The Wages of Unfair Wages

Well everyone, in one of my other writings I said something that I think made it sound like I don’t understand something that I actually do have a concept of, and it has to do with what is the opposite of slavery.  And I just want to say in this quick blog post that a lot of education about slavery always compares it to freedom, like freedom is the main thing to be gained instead.  But I want to say that I think wages might be the main thing, or an additional thing, and that some kinds of freedom come from having correct wages.  We have problems like this now in our country, and people think it is okay, because they see freedom as the main thing in question, which ends up focusing more on the freedom to make people work without paying them enough.  But wages might be the main thing, and the work itself is also a thing.  Abolitionists who made slavery go away a long time ago didn’t always offer other work opportunities, so a lot of poverty and suffering continued from American slavery while many people congratulated themselves and have felt innocent of certain atrocities. But work, wages, and freedom are all part of the justice picture, and people should consider this when they try to solve problems or assess how dependent they have become on other people’s mistreatment. It’s a lot to manage, and it is part of the reason why people should give all their effort to be a good person and do what is right.  And not to make everything theological, but a related topic would have to do with something like tithing ten percent and thinking that excuses you from offering your whole life to the service of God and others. A lot of people will find that to give an honest ten percent, you kind of do have to give your whole life. And so many people have thought all of that is not worth their time. But probably almost everyone would be surprised at how much the other problems of percentages can be traced back to it.

Fighting the System When You Are The System

This topic is very belated, but everyone knows what I am talking about. I thought of a name for it, which I would say is “policy-mongering.” It is when the lawmakers fight each other through the legislation process.  And I think that it has been so much a problem that people should do what they always should have done and make it be against the rules.  Not necessarily a crime, but just against the rules so you lose your job as a senator if you can’t work in a straightforward process instead of using every aspect of the congressional system to fight “the other side” as a representative.  The fact is, in that context, there is not supposed to be another side to that extreme, even with all the history of things like filibustering.  Well filibustering also was a waste of time, and disrespectful, and people should not keep their jobs if they can’t see their work as a job instead of a battle. There is something cowardly about blocking the other politicians at every step of government if what they really want is a war, though that doesn’t necessarily mean that duels are the answer. Both sides have done it consistently, which almost makes it a treaty or agreement of some sort, and that is actually part of the problem.  That is how it becomes a charade and sham while a whole country waits for justice. The right solutions would benefit everyone, and though the divided country and people who are not at peace with each other makes government a difficult challenge that is all too easy for someone like me to sit back and criticize, it is too much of a lie for people to say they are there to govern when what they are really doing is a much lower level role as a soldier taking orders from voters they are try to please in order to keep salaries and insurance that so suspiciously don’t match the wages of the people who can no longer afford places to live.

When to Sort Things Out

People seem pretty mad about riots and looting that have happened in recent months, but that is where I see some of the people who are actually honestly fighting problems instead of doing weird power-play psychological lashes like what a lot of politicians, media, and other bad people do. It kind of matches how people always get in trouble for assault but other life-ruining strategies that happen all the time in this country are often tolerated and sometimes even legal.  But I want to say that as people report on the Breonna Taylor murder, it seems that not everyone thinks it is important that there actually was a drug bust, and that probably her good life and herself as a good person had been turned into kind of a human shield by drug traffickers.  I think there is a range of how bad drug dealers can be, but this sounded like pretty serious drug trade to me, and it continues to confuse me that people so much want to build a case against all cops but ignore the very bad abuse of millions of people, especially young people, from trafficking and drug attacks. A lot of it creates bad situations like what happened to Breonna Taylor, and I don’t know for how much longer cops and soldiers need to be sifting through the complications of innocent people being mixed in before it just becomes a war. And if it does, then people who decided to flood the jails as part of that effort will have to face the consequences of their decision.  For a lot of communities, it still seems worth the effort to try to intervene in trafficking, especially because of the international threats and the child abuse involved. And I can’t say that I am not someone who thinks it does damage people’s credibility when they want to talk about mass incarceration without acknowledging mass crime. I pretty consistently side with the black people and see a lot of racism, and I side with the poor and see abuse and lack of justice, but when I read the news, I see lies. You don’t know how bad you have to be to lose my support, and many people have.  I am not scared to become Amish, to go off the grid, and just wait until judgement day when God tosses millions into the yawning chasm of fire that is probably already glowing a little brighter from recent days.

Yet another all-encompassing rant because of one slight

   Well everyone, I just ate some meatloaf that was in a cool aluminum container and I decided to put it on a plate first and saw that it seemed to not be cooked yet after all.  But I think really it was half cooked and had a note to heat it for 20 minutes in the oven.  Well that is weird because it was in the prepared food section at the grocery store. So I put it in the oven and it was still pink so I sautéed it.  Hopefully it is cooked enough now.  It makes me have thoughts of a ruined society, though, because I feel like there was in fact a time where you would not have to be so careful at a grocery store. There wouldn’t be a risk of accidentally eating raw meat. It happened to me with some crab cakes once, and I have also noticed refrigerated drink displays having alcoholic bottled drinks mixed in with other cryptically labeled teas and sodas.  And what is Kombucha?  I don’t really know.  But what seems clear is that a lot of people in our culture don’t care about anything but money, and they especially don’t care about kids and young people. They just don’t.  And this is how systems form that become harder to intervene in as people start to get cheated or abused by the hundreds of millions. 
     Maybe I should try to stay positive, because great things have happened in our country, and I can see how God blessed my generation from the 80s and made our wildest cartoon dreams come true with laptops, cellphones, and the most entertaining internet phenomenon imaginable. I am also a fan of Obama’s great 8 years, the candy aisle at Target, stars like Ellen and Oprah and Zuckerberg, and even delivery options like Amazon.  But you can see people trying to establish their right to run everyone over and not care about things like clean water standards, FDA rules that can mean life and death, and the most basic justice of getting fair wages.  Why do people continue to tear up everything instead of striving for a functioning congress, a police force that saves people instead of killing them, and schools that provide any service needed in a world where there may not have ever been a greater opportunity to share the truest faith and justice possible? To me it does come down to being able to buy food safely and fairly, and to not have to watch an ongoing economic and moral erosion hurting the younger part of America while the still unsatisfied sharks at the top try to take everything from everyone. If you don’t care about keeping your customers from getting worms, then you don’t care about anything that matters.

Recounting

    Well everyone, I am one of the bad whiteys who was a little slow to see how much the police brutality against African Americans was not isolated incidents. I think some legitimate distrust of the media was part of it, but it took me a while to see that of course people should fight back.  When I think of my own experiences with law enforcement, it is so believable that part of the population has it worse than me, and that I did not have it so good myself for a while.  In New York, I feel that cops have helped me stay safe through some years where bad people from my old job followed me and made themselves known.  But in South Carolina where I lived most of my life, even as someone who tried to stay out of trouble, I did have my share of traffic stops that were overwhelmingly a form of guerilla taxation at best, with some levels of violation that help me believe very much that some cops just go straight for the murder.  
     My experiences almost all involved being stopped for speeding in a school zone, and it was always about ten miles over the speed limit because of the changed speed for an hour, and it would happen after all the children had cleared out so no one could notice that it was a speed trap.  It’s not a big deal, and there is a black dentist from Pennsylvania, I think, who has been pulled over by cops more than 500 times in his gold BMW.  But I think in some ways, it is a big deal, because of the dishonesty of it, because of the motivation that is apparent, and because of the use of power to just maintain more power and rob people. One speeding ticket I got was just because I was accelerating and not speeding at all. It was literally just car trouble. The cop was so mean, and the courts make it not worth your while to plead not guilty.  They reduce the ticket as a bribe for you to put up with their false accusations, and if you lose your case after pleading not guilty, then you have to pay the full amount. So people just go along with the lies because of their lives that are too busy to deal with that kind of garbage. Another cop once pulled me over for an expired tag and when I showed him the actual legal notice vouching for me for one more month, he ignored it and gave me the ticket anyway.  I missed the court appearance to be hospitalized for a manic episode, and my parents tried to get it taken care of for me.  It was total garbage. 
      There is also a little town between the two towns of Greenville and Spartanburg, and this huge 6 lane highway that cuts through, with some businesses along the way, so it is a nice way to travel safely. But in the middle of it where that small town is, the speed limit suddenly cuts down to 40 miles an hour.  It is a speed trap to pay for people’s worthless existence.  What a bunch of losers. Build a factory or something. Don’t involve people in the justice system for no reason just because you need a source of income. 
     Obviously these stories don’t compare to people being shot after stealing cigars, but that is my point.  I think one in ten of my ticket experiences was legitimate.  They took everything they could, which wasn’t that much because of my innocence, yes, but also because of my middle class white background, though I definitely dropped down from that because of my own experiences with suffering and discrimination. I think there are other society solutions that will help everyone more than “defunding the police,” such as more businesses and jobs that hire fairly and pay fairly, but I also think the arrogant, blatant disregard of human rights represented so consistently by bad cops who are not only not held accountable for any of it, but deliberately enabled by worthless whiteys collecting the cash several levels away, warrants quite an overhaul, or an overthrow, or just a reminder of Judgement Day and Jesus Christ finally setting things right with a machine gun.

The Catholic Reformation

    I went to a presentation once where someone said that the secret to wealth had to do with credit power and buying and selling debt.  I don’t understand all of it, and that kind of stuff has definitely been part of our economy for quite a while, but not to good ends and legitimate prosperity.  There is a tough reality that everyone has to face, which is that people reap what they sow, and it is work that results in results. If people build buildings, there will be buildings, and if they don’t, there won’t be buildings, though God is good and gives people extra blessings all the time. And while people talk about interest rates, and lending practices, and all these factors that do matter, there is another thing in the background of America’s economic struggles to contend with. In addition to slavery legacies still needing reparitions, we have also seen about 40 years of Made in China tags on many if not most of the products consumed here. 
     I do not agree with all the bad people who have lamented that other countries have opportunities and production, even when things like patents got copied. I try to be happy when anyone gets what they deserve. But if people want to be safe from dangerous economic domination, then they need to get to work. Our 16 trillion dollar debt is thankfully pretty diversified, but if people think they are just going to coast on the storage of generational money while a third of the country does not have adequate employment other than possibly some drug trade out of a lazy and inconsiderate resignation to traffickers, then they are going to be very disappointed, and their children are going to be more than disappointed as everyone's enemies overtake and overwhelm them. You can already see enough of it to hopefully just serve as a warning to quickly find productive, honest work that builds power and strength to reject abuse and the worst kinds of slavery.

    Also, while I am at it, thanks for the SSDI, everyone.  I already got chewed up and spit out by the corporations, but eventually will return and try to pay it back, even if it means doing time in purgatory.

Monumental Landmark Decisions

I just want to say that I think whoever ends up sandblasting stone mountain will have fixed one of the most offensive monument problems, and I also want to say that I think it has worked out well to have the monuments so there is something to deface and record the right kind of rebellion. Modern art would always have been better than statues, and that is what a lot of graffiti is, anyway. I go so far as to think Mt Rushmore is also an offense, more against nature and all of humanity than just being an issue of racism.  What could people have possibly been thinking to carve statues into the best mountainsides? The arrogance of it is almost enough of an acknowledgement itself. It could be the more strong protest to leave the monuments up as the symbol of shame for people who let themselves be represented by it all.

Homemade Covid Meme

Well everyone, what do you think about this meme that I made?  I am thinking about learning how to make memes and gifs like some of the most creative people.  But I don’t know if I got this one right. I can see a little case against all three photos in terms of how it comes across. Especially the middle guy, who is one of the people who became a symbol of bad hoarding behavior.  And yet I am not sure that what he did is any different than Target and Wal-Mart, except that he actually has what people need in stock.

political warnings

My loyalties are often conflicted because I have known so many people in different contexts who are obviously doing what they are supposed to. But I have also seen in that same variety of environments various hypocrisies as people gleefully destroy the good work and reputations of those who are clearly helping others with all their strength, or at least most of their strength. Sometimes in those margins of what is left undone, aggressors attack mostly decent people and use that leverage to try to create more damage. It is a sad thing, but I mention it just to say that I think with all the problems in our country and world, as we see parts of our culture lost and destroyed, there will be a lot of martyrdom mixed in that people think they won’t be held accountable for.  It might not be the most classic Christian martyrdom, but it might, and people are already sacrificed and persecuted for all kinds of goodness and just an innocence of basic living and staying human. Any activist who thinks they are going to gain some kind of moral victory from carelessly and lazily opposing anyone with a different belief or background is going to find themselves responsible for losses that they might not have wanted to be guilty of if they had thought through their choices more wisely of how to serve the public in the most powerful way. It could ironically become very simple after all, as people are found out to be starkly either good or bad, no matter what situation they find themselves in as everyone makes their choice of whether to treat people with kindness and justice or blatant, undisguised crime.

maybe Jeff Bezos will save us all from the hoarders

Apparently amazon is overwhelmed with orders and can’t “deliver” on its prime services that people paid for, which no one needs to be a jerk about, because coronoravirus was very unexpected.  But I do think that there is an arrogance and disrespect that I have never seen the likes of in my life when I go to inquire about a pancake mix order that is obviously deliberately delayed as a power play and the only communication option there is is to “chat” with a “bot.”  A hard to find web page with literal artificial intelligence or maybe just an insult to everyone’s intelligence as we realize that quarantined people’s hunger for rice and beans is nothing compared to Amazon’s hunger for money and power.

A virus, an economic collapse, and a government tragedy

Something interesting right now is that in November if we still have a country and a government, I will be voting for either Bernie Sanders or a Libertarian. I think the Libertarian I would vote for is named Jo Jorgensen.  Those are the two extreme opposites but I think that is where the best people are and I will not be voting for Biden or Trump under any circumstances, even to prevent Trump or Biden from winning. I also am watching the tragedy of the coronoravirus bill with terrible sadness as they write big checks to corporations and small checks to people who need groceries. I am saying some people will get 1200 dollars and some people will get 600, and it is all about a week later than what was needed.  As much as equality is a concept misused very commonly to take away what people earn, there can’t be a situation more leveling than this disease outbreak, and for Republicans to deny their real job of treating people fairly and instead try to make themselves the judges and rewarders of supposed work ethic and virtue is a disgrace and at the heart of their continual discrimination. The only thing weirder and sicker is their worship and favor of corporations, who aren’t giving workers their fair share of wages already, so why would we trust them with a bailout that could have gone straight to the people.

National Looters

    There are some realizations happening I think with the coronoravirus crisis where we suddenly see some of the risk that people have put themselves in to serve their fellow humans, to contribute to the economy in humble and faithful ways, and sometimes to simply provide for themselves responsibly. I am talking about grocery store cashiers, and of course the health care people, but especially the grocery store people who have for many years been the lowest paid workers in our country.  You could see glimpses of it during snow days when everyone gets their food and the cashiers drive home on the snowy roads, but really I think it has been more apparent than that, with just the usual amount of discipline and patience it takes to get through several hours or a whole day standing in one place facing the public, which can be collectively impatient to the point of abuse.  Of course some customers are nice, and the grocery store jobs turn out to be the secure jobs as the economy crumbles some, hopefully temporarily.  But we should still not miss this clue that maybe cashiers have always been underpaid and under-appreciated by people who have no excuse, which is mostly companies, but also in a way, all of us as consumers who tolerate it.

    As people get desperate, there could be an additional level of safety risk not just due to the contagion of the virus, but also because of people targeting stores for stealing, hoarding, and other bad mob behavior.  I should not be pessimistic, and I think already military support has been activated to keep people safe, but I think it will be interesting to see what kinds of company sharks continue to chew up their employees and hide their money that could have strengthened our whole society to face any epidemic with total resources and justice for everyone. It makes you think about who are the real looters.  When people come into the stores with baseball bats, it could still be a thin disguise for the real bullies collecting the most cash from all of it, who literally are so far from the scenes that their only link to the stores are their rapidly increasing bank accounts, growing in exact inverse proportion to the health and safety of their employees and stock market slaves.

rescuing koalas stat

     This is just a short post to say that the numbers of koala rescues I am seeing seem a little bit small compared to the stats saying hundreds of millions of animals have died in the fires. The Crocodile Hunter people I think rescued over 90,000 or more, which is amazing, and maybe I have just not seen the news enough for Australia.  But on facebook, I see one koala get temporary water at a time, with headlines saying 480 million or even a billion animals have died. Thankfully, it started raining, but there may need to be prevention measures for the future, supported by the rest of the world.
    An irrigation system could be worth investing in to prevent more problems like the fires that hurt everyone for two years.  Also, I want to point out that a certain American brand of climate activism which is very political and often just scapegoats people who haven't come around to that kind of environmentalism yet is not the exact match for what is probably needed in an emergency like what happened with the wildlife in Australia. There is some kind of heroic mass rescue effort needed that is different than just lobbying polluters and shaming ignorant people.  Fire fighting is part of it, but the scale of animal rescue needed was beyond what has been established yet, and it is probably not too late for people to take action to make those rescues possible in the future.

Power Companies

I am not going to waste my energy trying to be clever about this, and I am sure that many people haven noticed the same things I have with recent tech company power plays.  Gmail has done several advances to have power over everyone’s communication lately, and I am sure others have noticed that sometimes you go to click on an email and all of a sudden the screen shifts down and you have clicked on an ad instead.  I also just now noticed that they are moving old emails up in the list to suggest that you reply.  Maybe that is helpful for people, but it seems a little confusing to me.  Spell check has also gotten more aggressive in recent months, making it hard to confirm your original word choice, and the other day I typed an email where google was literally putting a word in front of me each time I typed something, and “suggesting” actual email content.  It was very distracting and hard to think of what to say. Probably people can turn some of those features off, but it is still a weird controlling thing that reminds me of some of facebook’s tricks like that sometimes.  When I work on my website on Squarespace, I can’t easily log off and have to leave the site and come back to it to finally simply log out.  I believe that is so they can get another click to report for their stats.  There is something weird about this stuff, and controlling in an immature way, and there is also a dishonesty that to me is a terrible and dangerous thing on a scale that the tech resources have.  I am so thankful for all the ways I have benefited from all those awesome things like gmail and facebook, but I think that people should always remember the ways that millions of regular people have contributed and are part of that success. The way facebook always tries to roll out changes and stay ahead of any possible regulation could seem like a good way to function as an alternative source of power and leadership for our country and world, but I think that for everyone to decide that some of these guys are above legal oversight might not be the great system that people think it is. There are benefits to public authority and laws enforced by representatives of people with interests beyond just financial or being self-serving, and with the threat of low wages and trafficking that people face in our society, going ahead and just letting the tech people make their own decisions with no accountability is probably not the cool revolutionary idea that many people seem content to allow.

“Commemorative”

Putting Christina McAuliffe on a coin before Harriet Tubman is on the 20 dollar bill is nothing but a hate crime, and Trump should be the next astronaut for the challenger program.

Revisiting

I might share blog links soon, and I just want to repeat a solution idea I have mentioned before after many years of hoping the best for immigrants. It is similar to raids except I think people should find all the immigrants and print out an ID card for them, granting anyone easy instant citizenship.  And then, because there truly are problems with trafficking and abuse, the other task involves simply enforcing criminal law, which should be stricter against all abusers, rapists, and murderers, including Americans who are ruining lives as much as other bad people. There is a lot I don't know about what is happening all over our crisis-filled country, but I do think that simple concepts of welcoming people and protecting everyone from harmful abusers is in fact possible, as rightful moral things usually are. Also, has anyone thought of inviting Mexico to be part of the United States? It would be a nice gesture, considering everything Mexicans have done for our country.

recent consarns

Obviously I am slowing down with these mad blog posts, but I feel like mentioning two recent bothersome things. One is that I have gotten to a point where I really don't know what news stories are true, and don't have any news source that I trust in more than a partial way. People have been talking about this issue for a long time, but I did for a while feel like I could kind of get a picture of what's going on from skipping around and reading between the lines.  But honestly, now I go to sites and look through the headlines and genuinely don't know if there are any stories that I can believe. It could be paranoia or other mental problems, but I have a feeling that it is more likely that my mental problems are more of a result from wrongs like that and not the cause.

Then the other thing is something I have been meaning to mention for a long time, which is my disappointment that New York subways are not more accessible to disabled people and moms with strollers. I am confused about why a city as important as New York would not provide for people in that way, and honestly I thought that certain laws required that. I think that the Access-a-ride service is a pretty good step (get it, "step," like the hundreds of steps people have to carry strollers up with children in them who could get their face smashed if they are dropped?), but I think the disability van program is not the same as treating everyone with justice and service. And if a place as advanced or as potentially advanced as New York could have been won't do what is right, then I think that a lot of places and maybe the whole world is in a lot of trouble.

Ok I am remembering a third thing, which is just to make sure I say on this blog that I do think Trump is racist, and I also think he has a competence and sanity problem bad enough for immediate impeachment. I have thought so for a long time, even after holding out some very unpopular hope after decisively not voting for him.  The outrageous Harriet Tubman 20 dollar bill reversal was what really made me feel the urgent need to express my horror, but there has been a delay in me sharing my political views, and I am really sorry about all the reasons for that.  I mostly do what I can when I can, and I hope that everyone who has more official responsibility to intervene will succeed in preventing worse atrocities than what has already been happening.

next possible mad blog topics

are some children in fact being used as human shields in invasions disguised as migration, and then again as shields for political groups who are happy for the supposed leverage against people who did what they were supposed to

something suspicious going on with companies like twinkies and toys r us declaring bankruptcy and then coming back just a few years later with the same brand value

profit vs. gouging: productive commercial competition versus blocking resources to then charge people for access to basic supplies and services.

Neither Nor

In her book called Hunger, Roxanne Gay wrote about how she had to buy an extra seat on planes sometimes, but then the airline would want to let people put their stuff in her extra seat.  And she said it was like they wanted something both ways.  And I have noticed that a lot of injustice and mistreatment is exactly like that. When I was in college, my mom wanted me to get a job instead of doing volunteer and camp experiences, but then wanted to make me report my spending to her.  But I had my own money because I had had to work instead of doing the things I wanted to do. She could not have it both ways. But people do find a way to demand opposite things from people, and I think it is happening with a lot of our country’s problems.  A lot of people want to ignore things like immigrant needs and poverty and say that is the government’s job, but they also want to say that the government should be limited and not interfere and have any resources or power. The goal is to starve people out of the systems of food and health.  The insurance companies do it too, by wanting to collect premiums from everyone and cover health care for no one.  I mean why don’t they just come to our house with a gun and take our cash. When they do, I will do what I learned from the show called Electric Company when I was a kid.  There was a hold up and a muppet said to someone, “Your money or your life?” And the person said “I’ll take ‘your money’.”  And the bad muppet handed over the money.

only the messenger

   Well everyone, this is just a quick post about such a minor little change in the texting on my phone, which I am sure is just nothing to worry about, just like every other little advance that facebook and other technology does all the time, where they gain just a little bit more power over our actual socializing.  I noticed now that my friends can hit "like" on one of my texts.  Private texts, of course, but for how long?  I think the weird power plays of making everyone sign up for messenger, and then changing the way people select who they are going to send a message to have always had this hint of something that could happen some day, which is that facebook just decides to go ahead and make everyone's messages public instead of private.  no big deal, of course. When you are just trying to "change the world," you have to do stuff like that, don't you?  I think the threat is also there with google and google docs, and some people who think they might be some kind of deity are looking forward to someday letting everyone google through anyone's private and hopefully scandalous and even incriminating emails from the past thirty years.
   But I think that is when people will see why people sometimes have to use force and intervention to put a stop to oppressive and violating societal wrongs.  Hopefully once that happens, Iran will have stolen enough of our technology that we can reboot facebook and twitter with a little more consideration for people's boundaries.

More than a policy error

People have really gotten on my nerves lately with their self righteous shaming and blaming and quoting the Elie Wiesel silence quote after thirty years of squelching evangelicals but I am horrified about the Mexican children being separated from their parents and probably siblings with a strong likelihood of never being reunited and I do think that Trump should be impeached and along with others jailed for child abuse.

A soccer goal post

   This is a short post about something I am not really mad about but thought I would share a suspicion.  It has to do with soccer and something that I think would make the game more fun and interesting. My theory is that regulation soccer fields should be smaller. I think that the usual soccer scores are a little bit too low and people have to run too far but no one wants to say it because it would be like admitting that they were too tired or not great athletes.  That is just a theory that I have, and everyone can watch the world cup games and say that I do not know anything, but I actually did play indoor soccer one time and it was really fun, and it was fun because it was a smaller space and more time was spent aiming the ball instead of trying to transport the ball and it went all over the place constantly so everyone was always actually playing soccer and not doing long distance running in disguise.

    This also reminds me to share an idea for a game that me and some friends made up in middle school.  The game is called Ten-vol-soc.  You play it on the tennis court and you use volleyball rules but kick the ball across the net and try not to let it hit the ground.  It really is fun and I think people could become really good at it and eventually use the Wimbleton courts for world championships.

Desperate Times

    It may not be necessary to write this post since I have already mentioned this topic enough for other people to crack the code and solve the obvious problem, but I did decide to go ahead and say a little more about the rent gouging problems in this country.  A lot of people want to talk about gentrification and say that the "real" real estate problem is the bad white people taking over all the neighborhoods.  But I think it would be more honest and more productive to place the blame where it really belongs, which is on the apartment and real estate people who are gouging everyone.  I think that the faster that people realize that the rent gouging doesn't really help white people either and hurts pretty much everyone in not just individual neighborhoods but the whole country, then the faster we can prevent the behaviors that are actually wrong and our whole society can recover.

    And I want to add my main idea, which some people will think is horribly ignorant communism.  But I think that really, I am right when I say we need to question our whole system of letting people in power charge everyone rent that eventually exceeds the value of the property.  I think that there is a strong case that it is exploitation by nature and should not be allowed.  I will even say the most drastic idea for a solution that I have, which is that a lot of the apartments people pay rent for might need to all of a sudden be condos with their accumulated rent totals counting as mortgage and the ownership being transferred to the tenants.  People would kill over this and they think it is the foundation of American capitalism that I am attacking, but I think they might unexpectedly be wrong about that.  I think that justice is the true foundation of a profitable economy, and the damage that greedy people have done to our country does deserve a punitive act that could include property seizure.  And who better to hand the property to than the people who actually have paid for it.

"When lives are shattered, brains should be splattered."

I was recently at a conference where a speaker mentioned that Christian writers needed to have a response to the "Me Too movement."  I think he was an editor, so it actually is appropriate for him to be talking about it in a writing context.  And it probably is good and faithful for Christians to be on the lookout for some "gospel need" in any discussions that become kind of macro and national.  But I also felt strongly that the actual issues of most of the "me too" articles and essays from abuse survivors should not be minimized into just some kind of arbitrary current events topic that Christianity can be mechanically plugged into, and even a hint of viewing it that way is exactly the reason people wouldn't want to hear that editor's message, and is also part of why the abuse in question has taken over our country.  The Christian response to millions of people saying they have been sexually abused should include an immediate effort to kill the rapists.  That is the situation. We have a nation of pigs and rapists and we should be standing up to all of it in every context.  And when things are criminal, then there should be a use of force to stop the abuse.

The Stench of Liberal Hypocrisy

            It is normal and good for people to not want to be Nazis and to not want to be the bad people in the old civil rights photos.  But when fearfully avoiding "the wrong side of history" is the only moral compass someone has, and they want to prove their goodness by acting out another holocaust using real people as props, then I think they have to be suspected of contributing to the problems themselves. 

            People in the media still seem to be operating under a "trust us, we're the good guys," delusion as they report on all the flailing and failing republican efforts to "secure the border." But I am not convinced of the supposed media goodness.  I have thought since even before Trump got elected that the promotion that propelled him to power was directly and deliberately from the New York Times and a few other news sources who wanted to seem like heroes.  That is not to say that they genuinely like him. I do think they think he is a bad leader, but I think they also have always wanted him to represent the republicans and not just the republicans but really the Christians in this country, because it serves their interests of trying to squelch us and even destroy us.  I don't think it could have been more obvious during the elections, and if anyone thinks I am wrong, I would be interested in seeing even one example of any news story about any of the other Republican primary candidates.  The fact is that it was the media's strategy to make Trump the candidate because they thought everyone would vote for Hillary instead.  But a lot of people really don't want to pay for 40 million abortions, so they reluctantly voted for Trump.  And instead of admitting that their plan went wrong, The New York TImes immediately started diverting everyone's attention to the possibility of some kind of Russian interference in the election, when really, everyone remembers what happened.  The debates were horrible and Clinton got taken down by an abortion question.  And then the Republican candidate that the media chose for everyone actually won.  And what is left to do than for all the liars to try to prove themselves innocent by doing everything they can to insure that their only historical references: the Civil Rights movement and the Holocaust, actually play out with them starring as the heroes who denounce Trump.  And another interesting thing about this is that even with literally thousands of headlines selling the liberal narrative, everyone, including the liberals, knows that what I am saying is true.  And they also know that we do have immigration problems that need to be solved.  But why solve anything when we can spend all our free time playing nerdy little history games with all the people we can control because of their poverty that is largely due to our same old problems not getting solved, because it is such valuable material to use for the liberal's reputations in all their little photos that they wish were more iconic than their own dishonesty which is now an indisputable part of history.

Contracts aren't everything.

      People in our society make a big deal out of agreements, especially when it comes to wages.  A lot of people believe that if you agree to work for a certain wage, it automatically means it is fair.  But contracts aren't all there is to justice.  Justice also means that people get paid what they deserve in the first place, and that they keep what they deserve to keep.  Work value, effort, competition, and especially profits might all be factors, and an agreement doesn't mean that no one is being scammed.

       It is actually very dangerous for too many legal decisions and societal transactions to be based only on contracts and agreements.  People can be tricked, exploited, and leveraged into any kind of abuse with agreements when there are no other protections.  And even though everyone has gotten used to being expected to "read the fine print" and letting signatures be the last word on any matter, I think that more and more people will soon realize the limitations of legal paperwork without the foundation of true justice behind it.

      All the long and overwhelming "terms and conditions" that people have to sign before using any technology are one example of the risks that come with forcing people to agree to things. We all know that most people not only don't but probably can't read all the terms and conditions for almost every service that grants us access to most public participation and trade, and we all know that the personal information that is supposedly now the property of people who got us to click certain boxes gives complete strangers an absurd and dangerous amount of power over all kinds of people, including vulnerable populations like children. At some point, the agreements will have to be over-rided by more important factors and logic.

      Here is a more specific example: I signed up to pay my rent from an automated system because the property management company kept pretending not to get my checks.  When I signed up, I had to agree to their terms, and one of the terms said that they were not responsible for lost money even if the reason was negligence on their part.  I literally had to agree that negligence would be okay in order to pay my rent.  It is absurd, and if negligence happens, do you think it will hold up in court?  I don't think it will, and I think they don't think so, either, otherwise they would have done it.  But some things they will go ahead and try to get away with, and in this corrupt society, there is agreement after agreement that people try to get people to sign in order to have all the power.

      But it isn't automatically justice to honor all contracts, and if we put too much stock in it, the rampant abuse could suddenly mean that contracts have no power, which is also dangerous.  Systems and laws simply can't save a bad society.  They can only protect the good that is already there.  That is one of the moral laws that governs reality, whether people agree to it or not.