Moderates United

I’m inching my way through the movie “Norma Rae”.  It’s just one on my list of movies I feel like I ought to have watched at least once.  I’m not grooving on it too much, although you do have to admire the labor organizers chutzpah (and that is the precise word to use).  I admire anyone with that degree of persistence, even if I disagree with the goals.

Well, in any event, that movie dates from 1979.  And they got their union.  Then I got thinking, North Carolina textiles: were they not decimated around the same time the Rust Belt was forming?  Some time not later than, say, the mid-1990’s?

Actually, here is an excerpt:

By the late 1980s, the apparel segment was no longer the largest market for fibre products, with industrial and home furnishings together representing a larger proportion of the fibre market.^[29] Industry integration and global manufacturing led to many small firms closing for good during the 1970s and 1980s in the United States; during those decades, 95 percent of the looms in North Carolina, South Carolina and Georgia shut down, and Alabama and Virginia also saw many factories close.

So when Reuben the labor organizer got there, there was already pressure on the industry.  His timing was terrible.  He was leading them into a trap.

It took a couple minutes of digging, but yes, everyone in that plant–some 3,000 people–lost their jobs.  I will admit to feeling a few moments of inappropriate Schadenfreude at that.  This is wrong, as I see it, since people asking to live better lives is a good thing.  Unions are not bad things, and they were absolutely indispensable for a long time in this and other countries.  They were the only block on shameless abuse and regional plutocracies.

My Schadenfreude is not directed at the actual workers.  They were getting used and manipulated on all sides.  It is at the Democrat Triumphalism which this movie represents.  That movie is intended to say, this is why Democrats are good.  This is why we are the party of the working man and woman.  We are on the side of ordinary good people, and opposed to the rich and abusive.

But everything they build crumbles.  It works for a minute, then they prop it up to make it look like it is still working when it starts to fail, then when it fails and they can’t hide it, they blame anyone but themselves.  It is a zombie disease, one that is regrettably infectious, and insanely common.  Everywhere you look, this disease is waiting for you.

It is on the street corners of most major cities, handing out paper poison.

I’m thinking about this some more.  Either the polls showing a drop in positive views of Nike were wrong, or something is not adding up.

I reread both articles I posted.  The first one, showing a stock surge, is certainly true.  But this could EASILY be accomplished by one or more billionaires chipping in to show their political support for Nike.  Jeff Bezos could buy a hundred million in stock and not bat an eye.  So could Bill Gates, Warren Buffet, George Soros and many others.  It is scary to contemplate how many scary rich hard core Leftists there are out there.

And when you read more carefully, Nike users in general trend more Left than the population as a whole–they are more Chipotle than Cracker Barrel–but that is not the same as saying that all their customers are solid Democrats.  This is plainly not true.  Let us say an average company has 50% support from Republicans, and 50% from Democrats.  Nike is 40/60.  But this still means 40% of their business needs to come from people who were likely pissed off by the ad.

And the 30% sales increase was only over Labor Day weekend, and has to be compared to a normal 17% sales increase.  So it is a relative doubling, but that could easily be explained as a short term pattern of Leftists buying Nike because they are pissed at Trump.

The real metric will be where their sales are in a year, or even the 4th Quarter of this year.  If I am right, the energy they built among part of their customer base will be more than offset by losses everywhere else.  If their sales do not justify the stock valuations, then either the stock will fall, or we will know somebody is manipulating it.

I had posted a while back that openness means enjoying surprises and the unexpected. It occurs to me that a good word for this is play.  Play is where you don’t know what is going to happen, but you expect to enjoy it.  It is embracing the unexpected, and your own power in creating it.

As I understand it, sexual arousal is a function of the sympathetic nervous system–the system which reacts to external events–and sexual orgasm is a function of the parasympathetic, the system which calms the sympathetic system down.

The release is made more enjoyable by the tension.  When you consider this, it is not really that remarkable that some people add to the tension by adding pain or constraint.  It is a wider swing.

And I was thinking the other day about the quality of release on orgasm.  You are physiologically wired to be able to release completely, to be fully open emotionally, to let down all your defenses, to be completely at ease.  This feeling is the one we really want.

But how safe is that with someone who is a stranger?  We are all supposed to be wanting to have sex with different people all the time, at least the men are.

It seems to me, though, that the quality of the sex, which is to say, ultimately, the quality of the orgasms, it connected directly to the level of trust.

The orgasm is very obviously physical for men, particularly, but there is always a latent, body wide potential as well.  This of course is very obvious in women, who in general do prefer to feel loved and secure with their partners, for this reason.

An orgasm, in some respects, is an act of trust.

And I think if we reverse this, we can see why some men–it is nearly always men–feel the need for a heightened power differential, as in rape.  If orgasm requires trust, and if they don’t trust women, then they need to know that woman is under their control.  They say rape is not about sex, but power.  I would suggest, though, that it might be better seen as sex through power, as sexual orgasm enabled by power.

I am perhaps doing some combination of rambling and speaking incoherently, but I think there is a thread of useful content in here somewhere.

Inflation really is THE key economic problem.  The ability to create money underlies the stability or fragility, the justice or the abusiveness of any economic system.  Stable money and free markets throw off wealth.  Funny money and intrusive governments create and continue mass poverty.

I was thinking about Keynes the other day.  He amassed himself a small fortune in currency speculation.  I actually think that is how Soros made most of his money too, come to think of it.

Keynes understood how inflation is the effect of covert wealth transfer.  He stated this clearly in his first book, “The Economic Consequences of the Peace”.  Afterwards, he obviously got to thinking, then realized all the totalitarian plans he was attaching himself to could be facilitated by getting control of money.

I will note he played a major role in the creation of both the IMF and the World Bank, both of which have, in general, failed to achieve their goals of aiding development.  But who have they benefited?  It is a good question I can’t answer at the moment.

The already rich is nearly always a good guess, though.

Just because you hate your job, and just because there are very rich people out there, does not mean life or our system are unfair.

It is odd to think that so many people think intelligence is the summum bonum of human existence.  Intelligence comprehends the experience of competence, of understanding, of efficiency, but does not comprise it.  It is quite possible for someone baking really good peanut butter cookies to feel the same joy and pride as a mathematician might feel in solving a particularly vexing problem.

You might say this is wrong, because the one is vastly harder, vastly more useful, perhaps, than the cookies.  This may be true, but am I wrong?  Should we call the person stupid for feeling good about his or her cookies?  Should we not take MORE opportunities to feel good, not less?  Would the world not be a better place if we did?

In America, particularly, we have this cult of efficiency.  It has, to state the obvious, made us more efficient, but only at creating and distributing things.  It has made us stupid when it comes to the savoring and appreciation of life. In doing everything faster, we do everything which matters worse, or not at all.

I think AI is the ultimate emblem of this.  Some seem to feel that, as frenetic as our pace already is, it should be faster, that, lacking any sound reason for doing so, we should do more and more.

I ask: Why?  what is the goal?  We’ve solved the problem of hunger, in this country at least, at least for the vast bulk of our citizens.  And AI is not being created to feed the heroin addicts laying on the sidewalk down on Market Street.

It would seem we know more and more about less and less.  What we know doesn’t really matter, and what really matters we seemingly know nothing about.  This is only mild hyperbole, in far too many cases.

I talk with rich people sometimes, and you know, they pay a price for their wealth.  They earn it.  Don’t envy them, most of them in any event.

Turns out Nike calculated correctly: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/colin-kaepernick-nike-6-billion-man/

https://www.nbcnews.com/business/business-news/what-boycott-nike-sales-are-31-percent-kaepernick-campaign-n908251

I think it was PT Barnum, or perhaps H.L. Mencken, who said that “nobody ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American people”

Amazing.  We live in a fallen world, in my view.  Everyone staring at their smart phones, thinking nothing, believing nothing, and admiring people who do, even when what they believe is ridiculous, and what they think even worse.

I want to be clear that I am not stupid enough to think all Republicans are good, or that all Democrats are bad.  I know for certain there have to be lifelong Democrats, who remain Democrats, who are appalled by the radical direction the leadership of the party has been taking it.

And Dennis Hastert was a senior Republican.  I don’t forget.

What we are fighting for is not a specific content of policy, not a specific set of ideas, OTHER than that the most civilized, mature, and truly Liberal way of conducting business, of setting policy, of making decisions, is through principled and mutually respectful dialogue and negotiation.

Where the Democrats have good ideas, they should be heard.  And where Republicans have good ideas, they, in turn, should be heard.

But so much of our political landscape is militating against this very reasonable proposal.  We are to be reduced to a landscape of shouting and lies, a brawl in the mud, where the most aggressive, most devious side wins, the one that gets there “firstest with the mostest”.

All sane people should oppose this.  All sane people should oppose Dianne Feinstein sitting on this accusation for 2 months, then bringing it out at a time calculated to create the most trouble, and the most opportunity for political grandstanding in the face of the reasonable outrage and protestation she knew would be the result, long before brought out the letter she cited, but won’t let anyone see.

At issue is not just the accusation, but the process by means of which it was brought into the public domain, specifically the timing.  She can’t shout, now, that the committee won’t grant more time, when there was PLENTY of time, had she just done the right thing.

It is not entirely unjustified to point out that Republicans blocked the nomination of Merrick Garland for a year, and ultimately defeated it.  They played politics.

But if you study history, hyperpartisanship with regard to Supreme Court nominations, which have historically basically just asked “is this a good man or woman”, began with Robert Bork.  To “Bork” someone has entered our political lexicon.

And this process extends from the fact that increasing tribalization has forced us to ask not what is good for all of us, but what is good for one tribe or the other.

On the one side, Democrats want to continue the erosion of the Constitution, to continue reducing the protections of our civil liberties this document offers, and to continue to place a premium on selfishness, bias, and one-sided deals.

On the other side, because of this, merely asserting that you value the Constitution as written, that you value the freedoms of speech and religion, that you resent an omnipotent Federal government, that the government should fear the people, not vice versa, gets you labeled not just conservative but reactionary and evil.  Ponder this.

This whole Kavanaugh feels like a much more important fight than it should be.  For my part, I actually question Kavanaugh’s conservative bona fides.  I think he will be a more or less exact replacement of Kennedy, which means he will side with the Obama people from time to time.

But it feels to me like Republicans in Congress are fighting for the right of common sense, common decency, truth, and honest civic mindedness to continue to exist and prevail in our public domain, as against the attacks of lies, grandstanding, devious tricks, and ideological gerrymandering created by our media.

It’s maddening.

It’s hard to know the way forward.  But the way backwards, towards failure, is always as simple as giving up. It’s OK to be confused, unsure.  But it is not OK to quit making decisions, acting on them, learning from them, and trying to do better on an on-going basis.