explosive-cargo

Saturday, January 18, 2020

Biden Today? Progressives Tomorrow?

We’re getting close to the primaries now. In a few months, we may even have a clear idea of who the Democrat’s candidate will be. I hope it is someone we can get behind. But I do worry. What if we want as progressives is not what the voters want?

I keep flashing back to an article in the Washington Post way back in July of last year, “Dear Democrats: I’ll vote for any of you. But please nominate someone who can actually win” by Megan McArdle. In it, she appeals to the Democrats to pick someone who can woo Moderates and even conservatives in particularly contested races. Or, to put it another way, I suppose she’s basically saying Vote For Biden.

Is she right? Should we do that? I honestly don’t know. Personally, I kind of think that Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren could pull it off.

Yet...yet...I do worry.

Could it be that we need to have a Biden in 2020, so that we can get a Progressive in 2024?

***

Want a free book? Check out With Luther, Tourists, and God in Santa Fe. It's partly a travel log and partly a meditation on people who actually make a difference in life. Oh, and it is lavishly illustrated by yours truly. It’s on Gumroad as a PDF about 52 pages long. So give it glance!

***

Michael Jay Tucker is a writer and journalist who has published material on topics ranging from the Jazz Age to computers. (Among his small claims to fame is that he interviewed Steve Jobs just after that talented if complicated man got kicked out of Apple, and just before the company’s Board came begging him to come back.)

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

Putin The Prude

So I don’t really know if this is true or not, but I heard the other day that Imagefap has been blocked in Russia.

What’s Imagefap, you ask? It’s a popular porn sharing site. Yes, I’ve been there. No, I’m not a regular guest. I’m not an enormous fan of pornography, but let’s face it, I enjoy looking at pretty pictures of naked women. I’m a heterosexual guy. That’s what heterosexual guys do. It’s the way we’re built.

But I find it interesting that Putin’s Russia has elected to block Imagefap. Argue that porn is bad...argue that it is good...argue that it is indifferent to human behavior...no matter. It is always going to be around. And my guess is that Russia’s current attempt at moralizing censorship will be pretty much ineffective. Russian men, and more women than you might think, will find their way around the Russian Cyberwall, or, more likely Russia’s own entrepreneurs will dash to fill the gap. (Please, no jokes here.)

It is particularly mystifying given that Putin’s own public persona is so based on his being a hyper-masculine male, always ready for a bout of martial arts or a midnight trip around Moscow with the Night Wolves motorcycle gang (on his three-wheeled motorcycle of course). One would think that a little porn would be just the thing for such a regime. What kind of guy doesn’t look at porn? I mean, really?

So why, then, would Russia block Imagefap? My guess is that two things are in play. First, part of Putin’s support comes from depressed rural areas, or from the un-privileged parts of cities--in effect, people who are somewhat like Trump’s deplorables. And these people, even if they themselves privately consume as much erotica as anyone, find the public acceptance of it disturbing and alien...i.e., foreign, i.e., Western, i.e. American.

Ergo, it is probably worth Putin’s while to play to that audience, and say, Look, I’m stamping out that degenerate filth...no more pornography...even while rumors about what actually happens behind the Kremlin’s doors are vivid and detailed.

But, there’s more. I think there’s a second reason for Putin’s sudden prissiness. Specifically, I think that Orwell had it right, and that dictatorships really do hate sex...except, of course, as an act of aggression. You see, there is a moment in sex...at least if it is consensual...when your mind is wholly occupied. When it is not thinking, in short, of Higher Ideals, or The Nation, or Victory Over The Enemy, or Obeying The Will Of God (whose will, curiously, is always revealed to us by other humans, and is so frequently identical to the wants of Our Leaders in this moral world).

And it is that moment of utter freedom, however fleeting, which they hate...

Maybe I’m being mystic here. But, whether I’m right or wrong on this, I’m willing to bet that in the long run, or even the short, it will not work. In the long run, there will be as much pornography in Putin’s Russia as there is everywhere else. It may be a little harder to get, but it will be there. Human biology is not so easily overcome.

Thus, in the end, Putin, and his censors, will enter history along with our own Anthony Comstock, who enjoyed in his time vast power, and publicly boasted of the number of people he’d driven to suicide and of the number of books he’d burned...

But when he died, he was just as dead as any of us ...

And as for his legacy...nothing.

Except the reputation of a villain and a fool, and, almost certainly, a latent “pervert,” utterly incapable of accepting who he really was...deep down...below the belt...

Even as he rode his version of a three-wheeled motorcycle, with his version of the Night Wolves...

In all their leathery glory.

***

Want a free book? Check out With Luther, Tourists, and God in Santa Fe. It's partly a travel log and partly a meditation on people who actually make a difference in life. Oh, and it is lavishly illustrated by yours truly. It’s on Gumroad as a PDF about 52 pages long. So give it glance!

Friday, January 17, 2020

Trump: generals are “dopes and babies”

Are you about to get drafted and sent off to die on some radioactive battlefield while terminator robots hunt your derrier across the landscape? This story in The Washington Post isn’t exactly reassuring.

In “‘You’re a bunch of dopes and babies’: Inside Trump’s stunning tirade against generals,” Carol D. Leonnig and Philip Rucker give us a chilling look at Trump’s relationship with the officers and experts who tried to convince him of the value of a cautious and thoughtful approach to world affairs. According to the authors, the military men and women began to explain the country’s long-term strategy to the president at a Pentagon meeting, only to have the President reject everything they said. He finally snapped at them “You’re a bunch of dopes and babies.”

Given that the world is a very complicated place, full of ambiguity, this is not a good thing.

Also interesting in the piece are hints that Trump seems to think that the American military should be rented out to the highest bidder, like mercenaries, rather than being reserved for our nation’s own interests and employed only in the most pressing of circumstances.

This, too, is not a good thing.

Anyway, give the article a glance when you have a chance. It’s is also an excerpt from a larger book which might be worth looking at.

After you’ve seen them, feel free to worry.

A lot.

***

Thursday, January 16, 2020

Want a free book? Check it out!

Just published this lavishly illustrated short book as a PDF on Gumroad. It's part travel log (all about Santa Fe, New Mexico) and part essay on activist Christians.

Give it a glance! And download if you like. It's free for the moment.

James Bond, Oz, A Strutting Fool

Something I find fascinating is how often, and (seemingly) how deliberately certain figures on the Right do their level best to look and act like Bond villains. I mean, consider #MoscowMitch. Here he is already about as attractive as a pocket-sized version of Gamera the killer turtle…and, if you ever get a chance, listen to him on Youtube or wherever while he cackles like the Wicked Witch Of Washington and clearly delights in being “the Grim Reaper,” killing off any bill introduced by a Democrat.

He comes off as diabolic as an underweight Professor Moriarty with a side-order of extra cheese and meanness.

In fact, let’s face it. Mitch is just an orbital laser cannon away from having his own Man From Uncle episode.

*

Don’t get the reference? Go to IMDB.com. Then say, with a sneer, Okay, Boomer.

Perfectly acceptable.

The Sinister Supervillain

Then there’s our friends in Australia. Consider their current Prime Minister, Scott Morrison. (I write this in January of 2020, so things could change by the time you see it).

Australia is now in the midst of perfectly horrible bushfires. Scenes that can only be described as apocalyptic have flashed onto screens around the world — blood red or orange skies, people in flight, homes reduced to ash, refugees in boats trying to make it out to safety and the sea. It all has the feel of the Bergman film Skammen, or, worse, Cormac McCarthy’s The Road.

And what has Morrison done? Pretty much nothing—other, that is, then deny that there’s any link between burning coal and global warming. You could almost forgive him for that, but the fact that he’s also done very, very little to assist the first responders and fire fighters saving lives from the flames is terrifying. I can’t imagine what his motivation could possibly be. Maybe it is some Libertarian or Neoliberal thing, a belief that any expenditure of resources by the government, for any cause whatsoever (except war, of course), is forbidden.

The result? He presents to the world a nearly perfect picture of elite indifference to the suffering of lesser humans. It is as though he sat down with his top advisers and said, “What can we do to present ourselves as horrible and hideous and a threat to human existence?”

And one of the advisors, maybe Angus Taylor, says, “I’ve got an idea! Let’s create a photo-op in which you stand in front of a burning country, and pretend that nothing is wrong, even as the flames consume animals, homes, and humans.”

“Perfect,” says the PM, and then goes on vacation to Hawaii.

*

Oh, and if you had any doubts, just the other day, the former Prime Minister of Australia, Tony Abbott, told an Israeli reporter that not only is global warming a myth, but that climate change activists are terribly dangerous. They are a cult, he said, to be equated with the Islamic and Chinese threats to Western Civilization.

It is so fascinating.

And do we recall that our own Rupert Murdoch is of the same class and community, a Right-Wing Australian, who came to the United States and founded Fox News?

Might be something there to consider.

*

All of which means that Morrison also has terrific potential to be a Bond villain. A cold and ruthless one. With no personal charisma or charm.

Say, in a way, Ernst Stavro Blofeld…

But with Vegemite.

*

But of all those currently on view in the Right, there is one who can never have a role, I fear, in an Ian Fleming novel or one of its imitators. He’ll never be up against Bond…whichever actor it is that will next play the man. (Or woman, thinking of Dr. Who).

I refer, of course, to Donald Trump.

Why not him? Well, consider, Bond villains may have very different characteristics. But, as a rule, they have a few things in common. For instance, they are quiet. They are sinister but silent. They speak in measured tones when they speak at all, and then usually just to impart instructions to their henchmen, or explanations to Bond himself (“Do you expect me to talk?” “No, I expect you to die.” All said without once raising his voice.)

Thus, the Bond villain may be quiet and thin, like Dr. No. Or quiet and fat, like Goldfinger. Or quiet and somewhere in the middle, like Emilio Largo from Thunderball.

But they are not loud.

Contrast that to Trump…

Who is nothing if not loud…nothing if not theatrical…nothing if not a mouth running at full tilt and a tongue wagging at both ends (and the middle) at the same time.

And thus…sadly, he cannot be a genuinely Miltonian villain, a true Lucifer, no matter how much he might aspire to be so. He won’t be a Dr. No or a Goldfinger or a Largo. He won’t even be a minor henchmen, an Oddjob or a Jaws.

He will never be great. Not even a great villain.

He will be, at best, a second rate vaudevillian, orange makeup on his face and a threadbare wig upon his balding head…strutting across a creaking stage before a thinning audience…

Until finally, like Shakespeare’s poor player, he is gone…and heard no more.

And not a moment too soon.

***

Please check out my new book, Padre: To The Island, a meditation on mortality, grief, and joy, based on the lives and deaths of two of the most amazing and unconventional people I ever met, my mother and father.

***

Michael Jay Tucker is a writer and journalist who has published material on topics ranging from the Jazz Age to computers. (Among his small claims to fame is that he interviewed Steve Jobs just after that talented if complicated man got kicked out of Apple, and just before the company’s Board came begging him to come back.)

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

Tuesday, January 14, 2020

Graduate School...A Waste Of Time (and money)?

Is graduate school worth the investment? That is, the investment in both time and money?

Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic asks that very question in a recent issue of the Harvard Business Review. His answer? Maybe. Maybe not. He lists reasons for doing so, including a higher starting salary and learning soft skills that could come in handy on the job. He also lists reasons for not going the graduate school. They include things like going into debt and the fact that potential employers may not care how many degrees you have on your resume, so long as you can do the job they want done.

His conclusion is, alas, that it’s up to you to measure the relative merits of going vs. not going, and then making up your own mind.

Okay, in interests of full disclosure, I should mention that I have three master’s degrees, one in English, and two in history. (I’d have a Ph.D. if I hadn’t gotten kicked out of one program. But I’m not angry. Just terribly, terribly hurt.)

Anyway, my experience is that I never once used my degrees on the job, or to get a job. Of course, they were liberal arts degrees, so that made a difference. But, still, no magazine I ever worked for (and I’ve worked for several) cared that I had an MFA in writing.

So, not a career builder, no.

But on the other hand, I really enjoyed earning the three master’s degree. (I’d have enjoyed the Ph.D., too. Insert much swearing and cursing here.) And, I guess, if I had it to do all over again, I take the same path.

After all, a job’s important...

But it isn’t everything.

Monday, January 13, 2020

A Most UnCivil War

Note: I originally did this way back in 2017. But, not much seems to have changed, so I thought I'd repost it now.

Haven’t we seen it all before?

I mean, not necessarily Trump. He may be sort of new. Though, I suppose, you could make an argument that Andrew Jackson was a bit like him. Jackson, like Trump, came to power by appealing to the lowest possible denominator. He gained, in other words, the votes of those below the usual threshold of American politics.

But, Jackson was (for better or worse) an intelligent man. And Trump…well, you know the status on that.

But the powers behind Trump, the men and women put up the cash, who provided the organization, the networks of “Dark Money,” (to quote Jane Mayer), the obscure associations of obscenely wealthy men and women who constructed the Radical Right bit by bit and bolt by bolt, like a monster on a slab...

Haven’t we seen them before? And only a hundred years ago? And then, as now, weren’t they were deadly, shameful, and redolent of treason?

Let me explain. I’m reading, right now, a couple of fascinating books. One is older, The Confederate Nation (1861-1865), by the eminent historian, Emory M. Thomas (1979). It is a classic work I gather, and can be found in the libraries of many a professor. The second is somewhat newer, This Vast Southern Empire: Slaveholders at the Helm of American Foreign Policy, by Matthew Karp (2016). In it, as the title would suggest, Professor Karp looks at the goals and means of the slave owning elites who controlled American foreign relations for a major part of the nation’s history.

Normally, I don’t like Civil War history. It depresses me. I can’t read about the battles, no matter how stirring, and not think of all those young men, many of them poor or working class, who marched off to their destruction in the service of privileged aristocrats who never suffered so much as a scratch. Nor can I escape the memory of what happened to the civilians, particularly women and children, who found themselves at the mercy of their enemies.

But, I am interested in what happened just before the Civil War—in the mindsets of the people involved, whether they were Southern planters, Northern industrialists, radical Abolitionists, determined “fire-eaters,” (i.e., extreme Southern nationalists), factory workers, farmers, field hands, clergymen and churchwomen, and on and on. What, I wonder, was in their heads? What motivated them to support or oppose or remain indifferent to what became the most destructive war in our history?

To find out, I turn to experts like Thomas and Karp. The former looks at Southern Nationalism and its origins. Or, more specifically, he is concerned with the Antebellum South’s assumptions about life and how it should be lived. Thomas argues that many of those assumptions could be traced to a relatively small group of individuals, i.e., the great plantation owners who dominated the South’s economic and cultural scene.

Oh, yes, there were many other participants in the society of the Old South. The middle classes were growing, the small farmers who produced food rather than cotton were always important (even plantation owners need to eat), and there were ever-larger numbers of industrialists and factory workers (particularly in Virginia). Even the slaves are not to be discounted. Though oppressed, they found ways of influencing the world around them.

But, still, the major outlines the Southern ideology came from the plantation owners—from, in other words, large commercial farmers but whose economics were quite modern, based as they were on international enterprise. They were, in their way, among the first of America’s globalizing entrepreneurs.

Yet, somehow, they combined this modernity with a strange backwards glance. They affected the pose of feudal lords, noble and paternalistic. Thus, in their view, the perfect man (or woman) was almost a separate sovereignty…a monarch among many monarchs, complete with subjects, a capital, a castle, and, in a limited way, a military capacity.

Karp, in turn, looks at how those same plantation owners ran the national government in their interests for many long decades. In particular, he looks at how they managed the nation’s foreign policy. The planters, it seems, had a single overriding goal—the defense of slavery as an institution. To this end, they envisioned a permanent alliance between the United States (or, at least, their part of it), and the other booming slave-based economies of the Americas—Texas, then still an independent republic; Cuba, still a Spanish colony but making tons of money as a vast sugar plantation; and Brazil, where bond labor was very much in operation. Their shared enemy? Abolitionists, wherever they might rear their ugly heads.

In the process, says Karp, the plantation owners constructed a remarkable form of Federal government that was deliberately crippled at home. Within the nation’s borders, it was to be a weakling, almost an afterthought, a distant shadow of authority which did not intrude upon States’ rights, much less those of the individual citizen…at least if the citizen was rich and powerful.

But abroad, it was to be hugely powerful…so that it might protect the interests of Those Who Really Mattered. That is, themselves.

*

But what was it that motivated the great plantation owners? What was their ideology?

They did have one. And it boiled down to a single word: Freedom. Absolute personal and economic Freedom was what they required. Freedom, almost on a libertarian level, is what they demanded. And they would accept no substitutes.

Ah, but there was the rub. By some wonderful twist of logic, that freedom included their right to own other people.

You have to stop and stare at that in wonder. How is such a thing possible? How could they not see the awful contradiction in that? Yet, somehow, they didn’t.

Indeed, and incredibly, there is evidence that they understood that slavery wasn’t an optimal solution to their economic requirements. As the industrializing North, not to mention Europe, had already proved, free labor is cheaper than bound. Moreover, all the planters had to do to pull the abolitionists’ fangs was to make the transition to some sort of wage labor. Yes, there would have been disruptions at first, but in the long run, it would have been more effective.

Yet, even though they knew that, the plantation owners simply could not make the necessary adjustments. It seems, or so I’ve heard suggested, that their own sense of self-worth was so tied up in their ability to regard others as property that they simply could not contemplate the alternative. Not to own slaves would have been to suffer a kind of death of the ego.

And so…they marched off to war.

And suffered a death of ego greater than they could have possibly imagined in their most horrific dreams.

*

But what has all this to do with our situation today?

Well, what do we know about the people behind Trump, that Dark Network?

Not much, actually. They tend to stick to the shadows. A few, like the Koch brothers or Betsy DeVos, can be seen…but most are indistinct. Still, we can determine a few of their defining characteristics. First, while they are limited in number, they are very, very wealthy. They have vast power and influence.

Second, they have an ideology. These are not just people operating from gut instinct, reacting to events without forethought. No. They are working toward a plan and a goal…almost a utopian society.

They are anarcho-capitalists. That is, they regard the Federal government as (at best) a necessary evil. At home, it is to be kept feeble and sickly. Within our national borders, Washington’s role is to, mostly, just provide an internal security force to protect the property of Those Who Really.

Ah, but abroad, that is another matter. Beyond our shores, the Federal government would be mighty, indeed. It would not speak softly, but it would carry the biggest of big sticks. It would be a standing, permanent, militarized state, whose central (sole!) purpose is make the to world safe for the investment of the great and the powerful.

And that’s all. That’s all government would do. Everything else, at home and abroad, would be cut away. And in particular, the government’s other traditional role…what may be its most ancient role, and what is doubtlessly its most moral… that of shielding the poor and the middle classes from the rapacity of the powerful, would be abandoned entirely.

And does this not all sound terribly familiar? Is it not that same blind selfishness of the slaveholders? That same definition of Freedom as the right to own others?

Is there not the same utterly irrational inability to compromise… even slightly!... with the concept of the general welfare, the social contract, and the shared national destiny?

And, lastly, most frightening, is there not also the same danger that, in their inability to bend, they will plunge us all into horror and strife?

Rather than, even for a moment, consider that they might not, after all…

Be gods?

—Michael Jay Tucker

Wait. What? It’s Really Trumpcare?

Okay, this one is wild. According to New York Magazine, “Trump Takes Credit For Obamacare, Says Democrats Want to Repeal It”

In a word, huh?

Wasn’t it just yesterday that Donald Trump was saying the Affordable Health Care Act was the worst thing to happen to American health since Bubonic Plague?

Well...now...hmmm...

Next up, the Emancipation Proclamation ...as signed by President Abraham Trump, when, of course, he had a spare moment after occupying airports and winning the American Revolution.

Saturday, January 11, 2020

Stop! Don't Go To College!

Interesting article in the Washington Post, “Is college still worth it? Read this study,” by Michelle Singletary. In it, Singletary presents data which strongly suggests that higher ed is not worth your time these days, at least not as an investment. There’s simply too much debt involved, and the supposed income bump you get from having a degree is increasingly mythical.

I must confess, I don’t buy it entirely. But, she’s got a point on the debt problem, and let’s face it, college isn’t for everyone--even if it were a guaranteed money-maker. Frankly, there is a lot be said for alternatives to the traditional four-year degree, like community college, two-year programs, and, increasingly, trade schools.

That said, I still believe everyone would benefit from having at least a touch of the liberal arts. People gain something from reading novels and poetry, and knowing a bit of history and politics, however little that something may be valued by corporate American.

So, maybe, we could look at a middle path. Yes, encourage young people to explore trade schools and other alternatives to college, but, also, do away with the crippling debt involved with higher ed. Make college, in other words, affordable once more.

Maybe then students can have the best of worlds--a marketable skill, and a hint of Milton’s angels and the Greeks and Romans of Mary Beard.

Peakpx

***

Wondering Why The Sudden Flurry?

Might you be wondering why I've suddenly been posting to Excargo ago? And so much political stuff? Well, there's a couple of reasons for that. One is that I've just gotten interested in writing about politics again.

But, the second reason is that my usual outlet for such musings has been recently Liberal Resistance, an online publication of which I was sort of the volunteer editor for a while. But, it's been offline for some major revamping after it merged with a larger organizaiton, USAUnify.org.

It will be back soon, and when it does I'll be posting there.

Oh, and it will have following URL:

https://liberalresistance.usaunify.org/

Friday, January 10, 2020

Trump and Hippopotami

Amusing piece by Dana Milbank in The Washington Post, “Trump wags the hippopotamus.” In it, Milbank says Trump has gone way beyond the fiction president in the movie Wag The Dog, who starts a fake war to distract the population from a scandal. Trump has actually done that, but now has gone beyond that to actually killing people.

The scary thing? He may get away with it.

Thursday, January 09, 2020

The Coyote Conquest

As a former New Mexican, I’m a great fan of coyotes. Oh, no, I wouldn’t want to get close to them. Bit too many teeth and claws for that. But I admire their intelligence and strength.

But the problem is that over the last few decades, they’ve moved in all directions. Right now, you can find them as easily in New York as New Mexico. I, personally, remember the very first time I saw them running wild in a park in Winchester, Massachusetts. They regarded me with absolute indifference, and hurried on their way.

Now, it seems they are poised to move into South America as well. In a piece in the Washington Post, Coyotes are poised to invade South America. Humans are to blame, Robert Gebelhoff notes that in the 1950s, the beasts moved into Mexico. In 2014, they crossed the Panama Canal.

The problem with this? Coyotes are out-competing a great many things along the way. It is entirely possible that biodiversity will drop dramatically as the result of the coyote conquest. That would decidedly not be good for life in the Western Hemisphere.

So, Gebelhoff says that if we wish to keep that diversity, we had better take a stand. He writes, “Hold the line against invading coyotes. Fortify the region’s rainforest defenses. Do everything possible to keep these animals from arriving in a new continent. If we can stave off this offense, perhaps we can win the bigger war to save biodiversity.”

Let’s hope we manage that. Let’s hope we hang together to stop the coyotes. I am hopeful that we can.

Or, at least, that we will do better than some on the left did at standing together to stop Trump from entering the White House in 2016.

The Fire This Time

There was a terrifying piece on the Washington Post a few days back, “Too late to leave: Australia’s advice for surviving a bush fire when surrounded” by Diana Leonard. It seems that the bushfires in Australia are now moving so fast that frequently people aren’t able to get out of their way. Increasingly, people are getting trapped by the fires, and so have to take shelter where they can and hope to fight the flames.

A particularly ominous line in the piece is “‘Climate change is producing more frequently these unprecedented conditions,’ said Crystal Kolden, a professor and fire scientist at the University of Idaho. ‘Fires are moving faster than people have ever seen.’”

Meanwhile, of course, Australia’s Prime Minister and his government continue to act as if there weren’t a problem, and to deny any link between the fires and global warming.

This is a fairly awful situation, and not just for Australia. When our leaders seem so willfully ignorant of what’s going on...willfully stupid, in fact...that then one wonders just what they’re getting us into.

One feels a bit that the whole human race is surrounded by fire...and Washington, and so many other capitols...tell us there isn’t really problem, and really it’s all in our heads.

Even as we blacken and burn.

Beware False Prophets

Definitely check out the the Rev. William J Barber’s piece in The Guardian, “Evangelicals using religion for political gain is nothing new. It is a US tradition.” Barber is, of course, the charismatic leader of the co-chair of the Poor People’s Campaign, and one of the more great lights of American Progressive Christianity.

In this piece, he argues that we should be saddened but not surprised that (mostly white) Evangelicals are supporting Trump. He traces their behavior and attitudes back through the various self-identified Christians who have supported segregation, lynching, slavery, and genocide. The sad reality is all too often people are willing to use God as excuse to do very evil things.

One particularly powerful paragraph reads, “Religious hypocrisy is not new. But Jesus and the prophets of the Bible make clear that God hates this abuse of the holy. ‘Do you expect me to overlook obscene wealth you’ve piled up by cheating and fraud?’ God asks through the prophet Micah. ‘Do you think I’ll tolerate shady deals and shifty scheming? I’m tired of the violent rich bullying their way with bluffs and lies.’ These are the biblical values we have heard too little about in our public life.”

Arrogance and Ignorance, a deadly mix

Interesting article by Joe Scarborough in The Washington Post, “Trump’s ignorance has created an international crisis.” In it, Scarborough argues that Trump is, in one way, like the late General Douglas MacArthur. Both the General and the president are famed for their boundless self-confidence, not so say arrogance.

The difference, though, is that MacArthur was a skilled tactician who knew his military history. Trump, by contrast, is just arrogant.

The combination of ignorance and egotism has been deadly in the past, and it may well be so again.

Wednesday, January 08, 2020

Iran And The Day After

So President Trump has just addressed the nation. He informs us that when Iran bombarded our bases a while back, we lost no men or women. The betting is that the Mullahs have decided avenging Qasem Soleimani isn’t worth the costs of a full-scale military confrontation with a Superpower. He notes that Iran appears to be “standing down.”

But there is something odd about all this. First, we don’t know, yet, that Iran is really “standing down,” and we won’t know for quite some time. Second, that Iran may back away from the situation now doesn’t mean it won’t hold a grudge. It is possible that at some unspecified point in the future, perhaps when we least expect it, the nation will strike at us with the cry “Remember Soleimani!”

Third, there is a curious sense of relief in Trump’s announcement. It feels like a school yard bully who has just pushed the toughest kid in class from behind, and then …with a shudder!…realizes what he has done. When the other boy simply sneers and turns away, the bully exhales and, after a few moments of shaking in terror, announces that he’s won.

But, fourth, and finally, we have (I think) suffered a significant defeat in the eyes of the world. For here’s the thing. No matter what happens now, humanity will look at us and note that it was Iran, not the United States, who handled this affair with restraint.

~mjt

Please check out my new book, Padre: To The Island, a meditation on mortality, grief, and joy, based on the lives and deaths of two of the most amazing and unconventional people I ever met, my mother and father.

***

Michael Jay Tucker is a writer and journalist who has published material on topics ranging from the Jazz Age to computers. (Among his small claims to fame is that he interviewed Steve Jobs just after that talented if complicated man got kicked out of Apple, and just before the company’s Board came begging him to come back.)

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

Tuesday, January 07, 2020

The Age Of Fire

Powerful, terrifying piece about the coming age of fire...the Pyrocene...in the Guardian. We have entered a period in our planet's history when the wildfires in Australia and California are the norm, not the exception.

See: The Australian fires are a harbinger of things to come. Don't ignore their warning by Steve Pyne

***

Michael Jay Tucker is a writer and journalist who has published material on topics ranging from the Jazz Age to computers. (Among his small claims to fame is that he interviewed Steve Jobs just after that talented if complicated man got kicked out of Apple, and just before the company’s Board came begging him to come back.) Tucker’s most recent book is Padre: To The Island, a meditation on life and death based on the passing of his own parents.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

This is so sad...

From The Washington Post: Russian trolls are targeting American veterans, and Trump’s government isn’t helping, group says

This is just so sad.

And why isn't the government responding? Where are our defenses? Where, for that matter, are our defenders?

Not, perhaps, in the White House at the moment.

***

Michael Jay Tucker is a writer and journalist who has published material on topics ranging from the Jazz Age to computers. (Among his small claims to fame is that he interviewed Steve Jobs just after that talented if complicated man got kicked out of Apple, and just before the company’s Board came begging him to come back.) Tucker’s most recent book is Padre: To The Island, a meditation on life and death based on the passing of his own parents.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

Pelosi No Fool

In the Washington Post, we learn that “House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) told Democrats in a closed-door meeting ... that she will not act until she learns more about how the Senate would conduct the trial, according to three people present for her remarks.”

This is undoubtedly wise on her part given that Mitch McConnell has indicated “Republicans have enough votes to proceed with President Trump’s impeachment trial with no agreement with Democrats on witnesses.” In other words, to run the impeachment in such a way as to make the conviction of the President pretty much impossible.

This is not a promising beginning for anything like so abstract and rare as justice.

See: Impeachment live updates: McConnell says he is ready to proceed with Trump impeachment trial with no agreement on witnesses, according to two officials by By Felicia Sonmez, Colby Itkowitz, John Wagner and Seung Min Kim

Saturday, January 04, 2020

A Killing Web?

In cyberpunk science fiction there is often a scene in which the hero is attacked physically as well as mentally by a hacker. That is, in the story, our protagonist is cruising the web, or maybe trying to hack into a dangerous site, and the site’s defenders send him some sort of signal that is actually deadly to the protagonist. I have never exactly figured out how such attacks could possibly work, but apparently something like them is already happening.

Specifically, in “A tweet gave a journalist a seizure. His case brings new meaning to the idea of ‘online assault.’ by Reis Thebault, in the Washington Post, we learn that Newsweek’s Kurt Eichenwald was actually assaulted by a moving image. Eichenwald is a frequent critic of Donald Trump. He also has epilepsy. So, when he opened up an email one day, and was confronted with a rapidly flashing image, he had a serious seizure...something genuinely life-endangering.

The image had been crafted, allegedly, by John Rayne Rivello, a Right-Wing supporter of Trump, who knew of Eichwenwald’s epilepsy, and who sent him the image in a deliberate attempt to hurt him...or, even, cause his death. That’s pretty disturbing, but there’s worse. The attack on Eichenwald has been copied by others, also sending such images to those with epilepsy, sometimes for political reasons, sometimes just for simple sadism.

I find all this terrifying, and for many, many reasons. First, I am sure that certain sad and unhealthy people will continue to do things like this, and maybe even find new and more deadly ways of doing so. Perhaps they’ll discover a means of sending Taser-like shocks over Wifi. Something.

But, second, I am troubled because I’ve always been a great fan of Free Speech, and I have always been an advocate of the Web as a means of ensuring that free speech. What was the line? “The Net interprets censorship as damage and routes around it.” (John Gilmore.)

Now, though, we have a situation in which discourse on the Net has become dominated by political fanatics, religious zealots, anti-vaxxers and flat-earthers, endless corporate shrills, bots of all description, and, now, the genuinely violent.

How do I respond to that?

How, indeed, do I respond to the fact that I vaguely, and uneasily suspect that maybe, just maybe, there needs to be something like an Internet police?

Such a thought chills me...

Particularly because it says worse things about people than about the ‘Net that was supposed to set them free...

by Michael Jay Tucker
copyright©2020

***

Michael Jay Tucker is a writer and editor based in the American Southwest. His most recent book is Padre, a meditation on life and death based on the passing of his parents. You may see the book on Amazon here: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1792646909/

Friday, January 03, 2020

Soleimani is dead

What will the death of Qassem Soleimani mean? Personally, I have no idea, and I went to bed last night quite frightened. This morning, I was reassured to see a fascinating article in Politico, "Why the Death of an Iranian Commander Won’t Mean World War III" by Ray Takeyh.

In the extremely well-reasoned piece, Takeyh argued that while the Iranian regime will certainly strike back somehow, it will be measured in that response. He says that the Mullahs are, indeed, highly aggressive, and do dream of an Iranian sphere of influence that would include much of the Middle East. (Let's be blunt, they are aiming for Great Power status.)

But, he concludes, they are surprisingly pragmatic. They are not in a position, yet, to strike back in a major way. They will, instead, commit some random act of terrorism, or maybe a hack attack, and then fall back to plan for another day.

Is he right? I don't know. I certainly hope he is. It would be nice to know that Iran wasn't going to launch nuclear weapons or anything in the future. And Takeyh is an expert on the subject. He is, among many other things, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. So, I guess I'll put my faith in his prediction and, for most part, relax.

But not entirely relax. I still think the killing was badly managed. And as for the Iranian response...

I try never to believe that an enemy (or a friend) will act in the way that I hope he will act...and the way I think he should act...

Because, all too often, he does neither.

Okay, a couple more posts after all...

So I am going to post a couple of things here after all. I am still planning to shut this blog down, unless there is a tremendous desire for it somewhere. And I still think that I will transfer my musings to the Michael Jay Tucker blog.

But I want to try an experiment. The Liberal Resistance site is down for a while. I want to see if I can use Xcargo to write about political topics, at least for a little while. If I get readers, I may transfer to vocal.media.

Talk to you soon.

cheers
mjt

Tuesday, December 31, 2019

Happy New Year, and check out my new blog

Happy New Year, Everyone!

And remember, this will probably be the last time I'll post here. Go instead to my new blog at:

https://michaeljaytucker.blogspot.com/

Take care, and see you soon at the new address.

Friday, December 27, 2019

Video: Soaring

And the last video I will do for Liberal Resistance...

In fact, it may be the last video I do for Liberal Resistance. Simply put, people don't seem to watch videos on political blogs. On video hosting services, yes. On personal v-logs, sometimes. But political blogs, no.

Ah well. We live and we learn.

Oh, and after you've watched this, check out my new blog, here:

https://michaeljaytucker.blogspot.com/

Friday, December 20, 2019

Video: Rover Revisited

More stuff I did for Liberal Resistance...but this time with a robot. And Mars. Great combination.

And remember, I will soon stop posting to this blog and moving to a new one, the official Michael Jay Tucker blog (ta-dah!)

But here's the video!

Friday, December 13, 2019

Video: To The Lighthouse

Another bit of liberal propaganda I did for Liberal Resistance :-)

And remember, I will soon be shutting down this blog. So check out my new blog, Michael Jay Tucker

In the meanwhile, here's the video.

Sunday, December 08, 2019

Fairwell, Xcargo

Well, I have finally decided to say goodby to explosive-cargo the blog. I will, instead, do my posting at my brand new blog, the official (ta-dah!) Michael Jay Tucker blog,which you can also find here:

https://michaeljaytucker.blogspot.com/

Why a new blog? Well, that is kind of hard to say. I've done Xcargo for a long time as a blog, and for an even longer time as an ezine. (Remember ezines?) And when I started the publication, I felt I wanted to be mischievous, and confrontational, and very, very political...though with a smile. I wanted to be a gadfly and a rabble-rouser.

And, well, I'm not sure I feel that way any longer. I would still like to be funny, now and then, if I can be. And I guess I will always write about politics. Though, frankly, right now, I'm not sure the world needs any more rabble-rousers. We've got way too many rabbles and way too many rousers as it is.

Besides, somehow, the name "explosive" doesn't seem to fit any more. (And, he said with a sad smile, in this age of alerts and alarms, it is not always safe to use in public discourse.)

So, I'm starting the new blog. It'll have my writings, but also more of my experiments with art and graphics, and with video. It will be, I hope, more in tune with who I feel I am now.

I'll be letting this blog run until the end of the year. There will be videos each Friday up until December 27. Then, after that, it will go silent.

But please do go to the new blog, and stay with me. I wouldn't want to lose your friendship after all this time.

cheers
mjt

Friday, December 06, 2019

Video: When it is all over

Another video I did for Liberal Resistance. As always, feel free to skip if you're pro-Trump.

Friday, November 29, 2019

Video: Red Sun Rising

Another Liberal Resistance video I did.

Again, if you're pro-Trump, feel free to skip. More apolitical stuff is coming.

If you're anti-Trump, well, then, watch away!

Friday, November 22, 2019

Video With Dinosaur

Another liberal resistance vid. But I do like the dinosaur...

Wednesday, November 20, 2019

Old Woody

And this is yet another GIF...

This is "Old Woody," a tree not far from here. They've decorated with paper lanterns for Christmas. I added the light, and the small blue Christmas/Fairy lights that come on afterwards.

Tuesday, November 19, 2019

My newest certificate

Got this today for a Udemy class I finished. Trying to move forward on the video stuff. I've gotten a couple of feelers from folks who want me to edit and/or narrate little promo videos they've done or want done.

Be interesting if I ended up doing that sort of thing, even if just as a hobby.

Friday, November 15, 2019

In Unity And Trust

So another anti-Trump video I did for LiberalResistance.net. Again, if you're a conservative, feel free to skip. I'll be lots of less political stuff in future.