How many put off by shooting in the title? I wonder.

Having lived on the elite N. Shore and (albeit briefly) the Ports I s’pect there are those abhorrent of shooting as they are after school hunter safety classes. Rangers likely not taking offense and already having taken the risk, why worry further?

But for what’s worth, consider a divide unified around going bang.  

One target downrange is impeachment. I hate it. After the two recent miseries I want no more. An’ anyways, doesn’t voting do similar? Impeaching seems too much a nasty revenge game. Go there if suits you. I’ll stay as removed as I’m able.  

While taking note of some differences in portions of The Reader coverage area, I need note the Ports have surged ahead in medical building. I’d reference the Insula Felicle’s, but that’s a thing our most excellent system has deprived most from knowing of Petronius or the Satyricon (early in gender recognition along with Sarah, Mary Huckleberry and Indie Anna Jones). Roman comps won’t work, so I’ll compare with the noble pyramids.

A long-time champ of pyramids for MN I applaud while admitting the upward-rising variety of medical monument is too hollowed out for my tastes and should include least one inspiring mortuary area in brightly painted Book of the Dead figures. Sadly, my copy disappeared. From the look of things it was not absconded by any architect building Port World medical pyramids.  

Here’s a maybe dense thought. If we rely on police for law enforcement it’s already too late. As oft-maligned Twain observed, I para quip, true honesty takes place without witnesses. You read correctly. Police come into play when morality conscience or ethics, etc. has failed. Dishonesty results in law (order) needing enforcement. Officers are needed when law-order are violated. The often reviled police state is more correctly a state enforcing politics. No officer comes to the door because (as easy examples) you gave correct change or didn’t take another’s property. Can’t fix the world or change society, but we might be able to make changes to ourselves.  

Remember when lads in Boy Scouts were weekly reminded to be Trustworthy, Loyal, Helpful, Friendly, Courteous, Kind, Obedient, Cheerful, Thrifty, Brave, Clean, Reverent? The reminder, called the Scout Law, set a goal to do better. Laws weakened or set aside a contemporary lad could be happier with twelve easier expectations. Shiftless, Noncommittal, Indifferent, Aloof, Uncaring, Selective, Snarky, Sarcastic, Spendthrift, Cautious, Casual, Faithless.

Which 12 reminders would you support? Which 12 make collective life a little nicer or nastier? And do not forget Do A Good Turn Daily gone onto the trash heap making way for better and bolder to inspire and aid.  

Gosh, gee, golly and whoopee, a program such as student loan forgiveness sounds good, doesn’t it? Who doesn’t have at least a dibble of sympathy for students struggling with debt they took on, as did anyone with a car loan or home mortgage. See where I’m angling with this? And yes, that’s a part of it, but I’d say look beyond the title and supposed beneficiaries. Sure, this debtor student and that will get off the hook, but who, I ask you consider, ends up with the money in hand? Not the student, is it? It’s the lender. We could as easily, accurately call this a Lender Relief Act because they get guaranteed payment from Uncle. Because it’s a clear ticket (aka fascist economics blending government and business) the lenders will do more sure-thing loans to more who can’t afford it but know rescue is one the horizon. Lenders are clear big winners, as are the Institutions of Higher Indebtedness. College kid gets ten thousand. Bank and College get ten billion. I knew an old net fisherman who’d know who sits smiling on those numbers.  

One of the sadder and more telling events of the past year was a Chinese Communist Party event where an old man was marched out. This wasn’t shown much, so maybe you missed it, which was the intent, I’d suspect. Anyway, out-of-favor the old guy was marched out by two hulks. No one looked at the disgraced. None thanked him for his service. He was out. In a system needing orthodoxy as you and I require O2, that’s all that mattered.

Political heresy, after all, is not a bit different in working than its religious or racial counterparts. Systems that demand uniformity in purity of belief turn ruthless and narrow and power driven. In an entire hall filled with believers, not a one dared speak a word of appreciation. Why not? Fear, pure ‘n simple, fear. And to think those involved call this a perfection of politics representing the one-mind of the people.  

Not, for a blessed change of tone, being cynical, here’s something for a currently hot topic. The book by Sarah Helm, If this is a woman, isn’t a decade old, but stems back to the glory days of the 30’s and 40’s when three socialist ideologies ruled in Europe, each of the three in its way striving to build a politically perfected society. Of the three (Italian fascism the odd-state exception) two were fond of using re-education camps to correct the imperfections of wayward citizens or unlucky captives.

Selected women were given special attention in an NDSP (the German form of socialist perfection) facility specially favored by Adolph and affirmed by Heinrich. The place, not too far from Berlin, for selected women is yet known as Ravensbruck, meant to be a shining example of what political correction could achieve. We call this a concentration camp, but its designers had a higher purpose in mind. From the same era we can read A world apart about life in a correction facility using forced labor and starvation to improve wayward attitudes in the Soviet Socialist state.

The Soviets, having wisely eliminated vestiges of religion were no longer bothered by Sundays as a day off. Savvy those Soviets doing away with contamination from the past in favor of their way (justified extortion) of doing things. Warning: power has ways to excuse and praise whatever it does, no matter how foul.