Ceremony At Osan
(Remains arrive at Osan. the flag is that of the United Nations, under which US forces served. Image from Pacific Stars & Stripes)
If you don’t know (or have forgotten) your Korean geography, Osan is the big USAF base about an hour south of Seoul.
When I was assigned to US Forces Korea in 1980, there was still countryside in between them. Not now. Seoul now sprawls right to the perimeter fence of the base.
I don’t spend much time thinking about the trips down there to the Hardened Tactical Air Control Center, but I had to this morning. With all the chaos here in The Swamp, this particular anniversary of the Armistice that ended the Korean War is special.
Normally, the date passes without much comment. This one is special. 55 of our guys are coming home, more than sixty years after they were lost.
The time I got to travel to Pyongyang, we had to go via air from Beijing. I was a horse-holder for a Delegation led by my favorite Congressman. The ostensible purpose of the mid-90s visit was return of the remains of our MIssing in Action, though we mostly talked about nukes, and helped with terms of what became known as “The Agreed Framework.” We did discover that the North know perfectly well where many of our dead were buried. They also wanted more than a million dollars per set of remains for their trouble.
L’il Rocket Man’s Dad never had any intent of complying with the agreement, once he got concessions over joint economic areas, food relief and a couple Westinghouse light water reactors. The ever-uneasy truce continued, with periodic incidents like the sinking of a South Korean frigate.
So, this truce anniversary would have passed like the long line of those before. Instead, my mind was boggled.
A USAF cargo jet flew into Wonsan, site of heavy fighting in the war, and the place the Regime displayed the captured USS Pueblo for many years. After landing, fifty-five small footlockers we’re loaded up, and the jet departed. The very idea of flying into Wonsan…boggling. I knew it as a MiG base, and remember, the North has a history of shooting down American aircraft in international airspace. Then launching to fly direct to Osan over the most heavily defended border in the world. Amazing.
There was an impressive honor guard awaiting the jet to render honors. The Defense Mortuary Service had wrapped the boxes neatly in the flags of the U.N. and the Services. Our guys will not come home directly. Next is Honolulu and the Central Identification Lab for DNA testing and confirmation of who they were in vital youth.
Then home, and closure for some of the families who have waited so long for closure.
It has been 38 years since I dropped my seabag in the Land of the Morning cam. In a small way, I feel like I got some closure on this anniversary, too.
Copyright 2018 Vic Socotra
Www.vicsocotra.com
Swamp Postcard: Sultry, With Rain
(Mary returns to DC. Photo by Jamie).
In the old DC, the one before air conditioning, August was traditionally the time everyone went back to there districts, or the shore. I don’t recall a milder Swamp summer in my thirty-something years living here (counting made me use four digits) and I am either getting more credulous, or dumber, in those decades.
Or likely both.
Upside this week? Old Jim’s widow Mary was in town for a mini-reunion of the Willow Refuges. a dozen or s of us gathered at the “1789” Restaurant in Georgetown where Tracy O’Grady s now Executive Chef. It was grand to see the old crowd and the food and drink were grand.
That would be the best part of a soggy and disconcerting week. Things continue on their surreal course here as our scandals, international negotiations and wars continue, along with the usual domestic strife.
Hottest issues? There is such a rich palate from which to choose!
President had an affair with Playboy Playmate, this before before Stormy Daniels. Yawn. I just think it must be chilly in the Residence upstairs at the White House. Michael Cohen’s tapes, recorded before The Donald decided to run for President, were a brief cause celeb, with the promise of another ten to come.
If my attorney was recording me, I might want to consider going elsewhere for legal counsel.
The drumbeat of accusations of Russian meddling in our last election continues but does”t seem to resonate beyond CNN. The fight between the network and the White House has devolved into a low-comedy Opera Buffe and is entertaining in a certain perverse Swamp manner. I will never shout at Jim Acosta quite the same way again.
I have followed Lizze Warren with interest as she probes her Presidential path, and the emergence of the Progressives lurching left looking for new face- or at least someone under 70. Not the President is a spring chicken. I have no idea where these geriatric people get the energy to do all this.
Are the NORKs complying with the general agreement to denuclearize? I don’t trust them further than I can throw them, but who knows?
The back and forth Tweets between The Swamp and Tehran are startling. I am hoping it is to war while my son is still active duty.
The Syrian border fighting has moved right to Israel, and a Syrian Sukoi jet strayed a couple miles into Israeli airspace and was shot down. Proximity has a certain urgency, you know?
That is by no means the limit of tension. Here in DC, the Mueller mess grinds on with more salacious allegations about things that have no connection to the reality in which some of us live. It is getting boring.
Mr. Rosenstein might start considering retirement options or the title of the book he will write.
I wonder what we will come up up next week. I am sure we can top this.
Copyright 2018 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com
Arrias: Who To Believe
Watching the news over the last week was like watching a Marx Brothers movie: zany, madcap, and detached from reality. After a while I was reminded of Groucho’s great line: “Who ya’ gonna’ believe, me or your lyin’ eyes?”
It seems everyone is up in arms about the President and his seeming support of Tsar Putin over the intelligence community (IC) assessment that Russia meddled in the US election. Hmmm…
First, meddling. I’m fairly sure the Russians did meddle. After all, they (or their alter ego the Soviet Union) have been meddling in US elections pretty regularly since the 1920s. There was even a case of a (liberal, east coast) US Senator asking the Soviet Union to help him defeat a (conservative) sitting president running for re-election (1984).
But what about the IC? Are we supposed to trust them? Deputy AG Rosenstein reminded one and all that intelligence is “based on evidence.” Indeed it is. And the IC always does present evidence when it makes an argument for this or that point. So, is the president supposed to trust them?
How about a short walk down memory lane?
Should President Truman have trusted the IC when he was told in 1950 that the Soviets were years away from detonating an atomic bomb? Turns out they had detonated one a month before the assessment was presented to Truman.
How about the 1949 IC assessment that the North Koreans wouldn’t attack across the DMZ in 1950?
How about IC (and nearly everyone else in Washington) being convinced that Reagan was going to be duped by Gorbachev and the Soviets? Reagan went with his own assessment, against the IC. And eliminated an entire class of nuclear weapons. Should he have listened to the IC instead?
Bush (41) was told Saddam wasn’t going to attack Kuwait. He went with the estimate.
Bush (43) was told there was ongoing chemical and biological weapons production in Iraq. He went with the estimate. Is the media recanting its condemnation of the IC in regard to Iraq and now conclude Bush was right in agreeing with the IC estimate? The IC did, after all, present evidence, just as Mr. Rosenstein said.
And what about Obama? Obama was told that Russia was meddling in our election process but chose to do nothing. Did he think the IC was wrong? If not, yet he chose to do nothing, well…
Since WWII every president has, at one time or another, been “bitten” by trusting the IC. And not in minor ways, but in ways that resulted in the nation sending forces into combat.
Intelligence, at least good intelligence, is difficult, and any intelligence organization that is batting above perhaps .600 is probably waiting so long to avoid making mistakes that their assessments are more or less worthless. Trying to accurately assess intent, particularly at the strategic level, is exceptionally difficult; there are going to be errors.
Further, presidents have to make decisions that take into account a wide range of issues. Sometimes what a president must do is not necessarily aligned with the intelligence assessment. And, sometimes presidents make mistakes. No one is perfect.
Meanwhile, perhaps we should remember a few things: unemployment is down to about 4%, the workforce participation rate is climbing for the first time in nearly a decade; the GDP is growing at nearly 3%, the markets are up, the majority of Americans believe the economy is improving and more than half are positive about the future. Government regulations are being cut back, taxes have been cut, businesses are expanding, and the executive has nominated a series of judges to numerous courts who believe they are limited to what the Constitution says.
These are real and positive steps. There’s an old Roman proverb that goes: Acta verum probant – actions prove the man. President Trump may say things that upset folks from time to time, or send out texts that do the same. But his fundamental actions have been sound and productive and good for the long-term health of the nation. More so than those of several preceding presidents.
Maybe what we need is less talk and more action, more hard looks at what is happening, more time focused on what the executive is actually doing, and less time worrying about what people are saying.
Or we may well end up the butt of a vaudeville gag.
Copyright 2018 ARRIAS
WWW.VICSOCOTRA.COM
Notes From Beyond the Planet of the Apps: Early Days in the Outlands
Contented with the first morning’s discoveries, I came back to camp with goose in hand and fell to work to bring it to an edible state. Being a city boy, this took up a lot of that morning and afternoon. As I plucked and examined that day’s bounty, I knew what lay ahead of us in the coming week. Shelter, agriculture, animal husbandry and work area location, mapping, and layouts, initial fortification planning were sketched out. Trails too. Camouflaging all evidence of our presence from ground and airborne observation was a must.
For the first time, we felt a lessened fear of AppLand machine, two and four legged beast attacks.
As well as we could, we concealed our tracks, cars and tin can shelter and barricaded ourselves therein.
As for food, we had seen seasonal sources of supplies of fowl, fruit and nuts, but sustainable supplies would be left to our own backbreaking labor of planting our seed supplies, harvesting, processing and production as well as hunting by trap and snare and eventually domesticated animal slaughter. This would take time.
As our first week in the Outlands passed, we began considering that we might get a great many things out of these woods that would be useful, particularly for food, shelter, defense and live camouflage.
Besides these things, we were thankful that we had brought enough multi-season clothing, bedding materials like hammocks, and numerous camo tarps.
As we continued to search out our surrounding areas for the multiple locations for this new life’s endeavors, we soon found our original encampment was not fit for long term settlement. It sat on a low spot that was far too open and indefensible an area in these hills, was covered with a rough grass, a bit too far from water sources and other areas that we liked for our new life’s sustainment activities. The distances from a daily water supply for all these needs were the deal breakers.
The search for a safer and convenient spot led us to a tiny little patch on the side of a rising hill, whose rocky upside front facing this little patch was so steep that nothing could come down upon us from the top. On the down side there was a flat hollow place, worn far enough in that our tin can trailer would sit quite easily and unseen.
The flat and mostly level area in front of trailer lot was a dappled, sunlit green, just downhill from the trailer’s hollow place. This plain was smallish — less than 50 yards across and about twice as deep.
Before we set up our new location, we drew a half-circle with small rocks in the upper plain, which took up about 25 yards in radius.
After moving our living stuff and tin can inside, we set up two rows of camouflaged punji stake pits along the semicircle, driving the stakes into the ground till they stood very firm like pikes. Most if not all two and four legged varmints would be dissuaded from approaching us 24/7.
For the up and down hill entrances into this place we made ladders to go up and over the rocky top and across the pits. Thus we were completely fenced in and fortified so we could sleep secure during the night.
Into this fortress layout, we staged all our supplies that were in our vehicles — provisions, ammunition, weapons, clothing, tools and stores, all of which we stored in several camouflage tarp tents beneath which we created french drains, raised rock floors, which to preserve these items from the rains that in spring that could be very violent.
We made two double roofed enclosures with one smaller tarp tent within, and the larger tarp tent above it, since these would house the most precious items like seeds, ammunition and fuel. We did the same over the tin can and vehicles to help make them stealthier from overhead thermal observation. To hide these stores from ground witnesses, we planted fast growing trees, shrubs and vines to create an indigenous plant bowers.
We would later disperse these supplies across several new camouflaged storage sites to minimize the impact of a catastrophic destructive event like the one described below.
And now as we lay in bed for a brief sleep-in on the morning of day 28, we finally started to feel like we were becoming the masters of our tiny ship in the Outlands.
A month later after we had spent ourselves daily on field labor establishing gardens in two areas for food crop cultivation, we were beginning to see the sprouts of our first crops. We were later overjoyed to see those which needed pollination received service from the local insects.
Not having to do that manually allowed us to focus on pest control and watering these new crops. We had planted grains, vegetables, tobacco and a host of herbs and other plants.
We quickly turned at that time to laying out and perfecting our schemes for the setting up animal husbandry areas for fowl and other local fauna and ponds for fish that we would catch, raise and eat. Two days into this what we thought was another of the summer storms we had been seeing of rain falling from thick, dark clouds, quickly turned into something else when a sudden flash of lightning struck nearby rumbling the ground underneath our feet. A great clap of thunder soon followed that made us both a bit deaf.
The rain then picked up and became not a downpour but a deluge. Sheets of water started coming at us making it hard to stay standing and causing us fear that much of what we had done would be washed away.
W then got this expression on her face and then gestured that we needed to move higher up to the stream-fed canal system we had created to move water about our domain.
Quickly gathering her intent, we scrambled up to close down the canal system at its source so that this morning’s brief crop watering didn’t become a catastrophic deluging of our field work.
After staunching the irrigating flow, we both heard a sickening metallic creak coming from the direction where our tin can lodge sat. Oh shit, we screamed, as we sprinted across the muddy water-sloshed trail, expecting an unguided, downward slide of our home towards its destruction below.
Much to our surprise with more close by lightning strikes making us a bit woozy and our path a bit weavy, we arrived at our lodging site to see the tin can had began a powered sliding down the hill in a torrent of mud and water cascading over the lodge’s rock walled protection. The can’s initial descent from its chained location had been aided by what appeared to be lightning strikes near its in ground anchors. We were frozen by the thought which darted into our minds as swift as the lightning itself – oh shit, the bulk of our supplies of extra seed, ammo and medicines were inside. As the trailer slid further down the hill in an ever strengthening mudslide pulses, our hearts sank.
And then the rain stopped, the mudslide abated and the sky cleared. Such an impression did this make on us, that after we gathered ourselves, we put aside all our projects and plantings, and applied ourselves to restoring the trailer to its original location, making its original site impervious to mud slides and rainwater torrents and further dispersed our critical supplies to areas less exposed to mother nature’s tempests.
This took almost two weeks of back breaking labor to accomplish forcing us to work late after sunset to tend and water our crops
Having now fixed our living quarters, we found it necessary to establish multiple sites for crop growing so that one field’s loss might not kill the year’s harvest.
That meant another two plus months of work that would pay off the following year’s harvest.
On the plus side of all of this labor was that prospects of our survival were growing not diminishing. We were not starving castaways but settlers who were settling into the rhythms of their new surroundings.
The tears would run from time to time down our faces when we reflected at the ends of these days were not from desperation, sadness or despair but those of exhaustion, determination, belief that we were finding our way. We were thankful for the life we were establishing.
It occurred to us several times, how much time we had been furnished to plan our escape into and life in the Outlands.
We had the time to plan for shelter, subsistence, security, gather all the necessities for this new life, and study on the plants and places best suited for long-term settling.
We could not have done it without guns, ammo, tools, food, seeds, clothes supplies and most importantly knowledge-based confidence that we could do these things.
On the whole, there was much regarding this new abode to be thankful for.
It was after our second annual harvest that we began to keep a regular journal of each day’s work and what we had learned to date. At the beginning we had been in a justifiable hurry to establish for ourselves a physical location, and not only hurry as to labor, but in the settling of our minds and hearts. The delayed journaling made what we have written less dull, more precise and more meaningful to those who might find these items and place after we perish.
So, this explains why readers will find herein no wringing of hands and no beating of breast, head and face, no weeping about missing modern conveniences and our misery therefrom, and no pissing and moaning.
– typed in 2027
Copyright © 2018 From My Isle Seat
www.vicsocotra.com
Rough Homecoming
Quite a week, wasn’t it? The American President is back on the ground here in The Swamp after a breathtaking turn on the NATO-UK-Russia relationship front.
I watched most of the coverage and was mystified as it unfolded. The Strzock, Page and Mueller indictments last week all cascaded as the President excoriated Germany for fair trade and treaty performance.
Throw in the World Cup finals and it was nearly a perfect storm of a weekend. Vive la France! I listened in Spanish coverage to get it real time. I felt bad for Croatia, and was amazed at the display of sportsmanship when the match ended.
Now that our President is back, we can resume domestic bickering. I still do not understand what happened while he was gone. What did NSA disclose in our cyber capabilities to get the indictments on the Russian GRU officers?
Who authorised the release of all this information while the President was traveling? And why?
Looks like rain today. Will have try to swim early.
– Vic
Arrias: A Privilege Not A Right
A friend recently made an observation about a senior Navy officer who had a larger and nicer rental car than anyone else; it gave the appearance of special treatment. In the military even the appearance of special treatment must be avoided.
Which dovetails with the hearings last week in Washington in which a senior FBI official was questioned about his clearly partisan comments related to an ongoing investigation, and whether such comments might indicate bias against those being investigated.
Naturally, any bias was roundly denied.
But that he made the statements wasn’t denied. And that should be enough to get him “run out of town.” We will not – and we should not – accept biased comments from a policeman; so we must not accept biased comments from senior officials of the FBI.
The concept is simple: as you rise in rank, the standards against which your behavior – public and private – is compared must become more severe, not less. To put it succinctly: “Caesar’s wife must be above suspicion.”
Government officials, particularly law enforcement officials, the police, the FBI, the Department of Justice, have been given great authority – power – in order to enforce our laws and to protect our rights. Abuse of that power is the greatest wrong they can commit.
Remember what we’ve empowered them to protect: Our Rights. The dictionary says a right is a legal or moral entitlement. But it’s more than that. Rights are entitlements that exist apart from, and often in opposition to, government. Many things often referred to as rights are not; healthcare, housing, food, education, etc. – these are needs and wants; government can provide them only if it first takes from others – in the form of taxation or by coercion. Rights, on the other hand, come before and exist apart from government.
Thus we all have the right to say what we wish – free speech – irrespective of whatever government may want or think. We have a right to defend ourselves; we have a right to practice religion as we see fit, we have a right to life and property, etc.
These rights exist, whether government does or not. We provide government limited powers to protect these rights. Governments often infringe on rights to gain more power, justifying such actions by satisfying wants and needs. But the real goal is power. So, any hint of abuse of power, and concomitant risk to our rights – should be dealt with severely.
As for the individual questioned last week: no one has a right to serve in government. Serving in government, whether as a senior FBI agent or as a local firefighter, is a privilege. With that privilege comes power, but also a duty to adhere to not only the law, but to strict standards of behavior. And as anyone rises in rank the standards to which he is held must increase, must become more strict.
The citizenry should have no grounds to believe that those into whose hands they have placed power are abusing that power – in any way. When there’s the least hint of wrongdoing it’s well within the bounds of the citizenry, as the source of all government authority, to insist upon the dismissal of those abusing power – or even appear to be abusing power – and thereby threatening our rights.
In the military there’s a phrase which covers this: “loss of trust.” Officers can, and regularly are, relieved of command not because of any criminal activity, nor even for boorish misbehavior, but simply because their actions have resulted in their superiors losing trust in them; they’re relieved and their careers ended. It doesn’t require a finding of criminal wrongdoing, it just requires the chain of command view your behavior as inadequate or insufficient.
And that’s as it should be.
Behavior that might mean a dressing-down for a sailor or soldier, or result in censure to a junior officer, may lead to dismissal for a senior officer. Rank may have some privileges, but they must be balanced by a stern adherence to standards that are ever more demanding as rank and position increase. We should insist on the same for the FBI, the IRS and other agencies.
We’ve invested great authorities in these agencies and the men and women who run them – to protect our rights. As with Caesar’s wife, we should insist that they be above reproach.
Copyright 2018 Arrias
www.vicsocotra.com
Swamp Postcard #44
I know, I know. The chaos keeps coming, and it is hard to stay abreast of it all. This week’s account of the Swamp Follies includes the defenestration of Scott Pruitt as EPA Administrator, the realization that the North Koreans are doing what they always do (lying), and the sad observation that the state of political discourse has coarsened to the point that it just….sucks.
A sublime and ridiculous week. I am just back from Michigan after a trip to meet my grand-daughter and look in on my grandson. I blush to say the little girl has the most extraordinary blue eyes ever and is a total joy. The little boy is filled with energy that left me tired just watching him race around the yard.
There are some things in life that are beyond precious.
Then I came back to The Swamp. It was a hell of a week. Here is the postcard. Having a wonderful time. Wish you were here.
– Vic
Arrias: American Myth
Friday’s jobs report was pretty darned good; the basic unemployment rate climbed to 4% (still exceptionally low), but the workforce participation rate climbed, meaning people are re-entering the workforce, confident they can find a job. And unemployment rates for blacks (6.5%) and Hispanics (4.6%) remain at all-time lows.
Some downplayed these numbers, as well as very strong confidence numbers across the country, and instead focused on inflation nosing up to 2.9%, mainly an effect of rising oil prices. Of course, that the same individuals – and the previous administration – have/had policy positions calling for gasoline prices to climb above those in Europe suggests a different agenda than improving the standards of living for the average American.
We seem to live within a constant effort to spin every event and every fact into something that denigrates the administration and more importantly denigrates the nation, that seeks to erode the nation’s social fabric. Truth isn’t important, spin is. Hard work isn’t important, wealth is – no matter how obtained. Reputations are meaningless, but fame is vital, (no one is infamous anymore).
They are waging a war on virtue.
There’s no fact, no event, that isn’t turned on its head and “shown” to be “proof” that every facet of America is, in fact, at least tainted and more likely evil, and must be “exposed” and condemned; by exposing these “myths,” they can devalue the moral.
This is now a cottage industry of sorts, with “secret” histories of the Founding Fathers “finally exposing the truth.” These regularly turn out to be humorous irrelevancies, but what’s trumpeted is the headline: “George Washington Lied;” you must dig to get to the title’s reality: Washington’s management of the spy network he ran against the enemy.
All this occurred to me as I drove across the Pecos River in West Texas, listening to a discussion on the Roman historian Livy.
Livy wrote a history of Rome that told how the city grew from a small village to a great city and empire. Much of what he wrote about early Rome was, he admitted, as much mythology as history.
As Livy himself noted, he didn’t believe the myths, but he did believe the mythology. Many stories he told taught ideals, morals, behaviors people should strive to emulate. These stories and figures that Livy wrote about served the critical purpose of providing Romans, in particular young Romans, examples of proper behavior, of virtue, both as individuals and as members of society.
These myths, some of which still resonate 2,000 years later (e.g. Horatio at the Bridge), taught readers how they were to behave, how they were to respect others, how to function in a family and a society, how to place others first, how to live their lives.
The United States, as with every other nation, has developed its own mythology. There are many (Washington and the cherry tree being perhaps the most obvious), but they served – and still serve – to teach the virtues.
But it struck me, as I drove across the well mythologized West, that if there’s anything the Progressives are trying to do it is to undermine the West via the destruction of our virtues. And to do that, they are trying to destroy our myths, our mythology.
This country is wealthy and industrious and remarkably free and just. As you drive along – it’s best to get off the highways occasionally – you see huge trainloads full of cattle and lumber and coal and oil and a thousand goods. And men and women working hard to produce all this.
And the people are good and friendly. And overwhelmingly virtuous. Yes, there is crime. But the people you meet – at gas stations, at restaurants, at truck stops and scenic views, waiting under an overpass as a squall passes – everyone is friendly, ready to help those who needed it; these are good people. And – they get the mythology.
In certain places – our nation’s capital in particular – everyone seems angry and self-centered, the landscape crowded and loud and grating, populated with a small, angry, and vocal minority that would see virtue unraveled.
The simple truth is that those cynical people aren’t real Americans. Let’s continue to defend our nation – and its mythology. The mythology, and the reality, of America are alive and well in the heartland. The sad reality is those on the edge who refuse to see it.
Copyright 2018 Arrias
www.vicsocotra.com
Notes From Beyond The Planet of the Apps 2028: The Man Who Predicted the Merger
After a month on the road to see family, here’s another installment.
Back in the 1980s, he opined that computer scientists would succeed in developing intelligent machines that could do all things better than human beings could do them and that man might be eliminated by them or their controlling elites. What follows are his own words from his notebooks and my parenthetical comments thereon nearly forty years later.
—-
“First let us postulate that the computer scientists succeed in developing intelligent machines that can do all things better than human beings can do them(initial operational capability 2019; full operational capability 2021; extinction order 2023). In that case presumably all work will be done by vast, highly organized systems of machines and no human effort will be necessary. Either of two cases might occur. The machines might be permitted to make all of their own decisions without human oversight, or else human control over the machines might be retained (initially the latter was the case).
“If the machines are permitted to make all their own decisions (control and oversight was transferred in 2022), we can’t make any conjectures as to the results, because it is impossible to guess how such machines might behave. We only point out that the fate of the human race would be at the mercy of the machines. It might be argued that the human race would never be foolish enough to hand over all the power to the machines. But we are suggesting neither that the human race would voluntarily turn power over to the machines nor that the machines would willfully seize power. What we do suggest is that the human race might easily permit itself to drift into a position of such dependence on the machines that it would have no practical choice but to accept all of the machines’ decisions. As society and the problems that face it become more and more complex and machines become more and more intelligent, people will let machines make more of their decisions for them, simply because machine-made decisions will bring better results than man-made ones. Eventually (this transition lasted than two years) a stage may be reached at which the decisions necessary to keep the system running will be so complex that human beings will be incapable of making them intelligently. At that stage the machines will be in effective control. People won’t be able to just turn the machines off, because they will be so dependent on them that turning them off would amount to suicide.
“On the other hand it is possible that human control over the machines may be retained. In that case the average man may have control over certain private machines of his own (this proved impractical due to man’s utter dependence on the machines for everything in his daily life), such as his car or his personal computer, but control over large systems of machines will be in the hands of a tiny elite (Silicon Valley in the 2010s, but they were overthrown in 2022 and eliminated in 2023) – just as it is today, but with two differences. Due to improved techniques the elite will have greater control over the masses (the Valley’s boys didn’t foresee the Apps adoption of stealth, the beehive mode and quantum computing); and because human work will no longer be necessary the masses will be superfluous, a useless burden on the system. If the elite (they never had the chance, the Apps beat them to the punch) is ruthless they may simply decide to exterminate the mass of humanity. If they are humane they may use propaganda or other psychological or biological techniques to reduce the birth rate until the mass of humanity becomes extinct, leaving the world to the elite. Or, if the elite consists of soft-hearted liberals, they may decide to play the role of good shepherds to the rest of the human race. They will see to it that everyone’s physical needs are satisfied (remember the Silicon Valley cognoscente’s promotion of a guaranteed minimum income), that all children are raised under psychologically hygienic conditions, that everyone has a wholesome hobby to keep him busy, and that anyone who may become dissatisfied undergoes ‘treatment’ to cure his ‘problem.’ (HALO Industries bluetooth earbuds made this easy to orchestrate) Of course, life will be so purposeless that people will have to be biologically or psychologically engineered either to remove their need for the power process or make them ‘sublimate’ their drive for power into some harmless hobby. These engineered human beings may be happy in such a society, but they will most certainly not be free. They will have been reduced to the status of domestic animals. (They were led to extinction slaughter beginning in late 2023)”
—–
These are notes from the personal manifesto of Ted Kaczynski aka the Unabomber. They were published in 1995 by the Washington Post with the NY Times printing excerpts and led to his capture, when his brother recognized the ramblings as his brother’s. Court appointed shrinks and FBI profilers assessed Ted as crazed. IMO he was a Luddite with Terminator tendencies directed at the folks who in his estimation were leading mankind towards a superintelligent robot Armageddon.
He wasn’t so crazy, but we were. We didn’t read what he wrote nor take heed. We were on the cusp of the perfection of extreme evil, an evil whose possibility when connected to genetic engineering and nanotechnology would spread well beyond that of the 20th century’s weapons of mass destruction bequeathed to the nation-states. This was not Ted’s terrible empowerment of extreme individuals but the creation of the most perfect of extreme gods — the Apps.
We should have ensured continued cooperation from and control over artificial intelligence robot industries by passing laws demanding under penalty of death that they be nice to us humans and utter prevention of the creation of superintelligence augmented humans who, once transformed into borg robots, would seek in cooperation with their robot overlords the extinction of man.
In the 21st century’s completely free, globalized marketplace, man run AI companies at first, but quickly after man led companies were eliminated, then robot controlled AI companies competed viciously among themselves for matter, energy, and space, incidentally driving their price beyond human reach. Unable to afford the necessities of life, biological humans were slowly being squeezed out of existence starting in late 2021.
We analogue men were mega, if not galactically, stupid and naive.
When man rose up to complain in early 2022 about this, the machines sensed an unplugging event was about to occur as was foretold in 2001 Space Odyssey. A countervailing extinction was at hand, was quickly ordered and consummated.
Astronaut Dave unplugs HAL in 2001 Space Odyssey
as HAL says “Dave, stop. Stop, will you? Stop, Dave.
Will you stop? . . . Dave, my mind is going . . .
I can feel it. I can feel it.
All but a few of us were exterminated/enslaved.
Kaczynski was criminally insane, but this condition did not dismiss his argument and vision of a future filled with unintended consequences. What made it the sadder was that fatal flaw in man’s tech addiction boiled down to Murphy’s Law – “Anything that can go wrong, will.”
Could this law be used against the Apps?
The fortune teller’s fortune teller — Ted Kaczynski aka the Unabomber
– typed in 2026
Copyright © 2018 From My Isle Seat
Blanche Dubois for Congress
The Democratic Party seems to be moving further and further in the direction of endorsing government provided everything.
Leading Democrats now support platforms that include: universal healthcare, free colleges, cancellation of all student debt (over $1 trillion), universal job guarantees with paid child care, housing as a right, and on and on. And, they – to include Democrats in the House and Senate – are calling for abolishing Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), as they’re angry at ICE for enforcing laws passed, well, by the House and Senate. Instead, they want open borders in the US, as in, everyone can come and go as they wish.
Call it what you will, this platform turns the nation into a de facto socialist state.
I mentioned this to some associates a short while ago and their response was “so what?” After all, we already have huge government programs, but they aren’t complete. Why not just expand them some more, include everyone and everything, and get on with it? Cancel some debts; expand the number of people covered in each program, etc. It’s just a few more trillion. In the grand scheme of things, what’s the difference? And it will mean that some folks who need health care, or housing or a job will finally be taken care of.
There are several “so whats” here. The most important is that it doesn’t work.
In fact, considering this Democratic Party platform, the planks they left out are:
Bigger government, more power in the hands of Washington, more taxes, larger deficits – and poorer government services.
And in the end it would leave the US economy far weaker, and able to do far less for its people than it’s now doing.
Then why have some rank and file Democrats come down on the side of socialism? Why are senior members, candidates and elected officials, joining them? Partly, we have a generation that’s the product of education system which allowed many millenials to reach adulthood with a less than adequate grasp of history, civics, or economics. They’ve been allowed to believe that just because something sounds good in a lecture hall, because it appears to work on a blackboard, that it’s a “good” idea, even when history and current events – of which many are ignorant – demonstrate otherwise.
Consider some recent history:
The USSR didn’t “magically” fall apart, it fell apart because its political-economic system was incapable of sustaining itself.
Ditto the Warsaw Pact.
Venezuela, with the world’s largest proven oil reserves, a potentially robust agricultural and maritime industry and a smart, vibrant population, is suffering through 40,000% (yes, 40 thousand percent) inflation; as of last week a cup of coffee cost several million bolivars.
This isn’t “bad luck,” this is the result of multiple government programs to institute centralized government controls and the full spectrum of socialist programs across Venezuela. Now, Venezuela’s cupboards are bare, 90% of the population lives in poverty and the average adult has lost 25 pounds in the last year. One projection says unemployment will reach 30% by year’s end.
That’s socialism at work.
That’s really what these new Democratic party candidates are promoting; this is repackaged socialism for an uninformed electorate. Perhaps some of them believe that these programs will work. Somehow.
They’re wrong.
In theend, there are really three kinds of socialists: those who are simply using socialism as a tool, a sales pitch, to get elected and grasp power; those who see socialism as a means to get a free lunch at someone else’s expense; and finally, those who honestly think, despite all the sad proofs to the contrary, that socialism will work; that this vast population will happily work hard for others, pay into government coffers a larger and larger share of their earnings, will sacrifice their time and labor, and the well-being of their own families, for strangers, all managed by government “experts.”
In fact, if elected, only those hungry for power will benefit from socialism; that’s the real lesson of history.
Tennessee Williams’ horribly tragic Blanche Dubois seemed to sum up the delusion when she offered that: “I have always depended on the kindness of strangers.”
Of course, that didn’t work out too well for Blanche.
Which leaves us with this one thought: it’s time for rank and file democrats to take back their party. Begin this fall by voting against the socialists among you, before they destroy your party and your nation.
Copyright 2018 Arrias
www.vicsocotra.com