I have had much less to say for a couple of months now. Although in part I've been occupied by personal needs, mainly I am so distressed by what I am seeing that I cannot comment dispassionately. The whole point of my blog was to discuss issues of relevance without rancor. That is no longer possible. This long post is an assessment of where we are as a nation. The short answer is I believe both American exceptionalism and the American experiment in Republican government are over. We are not what we were. To quote Prufrock, we have seen the moment of our greatness flicker.
A book called 'Game of Shadows' was published looking at steroid use in baseball, focusing on Barry Bonds. He of course has claimed he did not use them. Among the many items they examined was home run frequency, expressed as at bats per home run. Interestingly Hank Aaron does not lead this list. His home run totals come from a long career of impressive but not dominant power. Harmon Killebrew has the highest home run frequency in history, only 7 at bats per home run. Home run frequency peaks reliably between ages 26 and 30. From then on there is a steady and increasingly rapid decline in home run frequency. It is simply physiologically impossible for aging fast twitch muscle to react to a professionally pitched ball. Every power hitter that has ever been has seen a decline in home run frequency with age.
Enter Barry Bonds. Bonds too had a steady decline in home run frequency....Until 199-2004. In that period, the declining years of his career, Bonds not only outperformed himself as a young man, three of his seasons are among the greatest seasons in baseball history. They exceed Babe Ruth's greatest seasons at the height of his career. This is simply impossible. No one even needs to ask if Bonds used steroids, they don't have to see him inject or get a urinalysis. It is physiologically impossible to get the result he got without chemical cheating.
This is true of the 2020 election. A brilliant analysis of the vote patterns in the recent election is here- https://votepatternanalysis.substack.com/p/voting-anomalies-2020?fbclid=IwAR0vGjvqBYFi4gSL0IU9AhxPGoGfn-PMao71Pvo8H5AUfHbE_h9h9a4o3cA.
The relevant graph is here-
As you can see, Biden overtook Trump in two dramatic leaps of votes, both discreet jumps at specific times. This is procedurally and statistically impossible. It is even more obvious in Wisconsin-
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Recounts have focused on the accuracy of the count, an irrelevant issue. Officials, Democratic officials, steadfastly refuse to look at the authenticity of ballots. The count is not wrong; the ballots are. It is prima facie obvious that ballots were 'injected' into the ballot stream. I quote here from Presumed Innocent, Scott Turow's brilliant novel- "And I say, sir, that we stipulated to the accuracy of the sample YOU sent, Dr. Kumagai".
Exactly. Recounts simply document the accuracy of the count, not the accuracy of the vote. We have overwhelming evidence of shoddy voter roll maintenance- dead voters, redundant addresses, out of state voters. Voter rolls in the four contested states have more voters than the state has voter age persons, per judicial watch. It is too easy to inject ballots into such a corrupt database.
It is deeply distressing and revealing that neither our Washington government nor our media are paying any attention to this problem. No one cares. It seems to me much of DC, Republican and Democrat, wanted Trump gone, and was willing to look the other way at obvious cheating in order to get rid of him. Our press, grossly skewed liberal, is equally delighted to ignore anything that got Trump booted out. But this is a terrible and dangerous precedent to set. It shows a government uninterested in genuine public opinion and votes, interested only in the outcome it wants. And we as citizens don't seem to care either. We are willing to accept fraud in the name of peace and convenience.
This is the political expression of our societal decay. We have abandoned the virtues that made us great, and indulge the most ridiculous assertions, plainly wrong, as fact. There are many examples.
We now accept that public disorder and violence are legitimate expressions of anger. We have legitimized emotion over rationality, thus giving a voice to the uneducated and uncontrolled over the educated, rational, and disciplined. We have stood by as our cities are vandalized and honorable, law-abiding citizens are terrorized and their businesses destroyed. Officials- mayors and DAs- have declined to restore order and refused to arrest or prosecute wrongdoers.
We have redefined gender as a state of mind rather than a state of body. This leads to the perfectly ridiculous spectacle of a man with fake boobs, long hair, and hormonal injections being declared Woman of the Year. We have legitimized this through 'research' that purports to show different brain organization in these individuals, claiming a physical basis for their aberrant behavior. This ignores the hard wire differences seen in schizophrenics and bipolars, yet we still define these as illnesses.
We have normalized single motherhood, despite extensive evidence form the highest sources of academic research that children from these 'families' do much worse than other children.
We have allowed violence and ill behavior in our schools rather than throw out such students. We then claim the low performance resulting from disorder is racial bias, that if these schools only got more money they would perform better. This is insane; many such schools already get differential funding.
We have decided that equal opportunity must mean equal outcomes, defining any difference as sexual or racial prejudice. This is perfectly obviously insane. Put 100 kids on a football field and there will not be equal outcomes. Take 100 highly physically gifted children and put them on a football field and they will not all perform equally. Effort and attitude vary. You cannot define equality by outcome, only opportunity. Destroying your own opportunities through single motherhood, drug use, truancy, and violence is not prejudice. It's just life. Read the parable of the mustard seed- Jesus didn't say every seed got to grow. Some fell on rocky soil, some was choked by weeds, some was eaten by birds.
We have placed feelings above rationality in so many arenas of our society. Despite overwhelming evidence and biochemistry, we allow citizens to avoid vaccination. We reject scientific expertise in lieu of our feelings and beliefs. At the same time, 'science' is corrupted into a tool of the party line, results discarded that do not conform to pre-determined beliefs and decisions. In this sense society in its larger representation, government, is also acting on feelings rather than data.
Our politics are no longer representational. Our parties fight a zero-sum game for power without consideration of the needs or interests of Americans. 70-80% of Americans favor gun licensing laws, abortion access, legalization of marijuana, universal federal level healthcare, and an increase in the minimum wage. This ought to be an agenda both parties would be proud to pass as a responsibility to Americans. Instead, each party panders to monied donors while posturing for the sake of petty political gain.
Our government is no longer truly representational nor is it the Republic that was envisioned. We are what I call a Democratic Imperium. We 'elect' a president every four years, but in fact the drivers for government have nothing to do with the electorate.
Our minimum wage is one quarter of what it was in 1970, allowing for inflation. It ought to be about 25.00 per hour. The MINIMUM wage. Instead, it languishes at 7.25 per hour, hostage to the preenings of both parties. Go to a plasma center to see fully employed people donating their BLOOD in order to pay their rent. That is the system we condone. At the same time we have outsourced garment, electronics, and auto manufacturing to China and other low-wage nations. We cannot possibly compete with such slave labor rates. Instead of instituting rational protections of American workers, one party worships at the altar of free trade and the other at the altar of government handouts. We pay for finished goods with a trade deficit we cannot afford, which is subsidized by bond purchase by the very people to whom we owe the money. We have damaged our nation and our workers. Our CEOs and executives make 100 times what a line worker makes, up from 40 times in 1965. That is unsustainable.
We continue to boast about our military, but it is badly degraded. In truth, we cannot afford the expenditures we need. Here is the contrast between 1990 and 2020-
US military strength has been degraded by about 40%. By military admission, we cannot meet our own standard of being able to fight in two theatres simultaneously. We have nothing like the force necessary to protect our interests and our allies.
At the same time that we cannot project force we cannot enforce our borders. We ignore illegal immigration in the name of cheap labor, abasing our national definition. We cannot maintain our infrastructure. Our fancy foreign cars drive on roads that would embarrass any nation in Europe. Most of our bridges are dilapidated and need repair. Our airports are old and overcrowded. Our public transit is a filthy, broken mess such as it even exists. And China happily takes our money and is producing the finest airports, roads, dams, and transit systems in the world.
We are a debtor nation that relies on other countries to produce the goods we consume. We are unable to project force in our own interests. We have normalized violence, disorder, and familial dysfunction and disintegration. We have equated differential outcomes with prejudice. We claim the most outlandish deviancies as normal. We have abandoned any source of moral values except for 'self-actuation'. Our government is openly cheating and manipulating us.
Our period of greatness is over. The values we espouse are destructive and insane. We are as failed as society as England after WW1 and Rome in 275 AD, still with the trappings of greatness but not the moral, intellectual, and physical disciplines. We are fulfilling the Chinese saying- one coolie in 10,000 saves money and opens a business. His children prosper and grow rich. Their children squander the money on lifestyle. Fourth generation are coolies. That is us. That our coolies have cell phones, cars, and air conditioning obscures the social and economic devastation we have wrought. I have nothing more to say on these issues. I cannot write about them dispassionately any more, and I believe we are going to suffer terribly in our decline, a decline that is inevitable. I am glad I am old, so that I will not see the ruin we are left with.
There is no more I have to say on 2020, the election, or our social values. The election was manipulated. Our values are abased. I'm going to address other issues.
Ted
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