Notes On The Collapse

Before We Begin: A Crash Course On Terms

In order to do this properly, we’ll need a discourse, so that all sides can find middle ground that they can agree on. And in order to communicate, we’ll each need to use the same words to mean the same things.

For example: It might surprise some people to learn that there is actually no such thing as an “Assault Weapon”. Sure, you’ll find it in the dictionary of your choice, but the definitions are nebulous and disagree. They named the 1994 law after it, but the descriptions involved such superficial specifics as a bayonet lug or pistol grip without enough generalities to retain long-term value. The law expired in 2004; by then, the industry had long since retooled such that they could largely avoid its strictures.

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Guns And Politics

Watching video of kids getting shot is traumatic. How could it not be? And who can watch that and not be furious — terrified — sickened?

So how can we possibly expect that our immediate reaction will fix a damned thing?

We don’t make good decisions when we’re upset; nobody does. Instead, we get angry; we kick and throw things; we cast blame everywhere. The universe hates us and everyone’s evil. And then, if we’re smart, we settle down and figure out what went wrong so we can stop it from happening again.

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I Don’t Know What To Do

There’s been yet another school rampage shooting, and I don’t know what to do except weep. Best I can tell, nobody else does either.

Oh, there’s a lot of noise and a ton of blame being thrown, and I’ve heard the phrase “common sense gun control” more times than I can count. It’s a meaningless string of words; if there were any effective way to stop rampage shooters with a simple, common sense approach, we’d have done it by now.

Whenever I say that, there are two responses:
– “Well, at least do something!”
and
– “Just ban guns! Ban them all!”

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It’s Give Me Your Money Season

It’s campaign season again, and the candidates are out for your money — but you might have noticed that, despite the millions they got in 2020, nothing much has changed. This is because the difference between the Democrats and Republicans basically boils down to which color necktie the president wears. They’re all funded by Big Oil, Big Sugar, Big Pharma, Really Big Healthcare, and Enormous Insurance, so that’s not really a surprise; what’s shocking is that you still give them a dime. With all the corporate juice they’re getting, you need the money more.

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On Having COVID. Again.

EDITORIAL

We caught COVID — again.

There’s no way to tell if the horrible flu I picked up in March of 2020 was COVID. There was a particularly nasty H3N2 going around at the time, and the list of symptoms is nearly identical, including loss of taste. But we do know that my wife and I contracted COVID back in August of ’21, not long after getting our second-dose vaccinations, and it lasted weeks.

It’s noticeably worse this time around. Symptoms are more severe and they’re lasting longer. It’s like the most horrible cold ever, with occasional bouts of fever thrown in for variety.

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The War Is Over. We Lost.

“You might as well appeal against a thunderstorm as against these terrible hardships of war. War is cruelty, there is no use trying to reform it; the crueler it is, the sooner it will be over.”
― William Tecumseh Sherman

EDITORIAL

Doing this is hard sometimes.

When I started The Not Fake News, I set some ground rules. One of them is to always tell the truth as I see it, however painful that might be and without regard to the number of readers it will cost us. From time to time, that truth is harder to write about than not. This is one of those times.

Because the truth is that Russia, under Vladimir Putin, has won his war. And we lost.

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Gerrymandering and 2022

In late March, Maryland saw its proposed Congressional map thrown out by a judge, citing “extreme partisan gerrymandering” against Republicans. These maps are redrawn every decade after census results come in; the one released a decade ago was carefully engineered to remove one of the state’s two Republican congressmen, and this new one would eliminate the last.

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Fake News, Pearl-Clutching, and Ukraine

Some of the most inane fake news I’ve ever seen has been coming from pro-Russian media.

Bear in mind, both sides of the war are quite capable of propagandizing; in fact, Zelensky’s shown himself to have a natural talent. The more official Russian outlets have, by all reports, been quite competent at keeping their own nation focused on Putin’s talking points, and the formal separation of East from West information feeds, be they television or internet, have made this much easier. If it’s moderately difficult for citizens of the western world to get the official Russian party line, it’s harder by far for most Russians to access, for example, CNN.

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The Race To The Bottom

Don’t worry, Republicans: I’ll get to you in a second, but you lost in 2020. Sucks to be you.

When Joe Biden was anointed by the moneyed wings of the D.N.C. to become the approved candidate for the Presidency in 2020, it was an impressive gamble on the premise that we vote for the people with whom we most identify. It was a field that contained two highly capable, brilliant, and charismatic women, a massive populist machine that backed an unapologetic socialist, a Rhodes Scholar who nevertheless somehow wasn’t the smartest man in the room… Any of these people would have done the office proud. Instead, we managed to elect the only candidate who was worse at completing sentences than Donald Trump.

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Biden and the Price Of Gas

It is not entirely unreasonable to blame the high price of gas on the election of Joe Biden as President.

What’s not true, however, is the contention that his administration in any way is working to slow oil drilling or pipelines. The cancellation of Keystone XL, widely (and falsely) trumpeted as a win for the environment, didn’t change prices at the pump even a little.

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