or the last action before paralysis
By Mike Meyer ~ Honolulu ~ January 21, 2021
The tremendous relief of a silenced, defeated, and exiled Trump is like recovering from a long and debilitating disease. Fast executive action by Biden brings a fresh breeze. That we hope will freshen into a cleaning wind to remove the Trump stench. But will the wind be strong enough?
No one wants to spoil these valuable moments of relief and hope, but the variables are mostly uncontrollable, and the historical precedents are not good. Our economic and political structure is not viable. The social psychosis fostered by the Republican Party in…
American sets a new standard of exceptionalism
by Mike Meyer ~ Honolulu ~ March 4, 2021
The Previous Guy attempted a return on a recent Sunday at a shrunken CPAC. It was an open question of what he would do, but it was what it always has been. When the Previous Guy is losing and depressed, he reads the teleprompter and tries to imitate a normal politician. It doesn’t work.
All the articles describing the keynote speech at CPAC on Sunday noted how boring it was to hear the same old same old. It was the old familiar lies of a has-been mobster. …
The battles must be won, and time is running out.
By Mike Meyer ~ Honolulu ~ February 28. 2021
Since the last display of outrage and evil, we've had almost four weeks, but the Previous Guy got back on TV and talked about it again. He went to CPAC to repossess the Republican Party.
Criminal indictments should remove much of the Previous Guy’s threat to life, but his manipulated horde will continue to wield outsized destructive power unless structural changes are made.
Biden’s unquestionably professional team is doing the stuff American presidents do. He drives an amazing recovery against COVID-19 and struggles to bring temporary emphasis on temporary economic relief…
This puts it very clearly but many will pay no attention. In America we have a severe case of advanced selfishness exacerbated by steady political and economic collapse.
Thinking this is silly ignores that we live by language
by Mike Meyer ~ Honolulu ~ February 25, 2021
Destroying your language for short-term political advantage is sawing off the branch on which you are sitting. Unlike cartoon images of this in which it is obvious, e.g., I’m sitting here, the trunk is there, and I’m sawing away between myself and the trunk; therefore, I’m an idiot who will soon be on the ground, destroying language is weakening the entire tree of culture.
The last four years in America have illustrated this clearly enough that new examples appearing in our disintegrating world of politics and culture are tough to take…
I can understand the reluctance to carry the weight. I'm trying to keep a community college from stumbling backwards into failure and, in the end, I won't be able to help. I wouldn't want a position to do that anyway.
But there are other ways. For me writing about what is and what could be is something I can do and seems right as my 'last' career.
America is falling and refuses to admit it
by Mike Meyer ~ Honolulu ~ February 24, 2021
Someone needs to contact Capitalist Mission Control. There is a problem with Wall Street, and no one seems to know what to do.
A basic assumption of market economics is that people who trade do so for their own best interest. In the artificial world of modern economics, this is obviously a bad assumption, but more than a hundred years of mathematical models using that assumption have made it sacred.
This was a key part of the assumption behind the capitalist concept discussed previously: Mandeville’s Fable of the Bees or Private…
When we most need moral strength to save the nation
by Mike Meyer ~ Honolulu ~ February 22, 2021
While watching the ramping up of a scientific breakthrough in vaccines that give us a ticket to a different future, old hatreds and the willful ignorance of our reactionary populations are trying to drag us down. Their goal is white supremacy and authoritarian oppression to ensure that they retain control and are not threatened with any change.
That the majority of the American population and the people around the planet find this disgusting and inexplicable shows that this is not a fight against alternative policies but a fight against irrationality and…
It’s not just relief from the threat of COVID-19
by Mike Meyer ~ Honolulu ~ February 21, 2021
Our world is new and strange in many ways. While many people are anxiously awaiting a return to the pre-pandemic world, many others are growing familiar with the pleasures of a new and different world. The experiences are very different and will, I think, only expand the gaps between the broken pieces of human society and the disintegration of American society specifically.
We spend so much time struggling to understand the social malignancy that has destroyed our governments that we miss the new pleasures. We are living in a new world…
Judging anything short of a disaster as success does not work
by Mike Meyer ~ Honolulu ~ February 16, 2021
Times have been hard. After a year of pandemic lockdown, the inevitable capitalist economic collapse, mass hardship, hunger for many, and the endless screeching of the Trump nightmare ending in a pitiful but frightening parody of a coup attempt, almost anything is an improvement. For people everywhere and particularly those in exploited countries and failed rich countries, this is our world.
In America, one of the last bastions of national confidence, the polite transition to a new administration, however ugly the electoral battle was mauled and beaten at the whim of…
Mike Meyer
Educator, CIO, retired entrepreneur, grandfather with occasional fits of humor in the midst of disaster. . .
