Talk of "a new civil war" goes mainstream

I despise notions of "cyclical history." But nations do often fall into traps that look similar. Twenty years ago, back when America was riding so high that folks spoke of an "end to history," I addressed folks at a DC agency - flush with victory in the Cold War - and splashed them with colder water by asking: 

"What would enemies do, in this new context, to bring down even a pre-eminent Pax Americana?"

Even in the 1990s, there were many desperately eager to find a way. Some deluded themselves with fantasies of a supposed weakness that  "Americans are all decadent, spoiled, pleasure-seeking cowards" the same canard that every U.S. generation had to disprove at great cost, since the 1770s. (On 9/11 it was easily refuted by 60 brave volunteers aboard flight UA 93.) Now that perennialy-loony nostrum is being repeated by modern confederates, claiming that educated citizens and city folk inherently have no guts. I'll get back to that slanderously stupid calumny, below.

But in the 90s I went deeper. "What clever and potentially lethal endeavors might serious - if weaker - enemies undertake, to bring down the United States?" 

Wearing my sci-fi hat, I answered: "You'd start by looking across history for mistakes that almost wrecked the American experiment. Two stand out. Foreign quagmires and civil war. If I were an enemy, I would use asymmetrical and skulldugerous methods to lure us into both."

How might an enemy accomplish this? Among the methods listed on my 1998 slide (and there are witnesses) were: 

"Incite divisions among our classes and castes," 

"Incite suspicion toward our professional protectors," 

"Suborn top levels of U.S. leadership."  

Although every one of these can be found across the annals of shattered empires, my warnings seemed far-fetched in the late 1990s. I got smirks back when I first showed that slide. 

I don't get smirks anymore. I get gasps. 

Indeed, just three years after that talk, we were mired in endless middle-eastern quagmires, in exactly the same locales where the USSR met its doom. And through innovations such as the Hastert Rule, seeds were lain for an end to all grownup political discourse within the United States -- the beginnings of phase eight of the American Civil War.

== Talk of Civil War goes Mainstream ==

Okay, what seemed far-out, back then, is now on everyone's lips. Read or listen to this NPR report about “a new civil war?” Some passages are chilling. For example: one anonymous “fake news hater" left a voicemail threat for the New York Times' Ken Vogel. 

"You are the enemy of the people. And although the pen might be mightier than the sword, the pen is not mightier than the AK-47. And just remember Ken, there's nothing civil about civil war."

Like all of the bright fools in mainstream journalism, this reporter seemed to think that just quoting such treasonous bile should be enough to put it in disrepute. In so doing, these journalists help make the right's point! That brains and knowledge do not always translate into wisdom! So let me put all of this into much harsher perspective. 

Sure, oh anonymous troll-caller, it all may go hot. Rash heads might tip us over into something as awful as sci fi author Sean Smith relates in his novel TEARS OF ABRAHAM. Indeed, nothing would make Vladimir Putin happier. 

Before our confederate neighbors leap for their AK’s, however, it might be worth remembering that:

1) The Union side is always under-rated. Educated and city folk are routinely derided as “un-manly” and lacking courage, as in 1778 and 1861 and 1941. This lazy reflex is always proved wrong. But if these twits knew any history, they would not be twits.

2) Question: why have most liberals shifted their gun control views from efforts at restricting gun ownership to simple sanities like background checks? Answer: because liberals have quietly been arming themselves since 2001. They don’t preen, or stockpile, or wave their pieces around in compensation for male performance anxiety. Still, you'd be really foolish to just assume they are unarmed.

This goes double since the Fox-Putin treason ramped up its open war against our “deep state” professionals in law, intel, and the U.S. military officer corps. The folks who fought Hitler and saved us from Stalin and Brezhnev are now being told they must spurn facts and science and ignore the threat from a blatant, world-wide mafia putsch. And they are not having it. 

Hundreds of thousands of “crewcut types” have been driven out of the GOP and (sometimes holding their noses, and sometimes running for office) into the Democratic Party. You may be surprised how many of them will stand by the Union, if push comes to shove.

3) It’s not just the Deep State. This neo-confederate cult has been waging war against every profession that deals in facts and knowledge, from science and teaching and law to civil service, journalism… name an exception! 

But let’s circle back to that first one. Science. I have to ask the guy who threatened Ken Vogel: 

“Um, sir. If the AK-47 is mightier than the pen, then is an atom bomb, or a genetic weapon, or a software worm mightier than an AK? Because your cult’s open, death-vendetta against people who know physics and biology and cybernetics and medicine and every other science does seem to… well, forgive me… fail a simple IQ test. 

"Who will treat your battle wounds, when you've told doctors they're satanic? 

“I mean seriously, you think all the folks who know stuff will be helpless, when you traitors and your oligarch-mafia masters turn this civil war hot? Seriously? You assume your penis compensating arsenal of assault rifles and McVeigh devices can stand up to what we’ll be able to throw together in days, if your klan comes at us with torches and AKs and death in your eyes?

“Seriously? We're talking millions of people, each of them dozens of times smarter than you. Slay a few dozen of them and watch them get mad. You won't like them when they get mad.”

Here's a modest suggestion. Go visit Jim Wright’s Stonekettle Station blog. He comes from a good ol’ boy background and can beat any of you at blindfolded field-cleaning an M4. Only he also passes these IQ tests. And he can tell you what will happen if the New Plantation Lords send you into battle against “the north” again. 

Maybe, instead of obeying those masters and attacking all the folks who know stuff as a hated "elite," you should give another look at the real, conniving elite of casino moguls, slumlords, inheritance brats, Wall Street parasites, petro-sheiks, coal barons, KGB agents and mafia dons. They are “enemies of the people.” 

And if I'm not here to say it, then millions will step up to shout "j'accuse!"

== It's happened before ==

This is not the first all-out effort by paranoid dinosaurs to throttle our brave experiment in democratic-tolerant-scientific progress. The Dreyfus Affair crystallized a very similar turmoil in 1890s France, between liberal and reactionary forces that led ultimately to treason in 1940 — a  struggle that goes way back, in much the same way as the American Civil War has had recurring outbreaks, all the way to 1778: 

“The Dreyfus affair was triggered in 1894, when a traitor was discovered in the French army: Somebody had been passing information to Germany, which had defeated France a quarter century earlier and occupied Alsace-Lorraine. French military intelligence blamed Captain Alfred Dreyfus - an Alsatian who spoke with a German accent, and was a Jew—and therefore, in the eyes of some, not a real Frenchman. As it would turn out, he was also innocent. But French army investigators created fake evidence and gave false testimony; as a result, Dreyfus was court-martialed, found guilty, and sent into solitary confinement on Devil’s Island."

From The Atlantic: “The ensuing controversy divided French society along now-familiar lines. Those who maintained Dreyfus’s guilt were the alt-right—or the Law and Justice Party, or the National Front—of their time. They pushed a conspiracy theory. They were backed up by screaming headlines in France’s right-wing yellow press, the 19th-century version of a far-right trolling operation. Their leaders lied ‘to uphold the honor of the army’; adherents clung to their belief in Dreyfus’s guilt—and their absolute loyalty to the nation—even when this fakery was revealed.”

 As comments Daniel Duffy: “The split still divides France. The Dreyfusards led France to victory in WW1. The anti-Dreyfusards (especially those on the French general staff) led France to defeat in WW2 and ruled the Vichy regime. In his "Collapse of the Third Republic", William Shirer (also famous for "The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich") strongly implied that the anti-Dreyfusards of the French officer corp deliberately betrayed France and preferred Nazi anti-Antisemitism to "liberte, egaletre et fraternite". On paper, the French army was vastly superior to the Germans and it took more than just incompetence to cause defeat.”

Seriously. When our few experiments in a newer-better way than perpetual feudalism are so very successful, but then crushed by tsunamis of illogic and madness, you have to wonder if we are in Heinlein's "Crazy Years." 

You, yes you, might be able to make a difference during the coming week.

I hope you will.

Want to Investigate Electoral Fraud? Start with whistle blowers and judo!

== Calling all henchmen! ==

I’ve called for this since way back in the last century, illustrating it in The Transparent Society and in novels like Earth. We must unleash whistleblowers on the world. Envision Edward Snowden and the Panama Papers revealer, only far more extensively, with protections and rewards that lure secrets out of shadows. 


Basics are already in place – Whistleblower Laws that offer big commissions to tattlers in certain circumstances, for example, but these are far too limited. Expanding such protections and lures could be more important to our planet and civilization than any other matter.

Remember, our kind of society is almost never seriously damaged by revelations or leaks. Spills can be irritating or irksome and even tactically harmful in the short term. But we generally find the light bracing and adapt quickly, as our services did, after Snowden. 

Our deadly enemies, in contrast are all – every last one of them – lethally allergic to light.  


Sure our Protector Caste needs some tactical secrets. Still, there is one and only one long range victory condition. In a world that moves progressively toward light, we win. “We” – enlightenment civilization – just win. In part because none of our enemies can endure light.

As illustrated by most of the wildly diverse stories by brilliant authors in Chasing Shadows, illustrating all sorts of ways that people and societies will have to cope with an increasingly transparent world. And yet, for all its irritations and disruptions, such a world will be more just. Less rife with evil.

And this applies to... the Trump Era? Especially and spectacularly so. 

Like Bushites, he and his team will lay the hammer onto whistleblowers. But some billionaire might solve this.  By offering incentives outside of government for the kind of revelations that cleanse and invigorate our kind of society, unlike any other.

See how far back  I’ve been making this call.  Especially, asking that rewards be offered to bring out information about electoral fraud.

== A little Judo ==

Take President Trump's call for a major investigation of voter fraud. By reflexively opposing this, foolish liberals play their game - which is sumo... grunting against each other, chest to chest... when democrats should instead be practicing judo.

By opposing an investigation, liberals look like they are opposed to getting to the truth! And thus they fall for a trap. Instead they should say:

"At last you are offering something that's not about delusion, but about getting to truth! Fine! Let's agree to form a top level, blue ribbon commission, drawing from the finest statesmen and stateswomen! Start with retired US Supreme Court Justice (and Republican nominee) Sandra Day O'Conner.

"Only the commissioners will look into more than just the voting-dead. They will also examine rigged voting machines. And states that deliberately make it hard for women and poor people to get ID. And gerrymandering.

"Let's go! Let this be our first joint project with the new president. Meet our reasonable offer and let's get started!"

And yes, the heart and soul of any such investigation should be whistleblower prizes.

In the long term… this matters far more than just the results of one election. Out of a dozen major “suggestions” I have offered, over the years, none is more important than making it harder – ever-harder – for conspirators, would-be lords and other elites to trust their own henchmen.  Think on that.

Then ponder how this is not a uniform effect. The Koch brothers offered lavish rewards for scientists who would sell-out, regarding climate change. The tactic worked a bit in the pharmaceuticals and tobacco industries, biasing some reports. But almost never do top researchers accept the bribes. As I said, the forces of enlightenment can withstand light, but not their enemies.


So what I really want - what's needed - is some non-governmental Henchman's Prize. A big reward for whoever reveals "the worst thing" in any given year. Prize competitions are all the thing, right? This one could cost some real money.  But nothing else I can think of would more efficiently and effectively tip the balance in favor of a true... civilization.

== Siberian candidates ==

Hillary Clinton blames  Russian President Vladimir Putin for meddling in our election, as confirmed by the FBI, CIA and other agencies who will soon feel the heel of Putin’s revenge.  But Clinton attributes Putin’s grudge to have been due to her own past criticism of Russian elections. 

Really lady? You don’t think he might hate you for something more tangible?  Like the huge coup that you and President Obama are credited for, in the Russian Press and by Putin’s own words?  They accuse HRC and BHO of cleverly and aggressively “stealing the Ukraine” by stage managing the Velvet Revolution that ousted Russian puppet Viktor Yanukovych, in 2014.  I give far more credit to the Ukrainians, frankly. But it helps to put Putin’s later, “brilliant” moves in Crimea etc in perspective as very small nibble-backs from a geopolitical catastrophe. That is what he hates you and Obama for, Hillary.  Learn to take some credit. 

No wonder DT  would refuse even to look at evidence collected by our professionals, that a foreign power has waged acts of war against us - or even accept standard security briefings.

But seriously, what do you need? Could the Kremlin have picked a more favorable U.S. cabinet than Donald Trump has, including Exxon head Rex Tillerson for Secretary of State, who has received lavish honors - and billions in favored contracts - directly from the Putin Administration and who hangs with Russian klepto-oligarchs? When the U.S. imposed sanctions against Russia in 2014 pursuant to the invasion of Crimea, one of the items put on indefinite hold was a contract between the Russian government and Exxon to exploit a wide variety of off shore drilling zones off Russia's Arctic coast. Estimates made the contracts worth up to half a trillion dollars to Exxon, and even more for the Russian government.

So? All is symbolism on the right.  And hence, President Putin has ordered officials to start planning a celebration of next year’s centennial of the Russian Revolution. It will be awkward, since Putin has simultaneously encouraged restored adulation of Joseph Stalin and the toppled Romanov Czars… both the lamented Soviet Union and the Russian Orthodox Church. 

Sound a bit like Putin’s biggest western fans – Republicans? Who simultaneously declare adoration of the Greatest Generation of the 1950s while pouring hate upon every aspect of the nation that generation built -- from strong unions and high taxes on the rich to the living person those folks adored, above all others, Franklin... Delano... Roosevelt? 

As in Russia, it seems the central goal is to use emotion to drive out logic.  And hence, the outright war – in both nations – against the scientists and other fact-professions.

Oh, while we’re peering east. An interesting revelation about a Russian weapon that purportedly could sneak bombs underwater into American seaports. I would be wary of this article, though, as there are some telltales of exaggeration. Example.  There has never been a 100 megaton bomb.  One was planned but that method is probably long lost. The tsunami thing and the Cobalt thing are likely lurid arm-wavings. Their aim would be to cripple us, not to poison all our children, triggering a spasm to kill all of theirs. A ten Kt drone-mine in each harbor would leave us impotent at sea while leaving the main California cities still available to hold hostage.

== Political miscellany == 

More perspectives on how China feels about Trump. And why DT has so many fans in China.

The New York Times notes that, “As recently as last year, Breitbart published an op-ed article urging that “every tree, every rooftop, every picket fence, every telegraph pole in the South should be festooned with the Confederate battle flag.”  

Alt.right “hit lists” against professors and intellectuals of all kinds. 

One of the leaders of a recent alt-right convention quoted Nazi propaganda in the original German. America, he said, belonged to white people, whom he called the “children of the sun,” a race of conquerors and creators who had been marginalized but now, in the era of President-elect Donald J. Trump, were “awakening to their own identity.”  As he finished, several audience members had their arms outstretched in a Nazi salute.

Someone at the podium shouted, “Heil the people! Heil victory,” the room shouted it back. Later: “Mr. Spencer suggested that the news media had been critical of Mr. Trump throughout the campaign in order to protect Jewish interests. Mr. Trump’s election, Mr. Spencer said, was “the victory of will,” a phrase that echoed the title of the most famous Nazi-era propaganda film.” These are exultant times for the alt-right movement.

And finally some ironic quotations:

“Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!”  -- Ronald Reagan

“We’re going to build a beautiful, huge wall.”  -- Donald Trump

“Moscow’s evil empire…” –Ronald Reagan

“"I looked the man (Putin) in the eye. I found him to be very straightforward and trustworthy.”  -- George W. Bush

"Will he become my new best friend?" Donald Trump asked of Putin in a tweet before bringing the Miss Universe pageant Trump to Moscow.

Consistency? Confederates despise consistency.  The only thing that matters is whom do you hate? If you hate the same folks they hate, then you must be okay.

Battles over Symbols - and how to take back your vote!

First this quirky thing I heard... Has anyone else picked up rumors of hispanic Americans re-registering Republican, in order to vote against Donald Trump in primaries?  Anyone have a link? Or is it a rumor I just started?  ;-)  

Of course the tactic is silly at one level... none of the other GOP candidates are any better from the perspective of Latino Americans.

But at another level it makes plenty of sense.  And here I explain why anyone who lives in a Republican district should register Republican, even if they intend to vote for the democrat in the fall. And vice versa in heavily democratic districts, fair is fair. Except in California where we finally rendered that nonsense moot with sensible top-two primaries.

Seriously. Join the party OF your district!  It is the way to thwart radicals, get back a vote, promote local moderates, mess-up the PACs' calculations, and side-step the gerrymandering criminal theft of your franchise.

== It's never about substance ==

The debate over confederate symbols like the Battle Flag is just one front in our current “Phase Eight of the American Civil War.”  Nor can the New Confederacy complain, since their party made symbolism a locus of 21st Century aggression long before Blue America did — for example by insisting that U.S. aircraft carriers never be named after anyone disapproved by dixiecrats. 

Every phase of our ongoing civil war was demonstrably started aggressively by the same side.  

In fact, as a contrarian-militant-moderate, I will often turn around and offer up a yes-but. Hence, while I agree (yes-but) that the Confederacy was (and remains) a deeply vile treason without a scintilla of moral justification, at any level (especially not 'states rights)… I did stand up for one legitimately proud public use for the Battle Flag — at Civil War re-enactments.  Not only because its absence would be absurdly a-historical. But also because there was one trait of the Olde Confederacy that merited respect, even admiration by its enemies, like W.T. Sherman. (Whose prophetic words could not have been more spot-on.)

What was that one admirable confederate trait? The martial courage and resilience and ingenuity that southern men displayed on the battlefield. Completely independent of their “nation’s” absolutely uniform horrific moral standing was the staunchly brave way that they fought for it. I have no objections at all to southern white chests swelling with pride over great-great-grandpappy’s exploits at Chancellorsville or Chickamauga.

It seems that a transition is gaining momentum, as the Memphis City Council cast its final vote to remove a statue of Nathan Bedford Forrest from a downtown park. The statue, and Forrest's remains, will be moved to Elmwood Cemetery where the Confederate general had originally been buried, according to his wishes, till Klan-associated activists took over a city park for this gesture, in 1905. Forrest was, without any doubt, one of the most brilliant battlefield commanders, not just of the Civil War but in all of history.  He also ordered the execution of 300 already-surrendered and unarmed negro U.S. troops, among other atrocities, and helped to found the Ku Kux Klan. See this passionate article by a Memphis woman who pleads for the South to separate itself, at last, from the Confederacy. And listen to this radio show suggesting a new plaque for the Forrest statue.

Which brings us to the latest skirmish, demands to modify the giant Confederate sculpture at Stone Mountain Georgia. The carving of Confederate President Jefferson Davis, General Robert E. Lee and General Thomas "Stonewall" Jackson spans three acres and is the largest high relief sculpture in the world — even larger (by surface)  than Mount Rushmore. Atlanta's city council this week urged Gov. Nathan Deal to study additions of famous Georgians such as Martin Luther King Jr. 

I’d go farther.  Keep Robert E. Lee!  Not only did he represent all those admirable martial qualities, but he did us all a service after Appomattox, by quashing any talk of guerrilla war. His actual generalship was just a bit over-rated (a topic for another time.) But this is fine. Stonewall? A truly awful person — a real piece of work, like Forresr — but admittedly a superb battlefield commander. Like Forrest.

But Davis has gotta go. Almost a perfect archetype of an oathbreaking traitor who just before the 1860 election was preaching loyalty to America “right or wrong.”  I propose (and this will happen someday, folks, as the wheel turns) re-carving his face to represent someone else. Proposals? (Not Forrest. Longstreet might do. But I favor repurposing it more broadly across time.  Put in Washington and...er, um. Patton? Yeah, he rode horses, too. Oh, but Patton was a Californian, so he won't do....)

== Big Brother and the Patriot Act ==

In this Wired article on cyber-surveillance, Caleb Garling writes, "In his book Skating on Stilts, former U.S. Department of Homeland Security Assistant Secretary for Policy Stewart Baker examines the numerous ways—air travel, biotech, the Internet—that America has left itself vulnerable to threats. Baker has been one of the most vocal proponents of the Patriot Act—especially section 215, the program to collect telephone records and other digital information. A litany of opponents, including everyone from the Electronic Frontier Foundation to Senator Rand Paul, consider the secretive program a gross invasion of privacy—on May 31, the program expired."

Alas, this is a case where all three "sides"… the defenders of government surveillance like Baker and their critics and especially so-called journalists like this one, are wedged beyond all belief, dangerously so.  Perhaps even lethally, for our civilization. All of them, from Rand Paul to Baker to almost every "sage pundit" buy into the notion of a zero sum game. A tradeoff wherein we swap some freedom for some added safety -- or vice versa -- a noxious and even nauseating notion that betrays every fundamental on which we built the world's first positive-sum society.

The astonishing thing is how easy it is to refute this nonsensically romantic notion. In all of human history, no people have ever been as safe as we are, and no people have ever been as free.  The two desiderata rise and fall together, in ways that both illustrate and prove the power of "positive sum."  Yet, driven by righteous dudgeon, it seems everyone cries out for one absolute necessity, at the cost of another.

In fact, let's suppose that the members of our Professional Protector Caste (PPC) do need vast powers of vision and correlation, in order to detect threats to our well-being.  Sure, those same powers could wind up being used against us. 

We are all children of George Orwell, worried about Big Brother. (Whether he might come from Government or plutocracy is the main feature of your fantasies, determining whether you are "left" or "right.") So? In that case, look for the essential thing that will prevent the PPC from becoming oppressors!

 That thing is not blindness. Crippling their ability to see will not make the NSA etc harmless, it will only make them less effective… and more likely to look anyway, in secret.

 What will prevent our watch dogs from turning into wolves? Supervision. Ensuring that we, the people can oversee.  By safeguarding whistleblowers and making the FISA Court truly adversarial and ending blanket gag orders, we are stepping gradually toward a world where PPC abuses will be discovered without interfering in legitimate uses of technology to scan the horizon for dangers.

    

Will these reforms be enough?  In no way! Far from complacent, I am militant that we must push supervision in many innovative and aggressive ways… that nevertheless also allow civil servants who are judicious and professional… and who genuinely deem themselves to be our servants… to do their jobs.

   

What I will not listen to, any longer, is so-called wise-men who tell me I must choose between safety for my children or their freedom. People who push that choice upon us only thus prove how deeply, deeply stupid they truly are. They can all -- and this includes most of you contemporary pundits and self-styled heroes of liberty out there -- go to hell.

== On Drone Strikes ==

There are legitimate concerns among liberals about drone strikes and targeted killing as a method of war. But for those on the right to call President Obama “feckless and ineffective” in the War on Terror is the most stunning of hypocrisies.

In fact, there have been far fewer successful terror attacks against US territory, nationals or interests under Obama than occurred under Bush.  And vastly more enemy figures – including Osama bin Laden – have met comeuppance under Obama than the very nearly zero who were tracked down – despite all his posturing and bleating – under George W. Bush. (Who helped every well-connected Saudi citizen flee the U.S. and FBI questioning, the day after 9/11.)

You Fox watchers, get out more.  Try paying attention to actual facts.  But then, if you did that, you wouldn’t watch Fox.

== Apocalypse yearners are not your friends ==

I've spoken of this before and will have a longer post soon.  But the ultimate symbolism junkies are those who so hate the scientific era that they yearn for an imminent end of days. I'll say plenty about the apocalypse junkies in America...

... but now catch a glimpse of how the very same idea propels ISIS and its ilk. "Apocalyptic fantasies are "a major part of the Islamic State's recruiting pitch," says the director of Brookings's Project on US-Islamic Relations.  Indeed the syndrome is eerily similar, with slight differences in the details of the narrative, between the Koran and the Book of Revelation, and especially each side labeling the other in the role of satanic servants.  (As both sides labeled each other in Napoleonic times, and our Civil War, and in the World Wars and so on.

Many of you may be unfamiliar with the BoR, which in fact is the core mythology clung to by a large minority of Americans and -- significantly -- a large fraction of Republican candidates for public office, who openly yearn for events that would violently torture most Americans and then consign them to perpetual hell, while ending forever all human ambition, accomplishment, democracy... and the United States of America.

See this cultural touchstone illustrated swiftly and easily here.  You need to know how deep it goes. 

== The Politics of Culture ==

Colorado gave away free (or near free) birth control to low-income women and teenage girls across the state for 6 years, funded by Warren Buffett's healthy charity. Results? Teen births fell by 40% and abortions fell by 35%, saving the state tens of millions in direct Medicaid costs and heaven knows how much in welfare costs over the next 20 years, but the program still can't get government funding to continue. Add it to the long tally of ways that our partisan divide is no longer about classic "left" or "right."  Rather, it is now about mixed-practical vs jibbering insane.

As I will reiterate, one side of this phase of the Civil War is about symbolism -- we've mentioned flags and Confederate statuary and naming aircraft carriers and loudly proclaiming moral virtue and that everything was better in the 1950s. Let's be fair, in that the other side contains some obnoxiously (PC) symbolism-obsessed fools, too.  Still, most blue americans are far more interested in outcomes.  

Like what actual methods actually reduce teen sex, teen pregnancies, STDs, domestic violence, abortion and so on. And what methods actually make capitalism work better? And which ones actually and scientifically improve the economy and national health?  

No wonder one side hates science, so.  Which brings us to....

In a fascinating Atlantic article, Eric Liu takes up the much-debated notion of “cultural literacy”… or whether the shared background of “dead white male” past facts, accomplishments, mistakes and arguments can have merit and pertinence in a nation and world of fast-changing technologies, ethnicities and styles.  “The more serious challenge, for Americans new and old, is to make a common culture that’s greater than the sum of our increasingly diverse parts. It’s not enough for the United States to be a neutral zone where a million little niches of identity might flourish; in order to make our diversity a true asset, Americans need those niches to be able to share a vocabulary. Americans need to be able to have a broad base of common knowledge so that diversity can be most fully activated.”

Of course this relates to my own longstanding emphasis on the “positive sum games” of modern civilization… the only civilization in which positive sum thinking was ever a strong contender for primacy in public and private thought.  

But heck, finishing up this post about symbolism.... This essay adds evidence to the firm rebuttal of every lie about the “cause” for which confederate states seceded.  It was about slavery, and had absolutely zilch to do with “states’ rights,” which they had been happy to trample under the Fugitive Slave Act of 1852, and during the 30 years that southern states controlled the White House.  See also my own essays about this here and here.

Here’s one for the “name an exception challenges.” There is one area where Red America scores better than Blue America. Cost of living.  A dollar goes farther!  And we should hope so, since Blue America sends so many to Red America as government expenditures, far more than the residents pay, in loathed taxes. 

And now... enough for a Monday posting.  Keep moving forward. And to all oversimplifying, symbol-obsessed dogmatists?  There, there.  We'll save the world despite you.