Author: Ray Tuttle

On Nicole Wallace’s podcast,  Ken Burns, the great historian said that when racists found that blacks were going to be on their favorite baseball team, the higher quality individuals embraced the fact, came to accept it.  Not that simple. What makes higher quality?  It rather should be looked at as the decisions made  based on doors of opportunity to attain gratitification.

Hammurabi wrote a code  of laws for Babylon 4000 years ago, it was with the wisdom that the society as a whole would be much more productive, predictable, and happy if laws and enforcement curtailed some of the violent, unfair, and disruptive behavior.

But now we have to go deeper.  We know that men can aspire and conspire to circumvent, change, and rewrite laws to gain power and influence that is beneficicial to a small group but harmful to the greater number of people in a society.  To make  long principle short, the problem is that man, as a species,  community, or nation  has not yet engineered a way to control the small minority of humans who seek unfair, disproportionate wealth, power, or other advantage over the society, at the expense of the majority of the members, and sometimes even to the demise of the society.  Some members simply don’t care if their actions will lead to the destruction of the society as long as it is after their lifetime. “What do I care.  l’m not going to be around in 30 years.” (an actual quote from Donald Trump)

So the initial question is – how do we as a society control those few who are hypermotivated to gain huge personal power to the detriment of society. There wust be new institutions, attitudes, stated moral principles.   This question is more theoretical.  More practical is How do we reverse the present situation where the top 1% owns 32% of the wealth and the bottom 50% own 2 per cent of it? .   slavery was an institution that was overwhelmingly accepted in the North s well as the South in the US in the 18th century. Back then the idea that black and white children would be educated in the same schools, the same universities. was simply not in the dreams of anyone of any color. So maybe we can take solace that it is possible to reverse the tides of the political economy that dictate the hegemony of the financilly elite.

I saw a clip where an excited man was saying that humans and dinosaurs lived at the same time. The reporter dismissed the man’s thesis, but the man insisted.  “No, no, there is new evidence.  They have pictures.”  I’m not sure what he meant by that but anyone with a formal education, and most people who do not, understand the lack of credence of the idea.  The earliest humans evolved 200,000 years ago.  The dinosaurs became extinct 65 million years ago.  This is not a theory.  Paleantologists, paleozoologists, archeologists, anthropologists, and other scientists who have studied the prehistoric biosphere are quite in agreement.

Elon Musk, on the Joe Rogan show,  related his rather goofy  ideas about finding civilizations in outer space on other planets in other solar systems, etc, etc.  then Rogan excited replied that, hell, there may have been an advanced civilization here on earth 10 million years ago.  To this Musk joyfully agreed.  But to the above mentioned scientists, this is just as bananas as the moron who claimed proof that man was on earth together with dinosaurs. They have scientifically determined when the first life forms appeared, the first vertebrates appeared, first mammals, and most other life forms appeared. They have developed a massive taxonomy of plants and animals all over the earth and when, where, and how they lived.

If there had been a civiliztion ten million years ago unknown to today’s scientific community,  not only would all remains of the civilization have to have been lost but hundrds of thousands of years of the peoples predessessors’  traces would also have to have been lost –  artifacts and fossils.

Joe Rogan prooved congruent in ignorance to the first dinosaur-excited character in his lack of sophistication of paleozooic developement.

People saying China  1-child policy  was a mistake.  The proof of that is that now there re too many old people, not enough young people.
But the populaion has grown from 1 billion to 1.4 billion in 20 yers.
Invasive species.  expansion of man’s numbers has caused extinction of 100’s of speies per year.   fellow invertebrates, many fellow mammals and most fellow primates. …  New short sighted or selfish declaration that more babies will make a country better.

Everything makes a difference – sometimes imperceptively on the sub atomic level, sometimes with broad global ramifications.  The decision to take anti-oxidants last year may have stopped a tiny cancer process in one cell in your stomach. The decision to appoint Hitler as Chancellor by von Hindenberg in 1933 caused worldwide suffering.

Language has many purposes. It is used to communicate facts and opinions, compliments and insults. Virtuallly all languages have built-in
structures to express respect. Titles.  Mr. Smith, Dr. Brown, professor
Jones, general Black, reverend Bush, father Furgusson, officer Blake, your honor, your highness.    If your child is in the hospital, you address the doctor as Dr. Jones.  If you were to say, “Hey Jones, what is your prognosis? How long will Billy have to stay here?”, you may  convey a lack of respect for his station.  Dr Jones may be slightly less likely to give the same deference to your son, Billy.

Another structure present in virtually all languages is what anthropology calls forbidden words. In the vernacular:  profanity, curse words, obsenities, expletives, swearing or foul language. Forbidden words have a multitude of uses.

They are used by an in-group among themselves where they wouldn’t use them publicly to define an identifiction. On my dormitory floor in college, we all used profanities fluidly. it was sort of a bonding mechanism.  ”My goddam prof gave us 30 fucking pages of reading.”

Secondly they are used to convey respect by not using them in many situations. The same college student goes to a History discussion class and refrains from using the forbidden words that are de riguer back in the dorm. They would be out of place, and convey disrespect. If  a pastor gave a sermon and said,  “Theres’s too much fucking sin in the world”  it would likely be deemed inapproprite and disrespectful- breaking the taboo of forbidden words. And thus the respect for the pastor may diminish.

In 1972  Comedian George Carlin had a comedy routine where he identified the 7 words you cannot say on TV:  shit, piss, fuck, cunt, motherfucker, cocksucker, and tits. He was arrested for breaking obscenity laws. The case was dismissed but  later the case went to the Supreme Court when a radio station broadcast the Carlin sketch. SCOTUS ruled that the Federal Communications commision could sanction broadcasters for airing inappropriate material. But the decision was accompanied by subjective definitions that attempted to define speech that was indecent, but not obscene,  protected by the first ammendment, or “patently obscene,” which is not protectected. It asserted that speech that was merely indecent, (and, in turn, indecent defined as inappropriate for minors) could be broadcast only at certain times of the day. And that “patently obscene” could not be broadcast at all.  Of course all this meant not only that  all these terms were debatable, but the passage of time changed the words that fell into each catagory.  Since Carlin, the word piss, one of his 7 forbidden words, as in pissed off, is a regular staple of even buttoned-down news shows.

The hard sciences are concerned with hard concepts:  light, heat, energy, gravity, wave, particle, distance, speed, time, and others.  There are other real concepts which effect daily life that are only considered scientifically by the social sciences.  Fear, hate, motivation, gratification, structural violence, love, learn, and respect. In testing rat labs the international standard for motivation of the rat to find food is a reduction in the animals weight by 15%.  And a recent one, structural fear, which means fear propagated by demagoguery to compel a target audience to support a certain cause or leader.  Typically a population is made to be fearful that if a leader is not elected or a law is not adopted the country will be thrown into war or inundated by rising crime.  Many people speak casually about what they think of these concepts but it is left to the social sciences to  speak of them with operational definitions and  determine the the interaction and impact of these concepts on the society.

Once a student of mine said, scornfully, that just because he saw a murder on TV doesn’t mean he would go out and commit  murder.
For most people this is true, but the social sciences have massive amounts of scientifically attained research showing that, indeed, mass media has enormous influence on human behavior. The Bandura experiments showed how groups of young children reacted more violently across several measures, including hitting a plastic punching bag, than the control group after watchining a more violent video than the control group. And, rarely, the effects have an immediate, striking impact.  The film”The Boys Next Door” showed teens, trying to impress, made the stunt of lying down on the line in the middle of the road, letting cars pass by on both sides.  Within a week, in 2 different incidences, two youth were killed after trying the stunt in real life, on a real highway, and the film was shelved.

A society, at any given time, has its own tacit rules of what speech is acceptable and when. In 1940 the classic film Gone with the Wind was
made.  A minor scandal was caused when the producers decided to include the later famous line, “Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn.”
Such a word had never been spoken in a public medium. The producer David Selznick, was fined $5000, but the line was subsequently allowed in the film.  But why?  Why are there forbidden words?  Again it is a device arising out of culture, a device to maintain a level of respect in the society – respect that reaches across differences.  And this is a quintessential element of forbidden words, as well as titles – to generate respect across barriers, personalities, ethnicities, ages, religions. We use titles for people who are opposite politically, ethnically, regionally. Societal respect. A reflection that we all benefit from the sacrafices, accomplishments, and diligence of the many who came before us and helped build our society.

So why do the forbidden words become no longer forbidden and what are the effects of the process?  The most overwhelming driver of  the process is, of course, the media, and its go-to phenomenon that substitutes for great writing – voyeurism.  Violence, along with sex, loathsome behavior, betrayal, etc is the required voyeuristic  formula for modern TV dramas.  And violent, abusive, language is, of course, mandatory.

screenply…???   eloquent, forceful, dramatic, convincing, and entertaining without erroding the purpose of the taboo on forbidden words.

Media shows a US president who is patently, and unabashedly dishonest in House of Cards, a vice president of the US who is cynical and disingenuous (as all of her co-workers are) in the show VP,  a former teacher who is in the glamorous, exciting business of  drug smuggling in Breaking Bad and the Sopranos, the also-glamorous mafia family.  And we shouldn’t omit the glamorous violence of every episode of Game of Thrones.

What is  role model?

Sparta was the superpower, Athens was the rising star.  In May, 431 BC, Sparta pre-emptively attacked Athens. The Peloponnesian war lasted 28 years.  Harvard scholar Graham Allison identified what he called Thucydides’ Trap, a tendency toward war when the top dog among countries percieves  another country catching up to them, and threatening their predominnce. He cites several other times in history where this phenomena is visible.

Allison says his studies show that the leaders of the most powerful countries use structural fear to generate popular support for opposing the encroaching challengers. Structural fear is fear that is organized, generated, perpetuated  by social  and political institutions to manipulate individuals and maintain control.  So leaders who wish to reduce a the capabilities of a rising power can generate support for war
by inducing fear of the new power and describing  it as an existential threat to their nation.  Allison relates this to the position of the US, and its relation to its economic challengers, mainly China.

In 1990 I was pretty sure that China was going to become our next prime enemy, biggest threat, worst fear, replacing Russia.  Does it worry you that China will soon overcome the US as having the largest economy in the world?  They will be number one. Some Americans have been convinced by demagoguery that they should fear this. Whether there is anything to worry about or not, politicians cannot resist the use of structural fear, describing China’s overcoming the US economically as an existential threat. Rally round me. I am strong and I will save us all.  Its like free money. Press the fear button and, voila, out pops support like a gumball machine.

Not all Americans fear China’s economic climb, hopefully, but guess what. Nobody, zero, in Poland or Paraguay or Thailand or Spain fears another country’s surpassing their GDP.  Everyone wants their country to thrive, but only #1 gets caught in Thucydides trap.

Which countries in the middle East have nuclear weapons? Israel only.
Israel has, experts say, between 90 and 300 nuclear weapons.  They are deployed in a triad, in the same manner as the US nuclear weapons. They have 5 Dolphin-class submarines with nuclear-armed cruise missles. They have 40 to 50 F-151 and F-16 fighter bombers, with nuclear capability.  They have 25-50 land based Jerico 2 (medium rnge) and Jerico 3  (intercontinental range) missles armed with nuclear weapons. Sources debate over exact numbers but no one disputes that Israel has nuclear capabilities deployed and ready to strike.

Israel has kept info about their nuclear program top secret. It was unknown until Israeli nuclear engineer Mordechai Vanunu divulged it in 1986, sending documents to the British press. As a result, he was kidnapped and drugged in Rome by Mossad and returned to Israel where he served an 18-year sentence, 11 in solitary confinement.

Over the years Israel has conducted these operations to impair Iran’s ability to enrich nuclear fuel.
* Stuxnet cyberattack. (2012)  Computer worm damaged 1000 centrifuges
* Nantanz explosion.  (2020) Destroyed centrifuge assembly plant.
* Karaj centrifuge attack  (2021) Drone attack on centrifuge components production unit.

*  Nuclear scientists assassinated in Iran by Mossad
Masoud Alimohmmadi- (2010)  remote control bomb.
Majid Shahriari (2010) car bomb
Darioush Rezainjad  (2010) shot by gunmen on motorcycles.
Mostafa Roshan (2012) magnetic bomb under car
Mohsen  Fakrizadeh (2020)  remote control bomb

sources:  Rand Corporation,  US Istitute of peace, Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, U of Virginia National Data and Policy Institute

Hypothetical :  China develops an intercontinent missle and propulsion  that will travel 4 times the speed of previous missles.  The US starts to replicate the science.  China attacks the new US installations, and assassinates 5 American scientists working on the program.

I included zero opinion in this article. I invite you to add your opinion.

Justice Louis Brandeis, 80 years ago, said, ” We must make our choice. We can have democracy or we may have wealth concentrated in the hands of a few.  We cannot have both.”  Brandeis probably couldn’t have imagined that the disparity in wealth could ever grow to what it is today in the US.

The Trump administration has conveyed their belief that the way to stop crime in our cities is to send in the military.  Before he was assassinated, Charlie Kirk supported the idea, saying that we couldn’t afford to have such crime in our great cities, so “send in the tanks,” he said.  I have heard many opposing sending the military to fight crime on the basis  that the crime rates in the cities are going down.  I have heard few say that, whatever the crime rates, this isn’t the way to fight it.

The crime in our cities is not a problem of a lack of interdiction. It is a structural problem.  People commit crimes because of poverty, drug addiction and the accessibility of guns. Virtually all street criminals would rather have a comfortable monthly income than to have to break the law. I moved to Poland from the US more than 20 years ago ( I remain an American citizen) and the added perspective I gained is instructive in many ways.  There is virtually no crime problem in Polish and other EU cities.  I may not be able to speak for every city in Europe but one experience was edifying.  A few years ago I found myself in Paris waiting in a subway station alone after midnight.  I heard footsteps coming down the stairs and found it to be a woman, also alone, and nicely dressed. I asked her about how safe she felt and she said, yes, she felt perfectly safe.

During the current government shutdown  there was much reporting on the privations of those with federal government  jobs and those recieving SNAP benefits. Many people have little more than enough money to pay their immediate living expenses.  You often hear that the US is the richest country in the world.  This must be qualified: the top half of the US is the richest country in the world.  The bottom half not at all.

In the US, the top 1% hold 30 – 32% of the wealth, (about $51 trillion)  a number that has constantly grown for decades.  The bottom 50% holds 2.5 %!!! This disparity is unheard of in most other countries.  Here is a quick comparison of other countries where data is available.
………………………….top 1%                     bottom 50%
US                       30-32%                         2 – 2.5                              Britain                  10                                 9
France                 20-26                           4-6
Italy                     20-30                           6-10
Japan                   12-18                           8-12

The crime in cities caused by the impoverishment of the bottom half of society cannot be overcome by National Guards, federal troops, more police or more arrests.  The most obvious path is to reverse the redistribution of wealth from the lower classes to the richest classes that has been going on for decades.  How to do this of course is the problem.  It will entail many steps and  hard working public servants who want to curtail our system of legalized bribes to congressmen,  changing the tax schedule so it looks more like it did under Eisenhower and earlier administrations, stopping off-shore tax havens and all the rest of the ways the rich are permitted to rip us off legally.  And also will entail changing climate of public opinion to embrace the belief that maintaining a billionaire class is antithetical to freedom and democracy. And fighting the Fox News mentality which is constantly demonizing the welfare state and the slackers and cheaters who get “handouts” from the state.  The Trump administration recently announced that there would be work requirements to get SNAP benefits.  I can imagine the cheering from the MAGA crowd how this would spite the freeloaders.  Turns out the vast majority of recipients who are not children nor handicapped already  work – the working poor.

And there are other ways in which the bottom 50% in other countries are better off than in the US.  The minimum wage is a living wage and the working classes make much closer to the professionsl classes.  Also the universal health care systems are far superior in serving the bottom half  than in the US.  Universal health care is not free health care. It means that the costs are shared more equally iu the society.    It also means that the costs are less because they are not paying middle men – the health insurance robber barons.  Of the billions of dollars we pay health insurance companies in the US, much of it goes to pay CEO’s, board members, staff and stock holder’s dividends. This is money that goes to medical services in the EU.

“We must make our choice. We may have democracy or we may have wealth concentrated in the hands of a few. We cannot have both.”
The “we” in Justice Brandeis’s quote is an abstract construct. But the “we” that are choosing wealth in the hands of a few are also choosing power in the hands of a few.  And power in the hands of a few and not the American people is a good working definition of the absence of democracy. Ray Tut   <mintchippolitics.com>