I hate politics

I have only managed to vote a few times in my life. This is largely because I'm medically handicapped which has proven to be a substantial barrier to making my life work.

It's also because I lived a very private life for many years and I don't really understand politics, which is part of public life. I've never managed to keep up with political issues and I have a substantial interest in human psychology and social phenomena and I believe those things drive stuff other people see as "politics" in ways that most people don't talk about and which are often invisible and unprovable.

My mother is German and grew up in Germany during WW2 and its aftermath, so I've had some interest in WW2 and the events leading up to it. I'm fond of the poem First they came and its suggestion that you should speak up while you still can.

This blog is an attempt to do that, though it's probably already too late to remedy the mess we are.

As a student of psychology, I know that when men as a group feel threatened, they like to gatekeep and get very controlling about information and the behavior of others. I also see such behavior as ineffectual and an admission of ignorance and a failure to know how to fix the problem.

I'm not famous. My writing has no traction. I don't expect to make a difference.

But I've been writing for a long time about what I feel are solutions to the problems driving a trend towards a fascist, white supremacist America and none of that has traction either.

Contrary to what most Americans apparently get taught about WW2, Europeans apparently get taught what I eventually came to understand:

That Germany became an ugly fascist state because of the excess burden of war reparations they were expected to singlehandedly pay after the end of World War I because they were the only nation in the losing side that was still intact. 

The world is in crisis currently due to global warming and a destabilized global economy where there is too much emphasis on globalization in a way that undermines local and regional stability. I try to write about solutions to such things in various places but my work has no traction so it makes no difference.

My understanding is that the entire history of the entire world imposed war reparations on the losing side until the American Civil War broke that precedent.

General Lee feared surrendering at Appomattox because surrender typically had extremely harsh consequences. Ulysses S. Grant was a lifelong alcoholic and ne'er-do-well who imposed just three conditions, one of which was "You will let us come in and help you rebuild."

Everything I've read about history suggests that The American Civil War is extremely anomalous for being a singular event. In most countries, the end of the first civil war plants the bitter seeds of the next and becomes an inescapable cycle of repeated civil wars so long as that area stills see itself as one nation.

At the end of WW2, America went in to both Japan and Germany to help them rebuild. This is likely rooted in our own success in preventing repeat civil wars by rebuilding the devastated Deep South following the burning of Atlanta and the end of the Civil War, much of which occurred on southern lands.

So far, the world hasn't had a World War 3 though we seem to be currently living in dark times and perhaps that's coming thanks to whatever is happening politically which strikes me as rooted in incompetence and possibly corruption.

The antidote to a lot of "political" problems is education that fosters problem solving. As Einstein famously said, you can't fix a problem with the same mental models that creates it, so educating people is how you find your way out of a shit situation like the one we seem to currently be in.

That is assuming insecure, ignorant assholes in power LET you speak and educate people which they may not what with being assholes who may see the situation as an opportunity to grab power and have no real interest in fixing fuck all.

I didn't manage to vote in the recent presidential election. I'm not happy with the president elect including an immigrant billionaire and white supremacist in phone calls that are "official business" when he doesn't hold elected office.

I'm sure no one cares one bit what I think but this is 2024, so even a loser like me can post their thoughts to the world wide web for all the world to see, and never mind probably no one but me will read any of it. And also never mind that if the future of America is as dark as many people fear it is, it could mean I get locked up or killed for saying it though no one has read it except some version of the Gestapo.

I hope it doesn't come to that but I absolutely don't wish to live in a world where simply speaking my mind is a potential reason to execute me. I guess if people are that insecure and hateful and incompetent that murdering someone for wanting to find better solutions is their only response, I would probably rather die sooner than later.

A la "Give me liberty or give me death." I currently CAN still speak my mind, so I am.