All caps usually implies a raised voice and is more often than not inappropriate. For me today, it does not reflect anger but frustration. When we hear this not-quite-expletive uttered, it usually means a ‘discussion’ has concluded with one party surrendering in exasperation. You’ll see much more about this below. For now, let’s just say I want to deFINE the problems I see, and I know I’m not alone in this, and reFINE both my complaints and possible remediations. However, I make no promise of concision, given the habits already displayed here previously.
Patience is not a universal trait and I have just lost it on one topic in particular, that topic being the lack of an effective pushback against an obvious trend toward antidemocratic preferences on the part of some of our current and wannabe future leaders. Our posts, when they end up advocating better communication and a general reconciliation between factions in our society, usually begin with some innocuous topic and slowly segue into the main issue, never calling out names or parties. It’s time to skip the inoffensive intro and dive right in. I repeat, patience is not a universal trait. Its lack is directly coupled to the need for instant gratification. Previous posts have proposed pie-in-the-sky approaches to moving the minds of those who would contribute to the demise of our democracy, such as it is. Those plans are unlikely to achieve instant gratification or even long-term redemptions. Where does that leave us? Well, we could try changing the pie filling or punching more holes in the crust, or failing that, figuratively force-feeding it to our friends who do not yet believe they are hungry.
I want to introduce two quotes from Dwight David Eisenhower, the 34th president of the United States. He said, “Plans are worthless, but planning is everything.” I have seen many grandiose plans gathering dust on a shelf. But the process of constructing a plan requires understanding all factors that impact its successful execution, not only the what but the when and the how. It is a learning experience and in particular, it identifies obstacles to be expected along the way. Ike’s other witticism was, “For history does not long entrust the care of freedom to the weak or the timid." Is that not our challenge now? How do I relate this ‘freedom’ quote to the one about planning? Today we seek the strong and the courageous to plan our way out of an impending antidemocratic threat looming right in front of us. To those who would say that I am just crying wolf, I ask: Are you willing to be irretrievably wrong? An alarmist I am. Circumstances appear to demand that. A future post that has been on my drawing board was to be titled “Nothing happens until it does: …and when it does, BIG SURPRISE!” Again, all caps. I must pull that idea into this post because it seems that many of my fellow citizens are asleep at the proverbial wheel and a WAKE-UP! call is required. We can dispense with all caps now. But somehow we need to demonstrate that unexpected things, some preventable and some not, do happen.*
To those who differ with my leanings and who are not as alarmed as I am, be assured that I appreciate your sticking with me and will appreciate any comments, contrary or otherwise, you may want to make. Now what do I offer as evidence? Too much to list all, but I can list what is at top-of-mind at the moment.
First an aside, but not very far aside
That “Nothing happens…” post was going to continue somewhat like this.
The more things change, the more they stay the same. Yes, but not with impending disasters. More likely, the more things seem to stay the same, the less prepared we are for a major change. Call it gradualism, incrementalism, complacency, or it’s just unavoidable destiny or fate. We can choose our terminology, but they all imply not being prepared or even willing to consider impending change.
A list
Now, let’s list some changes for which most were unprepared since Homo erectus inhabited the Earth. In neither chronological order nor degree of seriousness:
The extinction of the Neanderthals and Denisovans.
Humanity’s ancestors nearly dying out according to a genetic study [1] that claims the population crashed following climate change about 930,000 years ago.
The eruption of Mount Vesuvius with Pompeii and its surroundings gone in 79 AD
The fall of the Western Roman Empire
The sinking of the Lusitania and triggering of World War I
The end of the Cold War (good with all new problems)
The demise of the horse-drawn carriage (or the advent of the horseless carriage, good with all new problems)
Climate change (not too bad yet, but is on the way)
AI (not too bad yet, but both threat and promise are on the way)
North Korean nuclear-tipped missiles targeting the US mainland (As a former US president has confirmed, “We both have launch buttons to push”).
The plagues (COVID-19 and recall bubonic, MERS, SARS, other coronaviruses, and Ebola to boot!)
The breaching of the levees by Hurricane Katrina
Deforestation of the Amazon rainforest and its impact on our supply of oxygen
Do our kids learn about all of these in K through twelve grades these days? Must we wait for a well-informed and activist next generation to grow up and knowledgeably anticipate change?
More clichés*
Take a breath and recognize many applicable clichés. We contend with prophecy versus prediction. There are the after-the-fact I-told-you-so crowd, the naysayers (as opposed to the worrywarts who like Chicken Little say, “the sky is falling”), the “this too shall pass on its own” folks, and those who rely on prophesies of a doom that we can’t avoid. The dilatory procrastinate with “we’ll get to it someday” as preparedness is someone else’s job. Procrastination applies to recognized threats. Laissez-faire is different but is just as explicit a take-no-action attitude. The regretful “we should have seen it coming” bunch just wake up too late.
Another list
There are many more isolated, localized calamities like Katrina to recall. We have earthquakes, tsunamis, hurricanes, tornados, cyclones, terrorist attacks, oil spills, reactor leaks or meltdowns, the fate of indigenous peoples, the withering of coral reefs, acid rain, and glaciers going going gone along with the arctic ice sheet (and the polar bears’ dilemma). None adequately anticipated. The only fear that makes me chuckle is the prediction that a “micro black hole will gobble up the Earth in an instant.” At least I believe that’s not real, and if it is, we’ll have no opportunity to remediate or to regret.
Denying globalism and our role
We have two wars of medium size raging now in the Middle East and Europe. One political party and a likely presidential candidate are playing political games with America’s support of the side we ought to favor and based on past behavior, would withdraw that support and from NATO, respectively. Why do some believe that returning to the isolationist stance of the 1930s, when entering WWII was not on the US horizon, would not open us to a repeat of Pearl Harbor or the more recent Nine-Eleven? I was born midway between December 7, 1941 (Pearl) and August 6 and 9, 1945 (atom bombs over Hiroshima and Nagasaki). After the US retreats from its role as the strong leader of the free world, and new conflicts are again not on anyone’s horizon, who will be born between the next surprise start of a major conflict and its extremely costly close? Even without new American leaders speeding our retreat, the USA is showing signs of decline in several areas such as education, some commercial sectors including high tech, and access to vital raw materials. Do we want to reverse those slow trends or speed them along?
US leadership depends on how the world perceives and respects the US. Many overseas can point to faults in our society. Some may be misguided in detail, but those criticisms of our holier-than-thou posture are well taken. Shall we let those fester or move aggressively to redress our internal problems and show the world that our efforts are sincere? With the divided polity of today, it is hard to see how a consensus mission could exist let alone progress.
Here at home – sleepwalking into the abyss
Not only are there folks who genuinely favor an isolationist “America First” policy but those who strongly oppose it are remaining relatively silent. Those in the globalism camp are less well organized, prefer more gentile advocacy rather than the harsh tones of the other side, and are like many, still in the “Oh, it will never happen here” group. That has got to change. The confirmation bias trap is well at work. Using the right/left attributions, the left-of-center broadcasts have a predominately left-of-center audience. Those on the air who are right of center have a similarly biased audience. Rarely do we see any crosstalk. We used to have rules governing equal time to opposing views for broadcast channels, but now with cable channels, fair and balanced is unfair and unbalanced. Will anyone hear a worried commentator opine that 2024 will be a real reprise of the fictional 1984? [2]
Another unrealistic but “what’s left” proposition
We need glue. Something that will cement many loose ends together. Something that can connect under-informed people to sources of good persuasive facts and figures.
I may be whistling in the wind, but shall we try to explain a possible unwelcome future? As we build that wall on our southern border to protect us from a minuscule number of criminals and drug runners and from very many people who truly need asylum, Canada will be building a wall on our northern border to protect their democracy from us. The next administration will be adding to authoritarian restrictions by introducing new required forms of address as members of Congress begin calling each other Tovarish (Товарищ). That’s a big left-right reversal in terms of who used to like that term. But look on the bright side. I knew a few East Germans personally and a few more through colleagues before the Berlin Wall fell. Many were content to live in a society where most decisions were made for them. No stress if one guarded one’s tongue. But then the Wall fell and suddenly choices needed to be made. Deciding where to live, what job to seek, where to travel, and which school the children will attend plus what their professions will be, are all frightening choices with which to deal. The next authoritarian USA will grant us such peace of mind that only the absence of freedom confers.
We can use some of that glue to plaster posters on every city wall where it’s legal to show passersby the Hammer and Sickle under which we’ll live. Or they can picture the empty grocery shelves of a post-competitive formerly capitalist economy where you can afford the controlled prices if you can find the milk and bread. Of course, they must also deliver images of unsmiling children in identical drab uniforms being taught to recite the oath to the Dear Leader. These are ideas based on actual past world events. Who knows what new-fangled oppressive symptoms will afflict our future?
Cheer up!
It won’t be all that bad. Right? I’m just exaggerating for effect. Right? We have guard rails. We have the Posse Comitatus Act. We have an independent judiciary. We have many don’t tread on me gun owners who will form the long-missing well-regulated militia that’s called for in our Constitution, that gave us, the people, the right to keep and bear arms, not to defend our backyard barbeques but to defend freedom itself. We are over 300 million Americans who will not just roll over and accept whatever comes. We may not be able to stop an earthquake or a volcanic eruption but surely we can reverse a government takeover if we know it’s happening after all free media have been shut down. Perhaps a note of sarcasm is detected here. Indeed. When we buy the farm where democracy is pushing up daisies, nothing on our bucket list will come to the rescue, even if that bucket is full of late to the party democratic fertilizer. Perhaps it’s time to conFINE our noisemaking to those all caps and leave these slang expressions behind. However, they do take the edge off otherwise quite serious concerns.
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*A friend who saw this post in advance reminded me of one other cliché. It’s Black Swan, which refers to an event that comes as a surprise, has a major effect, and is often inappropriately rationalized after the fact with the benefit of hindsight. [3] Once reminded, I had to add this footnote at least for completeness sake if not for the beauty of the metaphor.
[1] Reference: “Genomic inference of a severe human bottleneck during the Early to Middle Pleistocene transition” by Wangjie Hu, Ziqian Hao, Pengyuan Du, Fabio Di Vincenzo, Giorgio Manzi, Jialong Cui, Yun-Xin Fu, Yi-Hsuan Pan and Haipeng Li, 31 August 2023, Science. DOI: 10.1126/science.abq7487
[2] George Orwell, Nineteen Eighty-Four (Secker and Warburg, United Kingdom, 1949).
[3] Frederick Edward Hulme, Proverb Lore: Many Sayings, Wise Or Otherwise, on Many Subjects, Gleaned from Many Sources (Elliot Stock, London, 1902) pgs. 188ff.
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Nota Bene: Others may ruminate differently. But be warned: In my case, seeing or hearing something quite trivial -- a saying, a store clerk’s mannerisms, or bad grammar on a food product’s label – triggers a stream-of-consciousness extrapolation toward grander notions and generalizations. That is what often happens in these posts. ADDENDUM: Those subscribers who have been here for a while will have noticed that at times ruminations have veered into diatribes. I make no apology. I just want my readers to know that it’s quite intentional. When events come close to making the ‘blood boil,’ that discontent bubbles up here.
Disclaimer: Any and all opinions expressed here are my own at the time of writing with no expectation that they will hold beyond my next review of this article. Opinions are like a river, winding hither and yon, encountering obstacles and rapids, and suffering turbulent mixing of silts from its depths and detritus from its banks. But just as a river has its clear headwaters and a fertile delta, so do opinions, notwithstanding any intervening missteps and uncertainties.
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Reminder: You can visit the Cycloid Fathom Technical Publishing website at cycloid-fathom.com and the gallery at cycloid-fathom.com/gallery.
Forthcoming posts (unless life intervenes)
Grace under pressure
……Ice and silicon, strange bedfellows
Sched 3/11/2024
Our Bollards and Lines
…mooring more than ships
Sched 3/18/2024
Déjà vu
…Can a new thought be old?
Sched 3/25/2024
Science
…what it is and is not
Sched 4/1/2024
