Superior Force: An Inferior Method Of Survival

What becomes of an empire as it sinks into a depraved desire to expand and, ultimately, survive at any cost? This is the question on my mind since I finished Orhan Pamuk's tome Nights of Plague which some reviewers called a work in three genres: historical novel, murder mystery, and political allegory.

Pamuk lives and writes in Türkiye, rump of the once powerful Ottoman Empire. He's often in trouble with his government for not depicting their antecedents splendidly enough -- as for instance when he acknowledged the Armenian genocide and was placed under house arrest as a result. This time he's accused of mocking Atatürk, the founder of modern Türkiye. But the events of his new novel, set as the Ottoman Empire sputters out, are as imaginary as its physical setting: an island besieged by bubonic plague.

It was impossible for me to read this book without noticing the many parallels to my own failing empire. 

When spying and surveillance become the way to hold on to power long after rulers have lost the confidence of the ruled, I think of the U.S. Not only informers but technology-based surveillance of every phone call (thank you, Edward Snowden), every email (no thank you, Google), and every social media post is the fuel our sputtering empire runs on. We've now seen firsthand evidence that Facebook, YouTube, Twitter and other platforms are deeply infested by U.S. alphabet agencies like the CIA, FBI, and NSA -- one might even say, controlled by them.

Fake news? Dying empires specialize in it. The inability to reflect on blunders and correct course is baked in to imperial hubris. This guarantees more mistakes and the kind of poor decisions that hasten one's demise. For example, a series of failed wars in the Middle East and 800+ military outposts in other nations that are economically, morally, and environmentally unsustainable. Extreme weather events batter us while the empire continues pumping greenhouse gasses out at an alarming rate to maintain its self-appointed dominance. And funding failed rocket launches that trash the environment while government entities like the FAA look away.

Inability to manage public health in an atmosphere of suspicion and deliberate misinformation by governments who must proclaim their glory (whether D or R flavored) characterizes our day. When almost no one trusts government at all levels, the only way to get people to cooperate with it is through fear and intimidation. These methods are notoriously bad at promoting healthy outcomes.

Which brings us to torture.

A central conflict is Pamuk's book is the tension between methods of solving a crime such as murder. The Ottoman method is to decide who the culprits are, then torture them until they confess. The Sherlock Holmes method (the reigning sultan is a fan) is to use deductive reasoning to discover the culprits. Our modern Turkish novelist paints these as "East" versus "West" and indeed this lens was prevalent at the turn of the 20th Century. But is that still accurate today?

Who bombed the Nord Stream pipeline? Only examine the obfuscation and determination not to know the answer to see what "the West" has come to. 

Where did SARS-CoV-2 come from? Many have concluded based on the evidence that it was invented in a lab especially its highly significant gain-of-function ability to be spread via aerosols. The U.S. government in particular has distinguished itself in spreading false information and in punishing those who offer a counter narrative, or even those who wonder aloud if the official narrative is plausible.

On World Press Freedom Day our thoughts are with the many journalists who suffer severe consequences for their work

In particular we think of our own Julian Assange, detained for more than 13 years and facing a 175 year sentence if extradited to the US for revealing war crimes… pic.twitter.com/YKl0LRUBze

— WikiLeaks (@wikileaks) May 3, 2023

Julian Assange is the most visible victim of torture inflicted for telling the truth about U.S. war crimes. His torment is meant as a warning to us all: practice actual journalism and prepare to forfeit your freedom, your health, even your life. As the torturers signal their false respect for press freedom and journalists.

Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo stand as exemplars of torture regimes that even an Ottoman sultan would admire. But once instilling fear in others reaches the level of terrorizing, the information gained is practically worthless.  The cruelty of extraordinary rendition as a fishing expedition for possible future informants and infiltrators is a source of pride for the twisted individuals responsible.

Plausible deniability is also as U.S.ian today as it was once Ottoman. Pamuk's sultan gets rid of political enemies by making sure they're murdered far away from the capitol by agents whose actions cannot be traced back to the head of state. Similarly, the U.S./NATO proxy war on Russia via Ukraine has been a huge disinformation success. My venal senator Susan Collins just sent me email claiming we're there to defend democracy (in one of the least democratic of European nations) and to respond to Russia's "unprovoked" invasion of the Donbas region.

But sure let's keep claiming that Russia is the one shelling the nuclear power plant in Zaporizhzhia that they've controlled for a year now. By refusing to see the truth that Ukraine is doing the shelling (with U.S. or NATO equipment), we also refuse to understand how to stave off a possible meltdown. 

Our hands are tied by our own lies.

When the application of force is seen as the solution to any and all problems, your society is bound to fail. Because many problems -- like pandemics -- cannot be solved by force. Education, persuasion, and confidence that leaders can make tough but beneficial public health decisions are the stuff of public health management. In their absence, the infection rages on.

Love, Kindness, And Solidarity Are The Most Radical Acts Of All

The longest night of the year calls us to practice radical love. 

I'm writing before dawn as I stoke up the fire to warm the house while a carpet of tiny ice crystals sparkles outside reflecting the full moon in the sky.

Rituals of light involving candles, bonfires, and holiday decorations prop up our sagging morale  in the Global North as we struggle through the second winter of a pandemic more deadly than ever. 

source: Getty Images

The passing of Black elder bell hooks was an occasion to remind ourselves of her wisdom and fierce advocacy for love as the ultimate radical act. Her guidance:

love is a combination of six ingredients: care, commitment, knowledge, responsibility, respect, and trust,

and so if you don’t know what you’re doing, just pull out that little card and ask yourself ‘in what way does my action that I’m taking reflect these traits, these characteristics, these values’

Tempers are raging in the world white supremacist patriarchy created. That world is filled with threats of violence, actual violence, and a hail of bullets at regular intervals. Videos shared on Tiktok went viral calling for last Friday to be national school shooting day. Previous campaigns motivated students to destroy school bathrooms and punch teachers.

Teachers are quitting in droves, and those still hanging on are posting anguished reflections on the rising tide of anger directed at them by parents who have come undone and children whose social opportunities boiled down to zoom and video games for a year. 

High school teacher Julie Holderbaum wrote:

Oh my God, another one? How many school shootings does that make this year?

Are all teachers as overwhelmed and exhausted as I am?

Does anyone care what teachers are going through in this country?

When is someone going to do something about it?

Health care workers also are operating in a state of extreme duress that can only be sustained for so long. Much of it is fueled by their frustration and despair as angry, ignorant people refuse to observe safety protocols to protect others: the little children too young for the vaccines, and the immunocompromised people too ill to receive them.

Brute force in the form of vaccine mandates has failed as those who study public health success stories knew it would. 

Irresponsible advice last spring -- from the CDC no less -- to take off our masks and resume commerce and in-person school led us deeper into the crisis. 

We need a #maskmandate indoors in public. One-fifth of 🇺🇸 HCWs have quit since the #pandemic began, & I know dozens personally planning an exit. You will not have enough staffed beds if you don’t control cases. They have #physicianburnout & we can’t just make more drs/nurses. https://t.co/agWHsQwl8W

— Tatiana Prowell, MD (@tmprowell) December 20, 2021

This month the White House press secretary sneered at a reporter who asked why the federal government does not provide at home tests for everybody like other countries do (i.e. countries with universal public health care programs). Simple, non-invasive PPE like N95 masks for all is still lacking. 

Providing them would be an act of love, but the people have long since stopped expecting rule by corporations or oxymoronic for-profit health care to be guided by love. Will they share vaccine knowledge with the world or hoard it to increase their own wealth? You know the answer.

Scholar of failing empires Chris Hedges says that cruelty it not an accidental byproduct of the current system, it is the point. 

Our courts fail to punish sexual exploitation of children, protecting the powerful men and women in Epstein's little black book.

Instead, a court in the government that capitalism and its foundation, racism, built, punish a Puerto Rican immigrant truck driver whose company vehicle brakes failed resulting in a crash fatal for others. 

Image source: "Viral TikTok Shows Truckers Boycott On Behalf Of Rogel Augilera-Mederos"

Aguilera-Mederos manifested love when he said how he wished that he could have traded his own life for that of the victims. 

The judge sentenced him to 110 years. Silver lining in that particular cloud: truck drivers are refusing to enter the state of Colorado in response and over 3 million people have signed this petition asking that his sentence be commuted to time served.

Workers are unionizing like mad, hooray! Solidarity is an act of love -- while condemning someone to risk death for the bottom line is routine corporate behavior even in a weather emergency.

As the war machine churns out deadly poisons, accelerates climate change, and takes no responsibility for burning children to death in Afghanistan; as the social safety net tears beyond repair and your wealthy government responds by going on holiday; and its automated messages fill inboxes with ominious reminders of the resumption of student loan payments in January; as we struggle through the longest night of the year,

rememember:

love, kindness, and solidarity are the most radical acts of all.

Late Stage Capitalism Is A Death Cult -- Change My Mind

Aerial view of candle factory in Kentucky before and after this week's tornado.
Source: MAXAR Technologies via Reuters

I was sleepy the other night when I thought my husband said that there had been a 200 mile wide tornado killing people in Kentucky. Turns out it was a mile wide tornado (bad enough) touching down over a 200 mile area in several states (quite bad) in December (clear sign of a climate in crisis).

What he didn't know at the time is that Amazon warehouse workers routinely deprived of their cell phones were buried under rubble when the roof collapsed.

Source: The Washington Time "OSHA opens probe into deadly Amazon warehouse collapse in Illinois"

Also that workers in Kentucky's Mayfield Consumer Products candle factory who heard warning sirens and tried to leave were threatened with firing if they departed. Some stayed and died, some left anyway, and some stayed and survived to tell the tale.

The economic system producing both galloping climate change and burgeoning military budgets that drive climate change is a death cult.

Usually the claim "capitalism is a death cult" applies these days to the absence of public health policy that protects, you know, public health. 

One cannot serve both commerce and health as the CDC has bent over backward to demonstrate.

In the second winter of a deadly pandemic the U.S. has racked up this dismal track record:

• no universal health care
• no free testing kits such as the rest of the world receives (and derision from the White House press secretary for even suggesting this would be a good idea)

Wow. This tweet took off. And contains some of the most accurate responses wrt our pandemic response here in the US.

Maybe at some point our FDA, CDC and administration will understand finally this is a PUBLIC HEALTH problem, and not a Medical problem to make $$ off of. Maybe. https://t.co/fUCMNTtw91

— Michael Mina (@michaelmina_lab) December 7, 2021

• vaccine mandates rather than empirically proven access + education + incentive methods

• feeble vaccine distribution to low income nations we share the planet's germ pool with

• miniscule economic relief for actual people (vs. corporations)

• huge growth in the numbers of unhoused people nationwide

• schools open despite higher infection levels and maxed out hospital ICUs nationwide

• widespread health care provider burnout

• obscene growth in wealth inequality

Extreme wealth inequality has been a significant force for toppling the social order throughout history. So have pandemics and other disasters.

Meanwhile, the engines of commerce churn on creating profits to buy off governments. Subsidies to fossil fuel corporations were $5.9 trillion in 2020, a whopping $11 million a minute.

That would buy a lot of testing kits. If only the U.S. prioritized life over profits.

Fear Is Driving Both Sides In Vax Controversy

Screenshot shared on Twitter by Dr. Kimberly Manning https://twitter.com/gradydoctor/status/1443894539471687698 

An angry white man chastised me on Facebook for using asterisks in the word m*therf**ker claiming that Vietnamese Buddhist and teacher Thich Nhat Hanh advises us to "call things by their proper names." He had commented on my recent blog post with a meme showing an unidentified Black man saying, "When are you dumb m*therf**kers gonna realize both parties work for the same fuckin people?"

While I agree wholeheartedly with the analysis, I have two goals in mind: the first is, don't sink to name-calling (the first step in any genocide or civil war, because it dehumanizes "others"). The second is, don't get kicked off Facebook. 

Just yesterday a slew of prominent anti-vax accounts were kicked off YouTube (which is Google-owned, not Facebook-owned) and political commentators routinely have their social media accounts shut down for sharing inconvenient truths or using "violent language."

So, I may be skating on thin ice with this post examining some of the thinking on both sides of the COVID vaccine controversy. 

But, since I write when I've been reading news and opinion pieces until my head is about to explode, here goes.

Dr. Kimberly Manning is Black and, using hashtags like #blackwhysmatter, is offering a "No Judgment Zone" where people can talk about their vaccine hesistancy.

Fear is driving a lot of this hesitancy, especially as the CDC is a government agency that has given some really bad advice during this pandemic e.g. telling us last summer it was ok to take off masks in indoor public spaces if we were vaccinated. I suspect their motive for doing so was commerce not public health but, even if they were sincerely misguided, the advice was disastrous and led directly to this, the third and worst spike of COVID infections in the U.S.

And the good old U.S. government has not only lied to us many, many times, but has sponsored multiple genocidal practices like literally starving indigenous children in residential schools to see how few calories they could tolerate before succumbing. 

Also infecting Black men with a debilitating, fatal disease in the infamous Tuskegee Study of Untreated Syphilis in the Negro Male. The study ran, incredibly, from 1932 to fucking 1972! The subjects of this gruesome experiment were not told the facts, just that they were getting "free health care" from the federal government.

And let's not forget that the U.S. has been investing in biological weapons research for decades.

Here's a young NBA player explaining his own vaccine hesitancy:

I woke up to see videos of basketball players being more reasonable about vaccine hesitancy & loving your neighbor than the government and most other celebrities …am I still dreaming? Is this real?

pic.twitter.com/c9pq9IpjM7

— Ezra (@EzraCeleste) September 28, 2021

By now you probably think I'm anti-vax, but I assuredly am not. 

I'm fully vaccinated, everyone in my family that's the right age is fully vaccinated, and just this week I facilitated my husband getting a booster shot. One of my children got COVID last month but is fully vaccinated and had a mild case with no serious repercussions thus far.

Which is really fucking lucky, because now I'm going to address the other side of the ethical question. You know, public health, and the fact that we're all in this mess together.

When an individual speaks about why he, as an individual, isn't going to take the vaccine, I respect his opinion but I think he's wrong. Epidemics aren't about you, they're about the germ pool you're part of AND, increasingly important, about the hospitals you're sharing with others in your community.

I'm going to share one of the thousands of stories out there from grieving families who watched a loved one die, not of COVID, but of being unable to access health care in areas where hospital ICUs are full to overflowing.

Then I'm going to share one of the thousands of stories out there from doctors and nurses who care for acutely ill patients and have been doing so in an escalating emergency that has now lasted 20 months.

Here's one from Alabama dated September 13, "Family: Man turned away from dozens of COVID-filled hospitals." 

As hundreds of mostly unvaccinated COVID-19 patients filled Alabama intensive care units, hospital staff in north Alabama contacted 43 hospitals in three states to find a specialty cardiac ICU bed for Ray Martin DeMonia, his family wrote in his obituary.

The Cullman man was finally transferred to Meridian, Mississippi, about 170 miles (274 kilometers) away. That is where the 73-year-old antiques dealer died Sept. 1 because of the cardiac event he suffered. Now, his family is making a plea.

“In honor of Ray, please get vaccinated if you have not, in an effort to free up resources for non-COVID related emergencies,” his obituary read.

reported by Associated Press

And, here's one from Iowa reported September 6 where an emergency room doctor with decades of experience shares his exhaustion and career perspective:

[Dr.] VanGundy said that he'd recently seen non-COVID-19 patients with meningitis, stroke, heart attack, and blood clots in the lung, but couldn't transfer them to ICUs because "they're all full" with people who had COVID-19. He warned that if patients get sick then they'll have to wait as long as "days" for a bed to open up...

"In over 20 years of doing this I have never been this busy or this stressed or seen this many sick people," he said.

reported by Business Insider

There is lots more anecdotal evidence of health care provider burnout and grieving families begging people to get vaccinated.

Many health workers will have the problem solved for them because many governments are mandating vaccines for them. It's not a new idea, but it is adding a new vaccine to the list of vaccines already required in their field. And some health care workers have already quit rather than comply. They're certainly not in the majority, but they do exist.

Do mandates work? Again, not a new question as vaccines and vax hesitancy have been around for a long time. 

Short answer: no. Coercion is not the most effective way to address people fearful of a new type of vaccine.

What does work? Dr. Kimberly Manning's approach: education, persuasion, listening, and not judging.

If I get kicked off my blogging platforms for saying that, so be it.

Maybe I'll just go archive my post from a few months ago: "Divided We Fall May Be COVID's Underlying Purpose."

9/11 Is But One Piece Of The Puzzle

A visual comparison of deaths at the World Trade Center and deaths from the pandemic caused by the COVID-19 virus and its variants.

Unlike today's students being preyed upon by military recruiters counting on manufactured patriotism -- patriotism on steroids since the unfortunate events of 9/11 -- I was there. No, not in NYC, or Washington DC, or even in Maine where one of the alleged masterminds of the alleged takedown of the twin towers in lower Manhattan boarded his first plane.

I was in California, on my way to work, with a preteen child in the car -- one whose sense of security was demolished on Sep. 11, 2001.

A few years later I was back in Maine trying to count the flags that had sprung up everywhere (too many to count in a car traveling 45 mph).

Some things are best understood in retrospect.

That nearly 3,000 "Americans" (27 were actually foreign nationals) died in the World Trade Center was a fact repeated as often as the videos of both towers collapsing. Oh, and WTC Building 7 which collapsed 8 hours later. This magnitude of death was the pretext for going to war on Afghanistan which allegedly harbored the Saudi masterminds of the terrorist attack. Except it was Pakistan doing the harboring. But they have nuclear weapons, don't they?

The main things that 9/11 provided were an enormous spectacle to justify the endlessly profitable wars of imperial expansion for the U.S., sometimes doing business as NATO.  (If you wonder what NATO is doing in Australia since that's about as far from North Atlantic as you can get, maybe read blogger Caitlin Johnstone.)

The other signficant thing that 9/11 provided cover for was the 300 page so-called Patriot Act which gutted constitutional rights of citizens and terrorists alike. Swiftly gutted them, and created the Department of Homeland Security and created ICE -- both of which we had gotten along without prior to 9/11.

A lot of torture happened after 9/11. No, not the torture of being an Afghan or Pakistani child trying to sleep while surveillance robots droned overhead 24/7 waiting to unleash their Hellfire missiles on your home. Torture in secret prisons and in the gulag known as Guantánamo which is on Cuba's territory without their consent.

Torture that resulted in persecution of torture whistleblowers. 

Torture of Chelsea Manning for refusing to reveal how she shared evidence of U.S. war crimes. 

Torture of Julian Assange for sharing evidence of U.S. and allied forces' war crimes and dirty financial dealings. 

Almost torture of Edward Snowden for revealing the spying that digital technology and security state overreach have made ubiquitous. He lives in exile in Moscow now, with his young family, still trying to warn us about how to protect ourselves from the "security" state.

9/11 was used to justify war on Iraq via lies that Saddam Hussein had something to do with it. 

Source: Brown University, Watson Institute, Costs of War Project

9/11 was used to drive fossil fuel consumption and thus climate crisis.

9/11 was used to justify war on people in Syria. And Yemen. And Somalia. 

9/11 was used to consolidate U.S. government support of Israel's human rights violations and war crimes against Palestinians.

Source: The Daily Times "Eagleton fifth-graders study 9/11" Sep. 10, 2016 

9/11 was used to produce a lot of canned curriculum that teachers are told they must use to inform kids that are not upset about 9/11. 

Becuase they were not even born when it happened.

And really, how much should they care about 9/11? Their young lives have been upended by a public health disaster of far greater proportions, still rampaging out of control. This time the heroes they're encouraged to worship aren't in firefighter or military uniforms, they're in scrubs and PPE.

What will this much larger disaster be used for?

Uncivil War Over COVID Response Gaining Momentum & Distracting Us From The Real Villains

A tremendous amount of debate is apparent around the convergence of two themes I've posted about recently on this blog: "Divided We Fall May Be COVID's Underlying Purpose" and "Revolution Needed, So Our Corporate Overlords Are Fanning The Flames For Civil War."

Just yesterday I saw this post from a friend on Facebook:

He was making reference to the many people posting sentiments like "Let the unvaccinated die at home rather than taking up an ICU bed when they catch COVID." Besides the creepy tone of wishing death on others, my first thought was that it would include all children under 12. Wow.

The same source shared an excellent article on medical ethics by Dr. Jay Baruch: "It's easy to judge the unvaccinated. As a doctor, I see a better alternative."

Dr. Baruch points out that when people ask him how he can provide care to a COVID patient who is unvaccinated, it's analogous to asking how he could treat a drunk driver for injuries, or a burn victim who lit a cigarette while on oxygen for emphysema.

Touché.

But nearly every COVID response has been politicized to the nth degree in order to drive us ever further from common ground. 

Whether to mask, whether to vax, whether to distance, or open schools, or mandate public health measures in public places like schools -- all are subject to hysterical name calling aimed at opponents and coming from both sides of any of these issues.

I'll stop with the examples now. Compiling them all would require several websites.

My friend Pat Taub who has a background in group facilitation wrote a letter to the editor that was published this week by Maine's biggest daily paper: "Creating listening circles to heal our divisions." An excerpt:

I wish the media would stop reporting on the deepening clashes between the vaccinated and the anti-vaccinated as if it were a fait accompli, rather than suggesting ways to heal this division.

The vaccinated look down on the unvaccinated as irresponsible because they fail to consider that being unvaccinated means, if they get COVID, that they also can infect others and spread the virus. The unvaccinated feel that government-mandated vaccinations are an infringement on their personal freedom. Others opposed don’t trust the vaccines or believe in their efficacy.

These divisions, which are becoming increasingly violent, are distracting us from coming together to build strong communities. We are lacking in mutual understanding.

To bridge this gap, I suggest local listening projects, where individuals representing opposing views meet in a supportive environment led by a moderator experienced in communication skills. Schools, churches, synagogues and libraries are logical settings. The listening groups would be composed of pro-vaccination and anti-vaccination volunteers.

Seven of the eight comments on her letter expressed contempt for the idea of listening to the other side. Only one affirmed her diagnosis while suggesting an alternative cure:

Meanwhile, teachers and college instructors heading back to the classroom right now are sounding a note of desperation about keeping themselves and their families safe in the face of the highly infectious Delta variant. 

An example from Dalton State College in Georgia:

I start every class with an ultrasound picture of my son due in October, pleading with my students to wear masks as a personal favor to my family. In small, at-capacity classrooms, only 5 of 45 of my students wore a mask. I’ll never be able to look at this job the same way.

— Matthew LeHew (@matthewlehew) August 30, 2021

(Link to the tweet if the embed does not work for you: https://twitter.com/matthewlehew/status/1432392705104093187)

I just retired from teaching and I'm about to turn down two invitations to volunteer because the part of Maine I live in isn't all that different from Georgia. With an older husband who already has respiratory issues, it's not a gamble I feel like I can take to be indoors among unvaxxed or unmasked adults.

I'm disappointed in people's choices, but I'm going to keep listening. 

I'm not going to wish them dead. 

Health Care Workers Who Won't Get COVID Vax To Be Out Of A Job In Maine

My status updates on spybook seldom get much attention, but lately almost anything about COVID choices gets a lot of comments and clicks (and a gratuitous offer of COVID information I can trust? I'll pass.) 

Yesterday I had a mildly shocking experience receiving health care and I posted this:

The context here in Maine is that our governor has given health care workers notice that, unless they are vaccinated, they will have to stop working in health care. 

If you think this should be a foregone conclusion, you haven't been paying attention.

There have already been two protests in Maine cities with hundreds of health care workers marching for their right to get up close and personal to administer health care without being vaccinated.

I have persistently shared my theory that the underlying purpose of COVID was to divide the 99% against one another so that the 1% can continue their reign of austerity for us and obscene wealth for them. That, too, has gotten a lot of clicks and shares so it will probably be taken down as misinformation soon (read it here while you can).

Many of the comments I cannot agree with, but I let the debates rage on because

I'm genuinely curious to know how other people understand this health crisis and the optimum ways to respond.

Both right wingers and liberals tend to be really nasty with the name-calling, insults, and generalized lack of respect for other people. I think that's sad and I never "like" that kind of language. Every genocide and civil war begins with dehumanizing language aimed at "others."

I am reminded of a theory I encountered recently: holding demonstrably false ideas in public is a way of signaling loyalty to your group, thus conferring an evolutionary advantage. If true, this explains a lot. Especially how 45 became more popular with his fan base for tweeting lies that everyone knew were lies. If you want to check out this theory, you can read about it here.

A ubiquitous comment from both sides wonders how the others could be so stupid.

This is an ableist comment unless what they really mean is ignorant. No, stupid and ignorant aren't synonyms. One means unable to use reasoning well and the other means lacking information. People with developmental delays in cognition are not uneducated but they are differently abled. As for what happened with public education in the U.S., don't get me started.

An anecdote from pre-COVID days:

I once learned how to use an app for making online quizzes. Another learner and I took a sample quiz where one of the math questions depended on knowing the order of operations i.e. PEMDAS. The other learner doubted the answer and it bugged them enough that they brought it up to me later. I explained why I thought it was the right answer using PEMDAS and then added, "______ was a math major and is our IT director so I'm pretty sure if he and I disagree about the answer to a math problem, he's gonna be correct." I could tell that this did not resolve the other learner's skepticism. They trusted my answer -- I was a literacy coach -- more than his! Possibly because they had a closer relationship with me than with the IT director? Who really knows.

Distrust of experts -- even in an education setting -- has been with us for a while.

And it can be deadly. 

Maine legislator Rep. Chris Johansen continues to go into crowds unmasked and to fight vaccines and masking requirements for large gatherings despite the fact that both he and his wife contracted COVID. His wife died.

Then there's the fact that the No Child Behind Act, passed with bipartisan support during George W. Bush's adminstration, took an ax to both science and social studies education. It did this by preferencing reading and math for the test-and-punish regime that enriched for-profit testing corporations. Science clawed its way back via STEM and other intitiatives from the outside world, but much damage had  been done. And social studies has never really recovered. 

That explains a lot, too, doesn't it? It's clear how even many elected officials really don't know the structures of government or understand their role in that structure. Once big money controlled all three branches of government at the federal level, and many if not all state legislatures, the old civics lesson on "how a bill becomes a law" became a lie anyway.

It would probably be elitist of me to point out that it isn't doctors or registered nurses (RN) refusing to get vaccinated for the most part. 

Here in Maine it's the much less educated health care providers who are the refuseniks e.g. certified nursing assistants (CNAs), lab technicians, hospital kitchen workers, group home attendants, and the like.

My sister works at the leading research hospital in northern California as an RN and has for years. I value her information and advice because so far it has been ahead of the curve i.e. the intel that she passes on from the epidemiologists at her hospital anticipates what eventually the CDC gets around to recommending. I'm guessing this is because UCSF researchers care about health rather than about commerce, while the CDC must serve two masters.

Meanwhile, every school district in Maine -- and there are a lot of them -- has been thrown to the wolves to hold the line for science amid shouts, threats, and jeers of uneducated and/or ignorant parents.

Then there's the big picture context.

Source: https://twitter.com/OpinionatedLab/status/1426296638654619648

Lies are the currency of the day. Big lies, ones that can kill you.

Well, after all this gloom and doom I feel moved to end on a lighter note. No idea who created this gem:

Source: https://www.facebook.com/snarkavenue/photos/a.397515703684731/3517531905016413/

Revolution Needed, So Our Corporate Overlords Are Fanning The Flames For Second Civil War

 One of President Obama's many rewards for enriching banksters at the taxpayers' expense was this summer "cottage" on Martha's Vineyard.

Why do we need a revolution, you say? 

In rough order of priority:

o Global climate crisis driven by capitalism is spiraling out of control and the window to walk us back from catastrophe is rapidly closing.

o Global pandemic has killed millions and appears headed to kill millions more with a system of medical apartheid and for-profit medicine in the U.S. and other non-socialist countries.

o Eviction crisis on top of already galloping homelessness not only creates trauma for millions but is a big factor in the spread of COVID.

o Military spending and weapons systems surging -- including building nuclear weapons, illegal under international law because they could easily end human life if used.

o Incarceration for profit in the U.S. and to impoverish and disenfranchise Black, indigenous, and people of color is growing worse and was already at crisis levels. Racist policing continues at crisis levels but is now more visible due to cell phone videos.

o Student debt continues to depress the prospects of entire generations.

o Minimum wage is now about 1/3 of what an actual living wage should be in 2021, especially because of rapid, ongoing inflation of the cost of housing.

o Child care and public education continue to be underfunded in the face of immense unmet needs.

How are our corporate overlords fanning the flames for a second Civil War?

Charlottesville, Virginia "Unite the Right" rally August, 2017 

In roughly chronological order:

o Propaganda rather than useful information sharing is the norm across the spectrum of corporate-owned "news" outlets, from Fox News to CNN. The steady erosion of reliability in sourcing information is the work of corporate media and corporate social media that censors on behalf of the ruling class.

Carlos Piccata, who says he is a combat vet, to the Shasta, CA county commission: “It’s not going to be peaceful much longer. We’re building, we’re organizing. You won’t stop us when the time comes. This is a warning for what’s coming. There’s a million people just like me.” pic.twitter.com/EF8fjqGb1z

— Ron Filipkowski (@RonFilipkowski) August 14, 2021

o White supremacy is in a desperate fight to remain in control, and numerous militias and other types of organizations have responded to perceived and real threats including the removal of Confederate statues and flags. Also, attacks on Black Lives Matter protesters, including killing them by running them down with cars (a practice that a few states have legalized) and targeting them for assassination.

o Law enforcement complicit in white supremacist movement, and armed to the teeth with cast off military equipment shared by the Pentagon.

o Widespread misinformation about public health protocols including vaccines, masking, and distancing and robust media coverage of refuseniks.

o Absence of national leadership on ending the pandemic leaving states, towns, and school boards to fend for themselves in the face of angry mobs. We are entering the third school year in a row pitting neighbors against neighbors and parents against school administration.

What can we in the U.S. do to bring on revolution rather than a second civil war?

In no particular order:

o Don't fall for divisive tactics. For example, consider the possiblity that "Divided We Fall May Be COVID's Underlying Purpose."

o Look and listen beneath the surface of false dichotomies.

o Don't demonize each other just because we disagree. People with ideas that seem wrong and dangerous may have PTSD from traumas. They may be experiencing hunger, bankruptcy, or lack of medical care. They may only have access to really poor information or outright disinformation. Don't write human beings off even if you loathe their ideas. 

o Free your mind and the rest will follow. Do your own thinking, take in new information, and be willing to rethink your beliefs. Put another way, don't mistake narratives for truth. Even this one.

Divided We Fall May Be COVID's Underlying Purpose

I've been thinking a lot about how the SARS-CoV2 pandemic and vaccination drama has played out in the U.S., and why that might be. 

It's pretty clear by now that the coronavirus with cutting edge gain of function capabilities was made in a lab in Wuhan, China and that this particular project was a collaboration between that country's government and my own. Dr. Anthony Fauci, the face of our federal government's response to the pandemic, was deeply involved.

Whether or not the virus leaked accidentally or was deliberately released will probably remain as murky as the truth about the unfortunate events of 9/11. 

No real inquiry will ever be conducted, and the misinformation swirling in "news" outlets, blogs, and social media platforms will continue to muddy the waters.

Certain bioweapons experts like Dr. Francis Boyle maintain that the accidental leak theory is likely. His reasoning: all bioweapons he's studied have accidentally leaked, including Lyme Disease and West Nile virus.

But the history of U.S. development and deployment of bioweapons since the nation's founding is both sordid and largely undisputed. So, there's precedent for an intentional introduction of the virus. Also for the assertion that the vaccines themselves could be bioweapons.

I used to sort through 9/11 theories with an eye to the uses that were made of that event: perpetual occupation and theft of resources in the Middle East; severe restrictions on civil liberties formerly guaranteed by the Constitution; the creation of the odious Department of Homeland Security and its evil subsidiary ICE. So quickly were these changes instituted that it is barely plausible that the events of 9/11 were unexpected.

Now I'm sorting through COVID theories with a similar lens. Aside from the death of 4 million, accelerated wealth inequality, and the privatization of profits from vaccines developed largely at the public's expense, what has been the most noticeable effect of the pandemic to date?

The division of formerly coherent communities, groups, coworkers, and families has been a very significant effect of COVID.

This would put the virus in a category with plenty of other features of 21st century life: 

• robust, well-funded disinformation campaigns disseminated widely and constantly
• promotion of the belief in false dichotomies (e.g. Democratic Party vs. Republican Party) 
• deliberate fueling of conflicts between generations, genders, sexual orientations, education levels, and geographical groups.

To what purpose?

A recent observation by Australian blogger Caitlin Johnstone caught my eye.

Caitlin Johnstone on substack

As people lose faith in electoral politics to change anything, so the corporate media gin up the show of differences between the two flavors of oligarchy. But young people aren't buying it. Most of them are too damn poor to believe that it makes a significant difference in their circumstances which color is sitting in the White House or Congress. The American Dream for these generations is to be able to move to a country with universal health care. On this basis, they envy Russia and China rather than fearing them.

Keen interest in socialism, communism, Marxist-Leninist theory, radical socialist feminism, and non-hiearchical cooperatives is evident from Gen Z through millenials. Capitalism is a dirty word. This undoubtedly worries those "winning" at capitalism (though how profits generated by destroying the planet as a viable biome for human beings can be seen as a "win" defies logic).

Some of the formerly coherent groups I'm aware of that are rendered asunder by the COVID vaccination controversy: nuclear families, extended families, organizations working for social change, dance troupes, schools and universities. Cousins gathered this summer based on who had, and had not, gotten the shot, and teens whose parents would not consent to their vaccination were excluded. Mask wearers inside stores were jeered at and hassled by mask refusers. Hospital workers went back to wearing N95 masks and goggles all day every day, seething with resentment at people who won't pitch in for public health after an exhausting 16 months of pandemic life. 

It's almost like the virus was designed to feed into the individualism on steroids that characterizes U.S. culture. 

And was deployed only after the immense disinformation mechanisms of mass media and social media were in place to cast serious doubt on the veracity of any and every fact.

Divided, we are most vulnerable to the depradations of our corporate overlords. 

EDITED July 29, 2021

A few things I wish I'd seen -- or remembered -- before writing about this yesterday. I'm likely to write about this topic again but I don't have time right now, so I'll include these as a postscrip here.

Anti-vaxxers may just obey Trump or believe lies or not understand statistics, but I wonder what impact it had that Reagan helped supply Iraq with bioweapons and then Bush #1 forced 1/2 million U.S. soldiers to take experimental vaccines in a war that made a lot of them sick.

— David Swanson (@davidcnswanson) July 29, 2021