Lone Survivor and "War and the Breed"

I finally got around to seeing Lone Survivor, though after reading Marcus Luttrell’s book by the same title, I wasn't all that enthusiastic about seeing what I knew would be a grisly account of a U.S. Navy Seal Unit shredded in the mountains of Afghanistan.

It was not, as some have suggested, a “testament to the brave men and women who serve in the U.S. military.” For one thing, there wasn’t a single female character in the film, aside from photos of one SEAL’s (Matt Axelson’s) wife. The film neither sought out females for gratuitous “eye candy,” nor to make fictional heroines out of thin air. I find that commendable in this age. I’m almost certain that there are, as yet, no female members of the Special Forces and definitely none in the SEALS.

I've worked with a number of former Special Forces members and they, rightly or wrongly (probably rightly), tend to look down on the non-combatant members of the Military, or at least hold the members of their own elite fraternities in much higher regard.

The film starts off with some background on the individuals involved and the extreme training they go through...a training that washes out the vast majority of the candidates by forcing each member to force their bodies to do things they wouldn't believe they could do...like simulated drowning – being tossed into a pool with hands and feet bound and rescued well after they’d run out of air. Rescued members are shown unconscious, having the water pumped out of their lungs.

The Military Channel has long shown documentaries about “Hell Week,” so most people already know that these are the best we've got. Few, if any members of Congress could’ve passed such rigors at the height of their youth, It’s unlikely that many, if ANY professional athletes could make the cut as well.

Some might rightly note, “How many of these guys would make any professional rosters?” Probably very few, but the skill sets are completely different, whereas athletes fine tune their bodies to do a set of specific tasks extremely well, these guys seek to master a very wide range of skill sets without regard to their own bodies at all. They condition themselves to force their bodies beyond its natural parameters.

At heart, the film shows the disaster that is the misguided view that “America can win modern wars with very few ‘boots on the ground’ by relying on drones, air support and some strategically placed Special Forces Units.”

It’s a badly misinformed viewpoint because it never works. It didn't work in Somalia, when an American Ranger Battalion went in light and took heavy losses as a result.

AND it didn't work here in Operation Red Wing, where 6 SEALS were attacked by over 200 Taliban insurgents.

Tasked with finding a Taliban leader who’d killed 20 U.S. Marines the week before, they trek out into the mountains of Afghanistan and track down this Taliban leader. Almost as soon as they spot him, an old man and two young boys herding some goats discover the SEALS, who quickly capture them. The three goat herders carry a radio that links to the Taliban camp below, so they know that these are NOT friendlies. At that point they’re forced to make a fateful decision...of their three choices; (1) kill them right there, (2) gag them and tie them to trees and let them get eaten by animals of freeze to death overnight, or (3) let them go, abort the mission and head to higher ground for extraction.

It’s decided that the “rules of engagement” demand that they let the three go. That turns out to be a disastrous decision in this case, for when they reach the peak of the mountain they’re on, they’re still unable to establish good communication and within hours are surrounded by heavily armed Taliban insurgents where they take withering fire, while inflicting massive casualties among the enemy. Thankfully, neither the book nor the film glorifies battle, as it shows the horrific wounds these guys endure as they literally fight to the death. After being chased all over the hilly terrain, most of them are forced to fight on with multiple gunshot wounds, and traumatic injuries from falling down crevices, slamming off rocks and trees, etc. Luttrell does a good job of showing that the firefight offered no glory, only massive amounts of fear and pain, as these elite warriors are literally shredded by an “army” that outnumbers them by well over 30 to 1.

When one of them finally is able to make contact with their base, the rescue helicopters are forced to respond without their accompanying gunships, which had been commandeered by another task-force. One of the helicopters is dropped with an RPG, killing its entire crew and the other is forced to abandon its rescue mission, leaving Luttrell and Axelson to fend for themselves.

They wind up split up and Axelson is killed, while Luttrell survives by hiding in a rocky crevice where he stays overnight.

When he starts hiking out the next day, dragging one badly torn up leg, and suffering numerous other gunshot wounds and other traumatic injuries, he comes across a small pool of water, where he is found by villagers as he was washing out some of his wounds.

They take him back to their village, where the man and his son who found him protect him from the Taliban according to their code of Pashtunwali - "Pashtunwali promotes self-respect, independence, justice, hospitality, love, forgiveness, revenge and tolerance toward all (especially to strangers or guests)." The very same people who embrace the codes of Melmastia (hospitality) – “showing hospitality and profound respect to all visitors, regardless of race, religion, national affiliation or economic status and doing so without any hope of remuneration or favor,” and Nanawatai (asylum) – “derived from the verb meaning to go in, this refers to the protection given to a person against his or her enemies...people are protected at all costs; even those running from the law must be given refuge until the situation can be clarified,” ALSO embrace Badal (“justice”/revenge) – “to seek justice or take revenge against the wrongdoer. There is considered to be no time limit to the period in which revenge can be taken. Justice in Pashtun lore needs elaborating: even a mere taunt (or "Paighor") is regarded as an insult which usually can only be redressed by shedding the taunter's blood. If he is out of reach, his closest male relation must suffer the penalty instead. Badal may lead to a blood feud that can last generations and involve whole tribes with the loss of hundreds of lives. Normally blood feuds in this male-dominated society are settled in a number of usually violent ways.”

Luttrell's account shows the complexities of these engagements and how poorly America understands such cultures. It seems to suggest that there MUST be a better way to fight terrorism than this haphazard, half in, half out approach we've used for over a decade.

Marcus Luttrell was fortunate enough to have been found by Pashtun villagers who actually saved him from his Taliban pursuers in accordance with their own code, even at great risk to themselves (the village was subsequently attacked by Taliban insurgents).

Luttrell (the lone survivor of Operation Red Wing) was brought back with an onboard defibrillator on the helicopter ride back to the base.

The film ends showing all the members killed in that action, the 6 SEALs and those aboard the helicopter downed when it came to rescue them. It showed photos of them in the Military juxtaposed with those from their outside lives. It also showed Marcus Luttrell returning to that Afghan village to emnbrace the family that saved his life.

Neither the book nor the film is as much a “testament” as a cautionary tale of how we so easily and cavalierly sacrifice the very best America has to offer on a misguided tactic that has consistently failed us – “Too light to fight, freeze at night.” In many ways, it's as vociferously an anti-war movie as has ever been made. In fact it echos a book by David Starr Jordan that came out 99 years ago this coming march, titled War and the Breed (https://archive.org/details/warandbreedrela01jordgoog), which makes the case that war is the most dysgenic exercise ever undertaken by man, because it kills off and maims the best - the youngest, bravest and strongest, leaving only, in Jordan's words, "the weaklings and wastrels" to breed and pass along their defective traits, thereby weakening each nation a hundred fold.

I agree with a West Point graduate I know, “If you’re not ready to risk 10,000 casualties, DON’T risk 10.” If an engagement isn't worth a massive risk, than find another way to resolve the conflict.

ESPECIALLY don’t risk 10 of the irreplaceable best!

Pathetic Harvey Weinstein – Lost in Fantasyland

Harvey Weinstein

Movie mogul Harvey Weinstein, recently announced plans to make a movie that “will make the NRA wish they weren’t alive after I’m done with them.”

What a Diiiiick!

The naïvely doltish movie producer and one of Obama’s top fundraisers made the dopey announcement on the Howard Stern radio show.

In the interview, Mr. Weinstein stated that he believed that no one in America should have a gun. He claimed that the only time to use a gun for protection is if “you’re marching half a million people into Auschwitz”!

The idiotic Weinstein apparently fails to realize that the Weimar Republic required all German citizens register their guns in the 1920s and soon after that the Nazis took power and used that existing list of gun owners to confiscate all privately owned guns in Germany, targeting the Jews first.

Howard Stern asked Weinstein how he’d have gotten a gun if he were being marched to Auschwitz and Weinstein replied that he would have simply found a gun.

Seriously?! No one but the simple-minded Harvey Weinstein ever thought of that one?

Nope...turns out the Germans were ruthlessly efficient in disarming the Jews, then slaughtering them.

What Harvey doesn’t understand is just how EASY it is to make a gun. I have a full machine shop in my basement and can make a better gun than most people could buy. Here’s a video showing how such illegal gun-makers thrive in the Phillipines where over 2,500 politicians have been assassinated since 2000! (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fna9WEO6BjE)

I’ve made high quality guns, BUT I’ve used high quality metal, even some genuine parts, but I greatly admire the skills of these Filipino gunsmiths, making high quality looking guns (45s and 9MMs) out of scrap metal...check that video out. It’s VERY impressive.

BUT guns aren’t even close to the deadliest problem facing us today. I know of at least five undocumented gene splicing labs in places like Costa Rica, Madagascar and other remote places. Some have said that as many as nine such labs now exist, I only know of five, but I’ve always said “at least five,” and it is from places like these that the next, much more effective form of terrorism will be launched. In effect, genetic mutations with viruses can allow diseases to be targeted directly to various ethnic groups, geographic locations and various and specific genetic irregularities found in specific groups, like the XXY chromosome common to many hermaphrodites.

In other words, no one needs guns to “march 6 million Jews” or anyone else to any killing stations, instead they can simply let the winds blow that devastation into your living rooms.

Maybe idiots like Harvey Weinstein haven’t figured that out yet, maybe they’re so focused on guns they haven’t thought about anything else. Who cares?

The problem is that even IF Harvey Weinstein had his heart in the right place, his head ISN’T even close! Guns aren’t the problem at the heart of the mass killings and school shootings in America, mental illness is.

What do Adam Lanza (Newtown, CT), James Holmes (Aurora, CO), Jared Loughner (Tuscon, AZ) and Colin Ferguson (LIRR killer) all have in common?

Mental illness.

America simply does a piss poor job of dealing with the mentally ill.

It is obviously NOT the “easy access to guns” that creates or even exacerbates gun violence in America, New York State has some of the most draconian gun laws in the nation and one of the highest gun homicide rates. New York City has even stronger anti-gun laws and the gun homicide rates there are the highest in that state, while in neighboring Vermont, with the most liberal gun laws in the nation (an adults need no permits at all to carry either a pistol or assault weapon), which in 2010 had the LOWEST gun homicide rate in the U.S.!

The serious mass killers coming down the pike aren’t mentally ill, and they aren’t going to use guns either. Moreover, these killers won’t even have to know anything about genetics themselves, they’ll be able to contract with any one of a number of rogue labs to concoct the targeted disease of their choosing.

The Virtues and Necessary Evils of Income Inequality

Brian Williams

The contemporary crusade for some mythical “income equality,” is in reality, a dunces parade. Worse still, it is doomed to fail.

Ironically enough, just as black unemployment under G W Bush was lower than that under Bill Clinton, income inequality has widened under Obama, over that during G W Bush’s tenure.

Interestingly enough, all this talk about “income inequality” makes it (1) appear as though government can do something about, like legislate it out of existence by decree and much worse, (2) makes government’s failure to do so appear to be that government’s, more aptly, that President’s fault.

Truth is some skills are simply more valuable than others and some people are, through holding superior skill sets, far more valuable than others. For instance, people who speak four or more languages well tend to be very valuable...valuable to international Corporations and to governments. People who can’t read beyond a third grade reading level tend to have far less value in terms of their employment options.

More daunting still is the fact that a rising level of income inequality is actually a hallmark of highly developed economies. In basic hunter/gatherer economies there is virtually NO income inequality, everything is shared equally with the tribe, because everyone in the tribe is mandated to do the SAME work. In more the slightly more advanced agrarian economies there is more income inequality because those who consistently produce more crops do better than those who don’t, but here income inequality, at least between farmers, is pretty minimal. However, even in the agrarian economy, we see the rise of the middleman – the seller who buys as cheaply as he can from the farmer to sell for as much as he can get from the consumer. The agrarian society also sees the rise of the mercantile exchange, where the base price of grains and other commodities are set by democratic action between brokers. These create even more income inequality even in the basic agrarian economy.

In basic, or heavy industrial societies there is greater productivity, leading to greater prosperity and of course, greater income inequality. Miners and heavy equipment operators earn significantly more than unskilled laborers and a small but growing professional class (physicians, engineers, attorneys, financial planners, etc.) earn even more.

In even more advanced industrial and especially in technological, or information-based economies this inequality is even more pronounced as those with only marginal skills are left in a position where such skills do not even pay enough for a subsistence living. Those economies are clearly saying, “DON’T rely on such skills.” We do so at our own peril and eventually the negative consequences drive most people to simply develop new skill sets and seek advancement on their own.

There is really very little, if anything that government can do about that problem, as the “problem” is an advanced economy.

In America today there are many jobs going begging, especially among cryogenic truckers, commercial electrical workers (people who work on high voltage power lines) and “tree toppers” (people who cut trees for those power lines) largely because such jobs, even though they require less technological, or “professional” acumen, are extremely physically demanding and dangerous. Cryogenic truckers cannot even have a speeding ticket on their record to be hired for those positions...and the work requires a virtual laser focus because any misstep will almost certainly be that driver’s last, given the product their dealing with is stored at over 240 degrees BELOW zero and some, like liquid oxygen make asphalt surfaces shock sensitive (explosive when impacted). In our society the number of these positions are growing, so it’s incumbent upon poorly paid laborers to try and develop the skills necessary to do those high stress, high-turnover, highly paid jobs.

Viva income inequality! For it creates the incentives for poorly paid workers to be willing to do those highly skilled, very dangerous jobs that most people wouldn't want to touch.

Another anchor around the neck of this inane crusade is that many of its inherent are, well, a BIG part of the problem, by their very own definition.

NBC's Brian Williams, who reportedly earned $13 million a year in 2012, quoted Karl Marx while hyping a news report on global income disparity: "...the staggering news out today about the growing gap between the haves and the have nots."

Williams went on to recite the findings: "Some new figures came out today....And they are so shocking, it takes a while for them to sink in. A study commissioned by Oxfam says the world's richest 85 individuals have the same wealth as 3.5 billion people around the world. Once again, 85 people on this planet have the same amount of wealth as the poorest 3.5 billion people on this planet."

Tim Graham (of Newsbusters’) reported in 2008, this is the same Brian Williams who "lives in one of New York's swankiest addresses in Manhattan with the chic restaurant Le Cirque on the ground floor, which offers high priced cuisine like an appetizer of terrine of foie gras with Gewurtztraminer gelee for $38. 'It's better than having an Applebee's in the lobby,' he joked to the New York Observer in 2006."

It’s hard to take a $13 million/year news reader seriously, on the topic of income inequality, absent that guy’s taking a cut to say 2% of that “obscene” income.

You can take it to the bank that Brian Williams doesn’t see HIMSELF as the part of the problem he really is, instead he sees Hedge Fund managers and others who actually create value as “the problem.”

Then there’s Representative Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.), who is worth an estimated $20 million dollars, according to her congressional financial disclosure statement, claiming that Congress needs to tackle income inequality because it “poses an existential threat to our nation and our way of life.”

According to her congressional financial disclosure statement for 2012, DeLauro is worth between $5 million and $25 million. (The form’s requirements allow members to state ranges of value for their assets rather than exact values.)

In November 2013, the website Celebrity Networth listed DeLauro’s fortune at $20 million in its “Richest Politicians” category.

Note to these 1%ers; IF you really care so much about income inequality” STOP taking so much money for doing these rather mundane jobs. Simply STOP being so much a part of the problem!

Mandating Racism

Eric Holder

Eric Holder’s DoJ has been fighting charges of gross incompetence since about the time Holder took that office; from colluding to attempt to bury a legitimate voting rights case brought by whites in Mississippi (http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/11/us/politics/11voting.html?_r=0), to dropping the charges in the New Black Panther voter intimidation case in Philly (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Black_Panther_Party_voter_intimidation_case), to helping activists in New York find a judge willing to scuttle that city’s highly effective “Stop & Frisk” program, to fighting AGAINST merit and standards for Police and Fire Departments across the country.

The Holder DoJ has virtually been a singular bastion that has steadfastly held to the “disparate impact” doctrine that’s increasingly lost favor in most legal circles.

Most recently, education experts across the country have decried a new memo from the Departments of Justice and Education that instructs public schools throughout the country to cease punishing disruptive students if they fall into certain racial categories, such as black or Hispanic.

The letter, released on Wednesday (1-8-2014), states that it’s a violation of federal law for schools to punish certain races more than others, even if those punishments stem from completely neutral rules. For example, equal numbers of black students and white students should be punished for tardiness, even if black students are more often tardy than white students.

The most relevant section of the letter reads:

“Schools also violate Federal law when they evenhandedly implement facially neutral policies and practices that, although not adopted with the intent to discriminate, nonetheless have an unjustified effect of discriminating against students on the basis of race.

Examples of policies that can raise disparate impact concerns include policies that impose mandatory suspension, expulsion, or citation (e.g., ticketing or other fines or summonses) upon any student who commits a specified offense — such as being tardy to class, being in possession of a cellular phone, being found insubordinate, acting out, or not wearing the proper school uniform.”

Andrew Coulson, director of the Center for Educational Freedom at the Cato Institute, said the letter’s policies, if implemented, would actually harm black children, by making the classrooms they inhabit “more chaotic.”

“The kinds [of kids] who just want to be free to learn in peace, who are not disruptive, have their education injured by the disruptive kids who remain in the classroom,” Coulson said. “And since African American kids are more often assigned to schools like that, they’ll be the ones most hurt.”

Frederick Hess, director of education policy at the American Enterprise Institute, described the letter as “troubling,” and an attempt to intimidate schools into initiating bad policy.

“As best I can tell, they are telling schools that even if you have policies that are clearly neutral, that are clearly evenhanded, that are clearly designed to create safe environments for students and educators, DOJ still might come down on you like a ton of bricks.”

There is absolutely nothing in that directive that looks to help black or Hispanic students, quite the reverse. That’s NOT my issue...I DON’T much care about why a black, like Holder, would institute policies that would harm younger blacks...I have no interest in that. I DO have an interest in the abuse of law, the abuse and violation of “equal protection under the law” and “equality of opportunity” that the flawed policies derived from the poisoned tree of “disparate impact” generate.

You'd Probably Think an UNFIT Mother as Unfit to Hold Elective Office...BUT Wendy Davis Disagrees

Wendy Davis

Democrat Wendy Davis has repeatedly told the story of her struggle as a single mom who put herself through Harvard but it turns out, that story isn't at all true. An article published in The Dallas Morning News (http://www.dallasnews.com/news/politics/headlines/20140118-as-wendy-davis-touts-life-story-in-race-for-governor-key-facts-blurred.ece) detailed the real situation of Davis' life and those details aren't very flattering.

Ms. Davis was 21, not 19, when she was divorced. She lived only a few months in the family mobile home while separated from her husband before moving into an apartment with her daughter.

As a single mother working two jobs, she met Jeff Davis, a lawyer 13 years older than her, and in short order, married him and had a second daughter. He paid for her last two years at Texas Christian University and her time at Harvard Law School, and kept their two daughters while she was in Boston. When they divorced in 2005, he was granted parental custody, and the girls stayed with him. Wendy Davis was directed to pay child support.

WHY was Jeff Davis given full custody?

According to that recent Dallas Morning News article; “Jeff Davis said the marriage had failed, citing adultery on her part and conflicts that the couple could not overcome. The final court decree makes no mention of infidelity, granting the divorce solely “on the ground of insupportability.”

“Amber was 21 and in college. Dru was in ninth grade. Jeff Davis was awarded parental custody. Wendy Davis was ordered to pay $1,200 a month in child support.

“She did the right thing,” he said. “She said, ‘I think you’re right; you’ll make a good, nurturing father. While I’ve been a good mother, it’s not a good time for me right now.’”

“Wendy Davis declined to discuss the circumstances or terms of the divorce.

“When I decided to run for governor, I promised my girls we would not revisit a time that was terribly difficult for them,” she said. “I will tell you it was very important to me that Dru stay in her childhood home. It was a very difficult time in our life.”

She said: “I very willingly, as part of my divorce settlement, paid child support. That was at my request, not any court telling me I needed to financially support my daughters.”

A former colleague and political supporter who worked closely with Davis when she was on the council said the body’s work was very time-consuming.”

According to her own words, she put her career ahead of her family and the court DID, in fact, order child support. That sounds very much like an UNFIT mother to me.

Jeff Davis noted that was right around the time that he’d made the final payment on her Harvard Law School loan that she walked out on him and the children. “It was ironic,” he said. “I made the last payment, and it was the next day she left.”

Not surprisingly, Ms. Davis is now blaming her Republican opponent, Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott, for "attacks" on her personal life and has taken to lecturing Mr. Abbott about the "struggles" Abbott just doesn't understand.

Interestingly enough, Gregg Abbott has been in a wheel chair since he was 26-years-old after a tree fell on him while running and paralyzed him from the waist down.

Unlike Davis, Abbott has never asked for pity or to be treated differently due to his actual real-life struggles.

Two Abuse Cases Point to a SINGLE Solution

Abused Omaha toddler (above), murdered Myls Dobson (below)

Over the past week an Omaha, NE video of a toddler being grossly abused (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OIUpvtIqgKw)     and a another toddler murdered in New York City (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Fz5ouzWV20) have captured the attention of much of the country.

Dimwitted people in the national media have rushed to defend the Omaha situation as a “lifestyle,” much the way CNN’s Melissa Harris-Perry defended a welfare mother who’d had six children by five different men as a “lifestyle” choice...this is not a valid viewpoint.

While I'll admit that I've never thought about the possibility of such a situation in terms of a legitimate “lifestyle choice,” but I’m quite certain that if I’d had, I’d have rejected that possibility out of hand. It’s not Ms Harris-Perry’s fault that she’s not very bright, nor is it her fault that she seems to fail to see the reason for the widespread support for abortion on demand as eugenics...the poor take far more advantage of abortion than do middle class women and black females (appx 6% of the population) account for a whopping 35% of all abortions nationwide!

All of that is “to the good,” but unfortunately it doesn't go far enough, at least not nearly far enough to save the dysfunctional from themselves.

The case of 3 y/o Myls Dobson and that of the unnamed Omaha toddler clearly show that the dysfunctional poor cannot humanely be left to their own devices. Mandating contraception for the dependent poor and declaring all dependent poor as “unfit parents,” while on those dependency programs is the ONLY way to prevent such cases from recurring is to prevent such irresponsible people from having children to abuse.

Mandated contraception, far from a ‘punishment,” is instead a means of keeping the chronically irresponsible from being burdened with responsibilities they cannot possibly meet.

FINALLY!…They’ve Charged a Knock-Out Game Player With a HATE CRIME…Yup....he's WHITE!

Eric Holder

The hopelessly inept Holder DoJ FINALLY stepped up and charged a vicious teen who assaulted an elderly man with a hate crime!

A Texas man, Conrad Alvin Barrett, 27 was charged with a hate crime after brutally punching a 79 y/o man in South Texas.

Of course, as it turns out, Conrad Alvin Barrett is white and his elderly victim is black. The media seems focused on this particular crime because it “goes against one of the major media narratives about the Knockout Game that it is being played mostly by groups of black youths against white and Jewish victims.”

Funny story...OK, not so funny...THIS is, to date, virtually a singular event, in an astounding 99+% of the cases the perps are black and the victims white, and predominantly Jewish in major urban areas.

Another twist in this particular saga is that Conrad Barrett’s attorney is suggesting that his client is suffering from bipolar disorder and thus isn’t responsible for his actions. Hey! Why not affluenza? I mean if this punk doesn’t live in a trailer park, why not throw that bullshit against the wall as well.

Conrad Alvin Barrett

Bottom line, Conrad Alvin Barrett SHOULD be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. Texas did that with Shawn Berry, Lawrence Russell Brewer and John King – James Byrd’s killers. Two were sentenced to death BEFORE Texas had a “hate crimes” law.

My own issue with “hate crimes” is that ALL violent crimes are motivated by hate, so such crimes, in effect, claim that racial or ethnic hatred is somehow worse than class envy or other kinds of hatred. That is clearly NOT the case and no one, to date, has ever made a compelling argument for that erroneous claim.

“Hate crimes” laws discount a black victim’s suffering at the hands of a black perp, and a white victim’s suffering at the hands of a white thug without ANY rationale for denying THESE victims “equality before the law.”

The best thing this case can do is to expose the incompetence and hair-brained malevolence of the Holder DoJ. THAT would be a very welcome development.

Where Phil Robertson is Wrong – You CAN’T go Back Again!

Duck Dynasty's Phil Robertson

Lost in the chaos swirling around Phil Robertson’s (of Duck Dynasty) condemnation of swindlers, adulterers, liars...and homosexuals, is the broader idea proposed by the Robertson clan, in effect, that we can all go back to a simpler life, where we’re all at peace with nature and such.

For better, or for worse, that ship has long since sailed.

Mankind’s “dominion over the earth” is best exemplified today by China’s and India’s burgeoning smokestack industries and NOT a few robust Louisianans shooting ducks.

We live in an INCREASINGLY automated and energy-guzzling world that tends to pit mankind AGAINST nature, looking to control, harness and utilize earth’s materials and not worship them American-Indian style, as romantic a notion as that might be. That culture, like the other “indigenous” cultures around the globe was replaced because it wasn’t efficient enough to defend itself from the coming industrial onslaught, brought about primarily by the northern Europeans,  the missionaries of human progress and modernizers of the existing world.”

Today, we live in a world that will require 4X as much energy by 2050 as it does today…and we WILL HAVE TO find a way to supply it. Ours is a world birthed by the technological genius of two Germans Carl Bosch and Fritz Haber, the first to devise a means of creating ammonia and chemical fertilizers from the nitrogen in our air. It is that advance alone that has allowed man’s population to rise above the 2 BILLION that could be sustained by a global agriculture sustained by natural fertilizers alone.

We’re also living through an age of major economic dislocation, somewhat similar to the time between the horse and buggy and the car. Old industries are dying off, or automating to such a degree that a scant few can now do the work it took a veritable army to do a few decades ago, and newer ones are either just starting up, or on the horizon and we’re in a major transition period between the older industrial technologies and the new, coming ones. Those today who don’t embrace that change quick enough are going to be left behind like buggy whip makers and, well...like those romantic Indians of the Great Plains.

There is a LOT of pain, both present and more coming that will ultimately have to be shared, to get through this transition period. That’s why we’re seeing the virtually limitless extensions to unemployment insurance – because new jobs...and new training just aren’t ready yet.

Worse yet, the demographic shift America gleefully (some may say foolishly) embraced immediately after the murder of JFK (it seems as though we couldn’t wait to throw away every bit of that post-WW II “1950s America” in the wake of Camelot), appears to make a successful economic shift like this all the harder, for in changing the population demographics, we’ve also changed the American work ethic...BOTH were unceremoniously thrown overboard.

BUT there’s no “going back” in that regard either and more and more Americans are finding that there really aren’t liberal...or “librul” Americans and “Conservative” Americans, so much as cynical Americans, who’ve come to see the post-JFK social, economic and political changes as “not in our best interests,” and naive ones who thought that NONE of those changes would ever really hurt themselves...or their children.

As more and more middle-class/middle-management whites have been laid off, replaced, or downgraded and seen their kids chances of doing even as well, let alone better than they did greatly diminish, the shrinking white vote has grown considerably more cynical...or “Conservative.” In my view the “political” divisions don’t come down t “Liberal” versus “Conservative” Americans, so much as “shrewd and cynical” Americans versus naïve, and still awakening ones.

The inevitable demographic changes (they are fixed now via immigration policies) will bring with them inevitable social and economic changes, as well. America looks poised to have a Hispanic century, before the nation’s predominant cultural vibration becomes Asian, by somewhere around the mid-22nd Century, when Asians become the largest single group at appx. 34% by around 2150, with Hispanics holding at around 30%, whites around 26% and blacks around 10%...give or take a percent here or there.

Until that rise of Asian influence, which might (if we’re fortunate) both bring back a sense of “shame,” and a stronger work ethic, it could be a bumpy ride for the U.S., especially between 2020 and 2100, where the REAL demographic shift becomes much more up close and personal for a LOT more people. Many once comfortable people won’t be as comfortable anymore and their children may well wind up even less secure, as others prefer to associate and do business with “their own.”

The parochialism of race and ethnicity still seems to have a good ways to go before it’s put behind us.

In the short term it appears to be a very big risk entering an economic transition while undergoing such a rapid and dramatic demographic shift, but that is virtually inevitable now.

Regardless of whatever second thoughts we might have, or come to have, there’s no “going back,” so the enticing essence of what the Robertson’s offer (a return to a simpler, more natural time) is unfortunately a fiction that threatens to take our focus off dealing with the myriad problems that are heading our way fast.