Perception vs. Reality

In this YouTube video, the professor asks the class how many people were killed by police in 2016.  Their estimates are surprisingly good.  Then he asks how many were black?  Here, their estimates are more the twice as high as the actual number.  How many were unarmed?  Again, the estimates are wildly high.  Why does everyone have the same overinflated misconception?  Several offer the media as the cause.  The media will focus on the relatively few cases of unarmed victims and never account for the vastly larger number of armed ones.  In the end, the professor notes that the odds of an unarmed black man being killed by police are 0.6 in a million.  Sure, that's more than it should be, but it is not what is portrayed in the media.

Civil War Brewing?

Tim Pool has talked about civil war for a while now.  The level of discord between the left and the right is so extreme that he posits that our current era is equivalent to the 1850s prior to the Civil War (1861-65).  Sadly, he makes a good case.  In a longform video, he noted how police in some localities are not enforcing the law or that some things have been decriminalized.  For example, shoplifting less than $900 worth of merchandize in California is no longer prosecuted.  Surprise, surprise, the amount of shoplifting has skyrocketed.  In fact, it is done openly and you can find videos of brazen thefts posted on Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, and so forth.  Though such theft is no longer a crime, the police will often arrest and prosecute those who attempt to stop the thefts.  Therefore, protecting your property from thieves is a crime.  How can that be the case?  Tim points out that this cannot go on much longer.  We already see San Francisco businesses closing shop.  If the authorities refuse to protect the citizens, there will be vigilantes.  There will come a day when the vigilantes injure or kill 'criminals' in the act.  The state police or maybe even US Marshals/FBI will show up to arrest the vigilantes.  Now what?  The vigilantes have no reason to respect the authority of either.  Had the government been doing the job of enforcing law, the vigilantes would have been unnecessary.  By its own acts, the government is setting the stage for a conflict with its citizens.

The collapse of the rule of law is leading to increased civil strife.  Obvious cases of two-tiered justice where criminals are released without bail and victims are prosecuted for resisting criminals has to stop.  If not, Tim Pool's prediction of the next civil war may come to pass.

Pearl

H. Pearl Davis has burst upon the scene, a YouTuber who has exploded in popularity in recent months.  She has picked up the complaints of MGTOW (Men Going Their Own Way) channels and added her observations to them.  She states that modern women would be regarded very poorly (I dare not use her descriptions here) by standards of an earlier era.  Where men were supposed to be providers and offer protection, she states that women would bring purity and youth.  That does go back quite a way, certainly before the sexual revolution.  This is hardly the most controversial thing she says.  Recently, she adopted the idea that women shouldn't vote!  She regularly states that men are better at everything than women.  Men are smarter than women and men are less gullible.  It is hardly surprising that she is viewed as a misogynist by her critics.

According to Pearl, men get a raw deal in marriage.  A woman who comes to a marriage as a virgin is 80% likely to stay with her husband.  However, one who has had 5 or more partners, is only 20% likely to stay.  If the woman does leave, she will take the kids, half the household value, and continue to cost her ex-husband through either alimony or child support.

Her rocket-like rise reminds me of Milo Yiannopoulus, who was suddenly everywhere in 2014.  Here was this new personality that was inexplicably everywhere and remained so for several years.  Then there was his collapse in 2017.  Is Pearl just the latest personality to rise to the top and destined to crash into oblivion?  A flash in the pan?  How likely is it that she can resurrect the taboos and mores of an earlier era?

The Fury (1978)

Peter Sandza (Kirk Douglas) is an intelligence operative in the Middle East whose son, Robin (Andrew Stevens), is a powerful psychic.  Plans of accompanying Robin to school for psychics in Chicago are disrupted when terrorists attack.  Robin believes his father was killed in the attack, but Peter sees that the attack was meant to get him out of his son's life.  Though he shot the man who betrayed him, Ben Childress (John Cassavetes), he failed to kill him.  A year later, Peter is in Chicago to search for his son.  The discovery of a psychic girl, Gillian (Amy Irving), provides a link to the school.  Robin is not currently at the school and reports are that he died.  Peter doesn't believe it.  If Robin was dead, the efforts to thwart his search would end.  In fact, Robin has been taken to a private home where he has a doctor assigned to him alone.  It is clear that Robin's psychic powers have grown immensely but at the cost of his sanity.

The movie is unfocused.  Rather than follow Peter in his hunt for his son, we get the overview of everyone doing their thing.  There is Gillian having trouble controlling her developing powers, Hester (Carrie Snodgrass) acting as Peter's agent at the psychic school, Childress complaining to everyone about the problem du jour, Dr. McKeever (Charles Durning) trying to drown his regrets in alcohol, and others still.  The reunion of Peter and Robin is incomprehensible to those not familiar with the book.  Having done the mother with psychic daughter in Carrie (1976), De Palma decided he needed to balance that with a father who had a psychic son.

There are some surprises in the cast.  Daryl Hannah stars as one of Gillian's classmates and Dennis Franz (NYPD Blue) is a uniformed cop concerned about damaging his new police car.  His role offers some of the rare levity in this dark film.

It has its moments but is just so-so.

My Latest Book

An anthology of Downland characters and what they do between their epic adventures.  Mostly written as birthday gifts to the players, these are character studies rather than tales of high adventure.

Cover art by Erika "Chloe" Gritton

Sunburn (1979)

In Acapulco, a man drives his car through a cantina and crashes on to the beach, where it bursts into flames.  In New York, the insurance company is not eager to pay the $5 million policy for the death.  Therefore, Jake Dekker (Charles Grodin) is dispatched to investigate.  To provide a cover story, he hires a model, Ellie (Farrah Fawcett), to pose as his wife.  Jake also has a local contact, Al Marcus (Art Carney), a veteran gumshoe who will help out for a premium fee.  No sooner have Jake & Ellie arrived at their posh rental than they are invited to meet the suspects.  They meet the dead man's family: stand-offish wife, lustful son, and lachrymose daughter.  There is also the man's lawyer and the lawyer's wife (Joan Collins).  Beyond planting bugs in phones, Jake and Ellie accomplish little.  Mostly, the plot is advanced when Al reports his latest findings, which mostly happened offscreen.  Oh, it's like that.  This 'mystery' is often more interested in the awkward romance between Jake and Ellie, who have no chemistry.  Sad.  The actual villains are barely seen or developed beyond what Al has stated to Jake.

Where this should have been a noir mystery set in a tropical paradise, it is instead a weak romantic comedy that offers plenty of chances for Farrah Fawcett to wear snug outfits and Charles Grodin to act bemused.  The best performance is that of Art Carney, who did this same character a couple years earlier in The Late Show.  The villains and most of the side characters are barely developed.  The most memorable part of the movie was the car chase that went through a bullfight: car vs. bull!  That the car chase made no difference at its conclusion was disappointing.

Mediocre.  Skip.

The US Camel Corps

During the Second Seminole War (1835-42), George Crossman was a quartermaster for the US Army.  Moving supplies in the hot and inhospitable everglades, Crossman proposed the use of camels to transport cargo.  During the Mexican-American War (1846-48), Crossman was quartermaster for General Taylor in Texas and Northern Mexico.  The difficulty of moving supplies combined with the desert terrain again called up the idea of a camel corps.  Colonel Jefferson Davis of the 1st Mississippi Rifles thought the idea had merit.  When he became Secretary of War under President Pierce (1853-57), he implemented the US Camel Corps.  In May 1856, 34 camels were delivered by the USS Supply to Texas.  More were delivered the following year.  Along with the camels, several cameleers from the Middle East had been hired to take care of the animals and train US soldiers in their use.  Though the camels greatly outperformed mules and horses in the desert terrain of the American Southwest, they were not popular with the troops.  One test saw 6 camels deliver a cargo in 2 and a half days what took 18 mules 5 days to deliver.  That camels could go many days without food or water, didn't need to be shoed, and could carry much more weight made them almost ideal.  That they didn't get along with horses and mules, that the mule lobby didn't want the competition, and that the culture was used to horses and mules pressed against the adoption of camels.  The Civil War interrupted and essentially killed the Camel Corps.  Based in Texas, many of the camels were not used by the Confederacy.  Soon after the Civil War, the camels were sold to private interests - mostly zoos and the like - or freed into the wild.

The book is more a pamphlet.  It is quite brief, covering the highlights of the brief use of camels in the United States.  A good primer for the subject, which may be all one needs for this footnote in American history.

The Expanse (Season 6)

It has been six months since the Free Navy last hit the earth with an asteroid.  Mostly, this is because the UN Navy had been reassigned to asteroid protection rather than hunting down Free Navy ships.  As such, the Free Navy has had free reign in the belt and beyond.  Though independent, the Rocinante had also been on asteroid patrol when it encountered an asteroid with a rocket engine.  Interesting.  Naomi (Dominique Tipper) reverse engineers the receiver signal and soon locates a Free Navy ship that is orbiting earth and launching these self-propelled asteroids at weak spots in the screen of ships.  Plans are hatched to capture the ship.  Avasarala (Shohreh Aghdashloo) sends Bobbie Draper (Frankie Adams) to the Rocinante to oversee the operation.

Meanwhile, Marco Inaros has challenges with his Free Navy.  His son, Filip, has a breakdown; that his mother and father are trying to kill one another has been hard on him.  The Inners (Earth & Mars) have built new ships and are starting to turn the tide against him.  However, Marco hasn't been idle.  His alliance with the Martian separatists has provided him some surprises for the Inners.

In a tenuously related storyline, Cara is a girl on Laconia, the Martian separatist colony beyond the ring gates.  While exploring, she has encountered some strange dogs that seem to have the ability to fix things that are broken, even reviving a dead bird.  Well, that's interesting.  There was a definite Pet Cemetary vibe to this.

The inclusion of Cara's tale on Laconia is really a distraction.  Yes, this would be important background for the next three novels, but superfluous if this is the final season.  The time and expense would have been better spent on the story back in the solar system.  I would rather have seen the cameos of Anna Volovodov, Elvi Okoye, and Praxidike Meng expanded.  Those were major characters from previous seasons who each had maybe a minute or two in this finale.

It is unfortunate that Kas Anvar, who played Alex Kamal, didn't get to remain with the show for this final season but his character is fondly remembered by the crew in more than one episode.  Every character had an opportunity to reflect on his absence.  Holden (Stephen Strait) has taken over as pilot and proves to be every bit as good as Alex because the plot requires him to be that good.  In the novels, Alex survives to the final book.

At only 6 episodes, this season goes by fast.  Though well-handled, it does feel rushed compared to previous seasons.  Problems don't get to percolate for a couple of episodes before they get resolved.  Nope, this season, we spot a problem at the beginning of the episode and overcome it by the end.  It moves toward the standard episodic pattern of TV rather than the ongoing space opera from previous years.  Nonetheless, it is great.  The whole series is highly recommended.

Spoils System was Better

In the early days of the nation, all positions in the federal government were up for grabs after the election.  One of the most onerous jobs of a new president was to deal with those who had supported his campaign now looking for a job in the new government.  Most presidents picked a member of the cabinet to do this, but that didn't prevent job seekers from pestering the president himself.  Every job in the bureaucracy was available.  Of course, those selected for the position were often unsuited.  It was little more than a way to pay supporters who then did a mediocre or worse job in the position.  Thus was born Civil Service Reform.  Rather than hiring a new patent clerk, why not just keep the one that is there?  It is a non-political position and should be filled by someone with the skills required, rather than some random campaign supporter.  Yes, that was a perfectly sensible idea.

However, now a new problem arises.  A system was now in place where an administration could establish a new bureaucracy and then populate it with supporters.  The next administration would no longer be able to just sweep them away.  Is it any wonder that the federal government now employs more than 23 million people?  That is more than the population of Florida, our 3rd most populous state, who are working for the government.  This is what civil service reform got us.  Worse, these people are not non-partisan professionals.  Washington DC and the surrounding counties vote 90% Democrat, showing that the bureaucracy class - the Deep State - is clearly on one side.  When a Democrat is in office, the multitude of alphabet agencies implement the new policies with vigor.  When a Republican is in office, the gears of government grind to a halt as those same agencies slow walk the new policies.

Though the idea of non-partisan professionals was great in theory, it has utterly failed in practice.  It is time to return to the spoils system.  The Augean Stable needs to be cleaned.  Vivek Ramaswamy has floated the idea of disolving the FBI and placing the various useful special agents in related agencies (US Marshals, Secret Service, Treasury, etc.) and eliminating the administrative bloat that is more than half the FBI.  He also wants to close the Department of Education, which has improved our nation's educational standing not at all since its inception.

We are supposed to have a limited government.  Let's do some limiting!

As the Deep State Turns

Look at all the evidence that is poring into the open about Hunter Biden and the Big Guy.  Devon Archer has testified to Congress and confirmed that Joe Biden was involved in multiple calls and meeting with Hunter's business associates.  In fact, he confirmed the Burisma story where Joe Biden arranged to fire a prosecutor, Viktor Shokin.  Yeah, Trump was entirely justified in asking the Ukrainian president to look into that, but he was impeached for it instead.  The Bidens have offshore shell corporations that have received money from overseas.  Of course, we knew most of this several years ago.  Why is it coming out now?  Because the Deep State can't hold back the tide with a broom.  Time to cut their losses.  Joe Biden will not be running for another term.

So who will run in his stead?  Kamala Harris?  Not a chance.  She was the first to be eliminated from the 2020 primaries, before voting even started, and is mostly an embarrassment to the administration.   They certainly don't want RFK Jr.  He has a longstanding dislike of the Deep State, viewing it as responsible for the death of his father and uncle.  He will not be an ally like Obama or a puppet like Biden.  No, who can they get?  Governor Newsome of California!  The Democratic Party put a thumb on the scale to get Hillary instead of Bernie Sanders and will do it again.  Those superdelegates decide the nominee while the ordinary delegates just give the impression that it was a democratic race.

To give the Democratic nominee a better chance to win, the Deep State has indicted the leading Republican candidate.  Trump has been repeatedly indicted.  Where Trump asking questions on one phone call before Joe Biden had even announced his presidential run was deemed an impeachable offense, it turns out that siccing the DOJ on your opponent is just fine.  It is very hard to hide the two-tiered justice system these days.