Saturday, December 07, 2024

More sci fi comedy! And TASAT is go! Plus many other sci-fi related sites and resources!

For your weekend pleasure, I've posted the third installment of THE ANCIENT ONES - my SF comedy novel... that also delivers some unexpected twists on hoary sci-fi tropes. I don't see any comments under the prior postings, so I assume they were... fun? That some of the puns knocked you unconscious?

Your wit is welcome.

Okay, back to the world and varied ways to save it!

Far more important than any of the news below, is my annual suggestion for Seasonal Giving -- how your philanthropy dollars can be targeted in ways that help to achieve the world you want. If you have a dozen things you feel should be done, there’s an NGO trying for each of them. Please read

Save the world, your way.


== And now something for you... ==

...Well, for the prosperous sci fi aficionado. After 44 years, there is a hardcover of my first novel SundiverIt's a lovely, collectible edition (numbered and signed) with a gorgeous new cover and interiors by Jim Burns. From Phantasia Press. (Not cheap. But wow does Phantasia do good work!)

Are you more rich in nerdy sci fi knowledge, instead? 

Well again, The TASAT project -- There's A Story About That! -- is doing great! A special service I've tried to bring into the world for almost 20 years. And now, thanks top master programmer Todd Zimmerman, it lives!

Come by TASAT.org and see how there's a small but real chance that nerdy SciFi readers like you might one day save the world!

Or like Ray Bradbury's chillingly prescient time paradox story "The Sound of Thunder."



Addendum -- other science fiction resources:

And now a year-ed gift for the nerdiest. A passel of web resources all about science fiction!

Here is a list of useful online science fiction resources, including databases, encyclopedias, as well as discussion forums and question and answer sites... 

Science Fiction Academia

Science Fiction Research Association -
“The oldest professional association dedicated to scholarly inquiry into Science Fiction and the Fantastic across all media.”

SFE: SF Encyclopedia -  
“Our aim is to provide a comprehensive, scholarly, and critical guide to science fiction in all its forms.”

The Science Fiction and Fantasy Research Database -
“A freely available online resource designed to help students and researchers locate secondary sources for the study of the science fiction and fantasy and associated genres.”

J Wayne and Elsie M Gunn Center for the Study of Science Fiction   -
“A safe space for inquiry into, education about, and celebration of the genre.”

Science Fiction Databases

The Internet Speculative Fiction Database
“A community effort to catalog works of science fiction, fantasy, and horror.”

Science Fiction – TV Tropes -
A section of the famous TV Tropes site, focused on popular themes in science fiction.

Inventions and Ideas from Science Fiction Books and Movies at Technovelgy.com -
"Explore the inventions, technology and ideas of science fiction writers at Technovelgy (that's tech-novel-gee!)"

Science Fiction Forums

Science Fiction & Fantasy Stack Exchange -  
“A question and answer site for science fiction and fantasy enthusiasts.”

r/scifiwriting -
A subreddit for writers of science fiction.

r/AskScienceFiction -
"It's like Ask Science, but all questions and answers are written with answers gleaned from the universe itself."

Worldbuilding Stack Exchange -
“A question and answer site for writers/artists using science, geography and culture to construct imaginary worlds and settings.”

And yes, I'll repeat that I am continuing each week, more or less, posting chapters of my sci fi comedy novel THE ANCIENT ONES. Hey, can you really turn down free yucks?


== Defy The Beast! == 

The world is worth loving and saving. We do that by proselytizing what can truly save it...

...belief that we have a future.


Friday, November 29, 2024

What Democrats did wrong... Three categories of rationalizing - while ignoring why they hate us.

At the end I'll cite some book and SF news, including some fun! Like part two of my comedy, The Ancient Ones.


Only now we'll return to the topic on everyone’s mind… WTF just happened?  And what should we do now?


We'll start with Nathan Gardels – editor & publisher of the excellent Noēma Magazine - who always offers interesting observations. Though, he often triggers my infamously ornery “Yes… but…” reflex and a too-long response. (Several posts here originated in rémise to Nathan.)


In a recent missive - "How to Soul-Search as a Losing Party" - appraising What Democrats did wrong, Gardels points out many valid things… while reaching a conclusion that I deem spectacularly mistaken. Taking note of how so many Black and Hispanic males abandoned the old, Rooseveltean Coalition, he joins with so many others out there, urging a campaign of gentle conciliation.


Nathan cites a raft of earnest intellectuals, as well as deliberative ‘citizens panels’ that have – in Europe – shown some success at getting participants to bridge the dogmatic gaps that divided them. Indeed, such experiments have been terrific! It is the mature approach. And it works… 

...with those who are already drawn far enough into the process to leave behind their familiarly comfortable, polemical echo chambers. Forsaking today’s media Nuremberg rallies, in order to participate. 

“(O)nce informed and empathetically exposed to the concerns of others, participants move from previously held dispositions toward a consensus.“


Indeed, that participation can be widespread! As in the Truth and Reconciliation process led by Nelson Mandela, in South Africa, and similar endeavors in Argentina and Chile, wherein vast swathes of the public – on all sides – realized they must do this… or risk losing everything.


As for it happening in today’s USA? Well, I can think of one actual, real world example. 

         

All across the nation, grand juries are selected from randomly-chosen voters and vetted for general reasonableness. In a majority of American counties, the resulting panels consist largely of fairly typical white retirees. And yet, it has been exactly those red county white retirees who – after exposure to arguments and copious evidence – have indicted so many Republican politicians and associates of a vast range of crimes.


    I’d argue that is a kind of fact-based consensus-building, even if it leads to some well-deserved pain by the fomenters of one side.


That is the first of many reasons why the masters of that side will have no interest in allowing wider versions of consensus building.


I do not see any hope of such a thing happening in today’s America, at any kind of scale.


…with one barely plausible exception.


Saturday, November 23, 2024

THE ANCIENT ONES lives! So does TASAT! And a SUNDIVER hardcover! Plus some Science Fictional Musings

They're alive! 

(1) I'm posting my SF comedy THE ANCIENT ONES!

Samples were available at davidbrin.com. Only now I'll go all the way through, one chapter per week (or so) on Wordpress. Come by for laughs + painful puns! And some sci fi concepts taken to extremes. Oh and there'll be freebies for best groaner comments to adjust the final version. (Full novel soon at Histria Press!)


(2)  After 44 years, there is (released today) a hardcover of my first novel SUNDIVER

It's a lovely, collectible edition with a gorgeous new cover and interiors by Jim Burns. From Phantasia Press. (Not cheap. But wow does Phantsia do good work!). (www.tinyurl.com/hardsundiver)


(3) Also the TASAT project is doing great! I've touted it before - a special service I've tried to bring into the world for almost 20 years. And now, thanks to master programmer Todd Zimmerman, it lives!

Come by TASAT.org and see how there's a small but real chance that nerdy SciFi readers like YOU might one day save the world!

So, yeah, I've been busy. 
And you should stay busy. 
And hence...
... want another predictive overlap between fiction and the onrushing future? 


                == Rich prepper ingrates using my ideas ==

Almost exactly as depicted in Existence -- and after conversation with some of the innovative schemers -- it seems that an island nation -- one that is threatened by rising seas -- is collaborating with world zillionaires to erect a lagoon-sheltered arcology-city One that can float above changing sea levels… providing both those zillionaires and the island nation’s elites with refuge from both angry Nature and the western tax man. Again, exactly as in EXISTENCE. Moreover, as a bonus, those zillionaire preppers will get a legacy-sovereign UN seat, like a heritable seat on a stock exchange or law firm. Well-schemed! 

And no need to pay the fellow who gave you the idea, in the first place? That, too, was predicted.

Speaking of predictive success, here’s an extremely minor forecast I'll now offer. Minor, but still, one for the registry. I foresee that folks will feel a small but real sense of relief when we reach the year 2032!  Why?  Because we will suddenly be able to use just 6 digits for the date, instead of 8.  Can you envision why?  Speak up, in comments.


Alas though, right about the same year religious zealotry will spread rapture ravings, like nothing we have ever seen before. Can you envision why? I explained here. Hopefully, by then we'll still have a civilization then that awards predictive points. And that has resumed confidence in science and reason.


Meanwhile... In Nautilus, Namir Khaliq interviews me, Doctorow, Bujold, Stross, Jemison and Weir about how science influences science fiction, especially in a time of looming AI.  Come for insights. 



== Are hidden or ‘shy’ aliens or AIs watching us right now? ==


The "After On" podcast posting by Rob Reid (author of the SF novels After On and Year Zero) about "Shy or Hidden AI" was fun and well-spoken... though incomplete and hence not fully persuasive. "Might we unwittingly start sharing our world with a super AI?" A monologue and (mostly) playful thought experiment. Listen on Apple Podcasts

Interesting? Well... let me shine light on one under-explored aspect. For about two decades, I've pretty often been interviewed about either aliens or Artificial Intelligence. Sometimes I trot out a particular riff, when it seems likely to be fun. Here goes:

"I can now reveal that I've been 'channeling' for hidden (aliens/AIs) who use me as their human 'front,' to publish odd thoughts, or their attempts at sci fi (some better than others!), or else in order to float ideas out there...

"...like this idea that I'm floating right now, that a particular human might collaborate in this way, fronting for cryptic (aliens/AIs) who are shy about being publicly revealed. An idea that nearly all human audiences have deemed benignly amusing, because they assume that I am joking!

"But then, isn't that what I'd be hired to do? Getting folks pondering the possibility, so that the hidden aliens or AIs might get a measure of the reactions? Perhaps to see if it's safe to come out?


"Or else... isn't this exactly what a rascal like me would say, in order to tease about weird ideas? Just like you idea-rascals out there pay me to do?"

In fact, most of the last fourth of my novel Existence ponders cryptic or 'shy" interstellar probes who (conjecturally) have been lurking in the asteroid belt for millions of years, and might recently have been probing our internet. In that novel I riff-contemplate a wide array of motives they might have for maintaining secrecy a while longer. And yes, using humans as intermediaries is one of a dozen (actually 13) possible scenarios.

Still, this is an interesting and fun... if incomplete ... podcast speculation about the possibility. Including the notion that instead of lurker alien probes, it might be 'Shy AIs' reading these words right now as I type them... or else from stored files, five years from now.

I do say other things to such aliens or AI lurkers, that I won't get into here. Suffice it that I give them grandfatherly advice! ;-)



== The deep context of sci fi ==


Possibly the greatest living epic poet – certainly of epic-length poems about the future or sci fi themes – is Frederick Turner.  He’s done me the honor of reading Vivid Tomorrows: Science Fiction and Hollywood And while agreeing with some of my points, he also demurs on others. 


"Yes, many of the great epics - works like the Mahabharata, the Heike and the Aeneid – do emphasize demigods in a context of assumed rule by kingship.  But that may not have been in preferred-contrast to then-unknown innovations like democracy." 


Rather -- Fred argues -- many of them do contain their own profound critiques of power abuse by hereditary kings. Further, many of those epics may have been viewed as liberal in their age and context, contrasting instead vs: “…the only prior alternative, bloody tribalism and what Marx called rural idiocy. The city was a huge achievement, and it needed walls and authority, and was the origin of law and advanced technology.”

Certainly it has been pointed out that the story of Cain vs Abel has a context of the resentment by hunters and herders against the encroachment of agriculturalists, who appear (from genetic evidence) to have been far more expansionist and violent. 


Indeed, a major new element has been added by genetic research which now says there was likely a huge Y Chromosome bottleneck around 10,000 years ago. Weirdly and inexplicably, it may have happened roughly simultaneously across much of the world -- a few centuries when only 17% or so of males got to breed. The implications are immense!  


For one thing, this was the disruptive time when we invented both beer and kings. It's known that humans had less resistance to alcohol back then - more like other mammals, who are still very susceptible. So drunken boors musta been much more common. And this coincided with the new kings of minor agricultural realms, who abruptly possessed a power that tribal chiefs never had - to order killed anyone they didn't like, including drunken boors. (This was actually observed by Captain Cook etc., in Polynesia.)  Hence, just one effect could have been a major quick-evolution toward more self control re alcohol. (Still incomplete, alas.)


It seems that this phase only lasted a few centuries, until kingdoms grew larger. At which point the top king's harems were as big as he could handle and he gained nothing further by allowing the lords under him to keep rampage-murdering other males. In fact, the local top king would lose soldiers that he needed against other mid-sized kings.  Hence, there arrived rule of law against capricious murder... even by local lords... and the Y Chromosome bottleneck stabilized.


Sure, that is a speculative take on recent discoveries. But if all that is true, then there may be real implications for the vast oeuvre of oral mythology, coming to us from that era. The roots of all our heritage might be re-examined in new light.



== Pertinent Prescience? ==


Octavia Butler's terrific 1998 novel, Parable of the Talents, depicts a dystopian US ruled by fundamentalists. President Jarret seeks to rid the country of non-Christian beliefs, using the slogan.... "Make America Great Again." Sigh and alack.

And I miss her.


And her memory reminds me that we need to Make America smart and good and wise (and thus actually Great) someday yet again.





Sunday, November 17, 2024

So, what lessons did we learn? And what does the future hold?

Amid the all the hand-wringing, or wailing jeremiads, or triumphant op-eds out there, I’ll offer in this election post-mortem some perspectives that you’ll not see elsewhere. 

      But, before that - some flash bits.

 

First: a few have suggested Biden resign to make Kamala president for a month or so. Other than shifting Trump v.2.0’s number from 47 to 48, it would only bias 2028 unnecessarily, by locking her in as heir. Nah.

 

Second. I reiterate, there is one thing that Joe Biden could do – right now – that would upset the DC apple cart, and (presumably) be very much not to the Trump-Putin party’s liking. Last week I laid out how Biden might still – even now - affect the USA and world. And human destiny.

Third flash bit … how about some prediction cred? That Donald Trump has learned to never again appoint professionals or adults to office. Nearly all grownups from Trump v.1 (over 250 of them) eventually denounced him. (That one fact alone should have decided the election.) Sure enough, his announced cabinet appointments are almost all unqualified maniacs. But there’s a triple purpose to that – which I’ll describe at the end.

 

But that’s not what you came here for, today. You’ve been wallowing in election post-mortems, agonizing over how it could have come to this. 

 

So, after that wallow in futility and clichés, would you like some fresh views that actually bear some relation to reality? Some may disturb you.

 

 

== So… um… W.T.H. just happened? ==

 

 As VoteVets.org (Veterans dedicated to democracy and the rule of law) put it Wednesday: Moving forward and regaining the initiative requires us to confront the results of this election with open eyes.” 

 

Okay, for a start, it does no good to wail stuff like: “Americans chose a fascist dictatorship because trans kids are icky. And we hate the idea of a black woman being president.”

 

Um, not even close. Nor was Kamala Harris a ‘bad candidate’ (she was actually very good!) Nor was it because she ‘only had 107 days.’ Seriously? The campaign lasted forever!

 

Indeed, all over the globe (for the first time, ever), every governing party in a democracy lost vote share. So… maybe the Stupid-Ray Beamed By Aliens theory should be trotted back out? No, never mind that.

 

WTH actually happened?

 

Well, the demographics are clear. Major historically-Democratic groups simply did not show up, or else actively went to the GOP. While some Black men defected for reasons such as macho, they were mostly loyal, in the end. 


But Hispanics far more crucially (and of both sexes) stayed home or switched sides. And will you drop the racist slander, claiming that they’re all sexist? The new president of Mexico is a woman, fer gosh sakes. 

         

As for the trans thing, it was just one of so many hatred dog whistles. Useful to Fox and crappily/badly countered by the left. But it’s a side dish, compared to the Hispanic defection. 


Plus the fact that even white women split more evenly than expected.

 

Then what happened? 

 

TWO WORDS kind of sum it up! Two different one-word chants! Used repeatedly. One by each side.

 

For one side, that word was abortion.

 

Sure, the incredibly aggressive fascist putsch against Roe-v.-Wade and women’s Right-To-Choose was obscene and deserved to be deeply motivating. 

        Only then the Harris campaign transformed it from being a political gift by the Supreme Court into a liability. From being just one useful word into a million

Abortion. Abortion. Abortion. Abortion. Abortion. Abortion. Abortion. Abortion. Abortion. Abortion. Abortion. Abortion. Abortion. Abortion. Abortion. Abortion! And… Abortion!  (ad infinitum)

 

Dig it. All of the folks for whom that word was a deciding issue were already Kamala’s! Repeating it relentlessly and always - like an incantatory talisman - only made clear that hers would be a campaign exactly like Hillary Clinton’s -- led by and run by and aimed toward upper middle class white ladies. 

 

(And please? I voted for both Harris & Clinton and worked hard for them, in 2016, and again in 2024. We’re discussing tactics, here! And getting angry when failed tactics are criticized is a sure sign of a bad general.) 

 

Try asking outside that bell jar. After a while, each repetition (“abortion!!”) became tedious and hectoring to many. 


Especially to Hispanics, who -- may I remind you -- are mostly Catholics?

Who are capable of diverging from church doctrine… but did they need to be reminded of that cognitive dissonance hourly?

 

…Hispanic citizens who also proved very receptive to the other side’s talisman word. 

 

 ‘Immigration.’ 

 

This talisman worked to draw in support from fresh directions. Poll after poll show Hispanics want tighter borders! Yet, urban liberals refused to listen. Pompously finger-wagging that both Jesus and Deuteronomy preach kindness (they do!) toward the flood of refugees who are fleeing Trump ally elites in Honduras and Guatemala, they endlessly lectured and preached that the flood should ONLY be answered with kindness… and nothing but kindness.

 

… which is easy for you rich liberals to say. But Hispanic voters don’t want job competition. And your disapproval – calling them immoral when they shouted “No!” – helped to cement their shift.

 

 

== Immigration as a weapon vs. the West: It isn’t just America. ==

 

Did you ever wonder why right wing populism has surged in Europe?  Quasi-Nazism burgeoned there – and here – for one reason above all. Because Putin & pals have been driving refugees across western borders for 30 years, knowing that it’ll result – perfectly – in a rightward swerve of politics. 

 

You know this! It happened here. The tactic has now won Vladimir Putin the greatest victory of his life… that very likely saved his life! 

 

But you, yes you, have been unable to see it and draw two correct conclusions

 

First: you can’t have everything you want, not all at once. Politics requires prioritization. And hence when Obama and Biden built more border walls than Trump ever did, they ought to have bragged about it! And you should have bragged, too.

        Again, you cannot do all the good things on your list without POWER! And now, sanctimoniously refusing to prioritize has given total power to…

 

Second: and here’s a potential sweet spot for you: Want to solve the immigration crisis in the best way, to benefit both us and the poor refugees? 

 

Go after the Honduran/Guatemalan/Nicaraguan/Cuban/Venezuelan elites who are persecuting their own citizens and driving them – coordinated by Moscow - to flee to the U.S! 

 

Um, duh? Joe could still do that in his remaining time. He could! 

     But a blind spot is a blind spot…

     … and even now, YOU probably could not parse or paraphrase what I just said. About the possible win-win sweet spot. Go ahead and try. Bet you can’t even come close.

 

How much simpler to dismiss Brin as racist. And thus illustrate my point.

 

 

== More lessons learned… or not learned? ==

 

Polls showed that ECONOMICS were far more on peoples’ minds than abortion. In fact, in almost every meaningful category, the USA has, right now, the best economy in the whole world and one of the very best since WWII.  


 

  

 

Oh sure, saying that was difficult for Democrats. It comes across as lectury, pedantic and tone deaf to those working class folks who have no rising 401K, but do have high grocery bills. Or to young families staring at skyrocketing housing prices. Meanwhile, everyone is so accustomed to a great labor market that unemployment is a forgotten issue,

 

But does that mean to give up?

In fact, Kamala tried to get across this difficult perception gap by promising to end gouging at supermarkets and pharmacies and bragging about lowered insulin costs. But all of that seems to admit we failed, till now. So, maybe accompany all that with ads showing all the bridges and other infrastructure being rebuilt, at last, and asking “Do you know someone working at fixing America this way? Ask THEM about it!”

 

I found the rebirth of US manufacturing - the biggest boom since WWII – to be especially effective.  

 

As for housing costs, I never saw one attempt to blame it on real culprits - swarms of inheritance brats and their trusts who are snapping up houses right and left in cash purchases, free to ignore mortgage rates. I mean seriously?

 

Okay, I admit it’s hard to sell cynical working stiffs glued to Fox on the Good Economy. I won’t carp too much on that. Instead…

 

Of course, there’s so much anger around and someone is gonna receive it. So notice that the core Foxite campaign – pushed VASTLY more often than any message of racism or sexism – is to blame college folks with incited hatred of non-college folks. 

 

As I’ll say again, Kamala could have started changing this by pointing over there (as FDR did) at the real class enemies. The oligarchs who benefited from 40+ years of supply side and suck like lampreys from the hardworking U.S. middle class… both college and non-college.

 

 

 

== The insult that they deeply resent… repeated over and over again ==

 

Not one Democratic pol has ever pointed out that racism and sexism, while important ingredients in parts of the Red polity, are not their core agenda!  

 

Indeed, count how many of your friends and/or favorite pundits are ascribing this recent calamity to ‘embedded American racism and sexism!!”  

 

Sure, those despicable traits exist and matter a lot. And it’s easy for me to downgrade them when my life is in no danger because of a busted tail-light. 

 

Still, can you recognize an unhelpful mantra, when it is repeated way too much, crowding out all other thought?

 

As commentator Jamie Metzl put it: “There will be some people who awoke this morning telling themselves that the story of this election is primarily one of racism and misogyny. They are wrong. 

 

“Make no mistake, our country still harbors unacceptable levels of both, but that is not the story of this election. That is not who we are as a nation. We are the same nation that elected Barack Obama twice and would have likely have elected Nikki Haley, had she been the Republican candidate. Very many women and minorities voted for Trump. We need to look deeper.”

 

Indeed, howling “You’re racist!” at our red neighbors was likely counterproductive. They turn and point at black faces on Fox… and at the now-boring normality of inter-racial marriages… and more recently at ‘normal gays’… and reply

 

“I don’t FEEL racist!  I LIKE the good ones!” 

 

 None of that means racism is over! But except for a nasty-Nazi wing, they have largely shifted on a lot of things. What it does mean is that a vast majority of Republicans feel insulated from their racism. 

 

it means that shrieking the R word over and over can be futile.It only makes your neighbors dig in and call you the race-obsessed oppressor.

 

 

==  The actual enemy ==

 

I mean, have you ever actually watched FOX and tallied their openly racist or even sexist crap… versus who it is they actually assail most often, and openly? Care for a side bet on this?

 

I’ve said it before and will pound this till you listen. While they downplay their own racism and sexism, what almost every MAGA Nuremberg Rally does feature is endless – and utterly open -- attacks upon nerds.

 

The fact professions. From journalism to science to civil service to law to medicine to the FBI and the US military officer corps. 

        And NO Democrat has ever addressed that, head on! 

        Ever, ever, ever and ever.

        Instead of ever pointing this out, they assume that defending the fact professions will sound like smugness bragging. 

 

But they’re wrong. And there are reasons why the all out assault on all fact-professions is the core agenda underlying everything Republican/MAGA/Putinist.  

        And someday – as I mention below – this will at last be admitted openly. 

       Alas, too late, as beginning on day one of Trump v2 there will commence an all-out terror campaign against that officer corps, against the FBI and especially the United States Civil Service. And science.

       And when that happens, point proudly and tell your children: “I helped do that.”

 

 

== The giddy joy in Moscow ==

 

Oh, there are MAGAs who write to me – on social media etc. - taunting and gloating about all this. To which I reply: 

 

“Enjoy your victory. Your pleasure is as a firefly glow, next to the giddy ecstasy in the Kremlin.”

  



 

A few comments furthering that.

 

a.     Jill Stein deserves the Order of Lenin. She likely already has one in her secret Moscow luxury dacha.

 

b.    Recall the Four Scenarios I projected, last Sunday? As I predicted in scenario 4. If Trump wins convincingly, he will surround himself with loyalists and this time no ‘adults in the room.’ No Kelly, Mattis, Esper, Milley, or even hacks with a brain, like Barr or Tillerson or Pence.  

  

c.     What no one else has mentioned - or will - is how this cuts all puppet strings to Trump. Nothing Putin has on him… no pee tape, or snuff film, or video with Epstein kids… will matter anymore. Nor will blackmail files on Cruz or many others. All – even Lindsey Graham – will have their “I could shoot someone on 5th Avenue” moment. And when that happens…



 

        …there is a very real chance that Trump will feel liberated to tell Vlad to fuck himself. Or even take revenge on Putin for decades of puppetting control threats. I have repeatedly asked folks to learn from the wisdom of Hollywood! From the last ten minutes of CABARET. From Angela Lansbury’s soliloquy in the last half hour of THE MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE. From the oligarchs’ last resort in NETWORK. 

 

But no. I am dreaming. Putin will retain control. Even if blackmail ceases to work, there’s flattery, which is far more important to DT than anything else in the world. And liberals insanely ignore that.

 

 

== How will America respond to this Confederate conquest? ==

 

 

One of you, in our lively comments section below, said: 

Trump is who we are and we are not the great people we used to be.”



 

Malarkey. As I described here today, midway through this phase of the ever-recurring Civil War, it seems the Union side’s generals keep firing in mistaken directions. But do not look at this as “America is irredeemable.” 

 

View it as “America has once again been conquered by the entirely separate Confederacy, the recurring romantic-feudalist cult that now has its Russian and other foreign allies. Actual America is now occupied by that other entity."

 

But recall that it consists of almost all of the inhabitants of this land who know stuff. And if our mad cousins push too hard, mass resignations by the competent will only be the beginning.

 

And no, - even though we are the ones who know everything cyber, bio, medical, nano, nuclear and all that, it won’t come to any of that. 

 

Watch instead – if they go after the civil service and officer corps - for the words GENERAL STRIKE. And let’s see how they do without (among 10,000 other taken-for-granted things) their ten day weather reports. Especially when the parts of North America that will be the very worst-hit by climate Acts of God will be the Southeast.

 


== Why are there zero 'adults' in the newest DT administration? ==


      I promised to explain why Trump's announced cabinet appointments are almost all unqualified maniacs. There’s a triple purpose


1. This will maximize flattery (what Trump lives for), but this time he's only chosen appointees who are blackmailed and controllable. In some cases, Russian assets now appointed atop U.S. intel and defense agencies.


2.  Unlike all the 'adults' in Trump v.1, this time every single person named will join in the coming all-out war against the FBI, military officer corps and U.S. Civil Service.


3. Unlike all the 'adults' in Trump v.1 none of these will never denounce him in tell-all books.



== Side bits ==

 

Tariffs? Oh, dear oligarchs, try some wisdom from a surprising portion of Ferris Beuller’s Day Off! 


John Cramer points out that Joe Biden, as part of the Great Big Infrastructure Rebuild, boosted access of poor and rural areas to high speed Internet... "There is evidence that better access to the many disinformation sites shifted many rural counties from pink to deep red."


Also Cramer: "Botched Trumpian responses made Covid far worse. (And the best way for you to begin using wager demands would ber to demand cash bets over DEATH RATES for the vaccinated vs. un-vaccinated.) "When COVID hit, Trump arranged to sign the big relief checks. Under Biden (who din't sign the checks) this tapered too soon. Strapped voters remembered the "good old days" when Trump sent checks and the grocery prices were lower." Hm, that seems a reach but...


Above all I reiterate, there is one thing that Joe Biden could do – right now – that would upset the DC apple cart, and (presumably) be very much not to the Trump-Putin party’s liking. Last week I laid out how Biden might still – even now - affect the USA and world. And human destiny.

 


 

== So, what lessons did we learn?  And what does the future hold?  ==

 

Geez, you’re asking me? My predictive score is way above average, but I truly thought a critical mass of Americans would reject an orange-painted, makeup-slathered raving-loony carnival barker. I was wrong about that…

 

… but it only shows how stoopid so many millions of sincerely generous and college -educated Americans are, for assuming they know who the gone-treasonously-mad right is oppressing.

 

Wake up, educated gals & guys and gays and every other variant under the sun. It’s not your diversity they are coming after. Nor the client races and genders you defend, many of whom just said ‘fuck off!’ to being protected by you.

 

The oligarchs and their minions have one enemy they aim to destroy.

 

It’s you.