Thoughts on all the recent violence. Terrorism or otherwise

Nice France

Baton Rouge Louisiana

Dallas Texas

Terrorism, Racial Inequality, Fear.

I wish I had some profound insights to share but I don't.  I'm just a normal guy trying to make his way in the world.  So aren't we all.  

I'm sure you've felt some of the same frustrations as the perpetrators of these horrendous crimes but you dare not express them lest you be labeled a radical sympathizer.

Is Western society far too enamored with money and power?  Does it elevate the inconsequential above social responsibility?

Of course it does.  

Do we judge others based on what we know or the rhetoric we find most convenient to our own bias.

Do the people we trust with our safety view us as their wards or potential adversaries?  Sadly your complexion has an effect on that judgement.

Too  many labels: Black, White, terrorist, racist, capitalist, rich , poor, smart, dumb.

We become prisoners of our cultural indoctrination.  Threaten the construct at  your own peril.  The wrongs of the world are caused by the other guy.  The one that doesn't look like us, doesn't pray to the same god, doesn't see the world the way you do.

It stokes a fire of frustration that becomes a blinding rage.

I'm no better than you.  I have my own biases and prejudices and I confess I don't know as much about the world as I should.  

What I do know is that the more you try to control the world the looser your grip on it becomes.  

When you create a culture of denial your reap what you sow.  When you disenfranchise others for your own benefit civil discourse becomes impossible.  


This is how Dallas, Baton Rouge, Nice and Paris happened.  This is also how 911 happened.  

I shed no tears for Osama Bin Laden, Saddam Hussein or Micah Johnson.  I see them as bloody opportunists seizing the message of the disenfranchised for their own ends.

It's what politicians do just without the guns and bombs.

When your message is one of exclusion and your world view narrow and unyielding you create an incubator for terrorism and violence. 

Yes, the perpetrators are guilty of their own crimes but we have to take some responsibility for the environment that created them.  

There's always a catalyst, a spark, something that lights the fire.  Ignorance and indifference only fans the flames.  

Even Adolf Hitler didn't rise alone like some biblical Anti-Christ as some would have you believe.  He too was an opportunist taking advantage of the disenfranchised rage of a country on the verge of collapse.  

We're far too content with the superficial.  We want a bad guy to blame so we don't have to take any responsibility for creating him.

Worse, the world we live in thrives on the superficial.  Social media, 24 hour news cycles, news delivered by "personalities" without even the suggestion of objectivity.  

The message is controlled, massaged and pre-packaged.  We're spoon fed copious amounts of useless information.

We think activism is best accomplished by a Tweet or Facebook like. 

As though a click will end hunger, oppression, and economic disparity.

People are not being heard unless they make it into the news cycle and then only the most radical.  Is it any wonder with such low information that we think every Arab is a terrorist, Every Black man a criminal, Every Latino an illegal immigrant.

We caused this.  We created this environment and it will continue unless we acknowledge our complicity in it.  

They say we should create the world we want to see.  Creation requires knowledge.  Unfortunately, what we consider knowledge is often little more than packaged diatribe.  

The way to fix it?  

Ask the uncomfortable questions.  Challenge your mental status quo and see if there isn't a whole world you've been missing.

You can't escape the experiences your life has shown you but you can escape the ignorance.

Sunday's Super large Sportsball Ubergame (updated for 2014)

A non-sports fan's guide to Sunday's Super large Sportsball Ubergame

I'm not much of a sports fan.  In fact for many professional sports I only have a passing interest in seeing their respective seasons end.  That stems primarily from a desire to see the end of the propaganda that accompanies said professional sports when their season is over.

I don't hate sports, I just don't buy into the glorification of them.  Hey, these guys get to play a game for a living.  Yes it requires training, skill and intelligence to participate but in the end it's just a game.  We should all be so lucky, but we aren't.

And so it was with Sunday's major sporting event which shall remain unnamed because last year they sued a bunch of people just for saying its name without permission from the council of elderly rich people who own it.  

It had a lot to do with large men repeatedly assaulting each other usually in pursuit of another large man in possession of an oblong shaped object.  Possession of said object is paramount in this sporting contest by the way.

As I understand it, the game is divided into 4, 15 minute quarters that for some reason take 3 hours to complete.  There is also a lavish performance event in the middle of it where they stop the game and a popular entertainer sings songs with accompanying fanfare.  After which they resume the running and assaulting of each other. 

(The 2014 version featured a matchup between a group of large individuals representing angry equines versus another group representing seafaring birds of prey.)

The 2013 version of the Super large Sportsball Ubergame took place on February 2nd and involved 2 teams.  One team represented a group of black scavenging birds and the other a group of 19th century freelance laborers with pick axes.

During low spots during the game a small group of middle aged men wearing headsets would have heated discussions about what just happened.  It's not uncommon for discussions of 30 seconds of the game's proceedings to be discussed for 15 minutes, for example.   

Some of these men could also be heard during play of the game when something of interest to them occurs.  These men are known as Sportscasters.  They're much like the players in that they get paid to talk about professional recreational events without having to take part.  Some of their membership includes former game players who have "retired" from participating in these professional recreational activities. 

For most of the game it appeared that the team representing birds were very agitated while the team representing the laborers were largely disinterested.  Except during the early part of the game after the popular entertainer was done singing or the "second half" as they call it. Perhaps they were motivated by the performance of popular entertainer.

During an opportunity for the laborer team to best the bird team's score, one of the playfield judges dressed in a prison shirt appeared to have a lapse in their judgment.  It seems that the decision of the judge in the prison garb disheartened the laborer's team.  The effect of which was for the laborer team to stop trying to best the bird team's score. Apparently the effect of the popular entertainer's performance had worn off.

(For the 2014 game it appeared the team representing the angry equines shared the same motivational psychology as 2013's team representing laborers. Throughout the event the equine team's leader was shown many times with a concerned, unfulfilled demeanor.  In the end the seafaring birds of prey triumphed over the angry equines by apparently just showing up.  Proving once and for all after 2 examples that you never want to go up against a sportsball team representing angry birds. )

 (During the weeks leading up to 2014 edition of this annual sports event many late night comedic hosting personalities made note of how both teams apparently heralded from areas of the country where the consumption of exotic flora was deemed acceptable.  With some proclaiming the sporting event the "Bowl Bowl")

Now admittedly, I could care less and was actually flipping between coverage of this sporting event and reruns of Star Trek: The Next Generation.  Still, I saw enough to know that my time was better spent on the reruns.  Although even with my limited knowledge I surmised 30 minutes before the game ended that the birds were going to leave the laborer's with excrement on their pick axes. 

Luckily, the Star Trek reruns were presented marathon fashion by BBC America proving to be a far better use of the majority of my time.  I was also able to gain the most minimal of knowledge so as not to bring harm to myself should devotees of this sport find irritation with my lack of interest. 

In short, I can fake it.  If you know the score and a few highlighted moments you can keep this sport's  devotees postulating on individual player performance for days without fear of having to interject anything except for the occasional head nod.

Mission accomplished.  

Why the Conservative Media got it wrong

Article first published as Why the Conservative Media Got it Wrong on Technorati.

If there was any question as to whether there is such a thing as a conservative media it was settled in the run-up to  the Presidential election.  From Forbes to the WashingtonTimes,  right-leaning  media outlets predicted a close but decisive win for Mitt Romney.

Their assertions were based almost entirely on the Romney campaign platform which focused on perceived weaknesses in the Obama presidency. Let's take a look at a few of them...

The weak Economy...

"Obama and congressional Democrats are clearly to blame for the dismal economy." said Policymic.com...

The argument ignores basic economics if not the calendar. 

For one thing, Economists of any stripe agree that it's impossible to completely recover from a worldwide economic recession (near depression) in less than four years.  It also ignores Wall Street, a favorite economic indicator of the media.

Speaking of Wall Street...

Throughout the Romney campaign President Obama was accused of being "Bad for Business"

Obamaand the belligerent anti-business cartel running Congress have created anincreasingly hostile environment for businesses to operate in. from the Weekly Standard...

On January 20th 2009 (Obama's Inauguration) the Dow Jones industrial average closed at 8279.63.  Election day 2012  found the close at 13245.68.

We all know that Wall Street isn't main street  but the media treats the securities markets as an economic barometer.  A 5000 point spread is hard to ignore.  A number conspicuously absent from the Republican campaigns.

Let's try another one...

Legislative gridlock that could only be resolved with a Romney presidency...

"Obamahas needlessly created political enemies among the electorate.", again from Policymic.com

This one is pure fabrication unless the mere existence of the man is reason enough to despise him.  Remember Republican Senator Mitch McConnell's quote?

"The single most important thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term president."

For the two years since the quote to the National Journal, McConnell has insisted he was taken out of context.  Considering the almost intractable ideologies we've seen in congress throughout the President's first term I'm not sure what other context would apply. 

Both parties were aware of the frustration of the electorate with approval ratings leading up to the election hovering at 17%, an historic low.  "My way or the highway" isn't compromise and even a casually informed voter knows that the President can only propose not write legislation.  After that he has to wait for something to come to his desk  to sign.  Misdirection and the fallacy of the straw man. 

Finally, the straw that was to break the back of any hope of  the President's reelection.

 Democratsare not as motivated as they were in 2008. thanks again Policymic.com...

This one was more wishful thinking than calculated advantage...

Even in the face of reduced voting hours and recent challenges to early voting laws Obama voters turned out in force.   In many cases standing hours in line to cast their ballot.  Chants of "Let Us Vote" still ringing in the electorate's ears from the weekend before the election.

Whether or not voter suppression was going on, the suggestion alone was enough of a motivation to engage the ambivalent.

So how could conservative media get it so wrong? 

"MittRomney will win big tonight.  His popular vote margin will be between 3 –5%.  He will win the Electoral College I believe by a vote of 321 to217,"  Steve Forbes, Nov 6, 2012

Three possible scenarios come to mind. 

·    The people writing this stuff are just pandering to their readers who are comprised largely of well heeled conservatives. 

·    They based their assumptions on campaign rhetoric without any fact checking.  The second Presidential debate should have discouraged that route.

·    They're just the media arm of the Republican party.

None are good options and all call into question the standards of the publication.  Popular media is no longer under any type of fairness doctrine, however,  short of libel.  That's allowed media outlets to safely engage in a political bias.    Nobody would confuse Fox News with Mother Jones for example. 

In the end I offer no cautionary admonition against such gaffs.  If anything this is simply an  example of media consumption (or creation) based on individual biases.  Most bias is usually based on at least some factual information even if it's of our own creation .