National Debt and My Radical Wife

I see there is another round of budget debates going on in DC and can't help thinking that it kind of reminds me of some events going on in my life that are a little bit closer to home.

You see, my wife and I have been having some financial trouble lately. Really we get along pretty well in all other things but our financial situation seems to cause us to have... well… we fight a lot about money. Now I’ve been pretty busy lately filling out credit applications, and handling letters from people that we owe money to, and had to think pretty long and hard just to rearrange my schedule so that I could take some time and write this article.

Let me back up from the current situation and explain a bit what’s going on that seems to be the cause for the contentiousness.

There’s no other way to put this other than to say that she’s super hot. Even after our many decades together she’s still the most beautiful woman I’ve ever laid eyes on. Even in our ever advancing years she still holds a visual appearance and poise better than most of the women who are a mere fraction of her age. You’ve heard of love at first sight? It is one of those things that you can’t really believe in until it actually happens to you. When I first laid eyes to her she literally took my breath away. I felt like she was spawned spontaneously and directly from my dreams and somehow, by some miracle of God, made manifest in the real world. It was not a feeling of first sight so much as it was a sudden recognition of someone that I had known forever, was intimate with, and yet somehow had never met. Her eyes met mine and instantly I felt I could see to the very depths of her soul.

I could see by the expression on her face that she felt the same way. It was that type of look which only comes of the kind of personal familiarity that you would expect of a long lost close and passionate love. The sudden recognition that I’m sure was on my face was reflected in hers.

There was no restraint. There was not even the slightest thought that I should hesitate or hold back in any way for fear of her thinking that I was being too forward or creepy. We stepped together, took each other rapidly in our arms and passionately kissed in a way that even now, to recall it and attempt to put words to it, could only be described as a soul melting experience. Hers blended with mine and mine with hers, and together, like an alloy of metal, we became the strength of each other, much stronger than we were when apart.

Whether it was seconds, hours or eternity we spent together in this way I cannot say. All I know is that when we finally separated, I looking into her eyes as she looked into mine, we said together as if from the very same breath, “I have been looking for you for so long.” As it was obvious to us that we were meant to be together forever, as we felt we always were, we immediately began to arrange our lives to the point of making our individual lives into one.

Part of our decision making process, naturally as in all relationships in the practical world, included how we would spend our money. She likes to say that she’s being “very responsible” with money. Even before we met she preferred to save her money and use it only for specific things. She proposed a specific list of basic things that we would spend our money on. This list includes our house, taxes, medical bills, cars, utilities, food, things we need for our many children we planned on having, etc.

She wrote out what she was thinking of and I, being totally enthralled by her beauty as well as her good sense, agreed. She called it her “List of Authorized Expenditures.” Honestly it reads something like Article One, Section Eight from the United States Constitution.

As the decades went by our lives expanded. Our family grew to six children, three of the most beautiful daughters that there have ever been on God’s green Earth and three of the most heart melting—or at least so their girlfriends told me—handsome lads one could ever know. The girlfriends became wives and the boyfriends became husbands. Before we knew it my wife and I were embracing grandchildren as our financial empire flourished and prospered. I don’t wish to discuss specifics about how much we make and how we make it, it’s not important to the underlying principle I’m discussing in this article, but literally we have on the upper side of six digits coming in every year. Some years we break into seven.

However life, being as it is, is not always perfect. There, growing in direct proportion with our annual income, has always been this disagreement regarding how our financial lives should be handled. You see, she has always been very conservative with her money. She says we should only use the credit cards and loans for emergencies and after the emergency is over we should work to pay the debt off as rapidly as we could.

I like to play a little bit more of the wild side. I like to invest my money in our family’s future happiness, entertainment and education. And what’s the big deal with carrying a bit of debt as long as we can make the payments? And if we get into trouble our credit is good enough that we can always borrow more.

Now she seems rather pissed off that I’ve been spending 40% more on an annual basis than we make. What could possibly go wrong!?

Remember that “List of Authorized Expenditures” I mentioned earlier? Well, at some risk to our relationship I have to laugh a bit at her about that because that list is only about five to ten percent of our total expenditures! Imagine that, in the modern world, having an actual list of things that we are only allowed to spend our money on! She does kind of have a point that if we stuck only to that list, while at our current income, we would be able to pay off all of our debt within a couple of years. Hell, sticking to that list would solve any deficit problems within the next hour or two.

However for the general welfare, as I see it, of the entire family, I keep spending to the point that we’ve racked up so much debt the credit agencies, which I mentioned at the outset of this article, are threatening to downgrade our credit ratings. This is a big problem because as I planned it, running our finances a bit closer to the edge, then relying on our good credit for emergencies, would not work. If we can’t borrow more money to handle emergencies, and realistically there are always emergencies in life, then how would we be able to pay to solve whatever problems occurred?

Make no mistake; this situation has put a lot of stress on our relationship.

What she wants is to do some irresponsible and radical thing like balance our budget so that I would actually be spending less than we take in and use the difference to pay down our soaring debt. But that’s just too radical and besides, it's for the general welfare of the family and our children!

Well, between her radical selfishness and my kind and generous spending habits, I’m very happy to announce that we have negotiated a deal between us that will certainly fix everything. Instead of me spending 40% more than we take in I’m going to spend 39.999975% more than we take in over the rest of this year. Over the next ten years I’ll work that number all the way down to spending only 38.6% more than we take in, unless, of course, something else happens that we absolutely have to pay for. I'm sure it will work out just fine and make us look good with the credit agencies because of our serious and extreme efforts to reduce our deficit.

The cuts I’ve had to make have been cruel. Why in fact I’ve decided that instead of building a ninety-five thousand foot warehouse to house the family’s toys, to building only an eighty-five thousand foot warehouse! Maybe I’ll have to just give up on a couple of the more expensive toys. It’s brutal I tell you but somehow I’ll just have to try and get by! And some of the grandchildren who are now grown up and having children of their own? They might have to learn how to make their own money to pay for their own lives, educations and medical expenses! Oh the humanity! I hope the family can endure such radical extremes. I’ve been very happy living my life, even with my wife’s radical tendencies, and I’m hoping beyond all hope that this rift in our relationship doesn’t end in divorce.

Now I'd like to write more about it but I'm far too busy filling out the applications for these new credit cards that I need to use to pay our bills.

The Real Impact of Covid (Which We Most Likely Missed)

As I write the first lines of this article I have to wonder if I’ve mistitled it. Maybe it should be called “The Real Impact of Technology”? But no, that’s not right either because it’s incomplete. Possibly, “The Real Impact of Technology on the Mass Killing of Human Beings”? More accurate but too long.

So, “The Real Impact of Covid” it is. At least until I think of something better.

I am a guy who appreciates irony. I’ve wanted to write this article, which is largely related to the impacts of Covid, since Monday of the previous week. Normally I think of what I want to write for several days before I actually sit down to do my weekly blog article. Then as I’m waking up on early Saturday morning, as I’m chugging coffee, I write it before I do anything else. This could be as early as five or six AM.

The problem is that I didn’t wake up Saturday morning. I woke up Saturday afternoon at about 2:30PM, with a 102.5 degree fever and heavy flu symptoms. Then after a couple hours of self medication and sitting around staring into space I went back to sleep until early Sunday morning. I spent most of Sunday on and off lightly napping. By Monday morning I decided to call off of work with a slightly stuffy nose, a mild cough and thinking I had just caught some twenty-four hour flu bug or something.

The company I work for has a policy that if you even have very mild cold or flu symptoms you are not allowed to go to work without a negative Covid test. In keeping with this policy the HR manager called me and since I had a home test on hand we decided I should just go ahead and use it.

Now I’ve already had Covid (lab tested case) a little more than a year previously and it put me down hard for about three weeks. Not that I had been that extremely ill, I’ve been far sicker than that. The worst of it could only have been described as soul crushing fatigue. What I mean is the kind where you get off the reclining chair, go to the kitchen to get a drink and have to sit down and rest on the way back in order to keep from falling over.

So when Monday came around and I found myself north of ninety percent effective, with a stuffy nose and no fever, slight cough and no other symptoms, I was quite surprised to find my Covid test coming up positive. And here I find myself on Wednesday morning, with the same symptoms as Monday, still positive with Covid, still not back at work and instead writing this article which I normally would have done Saturday had I not had Covid.

And suddenly there’s Alanis Morissette; Ironic.

The thing is that prior to the entire Covid kerfuffle I’d have gone to work with a stuffy nose and not ever given it a second thought. I still have to sit here as I’m writing this and fight off this sense of guilt because of feeling so good as to be completely functional but not being at work doing the things I planned on accomplishing this week.

I must confess that as a guy who is into political philosophy I wake nearly ninety percent of the time and the first thing on my mind is the potential impact of politics and philosophy on human society. (We will not discuss what I’m thinking of the remaining ten percent of the time; okay?) I am a junkie to the worst possible degree as far as that goes. Politics are far more pervasive in my thoughts than most anybody I know. I really have to dial it back with almost anybody I talk to in person or else I will shoot so far past them so quickly that they’d think I’m some sort of escaped lunatic from Bedlam or something.

So check this out; Covid in my workplace is far too political for me. Best just to stay home, chug coffee, read, write, learn some stuff about how to do some of the artwork I’m interested in. I guess vacation is early this year.

That is Covid as it currently relates to me, personally, on an individual basis.

When Covid first became a big deal I remember talking to my day job boss and I told him I had a bad feeling about all of this. Not the disease itself but the reaction to it in society at large. I expressed to him the idea that the fear could create a panic when it moves out into the population and create problems of a far more extreme impact than the disease itself.

I was hoping at the time to be disappointed; hoping that things wouldn’t be as bad as I thought they would. I’m somewhat of a chronic optimist. Sadly I have to sit here and think that I’m disappointed to not be disappointed. Isn’t it ironic? Don’t cha think? A little too ironic. (Hey, if you knew the song it would be stuck in your head right now too!)

As of today’s date, 1/25/23, according to WorldOmeter on Covid, there have been 6,750,248 Covid related deaths worldwide. I highly doubt for many, many reasons the veracity of that count but for the sake of argument let’s just go with it.

There is a UN report out there (here’s the link) that makes this claim, “WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said that ‘while it is too soon to assess the full impact of #COVID19, the report estimates that 130 million more people may face chronic hunger by the end of this year.’”

This report is not at all unique. Just Google “Covid starvation deaths” and you’ll see what I mean. Make no mistake, chronic hunger is very deadly. The kinds of numbers they are talking about would even make Chairman Mao a little twitchy.

Thousands of years ago it was impossible to kill people on that scale. Then it used to take armies of hundreds of thousands making and using swords, spears, bows and arrows, millions of hours of labor spread out over hundreds of years. Then it used to take millions of hours of labor in making rifles, bullets, poisonous gases, bombs, ships and airplanes, decades. In the 1940s that was reduced to a small handful of bombs, a couple of planes with airbases and hundreds of millions of dollars of support to do the same damage in less than a day. Within my lifetime it became possible to do the same thing with billions of dollars of support to wipe out the entire population of Earth within an hour or so.

So what did it take for someone to place the lives of 130 million people at extreme risk? Simple. They told us that, hypothetically, possibly, at an outside chance, if you have enough other high risk ailments or are really just old, maybe we could die. (Da da daaaaa!)

That’s it. We did the rest. This isn’t on Covid. This isn’t on the lab or people who manufactured the disease; assuming such reports are even true. This is on us and every single thing we did that said “BE AFRAID!!!” instead of saying “remain calm.” Terrified people behave along specific behavior lines and it is rare that anything good that comes of it.

My ex-wife said to me, “Well Brett, that’s more than six million dead people; isn’t that enough bodies for you?”

That is pretty bad but let’s take a closer and more informed look at that.

All of the lockdowns and their consequent economic destruction, for us here in the United States, means some inflationary prices, higher unemployment and longer supply times. In third world countries it means an additional three weeks without food during which time there will be massive starvation. When is the last time you went three weeks without food?

Let’s cut the UN estimate in half. Ahhh, screw it. Let’s cut it to a far more “reasonable” 50 million. Go ahead and buy into the argument that the full 130 million won’t starve to death but most will just be very close to it.

That means that the number of people we have killed in this scenario, to protect the world from the horrors of death by Covid is slightly more than seven and one third times the number of dead people from only the Covid.

Again, all they did was told us that, hypothetically, possibly, at an outside chance, if you have enough other high risk ailments or are really just old, maybe we could die. (Da da daaaaa!) Just like that 50 million lose their lives.

While that is on a genocidal scale it’s not death by genocidal slaughter. It’s not death by Covid. It’s not really even death by economic impact. It’s death by selfish, stupid and ignorant fear.

We are not even talking about the short term or long term potential effects of largely untested mRNA shots; which the drug companies are protected against liabilities for any harm they cause; which many people want to see imposed as mandatory for everybody; which does not prevent you from getting Covid, a disease with a very high survival rate anyhow; which doesn’t prevent you from transmitting Covid to other people; which there is a sudden drastic increase in previously completely healthy people of all ages, from prenatal to old age, dying for no apparent reason, since the release of the vaccine; which arguably there is no good reason to take in the first place.

For some people this is foil hat time. I’ve said before that I’m not a very good conspiracy theorist. At the same time, my dear friends, given the clear history of the world, it’s pretty easy to make the case that there are people who enjoy the idea of causing the deaths of as many people as possible. I’m not saying they are all in some secret cabal working together with each other to control the world. They, being people who like to kill people, aren’t particularly fussy about their victims. They are just as happy to see each other die horribly as they are to see you or I die horribly. The evidence to support this supposition is the simple fact that genocide exists and that it is impossible for it to happen accidentally.

I’m not going to come right out and say that the whole Covid issue was intentionally planned by people who want to see us all dead. That’s not even close to the point that I’m trying to make with this article. However if you were such a person as described above, and again there is plenty of evidence to support this theory, Covid, or something much like it, very well could be the fulfillment of your wildest dreams. You create a virus in a lab. Accidentally and covertly release it into the world. Make sure people are good and afraid of it. Sell them a cure, that isn’t a cure, which contains something that makes a random number of people’s blood clot up. Then just sit back and watch the bodies hit the floor.

If the virus doesn’t get them the fear will. If the fear doesn’t get them then the economic impacts will. If the economic impact doesn’t get them then the starvation will. If the starvation doesn’t get them then the adverse reaction to the mRNA shot will.

George Orwell would wet himself with envy for not thinking of it.

Now I have to say again that this theory is only being discussed here as a theory. I’m just a humble guy who likes to live his life and think about stuff, so I’ll leave the proving to those more adept at the research than I. It’s not a theory that I am necessarily in a position to endorse or reject at this time. That’s not the point of this article.

The point of this article is that all of what I’ve pointed out in it is theoretically possible. That’s something that cannot be denied. I’m not saying it did or didn’t happen. I’m not saying that it is or isn’t happening. I am saying that it could happen.

Technology has advanced and this is only a milestone along the way. But it is a milestone of such incredible magnitude that I feel “perfectly comfortable” in saying that something as significant as this hasn’t happened within human history since the mushroom cloud first rose above New Mexico in the Trinity explosion of 1945.

Whether it has happened as I’ve said, whether the conspiracy theories are true or not, is not the issue I’m talking about here. I have my belief on the subject which I assure you I have not stated; because it is not even fully formed as yet. What I am saying is that the technology to cause the wholesale massive destruction of human life on Earth has clearly turned a corner. Fifth generation warfare (Fifth-generation warfare is warfare that is conducted primarily through non-kinetic military action, such as social engineering, misinformation, cyberattacks, along with emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence and fully autonomous systems.—Wiki) only hinted at a couple of generations ago, is now certainly and demonstrably, completely and thoroughly possible.

It is only that possibility which I’m talking about here.

It is now much easier for people to kill people. What’s worse is that it can be accomplished without anybody really knowing who is behind it until it is far too late to be stopped.

And with that said; have a nice day! 😀

Basic Political Philosophy

Not for the sake of arrogance or vanity, I think it's pretty important to this article to briefly introduce myself.

In most ways I'm just an average guy who kind of likes the quiet, or at least peaceful, life. In many ways I am what you’d call an average Joe Six-pack kind of guy.

Where I excel is that I'm, as Yogi Bear would say, "smarter than the average bear." The last time I took an IQ test I scored one hundred thirty-five, which is in the ninety-nine percentile range. So I'm not quite a genius but I do get terribly bored if I'm not continuously thinking about something that challenges my mind.

While I'm not formally educated, I am still quite able to understand things I see in the world around me. Usually, I tend to see things in ways that other people don't tend to think of them. Not having participated in university life I don't evaluate subjects on the same framework, or with the same preconceived notions, as people who are more formally educated.

Now if you are at all like I am, having experienced some good life as well as some bad life, and are at all interested in the world around you, you have to have noticed that the subject of politics in the United States is… well… there's no kind way to put this; it's extremely screwed up.

I got my first inkling of this when I was standing on the flight deck of the U.S.S. Kitty Hawk staring up at the bellies of two Soviet bombers. As a young petty officer looking up at those two aircraft I kind of wondered how this situation came to be.

That question led me to a very intense study of history, politics and philosophy, until I reached the conclusion that you've got to have some of all three and be familiar enough with the basics of each if you are going to even begin to approach any understanding of the insanity that the subject of American politics has become.

I could have called this article "Simple Political Philosophy" however the word “simple” suggests things that I didn't want to be expressed. I could have just as easily made this article as complicated as Locke, Hume, Aristotle, Socrates, Plato, or any of the other hundreds of philosophers who have bothered to delve into the subject.

That would be perfectly okay except for the fact that if I wanted to talk to them I would have gone to the university, taken the requisite courses, written a book that they all agreed or disagreed with, maybe sold a couple of copies here and there, and we could have all sat around patting ourselves on the back for being so extremely brilliant that nobody but us could possibly understand us, and still solved absolutely nothing.

But I don't want to talk to them. I want to talk to you; and true answers, especially ones that actually fix more problems than they create, are basically simple.

The word "politics" these days most commonly applies to Democrats and Republicans fighting over who will be in charge of everything under the sun.

Many people, because of the contentious nature of politics, tend to avoid them in conversation. The problem is that there is no way to live on Earth without being involved in politics at some level. The subject is much, much broader than that. It doesn't just apply to political parties fighting for power and control of everybody’s lives. It applies as well to your daily struggle to control your own life.

When you really want to enjoy a beer on the couch on Sunday afternoon, watching the big game on TV and your wife wants, in a very demanding way, you to go with her and the kids, to her parent's house to celebrate "Grandparent's Day"—whatever the hell that is because you'd never heard of such a thing before—and you also notice that it's her parents you have to go see instead of yours, you have just become a part of a political situation. In much the same way, if the Democrats win the election there will be certain consequences, and if the Republicans win the election there will be certain other consequences, and it will impact your life either way it goes.

That's what politics are. It doesn't matter if it's two or more countries trying to negotiate to avoid a war or if it's the potential for two married people trying to avoid a conflict. Somebody wins with some consequence and somebody loses with some consequence, or they work it out with a fair and beneficial exchange.

That's what I'm talking about here when I use the word politics. Two or more people or groups of people, each wanting things their own way, with consequences on whether they get it or not.

There is a Wikipedia page on philosophy which starts off by saying, "Philosophy is the study of general and fundamental problems concerning matters such as existence, knowledge, values, reason, mind, and language." A far more entertaining, and possibly more workable description was written by Douglas Adams in the "Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy," where he says that it has something to do with "the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything."

Without all of the big complicated explanations there needs to be thinking people for philosophy to exist. If more than one person exists and they interact with each other, there has to be politics. The less actual thinking there is the less philosophic politics becomes.

There are all kinds of things that can make dealing with other people and their fundamental problems seem complicated. The more complicated the descriptions of these become, the less fundamental they are. You can become bogged down rather easily trying to understand them all even at their most simple level. If you engage in this activity do so knowing that those descriptions have more to do with people describing their own "genius" to each other than conveying any useful meaning to most people as they relate to their everyday lives.

What we are after in this article is basic political philosophy, not as it deals with all of the people everywhere, but instead as politics deals with you.

Political Philosophy, at the basic level is a study of why someone should, or shouldn't be defeated. This, simply put, is oriented more to discovering the nature of personal freedom versus government and the advantages of one over the other.

I've come to the realization that as far as politics go, I'd rather be a political philosopher than a political scientist. The political scientist is always about the party they belong to. Relative truth doesn't matter as long as their guy wins. Principles don't matter as long as you have your own personal faith that "your guy" is the right guy for everybody and it doesn't matter why; he just is.

Obama can be the best president ever and say immigration is out of control and needs to be fixed but when Trump says the same thing he is a Fascist. Obama can be the worst president ever because he's for tariffs but when Trump does them he's the best president and a brilliant political strategist. See? There are hundreds of issues where the same thing has happened. Relative truth doesn't matter as long as what you're saying about the issue is some contribution towards the defeat of the other guy.

That’s what makes it complicated. There is no underlying standard of values on which you can base the simple decision of “right” or “wrong.”

When a person is thinking along the lines of Political Philosophy, tariffs are either good or bad, and they stay that way no matter who the president is. Border control is either good or bad and remains so no matter who the president is. An out of control and unconstitutional budget is either good or bad, and remains so, no matter which political party occupies the White House or Congress. If a careless politician mishandles classified information it is bad no matter who did it.

In Political Philosophy it is the truth that matters, not the politician or party. For some reason, the truth is important to me. I can't bring myself to believe that the truth isn't important to the vast majority of people.

It is one thing to discuss what the Republican's theory is and compare it to what the Democrat’s theory is. It is something else entirely to fit those things into your life in a way which directly relates to you.

There is a practical answer. It's one that I think many people have a tendency to forget because it is so basic to your life it is taken for granted when there is so much of a temptation to get involved in the many complications involved in defeating the other guy.

Let's say that you are a guy who has done fairly well in life. You are sitting out back, sipping a tall cool drink next to your newly installed swimming pool when your teenage daughter comes out dressed in something that makes you wonder a bit if you should talk to her about getting a one-piece swimsuit rather than the bikini she is wearing. Hmmm… maybe a brief talk with the wife first, you know, just to see if she'll take the uncomfortable burden from you.

As you sit there pondering your course of action you can't help but notice the teenage boy who lives in the house across the back yard with his face firmly pressed against the window and his mouth hanging open. Maybe you're not so much bothered by the boy as you are by the father in the other window.

Yeah, she’s drawing a bit more attention than you are comfortable with. So you pick up your handy laptop and start shopping for a privacy fence. A brief walk around the yard and a few measurements of angles later you calculate that a seven-foot privacy fence would be the right height so as to keep the neighbor's eyes off of your daughter.

There is a problem with that. Your city requires you to have a special permit for any fence taller than six feet, signed off by your neighbor as well as any other applicable city officials, one of which suspiciously refuses to sign off on it. Six feet won't block the view of your pool from the windows the neighbors are looking through so it would render the entire expense and effort useless.

In the short term you decide that maybe your rifle needs to be cleaned so you set up a table and start field stripping your AR-15.

Being somewhat ambitious as you are, you go down to the weekly city council meeting and kindly point out that the regulations regarding the building of fences on your own property, with your own money, for the protection of your own family from the prying eyes of your testosterone influenced neighbors, are kind of insufficient to the required task. Also present are several people who will be running for the council seats due to be vacated at the upcoming election. One says it's unjust to have such an unwarranted restriction of privacy fence height, and if you vote for him he'll allow you to have your seven-foot fence. The other approaches your neighbor who is also at the meeting speaking out against fences because they block his view…of the scenery…and tells him that if he gets his vote he'll see to it that no fence is ever built anywhere more than six feet tall. In fact, he might even restrict them to five feet tall as sometimes they can be quite the eyesore and cause property values to go down.

As the campaigns roll out one of them says about the other that he obviously doesn't care about the protection of children and leaves them to be spied and preyed upon by the prying eyes of perverts. The other one responds that it is in the rights of property owners to protect the value of their homes from the uncaring actions of those who would engage in political mudslinging just to get their own way. Furthermore, there is obviously a tendency toward anti-social behavior on the part of those who want to turn their neighborhoods into fenced up fortresses for gun-wielding maniacs and maybe what they are really doing behind their big and tall fences is running a prostitution ring and growing marijuana.

Somewhere in the background, the Libertarian candidate says, "Oh yeah!? Well, I think a person should be able to build a fence right up until it becomes so tall it poses a navigational hazard to low flying aircraft and there's nothing the government can do about it."

So there you sit, next to your pool, sipping your beer, cleaning your rifle and watching the guy and boy gawking at your daughter, who is still in that damned bikini and soaking up the rays as if all is right in the world. Realizing the inherent difficulties involved in putting a bullet through your neighbor’s eye your greatest temptation is to involve yourself in the fight between the politicians as they engage in their battle of political science to see who can best the other in a fight.

More “advanced” political philosophy relates to whether you should or shouldn't defeat the other guy based on the truth of the situation. You could ask yourself if the political opponent has his own children that he cares about and protects. You could ask yourself if he really is concerned with things like property values. You could ask yourself if the concerns of the opposition have any merit at all. You could ask yourself if you are being fair to the guys in the other house. You could ask your daughter if she likes the neighbor boy because he sure is doing a lot of gawking at her. You could ask yourself if maybe your seven foot tall tool shed is properly positioned in your yard. You may ask yourself “am I right or am I wrong?”

Those are all relevant questions to the issue of the fence but the arguments of the politicians who are vying for power are all oriented around the question of what they are or are not going to allow you to have. All of this misses the point that you’re just trying to protect your daughter.

Basic Political Philosophy only has two relevant questions at the personal level, which both have a tendency to fall through the cracks as soon as the first politically motivated salvo passes the muzzle of the intellectual guns. The first being, "who rightfully should be in control of this portion of my life?" The second being, "who is in control of this portion of my life?"

Certainly, there are things a federal government should be in control of. Certainly, there are things that a federal government shouldn't be in control of. Certainly, there are things a state government should be in control of. Certainly, there are things a state government shouldn't be in control of. Certainly, there are things a local government should be in control of. Certainly, there are things a local government shouldn't be in control of.

Certainly there are things that you should be in control of.

It would be ridiculous for the federal government to be in control of how high your fence should be. It would be ridiculous for the local government to declare war on a country halfway around the world. The trick to government power is to put all of the different kinds and levels of powers in the right place and keep them out of the wrong places.

For me, it all seems to sort itself out at the personal level. What parts of my life should I be in control of? And am I in control of those parts of my life?

Should the federal government be in charge of what I eat? Or my medical care? Or my retirement? Or who I decide to vote for to represent me at that level of government? Or what medications I put in my body? Or what car I drive? Or how much of my money they take from me to give to someone else? Or where I go? Or who I talk to? Or what I say? Or what I believe? Or how much money I make? Or what I spend my own earnings on? Or how many children I have? Or how they are educated? Or what I own?

By what standard and what right does any other human being ever spawned on Earth have to make these kinds of decisions for me?

The Basic Political Philosophy answer is none.

The Nature of Political Power

Yesterday and several days previously I was engaged online in one of those kinds of conversations with a liberal troll that just seems to last forever. You know the type. It’s one of those things that is like stepping in fresh dog crap, where it just sticks to your shoe and you can’t get it off. Then it kind of smears out and gets everywhere and there’s really no effective way to get it off, leaving you with the lingering smell that follows you everywhere until you have a chance to wash your shoes.

During that conversation my adversary, who pretended to be a conservative to the degree that he uses the name of one of the Founding Fathers, told me that I’m just a silly old man who thinks he’s a political philosopher. He meant it as an insult. Well first of all, in order for me to think of it as insulting I would have to think his opinion of me was important enough to be hurt by it. Secondly, that’s exactly, bang on the dot, precisely what I am. I’m a sixty year old man who has been studying political philosophy, outside of academia and on my own, ever since I was twenty, when I was sworn into the United States Navy. I also have a sense of humor about myself and most everything I write about.

The subject of that conversation was not this most humble, unlettered and humorous author. As liberals always do when they are losing, this guy tried to make the conversation about me and my qualifications to comment upon such important and weighty subjects as the proper functions of government, rather than talking about the subject at hand. Fortunately I have received enough experience to recognize when I’m being diverted and steer the conversation back to the actual issue we were discussing.

The subject at hand was the age old, often repeated, conversation which could be titled, “The United States; Is It a Democracy or Republic?” And that’s what has been on my mind for the last couple of days. Normally whatever is on my mind for several days prior to the weekend, when I write a blog post, is what I write the blog post about. Unfortunately I just wrote about that a couple of weeks ago and while it is an interesting subject I don’t really feel that it’s right to repeat myself so soon.

There is nothing really going on in day to day politics that is of interest to me other than the vote for the Speaker of the House, which really is a choice between one guy with no named opposition. Boring and pointless other than to say that the one guy, that we have a choice between, seems to be one of those stereotypical RINOs who will vote in lock step with the Demoncraps on everything they can think of to squeeze around the constitutional limits and increase the power of the federal government in every single way they possibly can.

Still stewing around in my mind on a slow burn, behind the conversation regarding the United States as a republic or the United States as a democracy, is the core idea of why such conversations are so very important. It is very clear to me, and many of the kind of people who enjoy reading my words on the subject, that the United States federal government has gone off the rails. I regard it as a daily miracle that we make it to the end of another day without some catastrophic Soviet style collapse of the country leaving all of the States to fend for themselves.

In such an environment, especially where the People, government officials, the news media and seemingly everybody else under the sun, can’t even properly identify what kind of government they have, I think it’s important for the People to understand the true nature of political power. There is a right way to think about it and a wrong—in my opinion—way to think about it.

Subject to your approval or disapproval, however the case may be, is one well known mass murderer, communist and tyrannical totalitarian named Mao Zedong. I’ve seen estimates on the number of Chinese people dead as a result of his rule range as high as eight million people. It should be no surprise that he is credited with coining the phrase that “Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.”

On the flipside of this debate we have, well, little old me; sitting here in my nice warm bathrobe, sipping coffee and writing the words which you now see before you.

Of course there is a plethora of real world and historical examples of guns being used to wield what people all over the planet call political power. It does seem rather apparent that between the two of us Mao is right. Who are the likes of one apparently “arrogant, self righteous, self educated and self important” Brett Ashton to go up against the great and mighty Mao?

Well, challenge accepted. I’m not the guy who killed an estimated eighty million people. To date I’ve killed nobody. I think that fact alone places me well above him in terms of both honesty and honor as well as morality, and it should give me some credibility in the matter.

The difference between the great and venerable Mao and I comes down to a perceptive split between how we look at political power. There is forced political power, which seems real and obvious, comes at the muzzle of a gun, seems absolute and invulnerable, yet somehow keeps crashing in the most spectacular and violent of ways. Then there is persuasive political power, which is subtle, peaceful, prosperous and relatively unchanging over long periods of time, collapsing only when forceful political power takes over and is used against the People in a way that is oppressive to them.

Forced political power is the kind that Mao used. That he was effective at it seems rather obvious.

In spite of the fact that there are groups of people who act towards the achievement of various goals, at the basic level all human action and interaction is individual. So let me ask you on an individual basis; if Joe Biden came and put a gun directly against your head and said, “Do you support me?” what would your answer be? My answer would be “Yes, I fully and completely support you,” right up until he removed the gun, at which point I would go into the voting booth and pull the handle for someone else.

Why is this? Simple. It’s because his gun has not changed my mind about him except to convince me that he’s not the guy I want with the power of a gun over my life. As long as the threat is there, people will comply. This does not mean that they really believe in their compliance to the depths of their souls. It only means that someone is pointing a gun at them. In human nature they do as people do when someone threatens them and has the ability to carry it out. As soon as the threat is removed, or when it becomes so intolerable they feel they have nothing to lose, they do something else and that something else which they do tends to be proportionally spectacular.

That, right there, is the muzzle of the gun theory at work. That’s all there is to it. Tyrants, by their own actions, sow the seeds of their downfall by making their own enemies through their oppression of people. This is an appearance of power but what it really comes down to is just a simple use of force against people to make them propitiate.

Then there is the other approach, to which I have dedicated my life.

They say that political power comes from the muzzle of a gun. While it is true that it is sometimes enforced by the muzzles of guns it is not in the nature of bullets to carry intelligence. Political power really comes from communication and support for ideas. To gain real and lasting political power we have to be persistent, consistent and always on the attack.

Effective communication and persuasion is the real key to real and lasting political power. Let’s continue to look at Chairman Mao for a bit. There he is, all by himself, with a gun. Have you as an individual ever tried to rule a country with an iron fist, to the degree that you can kill eighty million people and get away with it, all by yourself? What would Mao have had to do at the basic level in order to be elevated to the level where he could do such a thing?

Well, he would have to first communicate to a bunch of people and persuade them that he was worthy of being such a leader. He would have to convince a whole lot of people that there was something for them to personally gain by following him. Nobody ruling a country stands alone, someone has to support them. People who support such a ruler don’t just spontaneously materialize out of nowhere. Even the best of the world’s tin-horned dictators can’t just go around pointing a gun at everybody, expecting them to mindlessly follow him through threat of force alone.

This is exactly why there is such a pitched battle going on in all of the lines of public mass communications. Big Tech social media in modern times, news media and the education system always are the leading edge of the political wars between good and evil. For the bad guys with the guns to succeed they have to control the communication lines to the public. For the good guys with the other guns they also have to control the communication lines to the public. Tyrants always wish to suppress their opposition’s ability to get their words out.

Why? Because real political power is a threat to their agenda. Obviously. There are people out there whom they curse because they will tell the truth about them and what they are trying to do. There is an interesting word for such a tyrant. Demagogue: a political leader who gains power by appealing to people's emotions, instincts, and prejudices in a way that is considered manipulative and dangerous.

Fortunately there is something that can, if used properly, counter the actions of such people. It goes like this; “Amendment I, Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”

(Interesting historical side note here: The First Amendment was actually proposed as the Third Amendment. The first two failed ratification and so the third then became the first.)

You can believe what you want and you can say it. And when the government gets it wrong you can tell them and everybody else about it. Can you think of anything that would be more dangerous to someone who tries to wield political power by the use of guns? I can’t. If the truth was commonly known as it is, the political support that relies on lies would blow away like chaff in the wind. Political leaders who rely on lies and guns to enforce their power, Mussolini for example, tend to end up shot to death, hanging upside-down in a public square while people throw vegetables at their corpses, while one woman deciding that he wasn’t dead enough for her put five more bullets into his body.

(Another side note here: There is actually a picture of this. At the risk of having this post taken down for potential violations of terms of service I have decided not to post it here. Yet I provide the link so you can view it at your own discretion.)

There are times however when the public communication lines fail due to the efforts of despotic wannbes. Sometimes very bad people will force you to shoot them. Thus we have this; “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”

Some might argue, “Brett, you counter your own argument here! See? It’s the muzzles of guns!”

Yes. By sheer coincidence the Second Amendment happens to be in the position which supports my counter argument. When the First fails, and only when the First fails, is where we take the fall back to the Second. When the use of force against the People becomes so prolific as to be considered abusive to them, war breaks out and we are in the position where we can hopefully defend ourselves as a last and desperate attempt to preserve our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor.

It’s generally considered to be very bad manners to shoot someone before you even introduce yourself.

Don’t do it unless you have to.