Filk Fragments

In the jolly chaos following the holidays and the new year's paperwork (we changed health insurance companies, among other things), and the usual piled-up medical appointments (including some expensive ones for my cat Silverdot), I haven't had much time for writing.  ...Except, that is, for finishing off a short story intended for the next Darkover anthology, which I just sent off (cross fingers).

However, I did manage to make it to yesterday's LAFA filk -- thanks greatly, Lee and Barry.  It was really nice to do some singing again, with live feedback, even via Internet.  And in between songs we caught up on news, gossip, the usual stuff everybody's been missing during the damned lockdown.

I forget who brought up the subject of the Garbage Crisis, but I knew something about how to deal with it.  I've been doing some Internet searches, and learned a bit about Catalytic Depolymerization -- which is the best way to deal with trashed plastics.  Basically, it's a heat-and-chemistry process that breaks down any polymer -- and all plastics are polymers -- into fuel-oil and pure minerals.  This process could clean up the oceans and the surface of the Earth in ten years or less, making profits all the way, but there's some unseen economic war being waged against it here in the US.  I mean to do my part in the battle by advertizing the process so that as many people as possible know it, and I thought that a great way to do that would be to write a song about it.  

The problem, as I explained to my fellow LAFA filkers, is that "catalytic depolymerization" is hard to rhyme and harder to scan.  We tossed the idea around a bit, and came up with a possible tune -- "Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious", from the Mary Poppins movie --  provided you stretch one syllable for two beats.  I managed to work out a chorus of lines: 

"Search out  Catalytic De-polymerization. 

It can clean the garbage up, in this or any nation.  

It can make a million jobs and hammer back inflation, 

So look up Catalytic De-polymerization."

That works, sort of.  Now I've got to figure out the verses, and that will be a problem because descriptions of the process, and the politics surrounding it, are even harder to scan or rhyme.  So, that's as far as I've gotten it, and I'm asking for help finishing the song.  Does anybody out there want to volunteer?  All suggestions welcome.

While I'm at it, I've got a tune for my Usual Warning too, but I can't think of any further verses for it, so I suppose I can use some help here, too:  (The tune's my own.)

"I'm a toddler on the Information Highway,

And I do not know computer stuff at all.

Where other people zip around the Internet,

The best that I can manage is a crawl.

I know nothing of programming;

I don't even know the terms.

Can't do a thing with Viruses,

With Spyware or with Worms.

I'm a toddler on the Information Hi-i-ighway,

And I need a live-in Wizard really bad." 

(For proof of the above, note how I managed to get this song-fragment in single-spaced lines, but can't do a thing to single-space the previous song.)  Again, suggestions for further verses would be welcome.

And again, as I was slathering Calamine Lotion on Rasty's nose this afternoon, I came up with a relevant verse about that ancient and honorable remedy, to the tune of "Little Darling":

"Oh little darling, how much you've helped me -- 

Saved me from bug-bites scores of times --

But not so much with mold infections,

Little darling, Calamine."

Feel free to have fun with this one.  No, I don't have any problem with multiple-author creations;  it's also called the Folk Process, and has made many a fine song -- including more than a few in the Filkmusic informal archives.  Go to it, fellow-Fen!  

--Leslie <;)))><  

    

Video for Xmas

 Hi, friends!  My book-publisher K. J. Joyner was in town, and she showed me how to make quick one-shot videos (and of course I couldn't keep track of the instructions at all, but I can always call her up for help), and we made a short music video for the season -- and the cats.  I've got it up on my Facebook page and my brand-new Rumble channel.   

I hope to make many more such videos for your enjoyment. I'm posting a link below so you can find it and see easily.

Meanwhile, Happy Hannukah, Jolly Solstice, Merry Christmas, Happy Sir Isaac Newton's Birthday, Joyful Eidh-al-Fadr, Merry Ganesha's Birthday, Happy Bodhi Day, Jolly Boxing Day, Lusty Saturnalia, Merry Ada Lovelace Day, Jolly Hogmanay, Happy New Year, Jolly Twelfth Night -- and a partridge in a pear tree!

https://rumble.com/vr7g2c-leslie-fishs-one-shots-kitty-cats-xmas.html

Kitty Cat's Christmas

****

Civilian, Thou Shalt Not Chase

In the last week two significant -- and strangely similar -- court cases were decided:  Kyle Rittenhouse and Ahmaud Arbery.  Fortunately, both cases were televised so that the whole country, and world beyond, got to see all the evidence, hear all the witnesses, and see the antics of the lawyers involved.  Most enlightening shows they were, too.  

In both cases, I'd say that justice was well served and an important point of American law was clarified.

They both started in a similar fashion: with repeated crimes in the neighborhood.  In Arbery's case there had been a lot of break-ins lately, and Arbery -- who liked to jog around the area after dark -- was a suspect.  The neighbors set up an unofficial armed watch system to defend their property.  In the Rittenhouse case, there had been three nights of rioting in the town, wherein a number of businesses were smashed, looted and burned, and the citizens set up a civilian armed watch system to protect their property from more of the same.  Rittenhouse, whose father and grandmother lived in the neighborhood, came to help. He did not in fact bring a gun with him, but bought a long-barreled hunting rifle there in town.  In both cases the police knew about the impromptu civilian watch groups guarding the properties. 

From that point the cases take two different courses. 

On the night in question, Arbery was seen (and videotaped) going into a house under construction and then running out of it.  The videotape didn't show him taking anything out of the house, but one of the neighbors reported the "possible break-in" to the police and to the rest of the neighborhood watch, whereupon three of those neighbors took off after him in a truck. During the chase, the three men called out to Arbery: "Stop, stop.  We want to talk to you."  When he didn't stop, they pulled the truck in front of him and stopped, and the youngest of the three got out and approached Arbery with a shotgun.  Arbery then made the mistake of attacking the man and (fool's move!) grabbed the shotgun by the muzzle and tried to pull it away from him.  The man then shot Arbery, killing him.  The other two called the police to report the shooting.  No weapon was found on Arbery by the police afterward.

Rittenhouse and the other neighbors in the volunteer watch were approached by a crowd of "demonstrators" who chased them -- and particularly Rittenhouse -- away from the property and down the street. Though Rittenhouse repeatedly called "Friendly!  Friendly!" three of the pursuers converged on him shouting "Kill him!  Get him!" One of the three hit Rittenhouse in the neck with a skateboard, knocking him down, and kicked him in the face.  Rittenhouse then shot him, killing him.  The second man (same fool's move!) grabbed Rittenhouse's gun by the muzzle and tried to pull it away from him.  Rittenhouse then shot him, killing him.  The third man ran up and pointed a pistol at Rittenhouse's head, and Rittenhouse shot him, wounding him in the arm.  Rittenhouse then got up and hurried toward the police down the street, where he reported the shooting. 

The survivor of the three men Rittenhouse shot tried to claim, or at least the prosecutor did on his behalf, that they'd thought he was an "active shooter" and went after him to disarm him.  That claim didn't work for them, and it didn't work for the three who chased down and shot Arbery.  Rittenhouse was found innocent, and the three men who killed Arbery were found guilty. 

The usual race-hustlers threatened demonstrations/riots in "revenge" for Arbery, but all that materialized were a celebration of the verdict and some speeches.  The same agitators threatened riots after the Rittenhouse verdict, even though the three "protesters" he shot were White.  They raised only small and sporadic riots -- a group of 200 in Portland, another 200 in Brooklyn, 100 in Chicago, fewer than 100 in Los Angeles, Oakland, San Diego and Kenosha itself -- and all of them were quickly contained by the police.  Apparently the facts and the law in the Rittenhouse case were too clear for even the most passionate Antifa/BLM propaganda to deny.  

Yes, there is an undeniable legal right to self-defense -- but it has spatial limits, at least for civilians.

In both cases, the verdicts showed that it's one thing for civilians to drive an attacker off their property, but another thing entirely to keep chasing him thereafter.  Those who pursue -- unless they're police -- have no right to claim self-defense if their prey fights back, but the prey can legally claim it.

There's even a parallel for this in warfare.  On driving off an attacking army it's usually a good idea to counter-attack and chase the fleeing enemy -- but be careful not to chase too far lest the retreat turn out to be a fake, intended to draw your troops out into an ambush.  This even applies to police tactics, and police can be expected to control the ground well enough to prevent ambushes.

So as the law stands now, you can drive off an attacker -- but don't pursue very far.  And, if you're the pursued (and you're not committing any crime at the time), you can shoot back.

It's good to have that stated, plain and clear.  

--Leslie <;)))><      

              

Not Quite Sundown

 

The other day I came across a long (5 hours!) YouTube video that's a string a lectures by, and a tribute to, James Loewen -- sociologist, historian and author, who died last August.  The lectures were about his three most famous books: "Lies My Teachers Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong", "Lies Across America: What Our Historic Markers And Monuments Get Wrong", and "Sundown Towns: A Hidden Dimension To American Racism".  Listening to only part of it, I could readily tell that Loewen was an earnest modern Progressive who was mostly concerned with "the concealed history of racism", not the forgotten history of anything else.  I could also tell that he was guilty of the same sin as the textbooks and monuments he was complaining about -- lying by omission to make his ideological point.  

In "Lies My Teachers Told Me", for instance, he mentions a briefly mentioned and whitewashed incident wherein the US Army attacked an Iroquois settlement, killed some 900 of them and drove the rest out of the county so as to give the land to White farmers.  I happen to know something about that incident -- through histories told, written, and sometimes published (but never used as school textbooks) by my Meti and Chippewa relatives, and the truth is a good bit more complex than Loewen said.  The raid was performed not at the request of White farmers but because of complaints by the Chippewa, neighbors of the Iroquois, who were quite tired of being raided and oppressed by them.  Whatever they may be today, the Iroquois of two centuries ago were not nice people;  they were robbers and opportunistic cannibals who much preferred raiding their neighbors to farming or hunting for themselves.  The Chippewa, who had had dealings with White men (the Vikings) centuries earlier, were quite willing to make a deal with the English/American White men for the same purpose;  stomping the troublesome Iroquois.  The Native Americans had a long and complex history both before and after the founding of the American colonies, and this did have considerable impact on subsequent American history.  For example, Hianwatha (a real person), tiring of the endless tribal wars around the Great Lakes, made peace between the tribes and founded the Assiniboian Confederacy -- whose constitution so greatly impressed Thomas Jefferson that he included some of its features into his proposals for the Constitution of the United States.  Loewen made no mention of any of that.

In "Lies Across America" he complains about historic markers and monuments that omit or prettify or outright lie about historical incidents of slavery and White racism, but he doesn't mention monuments to Black settlers or pioneers, or Asian entrepreneurs, Native American achievements, or markers telling of battles during the Labor Wars which stretched from the 1870s to the 1950s.  Possibly this is because, during and after World War Two, the working classes of western Europe and America made great enough financial and political gains (largely due to those Labor Wars) that they were no longer seriously oppressed by the middle-to-upper classes -- thus putting an end to all the hopes of the Marxist intelligentsia for a Class Revolution that they could ride to power as Lenin did in Russia.  Rather than give up their dreams, the Marxist intellectuals -- particularly one Herbert Marcuse -- abandoned the working class that had been their original excuse and went looking for another oppressed class to propagandize and exploit.  They found it in the "colonialized races".  Marcuse called this the "Critical Theory", and originally applied it to various Marxist rebellions in Africa, Asia, Central and South America, and of course to the Vietnam War.  When the war wound down, his followers decided to apply his opportunism to Blacks in the United States, so they re-named their campaign the "Critical Race Theory" -- the claim that race is everything and everything is racist -- and have been applying it, particularly in the schools, ever since.  Loewen seems to have swallowed it hook, line, and sinker. 

I had a particularly good giggle over his complaint that the state of New Jersey had somehow lost the list of its state historical monuments and markers, and so he didn't go looking for them.  If he had, he might have learned that the New Jersey troops made a poor account of themselves during the Revolution, that they were known as the "two-shot runaways" because that was generally what they did, and that George Washington made use of this proclivity to draw British troops into an ambush at one particular battle.  Loewen might also have learned that the principle conflict in pre-20th-century New Jersey was between the English settlers and the Dutch, who owned much of the best land and often refused to learn English up until World War One.  

In "Sundown Towns" he claims that, for reasons never made entirely clear, the US turned its back on the gains made during the Civil War and began driving non-Whites and even Jews out of some 10,000 towns and small cities, pushing them into the larger cities, by use of variously-worded "sundown" laws.  These, supposedly, forbade non-Whites -- particularly Blacks, of course -- to stay in town after sundown.  He links this to the continued existence of "White only"  towns, which manage to exist despite the Civil Rights Act and multiple lawsuits that followed it.  

This theory overlooks one obvious problem;  how were the wealthier families in those towns to keep their non-White servants (and entertainers) after dark?

As it happens, I have an answer for that.  The town I was born in, one of the Oranges of New Jersey, had been a "sundown town" until World War Two.  The weasel-worded local statutes did not say exactly that all non-Whites had to be out of town by sundown;  only that they were not allowed in public, on the street after dark.  "Servants", live-in or hired for the occasion, could remain in town as long as they stayed indoors, behind drawn curtains, and couldn't be seen from the street until dawn.  The bigger and obviously wealthier the house, the less it was likely to be examined or questioned by the police.  This also applied to certain businesses, including the local theater -- which could hold "minstrel shows" with real Blacks, so long as the performers would spend the night in the building.  I suspect that this is how a lot, if not most, of those "sundown towns" operated, right up until the war obliged them to change.

The irony is that, in my town at least, one of the biggest and most "respectable" of those homes was the town whorehouse.  It was a grand old mansion, owned by a wealthy (White) widow whose late husband had kept a large number of servants in the house.  Nobody thought to notice how, when her husband was dead, the widow replaced almost all of the male servants with pretty young women.  They were of all colors, and wore livery in the house that was oddly scanty, but they were quite well-behaved and nobody thought it odd that there were so many of them.  The widow was also reputed to give quiet formal dinners almost every night (never on Sunday) which lasted very late, so that often the attendees spent the night in the house.  When the servants appeared outdoors, it was always by daylight and they were always quite respectably dressed.  Apparently nobody either said or suspected a thing, not for a good twenty years, until the old widow died.  Her fortune, her house and her "business" passed to her heirs, who were quite scandalized when they learned what had been going on in there.  The heirs promptly dismissed the "servants", sold the house, and moved to another town.  The story broke in the local papers after they left, and it was a great joke for years afterward.  Thus did a "sundown" law lead to a House of the Rising Sun.

I wonder if Loewen would have appreciated the joke.

--Leslie <;)))><  

            

On Gender

 "A new study published last week in the journal Nature dispels the widely held gender stereotype that women are more emotional than men."  https://www.today.com/health/new-research-debunks-gender-stereotypes-about-emotions-t237160    

That doesn't surprise me in the least;  I knew as much when I was a kid.  Of course my parents, being conventionally middle-class, raised me with the usual stereotypes -- but when they weren't watching I went off and played with other kids, and the society of little kids is a practical meritocracy: how well can  you fight, how well can you play ball, how many sweets can you come up with and share, and kid-relevant stuff like that.  My mother, aunts, and various schoolteachers might try to give me Lady Lessons, but I didn't believe any of it.  Much to Mama's despair, I always preferred riding horses to going shopping -- and I preferred hanging around with boys who felt the same.  

Yes, I went off to school every week-day dressed in clothes Mama had picked out for me ("cute" skirts, "pretty" blouses, "nice" shoes and all), but when I got home I'd promptly change into workmanlike jeans, T-shirts and sneakers -- in other words, "like a boy" -- and then I'd run outside and go play with the other kids.  It wasn't because I thought I was a boy;  I knew perfectly well that I wasn't, and a single glance into my pants always confirmed that.  It wasn't because I wanted to be a boy;  I definitely did not want to have a body that was clumsy, smelled bad, and had its tender parts hanging out in the breeze, at just the right height to be kicked, poked, or snagged on thorny bushes.  No, it was because I wanted to be treated like one -- as a standard, default-setting human being -- not as an adjunct to humanity, a special class, a decorated weakling, required to take Lady Lessons and pretend to agree with them.  

I'd seen too much of reality to believe that female mammals, including humans, were naturally weaker, more hysterical, less self-controlled, more submissive, etc. than males.  I'd seen too much to believe much of anything my elders told me about sex, beyond the simple mechanics.

I recall one day in June, off at a summer camp that was a working farm the rest of the year, when the weather was warm and the air was sweet with fresh flowers.  I was sitting on the top rail of a fence, beside my friend Nancy, watching a pasture full of mixed farm animals going at each other with a nice disregard for gender, species or size.  We saw two steers and a cow take turns mounting a Percheron mare, who was more interested in eating the fresh grass.  We saw two yearling colts busily giving each other oral sex.  We saw a dog mounting a sheep mounting a pig, and couldn't tell the sex of any of them.  We saw a lonesome bull, fenced off alone in an adjacent paddock, cock his hind leg on the fence and beat himself off against a fence-post.  It was quite a display.

I traded glances with Nancy, and then asked:  "Okay, tell me.  Just what is an 'unnatural act'?"

She only shrugged.

I kept that incident in mind in years afterward, while Women's Lib and Gay Lib rose to legal standing and won social equality -- what I'd wanted for myself since I was little -- for gays and women.  I thought we'd finally made progress, and that we'd keep it.

Alas, anybody who's read The Peter Principle can understand why it didn't stay that way.  The principle that "cream rises to the top, and then sours" holds true for political movements as well as corporate managers.  Also remember that power corrupts.  And finally remember that once a reform group has won its goal, it has only two honorable opti0ns: to close down or to become a 'veterans' organization.  There's a third option which is less honorable -- and that's to keep inventing new reasons to be outraged, so as to give the group excuses to keep on collecting money and political power for its staff.  Sound familiar?

Too many of the organizations and high-ranking personnel of the sexual/gender revolution were unwilling to honorably quit or to be reduced to mere veterans/memorial societies.  To  keep themselves relevant, they gave up aiming for equality and took up chasing 'equity' -- which means demanding "compensatory" payoffs, which soon turns into an extortion racket.  To maintain and hopefully broaden their membership, they expanded the definition of  "oppressed" gender.  This explains the current popular flight away from equality, the endless laws and lawsuits defining anything and everything as "sexist" or "transphobic", and  noisily demanding that all of society rearrange itself to fit he latest of the movement's fashions far beyond the ludicrous point.

Let's pause here for some statistics, facts, and perspective.   

Women make up slightly more than 50% of the population and have been legally oppressed in Europe and Asia and countries developed from them for the last 3000 years, as a result of a religious war dating some 2000 years earlier (see "When God Was A Woman" by Merlin Stone).  By "oppressed" I mean can be lawfully attacked and even murdered in public for any infraction -- not "micro-aggressions" or  "silence is vi'lence".  Simple rudeness or thoughtlessness doesn't count.    

Gays/lesbians/bisexuals make up slightly less than 5% of the population and have been variably oppressed in Europe and Asia etc. for the last 2000 years, primarily as a result of the Abramic religions' political and military ambitions.  Consider that "womanish" men are despised only in cultures where women are seen as decorated weaklings, and women who refuse to breed cannon-fodder are despised primarily in cultures whose governments want large armies.  In any case, they could always avoid punishment by behaving conventionally in public and being discreet in private.

Transgender people make up less than 1% of the population, and were treated as gay/lesbian until very recently -- say, after World War Two -- when successful transition surgery became possible.  Like gays and lesbians, they could avoid punishment simply by being discreet.

Note that in every case, the "oppression" depends on the culture's attitudes towards women.  Once women became legally and politically equal, it became possible for the other two groups to gain equal treatment too.  Equal treatment, and freedom from real oppression, isn't the problem -- and hasn't been for at least 30 years.  Being treated like a standard default-setting human being isn't the problem.

The problem is that the various groups and activists of the gone-decadent sexual/gender revolution are now demanding something other than equality.  They want "equity", which translates to special treatment and compensations, and we know where that leads.  They want to discard public discretion and shove their sexuality in everybody's faces, and to punish anyone who complains.  This, of course, creates resentment and an inevitable backlash which could damage the cause of gender equality.  So why are they doing it?

The obvious answers are money and power.  Invent a new form of "discrimination", get the courts to believe it, and you can sue anybody for a lot of money.  Accuse anybody of "discrimination" and you can ruin their careers, financial or political.  Current examples are too numerous to repeat here.  This may be rewarding in the short term, especially for civil-suit lawyers, but it won't last;  the resentment and backlash are already growing.  It would be best for the activists to plan their escape route now, and the real supporters of gender equality to plan their future tactics.

First, let's clear away the crap and admit that gender is natural and real, but gender roles are artificial.  Regardless of what ages of cultural prejudice may claim, women are not naturally more emotional, weaker, more dependent, less aggressive, etc. than men.  Studies of the few known ancient and modern ambiarchal cultures (see "The Dominant Sex", by Mathilde and Matthias Vaerting) bears this out.    

The gender of all mammals is set by the genes in every cell in their bodies, but what effect this has on character and behavior is wide open to speculation.  All we can say for certain, looking at other mammals, is that females are more likely than males to feel affection for small, helpless, fuzzy, squeaky creatures much like their own young.  

In order to learn more than that, we have to raise humans -- for at least two generations -- with the children of both genders being treated exactly the same: same nutrition, same exercise, same training, same dress, same education and same expectations.  One thing I expect we'll find is that females, unless firmly embedded in solid pair-bonds and extended families, will expect to take at least five years out of their educations and/or careers for every child they plan to have.  This must lead to different attitudes toward marriage, family, and responsibility for child-rearing.

What I expect to see coming out of this is women, as well as men, spending their early adult years not only developing their careers but collecting volunteer extended families -- and enforcing these with new laws and customs.  

That's the "gender equality" society that I hope for and still fight to create.  

--Leslie <;)))><           

   

    

  

Simple Solutions -- Not Easy, But Simple

 This is a quick run-through of the "crises" the news media have been howling about this past week, and some simple (not easy) solutions for them.  Sometimes the solutions really are simple.

1) Jihadist stabs British politician to death.  Well, that tears it.  After all these decades of bending over backwards to placate the Muslims, this is what we get.  Enough is enough.  According to no less than the UN, 65-80% of all Muslims in the world are fundamentalists, which means that any noisy Mullah can get them to kill innocent people.  So, throw the bums out.  Any time any Muslim commits any crime, deport them -- preferably to Mauritania, which is willing to take them -- and make sure they can't come back.

2) Violent crime rates jump during the past year.  We all know that this is caused by both punishing citizens who defend themselves and demonizing and defunding the police.  So, reverse course on both. Re-fund the police, and make sure they spend the money on three things:  a) Hire more non-White cops, b) Buy stun-weapons for every cop and train intensively with them.  c) Organize, train, and coordinate with proper citizen militias.  Also vote out every prosecutor who won't prosecute, and every judge who won't sentence.  Also, add exile/deportation/banishment to the list of common sentences for civil crimes.

3) Huge surge of migrants at the border.  Most of them are not starving poor, or they would have stayed in Mexico, which has work for them.  So, close the border.  Finish Trump's wall and hire more border patrol agents.  Declare a ten-year moratorium on all immigration into the US.  Give "asylum" seekers a sympathetic hearing, a hot meal, a flea-bath, a minimal medical exam, and a free one-way plane ticket -- to Mauritania for Muslims, to Argentina for Spanish-speakers, and to Liberia for everyone else.

4) Antifa/BLM threaten more violence, even to their Socialist-Democrat allies.  This one is easy.  Declare Antifa/BLM (and Farrakhan's Muslim Brotherhood, while we're at it) to be "domestic terrorists", and throw the bums out -- again, to Mauritania, Argentina, or Liberia, and don't let them come back.

5) Climate change threatens the world, and makes an even bigger pest of Greta Thunberg.  First, ban all burning of coal in the open atmosphere -- catch the coal-smoke and condense it into useful coal-tar, and second, give Earth what it needs most: twice the forests and half the humans.  Bribe or threaten everybody into planting at least two trees apiece and making certain they survive;  likewise persuade all women (men can't do it alone) to have no more than two children apiece.  Provide cheap, abundant, reliable and safe chemical means to do it.

6) Excess garbage threatens the world -- particularly plastic garbage.  The solution is catalytic depolymerization -- which will reduce all polymers, including plastics and other organics, to fuel oil and their component atoms.  Get the oil companies to pay for it by forbidding them to drill for more oil, so they'll have to mine the world's garbage for it.

7) Energy shortage threats the world.  Flog the power companies into practicing "diversity";  make them invest in solar, wind, hydrogen, biodiesel, geothermal, tidal, created methane, mini-hydroelectric and thorium nuclear power generation.  Also, don't let them get monopolies on the technology for any of these.

8) China threatens world peace.  This will take a multi-pronged approach. First beef up our military (including cyber-warfare divisions) of course, but also persuade all governments and companies around the world to pull all their resources out of China -- that includes physical, financial, personnel and technological resources.  Cut off all trade.  Of course a few countries, companies, and crooks will try to run the blockade, and some will succeed, but they'll also jack up their prices accordingly.  China will no longer have the money to indulge its political and military whims.

9) Iran threatens world peace.  As with China, ditto.  Also provide Israel with whatever military, cybernetic, and industrial assistance it needs -- including help deporting its "Palestinians" to Mauritania.  

10)  Covid still threatens US.  By all reasonable standards, the government reaction is worse than the disease.  First, end all "vaccine mandates".  Then have all Public Health Departments provide cheap and readily available tests to see who has already had the disease and survived it, and therefore has natural immunity.  That will give us a far more reasonable picture of just how bad the threat really is, and how soon we can all get back to work.  

11) Parents clash with feds over CRT and "diversity" training in schools.  The feds' reaction to the parents' complaints is really idiotic.  What the parents can do is learn how to force school board elections and run for those offices themselves.  Other solutions include demanding/passing laws that put motion-activated audiovisual security cameras in every classroom, feeding to secure archives which give free copies to any citizen who asks for them.  This will protect students from "woke" teachers, and teachers from "woke" students.  Also create more charter schools, homeschooling co-ops and private schools that can escape from teachers trained in standard Schools of Education.

12) Groundswell to impeach Biden.  Good gods, no!  No, you fools!  Wait until the next election puts him and his whole kaboodle out.  Otherwise he'll be replaced by Kamala Harris, and she'll be even worse.                  

None of these will be easy, of course.  I didn't promise that.

--Leslie <;)))><

The Trapping of the Woke

    Normally I'd have no great sympathy for our state's federal Senator, Krysten Sinema -- she's a Democrat, I'm a Libertarian -- but one thing we can agree on is a "no" vote for Biden's proposed trillion-plus-dollar budget bill.  Our national debt is already in the multi-trillions, thank you.  Learn to balance a check-book, people!

    Another thing we can agree on is that the radical wing of the Democrat party -- who actually call themselves the Democratic Socialists --  have gone way too far, both in strategy and in tactics.  Despite the pie-in-the-sky campaign promises of the Biden/Harris team, the federal government does not need to spend hundreds of billions of dollars on pushing Diversity-Inclusion-Equity training at the military, businesses, unions, the public health system, the courts, public housing, and the schools -- especially not the schools, seeing how many parents have protested teaching Critical Race Theory to their children.  

    As for tactics, the calling up of Antifa/BLM mobs to march, riot and burn in the streets has gotten very old, very fast.  The tactic of mobbing and harassing political opponents or even neutrals, in public or in private, is no longer approved of either.                

    Therefore it was a stupid idea for the Democratic Socialists to call up their minions on the campus of Arizona State U. to harass Senator Sinema and chase her into the bathroom, filming all the way.  It was even stupider for the Woke devotees to post the video of the incident on the Internet, where it promptly went viral.  It was stupidest for the whole Democrat party -- including Biden himself -- to not condemn the actions of their minions but write them off as "part of the process", business as usual. 

    That's what prompted me to email Senator Sinema and apologize, as an Arizona taxpayer, for my tax money paying for a college that would allow and even encourage such behavior on the part of its students.  I also respectfully reminded the Senator that Arizona is a "Constitutional carry" state, which means that any citizen -- including a politician -- can lawfully carry a concealed firearm in public.  I also mentioned that if any goon threatens her, let alone touches her, that it's lawful for her to shoot said goon.  I hope she takes my advice;  shooting a few Wokey-doke goons might teach the rest manners.

    In fact, looking at the tactics of the current Woke crowd, I can see what motivates them -- and I have no sympathy for them whatever.  They're jealous of the great reform movements of the '60s and '70s, which passed the historic Civil Rights Amendment and ended a bad war.  They want to match that impact on history.  They want to be noticed, they want to be important, and they think that working as the reliable goon squad for the Democratic Socialists will do that for them.  

    They obviously have not done any of the intense historical, legal or political research that the '60s-'70s protesters did.  They're also obviously not constrained by any of the ethical concerns which guided their political elders.  They're clearly not non-violent, but will do whatever they think they can get away with.  They do no soul-searching to determine if their ideas or tactics are morally right.  They're sure that they already are perfectly righteous;  they just want power and fame. 

    There are ways to deal with such, as older and wiser reformers could have told them. 

    "Entrapment" is legally defined as luring someone into committing a crime they otherwise wouldn't have done for purposes of arresting them.  It does not refer to allowing someone to start committing a crime they had already planned to do, and then stopping them.  

    So...

    A free-speech group decided to defy self-imposed censorship in their town, held a "Draw Mohammed" art contest, loudly and widely advertised, complete with the date and time and address of the venue where the contest would be judged and the awards given.  A lot of Muslims wrote indignant letters to the press, but a bunch of foaming Jihadists chose to do more.  At the advertised time of the contest judging they swarmed into the building, toting loaded rifles and Molotov cocktails, obviously intent on violence.  Ah, but the free-speech group had already hired some trained and licensed security guards to provide safety for the contest.  The security guards mowed down the attacking Jihadists, arrested the survivors and handed them over to the police, complete with security-camera footage of the attack.  The Jihadists wound up dead or in prison, and that was legally not "entrapment" -- because so many other offended Muslims did not react to the contest by committing violence, therefore the crime was not an inevitable or expectable result.  

    So...  If you observe a group of Woke goons coming your way, demanding whatever, take steps to arm yourself in advance.  Then carefully ignore them, and keep on doing whatever you were doing, but make certain that security cameras are watching.  Since Wokey-dokes can't bear to be ignored, they'll come after you harder.  While keeping in sight of the cameras, continue to ignore them.  Eventually they'll become so incensed that they'll do something physical -- at least reach out and grab you -- and a touch is all it takes.  

    Mow 'em down with whatever the law allows, and arrest the survivors.  Just be sure to get it all on camera.

--Leslie <;)))><