What's the big difference between a Trump administration and the previous one?

So far, it looks like the biggest difference Globalist vs Nationalist.  Certainly, there are many differences of varying degree.  But, for the moment, it looks like a knock down drag out fight between those that consider America to be it's own country and those that consider America to be a global father figure.

As much is one would prefer to lend a helping hand, what we do is often more likely considered meddling than helping.  More to the point, it was no accident, nor was it short sighted that the founders of this country enumerated the necessity to avoid foreign entanglement.

As we have seen for the past 100 years in this country, the downfall of the USA has been tied to foreign entanglement.

Snowflake Storm 2017

#NotMySnowflake

The snow(flake) storm of 2017 has been vicious.  Everywhere you look there are entitled babies screaming about hatred, racism, and intolerance. 

The interesting part is that the build their message on their own hatred, racism, and intolerance.

Not only is it incredibly convenient to call others these names, but it is also significantly hypocritical.  How does one expect to be taken seriously when they use hate to attack those that do not hate?  How can a snowflake project their own racism on others simply because they don't yet understand that emotion without logic is less "right" and more closely identified as a mental disease?

If snowflakes wish to be taken seriously, there are a few things they must do.  Firstly, put down the kool aide.  Just because emotion is "easier" to process than logic, give logic a chance.  Sometimes just saying something doesn't make it true.  Sometimes saying it enough and getting others to say it makes it feel so good that reality is no longer important.  Once a snowflake falls into that trap, they are no longer able to understand why others do not experience the same reality that they do.  Secondly, be honest.  Admit you don't want to debate or even discuss.  You want others to agree with you wholeheartedly.  You find yourself empowered by the notion that you are abe to dismiss somebody with self righteous anger for not agreeing with you.  Relax, realize that you're not as special as the participation trophy made you feel.  Take a breath and realize that your parents and teachers let you down when they led you to believe that being such a short sighted and annoying creature was somehow "ok".

Privacy, the iPhone, and your Fingerprint

Technology has a way of making things easy.  Its easy to get reminded about appointments otherwise forgotten.  Its easy to get a thought instantly delivered to the recipient via quick txt message.  We have the ability to discover, save, and share with the click of a button (or voice command).

However, technology comes with a price.  Forgetting the 2yr contract, the monthly bill, and the exposure to various electromagnetic fields, users of technology are giving up their privacy in order to get these conveniences.  

In the past, people have joked about the government or some hidden entity having a "file" on them.  While there may or may not have been a file on you, there have been files on individuals in the past.  Creating these files required first identifying the person as being "of interest".  From that point, actual "work" was required to create this file, fill it with as much pertinent information as possible, and keep it updated.  This was a manual process and rather laborious.

Even with the proliferation of internet access, this was still excessively manual.  While aggregating information or sharing it would be easier, tracking was still hit or miss and required much vetting of bulk data.

However, the advent of accessible portable electronics such as telephones has changed the game.  Not only do we have constant access to these devices, but they are linked to us in a much more personal manner than ever before in the history of tech.  The vetting of data is flipped where the 10% is invalid data and the 90% of automatically aggregated data is accurate.  More to the point, we dont have to be targeted in order for a file to be created.  With facebook and google, we build our own file.

Our likes, dislikes, opinions, interests, strengths, and weaknesses are cataloged by us.  Our locations, habits, and actions are tied through a battery operated device we pay to track us.  While these are all great conveniences, there is potential for abuse.

Having worked in tech since the early 1990's, there are many undocumented aspects of this technology which are ripe for abuse.  Personally, I've processed a few FBI subpoenas and noticed the "reaching" aspect of their requests.  At that point, there were no agreements with google, apple, facebook to streamline getting information "directly" from their databases.  Of course NSA was rumored to have direct access to global telecommunication switching equipement inside the USA.  While I wont go into the location or company, its long been since known that they do have that access (even before Snowden released the information he acquired.)

Back to the point, data aggregation is no longer hard, no longer complicated, and no longer single digit percentage in accuracy.  Add the ability to tie a fingerprint to a device and one can pinpoint the location of a specific person or group of persons with great accuracy.  The ability to make a psychological profile of a random individual can be made with much greater accuracy based on information collected within minutes of deeming that person "of interest".

Lets forget IOS for a minute and skip over to Android.  The newer Galaxy S4 has the ability to read the eye of its user.  Slight software modifications can cause this device (or subsequent devices) read/monitor and log microexpressions.  Instead of keeping track of what you read, this type of device has the ability to log how you react to what you read.

Not only can a profile be built by targeting what information you are exposed to, but information can be tailored to your profile in order to nudge your opinion on a subject.  We dont live in a world where one story is written for a publication, printed thousands of times, and delivered to many doors.  We now have the technological ability to make 10 different versions of the news, and deliver the versions that people want to read.  Although it is not happening today, the ability to nudge the minds of millions exists and its in your pocket every day.

The unfortunate aspect of technology is its potential for abuse.  Of course its being abused already, but not to the point that it can be used.  However, be aware, the devices you surround yourself with have the potential to see, hear, save, and relay everything that happens around them.  

 

the basics of "gun control"

Possibly alternately titled "gun control for dummies" or "simplicity of gun control"

To start, the phrase "gun control" is misleading. Historically, gun control has been associated with attempts to disarm populations. The United States, having the right to keep and bear arms enumerated in the Constitution, has had a harder time disarming their people.

Disarming Americans is complicated by a number of factors. The states would have to all agree at the same time to ignore or rewrite the constitution. Considering that there is a mixture of red and blue states, that has not happened. Additionally, Americans are aware of the fact that their natural right to defend themselves happens to be enumerated in the founding documents of the country.

More to the point, Americans are aware of the OBVIOUS attempts to INFRINGE the natural rights enumerated in the Constitution. Given that, there is national murmuring about what to do should the government turn on its citizens. The general consensus is that military and police would never go along with it and the citizens would be safe from that particular tyranny.

Considering this, there are a few things about gun control that seem to be commonly misunderstood. For one, the militia is not the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines. The militia is "the people". Also, the weapons protected by the constitution would be those sufficient for defending a person or the people from threats to themselves or their country.

Of course there are certain shoe horned legislations which ban some of these weapons. Right or wrong, it happened and the people have not found a need to stand up and make an issue of it. That is one of the reasons that political currents push towards further limitations. Politicians understand that their agendas will usually not be realized with one piece of legislations, but rather chipped away over time.

- insert tragedy here: we must ban guns in order to prevent this from happening again.
sadly, this is an opportunistic use of tragedy twisted to attack the innocent by comparing unrelated concepts. this was made obvious in the recent senate hearings and subsequent followup comments by various people iincluding joe biden.

- nobody needs an ar15: the largest problem with this statement is that its not consistent with the subject at hand. there has never been a requirement that a person "need" to exercise a right in order to exercise it. most popularly as of late, Rosa Parks didn't "need" to sit in the front of the bus. in summary, we don't need to need an ar15 in order to have one. the government, if it wishes to take them, does however, "want" to take them away.

- nobody needs more than 7 rounds: this is a recently popularized statement. the biggest problem with this statement is that it falls back to the subjective term "need". who determines need? at what point does a third party defining need become infringement? defense experts, including police and military, have acknowledged that the more rounds available to a defender, the less that defender has to interact with the weapon beyond using it directly for defence.

- assault weapons should not be available to the public: this is the most frustrating argument. weapons are identified with a term easily marketed as FUD to those that have no knowledge on the subject allowing quick uninformed opinions to be formed. The weapons classified as "assault weapons" are so classified based on looks. their function is identical to other semi-automatic weapons, but they "look" scary. More to the point, considering that the 2nd Amendment was for defense against anything, modern weapons were required to provide defense.

Sadly, FUD (Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt), misinformation, outright lies, and political bullies seem to be twisting an important part of our Constitution against the people.

He's Got A Gun

This phrase holds many meanings.  Depending upon the situation, it can be a good thing, a bad thing, or a simple point of fact.

In a situation where the "he" is a criminal intent upon doing something violent, it has a very negative connotation.  It is a warning cry.  It is an exclamation of distress.

In a situation where help is needed, and somebody able to help has a gun, it is a phrase of hope.

In a situation where somebody is wondering who happens to have a gun nearby, simply out of curiosity, it is an indifferent answer to a request for information.

The simple act of "having a gun" is sometimes misconstrued to be an act of (or at least precursor) to violence.  At some point, society has let itself be programmed to think of guns as evil.  While not all have this opinion, there is significant evidence that large demographics have come to view guns as evil.

This change has caused many to fear guns.  Of course there are many houses with guns behind the door.  In point of fact, I see them all the time.   Some would say that I have become desensitized to their evil simply because I see them so frequently.  However, that is the contrary argument in that it is based on guns actually being evil.  We are actually seeing people being desensitized to the usefulness of guns.  

Nightly, we are faced with television programming (an apt word actually) where guns are either horribly evil devices OR they are salvation when in the hands of government employees.  I find it interesting that we are willingly subjecting ourselves to reeducation about guns.  How can we seriously allow ourselves to be trained to think that guns are bad when citizens have them, but somehow good when a random third party with three letters on their jacket has them?

There is no gun training available that makes their use sacred when controlled by the government and evil when controlled by the individual.  The best ATF/FBI/DHS agent in the world is still "following orders" from a third party.  By programming people to think that only the government can be trusted with guns, we are abdicating their use to the oversight of an often unnamed bureaucrat of which we should have no trust.

 

Lets Talk About Gun Control

Gun Control is a hot topic at times.  Certain agendists get terribly excited when there is a tragedy which can be capitalized on in order to trick the unknowing masses into ignorantly jumping on to their bandwagon.

With the proper framing, one can easily be led by emotion to irresponsible conclusions.  A prime example would be the opportunistic abuse of a mass shooting which took over the news media recently.  Rather than understanding what happened and dealing with that, certain groups and politicians have stolen the incident and tailored it to their needs.   Before facts were known, they made up their own.  Before motivations were known, they made up their own.  Unfortunately, many members of the public, to blind and weak to form their own opinions, have glommed on to the agendized version of the story and formed knee jerk opinions.

Sadly, many of these people are unaware of the direction the country would take should their knee jerk reactions become policy.  The generations before them knew what it was like to live in a country without freedom.  Much blood has been shed by those that built this country in order to create the freedom that we have been born into.  This seems to have created an environment where freedom is owed, not preserved.  Our generations are burning through our remaining freedom like a trust fund kid that never had to earn his/her keep.

Not only have we allowed freedom to erode, but we've done it in the name of expedience.  We pretend that packing people into cities like cattle (without opportunity) and increasing the headcount exponentially is somehow only a problem because guns exist.  We have media that reports every time a crime is committed with a firearm, but never when a crime is stopped with one.  We have an anti-firearm indoctrination that says the 2nd amendment was about muskets and hunting rather than preserving the foundation of our country (that the people tell the government what to do, not that the government tells the people what to do).

On the surface, this seems like a mixture of laziness (the government will do it for me) and the indoctrination that we are owed (the government has to take care of me).  The 4th amendment has been eviscerated by Bush and Obama with the Patriot Act (which oddly has nothing to do with anything patriotic.  Presumably this was named "patriot" in an effort to make people ignore the fact that it directly violates the 4th amendment.)  Freedom is fading.  We havn't had to earn it.  We havn't stood up when politicians attack the core of our country.  We have been lazy.  We have become the herd of cattle of which the government has assumed ownership.

Something as simple as this blog is possible only because of the 1st Amendment.  At the rate of which we are losing freedom and control of our Democratic Republic, how long will we even have that?  We are so busy fighting over which letter is better (D or R) that we run in circles while DR railroads us with stupid legislation.  The best thing that could happen to our government would be denying them any authority not specifically allowed in the Constitution.  Imagine if our legislator were required to DO THEIR JOBS as provided by the laws of our country instead of making up new laws to the contrary?

Imagine waking up and finding the average citizen is done letting the media use emotional stories to shape their opinions.  Imagine a country of critical thinkers that can see through the BS of Washington. There needs to be a national dialog.  We need to "Demand A Plan".  Of course, this dialog and resulting plan should be directed at preventing politicians from destroying freedom in exchange for campaign contributions.  

iFtHEN-ThenIf-iFtHEN- IF THEN

World of Ifs.

Ideology is based on core tenets.  Those concepts are either correct or incorrect.  However, they are not usually "provable".  Further, they are generally in contrast with what is considered right or wrong in some other ideology.

In politics, for example, there are numerous ideologies in contention at all times.  Group A is "right" and must enforce their views upon groups B-Z.  logically, groups B though Z can be substituted for A and iterated through for a more expansive, exhaustive, and redundant list of how ideological contention predicated on "right" or "correct" begins to lose it's sure standing as actually being "right" or "correct".

However, the larger point is that they are ALL right when analyzed from a specific perspective and filtered with the word IF.

The most obvious example would be pro life vs pro choice.

IF life begins at conception, then pro life is correct.  pro choice simply has no argument that choice displaces killing.

IF life begins at the first breath, then pro choice is correct in that there is no life to kill, hence the fetus is simply an extension of the bearers body.

Nearly every political point that is used to divide the population in argument is based on an IF.  We even vote under the assumption that IF this election is fair, my vote will be counted.  Further, we vote with the presumption that IF this candidate gets elected, he/she will or will not generate some specific change or stability.

However, people seldom consider that IF the thing that they base their assumption on is incorrect, that they are promoting a false cause.  To this point, we are all subject becoming the "sheep" or "useful idiots" of those that provide said information.

Consider how many opinions are dictated, directly or otherwise, by various media.  In the most popular case, "Mainstream Media" feeds populations with specific information at a specific pace.  To a growing extent, alternate media feeds populations with information contrary to mainstream.  More often than not, those bits of information are inconsistent with each other.

Which is right?  How can we know?  Simply put, those with power and influence do have the ability to rewrite history.  The average person will never be truly "in the know" and will react and respond to those things in media which resonate with them.  Every person on this planet is subjected to information that cannot be personally verified each day.  Every person on this planet makes some sort of decision about those bits of information.  We chose to make them true or false.

Furthermore, debating is not about finding the truth.  Debate is about beating your opponent with words and ideas with no regard to fact.  Debate winners are often supporting the fact of weaker stance with better performance.

The next time we stand up and claim to know something, we should realize that we do not honestly know enough truth about the situation to know anything.  Our knowledge is predicated upon the IF that we base out truth...