Author: Mark J. Heinicke

The Other Addiction: Is Democracy Sunk?

Chemical Addiction: Unsolved although Obvious

Addiction to painkillers has been killing a lot of people. For years.  Just why it has been getting so much media attention recently may have to do with (1) criticality, analogous to the point at which a nuclear chain reaction becomes self-sustaining, has been reached; (2) liberal alarm over the surge in “Trump voters,” many of whom, rural and white, are now suffering from addictions on a par with that of urban blacks whose votes have long been taken (and are still taken) for granted by Democrats.   PBS recently ran a series on the subject. It appears that bright spotlights being trained on the opiate epidemic are giving rise to promising local and state programs to save addicts’ lives and then turn them around.  The former is easier than the latter; instances abound of addicts having their lives saved one day only to overdose the next (and the next and the next), and the burden that puts on emergency services has led to a debate of whether there should be quotas, as in Three Strikes and You’re Out (for eternity).

Noises are being made at the national administrative and legislative levels to address the countrywide epidemic, but there’s little real movement, despite candidate Trump’s promise to do something. That was to be expected, since he was unclear from the start as to what, and seems to have forgotten his pledge while chaos erupts on every issue that he touches.  In the legislature, there is much public hand-wringing but not much legislating. Even if laws are passed to mitigate the opioid epidemic, who in a government drifting toward self-destruction will carry them out?

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McCain and Corker: Poster Boys for Term Limits

After Senator Bob Corker uncorked his imperishable quip, “It’s a shame the White House has become an adult day care center,” it became abundantly clear that he and John McCain have, by example, made a most persuasive case for term limits.  McCain stood up against the Republican legislative steamroller on health care, and Corker has stood up to the dysfunctional and dangerous White House with ever sharper criticism during the last several weeks.

What the two senators have in common—besides being moderate members of an increasingly immoderate political party—is the extreme unlikelihood that either of them will run for office again.  In Corker’s case, he has already declared he is retiring, and in McCain’s case, sadly, the glioblastoma ravaging his brain will almost certainly kill him before is he up for reelection seven years hence.

They also have in common the fact that both supported the Donald Trump presidential campaign. McCain, whose personal detestation of Trump was obvious, did so largely out of party loyalty, whereas Corker was an early Trump booster.

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The Nuclear War Threat: Way Beyond North Korea

If you think you’re worried about nuclear conflict now . . .

THINK SOME MORE. 

Sure we’re deeply troubled by the prospect of a nuclear war between an American Narcissist Who Would Be King and a North Korean Dictator Who Would Be a God.  But—trying not to diminish the horrific losses such a conflict would entail—at least it would not lead to global Armageddon.  The leaders of Russia and China would keep cooler heads than either of these madmen, and avoid a widespread holocaust, although the damage to North Korea and perhaps the U.S. would be immense and long-lasting.  I trust those other leaders to be rational: however cruel, repressive, and callous they may be, they are not suicidal, neither are they unpatriotic enough to risk the destruction of their nations over North Korea.

So that you can worry about the potential for  a nuclear exchange far more consequential than Korea’s, I call attention to a piece in the September 23-29 New Scientist by Debora MacKenzie, entitled “Accidental Armageddon” —that’s the title within the pages; on the cover the headline reads “End Game: You’re right to worry about nuclear war – but not for the reason you think.” If these headlines make your blood run cold, you may find it run colder once you read MacKenzie’s article. Unfortunately, at this moment I can’t give you a link to the story, but you can find the magazine in material form at most libraries.

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Gun Culture, Liberty, and the Appeal to Agency

Mass Shootings: The Price to Pay for Liberty?

What has once again been largely left out of the public debate on gun control prompted by the Las Vegas massacre, is how tightly gun rights are bound to right-wing ideology, at the core of which is the fear of a tyrannical government.  The shadows of the Revolutionary War and the Civil War fall over the darkest corners of the gun culture: Should tyranny come, our freedoms can only be defended by taking up arms—so goes the narrative. That these guns will inevitably be misused by sociopaths to slaughter innocents is the price we have to pay for the capability to defend ourselves against a totalitarian government.

They have a point. The revelations by Edward Snowden of the scope of national security agencies spying on U.S. citizens were chilling.  Whatever nominal limitations were put on mass surveillance in the Obama administration may well be mere window dressing, as far as the NSA and CIA are concerned. Those operators are secretive by nature, and the only way we can feel safe from surveillance is by trusting the people whose mission is to monitor, capture and kill enemies of the state—trusting them to be motivated by true democratic principles.  For now, their focus is on terrorism and hostile foreign governments, but if the government were to be taken over by a strongman (such as Donald Trump would like to be but is too scatterbrained and undisciplined to emulate),* the tools of these agencies could readily be turned on American civilians—in particular on what we like to think of as the free press (the irony of right-wingers’ beliefs that “the media” are dominated by socialists is particularly rich; do they really believe that these news organizations are arms of the “Deep State?”).

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Just Say NO to Bridenstine – and Slow the “Lunar Gold Rush”

Bridenstine Edges toward Confirmation as NASA Head

Recently I circulated an email warning of the potential for non-scientist, non-engineer Congressman Jim Bridenstine to be confirmed as NASA chief administrator. This is yet another Trumpian poke in the eye of the science community, and more seriously it would put a tool of the mining industry in a position to prioritize NASA’s missions.

Now, the Washington Post (September 12) reports that Bridenstine’s route to confirmation is being eagerly groomed by industry groups and key members of Congress. See: Bridenstine Advancing, Science in Retreat  I recommend you let your Senators know it matters to you that this man not only is lacking in scientific and engineering credentials, but also has an agenda to shift NASA’s priorities away from space exploration and toward space exploitation. To wit:

What Bridenstine Wants: New Kinds of Craters on the Moon

The Post reports Bridenstine as saying, “From the discovery of water ice until this day, the American objective should have been a permanent outpost of rovers and machines. . . .” To what end, pray tell, Congressman? We can get some clues from a report under the aegis of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory on “The Lunar Gold Rush: How Moon Mining Could Work.” See: JPL on Mining the Moon

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Poll Found Americans Undecided on What?!?

Via NPR I heard a few weeks ago that 52% of Americans felt that Trump’s response to the Charlottesvile domestic terrorism did not go far enough in denouncing White Supremacists and Nazis in our midst. That’s according to an NPR/PBS poll in mid-August.

27% feel that his response was appropriate. No surprises there. We know who they are.

Here’s the baffling part: 21% were  undecided!  A number which is astonishing, disturbing, and . . . evidence that at least a fifth of Americans are either (1) deaf dumb and blind; (2) so addicted to sports or Game of Thrones that they don’t know anything besides; (3) appallingly apathetic; (4)  ignorant of the most basic facts of American (not to mention world) history; (5) so influenced by right-wing propaganda that THEY DON’T KNOW WHAT TO THINK.   The cultivated doubt that has infected attitudes to climate change, health care, medical science, ecological science, has even spread to what you’d think would be clear moral understanding.

 

 

 

 

 

Afghanistan “Win”: Surely You Jest, Mr. President

Is the Joke on Us, or on Our Glorious Leader?

Some days ago, the brat who poses as our nation’s president declared we would commence a winning strategy in Afghanistan.  I believe he said “win” at least five times, eliciting a lighthearted “ha ha ha” among the more jaded listeners.

That this flies in the face of logic—given the seventeen-year history of our military adventure in Afghanistan—is no impediment to Mr. Trump, whose logical faculties (such as they are) are overwhelmed by his egotism, vainglory, and desperate cravings for winning at any cost.

Containment of the Taliban, not defeating them, is the name of the game in Afghanistan, which the generals whom Trump maintains he consulted at length know very well.  (He also said he had looked at the Afghanistan situation “from every angle.” That was not the only time that I laughed out loud at this speech, but it was probably the loudest.) My guess is that the only way they could sell their strategy to him was to tell him it was a “winning” strategy, because the language of zero-sum games is the only language he understands. I’d wager they had a good laugh among themselves once the ruse succeeded.

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What’s in a Name? from Romeo and Juliet to the NIH

The Power of Names, Like It or Not

In the August 24 Washington Post, we hear that ESPN yanked an unfortunate Asian-American from broadcasting a University of Virginia football game, the sportscaster’s trespass being that he bore the name: Robert Lee.  Elsewhere in the same issue, Dana Milbank skewered ESPN (and ludicrously overdone Political Correctness in general), with a satire that suggested we should ban from the public eye Bruce Lee, Tommy Lee, Harper Lee, Spike Lee, Bobby Lee, Lee Majors, Lee Jeans, etc.

We are all familiar with the epigram, “What’s in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet,” spoken by Juliet in Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet.

Really?  What if the flower were named Kerblunkanoo? Ratstikittel? Skrutabucket? Wine critic: “This chardonnay has a complex aroma, a fusion of pears and peaches with a delicate hint of skrutabucket.”  OK—it could become catchy. But that doesn’t change the fact that names shade perceptions. People named Hitler can attest to that. Racial, ethnic, gender, and religious slurs attest to the demeaning power of names. Actors and actresses acquire stage names to spin their personae, perhaps the most famous being the name Marilyn Monroe to replace the decidedly unglamorous Norma Jeanne Mortenson.

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Robert E. Lee Cooling the Fires – All for Naught

Robert E. Lee Echoing Lincoln

In the August 25 Washington Post op-ed page, Eugene Robinson revealed a side of Robert E. Lee that runs against the grain of many who wish to celebrate his memory with public statues: after the Civil War, the general warned against erecting Civil War monuments in Gettysburg (one may infer that he referred to both Union and Confederate monuments): “I think it wiser,” said Lee, “not to keep open the sores of war but to follow the example of those nations who endeavored to obliterate the marks of civil strife, to commit to oblivion the feelings engendered.”

Echoes of Lincoln, right down to the metaphor of wounds to the body politic, ring uncannily.  In his second inaugural address—made less than a month before Lee’s surrender at Appomattox—Lincoln urged, “let us strive on to finish the work we are in; to bind up the nation’s wounds. . . .”

This softens the picture of Lee, who was, by any definition of treason, a traitor to his country. A traitor, moreover, who chose to defend a government founded on the monstrosity of slavery.

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O Magnum Mysterium – Prayer without Boundaries

I thought of spilling a lot of superlatives (ooh did I ever!) about this song but didn’t want to contaminate it. Judge for yourself. Just be in a quiet space for 8 minutes. Even if you’ve heard it before. . . well, you know. Don’t worry about the religious part – it’s for anyone whose heart is not made of stone.

O Magnum Mysterium, Kings College

There’s a synthetic version by John Serrie that I sort of like just as much, but it’s less organic. So listen to Kings College first.