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.

Sportsmanship

Sports has been used to as a way to improve the character or morality of students, and this is part of why the Olympics was founded. The first Japanese member of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) joined in 1909, and was the founder of Judo. From the time Judo was first formalized, its established goals were "physical education, contest proficiency, and mental training." Historically the IOC viewed Judo as containing "methods of physical, mental and moral education." Clearly the IOC still holds this sports-as-education view today:

The IOC President, Thomas Bach, regularly emphasizes that "sport is not just physical activity; it promotes health and helps prevent, or even cure, the diseases of modern civilization. It also is an educational tool which fosters cognitive development; teaches social behaviour; and helps to integrate communities".

One such movement that considered physical development of the body to contribute to the moral and mental development of the mind was Muscular Christianity of the latter 1800's, clearly influencing the movement that led to the Olympics as we know them today. The YMCA was originally founded to meet the social needs of people living in urban areas who faced moral dangers that could harm them. They invented basket ball to help such people "keep fit." Basketball was first played as a demonstration sport in the Olypics just a few years before Professor Kano joined the IOC. I hypothesize sports improves morality by:

•  Stimulating the prefrontal cortex and cerebellum. 
• The Olympics authority believes that people coming together socially helps promote world peace. 
• Others believe it improves social skills as athletes learn teamwork and how to follow rules and regulations. 
• Others see sports events as a metaphoric simulation of life, and that each time we participate in a round of sports it can help us reflect on who we are as a human being. 
• Others see sports as the ultimate state of "mindfulness," a powerful meditation where we stay focused on the here-and-now instead of fretting over the past or future, thus helping us to reflect on our lives more effectively. 

None of these explanations necessarily exclude each other. I believe that full contact continuous martial arts (such as boxing and judo) build morality in athletes faster than other sports, but that most other sports also accomplish this.  For example in basket ball a ball-hog is likely too self-centered off of the court. A lazy player who runs out of steam on the court could likely be putting in more hard work into the rest of his life as well. A player who pushes himself too hard on the court resorting in injury may need to relax more in the rest of his life as well. A player who lacks confidence to take a shot when he has a good opportunity may need to learn more confidence off of the court as well. These realizations could come as a result of any the bullet points above. Moral gains may also be a result of Neurogenesis:

CNN Clickbait

CNN is a sensationalist tabloid. FOX News is the most notoriously misleading news organization out there. CNN is worse. If you like CNN because Fox is too right wing and MSNBC is too left wing, the alternative I suggest for you is NPR. NPR gets their funding primarily by soliciting their readers and listeners for donations. NPR has a left leaning bias because of their college educated listener base. But NPR also panders to a significant minority of their listeners who are conservative, forcing NPR to make a sincere attempt at accuracy.

The same can not be said for CNN. If you've read my blog before you know my #1 political issue is health care policy. For our example here, let's focus on Trump's rash decision to cut subsidies to private insurers.. Let's compare Fox's main story vs. CNN's main story on that:

1. Fox reports that "Trump says Obamacare stinks, and he's not going to pay 'massive' amounts of money to bail out the private health care insurance companies any more. This will rattle health care markets and start a huge legal battle." Is this politically biased? Yes. Does it make hasty projections about the future? Sure. BUT IT IS BASICALLY ACCURATE, COVERING WHAT ACTUALLY HAPPENED.
2. CNN reports that "Trump supporters hate multiculturalism, so they hate anything with the Obama label on it, so Trump will destroy Obamacare because of its name." Is Trump racist? Maybe. Are some fraction of his supporters? Obviously. BUT IT IS CATEGORICALLY UNTRUE THAT THE PROBLEM THEY HAVE WITH OBAMACARE IS THAT IT WAS SIGNED BY A BLACK PRESIDENT. 

The reason why Trump supporters don't like Obamacare because it has ALREADY failed to provide fly-over states with affordable coverage. For example:

As hard of a sell Medicare For All is to fly-over state voters, it is far easier to sell to them than Obamacare is, because Obamacare was already wrecking them financially in 2016. NPR listeners realized from NPR interviews that many a Trump supporter's 2nd favorite pick was Bernie Sanders. These fly-over state voters would have voted for Sanders when the sexual allegations against Trump were revealed. But even if Hillary suddenly released a video of her in camo shooting an AR-15 while hunting deer with the president of the NRA, fly over state voters STILL COULD NOT VOTE FOR HILLARY BECAUSE SHE SUPPORTED OBAMACARE OVER MEDICARE FOR ALL. The "opposition to Obamacare is about racism, not economics" CNN is peddling here is a postmodern platitude. CNN either doesn't care about accuracy, or it is actively sabotaging its viewers.

Let's take CNN's big story when the Vegas shooting happened. Supposedly "Whether a state has a large capacity ammunition magazine ban is the single best predictor of the mass shooting rate in that state." But then nobody picked this up and did their own story? If this is such a big deal worthy of attention, how come the only other news organization to pick it up was actually Fox? CNN is so bad that even Fox shouldn't trust them!

Another example of CNN's frivolity is this story about how a widow of a fallen solider never got her promised phone call from Trump. So she spent a lot of time in person with Pence, who would be a less painful to hang out with than Trump would be, and then Trump never fulfilled a promise - because Trump's dishonesty is what... some kind of news?

On any of these tabloid stories CNN runs (and they release ridiculous pomo garbage masked as news every day,) go to the bottom of the web page. There you will see paid content that is yet more not-really-news. What do you call a news website with poor news accuracy, low factual content, that ultimately just takes you to more clickbait? CNN IS CLICKBAIT.

If you are a right winger, you are reading this and chuckling "I told you so." But if you are a left winger, you need to realize that words matter - the truth matters - eschew post modernism if you want to influence reality. You can't win elections if you constantly mistake fantasy for reality. CNN's bombastic bulls**** is precisely the type of cultural evil that is tearing our society apart and leading us the wrong direction:

God Hates Pomo

The word "God" means something. There is a dictionary definition: creator, ruler, supreme moral authority. When people - using the English language as it is used after the year 2000 - start to say "Muslims, Christians and Jews worship different Gods" - or in fact when they say ANY religion is worshiping a different God, they are playing a rancid game of pomo. Unless a religion is worshiping some form of anti-God - like perhaps the (openly not-necessarily-theist and highly-critical-of-typical-belief-in-God) Church of Satan - it is not fair to say they worship a different God, regardless of how pagan or polytheistic they are.

Playing the "my Asherah statue is better than your Baal statue" game of "your God is not my God" abuses the English language, it is screwing around with the definition of the word God. God always refers to the highest being in your supernatural cosmology. If my word for that is Asherah and your word for that is Baal, then we are talking about the same entity, even if our beliefs about that entity differ.

Accusations of polytheism are used to justify this game of "your God is not my God." The problem here is all versions of God have pantheons. Allah of Islam has both angels and gins. The Father of Christianity has arch angels and lesser angels and fallen angels. As proudly polytheistic as worshipers of the Norse Gods may be, a worshiper of Thor still admits Thor is subordinate to Odin. Athena is subordinate to Zues. The key here to understand that arguing over weather or not this or that entity in a pantheon is a "lesser God" or an "Angel" is a matter of semantics. Michael the Arch Angel in Christianity would be considered a lesser God when viewed from the lens of Polytheism, and Thor would be considered an Arch Angel through the lens of Monotheism.

The real difference between Polythesim and Monotheism in practice is can different deities be called upon for different purposes. Do I only pray to God the Father in the name of Jesus for any blessings I may need, or do I should I pursue Athena specifically when I need technological insight, instead of always praying to Zeus for everything? Now the biggest organization on Earth promoting Monotheism is the Catholic Church, and they more so than anyone else with their pantheon of Saints advocate praying to lesser beings than God the Father. All of this Monotheism vs. Polytheism in practice is pure semantics.

Instead of playing the "your God is not my God" pomo game, we should instead say "we have major differences in our beliefs about God." Because words matter. Because words have definitions. The most important English speaking country in the world, culturally and historically from a global perspective, is the United States of America. Our founding fathers used Free Masonry to have a neutral definition of God that everyone could agree on, and this is indeed the overt definition used on our money: "In God We Trust" with an all seeing eye and an Egyptian Pyramid but no sign of a cross to be seen.

Pretending like the word God means something more exclusive is postmodern deconstructionism, and is dangerously nihilistic and irresponsible. It's a great example of what I call pomo unibomber bulls***, and attempts to undo centuries of dialogue and understanding between different faiths, seeking to take us back to a time when we would kill each other over semantics:

Salvation From Sitting

Word is out, sitting is the new smoking when it comes to health, though standing in place of sitting doesn't help much. However, the researchers who did the latest study on this don't strike me as physical rehabilitation experts. My favorite fitness guru on Youtube however has something to say about exactly what sitting does to decrease your mobility (and thus kill you):

"Anterior pelvic tilt" explains a lot. His remedy is building the glutes (butt) and abs (stomach.) How should we do that? I choose my exercises based on the following principles:

1. Ergonomics: low risk of injury. I especially like exercises that give good results with less reps, as I am concerned about repetitive stress injury on a number of my major joints.
2. Fool proof: the exercise should give good results even when not executed at the full range the fitness instructor on the video demonstrates.
3. Self-defense application: if it doesn't help me in sparring, I don't have time for it.
4. Efficiency: I want to work the maximum number of muscle groups with the least number of exercises, because exercises take away from sparring time.

Let's start from the ground up, with the glutes. I like squats for these because it is pretty easy to follow the instructions and not hurt yourself (1,) and squats give good results even when your squat depth is not great (2.) It's always helpful in a fight to be able to suddenly get lower than your opponent (in knife fighting it helps you target the back and inside of the legs, 3,) and squats also work most of the other muscle mass in your legs (4):

Abs are the other part of the solution to the Anterior Pelvic Tilt problem. I have a problem with most of the ab exercises out there (sit-up variations) because they violate all 4 of my exercise principles. But then comes the plank. A good basic front plank is simple to get right (1,) and is time based so adapts to the challenge level of where your abs are at (2.) It is a great exercise for practicing keeping your hands up while your body is under stress (3,) and unlike most ab exercises it works your entire abdominal wall (plus a bunch of other important muscles, 4):

The other problem caused by a sedentary lifestyle is a general weakness of the upper body, which limits our mobility as we get older. Good old-fashioned (Word War 2 era, probably done by Yoga Gurus for millennia, staple of traditional martial arts) Dive Bombers meet my criteria. Dive Bombers are pretty hard to hurt yourself doing (1) and give results even when done with less than ideal range of motion (2.) They have direct applications to grappling (sprawling and side control, 3,) and work most of the big muscle groups in your upper body (4):

To be clear I am no expert on fitness or medicine. It is my uneducated hypothesis that these are the exercises that will most efficiently save you from sitting on your ass 12+ hours a day. (I recently added these to my daily Tai Chi workouts and few visits a week to the MMA gym.)

Pomo Is Racist

Before you go judging my credentials on postmodernism or on racism, check out my two most important posts on these subjects:

1. A Diversity Of Whiteness
2. LA Pomophobic

The ultimate conclusion of Post Modernism (pomo) is that because all rational argument can be deconstructed, the only meaningful source of information is personal experience. This is far more destructive than being rebelliously narcissistic. Pomo is inherently and irredeemably racist.

One pomo platitude is "patriarchy for me may mean something different than patriarchy does for her." In other words "dictionary definitions don't matter, only our personal perspectives." This means that the ONLY value of any idea is the IDENTITY of the person who originated the idea. All ideas from white people are then white ideas, all ideas originating from gay people are gay ideas, and so on.

This means that every idea coming out of the brain of a person who happens to be black is a black idea. No matter how ingenious or earth shattering the concept, we must first consider and evaluate the idea's author's identity. That is just about as racist as you can possibly be.

As I described in A Diversity of Whiteness, I ran into grad school students who wanted to work on projects that were not associated with their ethnic identity. They expressed this concern with me on many occasions: "I am Mexican, so does that mean every time I come up with a new idea, we have to talk about how Mexican I am? When do I get to just be a student, and have my ideas evaluated on their own merits?" Pomo idealism was the most racist threat to their well being in grad school.

If you have ever argued with a conservative in social media, backing up your facts with links to credible sources, you very probably have heard the following comment: "Why don't you think for yourself and do your own research?" Stunned that they weren't going to take any links to Snopes, Wikipedia, University websites or even peer reviewed articles seriously, you begin to realize that what they are literally saying is "I was on food stamps once. I saw some ethnic people in the office who I think were acting very lazy and looked like they used drugs. So in my personal experience, I myself as a concrete witness know for sure that most ethnic people on food stamps are lazy drug users." Notice how extraordinarily pomo this racism is: your facts don't matter in the face of their personal experience.

And again, as I mentioned in A Diversity of Whiteness, this pomo discrimination alienates the oppressors in society from enlightening conversations that could help the oppressors not oppress. When the rich have to be excluded from conversations on poverty because all their ideas are rich people ideas, then the main power holders in that situation have been invited to never give poverty serious thought. In this way pomo perpetuates racism by excluding whites from conversations on ethnic diversity.

Racism in our world today may be completely dependent on pomo. Pomo is racist. 

Martial Morals

Many a famous martial arts master took on criminals as students - especially Triad gangsters in China being trained by Kung Fu masters, and Yakusa gangsters in Japan being trained by Karate masters. The most famous of these masters, Oyama, founder of the most influential of these traditional Japanese & Chinese boxing systems in today's sports world (Kyokushin Karate,) was known to believe that training in martial arts improved the character and morality of the trainee. These martial arts masters were essentially ministering to those who needed character and morality development the most - the criminal element. Professor Kano, the founder of Judo, was a leader in physical education and had similar beliefs about martial arts training, that it led to not only increased health, but increased morality:

Why would training to become better at hurting other people make you a better person? Why risk teaching delinquent elements in our society how to become more effective fighters? My hypothesis is that they witnessed first hand this moral development, and that this is a natural side effect of full contact martial arts training (as well as other certain types of athletic activities.)

In the documentary "A Mind to Crime: A Dangerous Few" explains that chronic criminal behavior is largely associated with an under stimulated prefrontal cortex, so that a recidivist has problems empathizing and forming long term strategies based on obvious consequences. Treatments that stimulate the prefrontal cortex - basically turning the life of a child into one big game of good behavior, or getting an adult to use a computer game to intensely focus their ability to concentrate their prefrontal cortex for extended periods of time - have shown to be effective treatments, stimulating the prefrontal cortex and leading to drastically less criminality.

In the classic Frontline documentary "Inside the Teenage Brain" explains that another part of the brain, the cerebellum, builds both coordination of ideas and coordination of the physical body. (I can't emphasize this enough: learning to coordinate your thought helps you coordinate your body, and learning to coordinate your body helps you coordinate your thoughts!) Teenagers mature not only as their cerebellum and prefrontal cortex grow and mature, but as the connections between those two parts of the brain solidify and strengthen.

Full contact martial arts demands your concentration. A brief laps in concentration while sparring leads to almost guaranteed physical pain, stimulating your prefrontal cortex. It also forces you to develop your physical coordination as it is an athletically demanding activity. No wonder boxing in the inner city of the USA and Mexico has been used to lead many wayward youth into a law abiding lifestyles as adults. No doubt wrestling has helped numerous middle class youth abate their own narcissistic tendencies, not only as the wrestlers learn to develop sympathy so that their sparring partners can avoid injury and continue to train with them, but also simply because of the stimulation of their prefrontal cortex and cerebellum!

We have assumed the YMCA created basketball primarily for fitness, but this achieved their over all goal of improved moral behavior, and basketball continues to be used throughout education systems today, partially because it is known to improve behavior of athletes long term. Fail to concentrate for even a moment in basket ball, and the consequences will be obvious - "keep your eye on the ball!" - prefrontal cortex stimulated, and all the while physical coordination is being developed.

I believe that full contact martial arts develops the brain's ability to coordinate and concentrate much more intensely than other athletics like basketball, because of the psychological and physical intensity of martial arts training. This is part of why martial arts masters have found martial arts to be an effective way of growing people into better human beings.

LA Pomophobic

This summer I have been up and down the I-5 corridor, visiting friends from as far north as Bellingham WA to as far south as Oceanside CA. All of the people I have met in these travels, especially the people in SoCal, have been very pleasant and competent people who's company I have enjoyed, and this post has nothing to do with them.

If you fly into LA, visit Disney Land, and fly out, you have no idea how densely populated and geologically vast southern California is. You would think that say San Diego is a geographically unique place from Los Angeles, but you would be wrong - it is one massive interconnected urban sprawl, incomprehensibly large. You can get on a 6 lane highway (12 counting both directions) and drive for 45 minutes, and get off only to find yourself in almost exactly the same neighborhood. People frequently drive two hours one way to attend common social events without really going to a different new place. Traffic (not as bad as Las Vegas, about like Seattle's) does increase travel time, but the absolute vastness of this place escapes our collective understanding.

Now imagine you are from a middle class family in the North East USA, raised on some moderate form of protestant religion, and have 1.5 siblings, each of you proving your uniqueness by playing different sports and musical instruments and getting into different liberal arts colleges. After amassing impressive debt, you manage to graduate from college with a bachelor's in English, and your main ideology is a post structuralist critique of the moderate Christianity you were raised on. Still basically a child, you must pay off this debt, and soon find yourself in LA working in a marketing firm or in Hollywood in movies or TV.

Now you see the world for what it is: incredibly diverse, people from all over the world, all kinds of families, all kinds of politics, all kinds of religion, all kinds of suburbs and inner city ghettos. Whenever you need to study a group you are portraying in the media you are writing scripts for, to get real life experience with that group (Jews, first generation immigrants from any location in the world, millionaires, homeless, Italians, red necks, or whomever,) you only have to call an Uber and you will be seeing this group inside of a few hours. In LA (or some other indistinguishably not-LA part of SoCal.)

Now you portray to the rest of the USA what that group is like based on two things: 1) your post-modern critique of Christianity, and 2) your limited life experience in SoCal. This naive superficial representation is now published all around the world as the most recognized version of that group. This is the mechanism by which post modernism has become ubiquitous in media and politics.

But you can't help it any more than the gang members in Crips and Bloods: Made in America, LA (SoCal) is so vast, that you have never, ever seen the way out. No one you live near or work near know of any way out besides LAX. You live in the economic and cultural center of the universe, all gravitates towards you, and what you would face to get out would be more like an impossible climb than simply a several hour drive as fast as you can go down the freeway. But even when you get north of the Bay Area, outside of San Fransico's orbit you are still essentially on SoCal culture, surrounded by In-and-Out Burger and Del Taco, until you are multiple days drive from downtown LA proper. It would be faster to drive south through Tijuana into Baja California to escape the endless SoCal sprawl. Go east? You hit the Las Vegas vortex, which in the context of SoCal just feels like a SoCal suburb with legalized gambling and prostitution.

But in the end, because of Hollywood's ubiquity, we are all in LA's orbit, with it's incestuous postmodernist tendrils contaminating our perception. Before I left for LA I watched indy vampire film The Transfiguration. We struggled to figure out what city it had been filmed in, and concluded it must have been made in Toronto in spite of the land marks seeming to be from NYC. Because it didn't look like NYC. It didn't look like the NYC we had been served through the post modernist media, through the lens of LA. It turns out that NYC filmed in NYC presenting characters that would live in the real NYC would look almost nothing like what most of us think of as NYC, because our world perception has been warped through the post modernist LA lens.

It isn't a conspiracy of naive and opinionated well-intentioned feminists. No one is trying to poison our minds with eco-primitive nonsense. It is a simple problem of geography: the absolute vastness of LA/SoCal isolates English majors which for generations have used post modernism as their moral compass.

Constitution

This is the flag the USA's flag is based on. It is the flag of the East India Trading Company, most well known for the British invasions of India and China, and for helping to bring slavery to the 13 Colonies. The constitution's definition of "men," as in "all men are created equal," excluded:

• Blacks
• American Indians
• Women
• Poor white men who didn't own enough land

In other words, if you didn't have enough money to hold stake in a corporation, you didn't vote. The USA was founded on all the worst values of imperialism, corporatism, Victorian sexism and genocidal expansion. In a monarchy the monarch is the one who collects taxes from the rich to make sure life is still possible for the poor, and the USA's constitution was based on the concept of rejecting that institution.

The 12th amendment to the Constitution preserved the Electoral College precisely so that it could give slave owning states disproportionately more voting power than they would have had based on their voters. That same Electoral College has resulted in the election of the most reckless and openly racist president since the death of Martin Luther King Jr. Just a decade before it got us a president who divided our nation politically, wrecked our international reputation, and plunged us into the longest and most expensive war in the history of the USA.

Don't talk to me about the founding fathers. What makes the American people great is the American people, and our ability to recontextualize the intentions of ancient documents in today's reality. Some esteem the constitution as scripture, but all scripture must be seen in the new light of the next day, or else you will find yourself in the middle east, living in a tent, riding around on a camel, and defending yourself primarily with archery, since that is original context of most Judeo-Christian scripture.

The strength of our constitution is the very fact that we can literally amend it, and we often reinterpret it, to our credit, and as we should. Our loyalty to that document is exactly what makes it possible to have revolutions in this country without massive bloodshed. This attribute allows us to endure the change and adaptation that makes our nation great.

Medicaid For All

Medicaid For All is the MOST fiscally responsible health care policy in the USA political world right now. When I recently demanded my congressman Derek Kilmer explain why he was not more enthusiastically supporting a single-payer system, he responded with a thoughtful explanation of his policy, which included this comment in regards to "Medicare For All":

 "...health providers have raised the concern that putting everyone on Medicare without improving Medicare reimbursement rates would be problematic. Currently, most hospitals lose money on Medicare patients..."

That's EXACTLY why MediCARE For All is better than Obamacare or any privately-held health-insurance, is because it is the only system that actively pushes back against the exponential out of control increases in medical costs. But that's not what I am advocating for here... what I am advocating for here is MediCAID for all.

Why Medicaid instead of Medicare? Because:

1. Medicaid pays even lower rates to health providers than Medicare, pushing back against costs even more!
2. States have more control over their Medicaid policy than their Medicare policy, so that this is far easier to implement on a state by state level.
3. A senior friend of mine was recently forced to transition from Medicaid to Medicare. At least in his case Medicaid was a much better customer experience, with far less paperwork, more comprehensive coverage, and less over all stress in general. 

Some of my thoughtful Libertarian friends have pointed out the real problem here is that private health insurance uses our employers to shield them from our consumer wrath as our health care fees are raised. They point out that making employer-provided health insurance - a victory of organized labor - illegal (probably resulting in a Libertarian-celebrated collapse of private health insurance generally in favor of a pay-in-cash system,) could almost by itself solve the problem of skyrocketing health care costs.

Unfortunately, like so many other Libertarian truisms, this amounts to quaint platitude. Until serious Libertarian politicians make serious health care proposals, this is pure fantasy. Medicaid on the other hand is real:

Medicaid For All is very actionable:

1. Nevada is doing it.
2. California has started a political process that will (for the above mentioned reasons) likely result in it.
3. Vice President Mike Pence (one of my least favorite people) pioneered a conservative version of this in Indiana, where everyone pays an income-adjusted amount to support their medicaid coverage, when other health insurance options won't work for them ("Healthy Indiana Plan 2.0".)

As to just how possible and likely Medicaid For All is, consider this quote from my "Trump Card" post that demonstrates how much leaders of industry are looking to shed the burden of their employee's health care costs:

First, let's take what Trump himself has said on health care in a 1998 NBC interview: 

"...I am a liberal on health care, we have to take care of people that are sick... I like Universal health care, we have to take care, there is nothing else. What is the country all about if we are not going to take care of our sick?" 

Second, let's take the ultimate "evil corporation" by liberal standards, WalMart. In  2007 WalMart actually sided with the notoriously progressive SEIU in calling not for Obamacare, but full blown universal "socialist" health care, just like what Trump was praising in 1998.

Third, even GM Motors CEO Richard Wagoner testified on December 5th, 2008 before the House Financial Services Committee said something along the lines of "universal health care coverage would help us against foreign competition where health care is provided by their governments instead of by our competitors."

And if you are a small business entrepreneur or owner, worrying about the impacts of health care on you, your partners, and or employees doesn't help your bottom line by any stretch of the imagination. Under the Californian proposal mentioned above, studies show small businesses would end up saving more than 10% even with any required tax increases taken into consideration. 

Watch this carefully. Take notes. Watch it a second time to make sure you understand all of its political implications in 2018 and 2020 (because you do NOT want to be a Democrat in 2020 who has failed to make progress on Medicaid For All):

Stealthing

I am disappointed in first world humanity. The most insipid thing of all time, a new form of sexual violation called "stealthing" where supposedly a man slips off his condom while having sexual intercourse with a woman, has taken prominence in the media lately. I seriously question how relevant stealthing is in comparison to other forms of sexual violence in our society, and I think those propagating its importance are naive or opportunistic.

I agree with feminism insofar as it relies on facts, science or data, and eschews postmodern deconstructionism. Obviously discrimination based on sex or sexual orientation is a foul sin our society should have laws against. Non-consensual sex is horrid violence, no question about it, and should be punished as such. If full blown prison gang rape is the sexual equivalent of murder, than stealthing would be the sexual equivalent of slapping someone in the face hard enough to leave a bruise.

Keep in mind that in this case condoms slipping off are already a known form of condom failure, the risk of which she has already consented to. Is it sexual violence? Certainly. Does it deserve the same attention by society at large as the other forms of sexual violence in our society? I seriously doubt it. Should stealthing be punished if someone is convicted of such a crime? Yes, to the full extent of the law, whatever that may be. Should there be a law? Sure. How severe should it be? Something like slapping someone in the face and leaving a bruise. Is it provable? How can you prove someone did something on purpose that frequently happens on accident?

Besides questioning the severity and provability of stealthing compared to other forms of sexual violence, I openly challenge the assertion that it is a "rising trend." Show me numbers. I don't doubt that it happens... with 7 billion people in the world, 3 billion of them competing for sexual partners, no doubt heinous unpredictable behavior happens every day. But the source document everyone is referring to here doesn't even assert numbers that suggest stealthing is a "growing trend". Sure it must happen, sure it should be illegal.

Let me say something here about post-modernism and feminism. When these two are combined, and words start to mean different things for different authors, when we start hearing things like "patriarchy for me may mean something different than patriarchy means for her", when we eschew the very concept of having set definitions for words, this excludes some types of rational people (who depend on established vocabulary to communicate) from your conversation. Especially males, who's shoulders and backs industry has built its tremendous weight on, who under that pressure as a community have had to become extraordinarily rational in order to survive in the face of dangerous chemicals and machinery.

In a world of profound sexual violence and competition, who benefits from a party where the men are all invited to leave? I appreciate the contributions lesbians make to our world every day, was educated and personally mentored by more than a few myself, and fully realize the vast majority of them distance themselves from these kinds of male-hating irrational arguments. But just as there are aberrant males leaving sexual damage in their wake, certainly it is at least possible that there are opportunistic lesbians that have something against their most common sexual competition, men.

Isn't it ironic how convenient stealthing is for man haters? If a condom comes off by accident, how does a man prove his innocence in their eyes? Keep in mind that compared to other birth control failures, a condom accidentally slipping off was fairly likely to happen sooner or later - BUT in 2016 it was no crime - and now it will be. It is better for a woman to have sex with a lesbian because she can't get you pregnant. Condom? He will probably just stealth you.

Tom Leykis asserted that men needed to flush their condoms down the toilet, so that opportunistic females could not pull your condoms out of the trash and impregnate themselves with men's sperm non-consensually, as to be able to take advantage of men financially. I had a really hard time taking that whole line of thought seriously. Tom is the epitome of modern misogyny, yet stealthing is the exact opposite of anything he or any of his followers would ever do...

Naivete. Can you not see the chip on her shoulder as she stares at your female curves? More importantly, do you know what an internet troll is? Supposedly men are bragging about stealthing online. Do you have any idea the lengths to which a troll will go to offend you online? Do you have any idea what lengths I, B.F.Galbraith, have gone to offend people on line, primarily for my own entertainment? Have you not partaken of this forbidden fruit even once yourself, and taken a person or community for a ride to Alice's Wonderland?

Stealthing is an appropriated term from gaming. In gaming, stealthing is sneaking up on and punking your enemies when they least expect it. Think about that: a gamer term - ironically referring to strategic deception - used to inject a new phrase into the language of sexual violence? Seriously, you don't suspect anything amiss here?

The internet knows how weak feminism is when tainted with postmodernism. They also know how ubiquitous postmodern feminism is. When you abandon facts, numbers and data, then you have no reliable standards for evidence. It is then an extreme temptation for your critics to inject myths into your network of knowledge, and see how gullible you actually will become before you abandon your silly postmodernism. So far the depths of your naivete have not been discovered.

If feminism survives, it will be without postmodernism.  It will recognize objective reality and feminism's place in it. The future of feminism will have more facts, data, and science.

One Boy at a Time

In our era of gender-fluidity and pomosexuality, maleness has been demonized. Whenever any of us experiences a strong sexual impulse, we sag our heads in shame of our maleness. By "emasculation" I refer to any time we are made to feel less because of our maleness.

Women have maleness. They carry genes which are intended to benefit male offspring should they reproduce. This maleness can be expressed in their own biology and personality. Whenever a woman is asked to refrain from "unladylike behavior" she is experiencing emasculation.

Sexual objectification of women is the most obvious form of female emasculation. When men only see her as a sex object, men cannot appreciate the male characteristics a woman is contributing to the group. Her male qualities are ignored, and thus her maleness emasculated.

In the martial arts, I have worked out with numerous females who were very physically attractive. Often we would be working on ground fighting, on a mat in very close quarters, bodies weighing on each other as we battled for positions to dominate each other. However these circumstances were far from erotic, as their male aggression forced me into numerous painful submissions as I was choked, pinned, or had my arm twisted until I surrendered.

These females, as sexy as they were, were brothers in arms to me, and that is exactly how I saw them. Without others to spar with, I could not get better at martial arts, and another potential sparring partner was much more rare and valuable to me than yet another potential sexual partner. Now as I encounter new attractive female students, my words for them are brother to brother, as I help them awaken and harness the male within: "Hit me as hard as you can. OK, now swing your body into it. Hit me harder! That's better, now keep your hands up!"

But most often emasculation is used to openly assault straight male sexual identity. Straight males are criticized for being more attracted to fit females over unfit ones - as if they were the only ones who can control who they are attracted to. They are criticized for being too forward with females they are attracted to, and criticized for not being forward enough. Never minding the fact that most females will develop self-esteem problems if they see themselves as wholly unattractive to men, male heterosexual attraction towards females is often seen as the definition of pure evil.

"One Boy at a Time" is what I refer to a specific canned response I often see on social media. It goes something like this: "males are all inherently misogynist. We have to overcome rape culture by teaching them to see females as people instead of sexual objects, one boy at a time." This sounds like a green skinned witch with a long warty nose, a dark hooded robe, and a straight razor wandering a city park and castrating any little boy she can get her hands on. This assumes most males can not see for themselves the painfully obvious fact that females are also people, as if most males constantly groped most attractive females they see. The message to boys is clear: "the way your were born is NOT OK."

One Boy at a Time is incredibly and naively optimistic about protecting females from male aggression. First it is assumed that a little education can change a person's behavior significantly. Second, it assumes that a "one at a time" approach can keep up with the birthrate of new males.

First, the kind of opportunist that takes advantage of vulnerable females at each convenient opportunity is not most males, or we would live in a much different world. Just as all women carry male characteristics, males also carry female characteristics and have an empathetic, nurturing side that is horrified at the thought of another human being being sexually victimized. This means that when a women is being sexually victimized by a male, it is a male that is abnormal in some way. With two equally large populations, if only 5% of population A is aggressive towards population B, that is plenty of aggressors to, as the days go by, repeatedly and regularly harass 100% of population B, even if 95% of Population A is horrified at the prospect of such harassment happening to population B. This kind of opportunist, the 5% as I have referred to here, aren't going to change by way of educational effort.

Second "One Boy at a Time" is not frequent enough to catch up with the birth rate of males. If every male is born with this sort of original sin of built-in-misogyny than no one-on-one tutoring program on how to think about females is going to reach them all. One Boy at a Time is practically inadequate.

Once upon a time I did an internship for college credit with an extremely progressive activist organization. One of the leaders in this organization invited me over to her place to work on some strategic planning documents. She acted as if she was unsure about where the most comfortable place to get work done would be, going from kitchen to living room to - before I realized what was going on - her bedroom, as she gestured to her bed "we could get some work done there." Not only did I need this project for college credit, I was married, and even more to the point, she was NOT my type. I pretended like I was just too stupid to understand and explained I needed a table to write on, and managed to get some work on the documents done with her before leaving without further incident.

This was not the only time women have tried to coerce me into sexual encounters with them when I found myself alone with them. I use this specific example so that it is crystal clear that from my experience, hard-line anti-cis-male ultra-progressive feminist females are far from above this kind of harassment. Ideals do not guarantee behavior, and women possess a wealth of toxic masculinity themselves.

In my personal life, I categorically don't hang out with women who are having more than one drink, ever. I reserve the right to be a red blooded male. I retain my maleness - I have sexual might that is all too easily unleashed - and I reserve the right to constrain it by avoiding even the appearance of evil.
If it LOOKS bad, why go there?  Male. Heterosexual. 100%. That is my sexual identity, ready and willing to inflict bedroom mayhem on vixens everywhere, if unrestrained. Restraint is part of taking my sexual identity seriously. THIS prevents "rape culture." THESE kind of "avoiding the appearance of evil" standards are the ONLY effective protection for females from highly opportunistic males. 

Orthodox Stance With Weapons

Orthodox stance, by my definition (and most others), refers to a fighting stance where:

1. The weak foot is forward, and the strong foot is back.
2. The weak hand is forward, and the strong hand is back.
3. Both hands are held defensively in front of the the body or head.
4. The stance is square enough so that the opponent can still be easily reached with the strong hand.

In fencing they have the opposite of an orthodox stance. They are standing so far sideways that it is hard to reach the opponent with the rear hand, and they are leading with the strong side. This stance is often popular in light contact point-sparring competitions that imitate fencing.

The best weapon fighters right now seem to be using a stance that is strong side forward, but which is otherwise what I would think of as an orthodox stance.

I am very interested in using an orthodox stance (instead of a strong side forward stance) in weapon fighting, a tactic that after a lot of experimentation and development, I tried out at the 2017 Pacific North West Tipon Tipon:

Besides Boxing and Kick Boxing, typically Sword & Sheild fighters will fight with an orthodox stance:

And most people who train with spears quickly realize you want to use an orthodox stance with long weapons as well:

Even in the notoriously strong-side-forward world of Japanese weapon martial arts, with long weapons a more orthodox stance is preferred:

What the orthodox stance brings to smaller weapons such as knives, is it keeps the empty hand in the fight. Normally beginners and many others will want to knife fight with only one side of their body, keeping distance from the opponent and not endangering their weak hand (which is full of vulnerable and valuable veins, nerves and bones). But when using an orthodox stance in knife fighting, it forces you to keep the weak side of your body in the fight, so that you are more likely to employ two hands instead of just one:

The other big advantage of the orthodox stance is that kick boxers and boxers should be able to integrate their unarmed strikes into their weapon duels more easily, if they are starting from a stance they are already trained to use.

Right now the orthodox stance is not the dominant stance in full contact weapon sparring, but for me the verdict is still out on this.

Kudos for Kudo

By the early 80's martial arts master Takashi Azuma had earned advanced black belts in Judo and Kyokushin. He then created a synthesis of the two arts, now called Kudo. At first glance Kudo looks like MMA with uniforms and helmets (raising the question as to why we still need Judo or TKD in the Olympics when we could have Kudo instead):

But the use of the Gi in Kudo is even more practical and street-fighting related than what we find in in other Gi-grappling arts:

While those helmets make for some good-looking athletes with relatively few boxer's noses and cauliflower ears compared to MMA, those helmets also help allow headbutts which are now often illegal even in MMA. When I studied Judo off and on over the course of a decade (never making it close to yellow belt,) I was always puzzled at how easy it was to accidentally smack your head into your opponent's head in many Judo throws. Allowing headbutts as intentional attacks makes for more head position awareness:

Kudo has a rich tradition and philosophy as well, complete with (above mentioned) legendary martial arts master founder doing a super human martial arts stunt:

Though it is interesting that Kudo has been around far longer than MMA, Kudo has managed to incorporate plenty of boxing, Muay Thai and BJJ over the years, so that it is basically the perfect martial art for the self defense consumer:

Health Care Reality

I have stated repeatedly that the number one reason why Hillary lost the electoral college vote was because she continued to defend Obamacare (ACA) even as it continued to fail the fly-over states. Many of you seem to think Health Care Coverage is not the number one political issue of our time, yet it is.

First understand how bad Obamacare actually got for many people. In at least 5 states there were only one carrier in the ACA health exchanges, while healthcare insurance prices soared in those states as you would expect with such a monopoly. Alabama's health insurance prices became more expensive than California's. Some of that was state-level self-inflicted wounds by conservative states rejecting the Obamacare Medicaid expansion, but just as the public option would have been required to make the ACA/Obamacare work, so allowing for this obstructionism in Obamacare's design was also a fatal flaw.

Various polls have shown that when the policy is explained to the person being asked, we in the USA strongly prefer a "single payer" system for health care to any alternative. The problem is now the name "single payer" because of the specific disaster mentioned above with health insurance monopolies created in Obamacare exchanges. The plain American English for what we mean by "single payer" (which is not private health insurance monopolies) is "Medicare for All," as espoused by Bearnie Sander's platform. There was a very significant anti-establishment overlap between Trump voters and Sanders voters, but once Hillary got her party's nomination, she guaranteed "Medicare for All" would not be on the agenda, and voters desperate for change on this one most important issue had little choice but to vote for Trump.

Before  Obamacare, we Americans were easily frightened by tales from Western Europe and Canada about the failures of single-payer health care coverage. However now that we have seen just how rapidly things can decline, a "European-style health care system" is sounding very good to us. There is one other English speaking country in the Americas, and they are right next door to us. We know the Canadians have a superior health care system to ours, and there isn't any hiding it. 10 years ago you could have pointed to their taxes and convinced us it was too luxurious for the USA, but now that we have seen our health care prices skyrocket in spite of the Obamacare overhaul, "Canadian taxes" are the least of our health insurance expense concerns.

As Americans, we believe in freedom, so that employer based health insurance is a very poor cultural match for us:

1. From an employer's perspective, an entrepreneur or manager shouldn't have to sweat how to cover employee health insurance. This is not a natural part of the wages vs. hours formula, and when health care insurance prices go up for exactly the same or worse coverage, your employees do not appreciate what you are paying for them because they aren't paying for it, except for in lower and less frequent raises. Employer-based health insurance impedes our ability as Americans to complete fairly in business.
2. From an employee's perspective, the threat of losing employment means loosing access to your doctor. For anyone with a significant health condition OR at risk for a serious health care condition (basically all of us,) this is very like threatening our lives. In other words, employer-based health care for the employee is strikingly similar to guns-pointed-at-our-heads slavery.

I also often say "do not tell me about political parties. Instead give me Libertarians and Socialists, so we can have a grown up conversation about meaningful policies." In an era were most jobs are rapidly being replaced my automation, the most important question voters should be asking themselves (besides perhaps issues around maintaining their rights to vote in the first place,) is "what should be paid for by taxes, and what shouldn't be paid for by taxes." We get so caught up in political bike shed issues, that this critical question is rarely debated:

• Roads should be paid for by taxes, because they are too expensive for any of us individually to build and maintain, but we all need those roads. See also military, court system, government, etc.
• Chocolate should not be paid for by taxes, because it is inexpensive enough for anyone who wants it to get it, and even in the case of extraordinarily expensive chocolate, we do not depend on chocolate to survive. See also piano lessons, watermelons, entertainment, etc.

In the days of the traveling door-to-door doctor (think 1800's,) health care coverage was far more affordable and far less effective at extending our survival. Now in 2017 health care is like roads, incredibly expensive and critical to survival in our society. Health care should be paid for by taxes and have have nothing to do with our decisions regarding business plans or how we spend our days.

Mint

At the Game Arts Guild we get the most powerful hardware we can afford by buying last-years laptops that haven't sold and go on sale to make room for the latest inventory. We then put Linux on them instead of Windows to get maximum performance (and so they aren't at all outdated.) I have two secrets that make this simple to do.

First and foremost, if your Linux machine has a problem where the screen freezes up for no apparent reason (a chronic problem for us in the past), do this:

(This is from: http://askubuntu.com/questions/760731/lenovo-thinkpad-11e-randomly-freezes-on-ubuntu-16-04 Note: to edit grub, you have to run the text editor from the command line with “sudo”. In Mint, you would open a terminal and type “sudo xed”.) 

Edit /etc/default/grub. Change the line

GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet splash"

to

GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="intel_idle.max_cstate=1 quiet splash" 

then in the terminal enter:

sudo update-grub

and restart the computer.

Second, use Mint Linux:

1. Your first clue is because it has been the most popular version of Linux on DistroWatch.com for a very long time. 
2. Your second clue is that though it is based on Ubuntu (the other most popular type of Linux) it has three major versions, two Ubuntu versions (MATE based on the older, faster, more established Gnome 2, vs. Cinnamon based on the slower, fancier Gnome 3,) and a Debian version, so that the Mint Linux community has a very clear definition of what their operating system experience should be like in spite of whatever desktop (MATE vs. Cinnamon) or back end (Ubuntu vs. Debian) they are using. Obviously you should be going with Mint MATE in most cases.
3. Anything lighter weight than Mint MATE (like say Xubuntu) comes at a great sacrifice (as with Xubuntu's Thunar file manager which in my experience cannot reliably either move large files around or see USB drives. Lubuntu? Worse.) The good news is that Android is turning into a real OS called "Andromeda," and most low end machines will not need a new OS for most users.
4. That Mint "definition of operating system experience" is ideal. The default set up is simple, familiar, easy to use, and conscious of screen real estate. It installs easily. It starts with the software that makes the most sense such as VLC for a media player and GIMP for an image editor. This Mint definition has also very stable, not changing with fads like Windows 8. Installing other software on it (such as the Chrome Browser) is easy.