Cease Fi-- Incoming!

     In the wake of the U.S. bombing of several nuclear-work sites in Iran, there was supposed to be a cease-fire between Iran and Israel.  The President of the U.S. said so.

     Their militaries don't appear to have gotten the message.  I don't know if their governments have.  Each is accusing the other of going back on the agreement.

     I'm not chortling at Mr. Trump's disappointment (he was chiding the Israelis on social media not long ago).  I'm certainly not cheering on the conflict; it is messy, with missiles, bombs and drones striking civilians along with their (presumed) military targets, in a region already filled with tragedy.

     Who ever calmed a hornet's nest by shaking it?

Ah, The Question

     Is it "monkeywrenching" if it has nothing to do with environmental activism, and isn't strictly illegal but just a little sand in the juggernaut's gears?

     Probably more polite to leave Edward Abbey's term for his destructive friends to use, and find some other name, like "malicious compliance."

Darwin Doesn't Need Your Help

     Channel-surfing this morning, on three separate occasions I happened on an NBC reporter, live from the latest big wildfire in southern California.

     She was about as close to the fire as she could get, with smoke drifting through and hints of flame in the background.  The report had "B-roll" shots from even closer, nightmarish images.

     But what kept giving me the shivers was the immediate background for the live report: A downed high-tension power line, the pole slanting away from the viewer's lower left to center screen, with a couple of crossarms making a steeper angle from lower right to upper left, big insulators gleaming, fat cables in slack catenaries crossing behind her making a dramatic scene--

     Dramatic and potentially fatal.  A downed live power line does not always arc, smoke or hum.  Electricity itself has no color, no smell, no sound.  Not every inert-looking wire is dead.  Power companies do not protect the high-voltage lines with the kinds of fuses and circuit breakers that trip once and stay off until reset.  They use "reclosers:" gadgets that open on a fault, wait some set amount of time, re-energize and try again, over and over.  It takes less human intervention and most faults -- a swinging branch, an incautious squirrel, a Mylar balloon -- will clear themselves.  Your lights at home flicker a little, maybe go out and come right back on.

     You not only can't tell if a downed power line is live or not, you can't even count on it to stay off!  California electric utilities routinely shut off power in lines feeding fire zones, especially if there's an evacuation.  They (somewhat reluctantly) shut them off in high-risk areas during fire season; power grids allow a certain amount of re-routing, though it takes extra effort.  Re-routing can light up a previously-off downed line, too; there's nothing magical about monitoring a power grid and the central control at even the most up-to-date utilities have only a limited picture of what's going on.

     The voltage gradient from a downed power line tapers off gradually with distance, in a logarithmic or inverse-square way.  The current is limited by the resistance of the soil, and current  across a resistor gives us a voltage differential.  The reality of this rough math means if you're too close, even standing with your feet too far apart can be fatal.  Holding onto a microphone connected to a wire plugged into a camera that is itself connected to a van some distance away will be fatal if the juice comes back on.  Oh, maybe she's got a wireless mic; maybe the camera is plugged into a video-over-cellular backpack.  Maybe -- and even then, maybe a long step to get back to the news van and make ready for her next live report will be her last.

     In most TV markets, the news photographers (don't call 'em "cameramen," they're photojournalists), any tech who runs a remote truck and as many live-news reporters as can be rounded up and made to hold still for an hour are subjected to regular training sessions on the dangers of overhead* and downed power lines.  The industry didn't used to do 'em, but a string of fatal and near-fatal accidents over thirty years ago caused our insurance carriers to insist.  The NBC crew ought to know better.  I hope they don't learn better the hard way.
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* Overhead?  Way up there?  Yes indeed.  For a terrestrial microwave link, those trucks carry tall pneumatic masts that will easily reach power lines -- if the operator was fool enough to park under them.  Filling in on an ENG shift, I was once waved into a spot at the State Fairgrounds, started the mast up, grabbed a reel of audio/video cable and stepped out of the truck to run it into the venue -- only to look up and see they'd put me right under a ridiculously low power drop.  I darned near broke a wrist, flailing for the air compressor shutoff, and had a short, heated discussion with the well-meaning Fairgrounds worker.

Margaret Atwood Says She's Not A Prophet

     Indeed, Ms. Atwood says The Handmaid's Tale drew on historical and (then) contemporary events -- which is one of the reasons she, somewhat sniffily, eschews being lumped in with "Science Fiction."  It's also one of the reasons I, somewhat sniffily, have shelved that book with my other science fiction books: all SF is, in one way or another, linked to current and past events, and to the writer's perception of them.

     You can read The Handmaid's Tale as a warning -- just as you can Le Guin's The Dispossessed; and they both warn about the harm caused by trying to hammer everyone into the same mold and the endless cruelties we inflict on one another when we don't stop to think and to care.

     The lesson is the same: Live however you choose -- but don't force the weird people across the road or the dull people next door to live the way you do.  Treat other people politely; you're not obliged to respect their choices but you don't get to be a jerk about it, nor do they about your choices.

     Otherwise, you're locked into an endless cycle of mutual retribution that will harm innocents every time the wheel turns.  "Oh," you may complain, "But look how it enrages those who disagree with me."  And with that, you have put yourself next to the Carthaginians as Roman historians described them, shoveling babies into the fire to ensure prosperity and victory.

     It's not worth so horrific a price.  It never is.

DEI Didn't Do It

     Elon Musk and others on the Right have decided to blame "DEI" for the California wildfires getting so out of control, or possibly for happening at all.

     That part of California has fires every winter.  They've got native plants that produce seeds that won't even germinate unless they're been through a fire, so you can't claim it's not normal.  And every so often, there's a winter there in which the Santa Ana winds aren't the usual 25 to 35 mph, but much higher.

     If there's any kind of white guy special knowledge and skill, or secret science, or for that matter magic, voodoo, prayers, incantations or handwavium that can counter fires being pushed through dry vegetation by winds of 80 mph and up, in a region of scarce water, I'm pretty sure California firefighters would like to hear about it.  But there is, in fact, no level of training, staffing or demographic adjustment that amounts to a hill of beans against what firefighters there are facing.  What they need is water, far more of it than any fire-hydrant system can deliver, and the way they usually get it is from airplanes and helicopters.  You can't fly 'em in 80+ mph winds; you can't scoop up water in winds that high and you can't drop it with any accuracy in winds that high.  Wind speeds have fallen a little and they are now dumping as much water on the fires as they can, as quickly as they can, and nobody is downchecking pilots for being too pale, too dark, too butch or too femme.  It's tricky flying and they'll take anyone who can do it.

     So some fire departments in LA County spent their downtime looking at demographics and trying to recruit firefighters from groups presently under-represented in the firefighting staff?  So what.  If they ended up with a few more who spoke the various languages spoken in their districts, or more familiar with the neighborhoods, great.  Fighting fires is hard work, and it doesn't pay all that well for the amount of risk and effort it involves.  If you're worried some nice white Christian boy is missing out on those sweet, sweet fireman jobs 'cos a dark-skinned pagan lesbian from across the sea edged him out, you're nuts.

Tragic Start To 2025

     Like you, I'm monitoring the reports from the truck-ramming attack in New Orleans that has killed at least ten people and injured over thirty.  The bare facts are about all that has been released to the public.  It is known to have been a deliberate act, not a drunk or incapacitated driver.  The FBI is on the scene and is investigating it as a probable act of terrorism.

     There are, in fact, a lot of State and Federal agencies at work on this in the French Quarter, and during the first news conference this morning, MayorLaToya Cantrell used an interestingly specific term, referring to the "unified command."

     That tells me that it's not chaos; it's from the Incident Command System, originally developed to coordinate public safety agencies fighting wildfires in California, but adopted and greatly expanded by FEMA, which had already learned the hard way what doesn't work.  ICS does work, and pretty much anyone in a position of command at a public safety agency has at least had the short course on how to work it.  I've taken the online version -- it was required in order to be certified to access the various sites where my employer has equipment, during an emergency situation.

     "Unified Command" comes right out of ICS, and lets me know that the highest-ranking members on the scene from every responding agency are metaphorically -- and probably literally -- sitting around the same table, pooling information, setting shared objectives and timetables, and sorting out who does what, within a framework they're all already familiar with.  It's a tool that prevents conflict and avoids wasted or duplicated effort, designed (perhaps uniquely, as things fed.gov go) to be flexible.  Internal chains of command are not disrupted: your boss is still your boss, but he (or his boss) is in steady contact with the bosses of every other department or agency working the incident.

     ICS command staff numbers expand and contract as the situation requires, task-oriented rather than position-oriented.  One person might wear many hats, or only one.  They may have a subsidiary staff or work solo.  And there are rules of thumb for figuring that out.  At its best, it's staggeringly effective; even when it's just clunking along, it ensures that the people out at the leading edge have ways to resolve conflict that run through their own communications and land in the laps of someone who can work it out with his or her opposite number(s).

     The system's working in New Orleans right now.  It's not magical, but it ensures FBI, the NOPD and the Louisiana State Police (etc.) are all on the same page.  There probably won't be a whole lot of details released to the Press until this evening; the next press conference* will be at noon and I don't expect to learn more from it than an update on the killed and injured, and perhaps early details on the perpetrator.  But the Mayor's use of one uncommon term has told me that the response is coordinated and organized, with clear goals.  They'll figure this crime out.
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* "Public Information Officer" is one of the defined jobs of the ICS Command Staff, and you may see a spokesperson or just a quiet coordinator in the background of the next news conference, but count on someone having the official details, probably an FBI agent; the rest of whoever will be there are only present because it is expected of them -- Mayor, probably the police chief and so on.

A Reminder

      It's "Move fast and break things," not "Move fast and break people."

"Robin Hoodie" Was Never Going To Be A Folk Hero

     It wasn't in the cards.  The UHC CEO assassin wasn't going to be a folk hero or even a comic-book (graphic novel!) vigilante.  Sane people, good people, don't shoot another person in the back unless that person presents an imminent threat to human life.

     Americans kill one another quite often, and on little provocation.  We're doing so less these days -- but we're still doing it.  And if it seems even a little justified -- how many stats have I seen about insurance claim denial rates in the last few days, with United Health Care heading the list -- a lot of us will chime in, or at least nod, or maybe just shrug.

     The fact remains that you've got to be seriously off-axis to commit that kind of murder; in fact, being some kind of nut (not to get too technical) appears to improve the odds of success, as I have written about before when discussing political assassination attempts.

     Did the killer's actions hold up a distorting mirror to the feelings of many Americans about the health-insurance industry?  Undeniably.  Just don't confuse the myth/legend/story with the facts.

     Murder is wrong.

     Running your business in such a way that a plurality (at least) of the people who hear about your murder express positive or neutral feelings about the crime is wrong, too.  It doesn't justify the murder -- but it ought to be food for thought.

Three Takes

 Staying Home:
     Despite the credit I have given Mr. Trump for driving up voter turnout, it was down this year.  The final numbers aren't in as I write; Arizona and Nevada are still counting.  But it looks like a little over 139 million people voted Red or Blue in 2024, while 155 million did so in 2020 -- and who stayed home Tuesday was significant: from 74 million Republican votes in 2020 to 72 million in 2024 isn't a big change -- but the Democrats fell from 81 million in 2020 to almost 68 million in 2024.

     Those missing numbers don't show up in the also-ran columns, either.  Apparently, 13 million Democrats looked at the race and said, "Meh," or "A pox on both of 'em."

     Pundits are busy mining and refining faint veins of "why" and partisans are touting it as a mandate, but it looks like blue apathy instead of a red surge to me.

El Camino Real:
     There is a throughline in the American Presidency that I can't quite trace.  It will take a real historian, preferably one with a couple of thousand years of hindsight.  But I have got the broad outline, and it runs from roots in Alexander Hamilton, to Andrew Jackson  and through Abraham Lincoln's wartime Presidency, lingers on Woodrow Wilson's expansion of Presidential powers (and loathing for Congressional vacillation and inefficiency), grows under Franklin D. Roosevelt coping with a global economic depression and global war, on to Richard Nixon, Bill Clinton, Ronald Reagan (especially encouraged by the Federalist Society) and blooms during Donald Trump's first term of office.  The Unitary Executive Theory is alive and well -- and ready to do some kicking.

     There's a rough parallel in Roman history: the accretion of power and authority in their executive positions, both before Caesar and after.  The appeal of "Stroke of the pen, law of the land"* is undeniable; we're wired up to want quick, bold solutions to difficult problems.  But this is a problem in and of itself.  Wilson argued for top-down government modeled on the patriarchal families of Classical antiquity, the basis for everything from Kaiser Wilhelm the Second's Germany to Stalin's Soviet Union: it's got a strong bias toward autocracy.  For all Wilson's impatience with Congress and the separation of powers, those things exist for good reason.

     Most U. S. Presidents have run some version of the American cursus honorum: military service followed by a series of civic offices, both elected and appointed.  Not every President touches every base, but nearly all of them have worked their way up, usually with some kind of legislative experience, some exposure to the give and take governance, some direct contact with what happens when slogans and ideals encounter the art of the possible.  Mr. Trump did not.  Nearly all business enterprises operate with an inherently unitary executive and little or no input from majoritarian assemblies; voting stockholders are hardly legislators.  Business has a strong bias towards autocracy.

     Do you want kings?  Because this is how you get kings.

It Can Go Boom:
     Ukraine's got a lot to lose in the aftermath of the 2024 Presidential election.  Ukraine is a country that could build a fission bomb over a long weekend and crank out fusion weapons in a matter of weeks.  And if you'd like more worries, with a few hours effort they could produce "dirty" bombs that render a patch of land uninhabitable for months, years or centuries.  Moscow's a target -- but Russian support centers and bases along the border are easier to reach, and a nuclear cordon sanitaire keeping Russian expansionism at bay could grow from there.  It's not a new idea; I cribbed it from Dean Ing, and he got the germ of it from Robert A. Heinlein.

     That's just one of the ways things could go sideways if Ukraine runs out of options.  I remain convinced that Russia's invasion is a festering boil that is more likely than not to erupt into global conflict and those odds are worse under Mr. Trump than they have been under Mr. Biden.  I hope I'm wrong.
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* People start fights over the context of this comment, but there's no denying it stuck.

You Don't Get To Choose Your Flakes

     If you start running with conspiracy theorists on one topic -- vaccines, UFOs, flat Earth, elections -- you throw open the door to all of 'em.  The "conspiracy mindset" rarely goes for just one thing.  Few people embrace every far-out notion, but the overlap between, say, people who think the Moon landings were fake and people who believe in Bigfoot is pretty large.

     Unfortunately, this includes people who are dangerous as well as the merely eccentric.  There have now been two attempts on a Presidential candidate, and in each case, the malefactor has not been a cold-eyed fanatic -- nope, they've been flakes.  People whose politics are all over the map, people who dream of fame and glory but lack the talent or dedication to achieve it.  The Secret Service is rational, cautious, methodical (and have been known to take a little too much for granted -- look for that to change, and fast).  And that means erratic people, people who are unmoored from reality, have an advantage.  Every attack after Lincoln that has done harm or come close has been perpetrated by someone who was behaving irrationally.

     That's a problem.  Unpredictability is an asset.  And the more a campaign has catered to the unmoored, the more it has been unwilling to turn away the fringe, the greater the risk.

     Normal people don't do this kind of thing -- no matter who they vote for.  Yes, your loudmouth Republican uncle and your bleeding-heart Democrat niece are normal Americans.  They might be annoying but they're not out for blood, no matter how awful their choices of politicians, policies and positions.

     But when you open the door to crazy, you open the door to all the crazy.  Expect the Secret Service to wield an even heavier hand around all the candidates from here on in.

Is It Worth Getting Out The Crayons?

     I was going to refute in extensive detail a commenter who loftily informed me that "January 6 was not an insurrection" because there weren't stacks of dead bodies and no buildings got burned to ground.  But it's simpler than that:

     Sorry, old boy, there is no ineptitude exception for insurrectionists.  The mob that stormed the capitol was seriously lacking in command, control and communications -- not to mention intelligence -- but they did have a clear aim: to interfere with the certification of Electoral Collage votes and to apprehend or hang one or more elected official (the Vice-President and the Speaker of the House),  They didn't succeed.  They were poorly organized, despite the presence of members of a few militia-type organizations.  Too much would-be brass, too many undrilled troops, zero sergeants -- and you won't go too far without noncoms.

     You know what we call unsuccessful bank robbers?  Bank robbers.  You know what we call the perpetrators of unsuccessful robberies, like the guys who broke into a local gun store and found all the guns in the store's vault or armored display cases?  Burglars.  If a man runs up to you on the sidewalk, sticks a gun in your face and demands your pocketbook, he's an attempted robber even if a car comes around the corner and he panics and runs away.  (That happened to me, and while I was sure glad to not be shot and to keep the $2.75 in cash money that I had at the time, the perp had nevertheless committed a crime.)

     You don't get a pass for being lousy at it.  People were injured and killed.  Historical properties were damaged.  I watched real-time video, handheld stuff, security cameras, some professional coverage, whatever the networks could lay hands on.  It was a mob assault with the intent of overthrowing the normal functioning of the Federal government and installing a different President than the one who had been duly elected.  And not just duly elected, but repeatedly challenged in court and every challenge found meritless.  Every recount -- even the ones most suspicious of the results and set up to be well outside normal channels -- found the same winners and losers as the original counts.

     The candidate the mob tried to put in office had lost the election.  That makes their actions an attempted coup -- an insurrection.

     How sad for your bloodlust that it wasn't as productive of carnage and otherwise terrible as it could have been, I guess, though at the time, I thought the country had a very narrow escape from a truly dire outcome, and I still do.

     I am stunned that the instigator of that insurrection has been given another chance at the office.  Win or lose, his party will come to regret it.  History shows that autocratic usurpation never comes to a good end; the only question is how long it will take and how many people will be maimed and killed before the sickness has run its course.

     I'm telling you now, you don't escape a wood-chipper by jumping into the maw and hoping to ride it out, and you sure don't avoid the guilt by volunteering to gas the thing up and push the starter button.

It's Christmas For Conspiracy Theorists

     If you don't know someone took a shot a former President Donald Trump yesterday, doing only minor damage to him, killing an innocent bystander and injuring at least two others, then you have been living under a rock well past the last trolleycar stop.

     The TV and online talking heads were on it nonstop after it happened, mostly reporting the basic facts listed above and admitting they didn't know anything more.  The shots came from an apparently unsecured rooftop overlooking the venue, and that -- as so far reported -- is a significant failure.

     I have worked engineering support for TV reporting from a Presidential candidate appearance, though with smaller crowds.  I'm not going to get into any detail, but the U. S. Secret Service doesn't kid around.  They identify the sources of risk and they get them under control.  There are locations where they've asked utilities to weld down manhole covers along the route of a motorcade.  Their normal, known way to deal with vantage points is to put their own person with a gun up there, or get a cooperating agency to do so.  Did they miss this one?  Did the individual(s) assigned to it get sneaked past, taken out, distracted?  I don't know.  We may not ever know.

     What we do know is the dizzy-minded of every stripe are fabulating; online, I have heard everything from accusations of a "Reichstag fire moment" to "a Leftist plot foiled."  It's nonsense.  Not that knowing so will stop the firehose of BS, but it's all wind.

     The first claim is easy to disprove: nobody's that good a shot, not with a bobbing, weaving, gesticulating target.  At the reported distance, under the known circumstances, no one could pull off a near-miss of that nature on purpose, period.  And without a Number Two already in place, ready to step up and wave the bloody shirt, no even semi-sane conspiracy would take that risk.

     The other extreme is harder to debunk, but the historical examples (with one or two possible exceptions*) show that it takes a lunatic to get by the security around Presidents and Presidential candidates.  From Richard Lawrence's attempt on President Andrew Jackson in 1835 through the assassinations of Presidents Garfield and McKinley, the attempts on former President Theodore Roosevelt, President-elect Franklin Roosevelt and president Truman,* the assassination of President John Kennedy and Presidential candidate Robert Kennedy to attempts on Presidents Ford (two) and Reagan, only people adrift from reality have been unpredictable enough to bring the means of doing harm within range of Presidents and Presidential candidates, at least within U. S. boundaries.  Nearly all of them have acted as "lone gunmen."  Plotters plot and all plots leak, without exception.  It only takes one Smedley Butler, only one cinematographer with a longer lens and better microphone† than plotters realize, one disaffected member of the group, one misdirected message, one nosy reporter.  And both FBI and the Secret Service are listening; researching for this post, I was impressed by the number of attempts they have foiled.  There's zero likelihood of a plot.

     It is, I am almost sorry to tell you, "the usual noise in here." Having sown political violence -- and our history shows it is always lurking -- the harvest followed.  Keeping the civility in civil society requires constant effort from each of us, and we haven't been doing a very good job of it in recent years.  My sympathies are with the victims, as are the sympathies of any decent person.
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* John Wilkes Booth was (arguably) sane and part of a wider plot; the Puerto Rico nationalists who murdered their way to within shooting distance of President Truman may have been fanatical but had no history of insanity.
 
† Perhaps I shouldn't point this out, but the power switches on many wireless microphone transmitters are lousy and, worse, talent has a habit of turning them off and then forgetting to turn them back on, so the switches are very often bypassed. 

I'm Going Back To Bed

     Wake me up right before civilization ends, please?  I want to see the big fireworks show at the grand finale.

So, That Debate?

     Two old guys, both inclined to ramble and go off on their own tack.  They got into a beef over their golf handicaps.  It wasn't impressive.  Hoping for Nixon vs. Kennedy, we got a Hudson & Landry bit instead and not one of their best. 

     One of them is a lifelong politician; the other one whipped up a gang of thugs to assault the U. S. Capitol while Congress was counting electoral votes and has never admitted he lost that election fair and square.  One of them has had a fairly quiet term of office, despite conflict between other countries; the other inspired violence from Left and Right, and fanned the flames when it happened.

     I've got points of disagreement with the incumbent but he's not a disaster, and he bids fair to remain acceptable.  The challenger and previous President was big trouble last time and promises more of the same if he gets in again, only stronger and better-organized.

     Two old guys.  That's what's on offer.  Pick one or the other.  They're old.  They're not great speakers.  But they're not the same.  Mr. Trump will create chaos.  Mr. Biden will not.  Maybe it's not an ideal set of choices but they couldn't be more clear.

The Same Old Future

     The run of too-hot-to-stay-outside weather -- along with current trends -- has reminded me of LA 2017, a brilliant (at the time) science-fictional episode of the TV series The Name of the Game.  From the stifling orange smog that has forced survivors underground to inept corporatized government to advanced technology delivered in barely-useful crappified forms, the broad outlines are a little too familiar even as the details are hopelessly dated.

     Our modern times may have more in common with the world of John Brunner's Stand On Zanzibar, in which an overheated, over-hyped media environment makes reality a thing only distantly glimpsed and despair an epidemic.  His world, another late '60s - early '70s look at the future, had too many people in too little space; ours still has room to stretch out but too often, we're standing knee-deep in bullshit and being told it smells like roses.

     It doesn't.  It never did -- you've got to manure the roses to make 'em grow, but that's not the scent anyone pursues.

     Those were lousy futures.  We should stop trying quite so hard to make them real.

Not Gonna Do It

     In response to my post yesterday, pointing out that everyone involved in the current round campus protests and responses are more-or-less hapless boobs, coping as best as they can figure out, I got a couple of comments -- comments singling out one group or another as particularly pitiable or despicable.

     That wasn't my point.  It's not even close.  It's just about the opposite.  And I'm not going to debate it.

     Nobody involved is, in actual fact, in Israel or nearby, kicking in doors, taking hostages, breaking heads,* bombing people, animals or buildings, killing or being killed, maiming or being maimed.  The protesters think there should be less damage and killing (and are trying to ensure the institutions they are attending, working for or bothering are not enabling it) and, surprise, so do many of the university administrators and police, only not quite as strongly.  Their clash is over means, not ends.  Or maybe it's over whether you should watch the fire burn or try to put it out, however futile your efforts.

     Many of the people directly involved in the actual conflict think they can kill, maim, kidnap and bomb their way to a better tomorrow -- a plan that has piled up millennia of not working especially well in that part of the world, though who am I to tell 'em?

     I've got about as much right to do so as any random college student in this country.  Or as you.  They're probably not going to listen.
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* With the possible exception of yet another group (not students, college staff or police) in California, where it appears thugs attacked protestors at UCLA with blunt-force weapons.  Reports have not named any group taking responsibility, but does it matter?  Initiating force against people who have not done so to you is immoral and unacceptable. Wave your own damn signs all you like, but you don't get to hit the other sign-wavers over the head with clubs.

Another Lazy Weekend

     Yet another weekend in which I did nearly nothing -- caught up on laundry and dishes, cooked a meal on the grill.  I tell myself I'm tired; I tell myself the increasing arthritis in my knees and hands is reason enough to vegetate until warmer and less windy weather comes along.

     There's truth in that, but it is increasingly obvious to me that the larger issue is burnout.  After five years or a decade of history that feels more and more like being strapped into a deranged roller coaster with my eyelids held open, I'm all screamed out.  I'm overloaded by horror.  Terror attacks, a pandemic that shattered my faith in the good sense of the average citizen, politics that took the ruins of that faith and plowed it under with radioactive salt, bombs and missiles raining down on a modern, civilized country and more terror spurring an even worse response: it's overwhelming.

     I don't know what our planet's variegated crop of neo-barbarians will break next.  I do know it will be precious and probably irreplaceable.

I'm Okay With Frienderdome

     The notion of "Frienderdome" doesn't bother me.

     One of the newer microblogging social media sites that has popped up in the wake of X (formerly Twitter)'s turn towards open partisanship* has fostered a grass-roots a "block early, block often" approach to intractable conflict, and it seems to be working.  There are lots of notions over which people of goodwill can disagree and discuss -- is right turn on red a good idea, or an unacceptable risk to pedestrians?  What colors work best in washrooms?  Should we tax the rich more, less or leave the rate alone? -- but there are other issues that are pure "Shiri Scissors" stuff, creating only division and resistant to forming a consensus.  You can't fix them, no matter how clever you are.

     If you can't resolve it and the conflict isn't something you can ignore, stop picking at it on social media.  Put up a wall.  In real life, if necessary you'll find a modus operandi or move on; on social media, all interaction is optional and if it only annoys, pull the plug.  It doesn't do any harm and you'll both be happier.

     We form online relationships based on imperfect knowledge.  Sometimes the curtain is pulled back and we're delighted.  Other times, we're shocked.   I worked in radio for years, and while many people looked the way they sounded, many others did not; the voice of Adonis or Aphrodite sometimes came from the mouth of a goblin or a crone.  Accept it.  Move on.
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* It's Mr. Musk's site.  He's free to pick sides, to boost one opinion and ignore, mock or remove disagreement.  He's free to alter or remove moderation and standards enforcement.  But nobody's obliged to hang around if they don't want to, and in true Internet form, they haven't.  There is a wealth of new possibilities, each with a slightly different focus and culture.

...The Supremes....

     Nope, not the singing group that propelled Diana Ross to stardom -- we should be so lucky -- but the United States Supreme Court, which as near as I can tell, is going to have a busy docket of Donald Trump and Trump-adjacent cases for 2024.

     I know what I have concluded about the man's actions; I know what the January 6 Committee concluded.  Now it's the Supreme Court's turn.  I'm figuring they'll focus on narrow technicalities, not sweeping principles; this Court has shown itself willing to stand up to the guy a little, but they haven't been overly spineful and Justices Thomas and Alito appear to be in the pocket* of our home-grown right-wing oligarchs.  I wouldn't mind that, except those selfsame oligarchs are Team Trump, not Team Institutional Republican-like-my-parents.  The rest of 'em, who knows; Chief Justice Roberts doesn't like rocking the boat (not, usually, a terrible quality in a Chief Justice), the Trump appointees have not shown a huge inclination to dance with the guy that brung 'em† and the left-leaning Justices parse the law at least as carefully as any of their peers.

     Is the President an Officer of the United States?  (Historical debate on the 14th Amendment and Chief Justice Roberts say very different things.)  Is whipping up a crowd to go break into the Capitol and send Congress fleeing in an effort to disrupt the tally of Electoral College votes an insurrection?  Is there a lawyerly way to weasel out of making the kind of decision that results in credible threats to one's personal safety?  We'll find out, in the next exciting episode, same time, same channel!  It's just a pity William Dozier isn't around to narrate it.  And that it's real life and not a campy farce.  Burgess Meredith chewing up the scenery would be a relief.
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* These two aren't looking great, ethically, and it makes me sad.  Maybe we should do the Baskin-Robbins free ice-cream thing with Supreme Court Justices: pay em so lavishly no zillionaire can bid high enough to influence 'em.  But there's always some damn thing you can buy a person with....
 
† Nor should they, or any other Justice, either.  It's a lifetime job at excellent pay (despite Justice Thomas's complaints) and they are supposed to be paying attention to what the law says, not what the President who picked them would like.  How any Supreme Court Justice can have trouble getting a loan to buy a house (etc.) is a mystery to me; it's not like they're at risk of getting laid off or fired, or left behind when the Court is moved to a right-to-work state to reduce labor costs.

Quick Roundup

     Here it is, all you need to know in the shortest time:

     U. S. domestic politics is awful.

     World politics is awful.

     War is terrible.  No civilian non-combatant ever deserves to die, even if they hold truly horrible opinions; however, letting combatants use your basement for their HQ disqualifies you from "non-combatant" status.  Also, bombing hospitals is never a good idea, even when it is.  And war is still terrible.  We should have fewer of them, and smaller.

     Please smile at other people and be nice to them; if you need encouragement, consider that some of them -- probably the ones you like least -- will really, really dislike it if you're polite and friendly.