REVISED:“God Must Have Loved the Common People. He made so Many of them” (Lincoln)

This is the last musing before I spend some time seeking info on the history of our species in the evolutionary process. The genesis for this interest 

“God Must Have Loved the Common People. He made so Many of them” (Lincoln)

https://www.vibe.com/2018/05/alabama-teen-takes-bus-high-school-graduation/

This kind of clip will always be a favorite kind of clip for me. People like this have always elicited the most empathy from me. They are everywhere, and my teaching career had many of them crossing my path. As Lincoln said “God must have loved the common people. He made so many of them.” 

People like Patrick are rarely disingenuous. And rarely, until they trust you, which is quite rare itself, do they tell you very much.

Perhaps I like Patrick because he is the direct opposite of Donald Trump. I admire Jesus Christ precisely because he was the opposite of a Donald Trump. What percent of the things a Donald Trump ever says or does would Jesus or Patrick ever say or do?  Which of course is not to say Patrick is comparable to Jesus but does reflect my own dependence on the Golden Rule for my ethics, not any inherited religious scripture. If everyone used the Golden Rule as the basis for their ethics there would be zero need for various religions, and all those who believe their behavior on earth will get them to Heaven can still have that belief, not to mention how much more peaceful it would be for so many more of our own species. All the religious passion for teaching the heathens a lessen would be gone, all the inherited religious dogmas and fanaticism would be gone with the wind. We would simply embrace diversity and base our own behavior towards others on just how we would expect to be treated if we were them. Period. 

I must have sat across someone like Patrick in my office thousands of times in my productive years, and in short order you feel the need to make some things go right for the person. Any attention from strangers makes them feel uncomfortable.  Eye contact is brief. These ‘nothing burgers’, as our society tends to treat them—- never whine, never protest, never have much to say, never bother anyone, tend never to ask for help, are about as honest a person one will ever meet, and for the most part they stay to themselves and are as invisible as one is willing to let them be. 

Patrick and Terrell Owens come out of the same formative years environment—the projects in Alabama. One rose to the top of the hill in his career and the other will likely never be much of a household name to anyone. Interestingly, hardly anyone in grade school, high school, or college remembers much about Terrell Owens and chances are great that, except for Patrick’s brief 15 minutes of fame, 20 years from now few of Patrick’s classmates will remember much about Patrick either. I suppose genetics comes into play here to some degree, especially will power in the case of Terrell, but the focus and confidence seems to have come from T.O.’s grandmother. Neither Terrell or Patrick would likely come to see their instructor—for differing reasons. So naturally I am impressed with Terrell who fought his way to the top on his own—literally. He wasn’t even first string in high school or most of college. Terrell had no posse, no army of coaches guiding him at every step of the way, no strong social circuit of friends, and neither does Patrick. Yet as much as I admire Terrell, I am just as angry at our society for walling off young people like Patrick in urban, suburban, and rural ghettos, most likely for them--- a  life sentence.  

We know a lot about Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome in soldiers returning from a front line battle in the service and we are aware of the kind of changes, sometimes permanent, that can occur to a soldier’s physical and mental health—and we know the cause is chronic high levels of stress hormones in their blood over a considerable period of time. Yet we totally ignore that this same elevated level of stress hormones can occur in many children living in our urban, suburban, and rural ghettoes—which today are scary places for adults, let alone children. To a lesser degree some children in middle class families, and even more in wealthy families, can suffer from chronic high levels of stress hormones. And yet we still don’t monitor these blood levels of stress hormones, let alone try to treat these medical conditions before damage, often permanent, occurs. I just don’t understand this. I guess it is another example that science is out, and feelings generated, by whatever, are in.  We understand a lot about post traumatic stress syndrome causes in soldiers—including the relationship between chronic high levels of stress hormones and the damage caused.  Nobody says their social and career limitations are their fault. Most of them can get some help, inadequate as it may be. I guess we don’t diagnose many of the kids living in our urban and rural ghettos  because we would then have to face the realization that our neglect of these ghettos is destroying the lives of many of these kids, just like taking young people and putting them on the front line in our military invasions, on borrowed money, can ruin the lives of these young soldiers.  

I would tend to call a student like Patrick into my office, since their grades were often unremarkable—not real good—and not real bad either, just plain unimpressive. “Why don’t you come to see your Professor to get help on getting your grades up?.  “I know I just have to work harder, what can you do?” “Do you ever study with students getting better grades?” “How can I do that? After class everyone goes their separate ways?”  “Do you have a job?”  “I bag groceries but the store is an hour a way on the bus each way.”  Why do you take a full load of courses when you work so many hours on top of spending 2 hrs each day on a bus?  “I have a Pell Grant and I have to finish college in 4 years plus I need to work so I can help support my mom with food and stuff.” And so it goes, so many disadvantages unimaginable—few, if any of them, I ever had. 

My guess (I don’t know Patrick at all except this clip) is that Patrick will manage a degree from somewhere in something or other, and then find it difficult to get a job (for varied reasons including his  un-energetic demeanor, his mediocre grades, and no evidence of much self confidence. Or, if employers are kind hearted they may hire him but there is a good chance he will appear lazy, show little creativity or drive for advancement, may be undependable, overweight, or slow to learn etc. Medically, being raised in our stressful and unsafe American ghettoes can do all these things—via elevated chronic levels of stress hormones—especially those in their formative years. The neural circuitry needed for a proper emotional state, the ability to learn things, to remember things, to be properly motivated, plus the proper operation of all body systems requires a proper nurturing environment during the formative years.  

I see it this way: Every government is responsible for all the communities within it’s borders. 

That means every child should have the same amount of money spent on their education, not affluent communities spending sometimes 4 times as much money per child. Every child should be guaranteed a good school, good teachers, good health care, and a safe environment. Family values should not be restricted to genetic cabals. The Golden Rule should be the ethical basis of every society and form of government. Now that we understand the medical danger for kids in urban, suburban, and rural ghettos and it’s existence to a lesser degree in all economic levels, we should alter our educational system accordingly. There is no need any longer for a teacher to give lectures all day long on subject matters. In most cases better lecturers on the subject matter are available on the computer. This frees up a teacher’s time to provide individual attention to those kids with chronic high levels of stress hormones. Each child with this medical problem should have a team of teachers assigned to find out the origin of the stress and the options for reducing the stress. These teams should have wide ranging authority to act, even if it involves interfering with parental actions, if they are part of the problem. It is so disingenuous to have strong opposition to abortion and yet let every child be on his/her own after birth. As a community, all the kids are our kids. As a community it is everyone’s responsibility to ensure all children have as level playing field as possible during their formative years. Period.  Chances are (I can only speculate based on this short video) that Patrick, like so many other children in our modern ghettos, does not feel safe outside of his home, if even safe there. If he did not see other kids get attacked, or bullied, or have things stolen from them, or get threatened, then he was at least well aware that this could happen to him. Once this kind of stress gets ingrained, it tends not to go away, and the only option open is to be as invisible as can be: don’t get involved with others, don’t speak up about anything in class, never have in your possession something of material value which others might want.  Don’t get friendly with other groups less one be demanded to participate in activities which could get one into trouble (and more stress), and essentially just stay invisible. His goal, to get a diploma, even if he had to walk and take buses for hours to get to and from school, was something he could do on his own. It was something he could do in peace without it impinging on anyone else’s life. To the extent any of this is true, he will probably not recover and function in ways which will lead to much success in any kind of affluent lifestyle. And many others, who grew up in a safe neighborhood with good schools, good teachers, good health care, and endless opportunities for advancement, express disdain for those like Patrick—lazy, poorly motivated, little willpower, and so on. We have found the problem and it is us. 

There is no reason the Patrick’s of this world should reach adulthood suffering from varied degrees of post traumatic stress syndrome. The kid in this video is frightened, tries to be invisible less he get dragged into social stresses he can’t handle. He probably has never been more than ten miles from his home, probably has few real friends, and if he did, why would no family see to it that he had a way to get to his own graduation, not walk and ride buses for hours in his cap and gown to get there? And why would no teacher or administrator not be aware of his circumstance and intervene to help?  This grown man still sits head down and let’s his mother talk about events happening that are about him, not her. She appeared to be a good mother, maybe the only one he trusts. Probably, in terms of an affluent and socially interactive life, it is all over for Patrick. My guess his teachers, if asked about him, would simply say “Not much to say about Patrick, comes to class every day, is very quiet, doesn’t bother anyone, never causes any commotion, manages to pass most of the tests with minimal competency, not the brightest bulb in the room, and other than that I don’t know much about him.” These teachers may just as well have sent the lectures on video tape to Patrick’s house for all the good their presence in his world does for him. We can pretend the growing size, dangerous, and stressful environment of our ghettoes, urban and rural, are not a threat to our society—but they are right now, and will likely be even more so in the near future. The violence won’t come from the Patricks buried in their midst, but other kids medically damaged from chronic stress, will act out with mindless violence when the right time arrives.  The Illusion that we have them safely out of sight, out of mind, will be a rude awakening down the ever less distant road. 

People like Patrick, in the past, when I was young, in historic simpler days, may have been poor but they felt safe and their poor neighborhoods were bustling with people sitting on porches, kids playing in the streets, and endless parties in the neighborhood. Today these poor kids can’t even leave the house, have bars on the windows and doors, while fear being shot or hurt at school. So when something good happens to someone like Patrick it is especially emotionally moving to me. What kind of kid is more deserving of a ray of good luck and recognition in their life? The cruel reality is that it may be too little, too late to restore the potential he may once have had.

The only upside to Patrick’s inherited environment is that expecting so little, he probably will end up satisfied with little, as opposed to those with much—whose want for more has no limit. American youth are 48 times more likely to die from guns than the youth in other industrialized countries. I wonder what the odds are for Patrick?  He better be careful with his new car. Don’t make a wrong turn and be driving where he makes certain policemen uncomfortable and end up getting shot.  We all know only a few cops are bad cops but why, when the bad cops behave badly, do their union leaders always support them?  So many of us today, if we emotionally like someone or some group, we act too much like those mothers who support the actions of their son no matter what the bad behavior of the son. Trump is right. He can swindle people and not only get away with it, but become wealthy with every bankruptcy, pay no taxes even though wealthy, and as he stated not that long ago—he could kill someone and his supporters would stand behind him. I’ll take Patrick any day as admirable over the Trumphites of the world.. Mother Nature bats last, always has, and God’s laws created to govern the evolutionary process will remain in place, despite the endless self serving illusions on the part of our human species, believing that we are now in charge. We will shortly see, probably in my lifetime, just how all this turns out. Hang on to your hats—this is going to be a rough ride.

If the current cultural status here and across the globe can be described in one word I would choose “disingenuous”. We have all learned via endless cyberspace communications round the clock that ‘disingenuous’ is everywhere. So many things are what we pretend them to be, not what they are. I  start with the 75 million displaced refugees living in tent cities on barren lands, and add all the Patricks in the world, getting to the number of people suffering severe environmental stresses in their lives—all this is as astonishing as it is depressing. If ways to make the Golden Rule the basis of human ethics fails, then all our real global problems, all new in human history, will cause our species to implode on itself as would any species which becomes overpopulated fighting over limited natural resources. We can ignore the community environment of the Patricks in our urban, suburban, and rural ghettos, and they will continue to get bigger and more dangerous—in other words, we can be be disingenuous about the nature of their existence and destiny, but this exploding  culture permeating societies across the globe is what it is. Hermit-hood protects me from the direct and daily impact of this social disease, and I suppose, when all is said and done, is why my empathy is directed toward the Patricks and Owens of the world. Whatever else they are not, for whatever reasons, they are not disingenuous. Different as night and day, come from the identical type of formative environment—one an amazing survivor (self made) and the other likely saddled with a medical condition which makes him uncompetitive in any rat race, depending on luck to find a little hidden safe niche, where he can be as invisible as possible and yet survive. That is no grand dream for his life, but if he can find it,  some contentment for him will be achieved. “God must have loved the common people, he made so many of them”. 

P.S. On a personal note I can’t count the number of times times when, teaching college students, others would remark to me, “You are here to teach physiology, why do you get involved in their personal problems?” Part of it is because, as a physiologist, I understand the vital impact of environment during the formative years to one’s mental and physical health. Another part of it may be that with no kids of my own, they became, for a short stint, my kids in a total sense, not just inanimate objects to lectured at for brief periods each week. By the time many of these students reached my classroom, the damage had already been done. After the formative years it is very difficult to reprogram their emotional, intellectual, and organ physiology. And therein lies a depressing reality. We thought spending our priorities on endless military hardware and invasions, would make us safe and protect our citizens. Wrong. All these modern day urban, suburban, and rural ghettos are like a cancer to our society—-growing exponentially, victims here, there, and everywhere.  

The Power of Nature in Our Lives

It is extremely difficult to put in words the power of nature to generate a state of contentment. Only in nature does one really feel everything is proceeding just fine and that on evolutionary time, things will get even better. Nature helps us accept that none of this brilliant process is about any of us individually. Once we can accept that, genuine long term contentment can be attained.  Below are some interesting quotes about nature, thoughts in stark contrast to the toxic combative tweets now swirling about us day after day, all day and night, ad nausea from the highest levels of our beloved country. And we are reminded that nature bats last.

Study nature, love nature, stay close to nature. It will never fail you. Frank Lloyd Wright

Look deep into nature, and then you will understand everything better. Albert Einstein

One touch of nature makes the whole world kin. William Shakespeare

Keep close to Nature's heart... and break clear away, once in awhile, and climb a mountain or spend a week in the woods. Wash your spirit clean. John Muir

We need to find God, and he cannot be found in noise and restlessness. God is the friend of silence. See how nature - trees, flowers, grass- grows in silence; see the stars, the moon and the sun, how they move in silence... We need silence to be able to touch souls. Mother Teresa

The clearest way into the Universe is through a forest wilderness. John Muir

If the sight of the blue skies fills you with joy, if a blade of grass springing up in the fields has power to move you, if the simple things of nature have a message that you understand, rejoice, for your soul is alive. Eleonora Duse

“A human being is a part of the whole called by us universe, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feeling as something separated from the rest, a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.” 

― Albert Einstein

“There is a pleasure in the pathless woods,

There is a rapture on the lonely shore,

There is society, where none intrudes,

By the deep sea, and music in its roar:

I love not man the less, but Nature more” 

― George Gordon Byron

“Tiger got to hunt, bird got to fly;

Man got to sit and wonder 'why, why, why?'

Tiger got to sleep, bird got to land;

Man got to tell himself he understand.” 

― Kurt Vonnegut, Cat's Cradle

“Adopt the pace of nature: her secret is patience.” 

― Ralph Waldo Emerson

“A quiet secluded life in the country, with the possibility of being useful to people to whom it is easy to do good, and who are not accustomed to have it done to them; then work which one hopes may be of some use; then rest, nature, books, music, love for one's neighbor — such is my idea of happiness.” 

― Leo Tolstoy, Family Happiness

“Live in each season as it passes; breathe the air, drink the drink, taste the fruit, and resign yourself to the influence of the earth.” 

― Henry David Thoreau, Walden

“We know that God is everywhere; but certainly we feel His presence most when His works are on the grandest scale spread before us; and it is in the unclouded night-sky, where His worlds wheel their silent course, that we read clearest His infinitude, His omnipotence, His omnipresence.” 

― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“Climb the mountains and get their good tidings. Nature's peace will flow into you as sunshine flows into trees. The winds will blow their own freshness into you, and the storms their energy, while cares will drop away from you like the leaves of Autumn.” 

― John Muir, The Mountains of California

“This life is yours. Take the power to choose what you want to do and do it well. Take the power to love what you want in life and love it honestly. Take the power to walk in the forest and be a part of nature. Take the power to control your own life. No one else can do it for you. Take the power to make your life happy.” 

― Susan Polis Schutz

When despair for the world grows in me

and I wake in the night at the least sound

in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,

I go and lie down where the wood drake

rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.

I come into the peace of wild things

who do not tax their lives with forethought

or grief. I come into the presence of still water.

And I feel above me the day-blind stars

waiting with their light. For a time

I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.” 

― Wendell Berry, The Selected Poems of Wendell Berry

“The tree which moves some to tears of joy is in the eyes of others only a green thing that stands in the way. Some see nature all ridicule and deformity... and some scarce see nature at all. But to the eyes of the man of imagination, nature is imagination itself.” 

― William Blake

Ordinarily, I go to the woods alone, with not a single

friend, for they are all smilers and talkers and therefore 

unsuitable.

I don’t really want to be witnessed talking to the catbirds 

or hugging the old black oak tree. I have my way of 

praying, as you no doubt have yours. 

Besides, when I am alone I can become invisible. I can sit

on the top of a dune as motionless as an uprise of weeds, 

until the foxes run by unconcerned. I can hear the almost

unhearable sound of the roses singing.

If you have ever gone to the woods with me, I must love

you very much.” 

― Mary Oliver, Swan: Poems and Prose Poems

“I felt like lying down by the side of the trail and remembering it all. The woods do that to you, they always look familiar, long lost, like the face of a long-dead relative, like an old dream, like a piece of forgotten song drifting across the water, most of all like golden eternities of past childhood or past manhood and all the living and the dying and the heartbreak that went on a million years ago and the clouds as they pass overhead seem to testify (by their own lonesome familiarity) to this feeling.” 

― Jack Kerouac, The Dharma Bums

“Thus, from the war of nature, from famine and death, the most exalted object which we are capable of conceiving, namely, the production of the higher animals, directly follows. There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved.” 

― Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species

“The goal of life is to make your heartbeat match the beat of the universe, to match your nature with Nature.” 

― Joseph Campbell, A Joseph Campbell Companion: Reflections on the Art of Living

The Stats Behind China’s Emergence as a World Economic Leader

The Stats Behind China’s Emergence as a World Economic Leader

China is a major engine for world economic growth with a GDP that grew 6.7% last year (The US grew 2.9%). It is now the 2nd largest economy. China is the largest merchandise exporter and 2nd largest merchandise importer. By 2020 China is projected to have a middle class of 600 million people (United States will have less than 167 million in the middle class). China is now taking environmental and energy consumption problems serious enough that energy consumption per unit of GDP is now dropping (in the US too—except things might be changing here). Major efforts are under way in China to cope with climate change, reducing resources consumption, carbon dioxide emissions, and protecting the environment. It’s foreign policy has shifted to the concept of a global human community with a shared destiny. It’s foreign investment activities have more than doubled since 2012.  China claims to be immune now to over capitalistic tendencies which lead countries like the U.S. to have stagnant wages and widening income inequality. It now (under current leadership), claims to select its national leaders based on merit and performance. On average, each party secretary has administered a population of at least 100 million before being promoted to the current position in Beijing. China’s population of 1.3 billion is now covered by national medical insurance and pension plans. China claims no need to yield to the demands of various vested interests, as does the U.S. to the power of capitalism. They claim the 100 richest Chinese have no influence on their Central Committee. China believes it can stay clear of American syndrome of over-capitalism or the Greek syndrome of the excessive welfare state. In the past five years more than 60 million people have been lifted out of poverty resulting in the poverty ratio dropping from 10.2% to less than 4 percent., while the middle income group has been expanding. 

In 2013 China launched a project to modernize the infrastructure along the ‘Silk Road’ which connects Europe with Asia. This will be funded through the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank. The importance of this is: of the 15 countries with the world’s largest oil reserves, 8 are along this route, as are 8 of the 15 countries with the most gas reserves.  And this route would also make transporting goods between Asia and Europe more economical. American anger at Pakistan (deserved) has resulted in a reduction in financial aid to Pakistan. But China stepped in and made direct investments in Pakistan totaling $837 million compared to the $42.6 million given by the United States over the same time period. 

In the electric car business the American Telsa manufacturer says it will build 260,000/yr starting shortly. China has already sold 700,000 electric cars in 1017. China has offered subsidies to buyers to the tune of $15,000 per vehicle and has threatened to block automakers that don’t make electric vehicles from selling traditional cars.  Recently China halted production of more than 500 models of heavily polluting cars. It is projected that by 2020 China will be producing 4.5 million electric vehicles while Tesla is projected to produce about 1 million. Right now China has become the world’s largest automotive market. The Chinese city of Shenzhen now has 16,359 all-electric buses. The United States has 300.

China is now seeking to reduce rural poverty by developing production systems, relocation, ecological compensation, education and social security initiatives. In one province this reduced the numbers of impoverished residents by 25%. Current goals are to lift more than 1 million out of poverty per year (Does the US even have goals here?). A modern rural cooperative gives 30% of profits to the village to cover public spending, 30% goes to the rural cooperative to expand production, and the remaining 40 percent is shared by the farmers (Since 2013, America's farmers and ranchers have weathered a 45 percent drop in net farm income, the largest three-year drop since the start of the Great Depression).

. Recently the brain drain from China to Silicon Valley has been reversed as more and more Chinese return to China where they feel the high tech innovations back in China  gives them a better chance to work on grander problems, and a better chance to become fabulously wealthy. 

In spotting cyberthreats China currently is 20 days ahead of the United States in spotting cyberthreats. This is based on 17,940 vulnerabilities added to both data bases over the past two years. 

China has mobilized 60,000 troops to plant trees in an area roughly the size of Ireland by 2018. 

China has indicated plans to boost the output of artificial intelligence (AI) at a cost which will equal more than a tenth of China’s 2016 gross domestic product. 

In 2011 85% of Chinese consumers preferred foreign brands. In 2017 the preference for foreign brands dropped to 40%.

The Chinese former policy of allowing only 1 child per couple worked so well that the policy now permits two children, but most couples are selecting to stick with just one. Chinese women get 161 days of paid maternity leave. And some areas of China now offer new fathers one month paid leave. 

China is now the biggest foreign holder of American T-bills. 

China has strict control over internet ‘news’. What the government considers fake news rarely gets through to viewers. Both Google and Apple struggle with being able to freely operate in China. Hard to know what to think of this considering the rampant use of ‘false facts’ fed to a relatively uneducated American public. Not that China won’t create it’s own ‘false facts’. Hard to know how best to handle false facts. This would make an interesting musing: how to deal with false facts dispersed quickly and to thousands of people daily via cyberspace communications.

China is using regulations, not interest rates, to force companies to lower debt.

Right here is enough data to draw some logical conclusions. It is understood that not all stats are to be taken at face value. But in great enough numbers a picture, however hazy, emerges.  Americans still place budgetary priorities on our military industrial complex, even though all these bombs and weapons of mass destruction provided little assistance on winning our invasion goals of countries we invaded. After we wipe out the infrastructure of whatever country we invade as ‘peace keepers’ and in the absence of having soldiers in military uniforms to attack, we declare ‘victory’ and leave the conquered country to thugs and terrorists to control their communities. Spending so much money on the military industrial complex (which in order to thrive must have continuous military actions somewhere), there is little money to actually compete with a country like China who is focused on the matters listed above. In fact all the more advanced industrialized countries have a far greater percent of their budgets to spend on domestic matters than the United States. Who wins with our current priorities? Certainly not the poor or the less fortunate in our own country, or the same classes in those countries we invade. Lincoln had it right: “A house divided against itself cannot stand”. Today, in America, this means that if the three large ethnic groups—white, black, hispanic----none of whom now have a clear majority——cannot bring themselves to respect each other, support each other,  with each group working with the other groups to help them solve problems unique to each group, then the toxic domestic environment will surely bring on the flames of violence and hate that will bring an economic and violent implosion, the likes of which we can not possibly fully envision. There is a lot at stake. Every ethnic group is screaming that “our lives matter”. This is only a noble expression when it is changed to: “Our lives matter too”.   

Our democratic form of government has not been able to change it’s structure in ways which allow domestic policies to get the needed attention. The argument as to whether Obama or Trump is the ‘devil’ here is misplaced. Obama got modest health care reform through when he had a democratic Congress early in his administration, but after that nothing that he proposed domestically could get through Congress or even be voted on by Congress.  Congress has become little more than a platform for vitriolic attacks on other people/groups. The classless vitriolic personal assassination in Congress is matched now by the Presidency. This, more than anything else led to large groups of ‘common folk’, whose economic status was getting worse every year—and has been for decades now, to revolt and vote for the candidate who was just as angry as them. The real issues are so complicated these days that we have uneducated voters deciding matters like climate change based on their feelings, not any real understanding of the issues. 

China’s revised political structure, given the current leadership, can implement policies unilaterally. Right now China’s leadership is focused on economic matters at home and abroad. To the extent it remains that way, they will actually do most of the things ‘liberals’ or ‘progressives’  in this country support. China is now focused on the plight of the poor, while the US is focused on greasing the wheels of the government for the 2-5% who own 90% of our wealth. China has already led on population control while non dictatorships have little ability to even discuss this issue and survive politically. China is now actively altering the economic structure of their rural ghettoes to ensure they are better educated, have good health care, and improved wages.  China is now hell bent on addressing climate control. China is hell bent now on a foreign aid policy which enables the third world countries to get a fairer share of benefits for economic agreements. In essence, China has made remarkable strides in fostering a capitalism that has strict regulations and strict limits. The Chinese dictatorship government will decide matters of fairness in deals with others, domestically or globally, and place limits of just how much of their national wealth can be accumulated by their very wealthy. 

The United States cannot do these things in the above paragraph and this is, right now, our Achilles Heel. We still lead, in most areas of military hardware, invasions of other countries, an economic system in which 3 citizens (Gates, Bezos, Buffett) can have as much wealth as half the United States citizens combined, and human rights, but more and more Americans are starting to emotionally feel “fuck human rights, I need a pay raise, a livable wage, a dependable and decent pension, to work less hours per week, to have a job opportunity (at a decent wage), to have good health care, to live in a safe neighborhood (an American teenager is 48 times more likely to be killed than in any other modern industrialized society), while young people living in our poorer communities, rural or urban, need good schools and good teachers. The political status in this country (we’re not the only one) is toxic, stagnant, and stalemated with both political parties able to stonewall the policies of any elected President. In this environment, with almost total neglect of our lower class, it will be domestic terrorism which will grow at the most exponential rate, and already is. 

This is about as short a treatise that can be written on this topic of China, Korea, and future world leadership. How to change the situation is not all that clear. On evolutionary time, there is no need to think progress is ending. On human time, the near future is certainly of concern for most of global humanity. What is glaringly new in the evolutionary process is a species (our own) with so much more ‘intelligence’ creating activities that are going to influence the evolutionary process in ways which heretofore were not in the mix. The result? It probably is a waste of time to even hazard any guess as what the result will be. The future generations will find out. 

I personally feel gratitude that my days of being ‘in the mix’ are over and have been for 21 years now.  My hermit hood life has achieved the level necessary to ride out and be apart from the reality of those now in their formative and productive years. I do what I can for the ‘most unfortunate’ plus the environment, through my FANAFI Fund, and go gently down the stream to oblivion, minus any angst over death as the certain finale. So much luck, genes, environment, and crucial help from others has come my way, independent of any earned right to any of these benefits, that it would be hard for me to generate any logical basis to complain. Perhaps when my dying process starts it’s final descent, I will lose sight of gratitude and squeal like a pig—and end up grasping at every straw to live a few more months. Time will tell. Except for endless musings, nature, Abraham Lincoln, Victoria Woodhull, the Louvin Brothers, Duke Snider, Obama, Barry Goldwater, Alan Iverson, my pets, and of course the more recent Terrell Owens, my acquired sense of when ‘enough is enough’ of most anything, has contributed greatly to my sense of contentment in my terminational years. Being unimportant never has felt more therapeutically acceptable. Fate has been kind to me, but I have always been saddened by the fate of so many in life for  whom so many unpleasant realities existed. The best I could do was to never be the cause of someone else’s bad fate. To the extent I succeeded there, my life has been judicially a positive force.  I never got to ‘miss’ the billions of years before my birth and I will never get to miss the infinite years of the future after my extinguishment. Fair enough, but still, extinguishment is a hard word to swallow. On the other hand, is it really a blessing to be the last one standing? There goes the last hope for a large funeral.  At that point, what are we standing for? 

The Korean Question and the Likely Outcome

Note: 

The two musings on the near future of our political planet are done, hardly the last word on anything, but I liked the challenge, and am eager now to return to the more isolated and less depressing aspects of human behaviors. After watching the primary and presidential debates, and listening to late night talk shows and the comedian at this past weekend’s correspondence dinner, it makes one wonder how American politics got to this ill-mannered, disrespectful, vulgar, malignant, vitriolic, acrimonious, and toxic level.  While we can hardly be accurate where all this is heading, one thing is certain: Donald Trump set the stage for it all in the very first primary debate with his endless name calling, character assassination tweets, and rantings, which have only worsened as President. It seems like it came right out of ghetto level communications on an adolescent playground. It is no wonder the man has no long time personal friends or any cerebral ethics.  We are now in a bar room brawl—find your mirror images, grab a weapon of some kind, and assault (verbally or physically) those of a different ilk. Then, at some point, seeing no light to an exit, take your own life—but only after you have taken with you a random maximized number of others. Having driven other species to a record rate of extinction, we have now turned on ourselves. Ready or not we will see how this all works out.  

  

The Korean Question and the Likely Outcome

Predicting the near term outcome of the Korean Situation is tricky and maybe foolhardy. But here is how I see the most likely outcome.

One must first consider the major players in any summit. Kim Jong-il, Putin and Trump are all the same ilk, that is to say they have little to no tolerance for diversity, have endless compulsion for material wealth, and truth to them is whatever works best for them at any given moment. Xi Jinping of China is probably the smartest and sanest of the bunch. Moon Jae-in I know little about but he is listed as President of South Korea.

The loose cannons in every respect are Kim Jong-iL and Donald Trump. The wiliest is probably Putin. Moon Jae-In just wants no nuclear attack from North Korea. 

After all these years why suddenly is there going to be various summit meetings between the major powers regarding North Korea? Kim Jong-il enjoyed playing games with the leaders of other major powers because he felt confident no one would risk an open attack. He feared more enemies in his own country. Putin, Kim Jon-il and Xi Jinping are all dictators. Both Trump and Kim Jon-il are driven by emotions, macho images of themselves, and little thought-through impulsives. Trump is likely the first of the major world leaders who Kim Jon-il feared might suddenly do something rash, unpredictable, and reckless. Like stated, they are of the same ilk.

Trump is not someone other world leaders admire, because Trump makes it perfectly clear that any deals will be made or kept only if it is in the best interests of the US, and he also makes it clear ‘best interest’ means everyone else will get the short end of the stick. That is his history his entire life. He made millions stiffing everyone he could including investors, workers, the government, contractors, anyone in real estate matters, business partners, etc. Up until now Kim Jong-il has been on everyone’s shit list while numerous economic sanctions have hurt the North Korean economy even as dismal as it is.  

No one wants Kim Jong-il to have nuclear weapons. Most people in the world probably wished Trump didn’t either. Whatever Trump is, he is probably quite temporary, for health or political reasons. So it seems logical that Russia and China will be willing to form a defense pact with North Korea agreeing to come to the aid of North Korea if the U.S. attacks North Korea. A sort of mini Pacific NATO alliance to protect Asia from the United States just like NATO is there to protect Europe from Russia. 

China will likely start dominating trade agreements in Asia and maybe even in Africa and South America. China will probably start offering better trade deals with third world countries than they will get from the United States. The reason: China is a dictatorship and can force Chinese companies to offer deals which give donor countries more real economic growth themselves. American companies are free to be as capitalistic as they please, which means the best deal is the one which benefits them much more than the third world country. America right now is getting a lot of back lash from third world countries in South America, Africa, and the Far East from the obvious: few, if any of them, have become more peaceful and prosperous from any economic partnership with the US or from any military invasion of their country to bring any positive changes. So the United States, for most of the world, is on a different kind of ‘shit list’.

Most countries across our globe are dealing with massive accumulation of their wealth into the hands of the few. This is true whether the country is a dictatorship, a democracy, or a communist country. Socialized countries in northeastern Europe are in better shape. Modern terrorism, spreading like a plague over the globe is a direct result of this grossly imbalanced spread of national wealth. America has for many decades believed that whatever is good for business is good for everyone. The wealth would all trickle down. It never much did and probably never will. America was blessed with endless natural resources and a remarkable constitutional government, plus a location away from all the turmoils in Europe and Asia. Workers here formed unions and were able to increasingly prosper from their labors. Children, women, and minorities gained more and more rights while progress, though slow, went forward. But as more and more wealth, and all the political power that came with it, after the frontier became nonexistent, this flow of even greater wealth to the already wealthy began to steadily strangle the ability of workers to keep pace with the prosperity of the wealthy. Americans never really brought into Lincoln’s insistence that labor comes before capital. As America grew to be the chief economic power in the world, the attitude toward other economic poorly developed countries was a continuation of our long establish domestic attitude that whatever was good for our businesses was good for the welfare of the other countries with whom we traded. Well, it wasn’t, and any money that ended up in these countries went to the already wealthy and for a long time our trade policies made our businesses wealthy and provided real domestic bargains for our own citizens via goods made by slave labor. Slave labor had moved from the cotton fields of the American south to the labor forces in undeveloped countries. This worked for some time in a simpler, less populated planet of the past. 

But human population doubled and continues to grow, while at the same time all kinds of inventions created the lifestyle of modernity, at least for the upper classes across the globe, and the common people fell further and further behind in terms of salaries and access to modern amenities. Today, it is no longer just the workers in undeveloped countries who work for slave wages, but more and more Americans are suffering the same fate. On top of this, we now have a global economy, and the fate of the poor is not solvable by the actions of one country on it’s own. For a start, until there are global minimum wages, the poor everywhere will continue to suffer in exponential degrees. 

There is a reason Americans are not very safe off the beaten tourist path when in other countries.  To many people, in more and more countries, America is seen as a huge military power who simply uses the natural  resources and cheap labor of others to provide bargains for it’s own population. For years, if political forces rose in these South American, African, and Asian countries to stop this unbalanced economic situation, America simply invaded to protect a cooperating government, supported rebels to topple an uncooperative regime, or imposed economic sanctions against the country. No matter what the form of effort made by undeveloped countries to rid themselves of American imperialism, they could not gain any progress. 

The Achilles Heel here for the United States is that these policies have come home to roost, and now it is our own underbelly population who are being forced into slave wages, needing to work several jobs, or becoming trapped in very unsafe urban, rural, or suburban ghettoes.                                    

Trump proudly refused the Pacific Rim Trade Agreement because it was not favorable enough to the United States. This inadvertently then opened up Pandora’s box. That is, it paves the way for China, Russia, Japan, South Korea, India, Thailand, and maybe even Australia to become the dominant economic force in the Pacific. Most Americans really believe that American capitalism can out bid and out perform others in any such contest. But this is an illusion that will probably burst, Trump or no Trump. This simply is not true. China is in far better position to dominate World Trade than any other country in the world including the United States. They have, in the last couple of years, become the leader in dealing with climate change, taking drastic actions to reduce carbon emissions and have recently assured underdeveloped countries that they alone can give them the best trade relationships in which the recipients will benefit as much or more than China itself. They can actually do this, if they choose, because they are a dictatorship and can literally dictate to their corporations what kind of terms they must give underdeveloped countries. The U.S. or most any other country cannot do this. Capitalism is based on getting the best deal for a company’s own bottom line, often by greasing the palm of the already wealthy in under-developed countries. China is in the best position to lend money without the recipient country having to spend it on products made in China. No more time here will be spent on today’s China as I am still in the process of acquiring the right stats to generate some conclusive insights. 

Many nations across the globe were already tired of Americans absorbing so much of their wealth. Even the 800 military bases across the globe exist more to keep the profits high for our military-industrial complex—as if they they need exist to actually protect our own national security. American economic influence may indeed be waning on the global scheme, but for sure no one remotely imagines they could attack us militarily and win. And we have already proven the last 50 or 60 years that we cannot achieve victory by invading even the likes of Vietnam, Iraq, Somalia, Afghanistan, etc. And as the final nail in our economic coffin, few if any countries we have made our major trade partners have made any noticeable progress with their economy or peaceful communities as a result of our interactions with them .

To conclude, America is likely to become a secondary trade partner in the Pacific Rim, plus the only remaining isolated country not to sign the Climate Pact, the only major country in the world not to have universal health coverage for all its citizens, the one country which spends more on military matters than the next 6 major countries combined, the major economic power with the greatest growing wealth separation between the real wealthy and the rest of our population, scores far down the list in any happiness polls across the world, and has by far the highest per capita murder rate of any industrialized country in the world. A teenage American is 48 more times likely to be gunned to death than in any other modern industrialized society. 

Korea may well become denuclearized after all these summits, and end up a major partner in whatever Asian Trade Agreement the Pacific powers reach without the United States. In return, for at least temporary cessation of nuclear bomb production, Korean gets non-interference with the inhuman manner in which it treats its own citizens, the economic sanctions will be lifted, and even South Korea, ever so eager to decrease the risk of being attacked with nuclear weapons, will probably find ways to co-exist with North Korea by being less friendly with the United States. I doubt Trump even vaguely realizes that for all his bluster, insults, and self serving demands, the most likely result will be very few countries will pay him much attention, and America become, in a strange way, more a pariah to the world community than a leader. 

Well, here’s hoping I am off base with all this. In politics strange things can happen. In a separate email I will list the reasons China will now become the real economic and political power in the world. It has less to do with Trump and far more to do with a political situation that has left the United States crippled by endless political stalemate. Minus any sudden change in leaders, China is free to do the right thing for the right reasons, and is free from any political control by the wealthy. The forever-long primary system has created a circus and the kind of debates that few quality individuals would ever subject themselves to. We now have an increasingly large class of politicians who pander to the prejudices and ignorance of their constituents, and campaign basically on promising their base that debt, tax cuts, religious beliefs becoming the law of the land,, and so on  be given to them while the constituents of the other party will pay the tab one way or another. Fairness to all citizens, and justice to all citizens, and opportunities for all citizens, health care to all citizens, decent livable wages for all citizens, and so on is not even seriously considered. We are now even going so far as to reduce welfare to the unemployed so that in order not to starve to death they will have to work jobs at slave labor wages. Then we brag that unemployment rates are down for the poor. Real smart ass. Terrorism of various means will grow exponentially with the kind of political climate existent in the United States today. We probably haven’t taken the lead yet in this area, but it won’t be for lack of trying.