Why '24 Doesn't Matter

I was talking over the weekend with my brother about his woeful investment advisor and I said that what helps is to see that there are no experts. A columnist I read has a good line on it: “distrust, but verify”, meaning that the default assumption is that experts are lying to you but try to verify it in case they are telling you the truth. (That writer said that he used to be in the “trust, but verify” camp until of late.)

Talking to him, I was thinking (but not saying) about the covid fiasco, where the medical field revealed itself as something of a joke -- most memorably by Fauci and the CDC tamping down the lockdown for the Floyd rioters, protest apparently being something that should be put above health concerns (apparently religious activities outside of “woke” religion don’t qualify).  There was also the amazing shredding of their credibility by claiming that the lab leak theory was a conspiracy theory. 

Basically covid was to the medical profession what the priestly pedophilia scandal was to the Catholic Church.  The difference is that the Catholic Church, even with very flawed ministers, is the path to eternal and infinite life while the medical profession is, at best, a way to extend life a few years. Which means the medical profession can be overruled and ignored if you so choose.

Anyway it was heartening to see that he recognizes at least the folly of our fake system of education credentialing. I hope he can do so with journalists, who again get to be “experts” mostly in misinformation or information suppression.

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I think with Trump the big picture is that a group of un-indicted criminals (the FBI & DOJ) are trying to make Trump a criminal.  Which he may well be, but it’s still ironic. The unjust indicting the unjust simply because the first have the power to do so.

‬It reminds me of how much I liked how objective baseball was, how the rules mattered and applied (theoretically) equally to everyone.  Two players in the minors, one hitting .280 and and the other .250 with equal power numbers meant that the guy hitting .280 would be brought up. Not so if one guy’s name is Trump and the other Biden.  Then it doesn’t matter what you’re hitting.

The problem with our judicial system is that Hillary, Biden, & Trump could all be charged and thrown in jail, and yet only one of them got indicted. The reason? It’s who you know, and who likes you. Years ago I read where the FBI/DOJ get to pick the winners and losers -- and that’s about as far from the “rule of law” as you can get.

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A European observer has this to say about the ’24 presidential election:

“Whatever you may think of their individual credentials, there is no one currently who can make any fundamental difference as a future US president unless they have a vast support network beneath them including Congress, Pentagon and Langley.”

True, which is why ‘24 election isn’t all that meaningful except as an interesting directional signpost. If the country can be saved it certainly won’t be by Trump or DeSantis let alone Tim "Can't we all get along?" Scott. 

America changed, in 1945, by not scrupulously drawing down its armies and becoming a peacetime republic as we had done in all our previous wars. Instead we became a full-time empire. People say that had to happen since the USSR was expansionist and so there was never a chance to stand down. I guess basically the reasoning is, “we had to become an empire because the USSR wanted to be an empire.”  Which is true, I guess, but because power corrupts, it flows naturally that empires are corrupting. Which means that it was pretty much foreordained that we would become corrupt. It makes me feel better about our decline and corruption since it pretty much had to happen that way in the natural sphere. It will take heavenly, supernatural influence to change at this point. (Imagine an alternative world where Communism didn’t exist and thus there was no Cold War. America disarms, becomes a force for good instead of evil, JFK doesn’t get shot, the Vietnam war doesn’t happen, the CIA/FBI don’t enlarge to target Communists, then Muslims post-9/11, and now moms at school board meetings.)

I recall how in late September of 2001 talking heads claimed that 9/11 would change the world forever. And I thought at the time, “hmm…. We kill who did this and that sends a message not to do this again…how does this change the world forever?”  I guess two forever wars later, the destruction of Christians in the Middle East, and an FBI into surveilling its citizens using the “Patriot” Act, I know now!