RANGER AGAINST WAR

Tonight's the Night

2020-11-03T02:12:00.012-05:00

People are crazy and times are strange

I'm locked in tight, I'm out of range

I used to care, but things have changed

--Things Have Changed,

Bob Dylan

Why do I find it hard to write the next line?

I want the truth to be said

I know this much is true

--True,

Spandau Ballet

there is enough treachery, hatred violence absurdity in the average
human being to supply any given army on any given day
--The Genius of the Crowd,
Charles Bukowski

If you want a lover I'll do anything you ask me to
And if you want another kind of love
I'll wear a mask for you
--I'm Your Man,
Leonard Cohen
________________________

Twas the night before Election 2020, and does anyone think Joe Biden is the best candidate the Democrats could have run? Really? Doesn't it feel like a re-run of 2016 with HRC -- like a warm beer and stale chips are on the bar.

This is why Mr. Trump will win re-election: Because the sky did not fall post election 2016. Because he has opened dialog with North Korea; because a peace accord with Israel and UAE has been signed, and a slight domino effect is following on; because the economy was very well until the Pandemic affected the world. Because Americans don't like changing horses midstream, and primarily because he is sui generis among presidential candidates and he doesn't self-flagellate for being pro-USA.

The bad things in our country have always been there: racism and casting-couch privilege. If they have not been dealt with before, that is not the fault of this President.

Finally, Mr. Biden neither inspires nor excites, a must for winning even a seat on the local school board.

Just like in 2016, the press has been drumming up the DOA Biden excit-o-meter for months, and Nate Silver at the polling site FiveThirtyEight still doesn't know what time it is (favoring Biden to win in the upper 80's low 90's tonight, hedging his bets from his badly misread slam dunk for HRC in 2016). But one must march in line, after all.

The Biden campaign has spent $6.6 billion to beat the incumbent, and it is a losing proposition. Joe is as electable as Bernie ... not. You don't need to wait up on election night; this will be 2016 Redux.

If a politician has no platform, and the best he can do is to crib from his opponent and shoot low ("Make America Better"); if he sets himself to be the cleaning crew ("I will bring adult leadership to the White House and clean house") but doesn't notice that both he and Mr. Trump are both well into their adulthood, well, there isn't much bright and shiny on tap.

$6.6 Billion is an obscene sum. Does anyone actually vote based upon 15 to 60 second commercials? If so, heaven help us. Instead, the Democrats could have done something close to noble and capped their spending to that of their opponent. Better yet, chose an arbitrary but lower number beyond which the campaign will not go; set a standard for some decency.

With the extra money which flowed into the campaign coffers, why not do something actual for the constituents over whom they cry crocodile tears? Why not build parks and update recreation centers in blighted neighborhoods? Take a hint from the dying bureaucrat in the Kurosawa film "Ikiru". Live for something beyond the results of an egomaniacal election.

When Mr. Trump won the presidency in 2016, I was curious and hopeful. Sadly, what ensued was daily disdain and insults directed at the man. The MSM had one goal alone: "How do we keep him from being re-elected?" Why they took this agenda into editorial is beyond me.

Any photo shown was of the KSM variety. It was always a Jerry Ford falling out of the plane moment; an exhausted and disheveled leaving AFO moment.

And he was a racist, don't you know? Please forget Obama's "Guns and Bibles" put-down; certainly Hillary's "basket of deplorables". Those people referred to aren't really Americans, after all.

For those who watch the news, it is like we all live in a Russ Meyer's film from which we cannot escape. The Democrats showed themselves to be mean and petty with their daily ad hominum harangues. All are following the now-stale template of comedian Jon Stewart, the daily evisceration. They can no longer claim to be on the right side of the fence.

Experimenting with Yahoo! news for three days to see what some of my friends are consuming, I felt unwell and dirty by the third morning, realizing that every headline dealing with President Trump was insulting, or worse. There is nothing more to say.

To leave today on a flight of fancy, were I to have been Mr. Trump's stage manager during his final debate with Mr. Biden when the later smugly stated that he and Mr. Obama would not meet with Kim Jong Un because the latter refused to lose his nukes, Mr. Trump would've said this:

"You can't demand he lose his nuclear warheads until you are willing to do the same. He is a dictator, and making scary threats is what dictators do.

"What happened to realpolitik? The goal is to reduce the boil to a low simmer. Let him save face; it is all he has. That is what we did, and it doesn't matter if he later rolls out a big rocket on a caisson that looks like Slim Pickens ought to sit astride it. It is showcraft for the little man.

"I regret only that I did not have Elton John perform "Rocket Man" and have Dennis Rodman present him a signed team jacket. Oh, and have a luxury block of Emmenthaler wrapped up in a silver box with a red ribbon.

"Laugh, but I'm your Monty Hall, your 'Let's Make a Deal!' guy. I met with Kim not once, but twice. Now he reaches out to his Southern enemy. Kim likes summits cos that increases his cachet. The Big Fear is detonated for now. No has done that in over 50 years.

"We give the Peace Prize to people like Yassir Arafat, not to make him not be a terrorist but to recognize him as a world player. Then Peace Accords become possible. Look at what the normalization accords we have brokered between the UAE and Israel.

"What we achieved with Kim and the Abraham Accords should have been Peace Prize material, but the politicization of everything demands we not be recognized, even at the expense of world peace."

Well, that's what he should have said, IMHO.

May the best man win.

[by Lisa. These views do not reflect those of the eponymous Ranger. They are editorial staff opinions.]

Et in Arcadia Ego

2018-05-28T21:41:00.000-05:00

[Note: We met Mr. Weis when he posted a comment to a 2012 RAW post (A Soldier's Heart). He composed the piece below for the planned 50th class reunion of BGSU this fall. It expresses the meaning of the day as well as any piece of writing can.]

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie,
In Flanders fields
--In Flanders Fields,
John McCrae

Remembering My Friend Doug Mabee

On the 50th Anniversary of his Graduation from BGSU:

          I have been asked to write a few words about my dear friend Doug Mabee, a young man who was generous with his hospitality, generous with his peaceful and gentle sharing, generous with the affection and caring that defined all his friendships.

          I met Doug through Eric Moore, also a member of the Class of 1968, and a close friend of Doug’s from the time they both started at Bowling Green.

Eric and I made regular late night, post-studying visits to Doug’s off-campus apartment during the 1967-1968 school year, where we shared a few beers, some progressive jazz, and the simple and soulful philosophy that is a tradition in one’s final year of college.

I was a junior that year, and I would see many of my one-year-older friends leave me behind as they graduated and moved on. Eric contacted me in April of 1970 to share with me the sad news of Doug’s death in Viet Nam.

          Doug was my fourth friend to die in Viet Nam. Aside from being my friends, they had other special attributes in common, and Doug perhaps exemplified those attributes most endearingly: modesty, humility, softness, an utter absence of belligerence or hostility toward others, an aura of peacefulness, an instinct for empathy, an ability to listen with deep caring and understanding, a gift for showing others that he liked them and was always glad to see them.

Each of these fine men perished in war, yet they were men of peace and love and acceptance. I could never imagine Doug Mabee – not to mention Airnaldo Cantu, Terry Huebner or Ted Bartholomew – ever picking a fight with another human being. I cannot imagine Doug Mabee ever hitting another man. Perhaps that is what drew all of us together. Ironically, these peaceful men – and our friend Doug Mabee – died in war.

          I wish Eric Moore was still alive to share his memories of Doug. He would do so with great enthusiasm and honor. He passed away in 2002 in the Virgin Islands where he resided. I was close to Eric throughout his life, during which he gave me many fond memories and a few good friends. Doug Mabee was one of those special friends – a friend whose memory will be with me for the rest of my life.

          A half century has passed. Those of us still here look very different than we did in 1968. Doug looks the same – a young face with glasses, a slightly awkward smile, an expression and a body language that always said, “I’m happy to see you.”

I am writing this wholly inadequate tribute to Doug Mabee one week before Memorial Day of 2018. On this Memorial Day, as in every one, year after year, I will be alone in my thoughts of four young friends whose faces are still young and still so vivid in my mind’s eye. And I will be wishing, for Doug and the others, that I could give them back the half century they lost.

          Thank you, Doug, for your service. They say that “time heals all wounds.” “They,” of course, are wrong. All of you here today know that. Some wounds leave scars that no years of longevity can heal.

Losing Doug Mabee to a war, now long ago, is one of those wounds.

--Bill Weis (Class of 1969)

Another One BItes the Dust

2018-05-12T06:20:00.002-05:00

The smart way to keep people passive and obedient
is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion,
but allow very lively debate within that spectrum
--Noam Chomsky

Are you ready, hey, are you ready for this?
Are you hanging on the edge of your seat?
Out of the doorway the bullets rip
To the sound of the beat
--Another One Bites the Dust,
Queen

Equality may perhaps be a right,
but no power on earth
can ever turn it into a fact
-- Honore de Balzac
_____________________________

Once there was a newsman named Paul Harvey who was famous for his "Rest of the Story" radio show. By fleshing out the details, one could come to understand the ground of the story. This is the thing we are least inclined to do today.

In fact, we are loathe to move beyond the salacious. Too difficult, too sobering. But we will do that here.

This is not an apologia for Eric Schneiderman, newly-retired former New York Attorney General, three hours following the publication of a New Yorker piece in which two of his former girlfriends indicted him of what amounts to either rough sex play, or abuse.

Judged in the court of public opinion, he was already dead in the water. Another one bites the dust.

"Some women like this," he told one of the women, after he allegedly slapped her. He very likely believed it, or he would not have said it, and done it. Each of these two women stayed in relationship with Schneiderman for over a year.

This is not to victim-shame, but to state a fact: If the man you are with thinks this behavior is good, and you comply even if only in your continued presence in the relationship, how is he to know that it is not appreciated? Seen another way, could this not be part of an archetypal master-slave game?

Do we not read and watch films based on books like 50 Shades of Gray? Was it not heralded as some sort of revelation for women's empowerment? Some pain -- that's how the master-slave game is played. It's all good.

Sacher-Masoch's classic, Venus in Furs, argues for the power of the slave in such relationships, for the master does not exist without it.

One episode recounted in the article has Schneiderman's girlfriend Ms. Selvaratnam saying that after being slapped, "(I) got up to try to shove him back, or take a swing, and he pushed me back down." If this were a typical case of outright abuse, the woman would be unlikely to come back at a much stronger perpetrator and "take a swing".

This sounds like game playing gotten out of hand. Maybe not your cup of tea, or mine, but for some, this is cricket.

When dungeon games are played correctly, there is always a "safe word", a way for the slave to stop any activity deemed outside the realm. This apparently works well for couples who abide by the rules.

But Mr. Schneiderman was too damaged to play the game well. His life is now ruined by the testimony of two women with whom he failed to be a consistent all-powerful character. He was weak, and not strong.

The New Yorker story states he awoke in pools of his own blood following injuries sustained while in drunken stupors. One woman bandaged his bleeding leg injury following one such episode, returning to re-bandage the newly-bleeding injury in his office the next day.

She had also seen him fall face down like a log following one episode of his getting wasted. Reading between the lines one finds a more nuanced story.

The woman said she had hoped that maybe she could help him stop his alcoholism. Of course, anyone in addiction treatment knows that cannot be done. The recognition and desire must come from the addict himself.

What seems evident is that Mr. Schneiderman was a runaway train in his illness, and it was only a matter of time before he was revealed. Unfortunately, there is no "#metoo" for the sick perpetrator of what he imagined a slice of society to approve. And Mr. Scheiderman is sick in the medical sense of the word, as the article belies his epic alcoholism and epsiodes of self-injury.

Like any typical functional alcoholic, those around him enabled his sickness to continue. As someone stated, he was "too valuable" of a commodity. So for all of his alleged objectification of the women in his life, the sadist was an object, too.

When the story broke, I told Ranger there would be a woman of color involved, and there was. Her statement that she was made to say that she was Schneiderman's "dark slave" is precisely in line with the sado-masochistic game. But it so offends our sensibilities that nothing can be heard beyond that.

As much as being a story about dysfunctional relationships and abuse, this is a story about a sick man who did not get the help he needed to be well.

So are we a prim bunch of morality policemen, or do we smile upon the panoply of sexual congress and call that freedom a good?

It would be nice if the rest of the story were told.

Eight Million Ways to Die

2018-05-08T16:01:00.000-05:00

The neighbor ... shot at the dog from an upstairs window
with a bow and arrow.
The dog’s owner ran back into his house
and came out with a Walther P-38,
a World War II souvenir.
The neighbor also ran outside with his bow and arrow,
and the dog’s owner shot him dead
--Eight Million Ways to Die,
Lawrence Block

In modern war ...
you will die like a dog for no good reason
--Ernest Hemingway

He who has a why
can bear any how
--Victor Frankl

______________________

Recently, we participated in a local initiative of our mayor's office, a community dinner called "The Longest Table". It actually takes place around a lot of 6-10 person tables at venues throughout the city. The purpose is to allow community members to voice their opinions on various topical matters, and to enjoy a civil evening of hopefully provocative sharing.

Last year was our first in attendance, and each table had its own monitor to facilitate discussion and note commonalities and differences. Sadly, this year's event was more of an ad hoc affair, and lacked that direction. (Perhaps because our Mayor Gilllum's office is currently involved with an FBI investigation.)

As a result, it was interesting to see how opinionated and righteous people can be, sans helpful direction. However, most people are not professional mediators, thus can be forgiven their indiscretions.

Moreover, in today's wired world, it is a small blessing when people actually unwire from their 24/7 media feeds in order to communicate face to face. That said, the comedown in empathy was palpable at the event. Mostly, participants opted out of dialog on anything of any import, probably because they know how quickly fever-pitch would be attained.

At our table, discussion was opened by a self-proclaimed former service member who began the usual rant regarding the badness of our current president. No one took the bait, to their credit.

But Ranger did engage with the man's second concern regarding societal violence; particularly, youth crime.

Ranger observed that extreme and life-like violence was a part of many young people's lives on video and computer, and that when young minds are bathed in this toxic brew there must be some causal relation between time spent and exposure to this extreme violent depictions, and possible anxious, anti-social or violent behavior in the consumer.

A young woman, a recent college graduate, insisted there was no research to prove such a linkage. Since we had no data before us, further speculation on the topic was D.O.A.

But let us consider the matter further here. Has the opposite been proven?

Is there research showing that prolonged exposure to violent media produces sound mental health and a sense of equanimity? Perhaps, it facilitates calm and reasoned thinking?

Shy of that, is there any proof that there is no effect from repeated and early exposure to such violent images and sounds? Have we even lived this "lifestyle" long enough to have a meaningful longitudinal study?

Everyone's favorite traveling protest show --the Parkland (FL) student marchers -- are weekly calling for a ban on and confiscation of all semi-automatic rifles. This would mean that 100-year-old rifles would be confiscated to quell the emotional demands of the teeny-boppers and their elder fellow travelers.

Okay. So we ban semi-auto rifles. What then about semi-pistols? Does this ban extend to our police? Or do they remain as armed and dangerous as a U.S. Army rifle platoon?

Let us not be goose-steppers here at Ranger, and take our collective heads out of the ground of public boilerplate.

To wit: Toronto and London, both sites of recent terrorist killings, have draconian gun control laws. Yet the criminally crazy may still murder and maim en masse.

Just rent a van and mow them down. No aiming, no choosing a good site position. Sure, it lacks finesse and is as brute as murder can be.

But dead is still dead, whether via a slug from an elegant Walther PPK or under the tires of a moving van, dead like a dog in the street.

Outlawing any class of individually owned firearms will not stop the killing. While Ranger is not an NRA member, he acknowledges the correctness of their position that Americans are not crazed killers, and the U.S. citizenry is not the enemy.

When one is intent on committing an act of mass violence, the means for doing so are manifold. Remember that the last 16 years of war began with the commandeering of another means of of conveyance, the airplane, to kill thousands of people. There was no move to ban planes.

Banning semi auto or black rifle clones will not eliminate the problem. There is no simple solution to these episodes of violent crime.

We have a puritanical history, so banning things that can be abused always seems like a good idea. (Though it is odd that Democrats like this approach, as it has such a patriarchal, Big Brother overtone.)

But the holes in this argument to ban-as-solution are so big you can drive a truck through them. Our own Temperance movement and the subsequent 18th Amendment (and it's subsequent repeal with the 21st) is a good example. If you want it and cannot buy it legally, you will get it another way.

In addition to alcoholism, obesity in the U.S. is a huge problem today. Big Pharma must love the profits, but the medical system is weighted down caring for the manifold illnesses consequent to a life spent in a state of Type II obesity-triggered diabetes.

So how do we change this poor behavioral pattern of overeating bad food choices?

Do we ban sugar? If we did, there are substitutes in defilade which still trigger the insulin response, and which would probably produce even worse bodily results.

Remember the Good Thing that liberals espouse, namely, that we are one world and irrevocably interconnected? If isolationism is not a good, and not even possible, then how can a ban on transnationally available goods work?

And yet, for a determined person, banning things within our borders begs only the simple question: how then do we get it here? Whether it is a moonshiner or an importer, someone will gladly oblige, if the price is right.

How does a waiting period to take possession of a legally-purchased firearm a measure that improves our security posture?

A resourceful mind can weaponize many objects. With any will, there is a way. Therefore, limiting access to discrete objects are not where the solution is to be found.

Guns, knives, planes, trains and automobiles are not the problem we are addressing when considering the problem of mass killings.

Earth Day 2018 + 8

2018-04-30T14:46:00.005-05:00

--waterproof iPhone case, for your

"Lifestyle"

Get out your white suit,
your tap shoes and tails
Let's go backwards when forward fails
--Everything Old is New Again,
Peter Allen

We can't return we
can only look behind
From where we came
--The Circle Game,
Joni Mitchell

Don't it always seem to go
That you don't know what
you've got 'til it's gone
They paved paradise
And put up a parking lot
--Big Yellow Taxi,
Counting Crows

Harmony and understanding
Sympathy and trust abounding
No more falsehoods or derisions
--The Age of Aquarius,
The Fifth Dimension
__________________________

We are not feeling too groovy about Earth Day 2018. Here are some reflections on Earth Day + 8.

Almost 50 years after the first official calendar declaration of our responsibility to be better co-inhabitants of our planet, and we have not come too far. Humans as good earth-stewards now seems a quaint notion.

More to the point, savages are us. It seems the Age of Aquarius has left the house, sans forwarding address.

Consider:

--We have music that is no longer melodic. Instead of calming the heart of the beast, its purpose seems to inflame it and incline it towards violence and exploitation

--We use drugs whose side effects are often worse than the presenting problem

--We search for intelligence in the universe, yet fail to develop or recognize it here on earth

--Healthcare is an oxymoron

--Entertainment is violence

--News is entertainment

--Food is not nutritious, and is often the cause of disease. Diet food makes us fat: low sugar food pumps up the fat for the "mouthfeel", and low fat foods up the sugar. Both are efforts to provide us with food that satisfies us in the way that actual food used to

--In all of these things, the ersatz replaces the real

--We breathe contaminated air, and drink contaminated water

--We are "friended" by people who are not our friends

--Corollary: it matters that we are "liked" by them

--Among the younger generations, narcissism is up, and empathy is down

Where have the Flower Children gone? The Baby Boomers, that largest and monied cohort, now spreads hatred 'round the world on its social platforms, the bilge every bit as toxic in nature and effect as any other environmental toxin. They call it a good.

AARP magazine says the Boomers seek housing in idyllic created and self-contained communities like The Villages in Lake County (FL). The landscape is clear-cut, and golf courses and boutique shops rule the day.

As one drives through these simulacra housing developments, one sees style blocs stuffed together, based upon price lines. How the residents find their way home among the homogeneity after a day tippling at the clubhouse, mystifies.

Marshall McLuhan foresaw that our technologies would not bring us closer, but rather separate us further. The radio or the telephone may bring us information, but we are separated from the reverence involved in creating an actual face-to-face meeting with a fellow. How many echelons beyond reality is the smartphone?

When one no longer sees or feels the actual presence of the other, he becomes less immediate, less actual. Our shared humanity takes a blow.

Atomic bombs, radioactivity, nuclear arsenals and DDT sparked the movement. If civil rights could be mandated and legislated, then surely the health and welfare of those lives could also be addressed.

However, the world goes on and it rides on money. And the quest for money and human well-being do not always jibe. So we have had Exxon Valdez, Bhopal, Deepwater Horizon, and far too many other planetary tragedies to mention, both large and small.

We belong to a global village, of sorts via our technological devices, yet seem no closer to empathetic understanding. Even within our own land of plenty we stand riven and ready at the least provocation to throw our verbal spears 'round the world, thus launching hatred into the already roiling miasma.

One may argue endlessly about the reality of global warming, but one may not deny the reality of resource depletion. Overpopulation is the elephant in the room, and one day, the earth will reach its carrying capacity.

There are 7.4+ Billion humans on the planet now. The number grows logarithmically, and the United Nations estimates the population will reach 8.1 Billion in 2025, and 9.1 Billion by 2050.

--you can't fool Mother Nature

Carrying capacity is a fact, as is the limited availability of drinkable water. Optimistic as one might be, these are two inescapable reins on our life here, and they are inextricably related.

Meanwhile, we with the leisure to debate such matters continue our niche political and religious debates regarding such things as abortion rights. It is of the fashion to always have an enemy.

Thus the brotherhood of man is a poetic chimera.

--Lisa and Jim

Up Against The Wall

2018-04-14T15:29:00.000-05:00

--The fall of the Berlin Wall

Before I built a wall I’d ask to know
What I was walling in or walling out,
And to whom I was like to give offense.
Something there is that doesn’t love a wall
--Mending Wall,
Robert Frost

It is not the strongest
of the species that survives,
nor the most intelligent,
but the one most responsive to change
--Charles Darwin

When you believe in things
that you don't understand
Then you suffer
Superstition ain't the way
--Superstition,
Stevie Wonder
__________________________

We approached this election as a people assaulted and insulted, both from within and without. The wall with Mexico was a campaign promise to give some succor to these bruised people.

Democratic institutions generally do not build walls, but rather, bridges. That said, border protection is a legitimate concern for any nation, and building a wall with Mexico became a campaign promise. And like all campaign promises, it provided a simplistic and easily-imaged solution.

Every president enters with some good ideas, but also some not so good. The wall may fall into the latter category. Not because a nation does need good border defense, but because there are better alternatives. Less iconic, but more effective.

This proposed wall is both a symbolic and actual gesture against the seemingly most porous point of entry, giving a sense of power to a people who have felt vulnerable and transgressed upon since the terror events of 9-11-01 (and probably before that).

But true defense in the 21st century is based upon mobility, and not static lines.

According to a Center for Migration Studies (CMS) 2017 report, illegal Visa overstays from all visitors to the United States (including those from Mexico) outnumber the "entries without inspection" (EWI) from across the Mexican border.

It is estimated that two-thirds of those who arrived in 2014 did not illegally cross a border, though the Department of Homeland Security does not release actual numbers.

A 2017 DHS report estimated 629,000 visitors to the United States — just over 1 percent of all travelers — remained in the country at the end of 2016 after overstaying their visas as students, workers or tourists. However, Mexico is still the leading country for both overstays and EWIs, with about one-third of undocumented arrivals from Mexico in 2014 being overstays.

The problem with the wall solution is, static defenses like walls have been OBE time and again. Think of any of the great walls, now fallen: Hadrian's, China's or the Berlin Wall. Or the Maginot and Siegfried and Winter (Gustave) Lines. All linear defenses ultimately were breached.

The concept of a static line defense has become superannuated by the wars of the 20th century. No commander will do a static defense. Bataan taught that lesson.

Another challenge for a Democratic nation would be the fact previously mentioned at RAW, namely, that an obstacle is useless unless covered by fire. Are we willing to go all Berlin Wall on Mexicans?

Probably not, since even the most hardcore wall advocate must see that Mexicans are the ones building the United States these days. Heck, legals would probably be the ones building the wall.

In contrast, a mobile defense would be more realistic, for several reasons.

A mobile border defense would present a better cost/benefit ratio than would a fixed wall. The European precedents include Germany's Grenzpolizei (Bundesgrenzschutz) and France's Central Directorate of Border Police (DCPAF).

Why not get innovative with border protection and get the citizens on board with the project? To that end, why not have a draft for service in the Border Patrol?

In the tradition of VISTA or the badly-gutted Clinton initiative, Americorps, service in the border patrol could become part of a mandatory post-secondary service modeled after the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) and the Works Progress Administration (WPA).

Further, a prerequisite for future military service could be a three-year stint with the Patrol. Future officers could not be commissioned until their Border Patrol service is completed. Officer selection could take place in that initial placement with the Patrol.

This envisions Border Patrol service as a sort of quasi-military function (moreso than currently). A person need not enter the Army proper, but could spend one's entire career border patrolling. (However, the Patrol would have to maintain its quasi-military shroud, as an outright militarization of the patrol would be seen as an act of war by Mexico.)

Since defensive measures are always in-depth, what guarantees that the Mexican government will provide a depth of operations on their side to assist this proposed mobile defense? The politics would have to be groomed immaculately.

The United States would need the complicity of the Mexican government to identify the shifting areas of main threat, as the success of mobile defenses is based on that knowledge.

"Strong point defenses" could be emplaced around major U.S. border cities, with "zones of security", and discrete mobile forces could be garrisoned there to neutralize local penetrations and to provide local area security. This denies illegal immigrants their local active and passive support (without which they cannot thrive).

Traditionally, this border function was the purview of the Texas Rangers. In the military, this is "rear area protection" -- defending the border in depth.

The Wall is a simplistic image of unassailibility, but walls are made to be breached.

A multipolar, focalized and local mobile defense is the more 21st century answer to achieving border security.

--Jim & Lisa

The Last Supper

2018-03-06T16:18:00.003-05:00

--Cherish Perriwinkle,
died 6.21.2013

The greatest trick the Devil ever pulled
was convincing the world he didn't exist.
And like that, poof. He's gone.
--The Usual Suspects (1995)

So long as little children are allowed to suffer,
there is no true love in this world
--Isadorea Duncan

Bless the beasts and the children
for in this world they have no voice,
they have no choice
--Bless the Beasts and the Children,
The Carpenters

It's a jungle out there
Violence and danger everywhere
It's brother against brother
Pounding on each other
--It's a Jungle Out There,
Randy Newman
_________________________

[In honor of International Women's Day.]

Funny how things come back around, sometimes with new meaning the second time.

This time it is one of the harrowing and absurd tragedies visited upon the little people in life, in out-sized proportion to the rest of us.

RAW wrote in 2013 about the local rape and murder of 8-year-old Cherry Perriwinkle ["Prelude to the Finale"]. While in Jacksonville recently, her story was back in the news Valentine's Day 2018, only adding to the grotesquerie of her story.

To recap: the man who killed this girl predated upon her mother's indigence. His offer of food and a $50 Walmart gift card must have seemed like a small lottery win for the poor mother. Except, poor people do not often hit the jackpot.

Would you entrust your daughter to a stranger in the hopes that she might get her cheeseburger? While it is easy to say that her mother made a poor choice, the fact is undeniable: Cherry lost her life due to her family's economic insufficiency.

The Jacksonville Times-Union devoted ran a four-paragraph piece (not online) of her killer's sentencing, offering some grim details offered by the public defender:

"He gagged her, he raped her, he sodomized her, and then he strangled her," State Attorney Melissa Nelson said in her opening statement. "He gagged her with such force her gums and her nostrils bled, he strangled her with such force her eyeballs bled. She did not die quickly, and she did not die easily, in fact, hers was a brutal and tortured death."

Please do not save all of your ire for the defective misfit who committed this crime, for if you do, any lesson is lost.

People today have become too emotional and outraged at the drop of a dime. After the angst du jour is gone, it is off to the next fire. We might do better to stay rational in the face of what we might like to claim is "outrageous" behavior.

A simple thought: What people call outrageous happens with such regularity that they might lower their reactivity and ask simply and with deliberation, "This is factual, so, what now?"

Cherry Perriwinkle's murder is monstrous, unspeakable. But too many people now become outraged over things against which they are impotent; worse, against things which are ill-defined, and sometimes, are not actually problems.

The hominid family contains myriad genetic freaks and perversions. Some members harbor violent impulses, and some act upon them; these are not concealed facts. Some might say that the most egregious behaviors result from genetic mutations, but more likely, we are all somewhere on a universal behavioral spectrum, and given the right circumstances are capable of things we don't want to confess.

To vent outrage upon a discrete actor like Cherry's rapist-murderer would be to tie a nice Hollywood bow around this actual story of want and depravity, and life is not tidy like that. The subtext to this murder trial is just as compelling as the actual crime, for without it, this particular murder could not have happened.

Lisa decided to conduct a perhaps macabre thought experiment: what does Cherry's story share with the accusers in the #metoo movement? Are the shared elements valid, and do they help illuminate any of the public angst being expulsed in all media outlets regarding female exploitation?

No disrespect is meant to any players, and this is not to victim shame or blame. And certainly, this girl's story and the cohort she represents is more horrific by orders by orders of magnitude than, say, any accusation against a Harvey Weinstein or Charley Rose.

We will consider only the female's who describe sexual predation. [Certainly males, albeit in fewer numbers, also find themselves in similar situations.] The challenge is to uncover the connections, connect the dots and to determine when and if the chain of connectivity breaks.

Further, how should we define the problem? Does #metoo represent any cohesive cohort? Do they present a clear platform, and is it actually a problem? If so, is it one of perpetration or perception alone, or both? Is it soluble?

The media has fatted us all winter on a glut of sordid exploitation tales of attractive females climbing the ladder of success on the coattails of powerful men. These "sexposes" exacted the requisite banal outrage of the viewing audience.

The usual suspects were netted (predominately powerful older men). A social media movement was born (#metoo) and the media has been devoted to covering the "new" female outrage. Eventually, predictably, just like after Watts or Ferguson, the furore will die down.

There will be nor furor for the child in Jacksonville, though much like the actresses in Hollywood, her mother appealed to a more powerful male figure for assistance. Certainly the perpetrator was a criminal in a way that the men of the #metoo movement are not.

One might also say Gwyneth, Salma and Uma also made poor choices regarding Hollywood producer Weinstein, but they were operating from farther along the power dynamic curve. At the least, they had transportation or cab fare, and could have left the scene of their reported exploitation.

But operating on a principle of charity, on a sliding scale as far as egregiousness, what is the commonality among these offenses?

Whether it is for want of a McDonald's cheeseburger or a part in a Hollywood film, the attempt to gain favor from a powerful male is the constant, and concomitantly, the desired liberation or power that comes with that. Because such transactions are entered from a position of a power imbalance, they must by needs end that way.

Maybe we are trained early on to pay obeisance to an all-powerful God the Father, and that is a hard archetype to smash. But if children like Cherry had economic sufficiency, and their parents were given proper education parenting skills, such children could at least grow old enough to face the next hurdle of potential exploitation, like those faced by their economic betters in Hollywood or Washington D.C.

Maybe men and women both would be served by a unit of moral education in primary school (reinforced later in secondary). Of course, values clarification is heretical to most public school boards who must honor and protect diversity. Further, who would be our Solomon?

For many of a more liberal bent, if a person who has achieved the age of consent and wishes to trade his or her body (much as we trade our mind-power in the workplace) for goods, who is to say otherwise? To them, the body is owned exclusively by the inhabiter thereof, and can be bartered into another fungible asset as long as all parties are on board with the terms.

But for those who buy into that construct, there must be allowance made for the emotions entailed by a quid pro quo gone awry. This is where the disingenuousness and hypocrisy enters, for if one has economic security and the exchange is a discretionary one, who is to criticize either party?

Moreover, is it that element of shame which makes the female in such a transaction "reveal all" at some future time? What is the impulse to both partake in the "crime" (for those who do so discretionarily), and then to condemn it? Is she seeking moral absolution via support groups, and the subsequent denigration of the male?

If you focus on the nugget, you cannot see the big picture. You cannot fight an effective battle if you don't know what you are fighting for. You can expulse your angst, if that feels good to you, but you will not accomplish much.

We are all somewhere on the green brick road: Cherry was at the beginning, and met her demise in her desire for a McDonald's cheeseburger. Gwyneth, Salma and Uma were a little farther along the path, their desires, a bit more lofty.

The question is, how do you move along it, and how far will you go? Are you willing to use yourself, and how will you do that -- by creating something, or by trading yourself in a direct exchange for goods?

Humans have free will and often make poor choices. Some are up, and some down. And thus ends the lesson on why parity shall never be reached.

Submitted for your consideration.

The Hokey Pokey

2018-01-16T18:02:00.000-05:00

I am woman, hear me roar
In numbers too big to ignore
And I know too much
to go back an' pretend
--I Am Woman,
Helen Reddy

Hell has no fury
like a woman scorned
--The Mourning Bride,
William Congreve

True madam;
those who have most virtue in their mouths,
have least of it in their bosom
--She Stoops to Conquer,
Oliver Goldsmith

The awful thing about life is this:
Everybody has their reasons
--The Rules of the Game (1939
_____________________________

[edited 1.18.18.]

Here's an amuse-bouche for your consideration. Since Hollywood is populated by people who compose part of America's aristocracy, and their cause du jour has been taken up the Democrats, it becomes a topic worthy of consideration.

The recent Golden Globe Awards provided a great insight into the confused state of liberal politics. The relentless topic, imbued with all the sturm und drang which the actors were capable of summoning, was the exploitation of budding starlets by male Hollywood machers.

We are all shocked to hear the news, right?

Well, not so much. And yet, at least one powerful man has been dethroned weekly for his bestiality toward the distaff half over the past couple months. A Lollapalooza for the newly minted grotty males.

At the event, especially incongruous was the abundance of female Hollywood crusaders wearing six-inch heels and cut-out, skin-tight mini dresses, also made up to the nines. Yes, people deserve the right not to be pounced upon like Sylvester the cat on Tweetie Bird.

But we must also be honest about who we are, which is a welter of hormones, visual cues and socialization, and then some.

This behavior has only been going on for, oh, say a couple of millennia (more likely, since the hominids entered the world scene.) It is hormones, hair, fur, coloration, size, power and ... the search for favor, patronage and protection. The behavior on the "casting couch" is the stuff of legend.

It is largely why men form garage bands and drive sports cars and become Harvey Weinsteins: because they lack something, they compensate with power. The woman who has value to trade understands the transaction (though she may regret it after the fact if the reward falls short of her expected quid pro quo.)

For example, crusader Sharon Stone revealed perhaps the most flesh at the ceremony in her cutaway dress, she of the beaver shot in the 1992 film, "Basic Instinct". We understand that is tame per today's standards, and also understand the difference between the auteur and the art.

However, considering that movies and music induct most young people into the adult "world", and further, that most of these actors and actresses have no compunctions regarding correct behavior either on- or off-screen, it seems a tad hypocritical to circle the wagons now.

What has been the motivation for the recent dreadful exposes? The question are, "Why now?", and, "Why this?".

Women are either reading from 1971's Our Bodies, Ourselves, or Fifty Shades of Gray. Further, if the former, we are also taught that the latter is all part of the play, all a path to women's self-empowerment.

So why would an empowered woman using her body as she sees fit need the Nanny State behavior of the newly patronizing Democratic Party? These ideas are incongruous. Capitalism relies on the free play of the marketplace of commodities.

We are talking here, obviously, of women whose sights are set on buying success in powerful arenas via acquiescing to sexual favors demanded by those in positions of power. These are not women submitting to abuse from a male partner. These are women engaged in discretionary though (if, as claimed) distasteful sexual behavior in a bid to gain favor.

These are not the pathetic cases of "No means no" violations, of not being respected after a night of partying at a frat house or drinking Boone's Farm under the bleachers during a JV game. Nor are they cases of ingenues filing papers in the office and being devoured by the Big Bad Wolf.

(Meanwhile, actual cases of unbidden male brutality go largely unaddressed by the Hollywood criers as they and their victims are generally not as sexy as a Salma Hayek or Gwyneth Paltrow -- one of their own. It seems not all women are equal.)

Most well-socialized people understand the culturally accepted signs, signal and semiotics of sexuality. In fact, desire and availability are signaled by various cues that Hollywood itself has so nicely immortalized. If one is a naive "40-year-old-virgin", one need only watch some rom-coms to get a feel for the play.

With this crusade, the Democrats have latched onto what they hope will be a winning cause. Who does not have a mother, sister, niece, daughter or wife? Who could be for sexual exploitation? And yet, the current media elites who are spinning the women's cause to great fanfare are hardly denizens of purity.

Moreover, the U.S. still has not ratified the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA), an effort at equality which failed to gain ratification following its introduction in 1923, and died after its extended deadline in 1982 (Ironically, Nevada -- the only state with legalized prostitution -- was the first state to re-introduce 2the legislation in 2017, the 45th anniversary of Congress's submission of the amendment to the states.)

So rather than re-hash a topic so over-determinded with social, biological and religious aspects, why not simply stand for human equality?

What is the purpose behind this goose chase? Will they engulf these men with their vagina dentatas, hoping the men will rue the day they traded skin for position? What then?

Power disparities are obdurate things. The woman who seeks to market her wares is a fungible asset. She must achieve on her own, rather than using her sex to obtain favor, and then crying foul. That is not cricket.

Old line Democrats are jangling against the revelations of this time-honored brokerage. When Nancy Pelosi defended accused Rep. John Conyers (D-Mich) by saying, "He is an icon in our country" and was a great Civil Rights crusader, she drew flak from her fellows. (Sure, he's a bit of a whore-dog, but the good image outweighs the bad; see MLK, JFK, etc.)

Liberals want it both ways in the play between the sexes (there really are only two, but you can mix, match or delete as you will): a nanny state to control and condemn human behavior, plus absolute liberty for one to do as one pleases. These are non-consonant ideas and contrary to reality. To hold both at once is, at best, callow; at worst, disingenuous.

They wish to legislate the rules of the game, while concomitantly saying a human may do anything he wishes in the boudoir. Where is the junction?

One might say the women in producer Weinstein's orbit had been predated upon. Alternately, one might say they were empowered women who traded one good for another in a time-tested barter system; a tit-for-tat, if you will.

The female accusers were all in the immediate purview of their alleged attackers, either on a friendly basis, or hoping to get cast in some upcoming production. One might argue that these were savvy businesswomen, engaging in transactions which they allowed.

So, how do they transmute into being piteous victims? Perspective is all.

If the woman gets the job, she has been successful. If she does not, then she may feel used. Claiming victimhood in a bona-fide capitalistic transaction is not being honest.

It may be that this current outrage is connected to the current president of the White House. As they could not prevent his residency, they will now knock every privileged older male out of his erstwhile safe box, so to speak.

While it may be something to do, it does not suffice as a policy or a political agenda. It is retrograde, and the advocates are not addressing the fact that women's rights have been an issue for some time, yet this arena of behavior has not changed.

Sometimes, for whatever reason, you lose. In the past, people sucked it up and moved on. Today, victimhood travels with it's own life support system (and those who exploit their being hard done by often become an Oprah Book-club selection.)

In the "Gotcha!" era, a secondary win can be salvaged by crying foul on a perfectly legitimate game ... if you should happen to lose.

Submitted for your consideration.

Precedent for the President

2018-01-08T22:13:00.000-05:00

--candidate Clinton blowing his horn

You can't always get what you want
But if you try sometimes you might find
You get what you need
--You Can't Always Get What You Want,
The Rolling Stones

Television is not the truth!
Television is a God-damned amusement park!
We're in the boredom-killing business!
--Network (1976)

And there's winners and there's losers
But they ain't no big deal
'Cause the simple man baby pays for the thrills,
the bills, the pills that kill
--Pink Houses,
John Mellencamp
_______________________

[Note: This a non-partisan social critique. It is is neither an apologia for nor a defense of Mr. Trump. RAW never shills for any candidate.]

Whenever I happen upon it, the evening news always richly rewards me with insight into the current liberal mental cul-de-sac. The 4 January 2018 PBS News Hour interview with sorta non-2020 Presidential candidate Joe Biden was no exception.

The blindness and anger which hobbles so many today can be understood by watching the life and person of Mr. Biden, and seeing how the fight in him is rendered impotent by his habitation inside of the straight-jacket of the hypocritical Democratic party line. It is why he is destined to never be President, despite the release of his new book and twice saying in the interview that he would not rule out running for office.

Biden is a kind of tragic figure. Once the rebel and provocateur of the Sunday morning talk show circuit, he has now assumed the mantle of a proper elder statesman. Beloved by his Delaware constituents in his 35 years as senator, many of the rest saw him as a bit kooky for his opinions. (To them, he was the tamer East Coast's version of California's oddball Governor Jerry Brown.)

But like Robinson's Minivar Cheevy, Biden's curse is to be a man out of time. At first, ahead of it; now, he has been passed by.

He ceded his 2016 run to the inevitable heir to the Democratic nomination, Hillary Clinton (who's own shelf-life had expired when the feminist movement lost steam, somewhere in the 80's). And like Senator McCain who did the same for President George Bush in 2000, you rarely get a second chance in the ring.

It must sting to see the once-outspoken nature for which he was censured harnessed by the successful runaway train of opinions that is the new President. If it had been allowed to him, Biden might have been buffed up and possibly been able to go toe-to-toe with Trump. But he would have had to have dropped the obedient-righteous act which has been beaten into him for decades, so not likely.

To see Biden's hesitation in answering a question on the fitness of the President is to be reminded of the reason many Democrats continue to fail.

It all seems so obvious: when the Democrats curse the President, they are by extension damning his electorate and supporters, which is to say, a largish chunk of the United States. Their relentless derision, disdain and outright insults cling to the people who approved of and elected this President, and this does not play well in Peoria.

This very simple not-winning feature of their incessant condemnation and high snark is what they miss; pardoning the pun, it is the elephant in their room.

Mr Trump won because members of the Democratic Party (DP) defected to the other side, and they did so from every demographic. Thenceforth, those Democrats have been enfolded by the shrill party diehards into Hillary Clinton's reviled cesspool of "undesireables".

People do not take kindly to being labeled as fools.

In the interview, Biden noted a sea change in candidate quality when President Reagan succeeded the very "Presidential" Jimmy Carter, suggesting the current President is an equally lame actor (except moreso.) But instead of riding his newfound high horse and bemoaning this "unbelievable" state of affairs, Biden and his fellows would do well to step out from behind the curtain and recognize the Land of Oz for what it is.

In a big fail, Biden et al. miss the fact that former Hollywood B-actor Reagan was the shape of things to come. George Herbert Walker (1989-1993) was a brief retrograde move towards the non-performer, but his disdain of the camera and the image was becoming superannuated -- was, in fact, already moribund.

Candidate Bill Clinton blew his sax on Arsenio Hall's show in 1992. When Monica Lewinsky, his au peche mignon, was revealed, it was a no holds-barred black humor-fest in both the realm of the MSM and online entertainment industry. (Ms. Lewinsky calls herself "patient zero" in the brutal new word of social media evisceration.)

George Bush landed in full military regalia on an aircraft carrier, a feat almost as impressive as Hannibal's crossing the Alps with his 40 elephants. Barack Obama connected with fans via MySpace and Facebook accounts.

Mr. Trump is but the inheritor of that venerable tradition, amped-up for 2016 standards. Time moves on, carrying us into ever newer scenarios, speeded up by the connectivity of an anonymous and unvetted ether world ever-more insinuated into people's every moment.

Guy Debord, Alvin Toffler and fellows saw decades ago what we are now passing through: the Society of the Spectacle, aided by mass undifferentiated information. The mash-up is not entirely a pretty one. Following the blip that was GHWB, all Presidents played to the masses, some better than others.

The politicians who can accept the reality and function efficiently and with respect (both to the voters and by extension, their candidates) will succeed. Any notion of what a candidate "ought" to be has now been knocked out of the park.

As any self-help book worth its salt can tell you, it is not what "shoulda-coulda-outta" that will fix you, it is seeing what IS. Incredulously, the DP's have yet to accept what is, calling it everything besides the reality, which is simply: "it is this". (It is an as-yet unknown impulse which disallows these people from accepting the reality.)

Summoning his best Democratic patter, Biden comic-tragically concluded by saying his party must do better to address the needs of the middle class. But is that not what Democrats are supposed to do?

But they didn't, did they? And it is their failure to speak and act honestly on behalf of the non-sexy, non-pet categorical average person which lost them a momentous election, and which saw their heir-apparent KO'd by the non-party favored 100:1 long shot.

The naysayers who refuse to see and accept the truth are not viable, and will only grow increasingly so. "It shouldn't be" does not comport with what "is".

Apparently, the reality of election 2016 does not comport with the image the now very proper Mr. Biden has of what a president should be. Perhaps the people are also not what he thinks they should be, namely, obedient zombies true to their school.

Today's reality is, social media has allowed new alliances and points of view. The participant's fealty is to his own knitted together community's media feed, the created thing which informs his reality.

However, the most important point lost on the arrogant disbelievers in election 2016 is this: it is not they -- our elected officials -- who give the imprimatur to the next President, but rather the People themselves who elect all of them. A government by, of and for The People.

Elected officials, low to high, serve us, feeding at the trough of our tax dollars. Civil servants all -- humility be thy name.

Sorry Joe, but your idea of what constitutes "presidential" has been bypassed. As in the Dark Tower, the world has moved on.

Sans judgement, change is a constant, and only in hindsight may one evaluate and decide if it was helpful, harmful or benign. There is no holding back the floodgates of the new.

If anyone should know this, it is the crusading liberals who forever seek to smash every societal shibboleth.

So if they wonder where this impulse to reject the trappings of the "presidential" emerged, they could do no better than to look at themselves.

The hope is that the deniers will grow fatigued with the their omnipresent disdain and begin to exit their Slough of Despond, and work to create a positive new day.

Even Asian cage fighting gets boring after a while, right?

Do You Hear What I Hear?

2017-12-31T15:33:00.003-05:00

--all of the talking heads today
follow Henny Penny's lead

And we'll never be royals
It don't run in our blood
That kind of lux just ain't for us
We crave a different kind of buzz
--Royals, Lorde

Nothing really matters
Love is all we need
Everything I give you
All comes back to me
--Nothing Really Matters,
Madonna

In every life we have some trouble
But when you worry you make it double
Don't worry, be happy
Don't worry, be happy now
--Don't Worry, Be Happy,
Bobby McFerrin
_________________________

For those voters who did not elect President Trump, 2017 has been a year in which there was no surcease of sorrow.

Presumably to avoid OD'ing on Wellbutrin, they have made a cruel and wicked game out of firing on anything that moves in the White House. It is not even done in the best spirit of American satire -- it is ham-fisted, and done with Gallagher's mallet versus Mark Twain's fillet knife. It emanates from a dark and heavy impulse, antithetical to the frontier mentality, the Yankee can-do spirit that embodies the best of our nation.

Here is a simple wish for the New Year: that the people I once considered my fellows put aside their fear and loathing of President Trump and have faith that the System will work, as it always has. If it comforts you, know that correctives happen every four to eight years, like clockwork. Whatever you thought was great but lost will be coming around again (possibly, in an improved guise.)

But Jeez Louise stop the incessant harping and haranguing stemming from the misbegotten elitist meme that "He is not my President". That's just stupid, forget counterfactual. Mr. Trump is your duly elected President.

If it helps, think back to 2000 and the unfortunate "hanging chads" and the infamous ballots of Palm Beach County (why is it always Florida?). In that case, Mr. Gore just might have had the better claim to the Office, but the fight was ceded and we rallied behind our then-President, the one who brought us our current misbegotten and most unexcellent and tragic misadventures in the Middle East.

Every day's news cycle for more than a year now has been naught but bloodsport against the person of Mr. Trump (with the occasional bombing, opiate addiction story and weather disaster thrown in for good measure). The talking heads are, as comedian Jon Stewart said of the ilk to which he aspired to belong before hanging up his spurs, "turd miners". Even he -- the original Pied-piper of the new "opinion news" -- tired of suiting up daily in his Hazmat garb.

Sadly, for the new breed, there seems to be no enervation in their non-stop caustic derision. Snark and nastiness is us.

This writer has tried, vainly, to counter the fearmongering and anger that has besieged her from all 'round. However, such efforts at rationality are epic fails, only serving to amp up the unfaithful and to ruffle my normal equanimity. The wise Lisa politely demurs.

No President may enact too many changes in four years. Rome was neither built nor burned in a day. Mr. Trump is surely discovering the confines that bind him.

Trade in your doom and gloom Nostradamus vagueries, "Well, we haven't seen the end of this ...". Instead, ask yourself, "What do I wish I had done today at this time next year? Do you really think disseminating fear, loathing and news-ish bits on the President is the best use of your life?

The blind arrogance of the once for-the-people Democrats is the most confounding and disappointing thing. When Mr. Obama disdained the "guns and Bible" crowd, and his presumptive successor Hillary Clinton pushed it a step further with her gleeful dismissal of "the despicables", those tone deaf party regulars failed to realize a very big reality, namely: that is us, or at least, a large number of the people they were elected to represent.

The United States has a venerable tradition of being parochial and armed. Put another way, we take our civil rights seriously. Blame it on King George and the brigands called our founders who seceded from the Royal Way.

In the 2016 election, we saw the corrective that occurs in a democracy when our public servants believe themselves entitled. In this new day of personal entitlement, the hackneyed boilerplate of the party apparatchiks seems fusty even coming from a New/Old School Obama.

He promised to extricate us from the Phony Wars and Terror (PWOT ©), but did not deliver. He presided over a renascent breakdown in race relations and the revelation of a new descent in the condition of the erstwhile entitled: the middle-aged white male, about whom it was revealed to be the only demographic losing in the mortality - morbidity sweepstakes

Sans judgement, the 2016 election was most remarkable, as it gave the lie to the received truth that pet candidates would always be shepherded into office on the large coattails of their wealthy sponsors. This writer remains curious and hopeful regarding this administration. The main fear is the New Hatred which has become de rigueur and a supposed sign of enlightenment. Nothing could be farther from the truth.

All we are saying, is give peace (in the Homeland) a chance.

Here's to a more civil 2018.

Mistletoe Banned!

2017-12-23T10:10:00.000-05:00

-- Even the New Yorker was fooled in their
1939 depiction of the act as consensual

Santa baby, and fill my stocking with a duplex and checks
Sign your 'x' on the line
Santa baby, and hurry down the chimney tonight

--Santa Baby, Eartha Kitt

________________________

Breaking news:

Beginning in 2018, the purchase or possession of mistletoe will be banned in the United States after it was reported last week that Santa Claus was using the plant's seasonal reputation as a kissing post as an excuse to grope and grab unsuspecting mothers while their children were asleep.

Unfortunately, the shocking revelations came too late for this year.

Francine Millet-Wenzel, 67, of St. Olaf, Minnesota ((in the ironically-named Otter Tail County), was the first to report Mr. Claus's unwelcome advances last week. (Millet-Wenzel has some local renown as a Top-40 You Tube poster of funny cat videos featuring her own beloved white Persian, Woofie-Heathcliff, in various improbable scenarios weekly over the last ten years.)

She said the attack occurred in 1967, when she was babysitting her niece. In a wavering voice, Francine said, "It hurt. I have never baked another chocolate chip cookie since that night."

Actress Salma Hayek was credited with encouraging Ms. Millet-Wenzel's shattering accusations.

When asked why she finally decided to come forward with her story, Millet-Wenzel cited a feeling of solidarity with Hayek [the actress who recently spoke out against serial molester Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein.] She said that she felt a resonance when viewing Hayek's portrayal of the long-suffering artist Frieda Kahlo in the 2002 film "Frida".

"Men [referring to Kahlo's husband, artist Diego Rivera] can be such brutes."

She offered a societal perspective, as well. "Living through the Civil Rights era, one became aware that the focus was on empowering those who had less. I knew that now was the time to begin the dis-empowering of those against whom that whole effort had been arrayed."

The former grade school English teacher waxed poetic when referencing Shelley's poem, "Ozymandias". In an unseasonal wish born of trauma, Millet-Wenzel said disparagingly, "That's what it's going to be like for these fat and entitled white men when women have our say -- 'despair'." It's time these villains get their just desserts."

She was not thinking of cookies with her last statement (though apparently, Mr. Claus, was.)

Asked if she was afraid to come forth with her revelation, she courageously said: "Not at all. I feel like Rosa Parks on that bus, or Michelangelo chipping away the unnecessary bits."

Further, she was asked if she feared a backlash from the male community in St. Olaf. "What do I care about that?" she said, confidently. I have my cats, and pussies are better than a man any day of the week."

With the air of a woman vindicated, she then offered to show the interviewer a local PBS affiliates' short feature on the popular antics of her beloved Persian.

--the now-defunct The American Weekly
offered a prescient and more menacing take
in 1948 on the newly-revealed assaults

After her story was run by the local CBS affiliate, an avalanche of the now all-too-familiar stories poured forth from around the nation. Now it seems, St. Olaf was not the epicenter of this tragedy.

Santa's avuncular appearance and inextricable association with classic holiday stories and music -- his iconic image spread on everything from television specials to gift wrap-- had lulled these unsuspecting mothers into a sense of safety. Mr. Claus depicts himself as a hale well-met fellow, but the facts suggest anything but.

As this outrage continues to spool out, what some say are too-drastic protective actions are being considered.

Several females members of Congress have formed an ad-hoc committee and are presenting an appeal to Homeland Security to issue a nationwide Orange Alert: Do not open your doors late at night to even the most benign-looking strangers, especially during holidays. If you have a chimney, secure gratings which will deter entrance to your home from alternative avenues of ingress.

One of the committee members, Rep. Jackie Speier [CA-D], discussed the possibility of enlisting a consortium of the National institutes of Health (NIH) and the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) to study how the male hormone testosterone works to enable a potential predator to assume various guises in the service of securing their prey.

"Men are known to impregnate women into their 70's," Ms. Speier said, despondently. "Think about Pablo Picasso and Charlie Chaplin. This will be a protracted battle for women, a Long War, if you will."

According to his accusers, Claus's ploy never varied: he brought gifts ostensibly for the children and at their behest, no strings attached. But when CBS interviewed the beloved Christmas fixture, he justified his frotttage by stating coolly, "Hey, we all know there's no free lunches, right?

Dispassionately, he continued: "Look at me -- I work like a dog to make Christmas Day a good one for kids, and what do I get? Milk and Toll House cookies, every time. Would a lasagna or meatloaf be so hard?". He concluded with the victim-shaming typical of previous predators with the rhetorical, "What did they expect?"

The numbers of victims are expected to climb, and reports say that Mr. Claus has sought refuge back in the North Pole, which has no extradition treaties with the U.S. Our requests to interview Mrs. Claus were denied by her spokesman, Mr. Elf.

[Notably, there were only five reports from the state of California, a state known for suspending its disbelief and love of all things elfin and fairy-like.]

For now, it looks like our Santa Claus is more Krampus than St. Nicholas.

_________________

--by Lisa and Jim

Up the Down Staircase

2017-12-13T16:45:00.001-05:00

--the great Terence Stamp, as Priscilla

Ever tried "punctuation sex", Henrietta?
Hyphens are kisses, commas are maybes,
and a period is a definite no.
And then of course, there's the...
limitless realms of semicolons and apostrophes.
I shudder to think what
an exclamation point might mean
--Up the Down Staircase (1967)

~So... You actually make money by dressing up like a woman?
~Oh, sure. You can make a fine living in a pair of heels
--The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert (1994)

Now let us sport us while we may,
And now, like amorous birds of prey,
Rather at once our time devour
Than languish in his slow-chapped power
--To His Coy Mistress,
Andrew Marvell
_______________________

In the previous piece we asked, "How and why has have the grotty gropings and sexual mis-adventurism of the powerful -- the previous bailiwick of the tabloid news -- become a part of the national evening news cycle?" A newly-prim Blanche DuBois may have begged her sister Stella not to hang back with the brutes, but brutes are what we are, after all, so why are we surprised?

But so hopped-up are the liberal harridans on their outrage du jour that it does not matter to them that this skulking behavior is not political news, nor is it anything new. Neither is it the sole domain of either gender.

To wit: it is not behavior unknown to Democrats. Right. In fact, sexual voyaging should more acceptable to those of a liberal bent who reject an Old Testament vengeful "Thou shalt not" kind of God, no?

We speculated that the Angry Birds of the news desks are scatter-gunning in their efforts to damn the current power elite as enabling this behavior (which obviously has stolen the Presidency from the Other Rightful Power Elite ©), and to thereby redeem the liberal cause in the process. If achieved, this would be a notable two-fer.

Since their wildly speculative new machinations do not seem to gain much traction, they are going back to the tried-and-true. They figure that by the sheer weight of lead which they are throwing, surely something will stick.

Here, yer own humble boots-on-the ground reporter broadcasting from Ground Zero -- i.e., the most liberal college in the university -- reveals the twaddle for what it is. What follows are three archetypal examples of hypocrisy as witnessed by me, up-close and in-person.

They demonstrate why liberalism has become irrelevant and can no longer provide guidance for a better world. Sensationalist outrage has transcended reality. They advocate both for and against bigotry and the needy as it suits them, thus losing any claim to a consistent or meaningful agenda.

#1: In a Human Sexuality course, a Gore Vidal-narrated video on "other genderedness", "Middle Sexes", was shown. The film glamorized the world of the Asian "girl boys" -- young men who vamp as women. This behavior was depicted as a time-honored tradition, suggesting that perhaps half of Asian men choose this path.

Despite the happy voice-over, the constant was that they were performing in one way or another for curious tourists. It was a lifetyle borne of economic need. Nonetheless, the focus was on the "sex positive" aspect of the behavior.

The program concluded with the story of a man who left his wife and child to marry one of these girl-boys whom he had met on vacation. The man said he was not gay, and when the interviewer asked if the male genitalia of his new partner bothered him, he protested vociferously, "No! Just look at her -- she's beautiful."

Indeed, the boy posing as girl was lithe and petite, and his make up was impeccably applied, but his situation is that of being cared for because of his created appearance by a married Western man. This seems the height of objectivity and disingenuousness.

But wait, there's more! The kicker occurred outside of the classroom, where a flyer advertised an upcoming talk by an immigration lawyer and social worker who worked to liberate and integrate former workers in the sexual tourism trade into United States society. In a nutshell, "We will apotheosize the Freak, but when you tire of it, we will welcome the refuse of your misadventure, too."

This sounds a little like having your cake and eating it. Stripping the ethics from the argument we can say say this flip-flopping will ensure that therewill always be jobs for lawyers, counselors and social workers, a cause for the liberal die-hards, and sex for horny tourists with money.

Moral: You can't be both against a behavior (i.e., trafficking in sex with minors or sexual tourism), and for it at the same time. (Well, not and be taken seriously.)

#2: In the same class, the instructor provoked a discussion on gender expectations. One woman insisted that she should be able to walk down the street naked and not be groped or propositioned by a man (no word on women).

Perhaps for her, one might agree that would be a fairly reasonable expectation, but not so for most women. C'mon, folks, this is either a red light behavior or a sign of mental instability.

We have cultural norms for a reason, and bearing a lot of flesh is a symbol signifying a desire. Maybe her view would be correct in a nudist colony, but is it really pretty to think that this should be a cultural norm for all of us?

One hapless young man offered that, while he thoroughly abided by the "'No' means 'no'" message, if he were clubbing and saw a woman with a drink wearing a tight dress up to her buttocks and wearing 6-inch heels, he would presume that she might be receptive to at least an opening gambit. Given no quarter, his honesty drew howls of execration from the females, who were now animated by the liberal professor to argue for what never was and never shall be -- a gender neutral society. (At least, if there were, they would die out pretty quickly due to lack of interest.)

Interrupting the moment of uproar was an African-American woman who daily sat with a group of her fellows in the back who spent most of their time on their PDA's. Praise be to her, for she could take the callowness no more.

"I'm just talking for myself now, but when I'm wearing that party dress up to here and got my 6-inch heels on, my hair and nails done, I expect to be in some man's bed by the end of the night." That was all, and she went back to the computer. I applauded her. (Does anyone hear the sound of two hands clapping in a silent sea of 40 brainwashed liberal wanna be do-gooders? I think not.)

To my surprise, following that admission, one brave girl from the defending cohort admitted that her roommate had a closet full of "Shame Shirts". The credulous professor professed ignorance as the student described the behavior as that of co-opting one of a man's nicest shirts for one's own following a one-night stand. A spoils of battle, as it were, thus showing that women could be players, too. (Who knew?)

Moral: Denying the facts in favor of a preferred reality does not make it so.

#3. (While it is hard to choose a favorite this may be it, as it so nicely encapsulates the hypocrisy being discussed)

After waiting over five minutes to speak a presenter after his talk at a recent symposium, I thought to press forward as one of the organizers had cornered him. The man was explaining a series of photos he had seen of early 20th century Jewish scientists, and was animatedly trying to get a response from the implacable speaker, to no avail.

"I mean they all looked ALIKE, with those faces and noses ... y'know what I mean?!?" He was smiling, and seemed bemused by his racial acuity, but he was not getting the laugh he'd hoped for. He then noticed me waiting patiently behind him and trundled off, the curious smile still on his face.

I thought, "How incredibly tone deaf." The speaker had mentioned the Rwandan Massacre, and how facial features were one means of determining who was to be eliminated. He had also spoken about the lineage of soldiers in his family, dating back to the Battle of Culloden (1746), and the miseries suffered by the various fighting men. Mostly, he was an economist, and he was considering how to meet the needs of society with diverse peoples.

It was surprising to hear such bigotry from this esteemed member of our Philosophy Department. What followed was equally surprising, in context.

The next presenter was a Jewish professor with one of "those faces and noses". His opening gambit was a visual in which he went for the cheap and easy laugh among the gathered liberals about "The Orange Man" (i.e., our President, Mr. Trump.) He had not not heard what was said on the same dais a few minutes earlier, when he and his were someone else's punchline.

Why was this person, who's categorization was the object of another equally educated person's derision, demeaning and categorizing Mr. Trump? Was he simply trying to fit in, to say, "I'm one of you -- please like me!", or did he really hold a contempt for this man of whom he knows not, but who he felt qualified to disdain? Unknown.

Liberals have become hateful, exclusionary and arrogant. They are the new Bubble Boys in the American political arena, such as it is, the media maestros, organ grinders playing the tune in the do-si-do of hatred.

The Mobius strip of disdain shows that they have lost whatever high ground they once occupied.

Moral: One may not hate a group and concomitantly claim for righteousness or inclusivity.

Q.E.D.

Off With His Head

2017-12-03T21:26:00.000-05:00

--The Red Queen has spoken

Well, I talk about boys, now,
What a bundle of joy!
--Boys, The Beatles

One way or another I’m gonna find ya
I’m gonna getcha getcha getcha getcha
--One Way or Another, Blondie

No one will ever win the battle of the sexes.
There's too much fraternizing with the enemy.
--Henry Kissinger

'Cause I gonna make you see
There's nobody else here
No one like me
I'm special, so special
I gotta have some of your attention
give it to me
--Brass in Pocket,
The Pretenders

And you're boring, and you're totally ordinary,
and you know it.
--American Beauty (1999)
______________________

The Game of Cat and Mouse: Can't Have One Without the Other

Subtitle: It really IS an Idiot Box.

Today, we'll peep in on the Battle of the Sexes, cos, hey, the news outlets say it's news. We are RangerAgainstWar after all, and in the annals of martial history this one has been going strong since time immemorial, with nary a durable truce. (And just like the Wars on Poverty and Drugs, it has a zed chance of conclusion of hostilities.)

Comparatively, in the longevity arena, the Phony War on Terror (PWOT ©) is a piker.

My stupefaction at what passes for media news is boundless. Over the past couple of weeks, the news ventured credulously into the oft-lurid territory of power and sexual dynamics, games as old as the day is long.

That commentators like Public Television's Mark Shields and David Brooks must feign shock and play "Captain Renault" to the female anchors tests the limits of credulity.

This is not an apologia for the Droogs

In last week's Public Television's Friday news roundup, Mr. Shields perhaps unwittingly let some ray of sunshine fall upon the Trump Administration when he circumambulated around the story, trying to tie up the requisite disparate parts.

Saith he, because Mr. Trump is who he is, he may be making male rutting behavior that much more unpalatable to the masses. Well, certainly he gave it a college try, but for attributing any Good Thing to the current White House, Mr. Shields will no doubt get a wrist thumping .

The thing is, since most of these newly-revealed sexual improprieties occurred many years hence -- many during Democratic presidencies -- are we to assume that Democrats have a certain "Penis Protection Society" for its wayward male members?

Why were we not shocked then? Perhaps the slippery morality of the bobos allowed the secretive behavior to continue. Are we entering a more morally black-and-white time?

Do you think that you're made out of gold and-uh, can't be sold? -- Jimi Hendrix

The horreur du jour is simply: Powerful men are taking sexual favors from guileless women. Are you as shocked as I?

Mrs. Clinton may not have won the election, but the press is giving her revanchist acolytes their moment in the sun to skewer the feral (mostly) White Men via yet a new avenue.

The doughty liberal women rejoice as they lasso the powerful men like so many head of steer. Those leading this charge have been handed the Consolation Prize in the never-ending Liberal Collective Anger Sweepstakes.

These bruised yet stalwart Hillary Clinton minions are trying to make the power-money-sex troika sexy headline news again, some 50 years hence.

The Bad Boyz have been dropping like flies. Senator Al Franken, Hollywood's Harvey Weinstein, newsmen Charley Rose and Matt Lauer, etc. And no longer are the accused innocent until proven guilty.

So horrid is their behavior that the trap door must be opened as if on a Vaudeville stage and the perp must then disappear presumably into a gulag run by female prison guards like in a bad Russ Meyer film.

Feminists demand this behavior -- Who knew? -- stop, and that the alleged perpetrators be summarily dismissed from their area of operations. A hundred years on, The Perils of Pauline have been re-packaged for modern consumption, with Wonder Woman to the rescue of the hapless Pearl White.

The press states that Mr. Trump qua Trump has ripped the scab off some great festering disease in our society committed by men much like him. As an archetypal powerful white male, he is the great abettor and enabler of this great undertow of exploitation.

Don't buy it.

First it was the press's frightening indictment that the President was responsible for a renascent white supremacist movement. Now, it is as though the fictional character Don Draper from tv's Mad Men has infected American men with some new, as-yet unseen, aggression.

We secretly yearn for that ur-Male, but want to castrate him when he arrives. Just look at the number of military programs, movies and video games produced in which the macho protagonist fights and gets the girl(s), too. It is the whole cake and eating thing.

The heady combination of power and sex is as old as Salome's dance and Delilah, and then some. It is capitalism at its finest: Opportunity meets availability. Consumption occurs 'til satiation, or until the Next New Thing comes down the pike.

Since one may not re-engineer the chemical makeup of the human being, one would need some broad, consistent and formative re-education to change unwanted social behaviors. Unfortunately, the United States is burdened by both a highly-sexualized, and a highly Puritanical background, resulting in some deep schizophrenia regarding relations between the sexes.

More to the point: why is this headline news, and why when the alleged offenses are often many years after the fact? Rather than some great awakening on behalf of the offended, it is not hard to imagine that powers arrayed against these powerful men troll about to find these women, offering the correct incentives for their testimony.

Of course, we are talking here of grown women, not minors. Consenting adults. It is a game they chose to play when they entered the fray of competition (in Hollywood, politics, etc.), and a price many are willing to pay, to give favors in order to receive.

It is an understood if unsavory quid pro quo. Don't cry wolf when it is you who walked into the wolf's den.

This is all nothing new.

And who are these men? Does power confer privilege only occur among the entertainment and political set (entertainers of their own sort)? Does sexual favoritism and exchange not transpire among the more mundane, simple folks like you and me?

How does everything old get new again, entering our never-ending chorus of outrage and indignation? Are there not other topics more worthy of coverage on the nightly news?

Does Anyone Really Need to Say This?

Watching the media coverage evinced no response so much as, "be an adult, and be smart. If you don't want to get dirty, do not play with dogs or pigs."

Shame on the press, for they know that firing at this target will leave them with Maggies Drawers flapping in the breeze every time.

[Update: An unedited cy. of this piece went on 12/4/17.]

Forget Me Not

2017-11-11T17:25:00.001-05:00

--Forget Me Nots

_______________________

Happy Veterans Day. It's an odd thing to say, looked at one way.

"Happy" is not the usual discriptor for the things a soldier must do. Is it a day for "Happy Veterans"? Are we happy that others -- the veterans -- do the things we would rather not think about, i.e., "We're happy that it is you, and not me"?

But to the aphorisms:

1) Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) is the soul dying faster than the body.

2) PTSD = feeling, thinking and reacting to the unreality of a situation.

3) Moral Injury is the phantom pain of the lost soul.

4) It is simple to kill a man, but doing so is never simple, nor is it easy, unless one had lost touch with his soul.

5) Remembering is not the same thing as not forgetting. (Coda: Forgetting is not the same thing as not remembering.)

6) If I am at peace with myself, then meditation is superfluous. My life is my meditation.

7) What if your memories are totally false? Worse, what if they are true?

8) You can't live in the past, but the past can live in you.

9) Films like "American Sniper" are neither history nor entertainment. These reiterations provide a rebranding of the Phony War on Terror (PWOT). They seek to legitimize the illegitimate.

To be heretical, they are the iconic "early eight-month baby" in church-sanctioned shotgun weddings. They are the Immaculate Conceptions of the war theatre.

10) Counterinsurgency Rule One: "First, do no harm".

All Atwitter

2017-11-09T17:57:00.000-05:00

--Dud Raphael foresee some Baby future Rangers?

There's only one rule that I know of, babies --
"God damn it, you've got to be kind
--God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater,
Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
________________________

What follows are some apothegms, witty aphorisms jottted down apropos of nothing in particular. Some of them are epistemological gems. He is a thinkin' Ranger (they exist), but you already knew that.

If we Tweeted, these might garner a new following, but we do not; one must maintain some dignity.

We will mete them out a few at a time over the following weeks, and will ask the readers to engage with them. Feel free to extend, personalize, or outright refute them. Like the hipsters say, it's all good.

1. Our wars since 1898 have not made us freer. Quite the opposite.

2. Being patriotic is like going to the movies. One must suspend one's disbelief.

3. United States military policy should not be to avoid wars, but to win those we deem necessary.

4. We should not fight a war that we can afford to lose.

5. Leadership cannot be quantified, but the results of leadership can be.

6. Rock and roll is about opposing authority. Then when we join the military to listen to rock and roll while defending authority.

7. Ranger's rule of non-rational reactions: for every action there is an unequal reaction.

8. Science fiction is the belief that technology can win wars.

9. Why does the U.S. go ga-ga to save Islamic refugees, but in World War II we were content to let six million Jews go up the smokestack?

10. In 1968 Ranger thought the Army was goal-oriented and wanted thoughtful officers. 1968 to 2017 proved him wrong.

Guns or Guitars

2017-10-28T15:30:00.000-05:00

--Upwards, Kandinsky

I started out clean but I'm jaded
Just phoning it in
Just breaking the skin
--Bent, Matchbox 20

Between who you are
and who you could be
Between how it is
and how it should be
--Dare You to Move, Switchfoot

There's something wrong with me chemically
Something wrong with me inherently
The wrong mix in the wrong genes
I reached the wrong ends by the wrong means
--Wrong, Depeche Mode

Strangled by the wishes of pater,
Hoping for the arm of mater,
Get to me sooner or later
--Holding Back the Years,
Simply Red

Why, you do not even know what
will happen tomorrow.
What is your life? You are a mist that appears
for a little while and then vanishes
--James 4:14

______________

[This is a re-post from 03 May 2009. We will be back next week with new thought. -- ed.]

Ranger waxes philosophic. (Next we know, it'll be a review on "The Secret" or "What the BLEEP Do We Know!?", and he'll be franchising energized waters):

Life does not have one beginning or end. Our beginnings and our ends are multiple, some beautiful, sad or just plain insignificant. Significance does not always attach to one's life.

What is the beginning? Is it birth? Is it anything at all?

Is the continuum the process and the life meaningless? Or does meaning accrue to the life, with the process being merely incidental? What assigns value to our lives? How does value accrue to a life which is simply an awareness briefly passing through the time continuum?

Is time even real? Is it circular or linear, does it compress or expand, speed or slow down? Does time even matter, or is it only our consciousness which gives it any relevance. Vacheron and Blancpain would like you to think they are demonstrating a phenomenon of importance, but maybe not. Without man, time seems meaningless. Like so many things, it simply is.

Our lives can be viewed similarly. Individually we are the center of a Twitter- and Facebook-centric universe, which is irrelevant, save to communication companies. Psychologists say narcissism among youth is on the rise -- little wonder. The Twitter egocentric universes exist exist inside a cosmos of expanding and contracting realities, in which any one reality matters little.

If there is a God, life shrinks to insignificance, and if there is none, we are still small, but without any imputed meaning. Did God exist for eternity, and if he did, why is this significant? Our own lives are insignificant regardless of religious, philosophical or political utterances to the contrary. Life gains particularity only at junctures of time, space and awareness.

At 16, a young man wanted a guitar with lessons, to which his mother replied, "Only hillbillies play guitar." Strange reply coming as it did from a Pennsylvania ridgerunner. Regardless, this teen received no guitar, but he did get a brand-new Sears & Roebuck Remington 30-06 rifle -- a hefty piece for a young shooter.

Both rifles and guitars strike chords in men's minds, some major, some minor, some suspended. Both lead to refrains and endings. Was this a beginning or an end? A rifle or a guitar was the choice. Chords and notes, or slings and shot groups?

A rifle can become a way of life, just as can a guitar.

A Battle Implement

2017-10-22T16:53:00.000-05:00

In my opinion, the M1 rifle is
the greatest battle implement ever devised
--General Georgw Patton
_____________________

Let us assume that General Patton's belief is true. If so, you should know that the United States government has been selling the M1 as war surplus to legal, law-abiding citizens since the 1960's.

In addition, although a weapon of war these weapons were also sold for a minimal price to the Civilian Marksmanship Programl (CMP) for its purpose of training citizens in correct and safe shooting skills -- all prefectly legal and sanctioned by the U.S. government. Today, the M1 rifle is still used as a National Match rifle.

Some background:

All of our armies since 1776 have used the rifle as their basic weapon. The rifle squad of the rifle platoon of the rifle company are the basic combat elements of any successful army. (Ranger, like all who wore crossed rifles as their branch designator, is trained as a basic riflemen.)

In 1871 it was clear that rifle marksmanship in the Civil War was deficient, so the governmet and private citizenry later formed the National Rifle Association (NRA) in an effort to ensure a basic level of rifle competency among all male citizens. To this end, the government also supported a Directorate of Civilian Marksmanship (DCM).

When Ranger was a young Boy Scout, any group such as the Boy Scouts, that had ten or more members received free ammunition and rifles from the DCM as a means of promoting civilian rifle marksmanship. This was in accordance with national policy.

The DCM supported all aspects of competitive marksmanship to include safety classes. Civilians and the government shared this function and the CMP still exists today.

Every civilian range that Ranger has visited has dual functions, serving both civilian and government entities. Federal and state entities cannot afford to run ranges that can be easily contracted from civilian sources.

In addition, police and sheriff's officers use these civilian ranges on contract, as do the Reserve Forces of all service branches. Ranges serve a social and recreational function as well as mission orientation one for the government forces. (On major military posts there is always a gun and skeet club that provides recreation to the soldiers.)

Government and civilian shooters compliment each other. Often times, civilian instructors provide instructions to military personnel. In my day, the military was tasked with supporting civilian marksmanship.

Because of his DCM training, Ranger entered the Army as a trained rifleman, later participating as a shooter in National Matches after qualifying in the DCM/NRA Small Arms firing school. This is shared to show that gaining rifle expertise was available to all citizens with the government's imprimatur, and the training often served as an entryway to later shooting projects in the Armed Forces.

Rifle expertise was not a thing to be feared. Somehow, this fact has been lost, as rifles have become a suspect and maligned.

As an aside, all of my childhood friends bought M1 carbines and 1911 A1 .45 calibre pisols from the DCM for $20 each, postage extra, shipped via U.S. mail. All of these men later served in the armed services; they are still proud owners of their DCM purchases.

Ranges are not places that breed trouble.

Son of a Gun, 2

2017-10-15T16:11:00.001-05:00

People are dumb, panicky
dangerous animals and you know it.
--Men in Black (1997)

Is that what this is about?
You're angry because you got lied to?
--Falling Down (1993)

Most folks can't afford to build an underground shelter but,
with a little know-how, you can use and prepare your home
to be a shelter against fallout or a biological or chemical attack.
It's much simpler than you might have imagined
--Sheltering in Place: A Family Guide
(water filter insert)
____________________

Polls indicate that most United States guns are purchased strictly for the purpose of self defense. Prior to this recent trend, guns were purchased primarily for hunting and sport shooting.

Curios and relics are not a gun control issues, and should be separated form the current political discussion. Any efforts to regulate that collector market is a waste of effort any money.

But there is a real, palpable craziness afoot in the U.S., and the issue remains the "kill your neighbor" (K.U.N.) type guns. High-capacity military clones are the item du jour. Weekend gun shows have become military arms bazaars.

When Ranger began his marksmanship career, bullseye targets were shot with service rifles. While NRA matches are still of the professional old-fashioned concentric circle type, the majority of the gun world now uses picture-type targets of people, or silhouettes.

The focus of many gunman has shifted to shooting people.

For fun, go to a bookstore and peruse gun and survival magazines. The stock-in-trade for many is to prepare people for an impending conflagration.

Major gun parts supplier Brownell's has an online catalog filled with trick-out items for the aforementioned kill-type guns. (In a not-unworthy side note: many of the items in their catalog are listed as "Made in America".)

The madness can be seen in many arenas. Ranger recently bought a simple water filter and noted that the accompanying literature addressed survival -- "preparedness products" -- which might arise in vague future dire situations, as well. The "prepper" mentality has seeped into our culture through many avenues.

Before proceding, the fantasy tricked-out rifles do have sporting and hunting functions. A M-16 clone is legal for hunting in most states. The only requirement is that the user employs only five-round magazines and not the 60-round mags found in the catalogs.

To my mind, the problem is the plethora of K.U.N. guns on the open market. It is an open discussion as to how this issue might be addressed. Since the demand and easy availability of these guns is a fairly new issue, understanding that phenomenon might be a good starting place.

The media talking heads usually have no grasp of the subject matter. The "experts" were discussing "clip size" recently, but no modern K.U.N. gun uses a clip; all modern firearms use magazines. From these basic misunderstandings issues ever-wider misconceptions.

Further, the media coverage of the topic never mentions that one of the only industries which remains succcessful and employs U.S. workers is the gun industry. If all of the tricked out guns are outlawed, then unemployment rates will increase.

So herein is a contradiction: help the economy by limiting gun regulations, or potentially help the occasional nutters and career criminals who wish to commit wrongdoing with a gun.

Talk amongst yourselves.

Son of a Gun, 1

2017-10-10T17:42:00.002-05:00

Don't take your guns to town son
Leave your guns at home Bill
Don't take your guns to town
--Don't Bring Your Guns to Town,
Jerry Douglas

Walk away from trouble if you can
It won't mean you're weak if you turn the other cheek
I hope you're old enough to understand
Son, you don't have to fight to be a man
--Coward of the County,
Kenny Rogers

Come on people now
Smile on your brother
Everybody get together
Try to love one another
Right now
--Get Together,
The Youngbloods
________________

[Note: some excellent related commentary has occurred in the previous RAW posting, It's Only a Game.]

What good are words in the discussion of gun violence and gun control in today's United States?

How can one be heard in a society where attitudes are sclerotic all-round? Events like the recent mass-shooting atrocity in Las Vegas only serve to tighten the cordon.

Ranger is a gunman and will remain so until death. I am not a threat to public safety and welfare. I am not an National Rifle Assocation (NRA) member, nor do I believe the members of that organization to be anything but honorable citizens.

Our society has been suffering a breech reaching back several decades between two sides who feel they are advocating for the same thing, namely: how does gun ownership comport with the safety of U.S. citizens. People draw their lines allying themselves with various movements and organizations, and like most such historical syndicates the high-minded ideology fails, the adherents left wallowing amidst a sea of partisanship.

The factionalism displaces the urgent questions: "What is happening?", "Is this something new?", and "How can the threat be best removed and the safety of the largest number of potential future innocent victims be reasonably ensured?"

On one side are those who staunchly support the 2nd Amendment gun ownership rights. Theirs has been a love-hate alliance with the government since the nation's founding.

The role of citizens vis-a-vis guns has morphed wildly over the course of our nationhood. In the beginning, the armed citizen was not viewed as an adversary of the national project, but served as its linchpin, or at least, as a staunch pillar thereof.

Until 1840, the smoothbore muskets of the U.S. military were inferior to the rifles of the general public. Today, soldiers and police possess military automatic weapons far outstripping anything permitted to the citizens, weapons of war that they may use for any purpose.

The Civilian Marksmanship Program brought citizens on-board as members in good-standing of their communities who would learn safe shooting skills. [Few discuss the conversion from gun owners as pillars of society to the suspects that they have often become today due to tragic events like the Las Vegas shooting. Ranger will discuss this in a future post.]

Opposing them are those who call for ever-stricter control over gun ownership rights. Their project, like those of the 2nd Amendment advocates, sees the primary issue of mass violence as the gun itself. For them, it is a simple equation: Limit the sorts of guns available and --voila -- the problem of gun violence goes away.

It is unlikely that these pro-control advocates even know that truly automatic rifles -- to include belt-fed and machine guns -- can be purchased simply by paying the $200 special tax required be the feds to own such a weapon. Do they know that no such weapon has ever been used in a violent crime?

Further, several elected leaders call for bans on M16 Black Rifle clones, mistakenly calling them "weapons of war". They are not, as civilian versions are neither fully automatic nor are they military grade.

Further, what if the citizens were permitted to have automatic rifles? Why may the police have them while the citizens they are sworn to protect may not? Check for yourself the photos of recent national disasters like the flooding in Houston or Puerto Rico: the soldiers passion out water have fully automatic rifles slung on their bodies.

Why? Do the citizens exist for the safety of the police, or vice versa?

But if we are honest and answer the aforementioned urgent questions, we must define the problem and see what actual solutions are available.

Generally-speaking, the gun control rights activists are liberal West- and East-Coasters. Broad-brushing, they often belong to the middle- and upper social strata, their most privileged members are what might be called the Creative Class (versus the majority of those who inhabit the vast middle swath of the country).

Taking a flight of fancy for a moment, presumably, they believe in the infinite perfectability of the human being. Presumably to that end (or perhaps, to pervert or exploit it), they have created myriad outlets for your viewing pleasure and virtual participation.

A majority of these games, movies and programs involve extreme weapons violence of the most heinous sort. Hollywood and Silicon Valley is only too happy to exploit guns for fun (all virtual, mind you).

Following Hollywood's fashion, music and movie lead, see the omnipresence of violence and death being imprinted even upon the human body -- knives, guns and skull-and-crossbones on clothes and tattoos abound. To paraphrase Snoop Lion-nee-Dog on doggies and their bones, Hip Hop ain't hoppin' without guns, and Hollywood has brilliantly sold that decrepit bill of goods to all youth. (Their cover: they're just following the mode of the streets.)

But you can handle this incessant onslaught of blood and destruction and go back to your loved ones and merely tolerated ones unscathed, yes? And if you can handle technicolor gore, surely if one were a gun owner, one could show good trigger control in the face of a "Falling Down" type of morning, right?

Ah, but if you have the slightest doubt that the pressures of modern society might unhinge a vulnerable person, how could you in good faith partake in the creation and dissemination of said materials?

And surely a gunman, say, a former military rifleman, might be capable of unleashing an onslaught of carnage with simply a good rifle and sight, no?

We love guns, until reality intervenes.

[To be continued ...]

It's Only a Game

2017-10-01T15:41:00.001-05:00

At a time when the world seems to be spinnin' hopelessly out of control,
There's deceivers an' believers an' old in-betweeners,
That seem to have no place to go
--Hands on the Wheel,
Willie Nelson

People forget
Forget they're hiding
Behind an eminence front
Eminence front, it's a put on
--Eminence Front,
The Who

And I don't know why I have to make a song.
Everybody talks about a new world in the morning.
New world in the morning takes so long
--New World in the Morning,
Roger Whittaker

Singing' don't worry 'bout a thing
'Cause every little thing gonna be alright
--Three Little Birds,
Bob Marley
______________________

This is hardly a news story; not by a long chork. But it's what suffices today.

Ranger and I do not run to the latest media brouhaha, but this one is tangentially of local interest, so we will deconstruct it.

Black football players are kneeling again this week a la Kaepernick. It seems some sort of black-white provocation, and surely the media and the Tweeters are giving it legs.

What is the proximal story, and what is distal?

Proximally, the United States saw an increase in media coverage of black interaction with the police over the eight years of the Obama administration. Concurrent with our now-ubiquitous social media feeds, beatings and shootings of blacks were uploaded in real-time, usually with no back story; certainly, no vetted back story. (That's the way they do it, today.)

The predictable reaction was increased social unrest, specifically in epicenters of racial violence. The Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement was hatched.

And bi-racial footballer Colin Kaepernick grabbed some ink by kneeling before his games. Kaepernick cribbed his move from religious University of Florida footballer Tim Tebow, who took to "Tebowing" before games in a petition to his Creator to keep him and his fellows safe during the game (and hopefully, to make all the viewers happy.)

Genuflecting is a position in the mode of solemnity before one's God. What this reverential position otherwise has to do with a prosperous footballer is not clear. It seems like so much grandstanding. Yes, you too can have your 15 minutes of fame.

Before whom are they genuflecting, and why?

So what is behind the Kaepernick's addition to the sorrows? He must feel badly that his unknown black father was a "shoot-and-scoot" kind of guy, his biological mother's baby daddy abandoning his destitute mother before Mr. Kaepernick was born. He was later adopted by a white family.

The reality must hurt, and it reasonable to assume that the footballer would seek for an answer to such despicable behavior. None can know the answer, but the charitable among us look backwards, to generational insults for explanation.

Perhaps it was the selling out of Colin's ancestors by fellow tribesmen to European slave traders in a long-forgotten African past. Perhaps, the experience of relatives being slaves in America.

Whatever the genesis of his father's behavior, kneeling says, "This is an implacable Mobius strip" from which we may not exit.

It says, "This legacy of dysfunction is an ever-widening gyre, destined to continue playing itself out beyond me. I bow in sorrow before the inevitiblity."

But who in our nation has not known sorrow?

Our Native Americans have reason for sorrow. So does the Vietnamese Army officer we know who spent 10 years in a re-education camp and took another ten making it over to the U.S. (He is now working in a restaurant kitchen.)

Japanese spent time in internment camps during WW II. Jewish people were used as slave labor unto death less than a century ago in Nazi Germany, and were not welcomed by the U.S. as refugees in their time of dire need. A friend has interviewed Rwandan Masssacre survivors who carry on. We have reader at RAW whose family was touched by the Armenian Genocide.

And so it goes. What distinguishes one from the other? How does on hierarchicalize?

I submit it is our response alone that dignifies and provides salvation to the former victim. One must choose for ascendence and life rather than blame and anger.

Meanwhile, the kneelers do nothing exalted, bring nothing uplifting to our consciousness.

In any event, the kneeling is a depressing sight, especially coming as it does from a man who was fortunate enough to have people lift him up in life after his unfortunate beginning, and who was then earning an eight-figure annual income.

It seems like a gesture of solidarity, but does it comport with the facts? Florida State University had a decent black sports role model a few years back in Charlie Ward who went on to finance youth mentor leadership camps post-career (in the days before FSU players became better known for stealing clothes from department store, lobsters from Publix and raping young women.)

Or look at footballer Knowshon Moreno, who was photographed crying during the National Anthem. He said he was, "excited", "blessed" and "privileged" to play this game,

Gratitude and generosity are the only positions from which one may reasonably expect to generate positive change.

But you must have the example, the imagination, to see that charity is a finer way to effect change than is an impotent gesture of solidarity. When one is gifted with largesse, charity become justice. It is there where Kaepernick et al. fail.

In any event, football is a sporting event. People tire of the ceaseless calls for atonement, the politicization of everything. There has to be a place to get away, to celebrate good-natured rivalries, even if just for a few hours.

If the kneelers want to be political, let them enter politics. The pay isn't that good (unless you like Tallahassee's Andrew Gillum, currently under FBI investigation for graft.)

A more sure route for a sports hero with bucks to make a difference is to funnel some of that money into school programs, to ensure young men and women can learn another way. I personally know of two non-profits making a real difference in this arena.

10-year Army veteran Vincent Hunt's "Creator's Camp" is helping young people develop and realize their dreams, teaching them skills for becoming future intra- or entrepreneurs.

Another, Wings for Kids, is an estimable after-school program now in three states. They told me they would come to Florida if someone would invite them.

To the footballers: you don't have to kneel. You can make a positive difference.

I'll hook you up. It'll be dope, I promise.

This is Only a Test

2017-09-24T21:37:00.000-05:00

--Congratulations, you were a "participant"

I never took the smile away from anybody's face
And that's a desperate way to look
For someone who is still a child
--In a Big Country,
Big Country

And why should I call your name,
When you're to blame
For making me blue?
--Wasted Days and Wasted Nights,
Freddy Fender

and the best at murder are those who preach against it
and the best at hate are those who preach love
and the best at war finally are those who preach peace
--The Genius of the Crowd,
Charles Bukowski
_________________________

[This is a prelude to our concluding segment on the stories we tell, "Circle Jerk III: The Frontier".]

I do not watch the news, as the mandatory agenda and relentless editorialization is onerous. But occasionally, it cannot be avoided.

Like Douglas Adams' holistic detective Dirk Gently, the gestalt does not escape my vision. To that end, two segments in a recent BBC World News America broadcast neatly collided for me.

First was a story on the propriety of leaving graphic Syrian violence uploads on You Tube channels. The commentator suggested that discretion was the key as, "People live on their platforms."

They live there, mind -- not just visit, not just type or read. Live. In a 5 x 8" screen. Even International Humanitarian Law would frown upon such living conditions.

And the Band Played On

Second, catty anchorwoman Katty Kay was sputtering over the bipartisan meeting called by the President with Democrats Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer. Clearly, this move was in violation of the party line that Mr. Trump is untenable.

"But he's 'toxic'", said Mrs. Kay (her go-to descriptor for the President.) The horror accompanying her protestation had the desperate look of someone who has been gobsmacked: the gig was up. Nothing normal was supposed to happen, yet it did.

It sounded like the silence after the horrible scratch of an agly needle on a rare vinyl album; it will now never be the same.

Instead of what might have been interesting speculation regarding a meeting on healthcare that looked a bit like a convocation from the film, "Cocoon", we get Kay, beside herself, asking her guest for some understanding of this, to her, inexplicable event.

In an embarrassingly simple explanation, the guest explained to Kay that as the U.S. President is the head of the Executive branch, he is allowed to do this sort of thing. (In fact, he noted, this is exactly the sort of thing candidate Trump promised to do.)

In such moments one perceives that the vitriol against this "impossible" President is just so much night music, a nocturne designed to both palliate and arouse the insulted Clinton faithful. The media enabled them to feel a false sense of power by unceasingly feeding -- in fact, designing -- their corrosive hatred.

While the media story is that chaos reigns, the more banal reality is that the administration churns on, doing the work of government.

A responsible press would sift through the daily docket to find the boring but important news which merits coverage. Instead, you will hear about shoes, hands and the inappropriateness of Mr. Trump's every utterance because it is a cheap and easy way to entice the faithful to update their feeds without much thought.

These two stories explained why what should have been the story of the century -- analyzing and perhaps even celebrating the election by the people of a candidate far outside of the mainstream -- has gone missing.

While this election could have spurred an honest and incisive discussion about why such a happening, that would require actually looking at the state of the American people.

Instead, we have been trained to mock the President and all attendants, and have been offered no insight. Those who voted for him are stupid little puds worthy only of our derision (right?) Comedians like Jon Stewart may be proud of their legacy.

[Note: Mr. Stewart exited stage right, perhaps aware of the Roman circus - runaway train which he had ushered in. Because he could be sharp or funny, or because he had that elastic Buster Keaton face, it became o.k. to outrageously disrespect the news. But people began THINKING of that AS the news.

No one is funny today, however, though the disrespect continues. Both he and the now-retired David Letterman have left a much meaner world in their wake.]

Today, an inroads is always found to bring any disaster back home to Mr. Trump. We all know the drill: he is white and wealthy, therefore, he emboldens poor and marginalized people to crawl out of their hidey holes and disturb the rest of us.

At least, that is the media's story and they are sticking with it. It has incited their faithful to expulse untold reams of bilge over the last year.

(Addendum: The contrapositive of the story is that if we had a person of color or a woman President, the white men would not some out of their hidey holes, and their needs and concerns would be staunched. And of course, to the party line Democrat, this would be a Good Thing.)

But as with a hurricane, such passionate energy eventually dissipates. Perhaps some of the erstwhile livid and animated viewers are becoming like Sasha Baron Cohen's character Borat at the Texas rodeo, or maybe his rapt listeners.

In the midst of Borat's impassioned diatribe about how the U.S. is going to win their "War of Terror" in increasingly contorted and ridiculously vicious ways, the supportive screams of the crowd begin to die down at his uttermost declaration (May you destroy their country so that for the next thousand years not even a single lizard will survive in their desert.)

At some point every dupe tires, and perhaps, realizes that he has been had.

And so it goes. All of the madness to which we have been exposed, causing us to to cry out against our duly-elected President, has probably been a proving grounds for the use of social media, like a test to see how wastewater permeates an unsaturated zone.

Meanwhile, some other people who know the score and see the futility, are reading Financial Times, The Economist or The Wall Street Journal, and are not spending too much breath on these things that obsess the lives of the hoi polloi.

The people who "live" on their smartphones and happily re-tweet endlessly unvetted "news" bits, have been played. They have proven to be someone's useful idiots, as they are pricked hither and thither, like hapless paramecium, whose thumbs cannot twitch fast enough (if paramecium had thumbs, that is.)

They were not even paid the $15 a Gallup Poll might have to pick their brains. By willingly surrendering their contacts and their wits, the angry re-Tweeters have proven quite useful to someone, as they dart under their Petri dish cover (i.e., smartphone screen).

Someone will use this enormous trove of free behavioral data you have provided. Count on it.

Cold comfort, but Big Brother loves you.

NEXT: Ranger on Vietnam

A Bridge Too Near

2017-09-12T16:59:00.000-05:00

Science does not have a moral dimension.
It is like a knife.
If you give it to a surgeon or a murderer,
each will use it differently
--Wernher von Braun

___________________

[Note: "Circle Jerk III: The Frontier" coming soon.]

For the last few months we have been bombarded with emotional drivel about removing the statues of Confederate States of America heroes. (This being but one example of the copious multitudes of emotional drivel on the media tap that RAW chose to look at.)

But the opening football game of the ACC college season in Atlanta, GA, brought the matter into its technicolor hypocrisy for Ranger. Specifically, it was the location.

Why, you ask?

The game was held in the Mercedes Benz Stadium. You may know that Mercedes Benz, along with BMW, Volkswagon and IG Farben all supported Hitler with his racist fantasies. They robustly enabled his international criminality and crimes against humanity, and specifically, his program to eradicate the Jewish people.

All major German corporations actively engaged in the genocide by using slave labor subjected to abysmal conditions and starvation diets, and worked unto death, times. But it doesn't seem to bother us as we sit fatted before the football game in the stadium funded by their ill-gotten monies.

No, in fact, we are untroubled by the re-location of these same German industries to the Southeast right-to-work states in order that they may hire workers at one-third the cost they would have to pay workers in Germany -- and the U.S. workers have no benefits, to boot. This outrage gets nary a peep, while we seem to have the attention and energy to attack memorials of our own Civil War, and a few pathetic slogan-carriers who look like Cousin It frozen in time from the The Munsters.

While we see fit to attack our pathetic marginalia holding anti-Jewish signs at a march to retain Civil War memorial statues, we do not bother to attack anti-Semitism in all of its guises. In fact, it is a convenient good when enlisted by liberals to support a plethora of entrenched anti-Semitic organizations.

This is called "hypocrisy".

Are we the people who supposedly won War World II? Are we now become their servants?

Since we seem so keen these days to get up in arms, why do we not bulldoze their factories, and leave our CSA heritage alone?

Ranger would rather see a Confederate statue than a monument to a foreign-owned factory with blood on its hands employing non-Union labor to avoid paying what they would pay their own -- shades of 1945. Our Southern population is the newly-exploited cohort in a time-honored behavior for these companies.

And while we are in the protest mode, why not dismantle all NASA memorials to U.S. space programs since all or our efforts sprang from the efforts of SS Maj. Wernher von Braun and his Nazi comrades? Their factories also enslaved and starved workers in the V1 and V2 rocket experiments, experiments later happily assimilated by U.S. efforts.

This should be more egregious to us than a Confederate statue.

It's amazing how quickly we forget. Is it from convenience, poor education or lack of attention spans, or a combination thereof?

We vote for Rebels over historical Nazi corporations any day of the week.

Circle Jerk 2: Queensberry Rules

2017-09-06T02:56:00.003-05:00

A freedom which is interested only in denying freedom
must be denied. And it is not true
that the recognition of the freedom of others
limits my own freedom
--Simone de Beauvoir

So let's leave it alone 'cause we can't see eye to eye
There ain't no good guy, there ain't no bad guy
There's only you and me and we just disagree
--We Just Disagree,
Dave Mason

It's funny how the colors of the real world
only seem really real when you viddy them
on the screen
--A Clockwork Orange (1971)

And if you want to be me, be me
And if you want to be you, be you
'Cause there's a million things to do
You know that there are
--If You Wanna Be Free, Be Free,
Cat Stevens

self-flagellation does not equal integration
--Lisa (doing her best Johnny Cochran)
_________________________

{We refer readers to the comment thread our previous post, Circle Jerk I. It is a candid and considered dialectic of the evolution and position of thoughtful RAW (link) readers.

Think of it as "My Dinner with Andre", with gravitas.}

You didn't know?

First: One may think as one wishes, and believe what one wishes. Those are the primary and foundational human freedoms, upon which all others are contingent. There is no second, for we are not going to the next step of potential action, as actions are circumscribed by the laws of civil society.

This obviates the need to discuss the Charlottesville marchers. It is a full-stop, Q.E.D. right there.

However, seeing as our media and society has fixated upon, ostensibly, the topic of civil rights lately -- with relish -- we will look at them to figure out the answer to the question, "Why?" and, "Is their concern genuine and relevant apropos their topic?"

If we agree that one's thoughts and beliefs are one's own, why the move to persecute anyone for his beliefs? We have not yet Orwell's Thought Police to torment and imprison us (though DARPA is probably working on that app.)

Don't Give Me No Hand Me Down News

Following the recent Charlottesville march supporting the retention U.S. Confederate War General Lee's statue, the media has been giving overwhelming coverage to supposedly mandatory contervailing thoughts and behaviors to the those of the marchers (whether stated or inferred). These are presented as necessary correctives to be imposed upon the dissenters.

To watch the talking heads is to imagine that we are like Captain Renault in "Casablanca", shocked that people believe different things. But Renault knew the game.

Maybe we are actually more like Gomer Pyle, USMC, with his authentic gesture of profound discombobulation. "Gol-ly!"

The topic might make a nice solid 3000-level Philosophy course on ethics and morals ("Why do people believe what they believe?"), but focusing on conflicting ideologies -- and preferencing one -- is not the stuff of national news. In fact, no university (aside from Berkeley, perhaps) would have the temerity to go to the next step and instruct upon how to eradicate or silence difference.

Surely any true liberal arts activist would cry to the high heavens if freedom of expression were curtailed. At least, that is how the United States used to be run.

Morality may be neither judiciously nor judicially mandated. It may at times be a curiosity and a perversion, but it is NOT actionable news. It deserves no front page ink.

So why is this even a thing?

In parts of the South, blacks celebrate their 1865 emancipation from slavery, the religious likening Mr. Lincoln's War to Moses's dictate to Pharoah ("Let my people go".) Of course, it is not exactly the same thing, but this part of the analogy to Christianity holds: Jesus doesn't make much sense without the cross.

Erase the Roman soldiers and the Crucifix and you just have a gentle guy spreading platitudes about love. So you can't have Jesus without the cross.

While General Lee was hardly anyone's crucifier, he is a representation of the Confederacy. Being as the CSA was an actual separate entity within our nation, then if for no other reason than historical accuracy, scrubbing statues and other testimony from our midst makes little sense. The statues have stood for the last 100 or so years, so why the move to rent them now?

Kipling's Jungle Book and Twain's Huckleberry Finn have both been bowdlerized to meet the politically correct policemen's standards. But in doing so, they have lost the very fire against racism which they had contained. They are happy little stories now, with nothing to rub you raw.

Throughout the South, including in many predominately black counties, statues of Confederate soldiers stand, facing North. it is a reminder of the horror of the Civil War which the young nation endured to become a Union.

So what are we really talking about when we talk about racism? Why were the people duking it out in the street in Charlottesville predominately white people? Can we reify the viewed phenomenon in order to see it as more than a salacious bloody news bite?

The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down

The marchers had a clear agenda and a permit to march, and they did so with the blessing of the ACLU. If we accept the media's presentation, they were mostly middle-aged white men who have been left behind in a technological society, and find value in identifying with the past.

They have either been adversely affected by the mandates of the Civil Rights era, or know someone who has been. The Equal Opportunity era was not about them, and racial quotas signified the end of white male dominance.

If they wish to march to preserve a commemorative statue, it is their right and they are permitted to do so. We moved through the Civil Rights and EOE era 50 years ago; the project was a judicial one, not one of neuro-engineering human thought and belief. In case you had not noticed, the human is not a perfectable organism; this is as good as it gets.

In any event, who is our Solomon, and who dictates what constitutes "right thought"? Who may choose and install our beliefs?

The Confederacy lost, and its sympathizers know that. Many have direct familial ties to that tragedy. For them, the history is living, and the desecration or removal of a monument is a felt offense.

They are like comedian Richard Pryor's black men who hold their crotches: Y'all took everything else ... we're just checking to make sure they're still there. The white marchers are checking.

Like a mute garden of stone, the continued existence of the thing will not affect history moving forward. In fact, the infinitely stronger argument is for the retention of the monuments as a reminder of the horrible sacrifices made all 'round.

The protesters are more difficult to understand. White and predominately young, they use the few and the worst placards of the marchers as their animating cause, signs expressing bigotry towards Jews and blacks. But Jews and blacks were not protesting, so what gives?

Who are these malcontents who gather to wale with such fury upon those with whom they ostensibly disagree? How are they mobilized to perform their violence? What fuels them, and what is their raison d'etre?

The protesters (not marchers) were crusin' for a brusin', fired up and ready to go. More agile and confrontational than the marchers, they looked like nothing so much as hipsters fancying themselves nuevo Che Gueveras.

But they were not fighting the power. The protesters were goading the marchers into a reaction, and taunting is schoolyard bully behavior.

They were attacking a dissipated cohort. Those from barren former factory towns know the bounty once theirs will not return for them.

The protesters are reminiscent of the character Malcolm and his misfit cohort in Anthony Burgess's A Clockwork Orange. They probably hit the Milk Bar (Starbucks) after a performance, for how to fuel the next round of "ultra-violence"? (Maybe they just return to their group homes and take their medicine.)

The larger point is, they have achieved nothing by expulsing their anger upon a crowd of non-violent legal actors. In a charitable reading of what is their driving their hatred, perhaps the protesters are resentful that they may not retroactively join the Union forces.

But more likely, they are a bunch of prigs who are angry that they missed the counter-culture movement of the 1960's. Today, gays may marry, so we are really at the end of the line as far as finding civil rights causes to fight for.

Knockin' down statues and telling people they may not believe what they believe? Kind of embarrassing. Once they have performed their diffuse violence, the beliefs of the people they are protesting remain. Their action is rendered entirely impotent. Worse, they are guilty of intimidation and illegal assault.

Beliefs are inviolable. If anything, when the marchers confront such white hot fury they will be strengthened in their beliefs, for they have been transgressed upon, furthering their feelings of alienation and resentment.

Hypocritically, many of those same protesters exploiting the few anti-Jewish placards also support the BDS movement and would be glad if the Jewish homeland disappeared. These are the same people who would disallow Stanford Jewish student Rachel Beyda from sitting on a committee because she is Jewish.

But back to Religion 301

People believe different things, and in seeking meaning they often affiliate. Their associates and they often believe they are special in some way, perhaps chosen as favored by God. This is all good in Democratic Republics like the U.S. which have both freedom from coercion to believe and the concomitant freedom to believe anything. One's mind is terra incognita.

The Judeo-Christian doctrine brings many fine things to the table of civilization. But true Christians do believe that non-believers will go to hell upon death, while they will go to the Elysian Fields. Mormons and Urantians believe they will go to another planet upon expiration. If you are not a believer, you might find these things disagreeable.

The Dalai Lama makes it his business to love all, but dollars to doughnuts, there is someone out there who thinks he is the anti-Christ. Nonetheless, all may believe as they wish. One world is enough for all of us, as the song goes.

Freedom of speech, assembly, religion -- all very fine things, inviolable in even the smallest way, for the smallest abridgment would nullify the whole. Liberalism is not the State religion; we do not have one.

On the spectrum of black power and liberation, one might choose to affiliate with Marcus Garvey, Haille Selassie, Farrakhan's anti-Semitic Nation of Islam or the Black Lives Matter movement, Frantz Fanon, Malcom X or the peaceful Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., among others. No one's gonna cold-cock you for it.

Yet the media gleefully reported the first white marchers to lose their jobs due to doxxing (revelation of anonymous marcher's personal data): a Chick-fil-A worker and a roofer. What has been accomplished? Proof that you are more powerful than they?

Do you feel better that these people are now unemployed? I do not.

I do not feel good knowing that there are vengeful bands of brigands in my midst, people hailed by many for inciting violence. Who is next on their list?

It was bully behavior and nothing to apotheosize in a functional democracy. Yet in a non-sequitur, the media rushed to feature black commentators on the spectacle, despite the fact that they were not a part of it.

The PBS NewsHour featured the usually reasonable Leonard Pitts and Carol Anderson , a black female academic from Emory, who said, either disingenuously or without understanding, that America needs to have a place for all Americans.

All, apparently, except the marchers.

Ironically, Public television had just concluded a six-part series on the American Civil War. Historian Shelby Foote gave informed testimony to the tragic regional devotion of Confederate General Lee, a man who had written passionately about the plight of slavery and the damage which the peculiar institution wrought on both Whites and blacks. He, like Jefferson before him, saw the permanent mark which would be left upon the nation.

None of the featured historians suggested Lee was a monster whose image should be struck from our collective memory. In fact, Lee's example is of nothing so much as the tragedy borne by capable military men who must perform their terrible duties, leaving unspeakable wretchedness in their wake.

The news cycle hasn't the time for such nuance, does it, when it is ultra-violence that keeps 'em tuning in.

The Circle Jerk

2017-08-24T17:34:00.000-05:00

A republic, if you can keep it
--Benjamin Franklin

If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it,
people will eventually come to believe it.
-- Joseph Goebbels

We try to hustle them,
try to bustle them, try to cuss them
Another day, another dollar,
another war, another tower
--Who Will Save Your Soul,
Jewel
____________________

[War is our stock in trade here at Ranger. Apropos of that, this is the first of a three-part critique on our media's descent into madness, thereby committing a war for your mind, and why you feel so perturbed and menaced today, and think things are falling apart. They may be, but not in the way you think they are.]

Do you love me, now that I can dance?

The mainstream media (MSM) has pulled off a great moral and ethical heist, and it all happened so quickly -- in their would-be twilight -- as the cultural critics were singing their swan song.

Papers across the nation were shuttering their doors (166 since 2008) and the reporting profession lost more than 50% of its rank and file over the last 20 years (most in the last five years.) But just before the casket lid was closed -- in this watershed moment -- the media made a pact with the devil to save its skin.

To staunch their bleeding, they co-opted billionaire entrepreneur Pierre Omidyar's model in his oxymoronic "opinion news" tabloid, The Intercept (refashioned lately as a "national security blog.) Media "reportage" became a circus seemingly overnight, the players dancing madly under the protection of diaphanous Big Top of former respectability.

No longer was the oxymoron absurd, dastardly or a piker's error, and Omidyar's model provided to the media the way to the greatest resurrection since Lazarus came back from the dead. Five years ago, the standard press was moribund --DOA. Now, the MSM were players once again.

While the papers and reporters are still gone, the press has gained cachet by adopting a new paradigm: All furore, all the time, with no pretense of rigor, and no apparent goal to their delirium and agitation. The holy grail of fact-checking has melted away in favor of the newsish, "bystander cell phone footage caught ...", or "In a leak today, ...".

Righteous indignation projected towards the solution of a moral offense is one thing (we have laws to cover legal transgressions.) But that is not what we have now, though we may trick ourselves into believing it is so, or that such a thing might be quantifiable, adjudicatable or in fact, newsworthy.

What we have is a free-floating angst focalized toward any crumb we are fed. Smut is the coin of the realm, and if the news makers have no thing, insinuation and sneers will do. The goal is pandemonium, and an instantaneous and white hot fury is the expected response from even previously thoughtful and informed consumers.

Now, we are ridge runners all. Thomas Hobbes had it right: it is a war of all against all. The media found the keys to the kingdom when they learned to transmute itself into a Zippo.

"Fire 'em up!

The old woman at a 2007 South Carolina church rally for candidate Obama had it right. A controlled candidate Obama was trying to appear down-home. He requested that attendees get stereotyped cousins "Ray-Ray and Pookie" up off the sofa to vote.

The speech was dwindling down on its own enervation when the woman in the back (Edith Childs) harnessed the power of "call-and-response" with her well-placed shout out, "Fired up, ready to go!"

While the scholastic Obama himself did not quite light the fuse, once the bodies started swaying and fist-pumping, it was all she wrote. The crowd had self-ignited, and like a stadium wave, its momentum carried itself.

That was an instructive moment in modern politics. People LIKE to get agitated, whether for good or bad. Since we have now abdicated our rationale, we easily turn "Hatfield and McCoy" when our media overlords sound the alarum.

Judicious reportage is no longer needed in the face of vanity social media feeds. The New York Times' Jim Rutenburg asked if it was o.k. to cover Mr. Trump's Presidency solely from a position of opinion, so malignant, so sui generis was it to the average NYT's reader.

Our nation's paper of note decided that the President demanded a new way of being covered, despite the fact that he won the Presidency in a most mundane fashion. It had the look of a plebiscite, but it was a foregone conclusion.

Writer Matt Taibbi said that the news was signing its death warrant if it bought into this, and trust in press impartiality would be gone. It was a last stand for dignity. (Mr. Taibbi soon joined the other side, seeing on which side his toast was buttered.)

Turns out, we do not want impartiality; what we want is to be able to whank off with others who think like we do. It feels so good that we have ceded our wits to them. Dopamine and adrenaline are powerful motivators, and we will do anything to keep the supply coming. We may now be too ill, too drunk on the toxic brew, to give up our fix.

Co-opting and Re-directing Anger

President Obama's administration oversaw a renascence in the news of police clashing with black citizens, an issue which appears like a sine wave in the media. This time, however, the events combined with the ubiquitousness of social media, allowing the images to be uploaded and shared in real-time.

Nothing was off-limits, and speculation ran rampant before the least fact could be vetted. Nothing new was happening in actuality under Obama, but the presentation and reaction to is WAS new. WE now created our reality out of bits and pieces ingathered from the sources which spoke to our predilections.

This "news wobble" became obvious several years ago when noticing the headlines from the same major news outlet delivered to my two email accounts differed considerably. After pondering the matter, the only difference was that from the older email address I wrote to mainly conservative friends; the other, primarily liberal.

The news which arrived in the first box box tended to be more optimistic and "news-like", of the old ilk. However, my newer email received only incendiary coverage, angry and rarely offering balanced viewpoints.

The media is trafficking in your fear and anger, and selling it back to you with the halo of righteousness. You are co-opted into their project when you re-send their content to 5,000 "friends". You have become small-time Soma pushers and fail to realize your complicity.

News goes on auto-pilot, as you function like HuffPo's unpaid "content generators", adding your own glib comment. But unlike the HuffPo non-wage-slaves, there is no hope of gaining a writing day job for all of your efforts.

You are mental bondsmen, compelled by habit to "help the revolution". It's just what you do, sun up to sundown, and beyond.

Bad Brilliance

So, the MSM (which was on oxygen) made a life-saving move. They would co-opt and harness the anger of the black community. They have subverted a moral and institutional failing, stripped it of its facticity, and are using the ensuing white hot fury as bellows to keep them alive.

This should make you mad. Your outrage can now be directed to any issue of their choosing. You are like bulls with ringed noses.

Think about it: they did not raise your ire against president Obama for his inability to contain the racial violence which erupted under his terms, and the media now owns that real estate (i.e., your violent impulses). They are practicing their dark arts now, and have led you to another pasture, re-directing your anger upon a focalized point of easy derision, President Trump.

This is as fine a work of agit-prop as I have seen in my lifetime. It is legerdemain of the highest order.

Skullduggery

2017-08-20T15:23:00.002-05:00

--The White Rabbit, running behind

We can do "The Innuendo"
We can dance and sing
When it's said and done
we haven't told you a thing
--Dirty Laundry,
Don Henley

Right now, there is a whole, an entire generation
that never knew anything that didn't come out of this tube.
This tube is the gospel, the ultimate revelation;
this tube can make or break presidents, popes, prime ministers;
this tube is the most awesome goddamn propaganda force
in the whole godless world
--Network (1976)

Just think of those shocks you've got
And those knocks you've got
And those blues you've got
From that news you've got
And those pains you've got
(If any brains you've got)
From those little radios
--Anything Goes,
Cole Porter
______________________

The story here is not the story.

What is this madness engulfing our news? Y'say you are shocked that tribalism and racism exists in America? Really?

If you are in the above category, you have fallen prey to the media's skulduggery.

In a true democracy, the events in Charlottesville were a law and order failure, not a civil rights one. In the absence of a proper threat assessment, there were not adequate police on site to maintain order, and violence happened.

The new normal should be: lots of police on-station when people will be exercising their freedoms of speech and assembly, if it is a situation the press may conceivably exploit to pump up viewership. There will be a flash mob on-site -- count on it.

The recent Charlottesville march should have been a quiet affair. The United States is a Republic, and contains multitudes. We have freedom of speech and of assembly. The marchers in VA had a permit (and the blessings of the ACLU) to do so.

Had agitators opposing the march not made a rumpus of it, and the press not shined a spotlight upon it, it would have been an event of no moment. Tension requires two things in opposition.

In a democracy, we are allowed to hate who and what we hate, love who and what we love. There are no thought police. To borrow from founder Thomas Jefferson, the beliefs of another "neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg".

The only rule is, we may not deprive another of life and liberty. Further, if we do so motivated by our hatreds, there will be an added designation of "hate crime" appended to the charge.

In 1978, the KKK marched in Skokie (IL) with the blessing of the ACLU. In contrast, today we are cudgeled en masse into outrage over the press's non-p.c. image du jour.

Meanwhile, within days the news cycle will direct your attention to something new to raise your ire, and you will have forgotten what had seemed so important yesterday. You will have invested no analysis into the things to which you are responding so viscerally, as there is no time or encouragement for you to do so.

Your opinions are handed to you, and they are designed to make you feel a constant undertow of menace. You have become Henny Penny, much to the delight of the press, for they are the dope pushers, and you are now a user mainlining their drivel.

The NYT recently ran a story on the "antifa" or "anti-fascist" movement. (The antifas are the liberal fascists, as opposed to the conservative ones.) They see their mission as muzzling the free speech of those with whom they disagree.

One of the group's members is quoted as saying, “You need violence in order to protect nonviolence ... [t]hat’s what’s very obviously necessary right now. It’s full-on war, basically.”

Martin Luther King, Jr. and Gandhi would be rolling over in their graves at the madness. As liberal darling Noam Chomsky wrote, “If we don’t believe in freedom of expression for people we despise, we don’t believe in it at all."

What the news will not tell you is, the antifas were illegally attempting to abridge the marcher's rights. That is all.

Do I really need to say this?

--by Lisa