Pomo the Pomo

Postmodernism is extraordinarily vulnerable to postmodernism. You have probably heard of the nutty professor who is talking about how Yoga is nothing but "cisheteropatriarchy" because... Yoga is somehow male oppression of the world? OK, fine. Simple counter, where we deconstruct this deconstruction: maybe the nutty professor has internalized patriarchy so that she resents the success of the female dominated Yoga instruction industry. Yes, I think that will do quite well, thank you very much:

Of course I had no choice left but for my "contact website" to link to:  http://bfgalbraith.blogspot.com/2017/03/one-boy-at-time.html

I am into feminism, I think it is awesome. Please pass me some Oprah 2020, thank you very much. However I have a problem-from-hell with postmodernism. The opposite-of-knowledge is not knowledge, it is that simple. Postmodernism amounts to little more than intellectual laziness combined with wide-eyed rants about personal pet peeves.

But the left his hardly the owner of postmodern idiocy.  What pomo typically looks like on the right is:

1. Have a REALLY strong opinion, but bring NO evidence to support it, aside from 1st and 2nd hand anecdotes. 
2. When people say "hey hold on a second, what's this based on..." you then resort to one of two options: 
3. A) accuse them of being condescending elitists (almost exactly same thing as "The Patriarchy"), or
4.  B) tell them "why don't you do your own research", aka do NOT rely on outside sources, because you know, personal experience trumps all, just like with 3rd Wave pomo.

Example:

1. You: "I think welfare recipients should be drug tested."
2. Me: "don't you know that is a huge waste of tax payer money because drugs are expensive and welfare recipients are poor... and some of the conservative politicians pushing this line of thinking have conflicts of interest on this subject... here's a link to an article on the subject:  https://www.forbes.com/sites/judystone/2015/02/17/the-sham-of-drug-testing-walker-scott-and-political-pandering/#15bd34e559be ."
3. You: Now you can say "you so-called progressives are very condescending. You think you can win a common sense argument by linking to a politically biased news source? Sorry, but your so-called research doesn't trump common sense!"
4. You: OR you can say "I had a friend on food stamps. While he was waiting in line, he saw people drive up in sports cars, who had gold watches on, who were dealing drugs and making huge money, and still applying for food stamps. I know him well, he wouldn't lie about this. And that's just one welfare office, imagine what could be going on in others. Why don't you go do your own research instead of just reading left biased media?"

But the fact is opinions are not equal to facts. "Cisheteropatriarchy" is an interesting word, but since postmodernists don't like to stick to specific definitions, it may as well mean "surgical penis enlargement" as my brother recently pointed out. And no, it's a huge waste of tax payer money to drug test welfare recipients, because dude, drugs are expensive. 

Pomo-the-Pomo Example:

1. You: "I think welfare recipients should be drug tested."
2. Me: "No, we should drug test rich people instead. Most drug dealers are rich people."
3. You: "But lots of people on welfare use drugs! We shouldn't have to pay for it!"
4. Me: "Sorry my friend, but drugs are a moral evil and bad for all, rich and poor alike, and rich people have more money more often to buy drugs more often, drug test the 1%! Being rich doesn't make you right, something you should keep in mind before talking down to everyone."
5. Me: OR I can say "My friend was at a party with rich people. Lots of coke. More drugs than she has seen at all the parties she's been at with poor people combined. An entire welfare office of food stamp recipients wouldn't be able to pay for the drugs it took to keep one of the debutantes at this party satisfied for the evening. Why don't you go do your own research instead of reading right-wing conspiracy all the time?"

My counter argument here is not rational, it's pomo. It is deconstructing the deconstruction. Pomo the pomo! Maybe we can get them to resort to using facts and actual substantial arguments that have meaning. Because unlike Yoga, postmodernism is a form of oppression:

Shapiro 2020

What Ben Shapiro wants to do is strip the influence of the White House down to its bare constitutional bones. This will force congress to legislate where they haven't legislated before, and the implications of Shapiro's view is that the White House has been co-dependently supporting a dysfunctional congress for generations. He would give congress tough love by scaling back the executive branch and forcing them to do their jobs.

Obviously this means Shapiro is states-rights on steroids, with rabies, from hell. He is perfectly willing to cut off that West Coast money from fly-over states until those states are abandoned ghost towns... until their uneducated, inbred, mutated decedents are too illiterate to even figure out what a voting booth is. I have two relevant views in regards to this:

1. The electoral college is source of all the world's problems
2. I am anti-state government

Shapiro's ideas about the executive branch is the conservative way of dealing with the electoral college problem. The president is not supposed to be  God-Emperor, it should not matter THAT MUCH who is or is not president! He's the commander and chief, but how often is military strategic ability considered in presidential elections? He's the head of state, but international diplomacy barely came up at all in 2016. If we can't get rid of the electoral college, burn down the white house, problem solved: Shapiro 2020. He'll loose against Oprah, completely sabotage Trump's reelection, probably carry Arizona, Utah, and Idaho, and for the first time in my life we'll have a real 3rd party to choose from in the USA. 

"State" and "Nation" are synonyms. In the USA we struggle with many levels of government: City, County, State, and Federal. I am here to tell you that the CAN ONLY be TWO levels of government, and that THEREFORE there ARE ONLY TWO levels of government. Those levels of government are Municipal and State. Municipal is whatever you and your neighbors are paying taxes to locally, to support laws that help shape your local community. State is what keeps the municipalities in check, stands up for human rights, prevents environmental and social catastrophes, protect us from foreign invasions, etc.

We don't have room for both federal and state government, even in the English language these two things are redundant. For example federal enforcement of cannabis laws in states where cannabis has been legalized is laughable. Some token scare-tactic efforts have been made, but in states where its legalized people smoke away whenever they feel like, typically with stuff bought at shop that openly sells it. IF the Federal government is to survive, it will have to crush the individual state governments, starting with the Electoral College, and I pray they succeed. However, I don't find that likely.

The last time our federal government did something significant was in World War 2. Almost all of our international diplomacy since has been one catastrophe after another. I suggest this is a lack of federal leadership - because federal leadership is itself largely imaginary. This means our "great nation" has ALREADY disintegrated. There's very little need for us to be contributing taxes to military spending, nuclear arsenals, etc. Progress may look like this: States Rights leads to Utopian progressive States, and the conservative backwater fly-over states get the deregulated hell-holes they have always wanted, until no one wants to live there any more, or the subhumans left behind are completely irrelevant. Problem solved.

Support Trump Supporters

We need to stop calling each other "liars," "evil" or "stupid." It is perfectly possible to be good, smart and honest while also being misinformed or just plain mistaken.

Trump supporters KNEW he was flawed when they voted for him. When he acts out like a three year old, or when details about his depraved personal life come to light, or when he lies like a professional con man, they are NOT surprised. They knew he was flawed, but they preferred this to Hillary Clinton because she was politics as usual. Were any of us content with the status quo in 2016?

And frankly my problem with Trump is he is too much like politics as usual. Considering that Hillary would have been facing exactly the same congress, I remain unconvinced that Hillary's presidency would have policy wise been much different from Trump's. The difference is she would have been quieter about it, and her decisions less questioned, and all the processes less transparent.

Trump spends vasts amounts of time and energy lambasting the Republicans. He is every bit as hostile towards them now as he was during the primaries. When it comes to practical policy, when he is faced with a progressive congress, he might sign off on very progressive policies.

Defeating Trump in 2020 is completely impractical. He has dominated headlines - intentionally and successfully on a God-like level - since he became president. Bad press is better than no press, and thinking that Trump will hang himself is a mistake Hillary will never be able to make again.

People who care about making this world a better place should be learning from Elon Musk. When it comes to really saving the world and improving all our lives, few are making the kind of progress he is. But he didn't fight against Trump, he recognized that we are living in a populist world (something Democrats in the primaries would have been well served by in 2016,) and did all he could to educate Trump and help Trump make better decisions.

More importantly we need to recognize that most people on the far left and far right agree strongly some of the most important issues:

• The far right wants to see the end of government picking winners and losers in the economy. 
• The far left wants to see an end to money dominating elections through lobbyists. 

Those two sentences are describing exactly the same phenomenon. The same is true on many of the the other issues facing the USA at this time.

Attendance

A buddy of mine who is a college professor and I were recently e-mailing about attendance policies, and I suddenly realized I am a huge kill joy when it comes to attendance:

1. The class is designed a certain way. If face to face is an important part of the class design, then students should be heavily graded on attendance.
2. Sterotypically in the past, students argue that they don't need to attend class because they can cram from the book and class notes and "pass the final."
1. Shame on any university that wastes face time in this way.
1. Any lecture that takes place should be highly interactive, answering questions from students, having students answer each others questions, and provoking questions and so on.
2. Face time is generally too valuable to waste on lecture. Students should be in simulations or in small group work/discussion.
3. Teachers who feel they must lecture uninterrupted should just make a video and have people watch it outside of face time.
2. If this is true of the subject matter, there is not much point in wasting student or teacher time in class.
1. Instead they should have had a capstone paper they had to write for the course that summarized the course materials, guaranteeing they were exposed to the course material OR
2. The entire course should have been one big take-home open book test, hundreds or thousands of questions that hit every point the instructor wanted the student to learn in the class.
3. Students should not be let off the hook from the learning they did not get from failing to attend class. On those grounds I think attendance should be graded, and heavily.
1. Likewise, students should be given credit for learning they got from attending class but which might not show up on other forms of student learning evaluation.
2. Example: Brazillian Jui Jitsu. A hot shot weight lifter decides he only needs to go to the class a few times a month, and that he should get belt promotions because he watches so much BJJ youtube on his own. Compare that to the average cubical dweller who manages get get to BJJ class four times a week. A year latter, as far as scoring in BJJ tournaments is concerned, the cubical dweller is going to kill the weight lifter, the cubical dweller really should be considered to have a higher grade of knowledge.
4. Students have a responsibility to participate in learning communities. 
1. Frankly it reflects poorly on any higher education program that produces students who can't work as a team, participate in civil conversation, and show up on time where they are supposed to. Attendance, attendance, attendance.
2. The student got into the school based on their academic reputation. It is their PRIVILEDGE to go there, not their RIGHT. Part of that privilege involves an obligation to help class mates learn. Good luck doing this when you don't even attend class. That sort of Ayn Rand "I can just pass the final after I cram" BS should be grounds for expulsion.
3. And if you don't grade based on attendance, the Ayn Rand student will blame you when they get a D on the final, when in reality they deserve an F in the class for taking up a spot at the school that could have been used by a student who was actually interested in learning something.

Wise As Serpents

I got serious about religion a few years after I got serious about martial arts, and studying psychology in school has helped me understand how martial arts have helped me be a better person. I have done martial arts off and on since I was a young teenager, and even as a 40-something still work out at the local MMA gym a few times a week and do some Tai Chi every day. I have been involved in many various security and community relations projects.

The Seattle Housing Crisis is a real conflict with real casualties, causing homelessness and incredibly long commute times. I regularly meet people who are between places to live who have singificant income. In December of 2017 a friend of mine moved out of the Ballard neighborhood where he had been paying $1,500 per month for a two bedroom apartment. The next tenant moving in would be paying $2,800 per month after a few minor renovations. At the time of this writing that friend is shuffling around between homeless shelters and friend's couches.

Many religions pay tithes. At the end of 2012 I was barely managing to keep my family with three young children housed and fed in the early days of the Seattle Housing Crisis. My landlord gave us notice that we had to move, and at the same time I got notice from my job that I was getting laid off. I struggled to barely find a place we could afford to live until I found another job. Instead of paying my tithing every month, I was in the habbit of saving up my tithes and paying them at the end of the year, a very imperfect practice by most tithe-payers standards.

Then a few days before we were to move, our new landlord cancelled on us as well. As we struggled to find time to look for a new place, I decided to take a few hours to go to Church and pay my tithing, showing my kids the money after I withdrew it from the bank. That very night we signed on the dotted line for a new appartment, and were able to move as scheduled.

But what happened with my search for employment was even more uncanny. On my first day I was laid off, just before I left for school, the thought struck me: "check out your last job's main competitor." So I did, and they happened to have a position I was perfectly qualified for, and I applied. On the way back from dropping off the kids I got a call for a job interview for the next day. That interview went well, and the following day I got a job offer for more money than I was making at my job I was laid off from, and had more long-term career potential.

My story is true and miraculous, but it is also cliche among tithe payers. Was my tithing an ideal tithing? No. Did God show grace and bless me for paying my tithing anyways? Obviously! But it is one thing to recognize God's grace, but it is an entirely different thing to be able to show that same grace towards others. The scriptures of many religions demand that we show grace, mercy and forgiveness towards others: God demands we show his grace towards others through our actions.

At one project I was involved in I was responsible for protecting the perimeter of a block in downtown Seattle. I was wrecklessly talking on my cell phone as I patrolled the area. I ran into a man verbally accosting a woman trying to get into her car, using sexist language that made me very concerned for her safety. I interrupted with "Sir, do you know this woman?" He replied by comming at me swinging. Still on my cellphone I used bobbing and weaving and footwork to avoid the strikes... on camera, much to the amusement of my supervisor at the time. The miscreant eventually tired, wandered down the street, blocked traffic, got arrested and went to jail.

This miscreant left behind a back pack. Interested in who he might be, we secured the back pack and examined its contents. We discovered sentimental objects from his childhood, medications, and documentation that led us to believe that he was a homeless veteran who was not recovering well from a back problem, and that he had been mixing medications with alcohol at the time of our skirmish.

A few weeks later the miscreant reappeared on the perimeter, looking for trouble. I got his back pack, and walked directly up to him, and asked "Sir, is this yours?"

He immediately broke down into tears. He sobbed "no one has ever done anything like this for me before." We never had problems from him again.

When God showed me grace, it made me a better person. When I showed this miscreant grace, it made him a better person. If showing grace can be this powerful in a street brawling situation, how much more important is it that we show our family members grace when we have arguments at home? Frayed family relationships are costly, and we should be quick to repair them, helping each other to become better people.

The most famous religious leader of the Old West was known for saying “He who takes offense when no offense is intended is a fool, and he who takes offense when offense is intended is a greater fool.” If I am working at one of these public safety projects and someone insults me from an alley, I can take it personally or not take it personally. If I take it personally and the miscreant in the alley didn't mean for me to take it so personally, and I start taking action against that miscreant, then morally speaking, I am the one who is really in the wrong. BUT far more importantly, if the miscreant DID want me to take the insult very personally and THEN I proceed to take action against him, I could be walking into a trap and he could have a friend waiting behind a dumpster to jump me.

Being thinned-skinned makes us easily manipulated and vulnerable. But it also complicates family relationships. In our personal lives we should forgive quickly, show grace towards each other, and strive to not be offended in the first place, opening doors for deeper communication that can lead us all to being better people. As the scriptures say, we should be "wise as serpents, harmless as doves."

Free Market Fantasy

There are two dominant rival schools of economic thought:

1. Keynesian: balancing the role of government in our economy. Most popular thinker on this was John Kenneth Galbraith.
2. Neoliberalism: believing the Free Market will balance itself without government intervention. The most popular thinker on this was Ayn Rand.

Before we go on, let's be clear, these are not political ideologies, but economic theories. This is not about "fascist" or "socialist," or "conservative" or "progressive." And because we are talking about economic theory, we should compare Ayn Rand to John Kenneth Galbraith:

1. Ayn Rand wrote from her own personal perspective, much like today's 3rd Wave feminists, with little regard for feedback from the outside world. She primarily wrote novels (fiction.)
2. John Kenneth Galbraith constantly studied economics, and was subjected to serious academic rigor, the public spot light, and numerous public debates. He primarily wrote non-fiction. 

Neoliberals are into nostalgic platitudes that make themselves feel good about the obvious inequalities that surround us, while Keynesians are in the serious business of figuring out how economics really works, and how economic theory can make the world a better place. Neoliberal's New-Age style of blind-faith in the "Free Market" insists that the reason why the market doesn't stabilize on its own is because government intervention interferes with the natural consequences inside of the market. The problem with this theory is there can be no "Free Market" without extensive government support and intervention:

1. The national system of politics that allows the Free Market to exist must be protected from other types of national systems with an extensive military.
2. Free Markets depend on government issued, protected and regulated currency. 
3. Free Markets depend on other extensive infrastructure on which goods and services can be neutrally traded (roads, law enforcement, etc.)

Neoliberals apologize for this irreconcilable contradiction by insisting the government should only provide certain types and levels of goods and services, and that their short list is somehow self-evident. Because how much you pay firefighters, policeman and city counsel members does not influence the market? Because no corruption ever happens through government contracts? Because it is possible to take care of the needs of government employees without exposing them to any existing free market? Their assertion is rife with naive and oversimplified assumption.

 No matter how often some lame trickle-down voodoo-economics scheme fails, they can always point to some government regulation that was not cut back far enough, some consumer protection that went too far, or some lobbyist who managed to bribe some politician, and say "see, it was too regulated." They can do this until there isn't any military, currency or infrastructure left to blame, and by then there would be no Free Market to be discussing. They have solved the balancing problem of "how much government intervention should there be in our economy" through the most intellectually lazy possible (and least possible) answer: "there just shouldn't be any." 

While Keynesian economic theory is based on observation, Neoliberal economic theory is based on mythology. This mythology is that chaotic systems are self-regulating and self-balancing. This is based on ecology where it was once believed that ecosystems by some miracle can be self-balancing. The problem is that scientifically speaking, this has been proven to be untrue: ecosystems are not able to re-balance themselves. After forest fires new ecosystems emerge, not clones of the old ones. If you want Yellowstone to be like it used to be, humans have to reintroduce wolves themselves, coyotes won't just naturally move in themselves and naturally evolve into the missing wolf niche.

Don't trust chaos. In so far as chaos can be anthropomorphised, it hates humanity desperately. Humanity IS nature's way of balancing ecosystems; without human intervention natural ecosystems cannot balance! And this is were economics gets married to ideology. Notice that people who believe that the Free Market can stabilize itself also tend to believe the following self-soothing myths:

1. Global warming isn't man-made. We should let nature take its path. If we could do something about it, we shouldn't. (As if mankind being killed off by the billions was a lesser sin than geoengineering.)
2. Every pregnancy should come to fruition. Nature should take its course. (As if every woman impregnated against her will should be forced to go through pregnancy and delivery, and that this could result in a better behaved humanity in the future.)
3. People are of value primarily by what career title they have. We live to serve the Free Market, the Free Market does not live to serve us. (As if the justification for someone being born is how some day they will make someone much more wealthy than themselves a little more wealthy than before.)
4. God will step in and save us, regardless of our mistakes. (As if God was into protecting us from the consequences of our own actions.)

I vote based on economic policy, and the second I hear someone say "Free Market Principles," I know they are someone who is either foolishly wrong about economic policy, probably blinded by their own political ideology, or someone who is being deceptive, probably with ulterior motives. This debate perfectly captures this Free Market Fantasy problem as it applies political ideology and voting: 

Sympathy For The Devil

The left and right in the USA are both very misguided on their views on Putin. Politically, he is far left of Bearnie Sanders, and the alt-right sympathizing with him is nothing short of hilarious. On the left, our constant accusations of him getting Trump elected to office only serve to strengthen Putin's power and encourage him to do more of the same in the future.

Why? Pay attention:

1. Putin cares about the Russian people deeply. 
2. After the fall of Iron Curtain, Russia fell into chaos, as the "free market" drove their culture into moral depravity and destitute economic chaos. 
3. Putin was elected into power in response to that chaos - it was no secret he was a former KGB agent, that was what the Russian people voted for specifically. Though there may not be any such thing as real elections in Russia, Putin still remains incredibly popular with his people.
4. He doesn't have a great human rights record, but he does everything he can - unlike Trump - to make sure all his people can have adequate access to health care and other critical services to survive. 
5. Putin's greatest fear is Democracy. He fears a right-wing scam artist, who has no real understanding of government or economics, could get in control of Russia, making life impossible for most of the Russians Putin has devoted his life to serving. 
6. Putin's tampering with the USA's 2016 presidential election was a demonstration to the world that his worst fears were possible.
7. Ironically, Putin doesn't care about what happens in the Americas, which is why it was low risk for him to use an election here as his model. 
8. What Putin cares about is the opinion of the Russian people who he serves. 
9. Regardless of weather or not Putin's election tampering was really influential, whenever the USA's media reports that Putin's tampering was effective, they are supporting Putin's message to the Russian people: Democracy can easily be manipulated to give you an embarrassing clown as a president, who will sell you out to the rich at his first opportunity.