North Korea is very dangerous, unfinished business.

 I see North Korea as being very dangerous, unfinished business, because of our decision to accept a draw in the Korean War, back in 1953.  The current government in Pyong Yang is a direct successor to the government that controlled that state more than half a century ago and it is a staunch enemy of everything that this country stands for.  I do not here intend to try to refight the Korean War, but I regard our decision to accept a truce as being very unfortunate, even though it probably saved my life.  Today, Pyongyang is cooperating with Moscow in fighting the war in Ukraine, and, as a reward, is receiving assistance in developing its nuclear capability.  A capability that is aimed at this country.

North Korean troops in Ukraine are a serious escalation of that ridiculous conflict, but the most dangerous part of it, in my mind, is the payback that Pyongyang is receiving from Russia because it threatens the American heartland.  The Kim family is dedicated to redressing the division of Korea into two nation states and it is willing to go to war to achieve reunification of the Korean peninsula under Pyongyang’s control.  Americans alive today do not remember how bad the Korean War was, but over two million people died in it and nearly half a million Chinese were among the dead and wounded.  Beijing is very definitely part of the Korean enigma and the problem is metastasizing as Teheran joins the anti-American axis that is emerging.  Here, in this country, the Biden/Harris Administration basically ignores the issue, while Trump seeks to address it by restoring the American military’s waning capability to defend against it.

Given the Hobson choice between Trump and Harris, I obviously choose Trump, but I also believe that this country has to move well beyond the shortsighted Trump doctrine of America First.  I accept that we must maintain a military capability that is superior to any other on earth, but I do not believe that a strong military is, by itself, adequate to defend ourselves from some idiot, like one of the Kim family, deciding to use nuclear weapons.  Mutual deterrence is all fine and good as long as the various potential contenders are rational.  I suggest that there are far too many flash points around the globe that involve unstable leaders with their fingers on buttons that lead directly to nuclear war.  Some of them are even apocalyptic in their thinking and might well see nuclear war as being necessary to cleanse the earth.  Were I in a position to influence policy, I would reestablish military dominance and simultaneously initiate economic policies that expressed more real concern for the standard of living of all humans.

I am jaundiced enough to believe that you and I are too shortsighted to do the necessary, and I see that as being stupid.  My fellow American's refuse to accept that we are stupid, so we will eventually slide into another conflict and this time it might very well involve a nuclear exchange that changes the world under our feet and the air that we breath.  At that point in time, the sign on the bathroom door probably won't seem as important as it does now.

Garbage, politics and nuclear war..

An unknown comic at a Trump campaign event made an unsuccessful attempt at humor that insulted a large group of potential voters.  The president of the United States then used that comment to insult another large group of voters.  Many of these voters will permit this type of rhetoric to influence their votes.  I am critical of the joke as being in poor taste and extremely unfunny, but I do not see its relevance to the war in Ukraine, Gaza, Sudan, or Burkina Faso, let alone the gang violence that is growing in our cities, or the size of our national debt, or a gazillion other things.  I am more critical of a vote cast because of it, than I am of it.

You and I are living in dangerous times, but the threat that we face has virtually nothing to do with sanitation on a nearby island, or an unsuccessful joke by an unknown, wannabe comic.  I argue that you and I should be more concerned with some of the other problems that are out there.  I also suggest that we should be actively discussing what to do about each of them, rather than spending all of our time trying to prove that none of them are our fault.  We desperately want to believe that we are right about whatever, and we focus all of our energy toward that goal, leaving very little, if any, energy for the real issues that threaten us.

I oversimplify when I call it wishful thinking, but whatever it is, it is going to kill us.  In times past, it inconvenienced previous generations and led to industrialized warfare that killed lots of people.  Today, it will eventually, once again, trigger war, but this time, the conflict will include nuclear weapons and that will change the chemistry of the air that we breathe and the fertility of the dirt under our feet.  Potatoes will be impacted adversely and that will significantly change life as we know it now.  Sanitation will be a problem, not for an island off the east coast of America, but for humanity in general.  The garbage will not just be unhealthy, it will be toxic.

Bitcoin and Nuclear War

 I, quite frankly, do not understand Bitcoin, or anything associated with it, but I wish that I did.  If I were a youngster today, I would make a sincere effort to get my head around it, in as much as it seems to be growing in importance both inside this country and out in the rest of the world as well.   Putin is talking about using the principals underlying Bitcoin in his effort to replace the dominance of the US dollar in international trade and people like Elon Musk are taking it seriously.  All of this, while this country continues to spend more than we are making - no matter which political party dominates the halls of power in Washington DC.  The American people are on a sugar high that is, at some point, going to crash our economy.  Individual politicians milk the situation to get political power over the rest of us, but, today, none of them even begin to address the imbalance between the world’s resources and mouths.  I admittedly do not know, but I suspect that Bitcoin is nothing more than another charade designed to cope with this failure on our part.

As I look out into the world around us, I see entirely too much conflict.  Conflict that adversely impacts the economies of the countries directly involved, but even more importantly, the international economy.  At some point we, you and I, will wake to the relationship of the world’s standard of living to our own lives, but I fear that it will be too late to successfully address the problem.  Very unfortunately,  leaders like Kim Jong Un, Xi Jin Peng, Vladimir Putin, and soon the Ayatollah, all have nuclear weapons and the delivery capability to destroy the ability of the earth to feed the number of people currently clinging to it.  Instead of thinking about all of this as we select our own leadership, we continue to permit our precious feelings to dominate our actions.  Neither political party speaks to the fundamental problem that faces humanity.  Instead, we quarrel mindlessly about the age of the fetus, the price of gasoline, the sign on the bathroom door, and our precious feelings.  Our focus on the relationship of carbon dioxide and climate change is illustrative of the same stupidity.  We have figured out that there is a relationship between carbon dioxide and the temperature of the earth, but we fail to think about the fundsmental relationship of population size and carbon production.

The problems that face humanity are humungous, but that does not change the need to address them.  Never will “leaders” start thinking about them if the people that gave them the leadership role do not start thinking about them.  People in the aggregate may well be too self-centered to make that intellectual leap.  If my pessimism is warranted, the difference between Harris and Trump is of temporary import.  Harris expedites, while Trump merely delays the next chapter in the devolution of humanity.  I choose to vote for Trump, but I recognize that it will not solve the long term problem facing us.  In order to do that, you and I are going to have to start thinking more deeply than we are now. My pessimistic derives from the fact that I see no evidence that we intend to do that.

One of the principal reasons why I voted for Donald Trump.

 I am not in a position to comment usefully on the current state of the war in Ukraine.  Too far away, too little information.  Having said that, I find news reports about Zelensky’s “Peace Plan” to be interesting.  As I understand it, a precursor to negotiations to end the war would be a good faith agreement between Russia and Ukraine to stop all attacks on their respective energy systems.  His plan also includes early Ukrainian membership in NATO.  I suggest that this reflects his understanding that Ukraine can not, by itself, defeat Russia and is looking for Western Europe and the United States to stop the fighting.  I presume that he is also increasing his tactical effort to get the munitions necessary to significantly increase the pressure on the Russian heartland.  My guess is that all of this is fundamentally encouraging to Putin, in that it implies that his campaign is succeeding, in as much as the Biden Administration and Western Europe are unwilling to provide the level of support necessary to hurt Russia enough to force Putin to agree.

Now, we have United Nations Secretary General Guterres attending Putin’s BRICKS meeting, where he is being accused of ignoring the Russian dictator’s various transgressions.  I am not a fan of Guterres, but I see this criticism as being off the mark.  I suggest that the UN Secretary General, by the definition of his position, has to talk to all nations that are members of the organization.  I argue that talking to each other is better than shooting at each other and I would encourage more substantive talking and less mindless shooting.  The problem being that bad people choose to try to use force whenever they sense weakness and talking instead of shooting is frequently interpreted as weakness.  Putin has spent his entire life correctly calculating the amount of force that he can use before his antagonist resists militarily.  The success of his Crimea adventure led directly to his effort to capture Kiev.  I believe that he might well have succeeded had his army not let him down by running out of gas on the drive to the Ukrainian capital.  Biden’s bungling of the situation has given us the current mess, but Obama’s acceptance of Crimea was the fundamental precursor mistake.

Whatever the reasons, the fighting in Ukraine is not only destroying that country’s infrastructure and killing far too many Russians and Ukrainians, it is also adversely impacting the economy of the world and raising the possibility of a nuclear exchange that very well could eventually (minutes) include us.  While I don’t mind Guterres talking to Putin and Xi at their BRICKS meeting, I also do not have the least reason to expect anything to come of it.  Guterres and the current UN are irrelevant in the real world.  So is Zelensky.  The only way that the argument in Ukraine between Moscow and Kiev is going to be temporarily settled is when Zelensky and Putin sit down (figuratively) at the negotiating table.  The only entity that can force that to happen is Washington DC.  The only national level politician that is arguing for that to happen is Donald Trump.  It is one of the reasons that I voted for him.  Those of my fellow Americans that are trying to elect another figure head president are making a tactical mistake that will ensure that we remain on the present inadequate political trajectory.

PS:  Electing Trump is not an ideal solution to our current political imbroglio.  It is merely the least bad alternative.  We will still have a mountain of work to do, but that is better, by far, than the alternative before us at the present time.  I am pessimistic that we will, in fact, do the work necessary, but I still want to continue to try.

I find social media to be extremely educational.

 I find social media to be extremely educational.  Millions of people sharing their innermost thoughts with the world in an increasingly carefully curated medium.  Each social media channel is dominated by “influencers” that generally reflect one side or the other of the national argument that passes for social discourse.  The level of intelligence embodied in the content on both left and right is abysmal and the degree to which contrarian voices are silenced is astounding.  “Free speech” is but one of the casualties.  Equally important is the dumbing down of America and the growth of mob mentalities.  Not only do we not think issues through, we do not even articulate our own disagreement with our neighbor, preferring instead to copy a meme generated by a lonely soul living in their parent’s basement or a more sophisticated political operative busily supporting one or another cause.

I am increasingly fascinated by the subtle nature and growing effectiveness of the control mechanisms governing social media and the extent to which the public participates in enforcing political bias.  Social media channels rely not only on artificial intelligence, but, to a great extent, also on the public, to identify contrarian views.  Their response is not to argue points of disagreement, but rather to silence opposition voices.  The vast majority of the populace today, ducks their heads and tunes in to the social media channel that best represents their own”thinking.”  Perfectly nice people post obnoxious material that illustrates their own shallowness, and they do it with great glee.  When challenged on this point, they respond with anger and childish rebuttal.  Never are issues intelligently debated in social media channels.  The public reaction is to blame the social media channel, but, in my mind, the real culprits are you and me for engaging in this childish stupidity.

The extent to which this phenomenon is impacting our society never ceases to amaze and discourage me.  I am an ardent photographer and I believe that beauty in nature can be an antidote to social malaise.  I try to share my photography as widely as possible, asking nothing in return.  I am proud to say that my photography is favorably regarded by most, but, very recently, I have been asked to not share it on certain social media channels, because it was not representative of the geographic limits associated with that particular channel.  I confess that my critics did indeed grasp one of my objectives and that was to try to broaden the geographic confines of our thinking.  As I see it “us” and “them” is a very serious fault line in our society.  If people living a few miles apart choose to draw imaginary lines that separate them from each other, how, in the world, can people living on opposite sides of the planet avoid conflict?

I confess that I find all of this very discouraging.  We are constantly bemoaning the evil nature of “them” without understanding that you and I are not only "us", but are also, actually “them.”  I well understand that we can not admit that and conclude that we are hell bent on destroying ourselves without accepting that deep down inside we understand it.  We focus instead on subjects that we can get our inadequate minds around:  the age of the fetus, the price of gasoline, the sign on the bathroom door, our precious feelings, and the boundaries around our community.  The Brat and The Donald are not what is going to destroy us.  We will do that ourselves by walling ourselves off from each other and repeating whatever stupidity, our “leaders” script for us.

BRICKS has unveiled its new payment system.

 I read today in the various make-believe rags that claim to be news organizations that BRICKS has unveiled its new payment system which is designed to replace the dollar in international trading.  The various "news" articles have varying degrees of explanation as to how it is supposed to work, but I confess to be unable to understand it and note that it apparently depends to some extent on principals that are inherent in cryptocurrency, another subject that I find mysterious.  I am much more comfortable with the more traditional form of currency, even as I admit to not understanding much, if anything, connected to “high finance.”  I do understand that poorer countries sought shelter in the stability of the dollar in years past and are today fleeing the dollar because we are unable to maintain its value, but I fail to understand the new form of money that is emerging.

I posit that “high finance” is but one more subject that average citizenry is not going to understand, and I wonder how much of our world can be a mystery to us while we expect democracy to be a viable form of government.  Whether we like it or not, international trade is already a major determinant in the way in which we live our lives and the quality of those lives.  This time around, we are extremely interested in whether Kamala or The Donald will give us a better economic future, but how many of us understand economics well enough to make that judgement intelligently, particularly when the candidates are telling us what they think the majority of us want to hear?  I hold that the average citizen does not even try to understand the issues being oversimplified in the various candidates proclamations, let alone understanding the international implications of any of it.  What will tariffs on Mexican car manufacturers do to political stability in our neighboring country, how will that impact the cross border drug trade, and what will that mean with regard to the battle against crime in the non-existent ghettos that are emerging in our once beautiful cities.

Put eleven people on a raft in the middle of the ocean and lines between authoritarianism and democracy are very easy to comprehend.  Add more people on the same size raft, in the middle of the same size ocean, and you have a much more complicated set of issues.  Now put a computer on the raft and let two people learn how to use it.  I hold that those two people will eventually learn how to use the computer to influence decision-making on the raft.  Cryptocurrency is but one of the incomprehensible computer based concepts that are increasingly shaping our lives and the average citizen in this country is blinking and looking away.  Now look at the type of individual that is allied with these concepts, and I argue that you are beginning to understand the changes that are occurring in our society.  The new elites are a different breed of human than ruled the world in medieval times and the ways in which they interrelate are far more complex.  My guess is that we will eventually destroy ourselves, but, until that happens, we will continue to drift away from the concepts that united us when I was put on the raft.  

My problem is deciding how I want to cope with the situation.  I long ago decided to join the commuter revolution and, in the beginning, tried to become part of it.  At first, I had a modicum of success, but the complexity of that world developed faster than I could keep up, and today I struggle with machines and technology that I do not sufficiently understand.  My personal advantages in the competition that is life are all firmly based in my life experiences, but the challenges that increasingly determine success and failure are rooted in what I see as the imaginary world of the computer.  Life is phasing me out.  In my youth, I paid 25 cents on Saturday afternoon to sit in s dark room and watch John Wayne take the West away from the Indians that lived here, and I paid five cents for my delicious Snickers candy bar.  I "earned" that 30 cents by taking the garbage out after dinner and keeping my clothes picked up in my room.  Today. the kid down the block has his nose in his thousand dollar phone watching beautiful people do impossible things 24 hours a day, while sucking on his drug of choice which originated in some far off place that he has never heard of and cares not about, paying for it with this parent’s credit card.

Life is different, and, whether I like it or not, it is going to get increasingly different, at a faster and faster pace, in large part, at least, because of the computer.  You and I are in a race to keep up, and, in my opinion, we are not doing a very good job of it.  I see The Donald as an effort to put the brakes on, and The Brat as being eager to rush forward into the imaginary digital future.  I am more comfortable with the former, and while I see the fragility of basing our future on Kamala’s vague mishmash of wishful thinking, I also see the reality of the need to accommodate to the computerization of decision-making.  I sincerely hope that we manage to do it before one of us pushes the nuclear button, even though that may be the only realistic way to change the stupid trajectory that we are on.

The role of the United Nations in Gaza.

 The role of the United Nations in Gaza is, understandably, a subject of considerable discussion presently.  There is considerable evidence that members of the various United Nations entities operating in Gaza are sympathetic to Hamas and are actually cooperating in the struggle against Israel.  I do not have any way to confirm or deny these charges, but I find them to be very credible.   I can not imagine an organization that depends on local employees in a situation, such as exists in Gaza today, to be anything other than sympathetic to Hamas.  Any Palestinian that is not would be inviting retribution, if not death, even if they were for some reason, or another, opposed to Hamas.  My guess is that virtually the entire population of Gaza is, in fact, dedicated, heart and soul, to the fight against Israeli “occupation.”  Trying to find a citizen of Gaza that does not know where the local tunnel exits are would be a fool’s errand and a healthy percentage of the citizenry almost certainly helped construct the Hamas labyrinth beneath the city and today participates in hiding entrances and exits.  Harboring a local command center or arms depot in your second bedroom is almost certainly a matter of considerable prestige in the local society.  What has to be understood is that the people living in Gaza do not like Israel.  Whether they should or not is immaterial to the real-politic situation on the ground and we should not be confused about the matter, just as we should not be surprised that their sons and daughters that have come to this country for schooling feel the exact same way.

I repeat what I have said in earlier articles, I support Israel, but I am not blind to the challenges facing the Arab population concentrated in Gaza, and I do not believe that a solution can be found to the “Palestinian Problem” that does not provide a significantly better life for the Arab populace.  This does not mean that I condone the inhumane stupidity represented by the events of October 7.  Quite the contrary, I see that stupidity as being part of a larger problem and that is Shia Islam’s internecine war with Sunni Islam.  Specifically, Teheran was concerned that Jerusalem and Riyadh were about to significantly improve their relationship to the detriment of Shia interests in the region.  The killing in Gaza is, in fact, a side show in a much, much more important struggle that is poorly understood in this country.  I don’t pretend to understand it either, but I see it clearly and firmly believe that it transitions into the various manifestations of Radical Islam that are largely being ignored by the entire Western world including you and me.  The Gaza microcosm should be seen as a precursor to a much more difficult battle between the Western world and Radical Islam as represented today by the likes of Al Qaida and ISIS.  

I do not claim to be smart enough to suggest the best way forward, but I do not believe that our current approach to Radical Islam is sufficient, and I see Jerusalem’s current effort against Hamas and Hezbollah as being nothing more than a significantly ratcheted up version of our own “Over-the_Horizon” assassination of individual leaders that we don’t like.  There is no question but that sometimes it is necessary to kill an enemy, but anybody that believes that, by itself, it leads to anything other than retribution has not read very much real history, preferring instead fiction dressed in the current set of patriotic colors.  All of this is. as it always has been, but there is a significant difference that we are blithely ignoring - the invention of satellite guided ballistic missiles tipped with multiple, independently guided nuclear war heads.  That conflict, when it comes, is going to make a profound change in the way we humans live.  It will be even more important than all of the things we are quibbling about today - gas prices, the age of the fetus, the sign on the bathroom door, and our precious feelings.

The Argument.

The presidents of Israel and France are arguing about the creation of the modern state of Israel.  Macron believes that the United Nations created it and Netanyahu insists that it was created through the efforts of the Jewish people.  I suggest that both are correct and that it is a significant part of the reason that the Middle East is in such a mess today.  I am not a scholar steeped in the intricacies of Arab/Jewish history, but I have thought about it for.a long time.  It is a difficult subject for me, because I honestly believe that the creation of the modern state of Israel was designed to make up for European and American tardiness in addressing Nazi Germany’s purge of Jews in Europe, and rather than redressing historic wrongs, reinvigorated the conflict that has embroiled the region since.  I am not here saying that it was a mistake, only that it gave Arabs a modern, very visceral, rationale for the renewal of the age-old conflict between Arab and Jew.  Jews removed Arabs from land that they had occupied for a very long time, arguing that it was their historic homeland.  Arabs responded with a campaign to destroy the modern state of Israel.

When required to take sides, I take the Jewish side, in part because my cultural heritage is closer to Judaism than it is Islam.  I actually believe that Christianity grew out of Judaism and the culture that emerged in this country over the centuries makes our entire way of life closer to Judaism than to Islam.  The issue is further complicated by a profound split in the modern Arab world, with Shia Arabs pursuing the argument with Israel even more vigorously than their Sunni brethren.  And on top of all of that, we now have the issue being warped into the struggle for world leadership between Washington, Moscow and Beijing.  Were I able to do so, I would resolve the issue by guaranteeing the continued existence of Israel and dramatically improving the quality of life for all residents of the region to include the plethora of religious and ethnic splinter groups that exist throughout the region.  A task complicated by too many people living in too small a space.  We are not able to do that, so we are involved in what could very easily develop into a nuclear exchange that will benefit no one.

The Arab-Jew argument has been going on long enough that both sides are able to firmly believe that they are in the right and the other is the malefactor that must be crushed.  I characterize the problem as being too many grandfathers having killed too many grandfathers.  I don’t believe that there is anything that can be done that will eliminate the profound historic disagreements that exist between Arab and Jew.  Conflict is close to inevitable and must be dealt with realistically.  In my assessment of the situation, one of the principal threats to the United States is found in the current Iranian leadership.  Developing a strategy that deals with that leadership is the critical challenge facing us today and I do not believe that the current Administration is dealing with it effectively.  I also believe that the issue is time sensitive.  If we procrastinate long enough, apocalyptic leadership  in Teheran will possess nuclear weapons and that will almost certainly guarantee their use, because Israel will act if we do not.  We may well already be at that point in time and it makes not one iota of difference who is right and who wrong about the origins of the Israeli state.  American cities are at risk.  Teheran explicitly tells us on a daily basis that Israel is the Little Satin and America is the Big Satin.  I believe them and reject the wishful thinking that undergirds the Obama/Biden/Harris approach to the issue.  Were I in a position to do so, I would explain to Teheran that if they continue with their attack on Israel, they risk being blown off the face of the earth.  Not because they are right or wrong about Palestine, but because they pose a threat to our continued existence.

The "Deep State."

 There is much talk about the “deep state” in the run up to our presidential election.  I suppose that there are several different definitions of the’DEEP STATE’ depending on who is talking about it, but I see the most common definition as being our bureaucracy.  I was part of that bureaucracy for three decades, three decades ago, and I have some very definite opinions about it as seen from inside and outside of it.  None of my opinions will please anybody, including myself, but that is true of a lot of other facts of life as well.

Before I go any further, I should note that I firmly believe that our society needs a strong, able bureaucracy.  Life is far too complicated, our population is far too large and spread over far too much territory, to not have a strong bureaucracy.  Having said that, I also believe that we have overdone it in spades.   Our unelected, bloated bureaucracy has involved itself too deeply in our daily lives and plays too large a role in deciding how we live our lives.  Were I able to wave a magic wand and reorder our world, I would increase the role of individual responsibility, and reduce the role of government.  Unfortunately, I am not able to do either, nor am I able to set in motion societal forces that might accomplish that objective.

We are stuck with an enormous bureaucracy and nobody is going to destroy it, much as some of us, including former President Trump might desire.  The reason is to be found inside the American people.  We are no longer the hardscrabble populace that came out of the Great Depression.  Today, we are a naive people that are trying their utmost to create the perfect state.  One in which all people live harmoniously with one another, believing in the same principals, and submissive to the greater good.  We need a strong bureaucracy to ensure that we all follow the rules.   Our problem is that we do not all share the same definition of utopia.

My own experience in government has reinforced my thinking on this subject.  I was never a member of any clique, or follower of any important personality.  My colleagues could not understand my comparatively rapid rise in rank.  I was almost always the youngest officer in any rank that I held, and I was usually promoted at the first opportunity.   I had no political benefactors, I was not wealthy, I was not particularly intelligent, and I did not enthrall my colleagues with brilliant analysis.  I actually displeased several important personalities in the career service and was known to be an independent, if unintelligent, thinker.  I just progressed in rank rapidly, no matter which political party was in control of government at the time.  I never received plum assignments and was always shunted off to impossible situations like war and natural disaster.  On reflection, I now understand that I was useful because I was not associated with any particular group and was always available for any nasty job that nobody else wanted.  I was promoted not because I was right about anything.  I was promoted because I was useful to the group in power at the time.

I inevitably spent a lot of my career in troubled situations and came to agree with critics of the Foreign Service in a lot of different situations.  I too frequently saw my colleagues through the eyes of a CIA operative, or a battalion commander, or a squadron commander, and found the words of my Foreign Service colleagues, far too often, to be empty pontifications rather than brilliant analysis of the situation on the ground.  The people with whom I was working in Viet Nam, or Turkey, or Stuttgart saw me as part of a rival organization and my position forced me to think about problems differently than my colleagues sitting in an air-conditioned office on the fifth floor of a nice, air-conditioned office building in Washington DC. 

Were I to be able to wave a magic wand and remove the problem, I would require any government official that might have influence over foreign policy to have had actual experience with the nasty side of war.  Were I knowledgable enough about the issues involved in other  areas of government, I would impose parallel requirements.  Too often, the bureaucrat making the decision is too ignorant of the real world that he or she is attempting to regulate.  These people are not the enemy, they are just not smart enough for the task that they are attempting to perform.  Our effort should not be to destroy the Deep State.  It should be to dramatically improve our bureaucracy.  I should also note that I would significantly reduce it in size as well.

Artificial Intelligence

Artificial Intelligence continues to capture my thinking. I see it as a relatively easily understood example of the power of the computer in the hands of the populace at large. I have absolutely no clue as to how it is going to play out, but I sense that it is going to coninue to speed up the "information" revolution that is already taking place throughout the world. Here is the original photograph and the two sibling images that I created using AI recently. These images could have been created by a skilled practitioner of Photoshop without AI, but the idea that they can be created by anyone in a matter of minutes is a profound "advance" in image creation. Add in voice manipulation and the "advances" bring made in video technology, coupled with the forces that are limiting our ability to travel widely, along with the political polarization of our major media sources, and you have a recipe for even more mass stupidity than exists presently.

A leader is no better than the people that he or she leads.

 My thesis is that the speed with which the world is changing is greater than humans are capable of managing.  Our reaction to change is to welcome it when it benefits us individually, resist it when it does not, and try to ignore it when it forces itself upon us.  Wherever possible, we build artificial realities in which to hide and, all too often, raise false leaders to guide us.  We can not fathom the enormity of the problem that we face with too many mouths hungering after limited resources, so we quibble about the price of gasoline, the age of the fetus, the sign on the bathroom door, and our precious feelings.  We are too busy with our own individual lives to worry about anybody that lives outside of our non-existent borders.  Were we to honestly assess the status of humans living in far too much of the world, including our own ghettos, we would better understand the reason for the severe deterioration of the world order, as well as the increased antipathy directed at us from abroad.

Because of our still powerful economy, and our massive nuclear capability, we remain the strongest nation on earth, in spite of the increasingly wimpish nature of our populace, but very unfortunately, we have some very powerful antagonists that are growing closer to one another due to the antipathy they feel for us.  While we remain the most lethal power on earth, the nature of conflict has changed sufficiently that no one is going to win the next major conflict.  Today, you and I, out here in the hustings, are arguing among ourselves whether we should elect a little girl that we pretend makes us joyful, or an elderly megalomaniac that wants to restore us to king of the hill.  I choose the megalomaniac because his failings are less likely to cause as immediate a problem as are the failings of the little girl, but  I do not see either one as adequately addressing the root cause of our problem - the changed nature of our society.  

We are no longer the country that we were when our parents were alive.  The “Greatest Generation” was born in the depression, tempered in nasty person-to-person conflict literally all over the globe, and dedicated to making the world a better place in which to live.  My generation tried to live up to their expectations and failed miserably, even as we had some tactical successes along the way.  The generation that we are raising is the product of those failures.  We honestly believe that we can improve our own security by surgically eliminating individual bad guys with “over the horizon” technology while pretending to improve the lives of the masses with artificial intelligence and virtual whatever.

I think a lot about leadership.  I have led people, sometimes in life and death situations.  I fully understand that a leader is no better than the people that he or she leads.  I repeat, a leader is no better than the people he or she leads.  There is no question in my mind, but that we have an extremely serious leadership problem, but the more serious problem, by far, is the changed nature of our society.  We are, today, a bunch of small, petty, selfish, confused wimps and the world is waking up to that fact.  The next serious argument that we have with one or another of our nuclear antagonists is going to fundamentally change the way in which humans live - no matter who claims to have “won.”

The filibuster and our future.

 I do not believe that the elimination of the filibuster will destroy America, but I do believe that it will be the final act in the destruction of the republic.  It will immediately transform America in very profound ways depending on which group wins any given election, and our congress will be transformed into a parliament wherein the majority of the moment is king.  I look at the history of parliamentary government and much prefer what we have enjoyed these past several hundred years.  I don’t hold those of us that want to go this route to be bad people.  They are just very shortsighted.  Unfortunately, the difference is not sufficient to save us from a significant increase in the swing of the political pendulum and that will intensify our divisions rather than heal them.  Division is what will destroy us.  The exact path that we take will depend on tactical issues of the moment, but the lack of unity is what will ensure our destruction.  I continue to see us as being stupid people.   Well educated, wealthy, cowards, afraid to face up to the specific issues that threaten us and adept at creating imaginary worlds.  I am not a fan of The Donald, but the idea that we are seriously considering the election of Harris/Walsh is literally embarrassing.  I am sure glad that I don’t have to explain America to any of my foreign friends any more.

Artificial Intelligence.

 I have recently been exploring artificial intelligence and I find much of it to be unnerving.  Obviously, some of my neighbors do as well.  One, who is an unfailingly severe critic of my thinking, actually found my explorations to be so disturbing that she requested me to stop writing about the subject, preferring that I go back to complaining about our collective stupidity instead.  I suggest that this approach to the problem of AI is indicative of our approach to all of our most serious challenges and is the reason that we are struggling with a cascading flow of increasingly problematic failures at home and abroad.  When we run up against a challenge, we immediately seek a way to avoid it rather than deal with it effectively.

Anything else is ignorant, wishful thinking.

 Israel appears to be concentrating its current activities in Lebanon on destroying Hezbollah supplies and removing Hezbollah leadership from the battlefield.  The principal tools being used are superb intelligence coupled with equally superb air power, supplemented with limited ground operations designed to further weaken Hezbollah capabilities.  This differs, at least for now, from its campaign in Gaza, where it has been actively attempting to destroy Hamas rank and file, as well as its leadership.  It remains to be seen how much of its current ground campaign in Lebanon is preparation for a broader attack and what the objectives of that campaign might be.

The question immediately before us, presently, is how Israel will respond to the most recent Iranian provocations - ineffective though they have been.  Some American observers believe that Israel is intent on waging its campaign against Iran with the objective of freeing the Iranian people from their radical leadership.  I hope that is so.  If it is, I agree with the analysts that expect Israel to avoid the oil fields because that would adversely impact the lives of the Iranian people.  Were I influential in their decision-making, I would be arguing for a massive strike on their nuclear facilities, even though the Biden Administration appears to be vigorously and mindlessly arguing against that approach.  My rationale being that a conflict with Iran after they have a nuclear capability is going to be far more painful than it would be now.  Unlike Biden, I believe the Iranian leadership when it daily tells us that they intend to destroy both Israel and America.

I argue that it is time to understand that the current leadership in Iran is dedicated to destroying America.  I do not believe that the Iranian people share that objective.  I do not want to go to war anywhere with anyone,  War is a stupid activity, but if we become involved in war, I firmly believe that we have no choice but to see it though to victory.  Appeasement is never an acceptable strategy.  No matter how we might want to deny it, we are currently ineffectively engaged in numerous wars, to include one with the radical leadership in Teheran.  We must face up to it now, if we are to minimize the costs in blood and treasure that we will inevitably incur.  Anything else is ignorant, wishful thinking.

Nuclear weapons changed the rules.

 Teheran has responded to Israel’s recent killing of the leader of Hezbollah and one of Iran’s senior military officers with another largely ineffective missile attack on Israel.  Simultaneously, Israel appears to have initiated its ground offensive into Lebanon.  The United States helped Israel repel the Iranian missiles and continues to argue for a ceasefire.  Everybody in the entire world is looking over their shoulder at our forthcoming election.  The expectation on all sides being that the election of Harris means continuation of the ineffective Biden policy of appeasement, while the election of Trump would mean a return to a hard-nosed American effort to thwart Teheran’s malevolence.  I agree with this appraisal and fully support an immediate effort to stop the radical Shite attempt to dominate the Middle East, for all kinds of reasons, and I argue that we have to do even more - much more - if we are to secure our future.

There are enough reasons to stop Teheran, if we think only about the Middle East, but, as I have pointed out in previous articles, there are broader ramifications that spill out into the wider challenges facing us.  Teheran is allied with both Moscow and Beijing and the radical Shite mullah’s success or failure in the Middle East will significantly impact our relationship with these two major antagonists in Europe and Asia.  We may well be the richest country that has ever existed, but our wealth is finite and we have an infinite number of things that need our attention.  We are in the mess that we are in right now in very large part because you and I refuse to think about anything outside of our immediate existence.  We replace thought with wishful thinking and it is going to get us killed because this is a democracy.  Our national policy can only be as effective as you and I make it.  If we are too busy with our puny personal concerns, to give a rat's ass about our fellow humans, we are going to get ourselves killed - pure and simple.

If I were in a position to influence policy, I would be advocating more fulsome support of Israel’s military effort, and a full court press on our relationship with every country on earth to isolate Teheran and eventually eliminate the radical leadership, even if it requires additional American involvement in the process on the ground.  I would also be advocating for a far, far more effective effort to significantly improve the lives of all, repeat all, of the people living in the Middle East.  In my mind, it is essential that both be done, and done well, if we are to secure a more peaceful future.  The one, without the other, ensures more killing down the road a few years.  At best it is going to be one hell of a task because all of the killing going on right now will argue for more killing in the future, just as it has over the past several millennia.

The Middle East needs us, and, whether we want to or not, we must provide the leadership necessary to thwart the present drift toward nuclear annihilation of far too many people - including you and me.   There is no way that we can continue to exist independent of the rest of this shrinking, overcrowded world.  Nuclear weapons changed the rules.  I will vote for Trump, but I will also continue to criticize you and me for not demanding a more intelligent approach to life on this troubled orb.  Remember that no weapon has ever been invented that was not eventually used.  In the case of nuclear weapons it was us, you and me, that first used the damn things.  If you think for one moment that a radical religious fanatic or a shriveled up has-been of a dictator wannabe won't use the damn things, you are stupid beyond belief.