Virginia, Blackface, and Intrigue

Over the past two weeks, I've sat and watched this episode with the Virginia Governor, and Lt-Governor.  Both are democrats and it's just rather odd that some downfall would occur like this. 

First, you would think that in the vetting process...both (the Governor with the blackface episode and the Lt-Governor with the sexual assault episode) should have laid this out prior to running, or someone should have spoken about this.

Second, both intend to stay on and fight for their cause. 

Having grown up in Alabama in the 1960s and 1970s....I have to admit this rare fact....you just didn't have plays or parties going on, with blackface being used.  Maybe I didn't hang out with the 'right' crowd.  But you just didn't notice things like that.

This sexual assault story?  Once you sit down and read the whole story....it just reminds you a lot of the Michael Douglas 1987 movie....'Fatal Attraction'.  You walk into some situation....bump into some lady who is not completely 'normal', and wake up to realize you got a mess on your hands.  I feel sorry for the Lt-Governor, but I think every single guy in America....by age 18, should watch 'Fatal Attraction' and write down a dozen personal rules about situations to just walk away from and avoid like the plague.

Why so many people latching onto this scandal-drama?  Well....the public, mostly because of social media and stupidity, are behaving like a herd of cows.  While there was a time when the controllers of the internet could herd the cows in one direction.....I suspect we've entered the stage where the herd can flip and turn quiet well now.....on their own.  Just one hint of a scandal, and that can move out and reach one-million people in a matter of six hours.  Politicians are just not prepared for this type of environment where some little small scandal item from 1984 pops up, and they have to launch into a defense.

The odds that the next Governor's race in Virginia will be a freak show?  I think it's going to be hard to sign up for a race, and have everyone drilling down into your past....to find your sexual assault or your blackface incident to show up.  A simple DWI from 1982, or a financial mess with 22 credit cards in 1998, or four-week visit to a 'fat-farm' in 2002.....all could lead to some public 'casting of the stones' on the candidate.  Just admitting that you routinely bet $50 on NFL games, or that you dated a Russian-model for a year in the 1990s....would be enough now to disqualify your candidacy. 

Warren, Fake Indian Heritage, and Gullibility

Today, after this business came out with Senator Warren and her registration with the Texas bar association years ago as an American Indian.....I sat pondered over this.

Imagine yourself standing there and needing some lawyer, and you walk into this private office area, and here are a couple of American Indian paintings, a picture of the Indian warrior gal with some chief, and a stamped certificate noting her Indian heritage.  For most folks (at least from Alabama), this would have triggered you (the customer) to ask about this heritage.

Course, the lawyer gal would have told you some 3-line story about grandma such-and-such who was fifty-percent Cherokee, and how you were proud of the heritage.  But then the Alabama in you....would gone on to ask how Grandma was 50-percent Cherokee.   The 3-line piece simply wouldn't worked.  You'd basically be asked for the two-page story, which Warren would not have prepared herself for that chat.

The problem here is that so many Americans are just plain gullible.  You could make up some story that your Uncle 'Joe' ran off and joined the circus in the 1950s, and folks would believe it.  You could make up a story that your dad was a Mennonite who escaped the family farm in the 1960s, and fought in Vietnam.  You could make up a story about yourself, in that you took a month off in 1989....went to Alaska, and shot two grizzly bears.  People are simply gullible enough to believe these stories.

In fact, the further you can take this....like in some university or US government job.....the more dramatic that the story can be.  There are probably 350,000 guys walking around the US today and claiming that they earned a Medal of Honor (since the Revolutionary War, there's only been 3,522 people awarded the Medal).

You can go over to a major American public university and ask them to state how many American Indians are attending, and find out that at least 300 students from the University of Alabama.....are American Indians.  Factual?  It's doubtful.

But that's the thing about this whole business.....people are gullible enough to believe just about anything you make you make up.  You could take two weeks of leave from the office....disappear totally, and show up in two weeks with bandages and wounds on yourself.....telling folks that you went on some safari to South Africa and got attacked by lions.  Folks would be all driven to believe the story and ask you to relate the lion attack story.

There's a problem here, but we seem to really enjoy being entertained.

Trump and the SOTU Speech

I normally don't watch these State of the Union speeches.   As a kid, I can remember two or three by Nixon, a couple by Reagan, maybe one of Clinton's eight speeches, and maybe bits and pieces out of the last twenty years. 

From the Trump speech yesterday, there were three things that I kinda noticed.  First, it was a direct and blunt statement to socialism.....which I think he's going to label the 2020 election about socialism.  Those Democrats showing up in the primary in early 2020....have a script already written out to hype socialism....which I have doubts that the bulk of Democratic voters outside of metropolitan areas will sign up to.  If Trump's team just runs ads of Venezuela and what socialism is all about.....then their candidate probably won't even cross the 60-million vote point. 

Second, as much as Pelosi tried to appear focused and busy in the background.....I just kept looking at her as he spoke.  I suspect a lot of people did.

Third, it just seemed like every paragraph to his speech....had some honored guest of Trump in the background and getting mentioned.  An agenda to each single person?  Yes.  You can't help but notice that angle.

As for the short opposition speech from the Georgia candidate for governor?  Meaningful....but it just wasn't as dramatic.   And the forty-odd people behind her?  I would avoid that in the future when you do another opposition speech. 

Mass Movements and Suddenness

"It is a truism that many who join a rising revolutionary movement are attracted of the prospect of sudden and spectacular change in their conditions of life.  A revolutionary movement is a conspicuous instrument of change." 
-- Eric Hoffer

This is the beginning of a seven-essay series I'm writing from True Believer, the 1951 book written by Eric Hoffer, which drills down into mass movements and how various agenda groups 'stage' an event or two....to captivate an audience and drum up support for sudden change.

One of the odd features of mass movements is that they typically don't involve people over the age of fifty.  It's hard to convince older people of some event requiring you to stage a revolution for change.  This is the crowd with a skeptical nature....questioning the need for irrational behavior or the sudden arrival of some emergency.

A chief selling point of this mass movement strategy is that people are naive enough to think that sudden change (of any type) will bring about success or good fortune.  Statistically, you can't prove that statement though.

One of the great problems of this mass movement strategy is that you often find people who are in the midst of a great landscape, and they don't see a necessity to get hyped up for revolution.  These are the people least likely to buy into suddenness.  And on the other side of this....you have the group who are frustrated with disenchantment brewing.  This is the group that would like to doors opened and problems resolved.  Suddenness is easy to buy into with this group. 

Oddly enough, all of this attraction involves 'sudden-change'....not something that occurs in ten to twenty years.....but in a much shorter timespan.  This is usually where some individual is telling you that climate change is underway and unless you do something in ten years....the world will end.  A naive guy will buy into sudden change pretty easy at that point.  An older guy will be skeptical and ask questions. 

So when you are confronted with some agenda and it just seems to 'tingle' or swing back and forth....with urgentness and suddenness attached, ask yourself if this is real or fake. 

On the NFL

After the Super Bowl ended (I didn't watch, and must admit.....I haven't watched an NFL game in four years)....they got around to talking about the viewers.  It was the lowest watched game in a decade. 

What's really happened here?

Once the kneeling business, and continued attachment to social warrior 'tendencies' hit some serious strides.....people asked some general questions, and then departed as viewers or fans. 

Here's the thing about it.....very shortly (might be here in 2019, or 2020).....the salary structures are going to be discussed with ticket sales and decreased TV viewer ratings.  All of this will likely lead to a 10-percent cut in pay for the majority of players.  Hostility brewing? 

There's some talk about the 2021 players-owners contract and how this will go.  So 2019's season is awful critical.  Everyone needs to get fans back on board, and just plain stop talking social-warrior chatter.  The players and teams need one season where there is no negativity for fans to talk about.  The Colin Kaepernick 'saga'?  It needs to end.  Some team needs to just offer the guy a back-up quarterback contract, and Colin needs to accept it and move on with what is left in his career.  He might be able to squeeze four more productive years out of this mess. 

What happens if kneeling and social justice events continue into 2019 and 2020?  I'll go ahead and predict a lock-out/strike for the summer of 2021, and players get shocked that owners aren't rushing out to resolve this mess.  Yes, the entire 2021 season might not even exist.   For college players aiming to arrive in 2021?  They'd best start planning a plan-B type situation for that summer, and the fall.....looking for real employment to cover their bills. 

999 Possible Socialisms

Since going into retirement in 2013, I've spent an awful of time looking at various topics, and then pondering upon the definitions and realities of these items.  One topic which I seem to go back to almost weekly....is where some college kid has gotten his 'big' lecture on socialism, and the 'gravy-train' that accompanies socialism.

I sat and watched some discussion where a 20-year old wanted to talk about Swedish socialism and how things worked there.  But about two minutes into the conversation, I came to realize that he's really never been in Sweden, the Nordic countries, or Europe for that matter.  A couple of months ago, I watched some discussion where Spanish socialism got mentioned but it was again someone who has never been there.  In each case....they had a professor make an impact statement upon them.....but there is no real factual evidence that the professor himself has ever been in one of these socialist countries.

So what are the various Socialisms?  There's Karl Marx Socialism.  Friedrich Engels Socialism.  Oscar Wilde Socialism.  Albert Einstein Socialism.  Norway Socialism.  Sweden Socialism. Finland Socialism.  German Socialism.  DDR (old East German) Socialism.  Nelson Mandela Socialism.  Canadian Socialism.  Icelandic Socialism.  Vietnam (1960s-1970s) Socialism.  Vietnam (1990 to now) Socialism.  North Korean Socialism.  Che Guevara Socialism.  Benito Mussolini Socialism.  Hitler Socialism.  Lenin Socialism.  Stalin Socialism.  Chavez-Maduro Socialism.  British Socialism. 

You could spend an entire afternoon going over the 999 types of socialism that exist.  The basic idea is that everything would be fair, balanced, and divided upon up among 'equals'.  You would live in some utopia where everyone got a piece of the pie. 

The best example that people tend to use? Norwegian Socialism.  Few ever mention with the discussion that Norway has a ton of oil and natural gas.....which leads to a major flow of capital into the national treasury.  When that oil and gas money runs out?  There will be an eventual downward trend, and the Norwegian utopia environment will eventually disappear. 

Can you have Socialism without the utopia 'dream'?  This is the key question which would draw a dozen folks to sit in a pub....drink excessive amounts of alcohol....and come to no real rational conclusion. 

Looking at Lifetstyles

At some point over the next decade, I expect around 10,000 Americans (male and female) to have enough plastic surgery done to their bodies....to self-identify as Klingons, Romulans, or Vulcans.  So will start a self-identify campaign to be able to note on their license, or their status in life.....as another species.  We will laugh about the effort, but there will be significant numbers to trigger some kind of public stance in support of the additional species.  The odd thing here.....they are all imaginary groups, and have no logical position in reality. 

So months will pass, as the logical folks among us (myself included) will basically deny that you can identify in some official sense as Klingons or Vulcans.  Some 'experts' will begin to appear on CBS and NPR, to speak to the idea that you can change and become whatever you desire.  It'll reach some stage where the self-identified Romulans have a national parade, a weekend of Romulan lust, and perhaps even get into Romanian-style politics. 

The problem with this is that some end-game ought to occur, where people wake up from this fantasy lifestyle, and maneuver back to some logical mind, but it WON'T occur.

Is there any limit to this illusion in life?  No.

You can already see people maneuvering around with fictional series....fictional religions....and even fictional lifestyles. 

In some ways, we are seeking to find entertainment, and escape our discontent.  This illusion....works.