Proxy Power, Pandora hopes, debacles and memes.

Before diving into some important intellectual content, let's briefly contemplate one moment from the past and one vastness of future. First, it's exactly 50 years since the most exhausting and scary year any Boomer ever experienced – 1968 – started drawing to its fervently-welcomed close. 

You think 2018 was rough? Any single week of 68's relentless assassinations, invasions, ructions, riots, wars, marches… and unbelievable artistic/musical/scientific fecundity… woulda killed any of you young snowflakes! But I’ve written elsewhere -- in one of my best essays -- about how 1968 ended with a wonderful gift. The very last news item – Apollo 8’s first human visit round the moon – gave us one of the most important works of art in human history -- our first full image of this gorgeous oasis planet, our Earth. 

I was reminded of the story of Pandora’s Box, which unleashed upon the world so many ills, and yet there, at the bottom, was the gift of hope. Here's another writer's fond memory of that wondrous end to a hard year. 

Now Robert Picardo, Star Trek actor and my fellow member of the Planetary Society Advisory Council, presents a survey of the mighty accomplishments that your civilization achieved this last year, in space alone. Culminating in the exciting flyby, almost exactly at the tolling of New Years, of our faithful New Horizons probe past faraway Ultima Thule. Tune in! When we apply ourselves, with confidence, we achieve miracles.

 Which brings us to my annual appeal. You can be part of every good trend taking place on this globe. You can be part of fighting every bad one. 

The greatest western invention of the second half of the 20th Century... and the one that Vladimir Putin openly hates more than anything... is the NGO or non-governmental activist organization. NGOs are the great equalizer between average citizens and the world's titan elites. And here's the deal... 

...pick any six issues you care about, and there's probably an org out there for each one! A group that would pool your annual dues with a million others, letting them hire researchers and lawyers on a par with the biggest corporations and the richest moguls!

Yes, I count the Planetary Society on my list. (I hope you will, too.) And I've been with the Sierra Club and Greenpeace each for more than 50 years. (Hey, I wrote EARTH!) 

Even disagreeing with some prescriptions, I send money to the ACLU and Electronic Frontier Foundation and urge you to send a piddling membership to help them fight for all of us. (It's not just the money, but also strength in numbers.) Emily's List helped elect enough women so that Nevada's State Assembly is the first with a female majority!  Lawrence Lessig's Equal Citizens is nonpartisan fighting to end cheating in politics. But make your own list.

You can see (and get others to link-to) my main article about The Power of Proxy Activism. Tis the season? (Note that your charitable contributions might have more tax benefits this year, than next.) But it's always time to save the world. Seriously. If you can't bring yourself to do this much, then stop spouting opinions all over; it's just hot air and noise. Put a little money where your mouth goes.

Key point: this method requires almost none of your precious time... and very little money... while you go about your busy lives, knowing you have hired others to save the world for you!  

What a deal.

== Dichotomies and memes ==  

“Memetic Tribes and Culture War 2.0” by Peter Limberg and Conor Barnes describes how the old left-right dichotomy no longer provides a sufficient map of the political territory we find ourselves in. It’s a fascinating and perceptive piece, though I feel it misses core points. 

First, much of the current culture war is about elites persuading large numbers of Americans that their most basic reflex – suspicion of authority (preached in every Hollywood film) -- should be aimed at just one set of figures, and not at others. We all view ourselves as heroic members of an in-the-know resistance!

Can I make that clear for you? Left or right used to be less about economics in the U.S. than about where you feel Big Brother is rising.

To a person of the "right" -- the Orwellian elites are snooty academics and faceless government bureaucrats, or

To a person of the "left" -- those conniving to end freedom are aristocrats, oligarchs and faceless corporations.

But in the general sense, aren't both sides correct to worry?  Don't cheaters drift into every niche of dogma, hoping to exploit it for power?  Shouldn't we be wary in all directions?

In “normal times" we are! A liberal might admit “in theory tech people or bureaucrats could be dangerous, so you conservatives watch them while we target those who would re-establish feudalism.” And decent conservatives would avow the reverse. Synergy!  

Alas, the main purpose and aim of our enemies has been to get Americans targeted ONLY at their bêtes noir, and never to turn their heads!  That synergy hasn’t worked in a very long time.

Here’s the deal. While the entire American right and much of the far-left may now be in tunnel vision mode, only able to see enemy-action in the direction their noses are pointed, this is not true of the vast majority of American liberals, as shown by the story of MSNBC. That network tried to imitate the fantastically successful profit plan of Rupert Murdoch, to create an obligate Nuremberg rally for one third of the American populace to zombie stare-at, 8 hours a day.  MSNBC tried a left wing version of Fox... and almost went bankrupt, because most liberals simply wandered away, not wanting to be led in chants.  

Yes, that network still caters to an anti-right stance. But it never could copy the Fox business model of staring-chanting drones. For survival, they backed off and chose instead to maintain journalistic standards.

Yes, the generally “left-moderate” or Democratic coalition contains sub groups who behave in ways that fall under Limberg-Barnes models. Social Justice Warriors? Sure, they exist. That does not even imply, let alone prove equality of tribalism. ‘Contains’ is not the same as ‘consists.” Nor is ‘far-left’ equivalent to ‘entire-right.’

Another test is whether a “tribe” preaches positive, zero, or negative sum messages. The former -- rare across human history -- predisposes a person or group toward negotiation, even compromise. The latter would include those like Steve Bannon who call for a violently cleansing world crisis. Or dominionists who seek a prophesied end of the world. While there are small groups of Earth fanatics on the left (I portray this in my novel EARTH), negative-sum is not common in the American center or moderate left. Nor even much zero sum, as I describe in my article Altruistic Horizons & our tribal natures.

  

What does it take for an American faction to be passionately motivated but not be a “tribe” in the Limberg-Barnes sense?  How about willingness to use and adapt-to fact based modification?  When the far-left and the entire-right in the US are waging open war against every single fact-centered profession, what remains is a center and moderate-left to which nearly every scientist, teacher, journalist, law professional and “deep state” member of the fact-using protector caste has fled.

So no, sorry. This is not simply about degree of vehemence and opposition to perceived dangerous foes. There are verifiable parameters that illuminate the degree to which a ‘tribe’ is monomaniacal or tunnel-visioned in their opposition to perceived threats. Those parameters amount to what's called "evidence."

And hence, opposition to an overwhelmingly-proved oligarchic-feudalist putsch is not “tribal.” Not when it is utterly blatant.

And finally...

I was among the earliest calling this a phase of the American Civil War… Phase Eight, to pin it down. The same anti-modernist, confederate culture romanticism that helped Cornwallis in 1778 and rampaged across the North from 1852 to 1860, and fought for slave-killing plantation lords in the 1860s, and raved to defend lynchings, smog, tobacco, Jim Crow, casinos, carbon lords and the Kremlin have now taken Washington and made “facts” the ultimate emblem of demonic possession. Now see a list of early “battles” in the last two years, as the heat builds and violence accelerates.

Economics wonks! A new book by Ray Dalio called Principles for Navigating Big Debt Crises examines those debt cycles and what we can do about them, examining 48 modern debt crises, sorting them into different types and then analyzing each type.

Impeachment junkies, have a closer look at what is waiting on the wings. Donald Trump would be vastly more dangerous as a martyr, high on daily rallies, no longer constrained by office. Trump would embrace and be embraced by the Dominionist-Christians, determined to bring the world's End Times, ringing down the curtain on all freedom, diversity, curiosity, progress... and an end to the United States of America... and an end to all future generations of children. 

Put it that way to them! There is no purer definition of treason than the scenario that these folks openly and proudly avow that they pray-for, every single day.