The Bigger Race

You may have noticed a decline in the frequency of mariner’s posts. The truth is, his complaints, insights and speculations have become perpetually negative, repetitive and never have an opportunity to report progress.

Watching today’s borderless, endless dysfunction has way too many horses in the race, simultaneously using way too many tracks and is confusing because not all entrants are horses. So mariner has decided to keep track of a three-horse card on one track.

HORSE #1

Will the United States survive as one unified and principled nation? The nation stands at the same precipice it has in the past when it formed a constitution with multiple personality syndrome, as it fought over slavery, and as the nation drifts apart again over deep cultural differences between red and blue. The trophy is constitutional democracy.

HORSE #2

Will the United States be a strong world leader in economics and global communication such as to be one of the very few nations that will dominate the political and economic reality of a one-market world? The present state of human political life ignorantly is spinning into a near future of global starvation, greatly reduced farming capacity and collapsing natural resources. The trophy is international stability; how many nations will cease to exist or merge because of a permanently collapsed economy?

HORSE #3

Current odds make this horse the favorite: global warming AKA climate change. Will the planet, tired of the fickle and self-promoting behavior of Homo sapiens, cause so much damage at the level of continent behavior, weather, intense storms, tsunamis and flooding that Horses #1 and #2 will not be able to continue in their present political/economic relationships? The trophy is humanism.

Ancient Mariner

 

Dumb TV

Mariner obtained a smart TV a couple of years ago. He and his wife should have spent that money on a TV tower so they could get local broadcasting. The streaming TV world is a lot like the metaverse; the past, present and future all are presented simultaneously – mostly the past and mostly over and over again. News broadcasts are verboten – even when rebroadcast over and over again. (When is new news not new anymore?)

Mariner and his wife are not movie watchers and the sitcoms have become irrelevant. There isn’t much except a few quite good documentaries and British detective mysteries. Now that we’ve worked out the plotline, the mysteries seem to be too long.

It has been one of very few recent research projects mariner has pursued, that is, the plotline of British mysteries. American detective mysteries have a tendency to introduce the guilty character as the third new character in the episode, often disguised as someone who will play a minor, innocent role later on. American mysteries frequently involve a time-sensitive chase scene at the end.

British mysteries, however, are much more convoluted. There are three components to a British mystery: Plot A, Plot B and an independent conclusion to the mystery.

The main purpose of Plot A is to discover the mystery. Do not look for clues – there aren’t any. Plot A introduces a general environment which typically has two politically divided factions. This bifurcation is unrelated to the mystery.

Plot B also has nothing to do with the mystery. Plot B is used as a time-flexible subplot to fill an hour or two. In this regard, Plot B often introduces secret romantic or business liaisons which are juxtaposed to Plot A’s bifurcation. [Aren’t big words neat?] The viewer knows they are in Plot B when irrelevant personal relationships pop up or a specified member of the permanent cast becomes the center of attention. Often, Plot B will add additional murders or misconduct to remind the viewer that an unsolved mystery is afoot.

The independent conclusion begins by adding a new dimension to one of the characters that has been hanging around since Plot A. Suddenly the viewer is presented with a list of unknown motives. This doesn’t take long, perhaps ten to fifteen minutes. The mystery is solved. Cut to commercial.

Ancient Mariner

Can you absorb each feeling?

Sail on, silver girl, sail on by.
All your dreams are on their way, see how they shine. . .

Feels like home to me.
Feels like home to me.
Feels like I’m all the way back where I belong.

A charge to keep I have. A God to glorify . . .

I see trees of green, red roses, too.
I see them bloom for me and you.
And I think to myself, what a wonderful world.

I love him. I love him. And everywhere I’ll follow.
I will follow him wherever he may be,
There isn’t an ocean so deep, a mountain so high it can keep me away.

A crash of drums, a flash of light
My golden coat flew out of sight
The colors faded into darkness
I was left alone.

May I return to the beginning
The light is dimming and the dream is too
The world and I, we are still waiting
Still hesitating
Any dream will do.

Compliments of mariner’s pop music GOAT.

Ancient Mariner

Same ol’

Mariner brushed away the pile of mail, a few hand tools, newspapers, a magazine or two, and sure enough, the old laptop was still there. Needless to say, mariner hasn’t been at the keyboard since June 1. Today, June 11, he slowly works his way back into his daily routines after a ten-day bout with Influenza A.

He will not make his readers listen to a long lamentation of the experience. Suffice it to say, mariner really wasn’t around for a while.  His wife did an angelic job of bringing him through the experience.

Mariner turned to the outside world today to catch up on things; seems like the same deck, just another dealing of the cards. His candidate did not win the primary but made a fine showing especially in the Southeast portion of the state. Mariner continues to worry as every indicator in the election is aimed at nationalizing the people’s vote.

Mariner may be a bit of a dreamer and philosopher but he knows one thing for sure: democracy is a one-person-one vote philosophy. Yet the pressure brought by organizers is to make one citizen’s Presidential vote a collaboration of many votes cast as one. This is too deep; mariner is going to rest for a while.

Ancient Mariner

Of cowboys and indians

The new solution for defeating the gun lobby is floating around newsrooms: children do not go back to school until new gun legislation is passed. It is a bad idea because the growth of an entire generation of young Americans already has been distorted by the pandemic lockout; adding yet another year of disrupted schooling can further burden the growth of these children. It is a good idea because it is a positive gesture ‘by the people’ who should have been managing their representatives more closely all along.

In case the reader feels there is not enough news to think about, American Native Indians are up against White Man’s courts. Politico reports:

“The Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA) is slated to come under the court’s microscope this fall via Brackeen v. Haaland, and the stakes are sky high. If ICWA is overturned, a slew of laws that rest on a centuries-long precedent of tribal sovereignty could be in jeopardy, say the law’s supporters. These policies relate to everything from housing and health care to education and employment.”

The core legislative impact is that the ICWA was passed by Congress in 1979 to bring an end to the old agreement, Indian Adoption Project, a federal drive to assimilate American Indians into white culture. As many as 35 percent of Native children were removed from their families. Eighty-five percent of those children were placed in non-Indian homes. It was also under the Indian Adoption Project that thousands of Indian children were rounded up by the Federal government and put in highly prejudiced boarding schools where many children were abused and died.

If the court overturns ICWA, the Native American has no tailored protection and will lose Indian sovereignty.

Judges need term limits as much as legislators do.

As the Iowa primary approaches, mariner has abided by his own rules for voting. His Senate candidate is under 55, not an ideologue, not a favorite of national PACs, speaks generically for the wellbeing of Iowans, has state and local experience in office, has a positive personality and is a woman. If she wins the primary, she will oppose Chuck Grassley who is 88 years old, a defender of the status quo, who represents a national government driven by party first instead of citizens first and is incapable of understanding the issues that confront Millennials and Zees.

Ancient Mariner