Disruption.

It is a buzzword of the new economy. Modern, nimble businesses aim to shake things upp, attacking the staid old markets guerilla style, thinking they can level the playing field by introducing changes that disrupt the status quo and subvert the ”business as usual”.

Problem is, a lot of this disruption is just bringing about change for change's sake. Not necessarily positive change, just change. A figurative and sometimes quite literal wrecking ball that is tearing down the old with very little precision, while offering no particular plan for the new. The only intent of the disruptors seems to be to cherry-pick the valuable pieces amongst the rubble that remains after the dust has settled.

And when you disrupt things in this reckless way, you really don't care about who you're hurting in the process, or whether you can rebuild better after you've wrecked things. All that matters is that you yourself, as the disruptor, are able to profit from the destruction.

Disruption seems like an apt metaphor for the Trump presidency as well (and I'm sure it will be the man's lasting legacy). Many people from the poorer, less educated parts of the country voted deliberately for Trump as a "disruptor", whether they knew to call him that or not. They felt left behind and wanted to smash things out of anger and dissatisfaction – wanted to ”send a message to the elites” as it were – and they really didn't care what happened afterwards.

They sure got their disruption.

But did it really improve things for them? In truth, can disruption ever improve things for those who are already left behind? There's a reason business people are the ones who like disruption – it tends to favor the privileged. The ones who are already poised to profit, who have the resources to take advantage of the mayhem, and who can seize the opportunities that may arise while the rest of us are trying our best to get back on our feet.

As a case-in-point, the COVID pandemic has been devastating for most parts of America. Of course, the pandemic itself was not intentional, but its effects were nonetheless every bit as disruptive and destructive as if they had been planned by corporate business vultures – for regular people that is. But not for the wealthy. The 15 richest Americans have become over $400 billion richer in the wake of the disruption caused since the COVID outbreak in March 2020.

Let me tell you a story.

I just returned from an extended roadtrip, driving through a vast part of the midwest and the upper northeast. Take it from me, it's not a pretty picture you see emerging in front of you. If this America was ever truly great, it wasn't any time in recent memory. The societal decay is really quite striking.

Inbetween the cities, an endless landscape of rural blight and neglect rolls by. Sleepy little towns and villages full of dilapidated buildings, with rusted out cars and assorted lawn trash sitting in people's front yards. Disintegrating roads worthy of a third world country are lined with endless strings of closed down businesses.

The experience honestly made me a bit despondent. How are these places and these people ever going to "be great again"?

It is quite clear that all these countless towns and villages have indeed been neglected and the people have been left behind. It is equally clear that none of this has been happening rapidly. No, the slow fading death of the American Dream has been going on since the birth of trickle-down-economics. Because, you see, the trickle never materialized – and even if it did, it certainly didn't trickle this way. The wealthy redistributed the wealth and hoarded all the money, and now all these forgotten places are completely starved of opportunity. Inequality has spread across the land like an economic plague.

To rebuild all these little po-dunk towns, you need substantial investment, but there are no investments to be expected. There's not even really anything that can be invested in, and these people really oughtn't hold out hope for the rich to take pity on them, because it is the economic policies of the privileged that caused all this decay in the first place.

So, when wealthy and influential people like Donald Trump dress up like conservative saviors and pretend to have solutions, but acknowledge no responsibility for the devastation that their economic policies have caused, they clearly have no intent of bringing more opportunities to these neglected parts of America – because capitalism offers no viable way to do that. It has disrupted, and moved on. The trickle-down playbook has already proven that, with ample clarity.

Trump may talk about "making America great again", but like a modern day Caesar – giving the people nothing but bread and circuses – it's all for show. He wants to disrupt politics and has no plan for how to rebuild, like the cynically opportunistic businessman he is. All Trump wants is the adulation – and the votes – of this misinformed, disenfranchised audience, and like all the other business disruptors, he's doing it strictly for his own benefit. He disrupts, and salvages what's left of value.

It seems the only way for this broad swath of the country to experience any kind of resurgence is for remote work to enable people to re-populate these piddly little neglected towns again, and fund the recovery with their tax money.

Except... conservatives don't even want to pay taxes.

So... where is this resurgence going to come from? Which economic policies are likely to reverse the flow of money from the middle class to the pockets of the wealthy?

I can tell you one thing for certain: tax breaks are not going to do it. Taxes have been slashed for corporations and the wealthy since the 70s, and it most definitely did not lead to "job creators" putting together some kind of rescue plan for the America that now is in dire need of greatness.

It seems, all we're left with is the tired old conservative cliché:

"Pull yourself up by your bootstraps”.

Except... the left-behind people of America's neglected towns and villages have no boots and no straps to pull.

Music journalism and biographies are filled to the brim of tragic life stories; of drug and alcohol abuse, abandoned children, sordid extramarital affairs and depleted bank accounts. It can appear as if the life of an artist is invariably a struggle, and that their demons are cruelly put on public display for all to see, but I feel the audience is often sold a bill of goods.

Personally, I never fully bought into the romanticized notion of the tortured artist as it relates to rock n' roll.

Are there, like in other artistic fields, tragic destinies buried in the annals of rock, where a damaged talent was propelled into a life of artistry, and for whom their inner muse may have had them do battle with drugs in order to exorcise their demons? Absolutely.

But for each one of those, there are twenty mediocre suckers who just wanted to make some dough, soak up the adulation of the crowd, get laid after the show and then spend their money getting high.

There is nothing romantic, poetic or even particularly tragic about the latter. It's just pitiful and sordid.

Whenever I hear stories of rock star victimhood, I look for proof or insights as to the doomed combination of a tortured soul and some unrecognized, precious talent that inevitably led Artist X down a path of self destruction.

Quite often, all I see is a lightweight who got served a life of privilege through very little effort of their own, and whose foibles ended up getting them suckered by tired old rock n' roll lifestyle clichés.

Some quotes from interviews, just to prove that point:

• ”[Artist X] has noted that the experience made him realize that even famous rock stars aren't immortal.”

• [Artist Y]: ”It's encouraged for rock stars to be out of control.”

It's an age old story, but not a noble one, or one imbued with poetic tragedy or profound meaning – just abject stupidity and gullibility.

Perpetuating these corny myths is just not purposeful as far as I'm concerned.

Prelude:

"Mom, I'm going to go across state-lines to defend myself!"

"That's fine son, make sure to bring your rifle – you know, the one you're not supposed to have – and bring plenty of ammunition. Be home in time for supper, OK?"

---

Kyle Rittenhouse, the Kenosha Black Lives Matter protest shooter, has been acquitted of all charges.

It is a truly dangerous precedent this court is setting, and I have to wonder if they considered the consequences at all.

They're basically empowering vigilantism, and they're saying they're willing to trust a fearful teenager to make the right split-second judgment call in terms of someone else's life or death. That does not speak well to the integrity or deliberation of the American justice system.

A society that permits this sort of rogue violence is truly a morally compromised one.

Do we really want to become a country of trigger-happy vigilantes – weapon fetishists who get to decide who lives or dies in the spur of the moment, and who are permitted to kill with impunity?

The court's ruling is WILDLY irresponsible. I fear no society can survive this reckless distortion of the rule of law.

Beyond the broader ramifications of this case, Rittenhouse was acquitted based on the self-defense statutes of the State of Wisconsin. So let's take a look at that argument.

What we have here is a case of ”Schrödinger's Defense”. The guy with the gun is somehow both the aggressor and the defender. (The person trying to disarm the guy with the gun is, on the other hand, apparently only seen as an aggressor).

However, unlike in Schrödinger's more philosophical case, these two things cannot legally simultaneously be true – we have to decide whether Rittenhouse was on the defense, or the offense. This, like so many other violent crime cases, ultimately goes to intent.

The people at the protest had no intent as far as Rittenhouse was concerned - offensive or defensive. They didn't even know he'd be there. They were ostensibly there to protest, and if they had other intents, those would need to also be argued and proven in a court of law. As far as Rittenhouse's presence there was concerned, protesters were clearly reacting to the evident threat that he was posing to them.

Rittenhouse, on the other hand, had a clear, pre-meditated intent to possibly shoot at people, regardless of who they were. Based on his past history, it seems clear that Rittenhouse is basically a Call of Duty cosplayer. A wannabe militia guy. A person with juvenile insecurities that he sought to compensate for with the help of an illicitly procured firearm.

It's highly incredulous to imply that any teenager would arm him- or herself and travel across state lines just to save a Target from being graffiti'ed. It seems pretty clear-cut that Rittenhouse was on the scene specifically because of what kind of protest was staged there, and because he wanted to menace people he didn't agree with politically with his nice, shiny, loaded toy. If we knew that he had done the same thing at a MAGA rally, things might be different, but he clearly took issue with the purpose of the protest itself. In addition, it appears rather unlikely that the thought of firing his weapon at someone hadn't at some point passed through his mind.

Hence, to argue this was self-defense, without any other intent or justification whatsoever, is quite a stretch. Rittenhouse could have defended himself just fine from home, or retreated safely behind police lines. Instead, he became an out-of-state armed aggressor and active participant when he entered the situation with a gun, and his intent was blatantly obvious from his posturing at the scene.

He wanted to point a gun at people and feel all tough and manly, but like the irresponsible child he is, he had zero idea of what it is like to actually take someone's life. And now, after the fact, his crocodile tears offer no consolation for the families of those he killed. He has learned absolutely nothing, and will most likely have a lucrative career as an NRA and conservative law-and-order posterboy.

A rat-a-tat-tat followed by a ka-ching.

In this, and in so many other cases involving gun violence, I think it helps to strip out the political aspect.

The apolitical bottom line is this:

From a moral stance, it is universally wrong for one person to kill another person, regardless of politics or legal hairsplitting.

Kyle Rittenhouse's defenders, on the other hand, appear to be arguing from the political perspective that the 2nd Amendment, open carry, and self defense statutes are defensible, even in the case of a scared teenager's fearful judgment being used as a yardstick to determine who lives or dies.

I find the latter position to ultimately be immoral and fundamentally incompatible with a society built on the fair administration of justice.

Law and order are null and void if we leave it up to fearful individuals to assess intent, determine guilt, and administer punishment in the heat of the moment.

Well... it sure looks like the 2nd amendment chicken have come home to roost.

As long as...

• ...you have vaguery about weapons in a country's Constitution (Which arms are referred to in there - nuclear weapons? Toothpicks? Not specified.)

• ...that same Constitution seems to imply that taking up arms against the government is somehow permissible (Just what is a "well regulated militia" anyway? And what kind of regulation are we really talking about, if it cannot infringe on the rights of its members?!)

• ...you have lobbyists who are allowed to push a for-profit gun agenda under the guise of some kind of civil rights pretense, in the face of quite outrageous, internationally anomalous rates of mass shootings

• ...you have an entire party who thinks that concealed carry and storming the capitol to interrupt a vote certification is not just kosher, but actually some sort of twisted patriotic duty

• ...you have people who manage to logically twist themselves into pretzels to claim that an armed person POSING the actual threat is somehow entitled to a "self defense" excuse

...then I suppose this is whatcha get.

In the ongoing authoritarian post-truth distortion of reality that was escalated and exploited during and in the aftermath of the Trump presidency, conservatives are laboring hard to label the enduring liberal distaste for Trump's persona, as candidate and president, as being the simple and unfair result of an "obsession". An irrational fixation without reasonable cause.

This distortion represents in itself an example of the very assault on the truth that started with the Tea Party movement, and culminated with the Trump administration's own propaganda antics, and the Trump cult's "fuck your feelings" brand of disregard for rational and civil debate. It's a form of whitewashing.

While it is not unfair to label the lingering fixation with Trump as an "obsession", I think it is disingenuous to not acknowledge that there are plenty of reasons for it. Much of this "obsession" arose quite naturally and predictably from the sheer incredulity that someone so evidently and historically unfit for public office would ever have risen to the position of president. And that incredulity doesn't even have to account for any political bias whatsoever – remember that Trump was always first and foremost an opportunist, whose political allegiances shifted as it suited his own agenda. You would be equally justified in obsessing over Trump's bad behavior as a conservative as you would as a liberal – in fact, I would argue that you should be.

Equally, the fervor of the cult of personality around him, despite Trump's manifest character flaws which were on public display for decades, seems to lack a convincing explanation. There's a staggering contrast of perception there that is terribly hard to reconcile or accept, and the contrast is created not just (or even mainly) from second hand reports, but from the statements coming directly out of the horse's mouth, and the actual behaviors of said horse.

I know many on the right are keen to dismiss anti-Trump sentiments as based on hyperbolic fabrications. This requires quite a bit of cognitive dissonance, and the wholesale dismissal of virtually anything the man himself has ever said as if it had never been documented, or the pretense that this documentation is not still out there in plain view. It is a matter of cause-and-effect, in that Trump's own words and actions seem to warrant a "hyperbolic" response, if only from a sense of proportionality. His behavior is extreme, hence it produces an extreme response - on both sides. This, then, is what divisive behavior in a president really looks like.

Since conservatives are increasingly inclined to look the other way when Trump's extreme behavior is mentioned, some of these historically anomalous presidential transgressions bear repeating, for context:

• Trump is the only president to be impeached twice. While his supporters argue that this is a result of partisan bias, that is something all past presidents have faced, and yet noone else evinced such bad behavior that it resulted in two impeachments.

• Trump was involved in a whopping 3,500 lawsuits prior to running for president. While some of these might possibly be dismissed on a case-by-case basis, the sheer volume (and what it says about the former president's relationship with the law) is truly unprecedented, by a staggering margin. Even for a businessman, this number of lawsuits should be cause for concern. Does anyone really think a candidate for a CEO position would be rubber-stamped if they had this many lawsuits on their record?

• Trump violated numerous ethical norms as incoming president, despite promises to stay true to them – for instance, the practice that presidents reveal their tax returns, in order to confirm that they are not indebted or financially beholden to anyone.

• Russian interference in US election procedures was conclusively proven, and actual indictments were issued. While it was never proven that the Trump campaign actively participated in this effort, Trump repeatedly failed to hold Russia culpable, and even disgracefully exhonerated Vladimir Putin at an international summit in what must surely be one of the most embarrassing moments in US foreign affairs. Trump later ludicrously claimed that he had misspoken.

• Trump abused a public messaging platform (Twitter) on a daily basis, berating individuals, groups, corporations, cities, and even entire nations in a manner wholly inappropriate for a president – despite initially agreeing that it would ”not be presidential” for him to continue Tweeting after he took office. This barrage of rudeness eventually reached fever pitch after the election, when his constant lying about matters important to both public health and the democratic principles of this nation became so egregious that Twitter saw fit to ban him.

• Trump set up a back door system of corruption that allowed lobbyists, corporations, interest groups and foreign representatives to engage in "pay-to-play” practices where they were given access to the president in return for spending money at his hotels and resorts.

• Trump (and several members of his cabinet) publically endorsed some brands and corporations and disparaged others, in a highly inappropriate manner which greatly affected stock evaluations. Paired with the ”pay-to-play” practices described above, it paints a picture of systemic corruption.

• Trump instituted a system of expected sycophancy on the part of his cabinet, where people who spoke out against him were removed, and others were expected to publically express loyalty and allegiance to him personally (not the office of president).

• Trump repeatedly failed to follow procedure in appointing office holders, choosing instead to simply remove those he did not agree with, and abuse a practice of assigning temporary ”acting” office holders, allowing him to circumvent established congressional vetting procedures and giving him the ability to hire and fire as he saw fit.

• The Trump administration was responsible for instating a cruel and inhumane policy of separating immigrant children from their families – a practice that could well be considered a crime against humanity, based on broadly recognized human rights principles as well as international law.

• Trump sent out his own attorney in an official but extralegal capacity, to dig up dirt on his political opponent in a foreign country. While an offer of "quid pro quo" was not conclusively proven, the act itself is highly remarkable, and you would have to ask why a foreign government would consider getting involved in one side of a US election if there wasn't something on offer for them in return.

• Trump violated his oath of office, which stipulates that he should ”well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office” . Part of those duties involves agreeing to the peaceful transition of power that is codified in US law. Trump did most emphatically not ensure a peaceful transition of power – in fact, he fought it tooth and nail, and encouraged supporters to ” fight like hell”, leading to the storming of the capitol – even after every Constitutionally defined instance (and then some) had ratified the election results. He continues to fight the transition of power to this day, bullying public officials to falsify election results, and perpetuating what numerous courts (including the Supreme Court) have established as an egregious lie.

• Trump lied so reflexively about matters big and small that one of the nation’s most respected newspapers found it necessary to instate an entire database to keep track of all the lies.

These are but a few examples – the list is virtually endless, making conservative efforts to ignore these transgressions even more outrageous, well warranting what Trump's supporters consider an ”obsession”. In fact, you could argue that conservative whitewashing of all these examples of thoroughly unpresidential behaviors has been part of what has actually stoked this ”obsession”. There have been zero consequences, for Trump or for his craven loyalists, due in no small part to republicans closing ranks and refusing to deal appropriately with this man's corrosive affliction on US politics.

The dismissal of objections to Trump's behavior can be taken as evidence of us as a society now firmly being stuck in a post-truth world, where pundits and politicians can shape the truth to their liking simply by ignoring or denying reality, or even manipulating it (in the case of gerrymandering, or politically distorting the balance of the Supreme Court). You can quite evidently choose to live in a bubble where none of Trump's countless transgressions ever occurred.

No wonder this "obsession" persists, because all this is truly disturbing. We are witnessing the slow strangulation of objectivity and truth, and the heartbeat of democracy is beginning to falter. It is quite a horror show.

If this is an obsession, we should all be obsessed.

Setting aside the issue of guilt or even intent, is Kyle Rittenhouse an appropriate example of the "good guy with a gun" that the NRA tries to get us to believe in? A teenager who deliberately and recklessly inserts himself carrying a loaded gun into a conflict, like a Call of Duty cosplayer, and who is clearly too emotionally immature and scared to act responsibly – rationally even – with that gun, and who for those very reasons quite predictably ends up using deadly force against unarmed protesters, killing two and injuring another.

This is the very best argument against that ludicrous idea of the "good guy with a gun": fear and firearms are demonstrably a very very BAD combination. The heroic myth of the experienced gunfighter whose every shot is justified and true is a delusional FANTASY.

If you place yourself with a gun in a bad situation, you are either creating a threat, or going to be subjected to one. With a loaded gun in your hand, and an imminent threat coming your way, fear is going to escalate, people are going to get hurt, and you have very little control over who, or how.

Ask Kyle Rittenhouse after the trial is over if he regrets what he did. His sobbing performance in court pretty emphatically says yes. So, was he a "good guy with a gun"?

No.

A scared child who had no concept of what it's really like to kill someone. Who should not have been armed. Who should not even have been there.

Deadly force spells lethal consequences. If you don't truly comprehend those consequences, you should not have a gun.

As for the matter of intent, I'm setting that aside since it will need to be proven in court, and the judge (along with every conservative) will argue that Rittenhouse’s intent was really to be that illusory ”good guy with a gun” – some kind of hero figure. Which this kid is most certainly not.

His behavior in court shows that he is a snivelling, immature child with very poor understanding of the consequences of his actions. Like most ”good guys with guns”, he was simply just ”a guy with a gun” who only ended up escalating tensions, and causing more violence.

So much for ”good intent”.

Bring a loaded gun into a bad situation, and you can have all the good intentions in the world. It's not going to end well.

All it shows is bad judgment.

As discussions about government mandated vaccinations proliferate, and conservatives flaunt hyperbolic statements about oppression and liberties being violated, a quote comes to mind, from the historian Thomas Frank:

"Bad government is the natural product of rule by those who believe government is bad."

In this case, conservatives assume government will seek to do harm with vaccines, because that is what they themselves would do. They cannot conceive of a government founded on the principles of public service, and so they seek to obstruct or sabotage it. But this is quite obviously a situation where we specifically elect representatives to look after the best interests of the citizens: to protect us against harm. It's no different from maintaining a military to protect against foreign aggression.

If you believe in Ronald Reagan's nihilistic statement that "government IS the problem", this will no doubt hold true for vaccination mandates as well.

The thing is, not all people believe in this core selfishness, where only your own motives are pure and uncorruptible, while everyone else is suspect; the paradoxical impetus to use your own narrow yardstick as an imperative, and to utterly disregard whatever broader consequences your actions might have on others.

Some of us believe in a societal construct where we can collectively choose to do good, and exercise our democratic privileges for the betterment of all of society. More importantly, if you don't, then you have the choice of either succumbing to utter nihilism and anarchy (meaning, you might as well go live on a deserted island), OR you have to own the consequences of your self-centered ideology, and endeavor to solve collective problems via some other mechanism – one where individual privileges and prerogatives can somehow magically be prevented from doing harm to others.

If you do not, you are nothing but a parasite on the body politic.

Make no mistake: the exit out of Afghanistan was a major debacle, with plenty of blame to go around.

But at what point is the American people justified in expecting more of its military, who is the recipient of a substantial chunk of the federal budget? And where is the acceptance of shared responsibility from the executive AND the legislative branch? Plenty of fingerpointing, but Congress seems to be completely disinterested in examining what they actually get from the massive budgets that they are continuously and uncritically rubberstamping.

Biden is hardly the only politician responsible for drowning the Pentagon in so much money that they seem to have descended into a spending frenzy, and replaced military strategy with military capitalism. It was exactly the same in Iraq and Kuwait and, well, pretty much everywhere. Seems it's about time to hire some accountants for the US military, conduct some auditing, and make sure all that money is spent appropriately, instead of shoveling money around like so much manure on all sorts of misguided arms procurement and local bribery projects.

If you apply the highly apt fiscal metaphor "bang for your buck" to the Pentagon, they must surely be one of the most inefficient armed forces the world has ever seen. Tanks and battleships are purchased in bulk, often as unnecessary additions to an already oversized arsenal that the generals do not even seem to want, bafflingly useless fighter jets are developed at unfathomable costs, and military contractors are handed what appear to be blank checks. With such a funding model, no wonder the Pentagon does not seem to care if they leave half a national arsenal behind when the decision is made to finally "get the hell outta Dodge".

In other words: time to hold the Pentagon accountable for the Pentagon's fuck-ups. They get paid more than enough for us to be justified in demanding a little straightforward old-fashioned responsibility from them.

Instead, we seem to repeatedly let the military get away with shirking their duties a little too easily. To some extent, isn't an evacuation ultimately about operational decisions on the ground? Like with everything else right now, this becomes politicized a little too wantonly.

After all, I highly doubt it's required of the president to call up the military commanders and remind them how to plan an evacuation. No doubt he carries the ultimate responsibility, but how this operation could not have been better planned by the military on the ground is completely incomprehensible to me, and I cannot understand why they seem to never be held accountable for anything.

There is certainly no shortage of resources on their end, so these failures must be due to a lack of organizational skills. Or perhaps the political decisions forced on them are so strongly resented that they decide to passively-aggressively fuck everything up and let the politicians take the blame.

Either way, we sure aren't getting a whole lot of bang for those bucks.

Reading a lot about how restrictive voter- and abortion legislations enacted in many conservative states are supposedly "undemocratic", and how they supposedly don't reflect the will of the majority.

I thought we had gotten past this; that it had been made clear that conservatives no longer care about democracy, OR what the majority of Americans think. They're hell bent on subverting elections to enact their dogmatic policies anyway, at almost any cost.

So why this continued naive focus on reasonable, rational policymaking, based on toothless polling data? Once again, Democrats prove to be stuck on words, and lacking when it comes to decisive action.

We know the GOP will ruthlessly ram through any legislation, even if it has to happen with the aid of a conservative-skewed Supreme Court, where the majority of justices were appointed without majority voter support.

They will attempt to ram through a win for a presidential candidate, even if it goes against the actual election outcome.

They will gerrymander districts to ram through results that are incongruent with the actual voter base.

They will go to almost any means to cancel out voter demographics that tend to disfavor their candidates.

They will engage in political gamesmanship and block legislation derived from voter-preferred policies on which a legitimate president campaigned and won.

They clearly have zero interest in following the will of the people, unless it's the will of people who voted for them – even if those people are in a clear minority.

It's time to stop talking about what the majority supposedly wants but apparently cannot achieve due to rigged political mechanics and bizarre filibuster rules, where a clear minority can obstruct and subvert the actual, quantitative will of the people.

Authoritarianism is at the gates. It's time to take action. Democracy literally depends on it.

I used to think Shark Tank was a pretty exciting show to watch.

You'd root for the entrepreneurs with a great idea; hope that one of the sharks would take the risk and jump onboard with them.

But these days, the sharks are fat, lazy and risk-averse - no different than institutional investors looking for a safe and easy pay-out. That is their prerogative as successful investors who no longer need to take any risks, but it's antithetical to the show's premise, and it makes for terrible TV.

Watching a neverending string of increasingly gung-ho and enthusiastic entrepreneurs get rudely schooled by rich and privileged know-it-alls on how they should have made more money prior to coming on the show, and reduced the risk for these bloated TV-fauxvestors, is not entertaining. It's not even realistically how venture capitalism works - it's just capitalism without the venture.

The axiom goes: no risk, no reward. That is especially true for Shark Tank as a reality TV show. When the risktaking is absent from the investment, the reward for the viewer is null and void.

It surprises me that the producers of the show don't see this. They should flip the script on the sharks, and have THEM desperately make the case for why viewers ought to invest their time. Right now, that is being taken for granted.

Restaurants and other minimum-wage and/or tip-based industries are having a hard time finding staff.

This now angers conservatives, who used to argue that if a minimum wage job wasn't good enough for these lazy bums, they should go off and find better jobs. Which they now have, causing a labor shortage.

But Free Market talibans will never concede that these gig workers and tip workers went off and found better jobs. They will forever argue (with scant proof) that these moochers are sitting on their asses, fed by Uncle Sam and our collective tax money.

In truth, however, many of the gig- and tip workers who still aren't working are probably busy maxing out their credit cards – ultimately benefitting the financial sector, which Free Market folks ought to be stoked about.

A problem "solved" with a thoroughly capitalist solution.

Why would we ever consider giving people more disposable income when debt is a much more effective tool to keep the poor and middle class in check...?

I can see how people might get the impression that Antifa are scary, just like one would get the impression that neo-nazis and white supremacists are scary.

However, if you actually do a bit of reading up on what Antifa actually stand for, it'd be difficult to argue that they aren't ultimately a force for good (even if one might disagree with their methods). The same can definitely NOT be said for neo-nazis.

So... do your research, people.

It seems to me, American public discourse has been getting increasingly nitpicky and childish. Most of the punditry that goes on in the media is not based on substance but on selective interpretation.

People – and this goes for the broader public as well as for so-called intellectuals – seem to be more and more frequently drawn down a rabbit hole of selectively cherry-picking statements and arguments that they can dismantle for easy rhetorical ”wins”, instead of divorcing the person who said something from the topic at hand, and debate based on the merits of the contents rather than the verbiage used.

This seems to go for debates across ideological divides, as well as conservatives debating conservatives, or liberals debating liberals. You often see people who really aren't that far apart in terms of beliefs descending into entrenched warfare based on positions staked out not so much based on nuanced intellectual disagreements, but a contrasting fervor and rigidity more akin to that of sports team aficionados. And you see people of different ideological stripes unnecessarily and antagonistically enforce differences where a little bit of mutual understanding and acknowledgement would serve both parties better. Regardless of whether you only listen to people on the right, or only to people on the left, there's a distinct inflation of differences, as if we're faced with a conflict signalling that the world is about to end, when the vast majority of Americans actually occupy a rather narrow ideological no-man's-land which is somewhat right of center compared to the rest of the world.

When publically disagreeing with someone, it seems to me it would serve the debate better to try to refrain from casting shade on the broader context by going after the validity of a specific statement, or even questioning the intellectual or verbal consistency of a specific person. We shouldn't be trying to ”win” arguments in pursuit of a ”gotcha”, strictly on a rhetorical or verbal basis. A debate is not the same as a spelling bee.

Let me give you an example: I recently read an opinion piece from Salon whose writer was trying his best to dismiss the entire ”New Atheism” movement (if it can even be called such) by going after specific public representatives like Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins and Steven Pinker, calling them ”godless grifters”, and de-legitimizing their positions by insinuating that they have become married to the alt-right. While this may seem alarming on the face of it, it's a smear that isn't much different from conservative voters calling Mitt Romney or Liz Cheney ”RINOs”. It's simple name-calling based on cherrypicked statements that ignores the entirety of the context.

To summarize, without knowing much of the background, the writer of the opinion piece – Phil Torres – seems to have an axe to grind with the ”new atheists” that he is calling out in the text. Whether this is because of some perceived slight or personal conflict, or because he has a beef with atheism as a whole, is not clear. What is clear is that he is using these individuals as tools with which to cast shade rather heavily on ”new atheism”, and he is using a few heavily edited and relayed examples of their past statements to represent not just them and their positions, but ”new atheism” as a whole.

This does not seem entirely fair and objective from a rational debating standpoint. In fact, it seems rather dishonest: an example of demagoguery. Surely, ”new atheism” as a whole, or the reasoning behind this school of thought, does not stand or fall with these particular individuals, nor should their entire written output be judged based on a few isolated quotes.

Pursuing this example further, the Salon piece cherrypicks a statement made by Sam Harris in which it appears as if Harris is using statistics from IQ tests to suggest that blacks have lower IQs than whites, and therefore say that they are empirically dumber than whites. If this is indeed a truthful interpretation, it is obviously a rather incendiary statement. Torres uses this to insinuate that Harris is racist, when the original piece written by Harris actually goes on to question the merits of IQ tests, and to conclude that such tests cannot (and should not) be used to judge individuals.

When quoting statements out of context (or even using individual representatives and their perceived positions in their entirety) to question the validity of entire schools of thought, opinion writers are often engaging in some rather tendentious sleight-of-hand.

• First of all: is the statement quoted accurately? This takes a conscientious reader time to verify; time that does not serve the understanding of the subject matter at hand. Most readers would not care about ongoing bickering between opinion writer A vs. opinion writer B, and really don't need to do so.

• Second, did the person quoting the statement understand it correctly? As readers, we have to determine that before basing an opinion on such a quote, which also detracts from the actual subject matter. This, again, is unnecessary and frivolous on the part of the person doing the quoting. I have better things to do than to go back and fact-check what opinion writer B may have actually said, and whether opinion writer A understood it correctly.

• Third, is the quote used out of context, whether mistakenly or deliberately? Again, spending time to determine this does not advance our understanding or evaluation of the subject matter.

• Fourth, did the originator of the quote actually intend it in the way it was interpreted? People write all sorts of things without the foresight of how they will be interpreted, and digging into semantics and verifications of intent can lead one astray very quickly, without necessarily having anything to do with the topic at hand. A writer's unsuccessful attempt at exploring a subject does not have to be a full or even accurate representation of what they believe, or what they meant to say.

• Fifth, how relevant is an opinion by a specific person to a larger topic? In any debate, you can assemble a collection of any number of individuals who have articulated an opinion on the subject, but this does not necessarily mean those opinions are representative of an entire school of thought, or even that they are of particular relevance to it. This can quickly become a red herring in its own right, where people start debating whether person A, B and C are truly meaningful representatives of a certain movement, which really should not matter.

We really ought to be able to divorce intellectual matters from individual people, or the when-where-and-how of what they said, and elevate the discourse to one where the actual subject matter is at the forefront. The nitpicking of what a specific person may or may not have said, or what their intent was in saying it, is not necessary to debate important topics. If anything, this is a diversion tactic often used deliberately to avoid having to address the merits of the position itself.

If I want to debate, say, a specific religious faith, or a certain political policy, or an ideological standpoint, I can make my case based on the merits of the topic alone. If I entangle that topic in the historical context of an isolated statement and the specific language used by an individual, I am fragmenting the potential relevance into any number of red herrings that are no more likely to substantiate my position than hearsay in a courtroom.

Just the facts, ma'm.

Let's debate based on substance, not based on what someone may or may not have said or meant.

”He said she said” is never a meaningful way to begin or to carry out an argument.

Conservatives have long tried to flip the script on liberals in regards to race, and assert that it is actually racist to suggest that a black person cannot succeed in this country due to their skin color.

But nobody ever said a black person CANNOT succeed in the US (that is quite obviously not true), and nobody ever said it's because of their skin color.

The argument is that a black person has a HARDER time succeeding in this country, but their skin color is obviously just the symptom, not the cause of it. The system is. And it's not people saying it, it is STATISTICS. (More statistics here, here, here and here).

It seems conservatives are implying that statistics are racist.

Human beings are a virus on this planet. We spread out; it's what we do. Migration has been a thing since the first organism crawled up onto land and started evolving.

With that said, this world is not a bunch of hermetically sealed virology labs where we can cultivate certain indigenous viral strands in isolation. And even if it was, who the fuck wants to live their life in the equivalent of a sealed petri dish?

It is about as meaningful to try and prevent people and human cultures from mixing and blending as it is to draw your curtains to avoid the outside air from getting in.

Get with the program, open your mind, and learn to adapt to change instead of trying to fight it.

Dear Americans,

In this time of political upheaval and rampant conspiracy theorizing, when riled-up people storm the Capitol, I would ask you to consider if you believe they are really acting on behalf of the people, or on behalf of the elites?

Ask yourself: who do you think the "elite" actually is?

You really, truly think they are BLM protesters or Antifa activists? You think they are working people who stand in line for hours and hours just to vote, and make their voice count?

Is Donald Trump, who encouraged the storming of the Capitol, not in fact a globalist, and very visibly part of the elite? He lives in an ivory tower, has his own jumbo jet, spends his weekends golfing at his own luxury resorts (plural!), shits on a gold toilet, employs fixers and lawyers to protect him from lawsuits, and ensure that he pays virtually no taxes in his own country. He has averted multiple bankruptcies through massive foreign loans, and does business with all sorts of foreign investors. And yet, you think he's not part of the elite – really?

Are the Kochs not part of the elite? They have sponsored numerous Republican political candidates and think tanks for decades, and are tied to ALEC (American Legislative Exchange Council), which is an organization that aims to subvert actual legislation and replace it with their own (as the name indicates), as well as revise the Constitution by pushing for a 2nd Constitutional Convention.

Is Rupert Murdoch not a globalist and part of the elite? He is the ultra-rich Australian player behind the largest news network in the US, and has been driving it towards increasingly outraged opinion-peddling as opposed to neutral news reporting. The majority of his on-screen personalities are no more than glorified bloggers, offering up their angry opinions as if they were newsworthy. You think Murdoch is paying them to speak for regular people?

Are the Waltons not part of the elite? They're the wealthiest family in the country and force their hard working WalMart employees to subsist partially on food stamps. The Waltons have donated substantial sums to conservative political candidates and right-wing causes through the decades. To say that they are not part of the elite, or pretend like they're not putting their foot on the scale on behalf of the rich and powerful, well that is simply just ignorant.

Was Sheldon Adelson not part of the elite? He was an ultra wealthy right wing investor who owned numerous casinos, hotels and newspapers, and spent a fortune supporting Trump's presidency. Do you really think he cared about ordinary Americans, other than in terms of how to fleece them of their hard earned money at the slot machines?

What about Tucker Carlson? Tucker Swanson McNear Carlson, FOX host and TV blowhard. You think he's some altruistic, neutral spokesperson for ordinary Americans? His father was the mayor of San Diego, he's married to the heiress of the uber-wealthy Swanson family, and he studied at a boarding school in Switzerland. You really think he represents the common man...?

No, the way you can tell who truly supports ordinary Americans vs. who really supports the "elite" is by looking with a clear and rational mind at which POLICIES they advocate for. Policies that benefit regular people: raising the minimum wage; ensuring affordable healthcare, child care and medicine; ensuring affordable education; protecting the environment; repairing and expanding our infrastructure; ensuring a more reliable energy grid and more sustainable energy; protecting against predatory lending practices; ensuring that corporations and the wealthy pay their fair share; protecting voting rights; protecting employee rights; protecting against discrimination based on gender, race, age or sexuality etc etc.

THESE are the policies that benefit regular people, not the "elites". And anyone who actually cared to look at the data would see that conservatives are almost ALWAYS on the wrong side of them – always are, always have been.

Why?

Because they want to preserve the status quo. They don't want things to change. That is, after all, what being conservative means! Obviously, that's also exactly what the elite would want: for things to stay the same, and for them to not have to share their prosperity, or yield any ground to the common people.

So: take a good hard look at who the elites are, which policies they support, and how that affects YOU. If you think billionaires are dying to allow you entry into their exclusive club, or if you think Donald Trump's presidency was about anything other than transferring huge amounts of wealth to himself and his rich cronies, you are sadly deluded.

The Constitution, the Law and biblical scripture have become tea leaves for people to read their own interpretations into. They no longer represent any shared cohesion or meaning, and a common definition of the objective truth seems entirely out of reach.

Social media has taught us that the truth is malleable and we can shape it to form our own preferred reality. At this point, it's unclear what will reverse that regrettable development.

The fact that the United States is not so much a nation but a federation of states seems to be the source of a lot of this lack of unity and bipartisanship. There's independent legislation across all states, and every state complains that they have to observe ANY federal imperatives.

The language that expresses distrust between the former colonies is hardwired into the Constitution. When Americans talk about Constitutionality, they don't usually talk about cohesive national principles, but their state's right to say "fuck you" to the rest of the country.

No wonder there is such discord.

In any normal democracy, losing an election typically results in a party doing some introspection and analysis of what you need to do to improve how you present your legislative agenda, and win the hearts and minds of more voters.

Not so in the US, and not with the GOP.

Instead, conservatives have doubled down on systematic voter suppression tactics and internal ideological witch hunts in order to retake power through bad faith initiatives, shameless promulgation of lies, and cynical political gamesmanship.

That is truly the mark of a party that's lost its way and no longer navigates by a political, ideological compass, but will try to win at all costs, damn the consequences. Open and fair elections have been abandoned as a meaningful way to calibrate a productive political direction.

This is a political system that has well and truly gone off the rails.

No longer can voters rely on the democratic process shaking out results on their behalf through productive debate and a genuine, mutual intent to improve things for the citizenry. Instead, we're being manipulated like numbered cue balls on a pool table.

It’s profoundly disturbing.

The thing is, I'm not even sure what is the most disturbing here: the off-the-charts insanity, cult-like behavior and anti-democratic death spiral of the GOP, or the absolutely baffling incompetence of Democrats in Congress to do anything about it - despite a long and unsettling list of never-befores:

• Here we are, mere months after an unprecedented and shocking insurrection attempt – a riled up mob storming the capitol on behalf of the sitting president, followed by conservatives openly claiming it was a false flag operation.

• Months after a democratically elected governor was threatened by a bizarre kidnapping plot.

• A majority of the opposition are still firmly clinging to a fabricated lie of widespread election fraud, despite universal, categorical rejections of these claims throughout the legal and political system.

• Republicans are chasing ghosts through the election system by turning voting machines inside out, examining ballots for bamboo fibers, and looking for indentations in paper to verify that voters actually physically circled an option.

• The twice-impeached former president, who refused to concede defeat (itself an astonishing breach of protocol), is thrown off multiple platforms for abuse of their terms of usage, and is forced to refund donations that were fraudulently solicited.

• A representative who is under investigation for pedophilia leverages this sordid attention to go on a self-congratulatory tour, soliciting conservative support and donations.

• Unhinged fifth grade bullies who can barely string together a coherent sentence, and who still incredulously got elected to office, openly harrass, insult and degrade congressional colleagues on a daily basis.

• Gaslighting politicians turn mask mandates during a global pandemic into a faux issue of civil liberty, and disingenuously reject the established science of vaccines (while still cutting in line to obtain those vaccinations for themselves).

• An armed, indoctrinated teenager goes and murders protesters, but receives applause, widespread support and substantial donations for his legal defense, and is being hailed as a patriot and a hero.

• Party members who object to the insanity are booed, ridiculed and thrown out of office.

And yet somehow, Democrats are incapable of doing anything about this. Incapable of being anything but feeble victims of all this astounding insanity.

This should be a slam dunk. It should be a simple case of adults vs. sock puppets. Skilled politicians should be running circles around all the flailing monkeys in this truly ape-shit circus.

And yet, it's as if all the craziness is not even happening. As if there are no consequences for it. It's allowed to go on, without a structured, sane rebuttal. As if we have no choice but pretend that all this bullshit is normal.

Why?

Nothing about this situation is normal. All the perplexing insanity on the conservative side should be enough to completely preclude or invalidate any real political results, and yet, Democrats are holding on by a wafer thin margin.

It shouldn't even be close.

And the fact that it IS close, both in the Senate and the House, is a bit like if gravity suddenly stopped working. It seems to defy the laws of nature.

WHY are they so inept?

HOW is it that this insanity doesn't just self-combust?

Another mass shooting. Another apathetic response.

Cue: more tone deaf idiots who think it's helpful to "explain" how AR-15 doesn't stand for "Assault Rifle". As if semantics will somehow help those who died, or stop a crazy person from obtaining a weapon of mass murder, intended specifically to kill as many people as efficiently as possible.

Yes, a crazy person might kill someone with a DF (that stands for Dinner Fork, people. Sheesh, I wish you'd educate yourself about cutlery already). Crazy people would really have to work at it to kill 10 people with a DF in the span of a few minutes though.

It's infuriating and exasperating that those who claim that banning firearms isn't a panacea for curing this gun violence pandemic, refuse to consider even one potential remedy. As if we have to hold out for that one single magic fix, and until we have it, we should do nothing.

"Hey, there are many complex reasons for these mass murders. But let's not do anything about any of them. The most important thing is that we know what AR-15 stands for."

One single shoe-bomber muslim on a plane? "OMG! Revamp air travel security! Hire thousands of people to grope your genitals while you stand there without shoes on!"

Hundreds and hundreds of crazies who waltz into stores and buy weapons of mass murder over the counter, and go out and shoot up a shopping mall? "Nah, that's just an inevitability of modern life, man. Suck it up. And for fuck's sake, learn what AR-15 stands for."

Reasoning with gun violence apologists is clearly a futile endeavor - they are showing with ample clarity that they do not care about solving this problem. Whenever you have a problem, and people who obstruct a solution to it, you don't ask them politely to consent to a solution.

You solve the problem without them.

Why are we repeatedly asking gun fetishists for permission to solve the gun violence pandemic?

• • • Do we expect caries to help repair our teeth?

    • Do we ask sex offenders for their contribution in making our children safer?

    • Do we ask arsonists to take part in firefighting operations?

    • Do we appoint Bernie Madoff to chair the Federal Reserve?

    • Do we ask bulls to kindly help organize the china shop?

    • Do we allow opioid abusers to be in charge of the pharmacy?

    • Do we seek out serial philanderers to solicit marriage counseling?

    • Do we consult with Heinrich Himmler to rewrite the penal code?

    • Do we ask toddlers to define what is a reasonable bedtime?

    • Do we hit up the captain of the Ever Given for navigational advice?

Gun fetishists: your right to buy and own an unregulated firearm does NOT trump the right of families to not have their family members murdered.

Ask yourself if you want to be part of the problem or the solution. The families of people who died want to know. And let us just conclude for one last time: knowing what AR-15 stands for is not, repeat NOT, being part of the solution.

Dismissing calls for gun regulation on the grounds that an AR-15 is not an assault rifle is like arguing that arsenic should be sold over the counter because it's not cyanide.

Sweden's COVID statistics have been far more dire than its Scandinavian neighbours, but still not quite as bad as predicted given its lax precautions, and considerably less bad than many other European nations (see this excellent article).

But Swedes have a natural proclivity for social distancing: if a Swede hears a neighbour opening their condo door to descend the stairs, they will shut their own door and wait until the neighbour leaves, so they can descend the stairs in solitude.

I think the main problem with the attitude towards precautionary measures from the Swedish Ministry of Health is that they didn't actually consider precautions at all. Anders Tegnell (the Swedish equivalent of Anthony Fauci) rejects such measures on the grounds that there is scant evidence for their efficacy.

The problem with that attitude is that he basically (somewhat cynically) treats the population's health as a science experiment, being prepared to accept a lot of potentially unnecessary deaths to see how the data shakes out. This is not a responsible attitude from a government agency.

Precautions should be taken to AVOID experiencing a bad outcome before making a decision. Caution in a potentially dire situation should be based on a worst case projection, not a neutral "wait-and-see" outlook.

Swedes will argue that the strategies of the Ministry of Health have been misunderstood. I'm sorry but there is no misunderstanding the numbers, and if the strategies didn't have the intended effects, then what is there to misunderstand?

It seems clear to me that there was selective reasoning behind Tegnell's recommendations. He chose to dismiss some precautions, citing lack of evidence, while arguing for herd immunity even when there was no data whatsoever outlining what the path to herd immunity even looks like with this virus - if it stays consistent enough for that, or mutates too fast. There is still scant evidence to confirm that herd immunity has been attained anywhere, or even that it can be. Even proof of the efficacy of vaccines against mutated strains is very scant. Still, very few are advocating against vaccines. So, why is some evidence worth dismissing, while the absence of other evidence is worth ignoring?

Not taking general precautionary measures HAS now been proven wrong, the article calls this out with ample clarity. The comparison with other European countries is not an apples-to-apples one: you'd have to first explain why countries that are closer cultural analogies have fared much better. And there were several common sense measures where there was no reason to expect that there might be adverse effects.

I still have not heard convincing arguments for not immediately testing at and limiting visits to elder care facilities, not issuing mandates about congregating, not recommending social distancing, waiting until recommending mass transit restrictions, not immediately implementing hand sanitizing routines in public places, not educating people about when and how to use masks etc. Not to mention the effects of the lackadaisical attitude that has been on full display, evincing a clear lack of public education on the matter.

As for the specific issue of masks, I think it's worth pointing out that the argument against them is related almost exclusively to self-protection (and this is parroted frequently by Trump fans and QAnon believers here in the US). But self-protection is not the main benefit of masks, or where the majority of the evidence is to be found, nor is it how they were advocated for here in the US. Masks protect OTHERS, not mainly yourself. Yes, you can still breathe in virus particles while wearing a mask. What a mask does is, it prevents you from becoming a virus agent, and curtails the spread. Your breath aerosolizes the virus, and spreads it through the air by dispersing your saliva. The virus can survive for hours on surfaces hit by micro-droplets spread through your breath. THAT is why people should wear masks: to limit the spread of their potentially virus-carrying spittle. And the evidence for this is quite robust. So, again, there has been selective reasoning applied against a certain precaution (masks), based on a limited application (self-protection).

It really surprises me that Swedes are still stubbornly refusing to recognize its pandemic response as a failure, even when the data is staring us in the face. Beyond that, I really take umbrage with Tegnell's attitude that a certain number of deaths "might be worth it" – that is not an appropriate stance for any government agency representative. The population is not his science lab to play with. I object to his cynical attitude, just as much as I object to the sweeping lack of sensible precautions that gave way to these poor results, and all these unnecessary deaths.

Beyond that, I feel the continued refusal to reevaluate is a sign of that same old historic Swedish arrogance: the belief that we know better than anyone else. A goody-two-shoes perspective of Sweden as some sort of global conscience, which conveniently ignores a lot of dirty laundry and a lot of mistakes.

There needs to be a public reckoning with the consequences of such misplaced confidence – of which the pandemic response is but one example.

In the realm of organized religion and Biblical scripture, it has always puzzled me that people are a) so willing to accept the Bible as the actual, literal words of God and/or Jesus, and b) willing to infer an absolute, unambiguous meaning from these words.

If people read every text like they read the Bible, and fail to acknowledge that every text requires interpretation (and that the reader is him- or herself responsible for that interpretation), then I wonder how we will ever have a defined place for facts and empirical truth.

Readers of Biblical scripture make all sorts on inferences from what they read. It bears pointing out that the provenance of these writings is unclear, the writers and translators are unknown, and the time of writing is undefined (but certainly didn't happen while the subject was supposedly alive – the proof of which is not very robust to begin with).

For instance, there are passages in the Bible that people quote to infer that love between two people of the same sex is disallowed. But the text typically says that people were made male and female "at the beginning" (not exclusively, for all time). It typically says "a man" and "a woman" (not "every man", or "every woman"), and it never stipulates anywhere that ONLY the male and female "will become one flesh". Nor does it spell out an imperative for a man and woman to do so – it only says they "will", not that they necessarily must.

When it is suggested that the person who is quoted (the supposed son of God) somehow made his intent clear, it needs to be stated for the record that the intent is actually very much NOT clear, because the New Testament is a report of what he supposedly said, not his own actual words. We cannot verify if the written testimony is accurate. Furthermore, the majority of the texts are allegorical – meaning they are clearly meant to be interpreted and internalized, not used for legislation. And if you need further proof of the mutability of these words, just look at the history of Biblical translation and interpretation, and realize that there are already hundreds of different versions out there. Makes you wonder what the purpose was to have those stone tablets made in the first place, if people can just pick up a quill pen, and rewrite the words at will.

It seems to me, when you are inferring things from a text whose origin and provenance is unclear, whose intent is inferred but not known, and whose meaning is very much up for interpretation, you might as well head on down to your local Chinese restaurant, get yourself a fortune cookie, and derive the Meaning of Life from it.

One can make all sorts of subjective inferences from these writings, and that is the very problem with organized religion and Biblical scripture. Empirical, unambiguous and definitive they are most certainly not, and the accuracy of the quotes (if the words were ever actually uttered) cannot be ascertained.

You can take a lot of things on faith alone, and add them to your beliefs, but you cannot define the empirical, universal truth based on them. In court, they call these kinds of things ”hearsay”, which would invariably elicit the exclamation "objection, your honor” from either of the opposing parties involved.

So, consider this my objection:

What we make of these words is up to us, and WE have to answer for our individual interpretations – that responsibility is ours and ours alone, and we have no right to project that interpretation onto someone else.

Don't blame a divine, fictional being for your own twisted ideas.

If you complain about the Oprah Winfrey interview with Meghan Markle, and think that her grievances are merely the spoiled whining of a privileged and pampered brat, then it seems to me you are completely blind to the bigger picture. This is not about her – systemic racism is never about any one single individual.

If you're joining the mob of ignorants who feel it's their job to deny her the right to speak up about this, you're continuing the oppressive behavior of putting down people of color as soon as they rise to any position of prominence (regardless of what we may feel about that position, or the justification of its prominence).

Check your privilege.

We may flippantly dismiss the British royal court as an archaic thing of irrelevance, but the racist/imperialist/colonialist traditions it is founded upon are no joke and they're still very much a thing we need to object to, and strive to eliminate.

Royal dynasties may no longer hold any formal power, but they remain at the epicenter of what gave rise to the systemic racism we experience today. They hold symbolic power. They represent dynastic, inherited white privilege, and sit as living monuments of the hegemony of white anglosaxon christian culture.

When people of color approach that symbolic power, and are immediately (often savagely) dismissed as unworthy of it, a message is sent to every minority child in the world:

"Don't ever dare think you can be like us."

The people of every economically disadvantaged nation that was once in the clutches of colonialist exploitation understands this context.

This is not about Her Royal Highness the Queen unwittingly exhibiting some innocent old lady tone-deafness in asking about the skin color of her future great-grandchild.

This is about white imperialism re-asserting its dominance over the world.

Congressional Republicans are trying their hardest to deflect from their own and the former president's culpability in the events that lead up to the violent assault on the Capitol on January 6th.

Some, like Ted Cruz (R-TX), are trying to make the case that this is really about free speech, and that we shouldn't inhibit anyone's right to yell ”fight like hell” at an already riled up mob – as if this right matters more than the right of 81 million voters to have their voices heard. As if there is no such thing as criminal incitement (which is explicitly not protected by the freedom of speech).

Others, like Mitch McConnell (R-KY), are trying to make the case that this is really about limitations on the constitutional powers of the Senate, and that citizens will have to take their case to the federal courts – as if it is not Congress' actual constitutional role to act as a check on abuses of power of the Executive branch.

The very point here, and the difference between any other protest (violent or not), is that the riot of January 6th took place at the very time a democratic vote was being certified. It was aimed at the very heart of the place where the certification was being executed, putting lawmakers at risk and desecrating the Capitol. Meaning, it was a direct, targeted assault on our democratic process.

The fact that Trump did not personally walk with the insurrectionists to the Capitol does not mean he wasn't engineering an attempt to subvert the legitimate result of an election – that effort began long before Election Day.

So, we're not just talking about a protest, but about a broad, orchestrated assault on our democracy, of which the riot was merely a part. We should be very wary of anyone who speaks in defense of such a thing, because they would certainly not do so if the shoe was on the other foot. This means their arguments cannot be trusted.

Imagine if Trump had won (legitimately), Biden had fought him in the courts (without merit), and egged BLM and Antifa on to storm the capitol (even if you could argue that the mob went further than he intended them to). Do you really think Ted Cruz would be objecting to an impeachment then...? Or that Mitch McConnell would be dismissing a conviction verdict based on a poorly supported constitutional rationale? Consider that these are people who impeached President Clinton for lying about a blowjob, and you have your answer.

It's high time to take off the partisan goggles and try to see things in clear daylight. There is only one party that is broadly and forcefully getting behind actual anti-democratic actions today, and you know full well which one it is. You may not agree with the purpose or methods of other protesters, but at least their efforts are not a direct attempt at subverting democracy.

Furthermore, you can argue til the cows come home that congressional Republicans are standing their ground on a constitutional basis, or that they are defending free speech. It really doesn't matter. The bottom line is, they have been unwilling to rein in the Executive branch (as is their job), and protect the election process from egregious overreach and insurrection.

THAT is what this is about, not some deflection or other.

It doesn't matter one iota what history will say about a presidency that was stained by two impeachments, if there is no accountability for the actions that necessitated them.

Given the limp, toothless outcome of Trump's impeachment, history will no doubt see more of these anti-democratic, authoritarian actions from future presidents, and history will note that elected representatives of Congress, who took an oath specifically to prevent these kinds of actions, chose to sit on their hands.

"We have no power" said McConnell, arguing against conviction on procedural grounds – a scenario he himself brought about by refusing to act before Trump was out of office. It seems to me, politicians have a lot of power, but only when they want to – like for instance when Supreme Court justices need to be rammed through at unprecedented speed.

What history says about something is immaterial if we don't learn from it. And when we don't learn from history, we're bound to repeat it.

The intent was crystal clear.

It was clear when the president was on the record numerous times, exploring every possible way to overturn the election (including calling a Secretary of State and ordering him to fudge the numbers).

It was clear when the president told an already angered mob to go to the very place at the very time that the vote was being certified, and "fight like hell", and ”if you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country anymore”.

For anyone to argue that the intent was not crystal clear really stretches credulity to the breaking point. Especially since they (the mob) are saying after the fact that they were doing precisely what the president told them to do, and he then said he loved them after they did it.

I'm genuinely curious what Republican senators think would constitute evidence of intent in this case, outside of a full confession. If this does not show intent, then it seems there is never any intent, of anything. We may as well surrender to nihilism completely.

If someone is caught on tape telling someone to murder someone else, and the murder is then carried out, that constitutes clear culpability in the eyes of the law, just as much as if you had pulled the trigger yourself.

If someone engages in hate speech, encouraging acts of violence against a certain group, and violence then ensues, you can be held legally responsible for criminal incitement.

The Presidential Transition Act of 1963 states that ”Any disruption occasioned by the transfer of the executive power could produce results detrimental to the safety and well-being of the United States and its people.”

What we have observed is very clearly an ongoing disruption – in fact, an outright sabotage – of the transfer of power. What's worse, this disruption was staged at the very occasion of an election result being certified by Congress, with the full endorsement of the outgoing president. A president who had sworn a sacred oath to ”take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed”.

What the president did was so very clearly counter to the meaning of this oath. The transfer of power is enshrined in law, and the president violated that law – he violated it himself by trying to coerce another elected representative to change a certified election result, and he incited a mob to storm the capitol to disrupt the certification of that result. The president's actions were at the very least careless, and there was no faithful execution of the law whatsoever. The certification WAS disrupted, as was the intent.

It's exceptionally hard to summarize these impeachment procedures and conclude that justice was served, that the Constitution was respected, or that the president or the senate have upheld the oaths they took.

What we see on display in the capitol right now is an outrageous sham of the highest order; a disgraceful mockery of our democracy; a shameful reversal of a procedure which was supposed to restore some faith in our democratic processes, and reinstate some dignity and credibility in the sacred constitutional oaths taken by our elected officials. A way to set the record straight, and assert what is right after a disastrous event that was so very clearly wrong.

And yet, all that which is so very clearly fundamentally wrong – all the evidence that is crushing the very notion of impartiality under the immense weight of the most egregious of democratic violations; a violent insurrection, egged on by the very commander in chief – all this wrongness incredulously appears to be of no importance. It will in all likelihood have zero consequences, simply because of blatantly partisan political gamesmanship.

It's as if a bank robber is put on trial, with wads of cash from the crime still falling out of his pockets, farcically being judged by a jury very much of his peers – a jury actually consisting of some of his fellow co-conspirators, with their ski-masks barely even removed. A criminal being acquitted by his bankrobber partners-in-crime.

We're watching it happen, and we're being forced to accept this travesty as if it somehow represents due process for what is surely one of the worst offenses a president can commit: an almost shockingly clear violation of his oath of office, to "take care that the laws be faithfully executed".

There was certainly no care taken by 45, nor were any laws or duties in regards to the election executed in a way even remotely faithful to the presidential oath of office. Instead, his acts spoke of nothing but disregard for the laws whose integrity he was supposed to safeguard; acts committed in thoroughly bad faith from start to finish.

And yet, this destructive wrecking ball of a president will not be held accountable for any of this.

I don't know how a political system can survive this amount of damage.

How can it be that the experience of being elected to Congress doesn't humble you?

How are you not awed by the responsibility you're asked to shoulder, and the confidence voters have placed in you? How are you not filled by respect for the democratic traditions of which you are now a part?

Instead, you enter into office like a classless buffoon; you abuse your given platform by spewing hair-brained nonsense; you pose in stupid, sloganeering face masks; you're being openly disrespectful and aggressive and threatening towards your colleagues?

I don't get it. You're being afforded an immense privilege, entrusted with carrying on our sacred democratic traditions, and this is how you choose to repay this trust?

Normalization comes in different shapes and sizes. On one hand, there's the normalization of bad behavior: the surrender to gaslighting and lies that causes us to lose sight of what is acceptable and true, and which gradually erodes the fabric of our society. Then there's the normalization of differences that allows us to realize that the human condition is multi-faceted and diverse, which in turn helps us become more aware and more tolerant. The confirmation of Pete Buttigieg as US Secretary of Transportation is an encouraging affirmation of the latter.

It seems profoundly problematic to me that we allow populism to devolve into authoritarianism, cult of personality and systematic incitement to violence, without recognizing the culpability of the populist who stirs up all this anger. If you repeatedly play with fire and the house burns down, you need to be held accountable as the arsonist you are.

There is a persistent myth about the Trump voter as an uneducated working class rube.

In reality, it has been Trumpists (and Trump himself) who have cultivated this image of Trump as a messianic savior of the American working class (which for all rational, thinking people is a completely absurd idea). It may be mainly working class supporters who show up at his campaign rallies, and who make the most noise, but they are not the ones who account for most of the votes.

"The myth of insecure working-class voters" should probably really be called "the truth about insecure white middle-class voters" . Time and time again, it has been proven that ethnicity-based fears are the main reason why Trump's rhetoric has been so successful. Like all myths, there is a measure of truth in it, insofar as whites are becoming a proportionately smaller part of the population. There is no denying this, but the question is why this is such a worry to whites. You would simply have to adopt a world view where whites are seen as superior in order to perceive their marginalization as a threat.

White upper-middle-class voters have quite evidently fallen for Trump's blatant fear mongering about black and brown people coming to destroy their nice, orderly suburbs. They feel marginalized – not because they are poor, or lack representation, but simply because they are white, Christian soft-core racists. A world where their hegemony is threatened is a world that feels alien and frightening to them, and there are so very MANY of them. They want tougher migration policies, they want to cut back on social welfare programs, and they do not care at all about civil justice issues such as police violence against blacks. Quite the contrary: they want to empower the police to be even tougher on the minorities that scare them so.

This is a development that has been in the works for a long time – it was called "white flight" in the 60s, 70s and 80s, when the white middle class abandoned the inner cities and moved to expensive, homogenous new construction suburbs. As this shift was happening, the tax base for inner city schools was slowly being depleted. Coupled with so-called redlining, there has been an ongoing segregation that has affected mainly poor inner city students, whose families cannot afford to send their children to better schools. They are truly the ones whose opportunities have shrunk, but you didn't see them voting for Trump. Why? Because they are disproportionately black and brown, and Trump clearly never had any intent whatsoever of improving their circumstances.

What we're seeing today are the consequences of this. White voters are not uneducated or poor, but they have been able to retreat into a security bubble where they have allowed themselves to be indoctrinated.

This issue is much more a matter of inner cities vs. suburbs than poor vs. rich, or city dwellers vs. rural residents. There simply aren't enough rural people to influence an election outcome: Wyoming has 580,000 residents, of which 65% live in cities, while California has 40 million, of which 88% live in cities.

I believe it was because of this that Trump voters were so taken aback during the vote counting of the 2020 election. The suburbs are dominated by Trump voters and they are somewhat scattered, with a relatively low population density. Most of those voters followed Trump's instruction to vote on election day itself, which is why their votes were counted first, creating the illusion that Trump was in the lead.

All states basically saw the same scenario playing out on election day, and in the aftermath: due partially to closures of polling stations in the big cities, liberals voted early, or by mail-in vote, and those votes (which were much more numerous due to population density) were counted last. Which pretty much universally led to Biden catching up and overtaking Trump in the final stages of the election. A repeat of that scenario, essentially proving out the hypothesis, played out in the Georgia run-offs.

This seems to have come as quite a shock to Trump voters, and that's probably partially why they were so eager to believe all the lies about election fraud.

The real logical fallacy perpetuated by Trump supporters when they claim he didn't incite an insurrection isn't failing to connect the dots between all his angry, fear-based rhetoric at his rallies. It's thinking that these kinds of insurrectionist sentiments and behaviors can be contained once the beast is unleashed from its shackles.

At this point, whether Trump actually incited this is immaterial. Whether he can or wants to stop what's going on is beside the point. What he has set into motion cannot be restrained with mere words.

And THAT is what will be his legacy: starting an avalance of untruth, anger and unreason which is picking up momentum day by day.

If it stops at one single riotous assault on the Capitol, we'll all be lucky.

It's a shocker, I know, but you CAN actually condemn both rioting, looting AND violent insurrection.

It is also possible to tell the difference.

The former two don't usually involve beating a cop to death with a flagpole, chanting about hanging the vice president, or smearing feces on the interior walls of the Capitol.

The latter, by contrast, typically involves an actual threat to our democracy where lawmakers are made to fear for their lives, electoral proceedings are interrupted, and the peaceful transition of power is compromised.

The latter also tends to be the kind of thing that ends up in the history books: usually an event the wrong side of which you really don't want to be on.

You don't hear people cheering for Benedict Arnold these days.

The powder keg finally exploded.

Armed insurrectionists, cheered on by president Trump and empowered by the opportunistic and irresponsible behavior of bad faith actors like Ted Cruz, Josh Hawley, Tommy Tuberville et al, stormed into the Capitol during a supposedly procedural joint session, in which Biden's already certified and legally validated election win was to be formally confirmed.

It is not a stretch to suggest that all this brouhaha started with the systematic undermining of the truth that was caused by the onslaught of Fake News. While originating in Russia, it gradually morphed and metastasized through social media and talk radio into the broader American discourse.

President Trump and the cynical, self-serving ghouls of his administration have since further hollowed out the foundation of the nation's political and electoral integrity. Their intent is - somewhat ironically - best summarized by Russian dissident and chess master Garry Kasparov:

"The point of modern propaganda isn't only to misinform or push an agenda. It is to exhaust your critical thinking, to annihilate truth."

And it is true that the population of the United States now live in a post-truth world; a world where Sean Hannity and Anderson Cooper report events in stark contrast, and viewers are forced to align with one or the other. The events at the Capitol on January 6th were covered very differently in the media: while CNN blew up huge headlines saying "THE CAPITOL IS BREACHED", OAN merely reported that Trump was speaking at a "Save America" event.

For this obfuscation of truth, I think we have to give some credit to Russian intelligence, because all the destructive events that the onslaught of Fake News has managed to set in motion are ultimately rooted in deep-seated American division. We often describe this nation in terms like "the American Melting Pot", which sounds nice except there hasn't really been much melting. Differences in culture, ideology, asymmetrical and unequal power structures, quasi-fundamentalist religious mumbo-jumbo and, frankly, a lot of fucked up shit that actually began already during the American Revolution, have continued to sow discord. It keeps bubbling to the surface every so often.

I think it always was (and still is) a gross exaggeration to call this country the "United States of America", for the whole disjointed power structure arose from the states initially not trusting each other, and demanding equal power to ignore federal government. This lack of trust is hard coded into The Constitution. Wyoming (579,000) has two senators and thinks this is perfectly normal, while California (40 million) also has two senators. That is nothing if not a massive skewing of representational power, and it is naive to think that this does not have consequences. The states are disproportionately well represented, are all very loosely connected, and all believe that they should be entitled to basically ignore any and all legislation that would define a cohesive nation if they feel like it.

The Civil War amplified these rifts, since there were never any real consequences for the arch betrayal committed by the southern states. Every so often, you still hear demagogues threaten secession. The South has continued as if it is raining, ignoring their defeat, celebrating the same old murky values, ​​and labelling it patriotism. The fact that you cannot by definition be patriotic while making the case for secession seems to escape them. This growing dissent and fundamental differences in values have been further fueled by the NRA as of late (an organization which has, not coincidentally, received support from Russia). And now, we have armed right wing militias who have assumed the modus operandum that it is fair game to oppose election results with armed violence, regardless of the legal legitimacy of the opposition. This is not a protest movement, it is a movement to destabilize the nation.

I honestly do not really understand exactly what Americans are so proud and patriotic about. They certainly do not share the same values – they're often not even compatible. It takes very little for Americans to become irate and conspiratorial about what is going on in other parts of the country. People are prone to using paranoid, hyperbolic talk of "good vs evil", and sit in judgement of other people with a chauvinistic aplomb that I have rarely observed anywhere else. It seems their often misplaced pride revolves around very different things. Many people on the right have even swallowed the canard that the US is "not a democracy, but a republic", flaunting the ludicrous idea that democracy is somehow a socialist conspiracy, and rehashing arguments from the 1700s when the term ”democracy” meant literal, direct democracy. Today, obviously, a republic and a democracy are virtually the same thing - representative democracy - and to argue that the United States is not a democracy is just nonsensical.

At the same time, large parts of the American South have undergone a societal disintegration that sometimes makes it look like the Third World. It's absolutely shocking to see up close. With such vast economic gaps, and a Congress ruled by lobbyists, where politicians spend most of their time chasing donations, institutionalized corruption is an established (if not fully recognized) fact. Citizens are reduced to mere passengers. Exacerbate this by giving the citizenry only two real political choices (which are already pretty limited and do not actually afford much of a real choice), it is not difficult to create a widespread feeling of frustration and disenfranchisement, which in turn generates societal turbulence.

All of the above is stoked by an entertainment-saturated media apparatus, where highly skewed opinions and commentary have long since replaced factual reporting, and viewers are basically brainwashed and indoctrinated on a nightly basis.

When needless conflict, exaggerated contrasts and aggressive soundbites offer better headlines than a more nuanced, level-headed truth, then what you have is not a healthy situation.

You have built yourself a very effective little pressure cooker.

Ted Cruz is questioning the validity of the 2020 election, using that to prop up a presumed future bid for 2024 and putting on a show of integrity that is, in fact, the exact opposite:

"(...) that deep distrust of our democratic processes will not magically disappear. It should concern us all. (...)"

It's astonishing how habitually grandstanding, chronic bad faith actors like Cruz can concoct dishonest scenarios in which they become champions of the truth. If voters do indeed have "deep distrust of our democratic processes", I can't think of a worse person to try and dispel that distrust than the senator from Texas. His trustworthiness is null and void – even senate republicans would attest to that.

Yet, here he is again, stirring up some kind of faux righteousness based on nothing but feeble lies, conspiracy theories and kooky, easily disproven poppycock. He pretends to care about the integrity of our elections while enthusiastically, nihilistically burning the 2020 election down to the ground. It's like the poisoner complaining about the foul taste of arsenic, while forcing the victim's mouth shut.

The way to restore faith in our electoral politics is NOT to give voice to unfounded claims, rumours, conspiracy theories and outright fraudulent assertions (from which Giuliani et al have been forced to back away when under oath).

The way to support the law and the Constitution is NOT to amplify seditious talk about overturning what by all rational, measured, legal accounts was a perfectly legitimate election.

The way to ensure the integrity of an election is NOT to cast doubt on the process without procuring the requisite proof, while throwing scores of kooks and attention hogs into courtrooms with frivolous and sensationalist claims.

Ted Cruz is doing the exact OPPOSITE of what he should be doing as a public servant. His job as a senator is to protect the Constitution and hold the president accountable. He took an oath to that effect. And yet, here he is using nothing but the president's unhinged tweets to support an attempt at overturning an election. He really ought to be ashamed, and should be prosecuted.

I wish someone would tell me how many more rounds of this nonsense we're supposed to accept. Round after round of fabricated fizzle and multiple court-rejected frivolities, and STILL conservatives and Trump cultists won't settle down. How much more? They have proven nothing. And nothing. And nothing again. This is not "due process", it's the very opposite of that: fabricating an alternate reality in which Donald Trump didn't lose. Trump himself is busy trying to enact that reality by calling and pressuring elected officials, using mob tactics and poorly veiled threats.

Cruz and his conservative confederates expect us to believe the word of a narcissistic bully; a born and bred sore loser who habitually and whiningly refuses to recognize any and every verdict that goes against him (even if it's just trivial statistics like inauguration attendance numbers).

Compare this to the 2000 election, where Al Gore lost by 537 votes in ONE state, and where a mere counting error could have easily swung the vote. And yet, Gore ultimately conceded, on Dec 13th. Trump, however, continues to dig in his heels four weeks beyond that date, cheered on by disingenuous gamesmanship pretenders like Cruz.

Give it up already. You're making a mockery of democracy.

To quote a recent op-ed in National Review: "To knowingly pretend a lie is true is, simply put, to lie."