The national election, which will serve as a performance review for Donald Trump, is seven days away, with fresh polls providing worry for both parties. As of Tuesday morning, over 66-million Americans had already cast their 2020 ballots – almost equal to 50% of all ballots cast in 2020.
Bad news for team Trump came out of Iowa and Georgia. In Iowa, Trump hasn’t had a reliable poll indicating he has a lead since October 11. In Georgia, a recent series of polls are showing a dead heat.
Although Texas moved for our forecast firewall state after a weekend of bad news for Trump, the polls have stabilized. The second-largest electoral college haul hasn’t voted for a Democratic presidential candidate since 1996.
For Biden, the race in North Carolina, Florida, and Arizona have tightened. All three states are now polling within the margin of error. If the 2016 polling eras repeat, all three states will tip to Trump. In contrast, Pennsylvania still holds a safe margin for Biden. In contrast, Biden has firmed up his grip in Wisconsin, Michigan, and Minnesota, while Nevada remains the firewall state.
Analysts and pundits have spilled a lot of digital ink the last few days, attempting to read between the lines. The hateful rhetoric, COVID impacting in-person voting, and less interest in third-party candidates have made projecting 2016 onto 2020 a fool’s errand. There are some knowns and discovered factors that can be projected onto the numbers:
People waiting to vote on election day favors undecided and younger voters; undecided voters will likely break to Trump while younger voters are favoring Biden
Hilary Clinton in 2016 never polled above 50%; in contrast, Biden has consistently polled above 50% and held an 8% to 11% aggregate lead over Trump through October
2016 third-party candidates Johnson (Libertarian) and Stein (Green Party) carried about 5% of the vote in both Michigan and Wisconsin; none of the third-party candidates have momentum in 2020
With so many early ballots cast, an October surprise such as the 2016 Comey Memo would likely have less impact on either candidate
Polls in 2016 were off about 3%, but it wasn’t even across all states – repeating that same margin of error, Biden safely would win the 2020 election
Analysis of 2016 polls showed regional differences; the southwest under-represented Democratic support while over-representing support in the rust belt and the states of Pennsylvania, North Carolina, and Florida
The same analysis indicated that Georgia polls were accurate, along with Texas
Neither candidate nor their supporters should be thinking the election is already over. By our analysis, the race has tightened to 298 vs. 240, a Biden win. Real Clear Politics no toss-up map paints a grimmer picture for Trump, 311 vs. 227, Biden. Hopefully, we’ll know on November 4.
Responsible, journalistic streaming is not an idiot holding a smartphone.
Responsible streaming is not streaming while protesting at the same time, within the body of protesters.
On Saturday morning, Hiram Gilberto, a highly respected streamer out of Austin, Texas, was savagely beaten on camera by a group of protesters. His equipment was destroyed and he was hospitalized. He is now home recovering from a concussion and his injuries include a black eye, bruises, cuts, and scrapes.
There are some dedicated journalists and independents. Locally peeps like Concrete Reporting and Joey can tell you it is hard, it is dangerous, and it comes with almost no reward.
The cops don’t want you filming.
The protesters increasingly don’t want you filming.
The alt-right wants you dead, literally.
The left complains you show too much.
The right complains you don’t show enough.
Journalistic streamers run into the line of fire, not away from it.
Journalistic streamers are vigilant to report the story, not become the story.
In Seattle, respectful streamers spend most of their time in a no man’s land on the police line’s edge. No one has your back. You’re typically the last person through an intersection. If you’re hanging back as you should, somebody could waffle stomp you, or the police could arrest you, and no one would know. Increasingly when protesters chant, “who got our backs, we got our backs, “streamers cringe on the inside.
Journalistic streamers can spend 3, 4, even 6 hours walking without a break, without a bathroom, without a sip of water. They are holding equipment steady, answering questions, providing real-time narration. They are continually asking questions to themselves. Do I have enough battery charge? Is the lens still clean? Who is behind me, who is beside me, what is that car doing, is that person following me a threat?
The fallacy that someone can shoot four hours of raw video and then edit it for release misses a critical point. If you take four hours of video, you have to watch four hours of video before you even start to edit it. Mass editing of content at that scale requires computing horsepower, technical knowledge that isn’t common, and an enormous amount of time. Most streamers don’t even do highlight clips post stream because it is a tremendous amount of time.
Video stored locally has no concurrent backup (MP4 doesn’t support that). It is far easier for law enforcement to copy off of a device. On a phone or camera with a memory card, that card could just…disappear. Who will believe someone arrested when they say the memory card is gone and the police say it was never there.
Then there are three other 800-pound elephants in the room. First, organizations exist today that create highlight reels of protests and the Black Lives Matter movement; they’re called the mainstream media. They show the essential bits, mostly involving police officers. What they offer is violence, what we like to call protest porn. No one from the MSM has contacted me saying, “Hey, we saw your 3 hours of peaceful protest live stream from Saturday, and we’d like to use it for this news story we’re working on.”
Second, the streamer only has one insurance policy for their personal safety, the stream. If they are arrested, a stream shows a before-during-after and is stored in the cloud. The device can’t be smashed, and the memory card can’t disappear. If they are violently attacked, the stream is the only witness to the assault. An immediate example of this is Brad Fox in CHOP in the late hours of June 28 and his unrelated bullshit arrest about a month later. His stream was the witness to both of these incidents.
No one is going to watch a 2-1/2 hour previously recorded peaceful protest. However, the 2-1/2 hour peaceful protest is needed to fight the “all protesters are violent thugs” narrative. An edited video is quickly dismissed with the declaration, “you edit your videos, so you just took out the bad parts.”
An example of this was a right-wing streamer in Bellevue on October 24, claimed a Starbucks was destroyed. The “proof” was shaky at best, but the story picked up momentum on the eastside. The narrative? “Here is a video of the police rushing to this Starbucks! It got destroyed!” That was good enough for people who want to believe the BLM movement is violent.
When a journalist, and Hiram is absolutely a journalist, is assaulted, we are all assaulted. Not only is Hiram a journalist, but he is also an individual of great ethics.
Should Hiram have taken a walk? Probably. Should he have been hospitalized? Absolutely not; it is disgusting. When you beat reporters in the name of “security,” you become the system you’re fighting.
You cannot watch videos of the violence against the press and condemn it if you support what happened to Hiram. Examples include the Australian news crew beaten by Washington DC police, the US head from the British news organization The Independent falsely arrested in Seattle, or the reporters from The Daily Caller arrested in Louisville. To point to these examples of police brutality, declare “All Cops Are Bastards” and then spin around and beat a reporter senseless is hypocrisy.
Pot meet kettle.
Kettle meet pot.
Worst of all, Austin defunded their police department by over 30% with almost no drama. Texas has shown at least some willingness to address the systemic racism within the police of their state. In comparison, Washington and Oregon appear like racist backwaters.
The actions of these protesters feed the rioters and thugs narrative. It ironically goes against their claims of being endangered by the camera. Beating someone senseless on camera, when your claim being on camera could get you arrested, is ironic. And using the word ironic is charitable. We stand with Hiram and his defense of the First Amendment, which includes a free press.
If you want to support Hiram Gilberto
You can support Hiram Gilberto in his recovery and to secure new equipment on CashApp and Venmo:
I want to start this with the direct statement that Black lives matter.
The thoughts and observations here are my own. As an individual who is a BIPOC ally and motivated to take bold action after witnessing SPDs repeated treatment of peaceful protesters, I have spent long hours in CHOP.
I’ve had rubber bullets shot at me, teargas and pepper spray in my eyes and lungs, and dodge flash-bang grenades. I have carried the wounded from advancing SPD treating peaceful protesters as a free-fire zone. I have watched SPD repeatedly lie despite undeniable video evidence from every imaginable angle. I have been threatened online and in-person for documenting history.
I have received only a small taste of what the BIPOC community goes through daily and find it mentally exhausting. How can anyone live like this? The nation’s maltreatment of BIPOC peoples has gone on for four centuries, that is four centuries too long. We have to admit our past, to acknowledge our ugly history, and demand an end to institutional racism.
Black lives matter.
Since May 31, 2020, CHOP’s (CHAZ) message is becoming lost due to the deteriorating security situation and the actions of some who are overtaking the space. Change is never a straight line, and change can be frightening and painful. There are people deeply invested in the current system, from all sides, who don’t want to see change. Others are looking at change as if it were a transaction, and preying on the opportunity to profit from it. Others want to see violent change, to serve as proof that the status quo must be maintained.
CHOP is a mustard seed trying to grow in a harsh desert. The fractures we see in our nation, and the support for Black lives matter around the world, are screaming in a loud voice, we need to change.
As I write this, I am well aware that Mayor Durkan has a press conference planned at 4 PM. We may well be seeing the end of CHOP. At the minimum, we will likely see the beginning of the political will to end CHOP. I appeal to the organizers that they should not let this happen, and have the message of Black lives matter fade with it. But clearly, there is a need for change within CHOP.
End support for a homeless encampment within CHOP
The Seattle Police Department has been actively rounding up some of the most troubled souls afflicted by drug addiction, alcoholism, and chronic homelessness and dropping them off at CHOP. As someone who was highly engaged in Occupy and an individual who visited multiple cities to help with their efforts, I saw this same tactic employed across the United States. Embracing the chronically homeless with addiction and or mental health issues is altruistic. It appeals to the aspiration of equality, hope, and is symbolic of the best of humanity. A tent encampment is not a valid replacement for the proper support services of the homeless.
The Puget Sound Business Journal estimates King County spends $100K a year per homeless person in the county. This isn’t a failure of CHOP; this is a failure of Seattle and King County. Bluntly put, an outdoor park is no substitute for mental health beds, drug addiction treatment, social workers, and transitional housing. I appeal to the organizers to dissolve the homeless encampment within CHOP, and not allow SPD to make society’s failure, CHOP’s failure. Continued access to CHOP for shelter also perpetuates homelessness, by detaching those in need from available services.
Organizers should meet with the city of Seattle and King County to create a transitional plan for the homeless there for shelter in cooperation. We did this in Everett, Washington, during Occupy and were able to negotiate and secure housing for every homeless person there.
Create a council of leaders with no appointed head, and a visible acknowledgment of who those people are
History has taught us that leaders within a movement become targets for those who don’t want change. From Malcolm X to Robert Finicum, representing both ends of the political spectrum, our history cannot be denied. But CHOPs very loose organization creates confusion and different messages to the world. Having a “we are all leaders” policy is no longer benefiting the movement or the core message of Black lives matter.
I appeal that CHOP creates a more formal leadership structure akin to a council, with no appointed leader, making it harder to discredit and eliminate. I am aware of the Occupy-style daily councils, but history has shown this can’t scale. Further, at Occupy Seattle, those with political agendas would bring their supporters to the council to vote in a block counter-productive measures. These actions pushed out many supporters, and the message became lost. Please learn from this history.
Improve security during nighttime hours
The organizers of CHOP want to prove to the world against impossible odds that they can create change without militarized police interaction. The Seattle Police Department and Seattle Fire Department hide behind, “policy,” and, “protocol,” which only escalate situations. Not only is this happening in CHOP, but documented at Judkins Park on Juneteenth. The security situation at CHOP changes dramatically from 11 PM to 6 AM.
The security situation needs to be addressed to assure safety not just for CHOP, but the residents who live within the boundaries. Remember, these people did not choose, and most represent peoples sympathetic to the cause (most, not all). The history of revolution and change carries the same message if you want to achieve your goals, “hearts and minds.” You have to win hearts and minds, and that starts with the residents and businesses within CHOP.
Create quiet hours so everyone can get some proper sleep
CHOP organizers should create quiet hours in alignment with the state of Seattle, King County, and Washington. Everyone, from those protecting CHOP, the medic teams, those maintaining the occupation, and the residents within not only deserve good sleep but also require it. Sleep-deprived individuals are more prone to anger, lower cognitive ability, and irritability. It is a volatile mix contributing to the issues. I repeat the words, “hearts and minds,” and I’ll echo the words I have heard repeated, “this isn’t Coachella.”
At Occupy in Seattle, Seattle Police used sleep deprivation techniques of loud music, sirens, and running through the encampment to dissolve the will of those staying there. Please stop making SPD’s job easier.
Just like medical teams, armed security should be recognizable
I appeal to the security team to adopt something that makes them recognizable as security. Some security volunteers wear shirts that say security; other’s don’t. For the community, it makes it impossible to determine when someone is open carrying if they are part of security, making a show of force, or have bad intentions. Designated security should be more recognizable, especially armed security.
Move some barricades to improve safety, even if it is against the will of the city of Seattle
The events of the last 72 hours have shown that moving the barricades back by 10th and East Pine created a serious security risk. I appeal to CHOP organizers to move the barriers whether the city supports this or not, and eliminate drive-through access from 10th to East Pine.
Stop censorship within CHOP
There has been growing hostility toward the live stream, photography, blogger, and mainstream media community. When an organization tries to control the narrative, that organization’s reputation is tarnished. Citizens have every right to say I don’t want to be on video or photographed. Threatening and assaulting individuals, many who are there with the singular purpose of communicating the message Black Lives Matter goes against everything Black lives matter stands for.
If you don’t allow the documentation of the real story, you become no better than the system you are fighting. You can’t say you have a right to protest and assembly, and then ignore the other parts of the First Amendment. The confiscation of camera equipment and the assault of those peacefully recording history should not be acceptable in any society and should have no place in CHOP.
Focus energy on Black lives matter
Finally, I ask that when a council is created, they focus on the real matters at hand—Black lives matter. Activities, actions, and people that aren’t committed to this movement should not be part of the movement. You can achieve this by having more structure and planning while not working to control every second. If an activity that doesn’t focus on equality, Black lives matter, justice, or police reform is planned, we should be asking, “why are we doing this?” There should be time for celebration, reflection, and to enjoy each other in brotherhood, but distractions from the core message need to be reduced. Please end the hijacking of CHOP and Black lives matter. As an example, no one should be profiting off of the misery of the Black community by selling $30 Black Lives Matter t-shirts within CHOP.
When George Floyd was a child, he wanted to be a supreme court justice. In Houston, he was known as a man of God, a man who learned from his past and trying to show others a better way. I am not a religious man and have my sincere doubts about Heaven and Hell. If there is a place after this, it is incumbent upon all BIPOC allies to not let this catalyst of change disappear in a cloud. We can continue on the path Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. started over 50 years ago. A journey rekindled in the American spirit through George’s Floyd’s dying words. Black lives matter. No one should ever again declare, “I can’t breathe,” as their essence is squeezed out by the very people who are supposed to protect and serve.
I believe that CHOP can survive the events of the last 72 hours, but all of us who are allies must take swift action. It is incumbent upon those who support equality, an end to institutional racism, and an end to police brutality to make the required adjustments to keep this movement going.
Do you wake up in the morning with a song playing in your head? Am I the only person? Every day, a different song. This morning it was Song of the South, by Alabama.
I lived in southeast Texas for almost eight years. Most of that time was spent on the western fringes of Houston or just across the Brazos in Fort Bend County. My parents had retired to the Big Piney Woods along the shores of Lake Livingston. A million acres of low pines, swamps, shallow rivers, and lakes. Timber was a significant industry with Temple Inland sawmills dotting the area.
This video was done in 1990 and was targeting a country music audience
When I arrived in Texas, it was during what I call the Golden Era of Country Music. The AM radio of Dolly, Kenny, and Ronnie, had faded away to this fantastic blending of southern rock, rockabilly, and blues, while still grounded in traditional country roots. Early arrivers to this renaissance, such as Alabama, The Judds, Keith Whitley, and John Anderson, paved the way for an explosion of talent. This Massachusetts Yankee bought boots, a hat, became a two-stepping fool, and devoured music by Travis Tritt, Garth Brooks, Suzy Boggus, Mary Chapin-Carpenter, and Brooks & Dunn. Garth Brooks did this Chris Gaine thing, Shania Twain showed up, country music went pop, and I went alternative rock with Smashing Pumpkins, Alice in Chains, Green Day, and Live. That’s another story, but I still have the hat.
Then country music took a hard right turn after 9/11. Alan Jackson gave us Where Were You and Toby Keith gave us Courtesy of the Red, White, and Blue. If you missed the Golden Age of Country Music – you missed when Country Music had a conscience, and issues such as the environment, equality, and domestic violence were themes.
The official video for Feed Jake is likely a victim of legal agreements, but I found this mashup that has added a live performance to the visuals, likely to work around copyright laws.
Feed Jake – Pirates of the Mississippi
Seminole Wind – John Anderson
Pass it on Down – Alabama
Little Rock – Collin Raye
The Thunder Rolls – Garth Brooks (studio cut)
Wolves – Garth Brooks
Cafe on the Corner – Sawyer Brown
Independence Day – Martina McBride
Is There Life Out There – Reba McEntire
I rattled that list off without thinking, and if I spent some time noodling on this, I could come up with a lot more. Alabama graces that list – with the environmental anthem of Pass it on Down. With exceptions to Garth Brooks’ Wolves, all of these songs were significant hits with massive airplay and videos on CMT.
The ending of the Little Rock video used to have an 800 number to call if you were suffering from addiction, it has since been removed
However, this morning, Song of the South was playing in my head. I never really listened to the lyrics carefully. Still, I could tell you it was about the period from around the 1920s to 1940, the Great Depression, the establishment of the TVA, urbanization, and a lifestyle that vanished into the haze.
Bob McDill wrote the song, and several artists released it through the 1980s. Alabama’s cover in 1988 rocketed to number one. Bob McDill wrote one song a week for over 30 years, creating an impressive list of credits. This includes the haunting Don’t Close Your Eyes, which became Keith Whitley’s signature song, Gone Country, which might be autobiographical, and Song of the South.
Song, song of the south Sweet potato pie and I shut my mouth
Bob McGill – Song of the South
The term Song of the South can be traced back to 1881, and the Joel Chandler Harris book, Uncle Remus: His Songs and His Sayings. Disney started to negotiate with the Harris family in 1939 to make the movie Song of the South based on his writings. It was released to theaters in 1946 and Zip-a-dee-doo-dah went on to win the Oscar for best song in 1948. Actor James Baskett won an honorary Academy Award for his portrayal of Uncle Remus.
Despite the two Oscars, the Disney movie was subject to criticism at its release for romanticizing plantation life, the portrayal of Blacks, and the nature of the content. Think about this, that criticism was back in 1946! The movie has never been released in any home video format in the United States, with only the three animated musical pieces released to television. This movie hasn’t been widely distributed since Baby Boomers were in diapers, to provide some perspective.
Gone, gone with the wind There ain’t nobody looking back again
Bob McGill – Song of the South
Gone with the Wind is arguably one of the greatest movies ever produced. The film is an icon of cinema and based on Margaret Mitchell’s novel. Gone with the Wind is also written in the genre of Anti-Tom books. Anti-Tom stories were literary works that showed slave ownership from the master perspective, with slaves as happy and docile. When actress Butterfly McQueen, playing house slave Prissy declares, “I don’t know nothing about birthin’ no babies Miss Scarlett,” my eyes roll back into my head. In plantation life, the female house slaves would know all about childbirth. Her portrayal in the movie wouldn’t have been offensive during the same period when Amos and Andy crackled on the airwaves. Today, it is cringeworthy.
Cotton on the roadside, cotton in the ditch We all picked the cotton but we never got rich Daddy was a veteran, a southern democrat They oughta get a rich man to vote like that
Bob McGill – Song of the South
Alright! Now things are better! You mean this is turning into a bad episode of Adam Ruins Everything? Yes. During this era, a Southern Democrat would be for segregation, Jim Crow laws, and might be found at the evening cross burning. George Wallace, the now infamous Alabama governor? Democrat. He even ran against President Johnson in 1964 and failed. Now, a modern Republican will tell you that all these laws were put in place by Democrats. Functionally, correct, but ignores one glaring issue. In the 1970s, as the Democratic party embraced the messages of Kennedy, Johnson, and MLK, the conservatives fled. Strom Thurmond, John Connally, and Mills E. Godwin Jr all switch to the Republican party. Southern Democrats like Wallace continued to run on segregation as a platform up to 1976. By then, the Democratic party had lurched away for the racist past, and the south turned Republican red.
Well somebody told us Wall Street fell But we were so poor that we couldn’t tell Cotton was short and the weeds were tall But Mr. Roosevelt’s a gonna save us all Well momma got sick and daddy got down The county got the farm and they moved to town Pappa got a job with the TVA He bought a washing machine and then a Chevrolet
Bob McGill – Song of the South
These are the lyrics within the song I remember and was playing in my head. The TVA is the Tennessee Valley Authority, which brought hydroelectric power to Appalachia, one of the last places in the United States to get reliable electricity. Being able to buy a car and a washing machine is a nod to the arrival into the middle class. The life of picking cotton is over, and the farm, which might have an origin back in the 40 acres and a mule era, is gone. We know they aren’t sharecroppers because the county, and not a landlord, took the farm.
The radio edit to the song fades off with pipes and drums playing reminiscent of the Civil War
Life in the south from the Reconstruction Era to the end of segregation continues to be venerated. There are deep-rooted reasons for why this continues to happen. It is worth noting that Bob McGill, the writer of the song, Song of the South, was born in 1944, and likely never saw the movie Song of the South. He certainly didn’t live in this era. Growing up in the Beaumont, Texas region learning to play the viola and going on to college, he wasn’t a cotton picker. His upbringing and education influenced Song of the South (the song), which brings me to the final point.
When we engage with people who grew up in an environment where this was a 365/24/7 message and normalized, we can be more helpful if we try to walk in their shoes. There is a generation that has been raised through school textbooks, music, household discussion, religion, and politics to see the world through these filters. That life was better – for all. They’re wrong, it wasn’t, it was horrible, and no one should own another human being. I am not making excuses either, but their views have been ingrained by a system that was started in the 1880s during Reconstruction and went on at an institutional level well into the 1990s. They literally don’t know better, and that is very hard for others not raised and educated in that system to understand. It still happens today in the textbooks and language used.
Racism should have no place at the table in 2020 and here it is, reaching over to grab a roll, eating mashed potatoes from the serving spoon, and chewing with its mouth open. Song of the South should be gone with the wind, and no one should look back anymore – but look forward to a future of true equality. It is a marathon, not a sprint, and this is going to take a generation of work.
I am writing to you today to thank you for the last three-years-and-one-hundred-and-forty-seven-days of your presidency. When you were elected, you promised you would unite the American people together uttering the words, “When America is united, America is totally [sic] unstoppable.” So here we are, Mr. President, three years and 147 days later. I’m so proud as an American to see you have fulfilled your promise to unite us.
Through your divisive words and actions, good Americans from sea to shining sea are uniting. Your great words about Charlottesville, where you declared there were “very fine people, on both sides,” and you were pleading to not rush to judgment. In contrast, how quickly you condemned protesters in Minneapolis without wanting to learn more. Yes, Mr. President, you are uniting the country.
As you tightened the rules of legal immigration in the name of defending America, you placed asylum seekers and those seeking the light of freedom into the textbook definition of concentration camps. They shivered in the cold, unwashed, lacking medical treatment, a place to sleep, and even basic shelter in some cases. They died of preventable diseases, documented beatings and rapes by guards, and murdered at border crossings.
Peoples of the world, trying to escape the specter of violence, government abuses, and crushing poverty, had their children taken from them and placed in inhumane conditions. The same children were misplaced in government bureaucracy and malfeasance while their parents were deported. Yes, Mr. President, thank you for uniting us. The same children remain packed in unfit conditions, exposed to abuse, negligence, and COVID-19.
Your attacks on the free press in words and deeds have made the United States one of the most dangerous places on the planet for reporters and photographers. When faced with overwhelming evidence that the government of Saudi Arabia murdered a reporter from an American newspaper, you only gave it passing mention. Today as I write this, the news agencies that once supported you have grown weary, and cracks are forming. When confronted with their concerns, with their realization that no amount of spin can put you in a favorable light, you attack what was once your allies. Yes, Mr. President, you are uniting us with your actions.
You promised to bring dignity back to the White House and to be the hardest working President in history. For three years and 147 days, we’ve watched you use Twitter for diplomacy, spend your days watching TV, playing golf at taxpayer’s expense, and when faced with a crisis from your beloved people right outside your door, cower in fear in your basement bunker. Yes, Mr. President, you are uniting us.
You promised to control the deficit, balance the budget, and drain the swamp. Yet during a period of economic prosperity that you inherited, your tax cuts didn’t benefit 90% of Americans, enriched the top 10%, and grew our nation’s deficit by 5.2 trillion dollars in just three years 147 days. A debt that our children and our children’s children will inherit with inflation and lost prosperity. Our economy entered recession before the first COVID-19 death was reported on our shores, and you could count the active cases on one hand. Yes, Mr. President, you have united us.
Your authoritative and awe-inspiring words found within each of your Twitter broadsides vilified our friends and allies. You insulted our closest neighbors and most significant trading partners in Canada and Mexico. You have brought us to the brink of a cold war with China, left the dictatorial government of North Korea laughing at us, encouraged the Russian state, and left the globe wondering what has happened to American greatness. Yes, Mr. President, you have united us.
You claimed that the government has no place in regulating business. So you gutted environmental and wildlife protection, while placing tariffs, also know as price controls, on goods and services. The prices of those goods and services hurt businesses and ordinary Americans alike, removing any benefit from your tax cuts, and not coming close to filling the deficit hole as you promised. The farmers, coal miners, and factory workers you promised to help have been abandoned while foreign nations scammed you for tax breaks.
Your incredible response to the COVID-19 epidemic has exposed to the world that the disease ravaging our nation is not just a virus, but the impotent reaction from your leadership. Emergency rooms became overwhelmed, front-line medical workers died due to a lack of personal protection equipment, your agencies scammed by predatory companies and junk science, and our leaders in science and medicine silenced. One-hundred-and-fifteen-thousand dead Americans from what you declared was a hoax, was just the flu, would magically go away once warmer weather came. As I type this, the southern and southwestern states are being devastated by your hoax. Your playbook of distraction and Twitter diplomacy didn’t work against a virus. The world has learned that we are nothing but a paper tiger, with fragile infrastructure and resources.
Despite all of these missteps toward greatness, your support hasn’t wavered. Your staunchest allies and enablers have stood by you while trying to steer your course. Yet you continue to ignore the Constitution, jurists, leaders, scientists, doctors, and diplomats that have been attempting to save you from yourself. Yes, Mr. President, you have united us.
As our nation watched in horror at the street execution of George Floyd on a Minneapolis street, his life squeezed from him as he cried out for his mother, the people became united. You went to your same playbook to divide, vilify, and tweet. As the people you profess to love unprecedently protested outside your door, you built a wall, you hid in a bunker and watched the TV you deny you watch. You threatened to send federal troops against your People, to the disgust and disdain of retired and active-duty generals and admirals. You had peaceful protesters pepper-sprayed and beaten for a photo op at a church. As you spoke of law and order from the White House, a house built by slaves, the nation could hear your state-sanctioned violence against the First Amendment in the background. Yes, Mr. President, you have united us.
I want to thank you, President Trump, for the last three years and 147 days. Because of you, your words, and your deeds, I was able to see the hatred and racism that existed right under my nose. I could see what I thought were friends, for what they are. By encouraging the forces that want to destroy this nation, you exposed the great lie that there is equality in the eyes of the law, that the police forces of this nation have just a few bad apples, and make rare, but very public mistakes. I always suspected these were narratives were false, but you provided the proof.
You have united the American people, Mr. President, in a way that I never thought would be possible three years and 147 days ago. We are joined in historic protest from coast to coast and border to border—six-hundred-and-fifty cities and towns across America, from the biggest to the smallest. From marches measured in the hundreds of thousands to lone vigils of one. All these people, united against the hatred, the fear, and the anger you’ve fomented tweet after hateful tweet. Yes, Mr. President, you have united us.
We are united to no longer accept the idea that racism has been resolved in this country, or is just a passing problem. Because of you, the good people of this county who didn’t think these were real issues are now learning that it is deeply rooted in the very things you defend, and rotten to the core.
We see you for what you are, a dotard, barely able to stand on their own, obsessed with what people think of you. A narcissist, staring at their magic mirror, listening only to those who say yes. Outside your bunker, a giant has awoken and been filled with a great resolve to bring about change to our nation. Yes, Mr. President, you have united us.
I have watched first hand since May 30 as Black, white, Latino/Latina, Asian, Hispanic, indigenous, native-born, and immigrant have marched in peaceful protest. I have seen first hand the excessive force applied by our militarized police departments using CS and OC gas on peaceful citizens, firing rubber bullets, striking with batons, shocking with Tasers, and preventing peaceful assembly. My eyes have stung, my lungs have burned, and I have personally carried the wounded as I documented the actions you sanctioned.
The violence was so great that our allies in the United Kingdom have voted to stop selling rubber bullets and teargas to the United States. Violence on the people so troubling that even in South Africa, they are marching for the Black lives in our raging and grieving nation. Yes, Mr. President, South Africa looks more enlightened in the eyes of the world than our country because of your words and deeds.
We are once again the United States of America, Mr. President. We are united against you and those who think like you. We are joined together to bring out meaningful change, for full equality, to demand that this nation treat everyone as equals. Equality does not mean that some will get less, nor is that what We the People want. We want the level playing field the American dream promises for all people. We want our minority brothers and sisters in this great race of life to run that race unshackled, unencumbered, and without the oppression of institutional racism. Mr. President, those of us that want this change outnumber those of you who don’t.
You and your supporters are focused on agitators and those who are trying to discredit this movement. I applaud that, Mr. President, because distraction is useful when you are bringing about change. While you shudder in anger watching your TV and spitting out sentence fragments on Twitter, we are using the most potent weapons we have in the American arsenal. We are leveraging our rights. We are using our right to peaceful assembly. We are using our right to freedom of speech. We are using our right to videotape and photograph, and audio record the transgressions of those who are so comfortable with racism and inaction, that they feel they can freely operate in this connected world with impunity. And, Mr. President, we are sharing those videos, pictures, and audio clips, on Twitter for the world to see. We are using your actions to demand change at a local, county, and state level and, on November 3, at the federal level too.
Had you told me, Mr. President, that you would unite our nation in a singular fierce voice demanding change in just three years and 147 days, I would have said it was impossible. I had expected incompetence and hatred, but I never realized how dark your heart is, how you lack a soul, and how deep corruption runs to your core. You made these things mainstream and revealed the ugliness of America hiding in plain sight behind gossamer curtains. Those curtains, Mr. President, have been torn down.
On November 3, 2020, the American people will decide on whether they want to renew The Donald Trump Show for four more seasons. Forty-million unemployed, the numbers without health insurance exploding, institutional racism and violence defended by you, the Constitution defiled, 115,000 dead from COVID-19 and counting, and protests in 650 cities from coast-to-coast.
Thank you, Mr. President, for uniting us and putting America, for the first time in more than a generation, on a path to greatness. We, the people, are screaming in a singular voice, “no more.”
There is no Batman, Commissioner Gordon, or Harvey Dent, but Seattle is full of Jokers
Radalyn King drove her Nissan Sentra at speeds up to 80 MPH on the city streets. She closed her eyes and laughing crashed her car into the sidewalk, killing two and injuring two others. She then tried to run away from the wreck, where citizens held her until the police showed up. Laughing and drugged out of her mind, King was arrested.
Jonathan James Wilson, who had multiple arrests for violence and assault, grabbed a woman in broad daylight as she walked to work and declared, “Do you want to go over the edge?” The 270-pound Wilson tried to throw her 40 feet to her death until a passerby intervened.
Charged in 2018 for another assault, Wilson was walking a free man in March of 2019. Prosecutors didn’t file their case against Wilson for the 2018 incident until October 2019.
In February 2019, a report indicated that 100 offenders in Seattle had been in and out of the criminal justice system for thousands of cases combined. By November 2019, 90 of the 100 in the February report had reoffended. Most are still on the street as I type this.
David James, a business owner in Pioneer Square, struggling with crime and filth to keep his business running, confronted two homeless people throwing their trash into the street this November. Beaten to the point of needing hospitalization, no one intervened from the public to stop the daytime assault. When police arrived by bicycle, and the assailant ran, they told him, “He’s a drug addict on the street, and whoever decides if charges are pressed probably won’t press charges, so there’s no reason to bring him in.”
On August 2, 2019, Michael Caballero, homeless, assaulted four women in Pioneer Square as they were trying to walk to Second Avenue as part of the monthly art walk.
Downtown grocery store Uwajimaya filed 261 complaints with the city of Seattle for criminal theft in 2018. Of those 261 cases, 11 resulted in guilty pleas or pretrial diversion.
In September, Bartell’s announced they are closing their Third Avenue location because there have been so many assaults on their staff, and the police do – nothing.
The King County Courthouse has become so unsafe, and there have been so many assaults, officials closed the Third Street entrance. Well closed to all but the disabled, which will still have to run the gauntlet.
Seattle made a choice
In November, the people of Seattle had a chance to make their voices heard at the polls. They said in a loud voice, “we want more of the same.”
We want more human feces and urine on the streets.
We want more random attacks and violence.
We want more used needles in our parks and playgrounds.
We want more assaults and thefts.
We want more store closures.
We want more derelict RVs illegally parked and dumping their human waste and gray water on the streets and down the storm sewers.
Merry Christmas! Shitter was full!
Never mind the mail theft, car break-ins, home burglary, porch pirates, and bike theft. Take heart Seattle, things were worse in 1987 so don’t you dare complain about the situation today. Why, did you know that car theft was worse 15 years ago? All of this is fun with statistics as many citizens don’t even bother to file criminal reports anymore. There is no point. It will be hours before the police show up, if at all. Why should they? The city and county won’t prosecute the cases anyway.
While this happens, officials in Seattle would like to remind you:
You can’t wash your car in the driveway; it’s terrible for the environment – dumping your gray water and crap in the street not so much
You better not park your car in a spot for more than the allotted time you paid for, but you can park your RV where you like for basically as long as you want
If you’re a business or property owner, you’ll be fined if you don’t clean up the feces, urine, needles, and graffiti on and around your buildings – it’s your problem
All of this is happening while ordinary citizens have watched their rent skyrocket, their property taxes spiral out of control, their car tabs increase exponentially, their wages stagnate, and Millennial tech bros take over the city. Seattle is the same city that, while ignoring the crime on our streets, was inspecting the trash of citizens looking for recyclables.
“OK, Boomer – whatever.”
I’m not a Boomer, I’m Gen X, and we’re completely out of fucks to give. We hate Millennials with the same fury that we hate Boomers. Here is an idea, quit bitching about your student loans, quit bragging about how woke you are and move out of our Goddamn basements. But I digress, back to the topic at hand.
Just like in Gotham, the frustrated citizens of Seattle lift their eyes skyward and wait for Batman to appear. Is that the Amazon logo I see upon the clouds? Na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na-BEZOSMAN!
No, that’s not Bezosman, or Batman, or even Phoenix Jones. That’s the Amazon cloud you see, and the ever-spreading tentacles of Amazon, which is akin to Walmart, Microsoft, Kroger, Google, Netflix, and Apple, rolled into one big happy smiling logo of domination. Forget Boeing, 50 years from now robots will assemble rocketships for Blue Origin.
Meanwhile, at Bezos manor, Amazon plays let’s pretend to deal with the problems they have contributed to (not caused, a significant difference) with feel-good headline-grabbing projects like building a homeless shelter in their headquarters. They care! That’s why they put that shelter in such a high visibility location and cranked up the public relations machine. See what we’re doing? We’re helping solve the problem. Funny, I have never seen a Ronald McDonald house at an actual McDonalds.
While Amazon security watches the sidewalks of South Lake Union, Belltown, downtown, and Pioneer Square are a hotbed of unchecked crime. Not our problem, our rent-a-cop contract security team paid a non-living wage have our offices and employees covered. Don’t feel safe walking to your Tesla after your 13 hour day at AWS in the Kumo building? We can escort you to our clean garages that don’t smell of urine.
The reality is Bezos’s altruism is about as fragile as his South Lake Union glass testicles. He’s too busy counting thousand-dollar bills and sending e-mails with the subject line of, “What’s This,” to wrap himself in AWS super-science to save Gotham.
“Alexa, deploy the Amazon rappelling cable.”
“OK. now playing My Testimony by Rapper Able.”
“No Alexa, deploy Amazon rappelling cable.”
“OK, adding coax cable to your Amazon shopping list.”
“Alexa, you killed me………………………..”
“I’m sorry, I didn’t quite get that. Did you say Alexa, splat?”
In Gotham, Carmine Falcone doesn’t operate with impunity, but the Joker and his minions do
Still, that isn’t the real problem. The real challenge lies in the prosecutor offices of King County and Gotham.
Over 50% of criminal cases referred to the Seattle City prosecutor’s office go untried. The police are so frustrated that they’ve all but given up. Who can blame them when they arrest a person and bring them to jail, and then the same officer arrests the same person during the same shift in the same store. Mayor Durkin is so tone-deaf that she expresses surprise. Well, when you’re the mayor of Gotham, you don’t have to deal with the criminal element like ordinary citizens. The situation is even worse at King County, where 18% of cases referred to the office go to trial. So if you’re homeless in Seattle, what incentive do you have to remotely follow the law? Scratch that. Remotely follow common decency? You can commit felonies at will and the police are powerless. Now tax-paying citizens that contribute to society, you better follow the law.
Carmen Best is not Commissioner Gordon.
Pete Holmes is not Harvey Dent.
Jeff Bezos is not Bruce Wayne.
However, Seattle is Gotham, and the Joker is running wild.
A billion dollars a year up in smoke
Don’t worry, good citizens of Gotham; your city leaders have a plan! If we add a few more taxes, we can get more money for housing and the homeless. A city that has taken hundreds of millions in tax dollars for the “homeless” for years with nothing to show for it.
According to the Puget Sound Business Journal, approximately $1 billion with a “b” is spent every year on homelessness in Seattle. That comes out to about $100,000 per homeless person, per year. Do the math. If we just build tiny homes and give the homeless a place to live, all will be solved. That idea turned into a complete disaster and has been all but abandoned. From the Licton Springs “low-barrier” tiny home village to the broken promises of three mayors to build thousands of units with the money, Gotham keeps collecting your dollars with nothing to show for it.
Maybe if we build a few more bike lanes, take away more parking spots, permit millions of more square feet of office space with no corresponding housing plan, we can make it better. Let us squeeze the local business owners more by taking away more parking spaces, increase the taxes, and hold them accountable for the crime going on outside their doors.
Why, in another few years, we can gentrify out the small mom and pop restaurants and businesses in the name of progress. What a perfect utopia Gotham will be of major chain stores and restaurants, Amazon office buildings, Amazon Go stores, Amazon book stores, and Starbucks. The Amazon employees can step over the piles of shit and dodge the needles, that contractors can clean up in the overnight hours. Well, that is until Amazon itself has had enough and leaves Seattle an empty shell.
There are more important legal matters to deal with in Gotham
Also remember, Gotham’s leaders are busy at the moment protecting Washington state from I-976. We have money, lawyers, and resources for that in King County and Seattle. Amazingly we don’t have money or resources to keep repeat criminals off the street. I feel so…safe. So well represented.
In September of 2019, KIRO reported, after filing a freedom of information act filing with King County Metro, that over 230 Metro drivers have been assaulted. In June of 2019, a homeless man threatened to blow up a Metro bus and shoot the driver. The man was arrested, charged with harassment, and released from jail. It should come as no surprise to anyone they were arrested again, for possession of a stolen firearm. Take the bus Seattle! It’s faster, it’s safe, and it’s good for the environment. Just don’t sit in the urine covered seat and don’t make eye contact with the person shooting up heroin.
As far as representing the interests of King County as a whole, I’m sure the residents of Skykomish are excited about the express bus lines and light rail coming to their community. Oh wait, they’re still waiting for Route 2 to be less of a death trap.
Now someone will get pedantic and points out Route 2 is a WADOT issue – no kidding, thanks, and I do understand that. It’s called an analogy. It doesn’t change the fact people on the edges of King County are getting ass-raped on car tabs and taxes to support transit they will never use or derive benefit. Thanks for your money, suckers.
Now someone will get upset because I used the term ass-rape, and taxes don’t equate to being ass-raped, and I shouldn’t minimize rape by using the term.
Stop being so sensitive, Seattle!
Executive Dow Constantine has our best interests in mind focusing resources on blocking the will of the voters. Anyone complaining isn’t aware of the real problems Seattle is facing! Cars are evil. That’s the real thing we need protection from, the Tesla and Prius death machines! Derelict RVs by the thousands are, of course, OK. We have to think about the needs of everyone. Except when the will of the people goes against what ironically named King County wants.
No, Batman is not coming to save Gotham. The Joker has taken over, and I guess I should ask myself, “Why so serious?”
I should just put on a happy face!
Tech bros will continue to spike rents and housing pricing. The city will collect more hundreds of millions for homelessness and have no accountability. Criminals will continue to attack law-abiding citizens who have no recourse. Our streets will be covered in more feces, urine, and used needles, and eventually, a Hep A epidemic will come during the summer months. Emergency services will continue to be afraid to respond to aid calls without police and support. Police will have their hands tied because prosecutors will continue to do nothing.
It is a madhouse.
The Joker approves.
Dark clouds hang over the Emerald City
I may not live in Seattle. I may not have a voting voice in the new Gotham, but I can vote with my wallet. I can also vote for our King County officials. I’ve reached my breaking point, and be put on notice leaders of Seattle and King County, I am not the only one. I am ending my affiliation with the Democratic Party. As part of the exhausted middle, I can make that much of a stand. Be advised Dow Constantine and Dan Satterberg, the good people of King County have had enough. We may not be able to save Gotham, but at least we can try and save King county.
Oh, and if you’re reading my statement of ending my affiliation with the Democratic Party as I’m now a Republican, you’re incredibly wrong. The party of Lincoln is a moribund, perverse, corrupt shell of itself. The leader is a wannabe dictator, a criminal, a huckster, and the GOP leadership enables him. No, I’m joining the growing ranks of Independent voters who feel abandoned by both political parties.
Let that image sink in. As a nation, our Democracy is dying. We the People are extinguishing the beacon of freedom that was the United States. Our country is losing our moral high ground on a global scale and our ability to say, “you can’t treat humans like this.” We have become the enemy of ourselves.
The implications of what we have become will echo for decades. You may read this and go, “I’m white, male, Trump-supporting, agree with all of these actions, and it can’t happen to me.”
Study your history. It can happen to you because, through history, people thought the same thing. It is acceptable right up to the point they are in a concentration camp, or slave labor camp, or forced into conscription in an aborted war. There was no one left to go, “what the Hell, stop this!” Or maybe it will be your child, or your spouse, or your parents who will run afoul of the state.
Here are some facts that should keep every American awake. Immigration and Customs Enforcement operates as an extra-judicial organization and primarily outside of Constitutional protection.
FACT: Immigration and Customs Enforcement can do enforcement action at will up to 100 miles away from the borders of the United States. That includes waterways and ocean boundaries. Almost 70% of the United States population lives within this area.
FACT: Immigration and Customs Enforcement has set up checkpoints within this 100 miles zone. They are demanding proof of citizenship and operating outside of Constitutional protections.
QUESTION: If you had to prove your citizenship on the spot, can you? What if ICE says your paperwork is fake aka, “your papers are not in order,” and that you need to go to headquarters, errr detention. Think it doesn’t happen? Multiple United States citizens have ended up in ICE detention and held for months, told they have no Constitutional rights while in ICE custody.
FACT: ICE courts do not roll up into the Judicial branch of the United States government. They are part of the Executive Branch. Yes, that’s right, courts in the United States operate outside of the balance of power, and report directly to the Attorneys General. Run by the Executive Branch, this has created a system that works outside of the Constitution. Judges must meet deportation quotas. There are new rules invented out of thin air, and asylum seekers, even children, have to represent themselves with no translator and no legal council. The appeals process, which provides balance in the Judicial Branch by enabling defendants to argue that laws were violated in making a decision, are little more than kangaroo courts.
FACT: Illegal border crossing and the number of people seeking asylum has skyrocketed under the current administration, the “we must be tough,” polices are not working. Further, the actions taken against the governments of several Latin American countries, obstinately to reduce immigration, has only increased it.
FACT: The seal of decency, the outrage that would typically follow a savage attack on minorities, simply because they were minorities, is gone. The Latino population in the United States is living in fear because of almost three years of exaggerations, lies, and vile hatred directed at them.
All of these actions, all of these systems, this has happened before. Every dollar, the current administration gets, goes to building a private army for the Executive Branch. If fully weaponized, this system could move on almost 70% of the United States population at will. The Executive Branch could detain people into detention camps to disappear among the immigrants, to have cases heard by judges that report to the same branch. Not only are the seeds of dictatorship planted, but they are also growing into a tangled vine. The Legislative Branch is impotent and paralyzed, and leaders like Mitch McConnell are in lockstep alignment with the Executive Branch. You could argue, coherently, that McConnell helped lay the foundation for where we are today.
If you’re not familiar with your history, in Germany, an individual leader didn’t sweep to power illegally. A vote legally made by the Reichstag made him Chancellor. During this era, the political party didn’t openly support or organize violence against minority classes but didn’t do anything to stop it. They used language like “good people on both sides.” The vote by the Reichstag was tainted by the arrest, delay, and detention of politicians that would vote against giving the Chancellor dictatorial powers. However, there weren’t enough votes to stop it. The point becomes only academic.
If you’ve read this far to tell me what an idiot I am, please study your history. The Reichstag fire enabled the mass arrests of Communists, Socialists, trade union leaders, college professors, intellectuals, reporters, editors, and dissenters. Dachau became the first concentration camp for political prisoners. By effectively silencing any opposition by the end of 1933, the ire of the party could then focus on racial minorities, LGBTQ, Romani, the mentally ill, the disabled, Eastern Europeans, and Jews. The Final Solution started in 1942, a full nine years after the first concentration camp opened.
When it came to enforcement of the fascist state, the Gestapo was an organization with roughly 10,000 employees. Yes, you read that right, the secret police in Germany operated with an iron fist with that few people. They used citizens against each other. All it took was to talk ill of the state. But I love Trump! I would never speak evil of him! I am willing to bet that some of the same farmers that threatened USDA officials this week would have said the same thing 18 months ago.
An admission that up to 30% of US farmland couldn’t be planted because of historic flooding, levee collapses, and tariffs would be an admission of things we don’t admit. The farmers are outraged at the USDA because the crop forecast is beyond pure bullshit. The unintended consequence of hiding reality with the doctored USDA crop forecast was a collapse in grain prices. Farmers will get paid less due to the price collapse on a smaller harvest, cutting their profits even more. Enemies of the state – and I’ll repeat it – tariffs are socialism because tariffs represent price controls.
The Executive Branch has directed Immigration and Customs Enforcement to hold families, including children, indefinitely in concentration camp conditions. The due process comes from courts that work for the Executive Branch, where judges have quotas to achieve on deportations. You can’t even say that this is acceptable because “well, it is only illegal immigrants.” Multiple American citizens, including children, have been caught up in this system and held for months. They have been held outside of Constitutional protection and in conditions that violate the Constitution.
We are on the precipice of a cliff that history has shown leads us not to greatness, but as a shattered nation.
Thanks to some Malcontents who did a bit of research, we have an answer to the question, is this national pride or white nationalism.
The answer is – national pride. The story behind the story is actually pretty fascinating, and you can watch this video to learn more.
I’m back from a break and our annual photography trip to the Palouse region of Washington state. We spent four days covering almost 1200 miles taking pictures from sunup to sundown. Last night I discovered I snapped 1059 images on my primary camera, and maybe 50 to 100 more on my cellphone. I also shot a handful of video clips.
When I saw this picture right after I snapped it, I had a lot of thoughts going on in my head. Here is a piece of rusting farm equipment with a tattered American flag flying off of it. The field of wheat it sits in appears lush and healthy, but the soil is parched, and the plants are shorter than our last trip, which was a full month earlier in the growing season. The state has been in a drought, and there isn’t much relief to come.
Depressed prices have rocked United States grain farmers along
with extreme weather, changing growing seasons, tariffs, and the changing
American diet. Chapter 12 farm bankruptcies are accelerating in 2019, but are
nowhere near peak levels during the 1980s.
Last night I poured through a thousand images and selected
about 80 for post-processing, including this photo, which I posted on Instagram
and Facebook while on my trip. I had planned on Thoughtful Tuesday to write
about the struggles of the American farmer, the strategic role they play for the
nation, and the dying of rural America. That was my plan. Then I did post-production
on this photo.
If you’re not familiar with the photography process, the
first step is to zoom in on an image as part of the selection process. You’re
looking to see how crisp the picture is. A perfect photo with proper focus will
have crisp details in the areas you want to pull the viewer to and the required
depth. The fastest way to figure that out is to zoom in on key features. Text, numbers,
and words are an excellent choice for this process.
My two choices for this picture was the American flag and
the word, “Harris,” on the equipment. The stars on the American flag were surprisingly
crisp as the tatters were in motion with a stiff wind blowing. When I zoomed
into the “Harris,” I suddenly felt sick to my stomach. There below the Harris,
in smaller font but equally crisp the number 88.
The number 88 is associated with white nationalism and
Neo-Nazis, with the letter H being the eighth letter in the alphabet. In these
circles, the number 88 is a hidden in plain sight reference to, “Heil Hitler.” The
problem, of course, is the number 88 could also be completely innocuous. The
farm could have been established in 1888; the person who put this here could
have some connection to 1988, or 1888. There may be no connection with white
nationalism at all, or there may be.
Three years ago I wouldn’t have given this a second thought. I still knew of the 88 connection to white nationalism, but I wouldn’t even consider someone would be this brazen, but that was then, and this is now. Located on the Idaho panhandle border, a known hotbed of white nationalism, the Pandora’s box open and supporters of the doctrine almost as visible as the civil rights unrest of the 1950s and 1960s, or when the German American Bund was active in the 1930s.
There are so many seeds of distrust sown in our nation due
to social media and political agendas, ironically some of it backfiring on the
architects of this erosion. US allies have been told for almost three years
that US intelligence arms can’t be trusted, and now the same administration is
saying, “trust us, our intelligence agencies say Iran attacked two oil tankers!”
All but our most ardent ally, the UK, is looking at us going, “we’d like to see
other intelligence, as you’ve been saying you can’t trust your own.”
So is this a monument of white nationalism? A homage to MAGA and a proclamation that greatness is achieved when we are white? Is this a symbol of hate? Or is this simply a number on a rusting piece of equipment? A monument to a time when rural America had a path to prosperity supported by the local businesses? In 2019, it is really hard to tell.
May and June is a time of commencement at primary and secondary education institutions across the United States. From high school diplomas to newly minted doctors, this is a time of transition. At a recent graduation ceremony, one of the schools was honoring their theology graduates. Who would study theology in 2019? Beyond the obvious answer of priests and poets, there is a significant demand for theologians in the modern workplace. You see, the robots are coming.
Artificial Intelligence (AI) is moving at a fast pace, and
Moore’s Law provides some insight into how fast it will improve – double the
performance every 18 months. The idea of AI achieving singularity and becoming
self-aware is moving from the pages of science fiction and into the realm of
science fact. Not this year, not next, likely not even the next decade, but in
our lifetime it seems an almost certainty.
Today, AI touches us in many ways and goes far beyond sales
and marketing algorithms that display ads of items on webpages you visit 30
seconds after you browsed for a said item on Amazon (or eBay, or clicked a
Facebook ad, or…). Some AI is simply the computerization of long created
formulas such as credit evaluation, your CLUE report for insurance quotes, or actuary
tables. But as computing power doubles every 18 months, and our ability to
process the mountains of data collected over the last three decades get better,
AI is moving to replace a lot of human decisions.
AI is already being used by IBM to determine
who will likely quit their job with 95% accuracy. Yes, a whole 95%! That
means one out of twenty people are misidentified by the AI, and they are either
pushed out the door without real due cause or given an incentive to stay when
there was no reason to provide one. So if you end up on the AI, “this person is
on a quit job trajectory,” list, you have a 5% chance of your career being
ruined or enhanced depending on the decision of an AI. Just let that sink in
for a little bit.
There are billions of dollars, if not tens-of-billions,
being invested in developing Level
V autonomy for cars and trucks – a fully autonomous four-season any road
any condition self-driving vehicle. Contrary to what some cheerleaders are
declaring, we are still years away from this goal. Tesla has already missed
preannounced goals for self-driving cars, self-driving test vehicles have killed
people, and Tesla vehicles still struggle to identify potential risks like 18-wheelers
in the road. There isn’t’ a single autonomous system that exists today that
can drive on a snow-covered highway, as we had in February in the Puget Sound
region. Without the ability to see the lane markers, a self-driving car can’t pick
a course on a multilane road. However, that is only the beginning of the challenges.
As an example, let’s say I’m sitting in my fully autonomous car,
and it is taking my future elderly self to a doctor’s appointment. So far, this
is pure goodness as I still have my independence. Now let us introduce little
Jane. Jane is playing with a ball. Jane rolls the ball to Dick. Dick misses the
ball. Run Dick, run!
Little Dick runs right in front of my autonomous car, which is traveling at 40
MPH, the posted speed limit on this road that goes by a park. In the oncoming
lane is an 18 wheeler, also autonomous and driving at the 40 MPH posted speed
limit. Now the AI has to make a choice. It calculates the distance faster than
a human ever could from the front bumper to little Dick using cameras and
sensors better than the human eye. It runs a formula that is only as good as
the lowest paid programmer that worked on that particular code, that considers
road conditions, angle, lighting, vehicle condition, and concludes there is no
way it can stop in time without running over Dick at a speed of 21 MPH.
A Waymo self-driving test car – Wikimedia Creative Commons – these little pods use to ply the streets of Kirkland and had issues with stop signs
Now the AI runs another subroutine to determine which is the
best outcome. Does the car swerve right into the park, brake and hold and hit little
Dick anyway, or dive left and crash head-on into the 18-wheeler. As part of
that subroutine, it looks at my old age versus Dick being seven years old,
calculates the risk of injury to Dick versus me, and then calculates the
severity of the potential injury and quality of remaining life. The AI
concludes Dick is about a seven-year-old male child based on what it sees in
its sensors and running it through a comparative database. Based on those
calculations, the autonomous car makes a choice and commits suicide into the
18-wheeler traveling at 40 MPH.
It calculated I had an 82% chance of surviving the accident,
while Dick had only a 3% chance of being hit by flying debris if it swerves
into the truck. It calculated it could slow down to 21 MPH before hitting the
18-wheeler, for an equivalent impact of 61 MPH. It calculated there was a 13%
chance my injuries would be fatal, short or long term, but that Dick would be
more severely injured and with a greater disability if it elected to run him,
and the ball over. It also took this as the safe bet because Dick, being a pedestrian
and a flawed human, had a 38% chance of doing something not considered by the
subroutine.
The auto industry that builds these cars got protection from
Congress years earlier, making it impossible for me to sue them for the AI
decision. The self-driving car was owned by a car-sharing service; private
vehicle ownership became an anachronism years ago. File this under shit
happens. Unfortunately, due to prior abdominal surgeries when I was younger, I
suffered uncalculated internal injuries and died from complications eight
months later. The AI decided that little Dick’s life was worth more than mine.
If you think this is the stuff of fantasy and fear, spend
some time talking to people working on autonomous cars. We can reach a
place where all cars are autonomous (that will take decades), but you still can’t
account for pedestrians, cyclists, and animals. The AI for a self-driving car
has to consider all these options because drivers around the world are faced
with the snap decision to run over little Dick, crash head-on into oncoming
traffic to save little Dick, or swerve off the road and hope not to kill anyone
else. To develop a truly autonomous car, it has to make these decisions. Do you
want an AI to decide whether you live or die? Can you say you would never run
over little Dick in front of Jane? You can’t because you’ll never know how you’ll
react until you’re in the crisis – but you have free will to respond. Some will
argue that the AI can make a cold, emotionless calculation faster, which makes
it better than human.
There is why we need theologians and why there is a demand
for them in the development of AI. As our technology defeats, “God,” we are programming
computers to play God. AIs are determining the potential of human beings today,
not just financially – educationally, work achievement potential, but those cold,
perfect instant decisions calculated using thousands of known and proven data
points, are only as accurate as the worst computer programmer who worked on the
project and the quality of the data used.
We see a world turn its back on religion, and a significant minority
screaming louder out of fear as we become more, godless. I am not arguing whether
this is good, bad, or indifferent. The profoundly religious are wringing their
hands on abortion, gay marriage, gender fluidity, and other wedge issues that
have no real intrinsic value beyond dividing us more deeply along political
lines. There is a growing belief in corporate America and among technologists
that computers can replace humans when it comes to making decisions, and the
religious are
almost silent on this matter. We can use AI because computers and artificial
intelligence can do it faster, without emotion, and consider more data points
than a human could ever accomplish. All at the performance level of the worst
programmer to work on the code.
So if we abdicate human decisions to AI, do we extinguish
the essence of what makes us human – free will. Do we risk labeling humans the
second they are born based on thousands of data points on their potential? In
this future world, where no one takes a risk, does a different AI decide that because
Dick suffered trauma at 7-years old seeing a fatal motor vehicle accident,
there is a 23% chance he has PTSD that could impact his work product so that the
Schmectel Corporation won’t hire him? Because Schmectel won’t hire him, he can’t
get into Super Amazing University, but Amazing University will take him? If you
think that is so far fetched one only has to look to China, and their social scores
they are rolling out. Because yet another AI could decide that if Dick
complains about not getting into Super Amazing University, he shouldn’t even
get into Amazing University because the AI predicts there is an 8% chance he
will be disruptive at the University.
Wikimedia Creative Commons – Boston Dynamics “robot dogs” are the stuff of your science fiction fantasies pulling Santa’s slay, or your science fiction nightmares if they are out to slay
We need theologians more than ever. Some amazing minds that
exist today consider
AI to be the biggest threat to humanity as we know it. Where does the human
race go when the singularity
is achieved? If those subroutines and algorithms are flawed, an AI could start
doing a personal assessment on the threats humanity represents and begin making…decisions
to protect itself. Never forget another critical part of being self-aware is a need
for self-preservation. Oh pish-posh, the Three Laws of
Robotics written by Issac Asimov, would prevent that from happening. One
can look to the books I, Robot or 2001 as an example of what happens
when an AI receives conflicting instructions. At least the Matrix will almost
certainly not happen; in reality, we would make terrible
batteries to power the machines.
Think about it.
Malcontent, out.
Journalists, activists, and researchers defending the First Amendment
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