Democracy

 

Democracy

I'm sentimental, if you know what I mean
I love the country but I can't stand the scene
And I'm neither left or right
I'm just staying home tonight
Getting lost in that hopeless little screen
But I'm stubborn as those garbage bags
That time cannot decay
I'm junk but I'm still holding up this little wild bouquet
Democracy is coming to the USA
To the USA

Elections are not the only indication of a democracy.

The late Leonard Cohen, a member of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, not only wrote such classics as Hallelujah and Suzanne. He also wrote the song. above. To those of us who think that the USA IS already a democracy, it might seem strange to hear that “Democracy is coming to the USA.”  But democracy is NOT just about elections. It is about free and fair elections that mean something.

The Holy Roman Empire, long before the Hapsburgs, was a monarchy that used elections to select its Emperors, so clearly elections alone do not mean a democracy. The recent “elections” at gunpoint by Russian soldiers approving the annexation of Ukraine provinces into the Russian Federation were hardly fair and free. Votes in the Senate to end debate and move votes to the floor, popularly known as the “filibuster”, which are not secret, and where the losing Party may punish that vote, are not free. If the loser of an election refuses to leave office, then the election, was to that loser just another contest of domination and the election itself meant nothing.

Democracy assumes that the will of the people will be expressed and accepted. Let us hope that on October 30^th democracy comes to Brazil. And that on November 8^th democracy will come to the USA.

Vote

 

Everybody’s Cryin’ Mercy

Straight ahead
Knock 'em dead
Pack your kit
Choose your hypocrite

You don't have to go to off-Broadway
To see something plain absurd
Everybody's crying mercy
When they don't know the meaning of the word
Nobody knows the meaning of the word

Vote

In less than two weeks I, like millions of others, will be exercising my vote. I do NOT plan on voting for any Republicans because I am afraid that those Republicans are “rINOs,” "republicans In Name Only.”  I realize that I will be voting for Democrats, but their brand has not been tainted so much that I do not believe that those candidates are “dINOs", "democrats In Name Only". I will be voting only for candidates who believe in democracy, including the representative form that is the US republic.

Democracy is the political system where all decisions are decided by the group. Representative Democracy, a republic, recognizes that each voter may not have the flexibility in time, expense, knowledge, or interest, etc. and the infrastructure may not all of them to participate in each and every decision. As such, the voters may choose a representative to make those decisions for them. That candidate is only a representative, whether that candidate is for town council, state legislature, governor, federal congress, or, while not in this election cycle, President. They may “win” an election, but they are still only a representative. This contrasts with those who believe that the decisions of the group leader ARE the decision of the group. Such a system is called authoritarianism, whether that “leader” is chosen by election, birth, or an act of domination, such as a revolution or a coup. I believe that all voters, whether deplorable or not, have a vote, and the decisions of those voters in a democracy is vital. I will not vote for dINOs or rINOS. They are hypocrites, since they believe in neither a democracy nor a republic, and do NOT deserve my vote.

Tolerance

 

Crown  of Creation 

In loyalty to their kind
They cannot tolerate our minds
In loyalty to our kind
We cannot tolerate their obstruction 

You should never respond to intolerance with intolerance. 

One on my favorite podcasts, Stuff You Should Know, recently did an episode on Fundamentalism.  While I agree with everything that was said, (like that was a surprise), the best outcome to me is that I got a word to use in place of standard deviation. 

I am a semi-retired engineer and one of the things I have been struggling with is the branding problems created in mathematics, especially statistics, which uses the term standard deviation.  IMHO, standard deviation should be rebranded as the degree of tolerance, which IMHO sounds much better.  The synonyms of deviation are perversion, anomaly, error, aberration, abnormality.  However in statistics what is meant is the only the difference from the mean.  If you are confident that the mean is without error, then having no difference from that mean, truth, is good. 

However having a standard deviation of zero, means that you are absolutely certain that the mean IS the truth.  In this instance statistics has a term that IMHO does NOT need to be rebranded.  If the truth is not yet known, then statistics says that distribution of truth is NORMAL.  Tolerance is normal, it is intolerance that is not.  I wrote a blog post previously on the problem of decreasing the standard deviation.  https://dbeagan.blogspot.com/2022/01/resiliency.html

BTW statistics also shows that for the mean to increase, grow, standard deviation...errr tolerance, has to increase.

 

Alex Jones

 

People Got To Be Free

 Hear the shoutin' from the mountains on out to the sea
No two ways about it, people have to be free
Ask me my opinion, my opinion will be
Natural situation for a man to be free 

Is freedom of speech absolute? 

Charles Dicken was right in his novel Oliver Twist. "The law is an ass—an idiot.". One only has to look at the writing of that “distinguished” lawyer, former New Jersey Superior Court Judge, former professor at the Brooklyn Law School, and current conservative pundit Andrew Napolitano for proof. Writing in the New Jersey Herald on October 20, 2022, https://www.njherald.com/story/opinion/2022/10/20/alex-jones-and-the-freedom-of-speech/69577197007/, Napolitano says that any school child can see that Alex Jones was protected by the Freedom of Speech of the First Amendment to the US Constitution. 

The problem is that Judge Napolitano apparently doesn’t understand the meaning of that protection. It was intended to protect the freedom of an individual to express an opinion. However it does not mean that anything can be expressed as an opinion. It does not supersede legal judgments being rendered for perjury, slander, defamation, etc. It does not protect the speaker from the consequences of expressing an opinion, famously falsely shouting fire in a crowded theater. If a stampede and injury results, the fact that it was only “speech” does not protect the speaker from the consequences of his lie. 

Alex Jones did not merely express his opinion. He stated those opinions as facts, profited by expressing those opinions, and there were deaths threats and other crimes that were the consequences of his “speech.”   If it were merely his opinion and was expressed as opinion then of course it was protected. However an individual must bear the responsibility for the consequences of his words. Just as King Henry II was responsible for the murder of Thomas Becket when he said “"Who will rid me of this meddlesome priest?”, so too is Alex Jones guilty for the garbage he spewed. Don’t be misled by Andrew Napolitano’s credentials. He is an ass. Alex Jones was not found guilty for speaking. He was found guilty for the nature and consequences of his “speech.”

Passing II

 

The Great Pretender

Oh yes, I'm the great pretender
Adrift in a world of my own
My need to be all I am not you've seen
And you've left me to dream all alone

Is Passing pretending?

I know that the subject hits close to home when I was torn between using the posted lyrics and Honey  Suckle Rose, “Flowers droop and sigh when you're passing by”,  at the start of this post. Passing sounds so much nicer than pretending. If were to look at me, and hear my name, I could pass for a straight, male, White, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant. You would only be correct on only half of those attributes. By appearance I am white, I am a male, by marriage I am straight, and my surname could easily be confused for an Anglo-Saxon Protestant, but unless you know me you might not know that I am an Irish-Polish Catholic and my beloved brother, the godfather of my oldest child and the best man at my wedding, is not straight.  However because many people judge a book by its cover, I am often mistaken for, passing as, one of their "own". As such, I have heard my share of Irish jokes, Polish jokes, Catholic jokes, sexual orientation jokes, etc. And much to my shame I have opted to “grin and bear it". I pretended. I did not stand up for the part of me that was being mocked, much to my shame. Thus while those telling the jokes were acting badly, I was complicit.

And that is the problem with passing. As long as there is an exclusion from certain groups or action against members of those groups, if you are mistaken for a member of the group doing the excluding, but you are a member of the group being excluded, you are denying yourself. The rooster has already crowed three times for me. It will crow no more. Passing to “get by” does not get you ahead, it puts you further behind.

Supply-side Economics

 

Fool Me Once, Fool Me Twice

That I’d fallen for a lie?
You were never on my side
Fool me once, fool me twice
Are you death or paradise?
Now you’ll never see me cry
There’s just no time to die

It's nice to fool anyone.

I have posted hypothetically before about not understanding that there is a difference between a median and a mean. https://dbeagan.blogspot.com/2018/08/wonderful-world-dont-know-much-about.html, but apparently it is a real problem. The chart below are actual incomes as reported by the US Census Bureau. The dots are the reported mean income at the midpoint of each income quintile, and the midpoint of the top 5%.

While mean income has increased from $59,698 in 2019 US Dollars in 1975 to $98,088 in 2019 US Dollars in 2019, an increase of 64%, median income has only increased by 34%, from $51,124 in 2019 US Dollar in 1975 to $68,703 in 2019 US Dollars in 2019.  The problem, is that while the shape of the income distribution curves above are determined by the mean income, the median is what occurs at 50%. Since “supply-side” “Reaganomics” was adopted after 1980, the rich have demonstrably gotten richer, and while the poor may not have gotten poorer, the typical, e.g. median, income has barely changed.  Is it any wonder that the economic markets reacted so badly to UK Prime Minister Liz Truss’ announcements of a return to “supply-side” tax cuts or why then Kansas Governor Sam Brownback’s tax experiment in “supply-side” economics was such a disaster.  I think the figure above shows what is death and what is paradise.  Don’t get fooled again. Twice is more than enough.

Liberals

 

You Don’t Own Me

You don't own me
Don't try to change me in any way
You don't own me
Don't tie me down 'cause I'd never stay

It is NOT being conservative to own the liberals.

My son’s POSSLQ, Person of the Opposite Sex Sharing Living Quarters, says that I am the biggest liberal she has ever met.  I found that shocking because I always thought that I was a conservative.  I believe in government but I think that it should be limited, not because it is evil, but because it is by necessity consists of people and according to Lord Acton’s dictum " power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely".  I also believe that the government has a responsibility to act on behalf of the group, society, but it should carefully consider before undertaking any actions because of the Law of Unintended Consequences.  I also do not understand any exclusions from the group. My math background tells me that any growing society has to increase its variance, whose square root is standard deviation, not decrease deviation.  It also tells me that the future has to be worth less than the past in order for growth and not decay.

That makes me a conservative in the vein of Mitt Romney, not Matt Gaetz.  Like the voters in my home state of Massachusetts, I am most comfortable with a Democratic legislature and a Republican executive.  ( that is real Republicans who favor a republican form of government and not ”republicans  In Name Only” who are really authoritarians.)  If someone knows how to Razzle Dazzle, as much as I enjoy being Razzle Dazzled, I assume that they are using that Razzle Dazzle to distract me, not convince me.  Liberal and conservative alone is not a useful characterization.  It is much more nuanced than that.