The Election.

Various news organizations have declared Trump to be victorious.  Given recent history, I expect that now we will enter a period dominated by challenges to various State election results, but it would appear that The Donald’s electoral victory may well be solid enough to withstand legal challenge.  I presume that his political opponents will resort to the same kind of contrarian activity that they did during his first term and the public discourse will remain in the gutter.  I sincerely hope that I am wrong here, but I fear that I am not.  I voted for Trump because I feared Harris more, not because I liked the man.  Hopefully, he will restore our ailing economy, strengthen our defense posture, reduce international tensions, and close the border.  All of that is well and good, but I fear that he will be unable to restore unity here at home and I do not expect him to initiate the kind of economic outreach to the rest of the world that is so badly needed.  In order for that to happen you and I will have to change our ways and I see absolutely no evidence that we are smart enough to understand that need.  In my view, we have dodged an immediate political catastrophe by not electing another sham president, and we have a shot at improving our short term economic situation,  reducing international tensions, and slowing the drift away from the societal traditions that made America the greatest nation in the world, but I see no evidence that we, you and I, will wake to the need to improve the standard of living of all peoples, not just those that live inside our non-existent borders.  In a nuclear world, that remains a serious problem.

Generative Artificial Intelligence

 Generative Artificial Intelligence is not really changing photography so much as adding to the ways in which photography is manipulated.  It is the logical extension of a process started long ago when photographers dodged and burned prints in a very dark room.  I presume that the process will continue to evolve and continue to amaze, but I don’t believe that it will ever replace the role of the photographer or the artist. Their fundamental role is to see and then create.  AI can not do that.  It is but one more very powerful tool in the human’s creative tool box.  How it is used is still the purview of the human.  I fully expect most of what is produced through the use of AI to be banal, just as most of our other efforts at expressing ourselves and describing our world are less than exhilarating.  The complexity that it adds to the task of understanding what we see is, however, going to be an interesting challenge.  My guess is that it will take time for us to fully adapt to it and I see the possibility that it might actually be beyond the ability of a significant proportion of us.  The underlying question in my mind is whether humans can ever fully adapt to having invented computers.  I admit to being extremely skeptical, but I also understand that I am too old to be relevant.

Is Musk talking to Putin?

There is a growing suspicion within anti-Trump political circles that Elon Musk is collaborating with Vladimir Putin to undermine democracy here in the United States, and the concern is not just among left-leaning activists.  Some of the loudest voices are within anti-Trump conservative circles.  I am not a legal expert, but, because Musk is not a government official, I see no legal bar to his talking to whomever he wants - inside or outside this country.  Given the ongoing back and forth over Twitter and free speech, I presume that Musk does not see any legal bar to it either.  I leave the legalities to the lawyers, but I side with Musk on the issue of free speech, and I see no reason in the world for him to not talk with Putin, if the two men decide it is in their interest to chat.  I hasten to add that I am not here necessarily agreeing with what either man is saying.  I, of course, have no way of knowing what that might be, or for that matter, whether a conversation is, in fact, even going on.

I see the hoopla that is being stirred up to be an updated version of the anti-Trump rhetoric that led to the earlier Russian collusion charges.  I see absolutely no evidence that Trump or Musk are in Putin’s pocket, nor that they are attempting to subvert democracy here in this country.  In my view, those charges have been thoroughly debunked.  This is not to say that I necessarily agree with what either man is saying to Putin, or anybody else for that matter.  My point here is that we, you and I, should be focused on the substance at issue, rather than the personality of the individuals engaged in the conversation, or the form of that conversation.  Specifically, I don’t give a rat’s posterior how we talk to Putin about Ukraine or anything else, but I do care about what we say in those conversations and I am thoroughly disappointed with what various American and foreign leaders have said to one another recently.  The conversation, in my opinion, is leading us in the absolute wrong direction everywhere in the world and I blame you and me for not insisting that the substance of the conversation be improved.

We continue to insist on being number one, but we fail to understand that position can only be maintained if the rest of humanity sees it to be in their interest to follow our lead.  Good hearted Americans on the left side of our internal conversation believe that we can welcome the rest of the world to come live with us, but we are not strong enough to solve the world’s problems that way, even if the other half of us agreed to it.  Rightly or wrongly, the other half of us believe that we deserve to be number one and the rest of the world will just have to accept it.  That used to be a viable thought, but the proliferation of nuclear weapons puts paid to that line of reasoning.  Now look at what you and I are arguing about and how we will move forward.  We are going to elect our next leader based on how he or she makes us feel.  We care not about any substantive issue, except as it impacts our feelings.

Musk talking to Putin is not the issue.  The issue is that you and I are not only not talking to each other - we are not even thinking.  This is still a democracy, so our foreign policy reflects our stupidity.  We just argue about which side of our inane, internal argument will represent us for the next four years, while too many humans argue with each other about how they will feed themselves.

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.