Forced Financial Foolishness

 So, let's say one night you are out and about and you notice that your car could use some gas (or electricity or hydrogen, whatever) so you pull into a convenience store/gas station.  Imagine you encounter a criminal with real mental problems.  

The criminal puts a gun to your head and forces you to purchase a lottery scratchoff ticket - not for him - he forces you to buy it for yourself.  Once you have the ticket, he puts the gun away and disappears into the night.

You scrape the appropriate areas of the ticket and lo and behold, the ticket is a winner to the tune of $50k.

Do you force the store to take the ticket back?  I'm serious, answer the damn question.  Do you force the store to take back their $50k ticket because you did not want it to begin with?

That is what happened last night.  Extremely effective leaders and administrators have been forced out because their initial hirings, years or decades prior, MIGHT have been positively influenced by their gender and/or ethnicity.

If you would not give back the $50k, and let's be honest, who the fuck would?, you already know why last nights idiocy was wrong and you know how it is wrong.  Now you need to do something about it.

DEI was put into place to stop the USA from harming itself by adhering to fallacious biases.  Ironically, though he had no part in hiring or training these incredibly valuable folks, rather than availing himself of the value they bring, he is sending them away after they have proven their value.  

I probably should not have to explain this to grown-ass adults.

Weakness In Numbers

 

Kash Patel was confirmed today as FBI director. You are right to be curious as to the why. Weak and feckless Dems played a large part.

See, what the Dems did, or rather didn't, do was that they failed to vigorously oppose nominations that were, in theory, less impactful. The Dems conveyed a variety of stupid reasons for shirking their duties. They did not want to seem non-collegial so they did not oppose sitting Congressfolk. They acted as though there was an umpire setting limits on how many "pitches" they could reasonable swing at when they should have been swinging at all of them. They had other equally stupid reasons but the salient fact is that with few exceptions, the lack of competence and patriotism were no impedance to the confirmation of the criminals Felon47 has chosen to surround himself with.

The problem that elected Dems refused to see or acknowledge is that with every confirmation, the First Felon gained more power. You may not be personally afraid of the FBI taking a look at you but, Homeland, NSA, IRS, Interior, AG, Defense etc etc? No, pretty much no one wants all of those folks digging into them. So with every confirmation, the next nominee was less likely to be opposed so as to not inspire a close look from those already confirmed. The Dems needed to vigorously oppose every name that he spoke.

They didn't. So the Senate got weaker and weaker as Felon47's success rate went up. They experienced weakness in numbers and we are all going to suffer for it. The fact that his supporters will suffer as well is small comfort at best. My position would be unreasonable if there was any indication that PINO was acting in good faith. I have seen no such evidence. I have not even heard a Dem attempt to claim he was acting in good faith.

No politician should ever feel safe doing the wrong thing. The Dems could have done the right thing but it would have been a lot more work for them. The work they are paid quite handsomely to do. None of their reasons for not fighting harder have gained any purchase with me.

Bullies and dictators will never give up power voluntarily. They will always attempt to grab more power than they have. If they are to not have that power, it must be taken from them. The Dems are supposed to be the bulwark. If any of them are unwilling to do the job, they need to turn their position over to someone who will.

The Next Big Guerrilla Op

The Next Big Guerrilla Op 

Picture in your mind's eye, exactly what the Mujaheddin would have done had they been directly adjacent to Russia rather than thousands of miles away. Remember what OBL and his crew of religious fanatics were able to accomplish here in the USA.

If your imagination and memory are offering up seriously horrible images, good. What you are picturing is what Russia will be dealing with far into the future if PINO and Putin have their way.  The problem is that unless you have been paying closer attention than PINO, his owner Phoney Stark and his crew of incompetents have, what you are picturing is about one tenth as bad as the actuality.

All those drones that the Russians can't stop from raining fire on their refineries?  Do you think those magically stop because our idiot says they should?  All that will happen is the deference currently being given to the Geneva Convention, international law and norms, the restraint being shown by a professional army, all of that goes away once it is not the army.  Sign that agreement and those drones will be operated by an unaffiliated group of folks with a huge grudge to bear.  They have watched their friends and families die.  They have seen their homes and businesses destroyed.  They will want, and likely get, some measure of revenge.

Most of the Afghanis did not speak Russian and of those that did, most likely had a detectable accent.  A lot of the Ukrainians will be essentially undetectable by looking or listening to them. If they can get their hands on a suitcase nuke, they will use it.  We will not be able to stop them because they will have no reason to listen to us.  With their families dead and their homes destroyed, there will be damn little to threaten them with.

Are you so confused as to believe that's it?  That they will endure a little terror here and there and be done?  Given the state of education in the USA, I would not be surprised that people think that way.  However, they would be wrong, really seriously horribly wrong.

Chechnya has had a significant faction for quite some time that want to be their own nation.  China wants huge portions of Siberia when they take back the land that used to be theirs, known back then as Manchuria. NATO will be tough to convince to stand down if they perceive a threat.  (I speak of NATO as a separate entity because I expect the idiot that thinks he is in charge or the idiot that is actually in charge to retreat from NATO but that is a subject for a different post.)

The damage to the refineries is real and will take time to recover from.  To regain their market share they will have to sell the products at a significant discount.  The aforementioned drone operators and their waterborne drones might have something to say about the ships coming and going.

Between those that escaped the nation and those killed or severely injured in the war, Russia is down a million+ men in their prime.  Such expertise as they may have had at their jobs, military or private sector, is effectively lost. Selling their military gear will be an uphill climb since the world has had a graphic demonstration of how they perform compared to Western gear. The Russians don't really export much beyond oil products and military gear.  They have not gotten to the hard part yet, economically speaking.

As good as Felon47 is/will be for Russia, the challenges in front of them are not going to be fun.  TBF though, I hope it is worse than I have described.

DEI

audio version of DEI

I have been extremely good at more than one job. In at least two of those jobs, I was as good or better at them than anyone anywhere also doing that job. Also for most of my employment career, I was one of the very few, if not the only, Blacks in whatever profession I was engaged in - at least locally.

I have siblings and friends, also Blacks, who could (and have) honestly make similar claims. "We" could all also tell you, it was not enough. It was never enough. I could perhaps believe some or all of them had reason to lie to me. However, when I hear(heard) personal stories that so closely align to my own experiences, my level of skepticism drops precipitously. To me, the conclusion to which I came was/is inescapable. My experience was/is not unique.

That will doubtless come as a shock to all of those who have convinced themselves that no matter how educated, accomplished, dedicated and professional a Black or brown person is, nearby is a white guy that would be better at the job and the only reason they are not in the job is the skin tone of the inferior individual that stole the job from them.

TBF none of those for whom I worked had any idea that I would be as accomplished as I turned out to be. Those of my siblings and other minorities I know who have had similar experiences might have had CVs that contained clues to their potential. I on the other hand, had a resumé that, according to how it was read, showed me as broadly competent OR unable to focus.

The point is that no one that I know or know of is able to intuitively tell who will be the absolute best at a given job. While there may be clues, there are no guarantees. As far as actual ability to do the job goes, skin tone has not, in my experience, been a reliable indicator. (aside: When I was building floating boat docks, Blacks and Hispanics were waaaaaaaaaaay superior hires but yes, we also had some white guys that would work. However, if someone needed to be told to "get back to work", it was always a white guy.)

DEI is not about ability to do the work. It never has been. For as good as I was at those jobs where I was the best, when I moved on, someone else did the job. Were they as good at it as I was? No, but they were good enough. Most jobs work that way. Perfection in a job is rarely seen and even more rarely needed. In engineering circles it is acknowledged to be the "enemy of good enough".

For an awful lot of jobs, ability to do the work is a relatively small part of the hiring decision. It is useless to hire someone who is good at the job but who does not show up. Yes, I did learn that through experience. There are a thousand ways even a competent worker can kill your business. In some places the wrong accent can be a negative. Bad grooming habits, atonal "singing", flatulence or the irresistible urge to "witness" to everyone that comes in the door can all have a large negative effect regardless of the skin tone or competence level of the individual.

For the entire time of its existence as a concept, DEI has been 'a' factor but rarely the only consideration. With the possible exception my particular job in the USN (I still would have been a sailor in a different job in the Navy so, it sorta counts), no job I have ever gotten has been solely because I met their DEI aspirations. As a matter of fact, I know of no job I have ever gotten where that was an intentional consideration - regardless of what the concept might have been called at the time. Until the reich-wing of USA politics decided to use it as a weapon, most folk could not have told you what DEI was if you offered a million dollars for a correct answer. 7ish years ago, I could not have told you what it was without some contextual clues.

I'm not saying it has never happened but, news of a DEI hire being fired for inability to do the work has yet to reach my awareness. I don't need to mention that a truly business friendly administration would not try to tell those businesses how to run their business. For all of these reasons, when someone around you is using "DEI" as though it is synonymous with "incompetence", that is them trying to tell you without telling you that they are embracing racial prejudice as a means for them to get ahead.

Since they are telling you, you probably want to check your pockets for their hands. Hate is a habit and once they decide they are done with whatever group they are repressing and denigrating, there is a good chance you're next.

PTSD by Design

audio version of PTSD by Design

Your first minutes in boot camp are when it begins.  You and those with whom you arrived all line up in some semblance of a formation in whatever clothes you made the trip in.  Your Drill Instructor though, is resplendent in an immaculate uniform.  So is his superior officer and so are his subordinates, all of their uniforms look like a carefully photoshopped advertisement for perfection.  You are part of a rag tag, shoddy group of nobodies but they, they are the ruling class and you can immediately see that they are and why.  You have barely arrived and your indoctrination has begun with a bang.

You are soon introduced to your "barber".  Whether or not he has any real skill at styling hair or any particular barbering abilities is something none of you will ever know or need to know.  He is going to cut all of the recruits’ hair off on this visit and on any subsequent visits.  After the hair removal, you all line up to be issued "uniforms".  Oh no, not uniforms like your Drill Instructor's.  Your uniforms will never be described as "resplendent".  They are working clothes, drab and functional and quite intentional.  You are not now, nor will you ever be the equal of that god-like Drill Instructor in his sartorial perfection or any other way.  That is what your indoctrination is telling you and it is a very compelling argument.

Off you go to learn to march.  Even though marching has not come in handy in combat for 300 or so years, you learn to march in step with your platoon mates.  It is the most obvious indication of the effort to diminish individuality and convert you all into a single machine of many parts.  You learn various drill maneuvers and you practice them until you actually do them in your sleep.  There is also plenty of instruction in exactly how you are to keep your uniforms and how you are to wear your uniforms.  The rank structure is explained to you in excruciating detail over and over and over again.  Pretty much everything you are expected to know is explained to you that way and then, you are expected to practice it.  All of that knowledge, all of the actions will become as automatic and familiar as the movement of your legs and arms.

There is much more to learn and as you progress, the knowledge you have already acquired is built upon.  That is completely normal and predictable.  What might not be as obvious is that the indoctrination is following a similar path.  You have been taught to do even the simplest things a very specific way to achieve a very specific outcome.  You have been taught through military drill to follow orders immediately and without question.  You know at a glance who you must show respect and who (if anyone at this early state) is junior to you and must show you respect.  You know how you must address anyone you encounter.  You have also been taught that you all are a single unit and any failure is a failure of the unit.

By the time you leave boot camp you have acquired an impressive amount of knowledge and habits in a brief time.  But you're not done, not by a long shot.  The things that you learn in boot are expanded and refined throughout your professional training and indeed, throughout your military career.  Every day, every minute you are in your indoctrination continues and is made stronger and more permanent.  Regardless of the job you have chosen (been assigned), the unit you join or, the rank you achieve, your indoctrination continues.  That is completely by design.

Training is not the only place to receive the indoctrination.  Actual operations, doing the job you have been trained for, will continue your indoctrination.  Combat in particular is an intense and accelerated aspect of military indoctrination.  No matter the activity, in recreation, in recovery from illness or injury, in training or at work, in ways subtle and overt the indoctrination continues.

Until you get out.  Then it stops.  Cold Turkey.  Immediately.  You are traumatically separated from that you have been relentlessly trained to identify with.  At best it is about like running out of the hot water in the mix to create your nice warm shower.  Going from luxuriously warm to harshly cold in a few seconds gets your attention.  At worst it is like waking up from a nap with a limb missing.  Either way it is a traumatic shock.  Sometimes you learn to deal with it.  The conditions under which you served, the justness of your cause and other aspects of your service can make your transition a lot less impossible.  Still, it is a shock.  It is supposed to be.  You have trained and lived and eaten, slept and breathed a different way of doing things until the day you no longer did.  

The alienness of civilian life - even the things you love, the familiarity of the military - even the things you hate, are different for every service member.  The existence of those concepts however, is consistent across the board.  Again, it is by design.  It is supposed to be that way.  You are expected to be 100% committed to your shipmates and job anytime you are assigned to a military command.

I am not a doctor and psychology is not my field of expertise.  Still, it is my considered opinion that the conditions I describe above conspire to insure that anyone who makes it more than a couple of weeks into boot camp has some level of PTSD.  The longer you are in, the more intense your service, the more sensitive you are, the greater the conflict with your belief system, the more drastic the differences between your life before the military and your time in, can all influence how "bad" your PTSD will be.  It may be so mild you think it not worth mentioning but, it is still there.

I used to “wake up” hearing a cryptographic machine alarm and walk into the living room looking for the machine so that I could correct the problem.  Of course, there was no machine in the living room and I had been out of Navy for months or years when I heard the alarms.  I still occasionally rush to do something that hasn't needed me to do it in 35 years or so, ignoring the fact that the materials I would need and the equipment I would work on could not possibly be around.  With decreasing intensity as the years roll on, I still lament the loss of friends and shipmates and feel guilt that I made it when they did not.  The closest I ever was to combat was the occasional bar fight.  I didn't fly a plane or shoot a big gun (or a small one for that matter).  Nothing ever exploded close to me.  All of the things the public has been led to expect to be present in PTSD cases have nothing to do with me, except the indoctrination.  My indoctrination was as complete as anyone's.  My issues, and trust me - the above descriptions are nowhere near a complete inventory, exist because the indoctrination took.  PTSD is by design.  If we ever decide to honor our debt to those who sign up and serve, as a nation we will fund and create a de-indoctrination program that will have to be a part of every service member's exit.  We need to invest in the time and energy it takes to undo SOME of the psychological changes necessitated by being in the military.  I am not ashamed or regretful of my service at any level.  I have largely readjusted to being a civilian (but boy did it take a while) but my situation was not everyone's.  There are men and women coming back who have gone through hells that I quite thankfully, cannot imagine.  If I could have benefitted from such a de-indoctrination program as I suggest should be in place, just think of the good that could be done for them.

As is all too frequently the case, PTSD is in the public awareness again because of a tragedy.  The deaths of movie subject Chris Kyle and his business partner at the hands of an afflicted individual and the subsequent and ongoing trial, serves to alert distracted citizens that potential problems walk among us.  The attention will not last but the problem will.  Those who can source their PTSD to military service are everywhere in this nation. They are your neighbors and coworkers, your elected officials and law officers.  They are members of your family.  If you are lucky, their experience with it is as mild as mine.  If you are not lucky, you - or your survivors - may come to agree with me that we need to be as active and intentional and comprehensive in our approach to treating PTSD as we are in instilling it.  No, I do not believe that we desire or intend our combat vets to return home “straight up crazy”.  The extreme cases have causes all their own.  But for an awful lot of us, our PTSD is by design.  If our veterans are to ever be free of that malady, it will have to be by design as well.

Nuclear Act One

Nuclear Act One audio version

We will never see another voluntary relinquishing of nuclear weapons/capability. The reason for this is us.

Wait, let me rephrase that. The reason we will never see another voluntary relinquishing of nuclear weapons is the USA. We could have done things differently but, we didn't.

During 45's term he inexplicably chose to vacate the agreement that had been negotiated by a previous administration with Iran. The result of that was that Iran made the perfectly rational decision to renew their efforts to join the nuclear club. Because he chose not to honor a reasonable international agreement, no leaders of other nations will ever consider such an agreement "ironclad" ever again.

When the USSR broke up, some of the former constituent nations had nuclear leftovers. Those who didn't want the hassle and expense of maintenance and upkeep voluntarily gave up that nuclear material. Ukraine was one of those nations. The USA tacitly agreed to ensure there were no negative repercussions from their greater good act. Then Russia invaded them and we did diddly squat. 47 has shown a distinct preference for interacting with autocrats and Putin is his favorite. So even the monetary and weapons assistance they have gotten from us is at risk immediately upon 47's inauguration.

The rest of the world has no problem seeing this. The entirety of the world in no longer under the delusion that the USA will protect them if they give up their nuclear ability or ambition. The rest of the world will have their fingers crossed behind their backs and a smirk on their lips as they sign "ironclad" agreements with the USA knowing full well that the next POTUS might just decide to not honor it.

Governance at all levels, from the hyper-local to the international (and probably beyond in the not-so-distant future) is predicated on the willingness of the populace to be governed. When the population refuses, governance doesn't happen. When the population has no trust in the documents and agreements of governance, they are significantly less likely to participate and/or adhere to the conditions of the agreement. We have burned such trust and good will as we had acquired post WWII. The next time we want to talk to a nation about their nuclear abilities/ambitions, we will need to show up with money and will probably still not be trusted.

You might be forgiven for kneejerking to the idea that this is not something you, on American soil, need to worry about. I think you're wrong. The expense of nuclear technology includes the cost to secure the facility and/or the material and/or the device(s). With no known threat, there would be extreme temptation to save money by reducing security. There are probably a thousand terror groups in the world actually salivating over the prospect. A lot of them want to kill you. The potential for terror groups that want me dead of having access to nuclear weapons/material is something that I think bears watching.

Either way, we have screwed the pooch. Once a nation's leaders decide to sell their nuclear materials, it will be difficult to justify not going with the highest bidder regardless of who that is. I can pretty much guarantee that we are not going to like the repercussions of our actions.

I ain't psychic but, I can see.

Savant or Saboteur?

 Savant or Saboteur?

Audio version of Savant or Saboteur?

Have you ever donated blood? If yes, are you dead? Why not?

No really, explain to me why taking a significant percentage of your blood did not kill you. Feel free to pause your reading right here and explain in comments why that didn't kill you. I'll wait here.

If I were to speak of the breadbasket of the USA, what picture comes to mind? For many of us, it is the Mississippi River valley and plains. Apparently areas the Mississippi River floods into are really good for human agriculture.

In CPR training years ago, we were taught that our exhaled breath contained enough oxygen to justify sharing that breath with someone in desperate need for whatever reason.

There are certainly other examples you can think of on your own but I'm just gonna start here. If your body was a truly efficient machine, it would have exactly as much blood as it needed. Any loss of blood would be fatal. If your body was a truly efficient machine, you would metabolize all of the oxygen taken in with each breath. Since we know that flood plains are good for agriculture, farming there would be more efficient than constructing reservoirs that keep that prime property under water.

There is much to like about a simple process or machine that is as efficient as possible. But that simplicity is key. As a process or machine grows in complexity, the most efficient points are frequently also known as SPOFs or Single Point Of Failure.  Recently, there have been several news stories about “Ransom Attacks” wherein a network of computers is hacked to deny access to the rightful owners until a ransom is paid.  Business, government and hospitals have been attacked making the network or elements of the network, SPOFs.

I probably don't need to explain why it would be a bad thing to have a paper cut's amount of lost blood to be fatal. (there would be very few female humans past the age of puberty). I like being able to swim under water for a couple of minutes with no ill effects. There are obvious reasons why there are places that efficiency simply isn't desirable. As a general rule, it is reasonable to say that as an entity becomes more complex, we must be very judicious in our pursuit of efficiency.

A human liver is a pretty complex entity. Other human organs are not noticeably less complex. So humans are complex collections of complex entities. Collections of humans, whether family, community, county, city, state, nation or geographic region, cannot be less complex than the entities that are their constituent parts. Governance of those collections of collections of collections of complex entities, cannot help but be complex. An effort to make government efficient, is the process of determining where one wants to place the SPOF.

Now, I am not telling you secrets here. What I am saying is what almost any intelligent and/or educated individual would know - if they cared to. The existence of "savants" in human culture has been known for centuries or longer. They are those folk with an extreme knowledge or awareness of just one thing. They are not generalists and if they were, the word would mean nothing.

So, are they savants or saboteurs? Elon and Vivek are allegedly very highly educated. They have clearly shown a savant level of ability to make money. Can they both really be so clueless as to not understand Complex Systems Analysis? Because I have trouble seeing an option other than they really are ignorant of most everything outside their areas of education OR they have the goal of sabotaging the USA.

I like having my government be robust. Robustness always comes at the cost of efficiency - always. I do not wish for there to be a Single Point Of Failure in my government. I have nothing but antipathy and disgust for those who through ignorance or intent are attempting to ensure the government of the USA has an accessible SPOF. In the old days, we called such people traitors.