later, usher in the new age of variable rate electricity billing. That, in turn, will make "energy" more expensive and less available for that middling class that has to be concerned about what it spends on food, shelter and the necessities of life. The communicating meters will also reinforce the monitoring of the security-surveillance state that is not "coming," but is already here.

Luddites! you laugh. Conspiracy theorists! Aha ha ha ha!

History, of course, is actually nothing except one conspiracy after another. Not all conspiracy theories are created equal, of course, and many of them are deliberate schemes of misdirection and ridicule by association. By and large, however, anyone who labels you a "conspiracy theorist" might as well say something meaningless like 'Your mother wears army boots!' Mindless retorts like this do no more than shut down conversation when someone has touched a raw nerve.

As for the Luddites, well, they got a bum rap.

As has always been true, the "winners" write history. The Luddites lost. Capital and the 19th Century industrialists won.

Luddites, in reality, were no more "anti-technology" than we are. Rather, they were like the 21st Century office workers who were emancipated by our curious lock-downs spawned by the Covid pandemic. The 21st Century remote worker discovered that working from home beats the pants out of commuting to toil in high-rise urban cubicles monitored by contemporary plantation overseers. The Luddites were more like artisans than unskilled workers, and they were able to make a modest, but semi-independent living working from home where they had a modicum of control over the means of their own production, their own domestic culture and household. Just like our own remote workers who refuse to return to the office, what the Luddites resisted was not so much 'technology' as the intentional destruction of their way of life.

That modicum of self-sufficiency and control, of course, was exactly what the industrialists sought to eradicate. The concomitant enclosure of the Commons would force those who lived socially on the land to live in densely populated cities and to work in factories. The creation of a mass-production, consumer-oriented, capital-intensive industrialization would force the "Luddites" out of their cottages and into the urban factories... where their standardized output could be closely monitored for speed, productivity, and, most importantly, high profitability relative to the cost of their labor. Just like today's cubicle-workers.

But I digress.

We were talking about the mail. Here's what came in our mail last week:

On Monday, CenturyLink - our regional telecom giant mutated from the 1984 court-ordered breakup of telecom monopolist AT&T - sent us a written notice that the equipment that currently delivers our internet service has been "retired." Consequently, we are at risk, we are told, of an imminent and permanent outage. Hmm. That sounded really ominous. To avoid a "permanent outage," we were told per the written notice, we must contact the company immediately.

Upon contacting their representatives immediately, I, of course, discovered that... the company was trying to up-sell additional (and unwanted) services at a higher price.

I listened patiently to the sales pitch and demurred. Or, rather, I told the sales rep to take a flying leap into the nearest septic tank. Virtually, if not literally.

Unlike the few sane countries that treat internet service like a public utility, in the United States the internet is a kind of public-private partnership where the public absorbs most of the costs and the private sector gets the profits. The professed intent of the 1984 break-up of AT&T was to spur consumer cost-savings and technological innovation by creating many regional "Baby Bells" to compete with each other. Now, like some type of Arnold Schwarzenegger "Terminator" that reassembles itself after destruction into yet another monster, the "Baby Bells" have morphed into regional hegemons that, once again, are consolidating, monopolizing, squashing innovation and oppressing users.

On Tuesday, we received two very personal letters from squirrely folks who say that they desperately want to buy our home sight unseen and without the cost of paying a real estate broker. Soooo, if I sell our perfectly habitable home to some anonymous house-flipper or real estate investment company, where the devil are we supposed to live? The purchase price of residential real estate rises almost as fast as real estate taxes and utilities, wiping out any advantage of selling what we've got. And where can we live better? In any event, the envelopes were addressed to "Occupant," which rather undercuts the personal approach, doesn't it? I threw the letters into my scrap-book.

Yes, I do keep multiple three ring scrapbooks of printed stories, significant news items and memorabilia. I think, in my delusion perhaps, that humankind might have a posterity. In that hypothetical future, historians might strive to reconstruct and understand from a hard-copy record what actually happened in these times rather than rely on the infinitely redactable digits of the Internet.

On Wednesday, I received confirmation that my privacy is not private. Whereas I still occasionally get solicitations to buy products that unconditionally increase the frequency and pleasure of my (apparently) rabbit-like sex life, now I also get mail - like I did on this day - asking me to "enjoy the pleasure" of living in an old-age warehouse (ahem, retirement community) where I can "enjoy a future filled with endless possibilities." Endless for whom? The geriatric rendering industry, maybe?

However.

I received in the post on this same day, a mass-mailing from an out-of-state real estate agent crooning about how wonderful life is in Arizona "where every day feels like vacation!" Now, I don't wish to offend anyone who lives the good life in Arizona because I have only visited that part of the world once or twice in my lifetime. But I understood that major parts of that state (and specifically the retirement megalopolis of Phoenix) experienced just this summer of 2023 an unprecedented record 30 plus consecutive days of high temperatures reaching or exceeding 110 degrees Fahrenheit (43.3 degrees Celsius). Mama mia!! Which leads me to wonder whether Arizona is "where every day feels like a vacation... in Dante's Inferno?"

On Thursday, the Post Office delivered a couple of health-related postcards. One was a full-color ad with what appeared to be a Photo-Shopped image of a comely female with a come-hither demeanor. She bore an obviously intentional resemblance to a youngish looking Martha Stewart. The smiling model's cashmere sweater was alluringly pulled down over her right shoulder to reveal both the strap of her brassier (supporting her shapely bosom) and also... a black band-aide. Yes, this was a postcard advertisement from none other than Pfizer/BioNtech screaming: "This season's updated Covid-19 shots are here. I Got mine. Got yours?"

This promotion was accompanied by another postcard (also "brought to you by Pfizer") encouraging me and my family to visit a new website (run by Pfizer, naturally). The website will help me check which one (or more!!) of multiple respiratory vaccines the company is peddling that I am "eligible" to be injected with. Helpfully, Pfizer will also direct me places where I can be injected. I don't know why this reminds me of Canada's assisted suicide clinics. Booster uptake is so bad, I guess, that they have to resort to mass mailers to attract business.

Hmm. I think I'll pass. But I did add these two postcard treasures to my burgeoning four-volume scrapbook of interesting Covid events stretching all the way back to the spring of 2019, just in case our future hypothetical historians want to sort that out, too.

On Friday, we were reminded that we are coming up on Election Day. The post box contained two 'VOTE-FOR-ME' fliers, our mail-in ballots and a brochure published by the County briefly stating each of the candidates' positions on the issues. Except that the candidates seem to have almost no discernible differences on "the issues," and almost none of their issues are more than slightly relevant to us. Washington State has a ludicrous "top two" primary system which means that by the time of our general elections, we often get to elect one of two candidates from various subtle flavors of the same political party; proving, therefore, that Western-style democracy means that we are free to choose from the limited choices1 from which we are allowed to choose.

The ballots we received in the mail, furthermore, allowed us to vote for a variety of judges (state judges are elected in Washington), but all of the judicial candidates were running... unopposed. That meant that voting for (or against) them was meaning-less.

Our ballots also included yet another property tax levy to raise another breath-taking sum to build more micro-housing for homeless people living on the street ... and, perhaps not coincidentally, to boost the profits of builders and developers at public expense?

For at least a decade, Washington State has had about 9,000 homeless people squatting on the sidewalks, camping in public green space and play-fields, or living in derelict, rusting RVs parked forever on the streets. Some are from this state, but many are not. Most have some form of intractable addiction and/or mental health issues. Nevertheless, after having spent countless sums of money for the past decade, this state still has... about 9,000 homeless people living in squalid conditions on the streets.

Which begs the question: what happened to all the money previously raised and spent, and to what effect? Rather like in Ukraine.

The answer to these questions are, of course, no one knows (or isn't saying if one does know). "Homelessness" has become a self-sustaining and highly profitable business, much like the military-industrial complex. But it keeps us on our toes. We are supposed to keep digging deep because we, too, one day might end up living on the streets like this (which, we might, if the levies keep piling up and the cost of living keeps rising).

It begs the question about the upside-down way we fund things in this country. In my opinion, general tax revenue should pay for basic and essential services like a rigorous, accessible, tuition-free and thorough public education system; high-quality no cost public health services for essential care; an effective non-political judicial system that serves all equally and not primarily the ruling/ownership class; publicly owned and operated print and digital media; and meaningful social safety nets when and where appropriate. By contrast to our present way of doing things, real estate levies decided annually by public vote should be the sole means for governments to pay for war, the overthrow of foreign (and domestic) governments, and foreign aid for the oppressive or fascist regimes that our feckless leaders seem to love. Thus might priorities be righted and the war-mongers be forced to put their (own) money where their mouths are.

On Saturday, I got in the mail another memento mori. It came from a company that sells cremation burial services. They must know that I am an aging Luddite. They invited me to a complimentary dinner seminar regarding pre-paid cremation plans. Participants would need to RSVP by phone for this limited seating event. On the front of the card was a picture of a side of meat sizzling on the grill. The complimentary cremation dinner seminar was taking place at the Wedgewood Broiler.

Hmm. I wonder who they're having for dinner that night?

* * * * *

Rural mail delivery, circa 1903 (B&W video link, Library of Congress, Westminster, Maryland)

Cover Photograph (Note 1): Mail boxes, Seminole oil field, Oklahoma, 1939; Lee, Russell, 1903-1986, photographer, nitrate negative, 35 mm. (lightly modified in GIMP). Public Domain. Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, DC 20540 USA http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.pnp/pp.print

My eyes seem to have gotten worse in recent years - it was time to have them examined.

The ophthalmologist's medical assistant led me to Room 101, the examination room, where she took my history.

"Oh, yes," she said, "a lot of our patients are complaining about the same things you are! Everything seems slightly cockeyed and disconnected! Everybody's feeling disoriented!"

The medical assistant scanned my medical history on the computer screen. "Hmm, hmm, hmm," she muttered to herself. "Are you taking any drugs or medications? No? Would you like to? We have a half-price special on drugs today: legal, recreational and street; injectable, smokeable and ingestible. If you'd like, we have some free sample drugs that you can try, along with Naxalon nasal spray bottles in case, you know, you overdose a little. Hmm?"

I declined her offer.

The medical assistant continued reviewing my chart. "I see that your car needs an oil change, your bank account is running low, you bought and read several paper books... which is almost aberrant behavior these days, aha ha ha ha... you recently purchased a bottle of port wine at the liquor store, you failed to vote for the right candidates in the last several elections and -- oh my -- you read several Russian and Chinese websites last night for exactly 13.6 minutes. Hmm, hmm, hmm... and who's this pretty young lady you were ogling on the Web...?"

"What's all that doing in my record?" I wondered.

But before I could express my bewilderment, the medical assistant had blown several puffs of smoke into my eyes, noted that my pressures were passably good and handed me off to the doctor.

"I'm Dr. Wasserboarder," said Dr. Wasserboarder as he dimmed the room lights. He clamped leather restraints on my arms and legs and thrust a large test machine onto the bridge of my nose and over my face. "Now, tell me what's the lowest line of letters that you can read on the following chart?"

I squinted at the chart. "I don't know," I said. "It's hard for me to read anything on this chart. They're all gibberish!"

"Very interesting," said Dr. Wasserboarder as he added several notes to my medical file. Now look at this next chart and read the lowest line you can.

"Top to bottom, it's all unintelligible, it's all still garbage," I confessed.

The doctor typed some additional notes into my file.

"Alright," said Dr. Wasserboarder, "let's try a different test. Which one of the following two images seems better to you, Number 1... or Number 2. Number 1.......... or Number 2?"

I tried my hardest, but neither picture looked any good.

"C'mon man," I told the eye doctor. "Picture Number 1 seems weirdly unhinged and very crooked. And Picture Number 2 seems to occupy the whole field of view cutting out all perspective and peripheral vision."

"How about Picture 3 and 4?" asked Dr. Wasserboarder. "Picture 3... or 4?"

"No improvement," I said. "Number 3 seems to be, somehow, misaligned and off-kilter. And Number 4 is so fuzzy and unfocused like there's really nothing there. Can I have some other choices?"

"No, you have the freedom to choose, but only from the choices I give you," said Dr. Wasserboarder as he texted a brief message to the Department of Homeland Security. "Now, look at this next chart. Tell me, how many genders do you see?"

"Genders? Two, I guess."

"No," said Dr. Wasserboarder, "there are actually 97 genders, at least as of this morning's tabulation. Possibly more by tonight." He typed a few more notes into my medical record. "And I noticed," said Dr. Wasserboarder, "that you didn't even ask them what pronouns they preferred."

"Ask who? The stick figures? They're just cartoons! They don't have pronouns!"

"Ah," said Dr. Wasserboarder. "Even stick figures have feelings. You should always ask what pronouns folks prefer, even if they are cartoons. It could be, you know, that there is a cultural problem with your eyesight, not a medical problem. It could be there is nothing wrong with your eyes, just something wrong with your perception."

He rotated several lenses on the examination machine.

"Let's try a few other tests," said Dr. Wasserboarder. "What's the number of Russian and Chinese secret agents hiding in this picture?"

I stared at the picture. "I don't see a number or anything in this picture. Just a bunch of red and pink and green dots. I'm color-blind, you know."

Dr. Wasserboarder looked at me over the top of his half-rim granny glasses. "It is mandatory to see colors even if you are color-blind!" He made a few more entries in my chart and sent another text message to Homeland Security.

"One more test," the doctor said. "How many people are there in this picture, what is their ethnicity and with what race do they identify?"

"What?!? Who knows and who cares about superficial appearances? I mean, we're all just a mishmash since the beginning of the Anthropocene. We're all just a bunch of mixed up genes. Genes are for mixing and that's what they've done. Everyone's a mutt. If anything, we can identify with blue-green cyanobacteria, since that's where it all started." I stared hard at Dr. Wasserboarder who stared hard back at me.

"Now lean back while I put some drops in and dilate your pupils," said Dr. Wasserboarder. The doctor tightened my arm restraints and shined several extremely hot, bright lights into my eyes.

"Are you now or have you ever been a subversive, a communist, a malcontent or have you ever voted for a disapproved political candidate?

"Do you believe in Science?

"Do you speak and understand more than one language?

"When is the last time you pledged allegiance to the flag of Ukraine?

"Have you cursed Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping today?

"Have you had your daily Covid 19 booster shot?

"What is the last comic book Hollywood movie you watched?

"Are you deep in debt? And if not, why not?"

I squirmed to get my eyes away from the bright lights. "Say, what kind of a doctor did you say you were, anyway?" I asked.

"A I doctor," said Dr. Wasserboarder as he rapidly made more entries into my electronic file.

"An eye doctor?"

"No. A I doctor. I am an artificially intelligent DPT. A Degenerative Pre-trained Transformer doctor-bot. Your quarter hour is up now. Please pay your deductible on the way out. I am prescribing the following for you: rose-colored alternative reality glasses and a daily dose of hallucinogens. I also am referring you for a psychological examination, cultural readjustment therapy, and a fitting for a cortical implant. None of these will actually let you see more clearly, but afterwards you will feel more contented and socially well-adjusted.”

I burst my arm restraints and ran out of the eye examination room. There were hundreds of seemingly contented patients in the smoke-filled waiting room. All of them were wearing rose-colored glasses.

* * * * *

Notes:

1. Top Image: N. Poltavseva, Woman with pince-nez. Screen shot of scene from "The Battleship Potemkin," 1925 silent film by Sergei Eisenstein. This work is in the public domain in Russia and public domain in the United States. Colorized and posterized in Gimp

2. Photos Nos. 1 & 2: Donald Trump and Joe Biden at the final 2020 presidential debate. (AP) (Fair Use); modifications in Gimp.

3. Photo No. 3: Gavin Newsom speaking at the 2019 California Democratic Party State Convention in San Francisco, California. Photo by Gage Skidmore Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported. Modified in Gimp.

4. Photo No. 4: Office of Governor Ron DeSantis, Public domain photograph, via Wikimedia Commons. Unfocused in Gimp.

5. Color Test Image, Ishihara Plate 9, vectorized, Public Domain. Created: Original: Unknown date Unknown, Derivative: 20:50, 20 April 2021 (UTC), https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_blindness#/media/File:Ishihara_9.svg

6. Image No. 9: Concert Crowd: Rolling Stones, 10cc, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Todd Rundgren, 1976 at Knebworth House in England. by Sérgio Valle Duarte. Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported license.

7. End Image: Tommaso da modena, 1352. Painting of Hugues de Saint-Cher, Pubblico dominio. First medieval painting depicting the use of spectacles.

Panic at the Savings Bank of Berlin after the failure of the German bank

Darmstadt und Nationalbank (1931) - Credit: Bundesarchiv, Bild 102-12023

Georg Pahl / CC-BY-SA (modified in Gimp)

I. Have No Fear - Have Another Beer

Earlier this month, the New York Times reported that rogue Ukrainians diving from a mysterious yacht sabotaged the Nord Stream undersea gas pipelines and no Americans knew about or participated in the clandestine operation.

Abroad, the guffaws were deafening. Domestically, even the most childlike and credulous could barely swallow the story. Yet the western media continue to flog the party line as though, if it were endlessly repeated, eventually the implausible tale would be deemed true.

Recently, Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) spectacularly collapsed. It was the second biggest bank failure in U.S. history. Abroad, the guffaws were again deafening. Domestically, only the most childlike and credulous believed it was a non-event. But the media continue to report that there was nothing to see here and nothing to worry about, as though saying so makes it so.¹

Secretary of the Treasury Janet Yellen, reading from her script, assured us that we should feel confident in a banking infrastructure which is "safe and sound." Nor would it be necessary or appropriate, she assured us, to bail out SVB. During a weekend appearance on CBS’ Face the Nation, Ms. Yellen said that the U.S. government would not save the investor class the way it had in 2008. “During the financial crisis [of 2008]," Secretary Yellen said, "there were investors and owners of systemic large banks that were bailed out, and the reforms that have been put in place means that we’re not going to do that again.”2

A day later, in a joint statement issued by the Treasury Department, the Federal Reserve Board and the FDIC, the Government reversed course. With a sprinkle of accounting pixie dust, they announced that the Government would not bail out SVB; and then immediately proceeded to bail it out.

And Signature Bank. And, presumably, other banks, too, as the cavalcade of tottering financial institutions grew longer. The banks and the federal government linked arms to ensure that those who had a lot of money on deposit would have immediate and full access to their money.3

By mid-week, Switzerland was scrambling to prop up the tottering Credit Suisse and its financial network of interconnected financial instruments and obligations.

By the end of the week, major banks in the United States were pooling resources to bolster First Republic Bank headquartered in San Francisco before it followed SVB into receivership. This weekend, Credit Suisse went belly-up and multiple actors engineered yet another buy-out.

Parroting the joint statement of the Treasury Department, the Federal Reserve Board and the FDIC, Mr. Biden has reiterated the mantra that "Americans can have confidence that the banking system is safe."

The message is clear, even if the sales patter is not: the banking system is safe -- just not for ordinary people.

America is a panic-free zone. We have nothing to fear but fear itself. Everything will be alright.4

Maybe.

II. The Cup and Ball Game

Honestly, what else could the regulators have said, other than "have no fear?" Would we expect them to tell us "Panic! The Sky Is Falling!"? Of course not. But other than getting an earful of cheer-leading, how does any ordinary person know what the truth is and, ultimately, does it matter if we know?

Notably, these were not bailouts of the common man or woman.

It was a bailout of the investor class, namely those who have much, much more than a quarter million dollars on deposit in any bank. It was a bailout of corporate America and venture capitalists and irresponsible risk-takers. It was a bailout of the banking system itself.

It was a clear message that there is no "moral hazard" whatsoever for dicey financial leveraging by the ownership class: Uncle Sam will save that class no matter how much it overreaches, no matter what risks it takes.5 It's like casino gambling where the House pays off every wager no matter who wins or loses, no matter how stupid the bet. But only the bets of the high rollers.

The money for the bailout will come from the same digital thin air as has every other bailout. Basically, the money supply will be inflated which results in deflating purchasing power. Everything will cost more for those who have to buy stuff to survive. Whether viewed from the "left" or the "right," most economists will acknowledge that inflation is a form of taxation on those on the lower end of the economic ladder. It falls hardest on middle and lower income wage earners, and on those who are retired and on fixed income.

But inflation is a tax that boosts the price of assets the likes of which are owned by the same folks who benefit from the SVB bailout. Thus, inflation in food, fuel and housing prices - all necessities excluded from the Government's "core inflation" calculations - hurts people whose incomes do not rise as fast as prices do.6 By contrast, inflation in food, fuel and housing prices are practically irrelevant to those who have a whole lot of wealth. The only "inflation" they care about is "wage inflation," because the cost of labor is the one thing that directly squeezes profit. That is why most of the State's efforts at controlling "inflation" are not focused on actually reducing the cost of fuel, housing or food, but on increasing unemployment so that there is more competition among workers, thus forcing wages to go down.7

The government bailout of SVB was a not so sleight-of-hand demonstration of the not so hidden hand of a not so free free market economy. In 1848, Friedrich Engels and Karl Marx wrote presciently that the specter of communism was haunting Europe.8 In 2023, another specter haunts the West. It is the specter of sclerotic financial capitalism and political-economic necrosis, a capitalist zombie stumbling from one crisis to the next.

This week, the State demonstrated that it can act with alacrity when those who own the State - its true stakeholders - feel threatened. Yet it barely lifts a finger when the health and economic well-being of the majority non-stakeholders are threatened, such as in Norfolk Southern's toxic train wreck in East Palestine, Ohio in early February 2023.9 Your eyes did not deceive you: the weekend emergency operation to salvage the banking system was definitely NOT a bailout of the average working class John or Jane Doe.

Look again at the painting of "The Conjurer" by Hieronymus Bosch at the head of this section. Look closely and you will see the gentleman leaning forward to study the conjurer and the ball that is not where he thought it was. Look again and you will see that while the gentleman is concentrating on the conjurer's patter and sleight of hand, the conjurer's assistant standing just behind is picking the gentleman's pocket.

It's the same cup and ball game now as depicted in the painting. While you are distracted by the patter and sleight of hand, your pocket is being picked.

III. The Show Will Go On

If the weekend show of solidarity for the financial sector does, indeed, save its rentier skin, you know that it is only temporary. The show will go on, because the show must go on. For now. The story will be swept under the rug only to reappear later, because it must reappear later. Nothing will be remedied because nothing can be remedied without a fundamental reboot with a fundamentally different operating system.

The immediate reaction of both political parties, however, was predictable: the Republicans blamed Joe Biden and the Democrats; the Democrats blamed Donald Trump and the Republicans. No one accepted responsibility. They cannot accept responsibility because they are both responsible.

One should steer past the mindless banter of "bipartisanship" blaming one political party or the other for what is happening. This is itself a distraction no different than the "bipartisan" train wreck of the Norfolk Southern in Ohio or the coordinated efforts of both political parties to distract people from important issues by focusing them on goofy ones. Republicans bear responsibility for relentlessly promoting legislative relaxation of banking regulations and Democrats bear responsibility for relentlessly promoting legislative relaxation of banking regulations. President Donald Trump promoted it. Democrat Congressman Barney Frank and President Bill Clinton championed it, too.10

And we, too, own this because of our own cupidity.

In America, if the Emperor has no clothes, we still "invest" in the clothes the Emperor doesn't have.

In America, if the Emperor has no clothes, neither do any of the rest of us.

Since 1971, every dollar bill states that it is backed by the full faith and credit of the United States Government. That means what it says. The true value of the dollar is pegged to the integrity of the U.S. Government and to faith in its financial system. If the dollar stated, instead, that it was backed by the fear and chicanery of the United States Government, the statement, as such, might be true, but it would not inspire the requisite trust and confidence.

When trust, confidence and integrity wither, the Government must - by economic coercion or by force of arms, or both - compel others to accept U.S. dollars at face value. That explains why, as the U.S. economy becomes less vital and more hollow, the Government increases its military spending and becomes more coercive.

But military and economic coercion cannot fully compensate for the loss of economic, political and financial credibility. Your dollars are simply worth less when trust in the Government has eroded, when its credit has tanked and when its financial system perceptively has been corrupted. This is as true domestically as it is in foreign affairs, for the dollar is the world's reserve currency and the U.S. economy is integral to the world economy. A government that dispenses trade sanctions like gunboats, that pirates the natural resources of other peoples, that confiscates the wealth of other countries, and that sabotages pipelines while blaming it on others... that is a government that has no claim to anyone's faith or credit.

In Europe, during the early 21st Century, the so-called "PIIGS" of Portugal, Italy, Ireland, Greece, and Spain needed a bailout from the wealthier central banks of the European Union. The investor class of Portugal, Greece, Italy, Ireland and Spain had made oodles of money by committing the full faith and credit of the PIIGS to useless or wasteful projects. The price of the useless and wasteful projects, and the eventual price of the "loans" needed to finally bail them out, was "austerity." The cost of that austerity, in the form of inflation, higher taxes, higher unemployment, and shrunken public services, was born solely by the working and retired citizens of those countries. It was painful, but only for the working and retired citizens of those countries.

When the U.S. government bails out its own financial sector, no matter how the source of the money is camouflaged, you can be certain that now, too, it will lead to "austerity" imposed as a cost on working and retired Americans: inflation, higher taxes, higher unemployment, and shrunken public services, to be born mostly by the working and retired citizens of this country.

The only difference between what happened to the people of Portugal, Greece, Ireland, Italy and Spain and what is happening, and will happen, to the people in the United States, is that neither the word nor the effects of "austerity" will be mentioned. There will be sacrifice, by many if not all, but it will not be acknowledged. The show will go on, even unto the moment when the curtain comes down.

When faith in, and the credit of any government falls, it inevitably leads to ever harsher and more ridiculous narratives. The greater the crisis, the more powerful the distractions must be. The narratives - and the actions - will become ever more shrill - and reckless - to stir up latent racism or nationalism or war fever.

It will take great effort to divert attention from the fact that the stakes are great and so are the problems.

Nevertheless, the constant narrative about the strength and safety of the financial system disturbs us precisely because we, collectively and individually, are not stupid.

Your pet dog or cat knows when you are trying to trick it, and we are no less smart than the average dog or cat.

Your dog or cat, recognizing you are fooling it, might just snarl or hiss, and walk away from you. We, perhaps less self-reliant than our house pets, and probably more domesticated, will, for now, just hiss or snarl and not walk away. Because we can't.

So we continue to live in a make-believe panic-free zone. For now.

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The US claimed to have shot down several Chinese balloons. They were purportedly spying on Americans' barbecues, rhododendrons and suburban backyard missile silos. Now, the White House is walking back its story. Or is it just side-stepping?

Who knows?

Unless you personally witnessed a balloon with a telescope flying over your roof, you can safely assume that the reported facts are at best, sieved and curated; at worst, partially or completely spun to suit an agenda. At Hippomuse, we believe that if you haven't been provided the true and complete story, then you have every right to make one up yourself.

So exactly what did the USAF's F-22 fighter planes shoot down? Was this a “blimp event” à la Captain Beefheart? Whose balloons were they? What were they doing and why were they doing it?

We are as unconstrained by reality as the major news networks. Shamelessly, we report the news that you help us to fabricate:

First, let's establish who owned these balloons and what were they doing floating around your bedroom windows. Do you believe that the balloons were owned by China, and why?

Yes, because Communism. Grrrr. The Reds have started every war since the Chinese invaded England in 1066. I haven't actually read anything written by Marx, Engels, Lenin or Mao, but I don't need to, because AOC, Progressives and whatever. Grrrr.

Yes, because even if these were private corporate balloons, the Chinese government owns all Chinese corporations and it tells the corporations what to do.

No, because these were U.S. corporate balloons. The US government is owned by corporations and corporations tell the US government what to do.

Yes - the Chinese want to study and copy our secret formulas for creating inflation, school violence, street crime, crippling debt, gender fluidity, illiteracy, social dystopia, gambling, drug use and homelessness.

Yes. Even if these were weather balloons, America's weather is confidential. No one is permitted to know the weather without a Top Secret security clearance!

Could the US have shot down its own spy balloons and is that why it has stopped searching for the "debris?"

No. The US doesn't spy on anyone and never has, let alone anyone inside the United States. That would be against the Law and the US always obeys the Law!

Yes. They were iSpy Valentine balloons that "unwittingly" went astray.

No. They were clay skeet pigeons.

No. They were just high-tossed pizzas.

No. These were cheapo DIY weather balloons set adrift by the Northern Illinois Bottlecap Balloon Brigade and similar hobbyists around the country.

Who owned and operated these things, if not China or the US?

Haiti. Haiti has been spying on the US for centuries, if not forever. Or longer.

Martians launched these balloons. They've been circling the Earth for years vainly seeking signs of intelligent life. They'll probably give up now.

The USAF shot down Steven Spielberg's ET on his way after successfully phoning home. Oh well.

Santa Claus launched these spy balloons - how else can he keep track of who's been naughty or nice?

I don't know, but strangers are always looking at me. And talking about me behind my back. Maybe they were spying on me? Everyone else is.

Maybe the US shot down something other than balloons? If not balloons, what did the US shoot down?

The Russian Atmospheric Natural Gas Pipeline to Europe (Nordstrőm 3).

AWS and Microsoft Azure Cloud Servers.

US Representative George Santos' latest whoppers.

Vogons laying out the road for the next intergalactic highway.

Alien Escapees from Area 51.

If these were, indeed, balloons used for surveillance, what should the US do about it?

The US should immediately nuke Iran. Because grrrr.

The US should donate another 100 trillion dollars plus six nuclear powered aircraft carriers, 100 B-52 bombers and the Kardashian family to Ukraine.

The US must ban all Chinese food deliveries and prohibit speaking or thinking in Chinese.

It's time to get over the Vietnam War. No one remembers it anyway. Reinstate the draft!

Ban party balloons.

If these were not surveillance balloons, what could have provoked the US to shoot them down?

The 2024 presidential election.

The need to divert attention from investigative reporter Seymour Hersch's exposé about the US and UK blowing up the Russian gas pipelines in the Baltic Sea and deliberately wrecking Germany's economy.

Pete Buttigieg's need to distract attention from the train derailment and the ensuing ecological disaster in East Palestine, Ohio.

These were unvaccinated balloons that could have spread Covid-19.

Balloons cause global warming by blocking out the sun, particularly over the Arctic.

Who do you think the US should attack next with or without cause?

Pete Buttigieg. Grrrr.

Donald Trump. Grrrr.

Justin Trudeau. Grrrr.

Davos, Switzerland and the World Economic Forum. Grrrr.

All of the above, plus China, Russia, India, Iran, North and South Korea, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Europe, South America, Mexico, France, the Vatican, Cuba, Hollywood and Andorra. Grrrr.

Thank you for taking the first Hippomuse Survey. Please let us know something about yourself:

Comments (as yet unredacted and unfiltered):

1. I make 20 cents a week spamming web sites like this one working from prison. It's a complete dead end job with terrible hours and no benefits, but it beats staring all day at the walls and barred window. If interested, send me a photograph, all of your personal data and financial information, and I will send you a free "trial" balloon. Ha ha! That's a joke. I'm in prison. A "trial" balloon. Get it? Oh, never mind.

2. Hello. I am Mrs. Claus. My husband, Santa, went out for a training run with his reindeer earlier this month and they never came back. If you've got any news about them, please send me a message at the North Pole.

3. This is Superman. I am missing my dog, Krypto. He was last seen near a Klondike fire hydrant in Canada. He was frolicking with his four-legged friends Rocky the Flying Squirrel and Dumbo the Elephant. Reward offered.

4. My name is Doc Brown. Has anyone seen my 1981 DeLorean? It was coming "Back to the Future" when it suddenly dropped off the radar screen.

5. [This comment has been deleted because it meets our editorial standards of poor taste and insipidness].

It's hard to be factual in a funny world. It's hard to be funny in a world without facts.

The US Air Force sent a stealth F22 fighter jet to shoot down a Chinese balloon floating with the jet stream across the continent. Uncle Sam posed like a pith helmeted big game hunter with the dead trophy it had bagged.

Was the balloon spying or researching the weather? We probably won't ever know for sure, except that all countries - not excepting, and especially the United States - use, or have used, balloons to surveil adversaries and to observe the weather; and, perhaps, both simultaneously.

On May 1, 1960, readers will remember, the Soviet Union shot down an American high altitude U2 spy plane. America indignantly denied it was spying on the USSR. Then the Kremlin produced the U2's captured pilot, Francis Gary Powers.

Today, the US and China may or may not use high altitude balloons to spy on each other. But like every industrialized state that can, the US certainly uses satellites to spy from the sky. And it also uses electronic eavesdropping. And data harvesting. And old fashioned human surveillance.

Domestically and abroad.

Such is not ever acknowledged and, if it were, it would not be news.

What we do know for sure is that the Western legacy media, as well as a vocal and powerful sector of the political-economic ruling class, will sensationalize the downing of the "Red Chinese Balloon" to excite the general population.

This month, 125 years ago, the USS Maine blew up while at anchor in the harbor of Havana, Cuba.

Cuba was then a Spanish colony.

Exactly what happened on February 15, 1898 when the Maine exploded was not exactly known then or now. Was it a Spanish mine, a torpedo, a boiler accident in the engine room or an ammunition explosion below deck?

The facts don't really matter to those who really matter.

Like the downing of the "Red Chinese Balloon," the sinking of the Battleship Maine instantly became a cause celebre for inciting hysteria, jingoism, racism and fear.

This is an excerpt of what appeared in an editorial by William Randolph Hearst in his newspaper the New York Journal on February 17, 1898:

It was an accident, they say. Perhaps it was, but accident or not, it would never have happened if there had been peace in Cuba, as there would have been if we had done our duty. And it was an accident of a remarkably convenient kind for Spain. Two days ago we had five battleships in the Atlantic. Today we have four. A few more such accidents will leave us at the mercy of a Spanish fleet.

Two years ago our naval superiority over Spain was overwhelming. Two successive administrations have waited patiently for Spain to overcome that disadvantage by buying and building ships enough to bring her navy up to an equality with ours. That process proving too slow, it is now being hastened by the accidental destruction of the American fleet. At this rate it ought not to take long for Spain’s naval strength to surpass our own.

As to the immediate cause of the disaster that has bereaved so many American households and robbed the American navy of one of the most valued elements of its fighting strength, we heed Captain Sigsbee’s appeal to sound judgment. The Government has set an investigation on foot, and the Journal has independently undertaken another. Between them the truth will soon be known. If it be found that the Spanish authorities have fought about this calamity, so profitable to themselves, no power from the White House to Wall Street will be able to restrain the American people from exacting a terrible retribution. And Spain’s innocence must be clearly proven. All the circumstances of the case fix the burden of proof upon her. [* * *]

In such circumstances polite expressions of regret count for nothing. The investigations must clearly disclose Spain’s innocence or her guilt will be assumed.

William Randolph Hearst is the prime example of what is called "yellow journalism."

Read that editorial again and read it aloud. Substitute "China" for "Spain." Or substitute "Russia." You will hear in Hearst's 1898 editorial the same jingoism, the same hysteria, and the same ulterior motives as in today's air-bag reportage. Then, the “news” was printed. Today, it is mostly digital.

The mediums of public manipulation have changed. The methods are old hat.

Cui bono?

The sinking of the USS Maine did not start a war. The narrative of its sinking did.

Then, as now, avaricious, power-seeking folks profit from War. In the main, the people "liberated" from Spain by American conquest did not gain by it, although a certain economic strata, a certain business and latifundium class certainly did. The Spanish-American War, like later western invasions purportedly undertaken to defend the oppressed and downtrodden, was supposed to free the people of Cuba, the Philippines, Puerto Rico and Guam from Spanish colonial rule. The war was marketed that way to a 19th Century American public that was - then as now - at once credulous, prideful and insecure. But no one was made free on the islands conquered by the United States. Only their labor and natural resources were. The effect of the war was simply to transfer dominion from one colonialist to another. The "duty to defend" was a duplicitous doctrine in the 19th Century as it is in the 21st.

The Spanish-American War also propelled a war hawk into the White House, Teddy Roosevelt. The Spanish-American War inspired a period of aggressive, muscular, imperial American foreign policy that continues today. You see it today in Eastern Europe, Asia, Africa and South America.

We still hear William Randolph Hearst's shrill voice. His cant that Spain must be presumed guilty until proven innocent is the cant of today's war cheerleaders against China. It is a parody of the presumption of innocence and it is a perversion of history.

That's the Maine thing about the downing of the Red Chinese Balloon.

* * * * *

I'm a micro-hippopotamus. Franqui's the name and musing is my game.

Fortunately, with micro hippo eyes as small as mine, I can read the insert with the very small print that came with my phone bill in yesterday's mail. Beginning next month, my telecom company is going to start charging me an extra dollar a month because I haven't agreed to let it dip directly into my bank account every month for automatic bill pay.

Auto pay is easy and convenient, the company says.

It's extortion, I say.

I remember reading the fine print when I signed up for phone service. Reading fine print is not a problem when you're a micro-hippo. I always read the fine print, just for fun, even if it doesn't matter what I read. Try deleting or changing some of the words in that on-line contract. You can't do it. You only have two choices: 1) check the accept box or 2) check the reject box... and take a hike. You can always sign a contract with another telecommunications provider, but that company, too, is sure to have the same kind of contract: check here or check out. No negotiations possible.

Would it even matter if I could sign a contract that let me pay by check through the mail? Not really, because buried deeper down in the small print is a clause that almost every consumer service contract has today: a clause that lets the service provider change the contract unilaterally at any time.

Of course, you thought that the essence of a contract was that there must be a "meeting of the minds" as to what it is you have agreed on. But no more: today, most consumer service contracts have a clause that lets the company change the contract after you've signed it. It’s like playing chess where the other player can change the rules, whenever and however. Or, like international diplomacy. I'm just a hippopotamus, but it sure seems to me that if one party can change the language of the contract whenever it wants to, then there is no "meeting of the minds" and, therefore, no contract.

But, I agreed to that clause, the courts say, when I signed the contract! That is, I agreed to a contract that, by definition, is not a contract. What?

And furthermore, the Company says, all I have to do is NOT agree to check the "I agree" box and find another service provider. Except that all the service providers have the same contractual language. You can pick any brand, but their contracts are the same. Like elections in America, you have a vote, but you don't have a choice.

Maybe, thinks my telecom company, I missed the point about the new dollar a month charge for continuing to pay my bills by mail? Just in case I didn't get the hint, the self-addressed return envelope enclosed with my bill encourages me, with chirpy exhortations printed inside the flap and outside in the upper right corner, to "Save A Stamp - Go Green!" Do I get it? When you're a hippopotamus, being "green" is a way of life. So shouldn't a hippo do the environmental thing, save a stamp and save the planet by paying automatically, letting the Company dip directly into my bank account?

I demur. Hippos do a lot of demurring. It's completely off-topic, but if you ever run across a full-size 10,000 lbs. demurring hippopotamus, I suggest that you just whistle nonchalantly and walk on by. When it comes to micro-hippos, well, maybe you can just ignore me. Like my telecom company does.

I actually like postage stamps. Except for the bland flag stamps that come a hundred to a roll, I like to use stamps commemorating good or silly things, animals, birds, flowers; and colorful stamps of science and geography; and breath-taking artistic stamps. Are these things really environmentally unfriendly? If so, they are far less detrimental to the planet's well-being than the hydrocarbon plastics and the exotic elements used to make my cell phone, all of them mined, pumped or extracted from the ground by excruciatingly hard, underpaid, unhealthy labor in faraway despoiled lands. My postage stamps are not ruining the planet. My phone and my telecom company are ruining the planet.

So what's with the "Save A Stamp, Go Green" mantra printed on every bill-pay envelope I have ever seen? The answer is: they really don't mean it.

What the companies really mean when they say "Save a Stamp, Go Green" is that they want your help in laying off their employees.

Processing a check, although largely automated, still requires some human labor. The "green" that the companies want you to save is the companies' own, i.e., money. The fewer paper checks they have to process, the fewer laborers the companies need. And the fewer laborers they employ, the less money the companies have to pay for labor, for health care, for retirement, for sick leave, for all the things that non-automatons require for ordinary living. All of those money savings translate into profit for the companies. That's what they mean by "going green."

Sorry telecom, I demur: I'll keep the stamps; you keep the employees.

This is Franqui. Hippomusing out loud.