PR 24 - Past Rememberence
A wise saw once said that those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it. If may add a supporting reason why that is in fact the case, it is that no society is actually physically capable of remembering anything beyond the memories of its oldest member. Admittedly we have invented better methods of recording the present, such that people have a greater ability to get a sense of what the past was like but this is still at best, only like looking at the world through an expensive looking glass. Once one returns the looking glass to the shelf with all of the other items upon one's dressing table, it is again physically impossible to look at one's self. Herein lies the central problem of the past and indeed of history generally. Even if one chooses to study the past, the vast majority of people will not; they certainly will not remember the implications of what the past might be able to teach them if they have neither studied it, nor experienced it first hand.
And so it is with myself. I am two generations removed from the unpleasantness of last century in which more than one hundred million souls on board this world, were destroyed (some of whom were destroyed more efficiently and effectively due to mass extinction devices) and physically can not remember the past.
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TR 27 - Not 'The' Worst But Still Pretty Bad
I make no bones about the fact that I think that US politics for the last four years has been an absolute horrorshow. Rather than choose someone who had any experience in running civil government, the American people actively chose the star of a so-called 'reality TV show' who then proceeded to run the administration of the nation with as much reality as a reality TV show; actual civil government was allowed to withir and die. Back in 2016 the NPR Politics podcast would report how many posts in government remained unfilled and by about mid-February of 2017, then ceased doing so once it became apparent that those posts would probably never be filled. That number remains at about 1600.
The Trump Administration is not the worst in US political history as is often declared in hyperbole but it's certainly up there in terms of badness and unfitness. It would take something abysmal to knock off James Buchanan's administration which broke the Union and plunged the country into civil war but it was at least as bad as Richard Nixon's or Calvin Coolidge's administrations in terms of patronage and corruption. Right at the very end of its days, the act of questioning the democratic process itself in a desperate bid to hold onto power for power's sake, is currently going on like a fever; which is an apt metaphor for the administration's lethargic response to the Coronavirus pandemic which has now claimed more American lives than all wars combined since World War 2 but yet still hasn't gained even enough of an economic response which is appropriate to the scale of importance of the thing.
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One of the problems with being a spirit trapped inside a bioelectromechanical vehicle is that you can never ever know what anyone else is truly thinking. It's even more apparent when the thing doing the thinking is of another species. I have no idea what or even how the mind of a cat works and I have no idea what kind of powers that they imagine that I posses.
I was standing at the back door late yesterday afternoon when Micah looked at me, then looked at the sky which was raining, then looked back at me and meowed a sort of complaining and yet questioning meow at me.
The message although wordless was immediately obvious. Micah had a complaint about the weather and then asked me to do something about it, as if I have the power to do so. What I do not understand is whether or not he actually thinks that I have the power to change the weather or whether this is just a generic complaint.
The fact that humans can open doors and open tins and make food appear is pretty special. I think that both Arthur C. Clarke's law that any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic and the inverse corollary that any sufficiently advanced magic is indistinguishable from technology apply here.
On reflection though, being able to make food appear is pretty magical.
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The rules of procedure state that you have to have a detailed basis in law, chose, fact, or action, for what you are doing; and if you don't, then you could be liable for various sanctions and remedies to be taken against you.
It is what's known as the "No Ronald McDonald Law". You can't go to court and act like a clown and you especially can't act like a clown who isn't funny. You can't just show up and fling burgers around the place.
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I really struggle to understand why the whole malaise era of American motoring should have lasted for so long.
Ford of Europe continued producing cars that were smaller than what they were selling in the United States and the Fiesta, Escort, and Cortina should have filled up the entire of the small car line up.
I also do not understand why apart from the Crown Victoria which exists purely as a taxicab and a police car, why the Mustang or Taurus, should have ever been allowed to be anything other than Australia's Ford Falcon. Exactly at no point from the introduction of Mustang II was the Mustang better than the Falcon Coupe and at exactly zero point in time was the Taurus ever as good as the Falcon.
There is a similar story over at General Motors because Opel/Vauxhall with their Corsa, Astra, Vectra and all predecessors, were always better than their American equivalents, and Australia's Holden Commodore was always better than the Impala.
Europe develops better smaller cars than the United States because that's where their market lies and competition is fierce. Ford eventually had to concede the point and introduce the Fiesta, Focus, and Mondeo to the United States. General Motors on the other hand, simply let their smaller car engineering die and so never really understood how to go about making small cars; choosing to import the engineering from Daewoo/GM South Korea.
The Mustang even four years on when compared with a 2016 Falcon, is still not up to par. Panel fit and even just the reliability of the thing is significantly worse.
When Holden were given the axe, I can only presume it is because that they did show up Chevrolet badly. The SS became an orphan in the lineup, when everything from 3L V6 Evoke, all the way up to Caprice should have been Chevrolets. The Impala was so terrible that when Holden was forced to replace the VF Commodore, Impala 10 came last in every test behind both Insignia B which became ZB, and VF.
All of this is nothing more than speculation now as neither GM nor Ford sell anything other than SUVs and pickup trucks in America and GM only half-heartedly bothers to sell anything at all in Australia.
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I do not know if people's sense of entitlement has increased during 2020 or if it is simply a symptom of increased tensions due to the pandemic. This morning I was walking across a pedestrian crossing in Marayong on my way to the railway station, when a lady in a Hyundai Excel came flying around a corner and point blank refused to slow down. She then proceeded to throw verbal mediocrities at me, accusing me of not looking where I was going, before she got out and then went into the newsagents' shop.
In my defence, I was in the middle of a pedestrian crossing and that she had Give Way signs facing her on that side of the T-junction, and I am a pedestrian which means that in theory I should have the right of way in all circumstances except for motorways but I suppose that in the court of this lady's opinion, I am still in the wrong.
I'd like to think that the general lesson that we've all collectively learned during the pandemic is that we all have to share our public spaces and our civic life but that's looking incredibly naive as it appears that human nature being what it is, with a pathological need to paint ourselves as the hero of our own story, trumps everything. It is almost as if it is simply impossible for us to learn that we are all in this together because we can't ever hope to recognise that there even is anyone else whom we are in this together with.
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With California's 55 electoral votes, Joe Biden has been confirmed as the president-elect as members of the Electoral College have now cast enough votes to push him past the 270 threshold to win the Presidency. Officially the Congress will count the electoral votes on Jan 6th 2021 but assuming that entire states' Electoral College votes aren't discarded, then the result is finally final. President Trump has said his attempt to overturn the election results is "not over."
Last Tuesday (8th Dec) the US Supreme Court turned out appeals by a Republican congressman from Pennsylvania, Mike Kelly, who argued that a state law in Pennsylvania which was passed in 2019 which adopted absentee voting for any reason, and also adopted mail-in voting, was illegal. The Supreme Court noted in its reasons for decision that several courts had already denied the request, and that Mike Kelly waited until after the 2020 election to file his suit when the law was in place well before the election.
Last Friday (11th Dec) the US Supreme Court outright dismissed a Trump-backed lawsuit to block four states (Georgia, Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin) from voting in the Electoral College, claiming that changes made to their election procedures violated federal law. The decision clears the path for the electoral college to officially make President-elect Biden the next President of the United States. The reason stated by the Supreme Court is that: "Texas has not demonstrated a judicially cognizable interest in the manner in which another State conducts its elections. All other pending motions are dismissed as moot."
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The United States Center for Disease Control (US CDC) has finally issued a list of three Cs to avoid as the number of deaths due to Covid-19 has now exceeded 300,000 in the United States.
The 3 Cs to avoid are:
- Crowds
- Close Contact
- Confined Spaces
As of this morning in Sydney, the Northern Beaches outbreak which has now extended to 19 cases and made national headlines, seems to have provide a practical demonstration that the 3 Cs being avoided by rich people who honestly do not give a rip, are:
- Care
- Courtesy
- Common Sense
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The emails which are mainly from a chap called Paul Alexander who was in the Department of Health and Human Services, not only makes it abundantly clear that herd immunity was in fact the goal for the United States but that the Trump Administration didn't care about "people who get the virus and die and can't complain".
Now I don't know at what point that treason should be declared but when you have an open policy which is based around actually killing your own people, that has to come exceptionally close.
Nixon's Administration was corrupt, Hoover's Administration was also corrupt, and Buchanan's Administration through inactivity broke the Union in half, but Trump's Administration appears to have actually made a policy of killing more people due to Covid-19 than all wars since World War II combined.
The kindest word to describe this is autogenocide.
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