The dilemma - cars and guns

== Again, why aren’t guns treated like cars? ==

Ponder a stark contrast. We have two examples of how America facilitates possession of potentially lethal machinery in the hands of citizens. Deadly tools that can be owned by almost any adult.

In one case, there are more than two hundred million users, who operate the machines with stunning skill, aiming them to just barely miss each other, hundreds of times per day. They license and register the machines and get insurance.

Yes, thousands of lives are lost to these potentially lethal machines! But if you divide that toll by the sheer number of hours of use, then by the economic benefits and life satisfaction that folks get from mobility, then the pain is thinly distributed. So thinly that the social consensus is: "Let's keep researching ways to refine the regulations and improve the technology to make them safer, but let's keep using them.

"This is working."

The other class of potentially lethal machinery accounts for almost exactly the same number of deaths per year! 

Dig it - that's a "wow" realization. Almost exactly the same number of deaths. Even though the second class of dangerous tool is used far, far less often, especially when it comes to "self-protection." 

The ratio of deaths per hour of use is incomparably higher for guns than cars. Like contrasting a mouse to a planet.

What are the crucial differences?

Oh, sure, one major aspect of the difference of lethality is intent. I get that. But pragmatically, the stunning difference is our attitudes toward what's reasonable regulation.

In one case there are regulations concerning training, insurance and liability (not just by user-owners but also manufacturers) that successfully reduce risk while enhancing utility. 

In the other case, none of this risk/harm/liability mitigation happens. At all. Whatsoever. Institutions are forbidden to even study the tradeoffs. Knowledge itself is dogmatically banned.

== Two types of dangerous machinery. Two opposite outcomes ==

The experiment has been run. Cars are regulated with spectacular success, at all levels and in all ways. Even the DMV runs far better, nowadays, in most states.

A huge burden of proof falls upon those who proclaim that Guns should not be treated exactly like cars. At all levels and in all ways. And yes, if you want an assault rifle, fine... take extra tests and insurance like the driver of an 18-wheeler.

There is only one justification for refusing to go along with this simple and logical approach. The Slippery Slope to Total Confiscation of Firearms by an Orwellian State. (SSTTCFOS). 

That's it. That is the sum total of the argument against changing the DMV to the DMV&G. "I don't want my guns registered, insured and licensed because then the state will know where they are and come and take 'em."

Whereupon I shock folks by saying... I agree! 

SSTTCFOS is an actual concern! There is a germ of a genuine objection, deep down, underneath the NRA-fomented hysteria, and liberals are foolish to dismiss it, out of hand.  In fact, I favor some steel-hard protections of Americans' "insurrectionary recourse."

The criminal stupidity of gun nuttery is not that they fret about SSTTCFOS. 

It is their refusal to look for a win-win. A positive-sum outcome. 

I describe one possible solution -- that could give all of us what we want and need -- here. Alas, no one seems interested in talk of a potential win-win-win.

== A useful metaphor ==

One of you (out there in the Brin-o-centric ether ;-) made the following, amazingly cogent observation:

"Gun advocates maintain that any law that infringes an American's right to bear arms is unconstitutional. Only note:

"While the constitution guarantees the right to vote, we do place restrictions on the right to vote: citizens are required to register ( and change their registration when they move). There are rules about where citizens may vote - and when they can vote. And gerrymandering can weaken an individual's vote."

And indeed, in Red America there are huge efforts to regulate away voting rights for millions. Talk about a slippery slope!  But this comparison's true meaning is simple. Rights do not have to go un-regulated in matters of process. You can wave picket signs on sidewalks and in parks, but not in the street or blocking businesses, yet we still have freedom of speech.

Again, I GET the slippery slope that gun activists fear!  I actually share that strong worry and reservation! 

But they are as shortsighted as lemmings. If you want to see how to prevent any slippery slope and get a win-win...

== Another - even better - "win-win" ==

Again.

Again and again.

Here's the Fact Act.

It should be item number one, if the dems ever had the sense to imitate the one and only political action taken by Republicans in 30 years that was worthy of respect. Newt Gingrich's "Contract With America."

== An idea whose time has come? ==

Years ago I proposed we copy a technique used two millennia ago, to discourage male morons from committing heinous acts in exchange for infamy. The idea was pooh-poohed and ignored for two decades... untill Parkland.

Suddenly, the notion of denying these awful twerps the spotlight has be called-out by columnists who act as if they invented the idea.  It's actually the "Erastratos Effect," and here's where you can see it worked out... how we can keep total freedom to know and speak, while still deterring these jerks, by denying them any noteworthy mention in history.

Follow-up essays:

Names of Infamy: Deny Killers the Notoriety They Seek.

The Jefferson Rifle: Seeking a Compromise Solution.

Three Lessons from Vegas

In the wake of the October 1 tragedy in Las Vegas, our national ritual of lamentation, recrimination and hand-wringing has reached a new pitch. Although even the National Rifle Association has admitted that some (small) lunacies must change, the core issues remain intransigent. We seem forever stymied by the emotion-laden matter of guns in America.

Among the better articles I’ve seen are this one from Slate: “Las Vegas should entirely change the way we think about preventing mass shootings.”… And this one: America's Gun Fantasy: “Three percent of the nation owns half the firearms—to prepare for an ultraviolent showdown that exists only in their imagination,” writes Kurt Anderson. Indeed, liberal goals for gun legislation, like background checks, have retracted, rather than inflated since 2001, when many liberals began quietly to arm themselves.

My own commentary this time will be in three parts. First, I’ll reiterate my top suggestion for what to do about the shooters, themselves. Especially when — as apparently in this case — the aim of the crime would seem likely to have been neither self-interest nor dogma, but deliberate infamy. 

Second, I’ll make crystal clear the deepest reason why the gun-obsessed refuse to negotiate or contemplate even modest or pragmatic reforms -- a reason that liberals are foolish to ignore. Finally, I’ll ruminate about some side issues that may be relevant and revealing about our times.

== Erase the most common motive ==

Violence comes in all flavors, propelled by a variety of drives. Regular or gang-driven crime can be deterred, if we use modern tools to ensure that it will never pay. Sometimes those who are mentally or morally damaged seek rationalization for their rage, under a veneer of dogma or grievance, as in revenge killings or fanatical terrorism. When a kid who has been viciously bullied lashes out, we must share some of the blame, for having allowed the torment to happen, and for not noticing earlier cries for help. On occasion, a soul that is sinking into despair tries to take others down with him.

And a large fraction of mass shooters don’t fit any of those templates. Rather, their lashing out at society seems to be motivated by a frustrated sense of self-importance. A need - after a lifetime of nebbish obscurity - to yank attention from the world. Take the example of Dylann Storm Roof, a white supremacist convicted of perpetrating the Charleston church shooting on June 17, 2015. 

Calmly proud of his actions, Roof went into a fury when his court-appointed lawyers tried to make an issue of his clinically delusional mental state. He made his cooperation with the court and prosecution conditional that his insane actions would not be so characterized in court. His self-image as a crusader for the white race and freedom — who shot down children in cold blood — was more important to him than any chance of a reduced sentence.

Elsewhere I wrote extensively about the “Erastratos Effect,” named after a loony who burned down the Temple of Diana in Ephesus - of the the great wonders of the world - in order for his name to live forever.  Ah, but in fact “Erastratos” is not his real name. The Hellenes erased that and replaced it, so that he, personally, would be forgotten,  showing that we can still learn a thing or two from our ancestors. 

See my posting - Names of Infamy - where I recommend doing the same thing, as a deterrent, in all such cases — for example renaming Mr. Roof “Loony-wimp 17.” (And before you howl about Freedom of Speech, would you kindly actually read the missive?)

Does any of this apply to Stephen Paddock, the Vegas shooter? It’s too soon to say. Down below, I’ll speculate a bit more about what little we know. But in general, it could be very effective to add this element, when someone is convicted or proved to have committed some truly grievous harm to us all.

== The underlying impasse — those gun guys fear a “slippery slope” ==

A majority - though alas not a super-majority - of Americans would gladly go for something reasonable that still preserves our traditional right to reasonable ownership of weapons. (Though for two decades I have been pointing out that the Great Equalizer that’s arming nearly all citizens, today, is the cell-phone camera. See The Transparent Society. Especially p. 160.)

What’s the simplest and most logical reform that could fix so many of the howlingly stupid and harmful aspects of today’s situation?  I’ve long held that we should treat firearms exactly like motor vehicles, with well-regulated training, licensing, registration and insurance. It works superbly for cars! Every day, about 200 million of us use potentially deadly tools for millions of person-hours, with incredible skill and statistically-minimal downside every single day. In fact, we might start by simply renaming the DMV as the DMV&G. Almost every general process and procedure translates, including taking more advanced training before being licensed for more dangerous firearms.

Why can’t we have this? The answer is simple. And if you don’t know… then try actually going out there and asking Gun Folks!  The answer that you get will always be exactly the same. 
And I mean exactly. 
The same, 100% of the time. 

It’s called the "slippery slope." 

Give an inch, and your enemies will smell weakness and take a mile. Then you’ll lose everything.

To this large, vociferous minority, any compromise will inevitably set off a landslide of rapid decay, leading swiftly to state confiscation of all personal weaponry. (In fact, the slippery slope is embedded in almost every meme pushed hard by Fox News for 25 years.)

Oh, sure, there’s not been the slightest sniff of any such desire or tendency among the vast majority of democratic or liberal politicians or voters. Putting aside the yammerings of a small, radical-lefty fringe, there has never been any sign of intention toward confiscation, among those calling for rational, car-like regulation of firearms. The paranoid ravings about this are like Obama’s “UN black helicopter camps for all Christians” — the fulminations of deranged minds.

And yet, pause. Take a breath. Underneath all that, there’s a nugget of truth to the gun folks’ slippery fears. 

Look at the vast majority of nations and oppressive states, across the last 6000 years, where the kings, lords, priests and their armed thugs did forbid common folk from bearing arms! Moreover, in view of human history, are you sure you can blithely dismiss that concern? Go ahead, and shrug it off, if you like. But you'll not budge them or divide their alliance or draw moderates away from their faction.

No, you are supposed to be the smart folks. Yet you do not even bother to listen to your opponents, trying to perceive if there’s a germ, a core of justification, buried under all the bullshit. And that laziness on your part makes you partly to blame.

Hence, I raise, once again, my proposal for an approach that starts out by acknowledging, rather than shrugging-off the slippery slope concern, and carefully contrives a way to cancel out that fear, leaving compromise possible. It begins by pointing out how incredibly weak their beloved 2nd Amendment is! And how some future Court will, in some time of panic, simply re-interpret its vagueness.  

We have something we can offer them. A better and stronger amendment!  If they’d meet us halfway.

Here's that paper: Brin Classics: "The Jefferson Rifle"

== Ancillary thoughts ==

Those are my two main proposals. And yes, it is frustrating to have to type new postings linking to them, year-after-year, decade after decade, mass tragedy after tragedy.

Wrapping up, let’s veer back to the specific emotion-laden vexations of autumn 2017.

We seek patterns, even when those patterns are simplistic or lead us astray. And so, the October 1st* Las Vegas tragedy sparked immediate questions about terrorism, or the perpetrator’s ties to radical groups. And in this case, speculations about political or religious motives led nowhere. As the New York Times put it: “whatever drove Stephen Paddock to kill has remained a vexing and terrifying mystery.” Agents are interviewing his family and friends. But if there were a single reason, “we don’t know it yet,” the Las Vegas sheriff said, as there was no note or manifesto left behind.

Oh, there will be parties declaring “It’s a mental health issue, not about guns!” And at the deepest level, sure, this is a truism. Over the long run, we must take responsibility for the hurt and the damaged among us, getting better at finding them. Soothing them. Helping them…

…which of course makes the fox-zoids yammering about “a mental health problem” the most unbelievable hypocrites! Hypocrites who then go and cut funding for mental health.

But that aspect is near term. What often comes up in my discussions with defense-types is the problem of “asymmetric technological empowerment.”  The notion that ever more destructive technology is coming into the hands of mass numbers of people, giving disproportionate power to the few, the angry, the insane. Some, like scholar Phil Torres, suggest that this happens to all advanced races. Indeed, it may be the ‘great filter’ that kills off most of them, helping to explain the Fermi Paradox! 

In my defense talks, I show members of our Protector Caste that it is the RATIO of sane to insane practitioners - in a context of reciprocal transparency - that can make the crucial difference in whether we’ll survive the rapid democratization of potentially dangerous technologies into the hands of an increasingly tech-empowered populace. I talk extensively about this elsewhere…

… and highly pertinent is this TED talk of mine about the plague of self-righteousness addiction that has made our society functionally less-sane across the board! Losing the agility and maturity we’ll need in a modern and open and free society.   

But what about Stephen Paddock himself? (Assuming, alas, that we remain more stupid than the ancient Hellenes and neglect to change his name, in righteously-pragmatic deterrence?) So far, he’s a mystery. But one trait already seems to stand out. The one thing he was apparently highly skilled at, across his life. Indeed, the central focus (besides guns) of his life.

Gambling. So far, it seems not to be the usual story of gambling shredding the addict’s finances, family and life. Not a ‘loser’ per se, the perpetrator was a major player. Paddock was apparently among a rare breed, those who were good at it.. until the House adjusts the rules and then you're not. And yet, even so, his brother and girlfriend and others have testified to watching him ride the up-and-down, sleepless roller coaster of thrills and depression at his favored game. Video poker has been called “the crack cocaine of gambling.” The Vegas shooter was a creature of Vegas.

Now, there’s little more to be drawn from this, in any factual way, at least so-far. We’ll have to wait and see if gambling truly was a factor. But you know me. I cannot help but riff off of this into a brinnian micro-rant. This one will be brief, but bitter.

== A steady re-definition of sin ==

Once upon a time, gambling was denounced by conservatives as at-best a wasteful temptation, and at-worst a sin that could lead to crime and shattered families. That was then. Today, shoreline and riverboat casinos are among the biggest employers and tourist draws, in the Deep South. Foreign governments launder mountains of cash through Sheldon Adelson’s anomalously profitable Macau casinos, that he then conveys under his own name to warp our politics. Indeed, most of the other gambling lords give generously. And while they have made the GOP largely their own, they still have plenty of spare change to spread to some receptive pols in the other party. 

Is this puritan conservatism in the 21st Century? We’ve seen them go from “A penny saved…” to deficit spending that is always — and I mean always — vastly worse than democrats. From shunning divorced people to re-electing far more of them than liberals do. From rewarding rectitude to making Dennis “friend-to-boys” Hastert the leader of the GOP for many years… a horrid pervert both preceded and later followed by men who were infamous for their ill-treatment of wives, and women, in general. 

Oh… and from denouncing organized crime to electing a casino-owner/slumlord with open mob ties? No, no. This is not just the party of denialist, anti-science coal barons and oil sheiks. It is not just the party of Wall street and the party of Putin. Never neglect to include the casino titans! And read this: “How Casinos Enable Gambling Addicts.”  

All of them share a central character trait that is more dangerous to the republic, to our Great Experiment and to our children and human survival than all the mass shooters and terrorists, whatever they may manage to achieve in the future.  Look at what these mighty interest groups have in common! All are oligarchs who feel they deserve the power that kings and priests and lords wielded across 99% of history. All of them cheat, instead of competing openly and fairly. All of them seek to hammer us back into that feudal pyramid of old, re-establishing an order under which their sons will own your sons and daughters.

For them, guns are a convenient way to stir Confederate-vs-Union passions distracting us from an accelerating oligarchic putsch. And just watch, you Second Amendment folks, how quickly that right will vanish, as soon as the New Feudalism is firmly locked in place.

===

===

Addendum.  The great astronomer and science fiction author Fred Hoyle wrote “October the First is Too Late.”  No connection. But I thought I’d plug a great sci fi novel to a generation that never heard of him.

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Futurespection: How do we get better?

The hot new journal, Evonomics just ran my appraisal of how Advertising is failing the Internet.   I explore how a real Web economy might replace the maelstrom of ads. Could simple micro-payments work, paying pennies for what you use? I’ve been working on this analysis for 3 years. A two-parter with major implications for your future online.

Today we'll wander a bit around a central question... can human beings and/or their civilization improve?

Of course, this is a premise of Futurespection -- a word that I just coined.  So let's launch this session with a piece on Gizmodo by George Dvorsky ranking the “20 Crucial Terms Every 21st-Century Futurist Should Know," including coveillance, eroom's law, the proactionary principle and more...

Okay so has progress occurred? Harvard professor Steven Pinker, author of The Better Angels of our Nature discusses how one could quantify the degree of human progress: “Most people agree that life is better than death, health better than disease, prosperity better than poverty, knowledge better than ignorance, peace better than war, safety better than violence, freedom better than coercion. That gives us a set of yardsticks by which we can measure whether progress has actually occurred.”

Backing this up, here's another optimist looking at the big picture. From The New York Times:  Is Humanity Getting Better?  "The world now is a thoroughly awful place, compared with what it should be. But not compared with what it was. Keeping both eyes open gives depth to our perception of our own time in history, and makes us better able to see where paths to more progress may be open," writes Leif Wenar.

== Criticism & positive reinforcement ==

A fascinating observation: educators have long opined that positive reinforcement is better than negative, Sometimes liberal types take this obvious truth to an extreme that gets downright silly, emphasizing feel-good praise-for-nothing and shiny trophies for attendance.  

Still, such PC absurdities aim in better directions than traditional methods that are still used all over the world, hammering kids with punishment for failure. Indeed, experts in animal training will tell you that negative reinforcement is iffy, at best. Creatures ranging from otters to dolphins to horses react much better to praise than to rebuke. Dolphins will throw tantrums when told they were wrong, much like a human 4 year old. Think Billy Mumy in that chilling Twilight Zone episode.

This provoked in me an interesting thought… that human beings may be exceptional in our ability to grit our teeth and accept “no!” as useful feedback. (Dogs, after 50,000 years of selection, can do it, too, though very grudgingly.) We hate criticism! And human leaders do everything they can to avoid it, which explains the horrid governance of most feudal societies. Yet, many of us are capable of clamping down and listening - actually listening - to unpleasant but useful feedback.

CITOKATE … Criticism Is The Only Known Antidote To Error.

So. Are we all similarly capable of doing this?  Of course not. Indeed, I’ll wager it is related to positive-sum thinking, of which dogma-drinkers in both today’s far-left and entire-right are clearly incapable, helping to explain our current civil war. 

In order to benefit from useful criticism, you must first admit the sacred mantra of science: “I might be (at least partly) wrong.” And to be clear, even scientists, who are raised and disciplined to be able to recite that holy catechism have to struggle, daily, to live by it.

No, to me the miracle is that any of us can do this, at all!  Gritting teeth and paying real attention when someone else credibly rattles your favorite notion with: “No! You’re wrong and here’s proof!” 

Then adjusting to that critique, and adapting and improving till it all pays off with ideas, inventions, policies, attitudes that are better for the battering. 

It is the way to win. Let me reiterate: it is the way to win, over the long run. And we appear to be a species that is capable – if barely – of using this greatest of all delusion-piercing tools.

== Threats and worries == 

Some examples of "oops!" criticism?

The British medical journal The Lancet reports state-level data correlating gun-related deaths and 25 state-specific gun laws. 

Researchers identified three laws that were most strongly associated with reductions in overall gun-related mortality. These state measures were: laws requiring firearm identification through ballistic imprinting or microstamping, ammunition background checks, and universal background checks for all gun purchases. 

Federal implementation of all three laws would be projected to reduce the national mortality rate -- 10.1 per 100,000 people in 2010 -- to 0.16 per 100,000, the study says.   

Gadzooks. This is astonishing in several ways. First that such modest measures  have such large effects… I’d wager there’s also at least a small average psychological and social and cultural difference in the states that have such laws – a calmer mentality perhaps – that I wonder how you’d control-for. Still, what I find most astonishing is simply that these “Canadian” style measures would be so adequate to reduce the plague of firearm deaths by 80%.

Note that Canadians can still have firearms, and unregistered ones! None of the three laws in question inconvenience legal gun owners a scintilla or lead to registry or confiscation, even in theory. None of them lead to a “slippery slope.” In other words the absolutist, never-compromise-a-bit NRA mentality is exposed for what it is… both impractical and insane.

See elsewhere my own proposal for a positive sum, win-win way that gun rights believers could better protect those rights while treating personal weapons more like cars.  

== Transitioning thru technology ==

Speaking of cars... This article asks about self-driving cars and profound effects on the economy – for example “truck driver” is the most common lower-middle class job. And the first to be rendered obsolete. Worrisome. Except that Safety Backup Driver could wind up being the ideal job for painters and artists and novelists who want to work on solitary creative projects, only taking over from the auto-drive robot only at long intervals.

Speaking of drives... Gene drive is a molecular technique that slips a new gene into an organism and guarantees that it will be inherited by offspring and by subsequent generations, by destroying competitors of that gene. Thus, the new trait is “driven” through a population. Potential positive uses would be to push into mosquito populations a trigger for their immune systems destroy the malaria parasite.  Alas, all such techs are “dual use,” meaning they might be applied to malignant ends.

Speaking of malignant users... I’ve been talking about this sort of thing for years… how we absolutely rely upon the ratio of good tech users to evil ones steadily rising across time. This ratio can be measured and the good news is that it does indeed rise, in open societies where smart people both have access to information and in general feel vested - that they are better off with a functioning civilization than without one.  Heaven help us, if that confidence is shaken.

And. Speaking of faulty predictive coding... Virginia Postrel offers an interesting riff on why “wearables” will remain pretty much vaporware (vaporwear?) for a while yet. Oh, you’ll get all the keen stuff I showed you in Existence. After a while. 

Okay though. Speaking of cool things we want… jetpacks are just a little closer.  

And that, even all by itself, will make us better!

== Our genes speak == 

Are smarter people nicer? Here's an interesting article on IQ and strategic "cooperation" - why do subjects who score higher also behave much more cooperatively or generously in "prisoners' dilemma" type tests?  I think this author zeroes in a bit too much on the "IQ" aspect.  But the variety of test-games he describes is fascinating, as well as how the more strategic player generally winds up being warily and guardedly... "nicer."

Aging researchers found that by killing senescent (aging) cells, middle-aged mice lived 24-27 percent longer. The only drawback is that senescent cells are a part of wound healing, so any therapy that targeted aging cells would need to cease if the person needed to have an operation or was injured.

Epigenetics — the study of inheritable changes in gene expression not directly coded in our DNA — has resurrected the long despised Lamarckian notion of passing down acquired characteristics. Our life experiences may be passed on to our children and even further! Studies on survivors of trauma suggest stress may affect subsequent generations.  Now scientists think they’ve spotted the “how” of it. Your life experiences may be passed on to your children and your children’s children. Studies on survivors of traumatic events have suggested that exposure to stress may indeed have lasting effects on subsequent generations.  In future, people under stress may take a drug to inhibit the passing on of consequences.

Fascinating. Human jaws and teeth got small at least a million years before we had fire to tenderize meat, which is very hard to swallow raw.  Apparently though, simple stone slicing tools made a crucial difference.

What is the minimum number of genes that can control a fully functioning and self-replicating cellular organism?  Researchers at San Diego’s Venter Institute started with a very spare bacterium then started throwing away genes to see which ones qualified as absolutely essential.  They announced a single-celled organism that has just 473 genes — likely close to the minimum number of genes necessary to sustain its life.  They still don’t know what 200 or so of them do.  That’s next.  

And finally...

This fossil revealed a wonderful pre-insect life form that hauled its young around at the end of tethers, like kites of balloons… a first for sci fi!  

A story about a math problem on a standardized test should not inspire laughter and admiration and anger all at once. This one did. And while the father-author is at one level a hero, and a paladin for the rights of his exceptional whiz daughter… he’s also an arrogant prick. Ah well.  We need to have the kind of society that we do. Where this kind of tale is viewed as reinforcing our love of exceptional excellence and equilibrium disturbers. 

Trumpopulists: what will be the priorities?

There is often a logic, beneath shrill jeremiads. For example, Ted Cruz has proclaimed that even one more liberal or moderate justice appointed to the U.S. Supreme Court might shift the reading of the Second Amendment (2A) — does it give private individuals an unlimited right to own guns, or reserve that right only to members of a militia? 

(Go read the amendment and come back. In Heller v. D.C. the court went with Red America’s wishes by one vote, one interpretative vote. Moreover, let me shudder and add that Cruz is probably right about this one thing. The swing between those two interpretations is very likely to teeter for our lifetimes and more. But in railing about the near-term, he and his followers ignore the long term implication –

-- that the Second Amendment, as currently worded, is by far the weakest in the entire Bill of Rights.  If this court or the next one does not reverse Heller, then it will inevitably happen when some huge national tragedy strikes. That’s called the “Ratchet Effect” (see The Transparent Society), and you are behooved to plan, during good times, for what you’ll do at some future crisis, when the public is scared.

If today's political rightwing were rational, it would be working right now to gather consensus for a new Constitutional Amendment that might protect weapon rights far more firmly than the ambiguous and inherently frail Second. I have elsewhere described just such an amendment, which could actually pass! Because it offers some needed compromises to liberals and moderates – some positive-sum win-wins - while protecting a core of gun rights more firmly than 2A.  

In fact, this begins a long list of possible compromises that might help left and right wing populists get some of their favorite wishes, while giving up things they deem less important. It used to be called “politics.”  Consider trying it, some time.

== My consolation, if Trump gets the GOP nom ==

There are several silver linings to Donald Trump. Oh, I am fretful, for sure. In fact, one of those argent glimmers – that Trump likely does not believe even ten percent of the pandering things that he rants – is as dismaying as it is encouraging.  

One thing is as certain as sunrise. As nominee, he will charge to the center with dazzling, roadrunner agility, leaving it to VP nominee Huckabee or Rubio or even Cruz or some other shrieker to keep the confederates from bolting.  As president he would prove both more moderate in policy and vastly more of a sociopathic fibber than even Richard Nixon. 

Want to know in advance one key moment that could deeply discomfit GOP elders – indeed, that they dread? As nominee, Trump would battle Hillary Clinton or Bernie Sanders very hard. Nastily hard. And yet, at some point in the summer and autumn debates, he is almost certain to say: “Of course the rich pay too little tax!” 

And thus, with both nominees agreeing, on live TV, that needle would shift, hard. At long last, with almost a consensus sigh, Supply Side Voodoo (SSV) will be finished, precipitating the first of several convergences of left- and right- populisms.

But the biggest silver lining is simply this.  A Trump nomination will make George F. Will’s head explode. 

Mr. Will’s almost-daily rants against Trump are a sight to behold and I confess to gleeful schadenfreude over this bona fide American traitor’s discomfiture. No citizen of this republic was so well placed to denounce and possibly arrest the hijacking of conservatism by monsters, bent on destroying U.S. politics, one of the key problem-solving skills we need, for a fast-changing era.   

Will had the intelligence to see that Supply Side was voodoo, utterly disproved by  thirty years of diametrically-opposite outcomes. He has known for two decades that the War on Science (and journalism, teaching and all other knowledge castes) was destructive and that the Hastert Rule - against GOP pols ever negotiating in good faith - was outright treason. Faced with the Fox-Limbaugh dumbing-down of American conservatism (financed by oligarchs, many of them foreign, who have no love of Smithian-flat-fair-competititve capitalism), Will at-best occasionally whimpered, then went back to his flack-lackey task of concocting rationalizations for oligarchy.

This man – this one fellow – could have led a rebellion by conservative intellects to save their movement from Manchurian captivity. It would have been fun! Historically memorable and possibly rewarding… though risky. A real man – and Will has had the nerve to lecture at us, over the years, about manhood – might have accepted the challenge, for the good of his nation and civilization. Indeed, for the good of American conservatism, whose descent into frothing, carpet-chewing hydrophobia can be laid squarely at his feet.

Oh, oh, this will be my solace when I see Donald Trump accepting the Republican nomination. To envision George F. Will swallowing that pill.  Reaping the whirlwind that he helped fanatics, foreign meddlers, junkers-lords and quislings to sow. The know-nothing tide and criminally re-ignited civil war that he abetted, using his substantial intelligence to help inflict dogma-rabies upon a nation of pragmatic, problem-solving citizens.

== Delightful asides ==

Oh... For those of you calling Marco Rubio the great hope of “moderates” in the Republican Party, have a look at what he says about “God’s Law always winning over “ even the U.S. Constitution. Those clutching at Sen. Rubio as the great hope of Republican "moderates" - a man who would throw a 13 year old girl into prison for cleansing herself of any residue, a week after being raped - only show how deep into depravity even Ronald Reagan would call the "moderate" wing of his party.

By comparison. This stunning piece of rationalization from a Jordanian journalist asserts that Saudi Arabia has been devastating Iran, crediting a Saudi Prince with ending Iran’s nuclear program and calling low oil prices a deliberate Saudi gambit to crush the Iranian economy.  In fact, the article is worth reading! In order to see a weird perspective, and to glimpse some aspects re the War in Yemen of which westerners are mostly-unaware.  Still, the entire screed is absurd.  Oil price plummets had nothing to do with Iran.  That the price drop has cut wages to Shiite radical militias is good, of course, but the end of economic sanctions and ending the drain of a bomb program will both stimulate the main, non-radical elements in Iranian society.  Meanwhile, who has the most to dread from Iran rejoining the community of nations, no longer crippled by sanctions?  The Saudis, you bet. 

== Bernie vs Hillary ==

Okay, Bernie went up one notch in my estimation: Sanders would instigate a 0.5% tax on stock trades - to reduce speculation and high frequency stock trading.  If Congress whittled it in half, that’d be just right. See elsewhere my own riffs on why such a transaction tax is utterly essential… including a sci fi reason Bernie won’t mention. I’m still not sure he is my first choice to be president.  But boy am I glad he is out there raising lots and lots of policy boldness to our political attention and horizon. For the record, Clinton also supports a transaction tax.

Sandersites and Hillarites, go ahead and argue.  But if you start copying the "passion" and hate we see on the Confederacy side, then we are doomed. Stop it!!  Whether Hill or Bern win the nom, they will tell you to replace emotion with iron-willed logic, the way the Union was less frenzied and more logical, when America won vital, earlier phases of this civil war.

If Hill wins and you still kinda dislike her?  Then turn to a local congressional or state assembly race in which your passion can make a huge, local difference, while grudgingly murmuring "I guess I'll vote for her." And  "it's the Supreme Court, stupid."

Clinton supporters, make the same vow! Our confederate neighbors are in a science-hating psychosis that is now 100% dogma and 0% facts.  Their screeching rage denies all ability to look at ACTUAL OUTCOMES across GOP vs Democratic presidencies.

Do... not... be... like... that. We cannot afford it.

== Your Halloween Costume - plan ahead ==

Pay attention to Spike Lee, one of our smartest myth-spinners.  He gets the power of symbolism, even when only a few percent “get it” consciously.  Take a look at the photo of Spike being interviewed in early 2016.  His cap is no mere accessory.  It is a “kepi” worn by Union soldiers during the Civil War.  Four (and also I believe eight) years ago, I urged that folks consider making this their Halloween costume, at minimum, but I was premature.  Now is the time.

(Hey Spike! Come out with your own line of kepis! Offer them for sale!)

From 1852 till 1865, America suffered horrible betrayals not so much by a region as a cancerous mindset – feudalist, rancorous, and utterly devoted to romantic oligarchy – rule by plantations lords – for whom a million poor whites willingly fought and suffered and died, striving against their own best interests.  

We are now in a later, re-ignited phase of that same Civil War.  And make no mistake, this is not purely regional. 

As Matthew McConaughey’s new movie “Free State of Jones” will portray, there were many, many believers in the Union and our Great Revolution against feudalism, all across the south.  Many of them took up the cause, wearing that blue kepi.  I pray that we get through this phase of our Civil War without resort to arms – only a couple of the phases were violent, though all were painful.  Elections are best! Still… get the hat.