Usually its satirical, with some seriousness. This past year, and perhaps its just my current perception, the year has been so odd and generally negative that it'd be impossible to do one that isn't negative.
Indeed, while I've never done this before in this thread, maybe this recent article by a Wyoming journalist simply sums things up better than any article here could do:
Resolve to Childish Rules
We'll give it a try anyway.
1. For everyone.
A. Accept that "I feel it", "want it" or "desire it" doesn't make it anything other than an individual feeling, want or desire.
Your own particular desires of any kind don't rise to a level of a societal need that society needs to personally ratify.
They may not even be legitimate. Just because you want something, no matter how deeply you feel it, doesn't mean its disordered. Just because you want to eat all the cake, for example, doesn't give you a protected right to do so and it doesn't mean you really should, for a multiplicity of reasons. And if you do eat it all, that doesn't mean that you have to demand everyone else accept that you ate it and agree that the problems its causing you aren't real problems.
B. Consider The Fourth Law of Human Behavior.
In addition, the time has really come for everyone to reconsider our fourth rule of behavior and really ponder it, it is:
Along these lines, it might be worth actually noting that a lot of the recent horrible behaviors of all types we have "discovered", we didn't. They've been horrible all along, but we started pretending they weren't and ended up bearing the consequences.
We had less of the "Me Too" movement in 2019 than we did in 2018, but it still provides a good example. All the misbehavior violated an old, old law of societal conduct. Much of the reason that it doesn't go away is that those noting the misbehavior and decrying it the violation an old, old law are busy violating other old, old laws, and don't want to stop. You really can't accept something as deeply wrong if you don't stop to ponder why it is, that its deeply wrong.
C. Time to consider some evolutionary biology.
When I was young I was a geology student and, as a result, I was in that class of people who studied evolution in detail. I know that there are those who don't accept evolution, but evolution is a natural fact and denying that doesn't make it less of a fact.
In keeping with that, we have our place in that picture and we're really busy denying that right now. It's time to get over it. This relates strongly to the item discussed in Paragraph B above, and there's another one of the laws of behavior governing it. We'll set that item out here:
Holscher's Third Law of Behavior. I know why the caged tiger paces.
Everyone has been to a zoo and has seen a tiger pace back and forth, back and forth. He'll look up occasionally as well, and the deluded believe "look, he wants to be petted," while the more realistic know that he's thinking "I'd like to eat you." You can keep him in the zoo, but he's still a tiger. He wants out. He wants to live in the jungle, and he wants to eat you for lunch. That's his nature, and no amount of fooling ourselves will change it.
It's really no different with human beings. We've lived in the modern world we've created for only a very brief time. Depending upon your ancestry, your ancestors lived in a very rustic agrarian world for about 10,000 years, long enough, by some measures to actually impact your genetic heritage. Prior to that, and really dating back further than we know, due to Holscher's First Law of History, we were hunters and gatherers, or hunters and gatherers/small scale farmers. Deep down in our DNA, that's who we still are.
That matters, as just as the DNA of the tiger tells it what it wants, to some degree our DNA informs us of what we want as well. I do not discount any other influence, and human beings are far, far, more complicated than we can begin to suppose, but it's still the case. A species that started out eons and eons ago being really smart hunters combined with really smart gatherers/small farmers has specialized in a way that living in Major Metropolis isn't going to change very rapidly. Deep down, we remain those people, even if we don't know it, and for some, even if we don't like it.
This also impacts the every sensitive roles of men and women. Primates have unusually great gender differentiation for a mammal. Male housecats, for example, aren't hugely different from female housecats. But male chimpanzees are vastly different from female chimpanzees. Male human beings are as well, but even much more so.
That's really upsetting to some people, but it simply isn't understood. If understood, this does not imply any sort of a limitation on either sex, and indeed in aboriginal societies that are really, really, primitive there's much less than in any other society, including our modernized Western one. Inequality comes in pretty early in societies, but some change in condition from the most primitive seems to be necessary in order to create it. So, properly understood, those very ancient genetic impulses that were there when we were hiking across the velt hoping not to get eaten by a lion, and hoping to track down an antelope, and planting and raising small gardens, are still there. That they're experienced differently by the genders is tempered by the fact that, in those ancient times, a lot of early deaths meant that the opposite gender had to step into the other's role, and therefore we're also perfectly capable of doing that. It's the root basic natures we're talking about, however, that we're discussing here, and that spark to hunt, fish, defend and plant a garden are in there, no matter how much steel and concrete we may surround ourselves with.
The reason that this matters is that all people have these instincts from antiquity, some to greater or lessor degrees. But many people, maybe most, aren't aware that they have them. Some in the modern world spend a lot of their time and effort acting desperately to suppress these instincts. But an instinct is an instinct, and the more desperately they act, the more disordered they become.
This doesn't mean, of course, that everyone needs to revert to an aboriginal lifestyle, and that's not going to happen. Nor would it even mean that everyone needs to hunt or fish, or even raise a garden. But it does mean that the further we get from nature, both our own personal natures, and nature in chief, or to deny real nature, the more miserable they'll become. We can't and shouldn't pretend that we're not what we once were, or that we now live in a world where we are some sort of ethereal being that exists separate and apart from that world. In other words, a person can live on a diet of tofu if they want, and pretend that pigs and people are equal beings, but deep in that person's subconscious, they're eating pork and killing the pig with a spear.
Nature, in the non Disney reality of it.
I frankly don't know why it is that so many in our day and age can't accept this fact and believe instead that our realities are self described and self made. They aren't, any more than they are for a jackrabbit on the plains.
C. Time for some Distributism
I've written about Distributism here a fair amount, but this year the need for a reassessment of economics is really evident. On one had we have the Democrats embracing Social Democracy and all the vast cost and expenses associated with it, on the other we have a roaring economy which Republicans are telling us is the best for decades. In the middle is everyone else with a vague feeling that things just aren't right.
They aren't right as not everything is about money. Neither the "let's all move to cubicle jobs in Big City" view of the economy or the "Government will fund all the needs you can't fund yourself view" is making people satisfied.
Having something of their own, close to home, might.
2. The Political Parties.
It's tempting to say "just stop it", but that's too flippant.
At any rate, however, the insanity of the two party system is now more evident than ever. You'd think that with this being the case, a third party or fourth party or something would come along, but that's not going to happen rather obviously.
With that the fact of the matter, this polarity is too much for the country to endure long term. It has to end.
In order to end it, however, some basic facts have to be accepted by both, and one is that the absurd level of name calling can't keep on keeping on and, moreover, whoever is in the Oval Office was put there through the process we have. Eight years of Republicans asserting that President Obama was illegitimate have been followed by (now) three of the Democrats yelling that President Trump is illegitimate. And it goes on down from there.
As party of the need for real change, party purity tests need to stop. The Democrats are initiating this on a national level, informally, and locally the GOP has done this formally. Parties aren't religions and there should be room within them, particularly in a two party system such as we seem to be captive to.
Finally, government can't solve everything. The Democratic platform basically is that it can, and that's absurd. The GOP one isn't, but the thought there is that the economy solves everything, and that isn't correct either.
Having discussed politics, let's move to religion
3. Confusion of Faith
I know that this is a topic that people aren't even supposed to discuss, save on Twitter and Facebook and I guess on Blogs, but this is a history blog, supposedly.
None the less, we've strayed into this topic a fair amount and so we're going to discuss it here.
A. Pope Francis
I don't know what Pope Francis' overall theme on things is, but if we were to give him a grade on his overall Papacy so far, it'd be a C at best. His vague comments, refusing to answer questions, and the like, are causing turmoil.
It's seemed lately that the Pope has an unfortunately Eurocentric view which is missing the real story of what's going on in Christianity in general and Catholism in particular, which is exploding in growth in the third world. I get the concern over the Western World, but the sort of weak leadership we're seeing and suggestions that we're retreating in one way or another while leaving things vague isn't helping.
I don't know what he can do about it as it seems ingrained in his personality. But a course correction seems in order.
B. The German Cardinals
One group that needs the course correction is the German Cardinals who are practically acting as an independent body. Somebody needs to point out to them the fact that their leadership hasn't been working and, moreover, the day in which people really listen to the Germans on about anything is over. What African Cardinals gather and say is more important now.
C. The Coffins and the Marshalls
Lest this seem exceedingly one sided, the Patrick Coffins and Dr. Taylor Marshalls of the world need to really re-assess their tone and what they're saying. I don't think any new schism are on the horizon, particularly from the Rad Trads, but if there were to be, Coffin would have to at least pause and consider to what extent his comments pushed some in that direction. Shows that come close to stating that the Pope may be illegitimate encourage schism as are shows that are blisteringly opposed to the current Pope.
You don't have to agree with a Pope, or a President. But that doesn't mean they're illegitimate. A person has to work within the system if its a system they declare themselves to have faith in.
D. The Irreligious Religious
Those of all faiths who proclaim to be faithful but then omit the tenants of their faiths need to knock it off.
This is particularly pronounced in Protestant Christianity, although it shows up in "liberal" Catholicism as well, at least in the United States. Boatloads of Christian churches proclaim themselves loyal to the Gospels, except where the Gospels address sex, for example. They say what they say and mean what they mean. If you don't like it, that means you have something to work on, not that you just omit it.
4. The Movie Industry
Stop it with the Marvel comic movies. They're stupid. Enough already.
I should note that I've typed out the start of a thread eons ago asking why movies have become so juvenile, but I've never finished it. I should.
5. The Television Industry
Television is stupid, and one of its stupidest acts is an assumption that its to be on the cutting edge to race to the bottom in the depictions of human behavior that involve morality in any sense. We get it, television, you don't believe morality of any kind exist. You are part of the problem (see above regarding the old standards).
Additionally, it's time to admit, Television, that graduates of the Harvard Lampoon aren't really funny. Quit hiring them as script writers for television and fire the ones you have.
6. Colorado fishermen
Is there no place to fish in Colorado? Look for one.
7. Twitter, Facebook and Reddit Posters
You are only heard, by and large, by a small limited audience. Posting vitriol of one kind or another just feeds our polarization. Take the year off on that and post on some interest other than politics or your concept of social justice. Posts on Twitter, Reddit, and Facebook change nobody's minds on those topics whatsoever.
8. Militarism. Enough already.
A person has to be really touch saying anything about this as they come across as not being a patriot or not supporting the military, or the like, but the United States needs to be at the point where it seriously reconsiders the nature and status of the military it created to deal with the Cold War.
From the countries earliest history, as colonies, up until 1947 when the Cold War started, the US based its defense on having a very small standing Army backed up by state militias, combined with a standing Navy. The Navy developed into a global force first when the age of sail yielded to the age of steam at the turn of the prior century. That made sense, as ships take years to build, last for years, and it isn't really possible to build a Navy from scratch during wartime, although we came pretty close to doing a bit of that during World War One and World War Two.
Armies, however, we pretty much built by having a small professional Army, very small, backed up by state militias. Early on, membership in the state militia was compulsory, but in later years it became voluntary. If the war was a big war, like the Civil War, World War One or World War Two, we built a large citizen Army while the Regular Army and the militia, the National Guard in later years, held the line. That's basically the way we fought the Civil War, the Spanish American War, World War One, World War Two, and the Korean War.
The problem became that for much of the Cold War we were somewhere on the brink of a hot war a lot of the time. Sometimes the Cold War broke out into hot wars, as in the examples of Korea and Vietnam, other times it just threatened to. It's now known, unbeknownst to us, that the US and the USSR became very very close to to going to war by accident in the early 1980s, and its likely only the fact that the Soviet Union's aged leadership remained cautious about war due to their memories of the Second World War, even though they were pretty convinced that NATO was about to invade them.
The USSR is gone and the wars we're now in are much, much smaller than those of the Cold War were. The wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, while definitely real wars, are minuscule compared to Vietnam and Korea.
The size of the military has very much decreased since the end of the Cold War, but it's still pretty darned big. The U.S. Army has 476,000 soldiers in it, with the National Guard adding an additional 343,000 and the Army Reserve another 199,000. In 1990 when the Soviet Union folded up its tent, the Army had 750,000 men and the national Guard nearly that, combined with at least 400,000 in the Reserves.
So the military is much smaller, but it has a lot of problems and those problems are highly concentrated in the bureaucratic culture that naturally came about as a result of the Cold War. The pre World War Two U.S. Army lacked that to a significant degree as it was so small and had so much to do. The bureaucracy now ingrained in the military is highly corporate and it hurts the nation's defense. It's not surprising that the Marine Corps, the nation's smallest military branch, is the branch that is the most martial, if you will. Even it, however, is restrained in its internal nature by an infection of social politics that has gotten into it.
In the post Vietnam War period the Army really suffered as its cohesion was destroyed by the war. This was much less the case for the other branches of the service but they all suffered to some degree. Ronald Reagan, however, put the Cold War service back on its feet in its final years and in a lot of ways the military we have today dates to that period. Reagan deserves a lot of credit for what he did at that time, but the vestiges of it have become a problem.
One of the ways that's constantly exhibited is the absurd flood of money that enters the service's coffers on a continual basis that should't. The Army has been working on a replacement for the lousy AR rifle platform for decades now when just about anyone who knows anything about service rifles well knows that adopting something in the 6.5x55 range with an action that's something like the G3s or the FALs is what is needed. Floods of money, however, have gone into what nearly amounts to a permanent project that produces no results. To make matters worse, nearly any small arm adopted by the infantry branch of the Army is rejected by the Marines, whose budgeting allows it to buy something else, which is absurd. The Army and the Marine Corps can't even agree on what boots to buy, so they don't.
The most flagrant example of things being out of control is the recent creation of a United States Space Force, which was created last year in anticipation of a need to defend our interests in space. This is flat out absurd. Right now the Air Force is perfectly competent to do that, to the extent we need to. And there isn't much of a need to.
The Space Force ends up becoming our eighth uniformed service, including the Army, Marines, Air Force, Navy, Coast Guard, NOAA and the Public Health Service. This excludes, of course, police branches of various government agencies of which there are now a plethora, but which is a separate topic entirely.
We don't need a Space Force and never will. If we ever need something like that, we have it handled right now. And we also need less of a military in general and one that costs a lot, lot less.
That sounds pretty radical in this day and age, particularly with two wars still going on. But the service needs to be cut down to size now that the Cold War is over. We could once again get by with an Army of 250,000 men backed up by a National Guard twice that size. I won't opine on the size of the Air Force or the Navy, as I don't know enough about their war fighting needs to do so, but scaling back the cash register at this point is really necessary.
So, I guess, that's a 2020 budget resolution.
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So what did we say on this before? Well, here's the prior editions:
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