Bill's Notes

I once was asked, how can you be conservative. I explained it not in philosophical terms, but practical ones. There are always lots of good things governments can do. There are always needs -- economics explains that these needs are infinite, but resources, not.

Government will naturally grow -- just because bureaucracies naturally grow and expand, so do governments. It would take something like two-thirds of the country actively pushing back to get the government to shrink. And even then it would grow. Because we need a government, and they don't tend to shrink.

There are lots of things for government to do -- add infrastructure here, right an injustice there. So many in fact that government tends to kill the golden goose. It will naturally expand into everyone's life, and ultimately, strangle us all in a web of regulation, law and confusion. BTW, that's water under the bridge. We're already at the point where the laws are so complex that compliance is mind-bogglingly complex.

So conservatism is in one sense simply push back, especially against complexity.

Ten years ago, the Catholic sex abuse crisis broke out. Three years later, I joined the Catholic Church. The second Easter, as I was rushing to Easter service at the cathedral in downtown Philly, directly across the street I saw a middle-aged man holding up a sign. It was a picture of his son. His son had been abused and apparently committed suicide. I was stuck there for a moment. WWJD?

My best guess is Jesus would have gone across the street, listened, comforted and healed the man, and then invited him in. I thought about it. I still think about it. Jesus definitely would not have done what I did -- which was go inside and ignore the man. Take care of me, you know. I had to get to confession. The irony was not lost on me.

Here was a man in pain. Afterward, I looked for him, but he was gone. A man who obviously loved the church enough to join and bring his son, only to have a predator within the church damage him. The son is responsible for his own suicide, of course, but you don't say that to people who are hurting. Imagine the pain of losing your church and your son. Imagine feeling so powerless that you stand in front of a church with his picture and watch everyone else go by.

The service was beautiful and sanctified beyond measure. I hope that some got to him. I hope his self-excommunication stops.

Some general thoughts on November's election, in no particular order:

1. Trends are true until they are not. Just because something hasn't happened doesn't mean it won't. Obama's negative approval rating and the general malaise of the country would in most years be a sign that he would be doomed to a Carter-like defeat. Obama's fecklessness, after a strongly assertive first six months in 2009, would similarly result in a severe electoral defeat.

Yet, my conservative friends are ignoring one thing: The crash in the fall 2008 and subsequent recovery scared the shit out of everybody. Scared the living crap out of them. For better or worse, things have stabilized. They have stabilized at a worse state than we've been used to for the past 25 years, but they are at least stable. For now. Thank God.

As Ming the Merciless once said, people are satisfied with less. We have an official 8.2 percent unemployment rate, closer to 15 percent if you include discouraged workers. That's high and brutal, and there is a lot of suffering out there. People who have played by the rules are getting hammered. About five full percentage points of the U.S. population (based on labor force participation rates) have essentially been knocked out of the economy through no fault of their own and not through medical bills or other calamity. That's about six million people.

Normally, this would mean an easy call for an incumbent defeat. But not when people can imagine it much much worse.

2. Things that can't go on, won't go on. Our deficits are unsustainable. They have been unsustainable. Neither political party can politically do what's necessary as long as they risk losing power.


Thus, neither side will do what's necessary until either: (A) one side wins decisively, or (B) the situation gets so bad that there is a political will for a bipartisan solution.

(3) People remember clearly the crash occurred during the Bush Administration. They remember clearly that the Republicans did not reduce the deficit when they had the opportunity. They don't trust the Republicans.

(4) The news media is interested in the horse race and in generating seeming conflict, even if the result is obvious for all to see. They can be extremely compelling in persuading people things are close when they are not. And then sometimes they are right and things are close.

******

This should be a slam-dunk landslide for Romney. It should be easy to call. But we seem to be living in different times than any I've known. Obama is much more popular than he should be at this stage of the race. Given his performance, he should have suffered a nomination challenge that either knocked him out of the race, such as Truman in 1952 and LBJ in 1968, or faced a tough primary challenge, such as Carter did in 1980.

There was no challenge. Despite this, some unknown challengers won significant quantities of the primary votes. It's this lack of a challenge despite his vulnerability that has me thinking we are in different times.

FWIW. YMMV.

That's the key issue here. What does the Obamacare ruling specifically mean to us as individuals? That is, what will I have to pay? How will this work? Like auto insurance?

OK, so there's this little German four-year-old sitting at my table at the wedding. There was also an empty seat at the table. So I think, OK, I'll leave an empty seat between us, you know, give the German a little breathing room and we'll be all right.

Dinner goes fine. Then, right after dinner, he gets up. He starts to walk away, then suddenly runs back and punches my arm. So I slammed him to the ground and said I was going to occupy any seat he sits in for the next 50 years. I was like, there goes that theory.

Nice kid, though.

The Supreme Court handed down its decision on Obamacare. For all intents and purposes, it is a complete leftist victory. Conservatives, even moderate center-left folks, have been defeated. It's pretty much game over. Free people have decided, with Obama, that they'd prefer to be government serfs, and they got the Supreme Court to uphold it. So, we're on the road to serfdom.

Well, at least we knew liberty for a while ... which is more than most people in human history can say and much more than most people today can say. We've experienced liberation through technology from many of evils that have plagued mankind. We've experienced a greater degree of political freedom. For those of us in our late 40s, we will still be able to ride the wave for the next 10 or 20 years, barring unseen events. Our retirement may be difficult, but less so than most have experienced in history and throughout the world.

We're experiencing at least three dislocating trends:

One is a cultural war, which will last our lifetimes and our children's lifetimes. We'll probably lose battle after battle, but that war is already won for us. I'll try not to fret too much about it. Acceptance for the sake of my sanity is the key here.

Second is the economic dislocations caused by automation and the Internet. I have no idea how this will play out.

Third is a demographic challenge. Our birth rate is low ... saved by immigration. Culturally, we will change, and America will look more like the places people have immigrated from than what we've known. Still, there will be a strong remnant American culture for many decades to come.

The battles will continue, but I can't imagine the GOP getting enough votes in the Senate to overturn Obamacare, even with Romney as president. Just not gonna happen.

Some guesses at the future, now that Obamacare is upheld:

1. Expect merciless hectoring about health choices. Now that the government is paying for healthcare, it can can issue incentives and punishments for wellness. It actually must do so. So your lifestyle choices — expect them to be hemmed in. So far, most of the leftist hectoring concerns food, drink, smoking and exercise. Mayor Bloomberg's soda ban times 1,000. It will all be justified as reducing costs. At some point, the left will have to take a look at sexual choices, but they won't — for a long time at least. The left's puritanism is currently limited to food rules.

2. Expect to be forcibly euthanized or granted only palliative care if you cannot pay for private healthcare in your old age or if you get seriously ill. It's inevitable. The left laughs at this, but Oregon has state health insurance, and so far at least one woman was told that the state would not pay for her cancer treatment medication, only for palliative care. The drug company offered her free drugs when this happened, but next time? This is inevitable.

3. Not sure, but at some point you may see the crossing of another trend — the government's preference of certain demographic groups — with healthcare. That is, your gender and skin color may matter.

4. Unemployment will likely stay high. The European socialist model results in unemployment rates of 10 to 20 percent. So expect that as structural unemployment.

5. Look for a clamoring for a single payer system. Obamacare is unworkable as is. The only thing that will replace it will be either a public option or a single-payer system.

As far as this question — what do we conservatives do?

1. Don't upset ourselves unnecessarily. About 80 to 90 percent of suffering comes from upsetting ourselves. If something sucks 10 percent, don't magnify it. Just let it be the 10 percent suckitude.

2. Continue to fight. I don't think we should give up. But we should fight with considerable sobriety and equanimity, stopping to smell the roses. Don't underestimate our own ability to adapt and change. Perhaps we will roll back and delay the left for a while.

3. Don't count on the Republicans. At best, they'll shoot for a "replace" option, but doubtful it will happen. They will reform and promise to do it better, but in the end, here it is.

That's all I have right now.

UPDATE: The more I think about it, this is a devastating setback for the conservative movement. Taking my own advice, I may have to sign off for a while to not magnify it. But I think this ruling all-but-assures Obama's victory in 2012. At that point, game over until reality kicks in.

But even then, don't count on it. Detroit is currently shutting off street lights. That's how broke it is, but the people there keep electing Democrats. No matter what. Leftists have an endless array of excuses for doing what they do. When human nature and reality intervenes or causes unintended consequences, they make excuses, blame Republicans, say they didn't do enough of what they were trying to do, and yadda yadda yadda. There's no end to it.

The country's been in a Cold Civil War since 1980, when Ronald Reagan was elected. This was the first real breach of the New Deal philosophy that was the controlling political force from 1932 to 1980. RR opened up the front; what he did worked; and liberals loathed him for it.

From about 1980 to 2006, the conservative movement was ascending, but not dominant. We did manage to win some. I was surprised at the persistence of the Democratic Party and the Leftists that have so corrupted it.

What the Democrats have done so effectively is reframe the debate in terms of peer pressure — educated, compassionate right-thinking people are Democrats.

Conservatives want to win politically and go home and watch baseball and cut the lawn. Democrats aren't that way.

But if everything's going fine under conservative governance, the Democrats will start politicizing the weather. They'll declare marriage to be discriminatory. They'll harp on abortion, women, talk about open borders, talk about dividing the country.

The Democratic Party promotes values that ensure poverty and heartbreak (which is why the cognitive elite live as conservatives), sowing discord, while simultaneously offering government solutions that turn people into reliable constituencies, while setting them at odds with each other.

It's a heck of a strategy. And it's largely worked. In this world. I doubt the Republican Party will help us much. They've thrown us under the bus so many times my clothes smell like exhaust. It's tiring.

I've been trying to work out in my mind a model of mind. I never found Id, Superego and Ego and other Freudian models to be helpful.

It seems to me that there is brain thinking, mind thinking and then, stuff that appears from beyond brain and mind thinking that comes from an external source, that we may call spiritual thinking.

Spiritual thinking is easy ... it's denied by most people, but it involves a connection to God, or possibly, other spiritual beings. It's clearly not from your mind, nor from your own thoughts, yet it acts out within your mind and thoughts. Who knows how it works?

Mind thinking involves our own internal conversations, cognition -- conscious thinking that we have a great deal of control over.

Then there's that brain thinking thing ... this is the concept I'm struggling with. It seems to be computerized thinking ... it's dumb, extremely dumb, but generates what can appear to be highly intelligent thoughts. Mixed in with brain thinking seems to be the brain's conflict of interest in being an anatomical organ. Stay with me here.

That is, the brain not only is the place where all our experience of life, including our mind thinking is held, but the brain has the ability to generate thoughts and provoke actions that pleases itself, but isn't necessarily in the best interest of the organism.

Your stomach, for example, needs cooperation from a lot of other organs and ultimately the brain to get you to eat. Now, imagine if the stomach had some ability to directly access food. We would probably eat all day unless somehow we disciplined the stomach. But now imagine that the only way to discipline the stomach was through the stomach's thinking.

Essentially, that's our dilemma. Our brain has a conflict of interest. There's an element of our brains that is dumb, that's simply a machine. Dopamine, good. More dopamine. I hear your thoughts about why we should stop dopamine but I will twist them one way or the other until you give me my dopamine, because brain want dopamine. Call it hulk. Hulk, smash.

Then, there's conscience. Conscience seems to be in something called the soul, particularly, deep conscience. This is the "right" and "wrong" stuff. Conscience seems to be in contradiction to the brutal brain.

Yet conscience must work within the brain. To some extent, conscience must be in the brain, too.

When the brain is acting in its own interests, that is, when it's acting like an anatomical organ with its own power, it masks its conflict of interest by generating thoughts ... and these thoughts, though emotionally compelling, can send us down a rabbit hole that lasts our whole life. Addicts, for example.

What I think we call "evil" is simply this masked thinking coming from brain thinking. I'm not communicating it very well.

For example, an addict may spend an enormous amount of time thinking about, even inventing philosophies around, justifying its behavior. But to whom? The conscience. The brain seems to be at odds with itself. That's the human condition.

It seems that the meaning of life may be growth away from brain thinking and toward humble obedience of the conscience. We call this maturity. I have a long way to go.

Having moved my share of other people's stuff in the past two years, and during my (brief) period of unemployment, I began to think about stuff.

Namely, I already had too much stuff. Not all the stuff I needed. I definitely needed:

1. More electrical tape.
2. More home repair tools.
3. String, rope, etc.

Stuff you need to fix your house.

I could also use a roof.

But stuff -- infrastructure-style stuff? I had all that I needed. Even if my computer upgrades, I don't need it because frankly I'm happy with my computer and have been for years.

http://freenortherner.wordpress.com/2012/05/06/perils-of-wealth/ is an article on the post-scarcity economy. I don't know if I agree or disagree ... at this point it's just interesting.

A couple of years ago, I suggested that perhaps our demand-side problems were partially connected to the plethora of stuff we all have.

OK, let me start again:

You know what the Internet feels like to me? It feels like a combination of the world's biggest attic, and it feels like a highway that goes everywhere, but everywhere is a dead end.

Or -- I don't know what I'm talking about.

I've felt that something paradigm-breaking is happening here. It's why I've eased up on the politics, 'cuz I'm not sure where things are going.

I mean, I could go on and on about things I hate. Strangely enough, a lot of the things I hate most of my liberal friends hate, too. Like the militarization of the police force. Our surveillance state.

The rules have changed and frankly, I don't understand them anymore. This has been true for some time. And I feel (this will sound paranoid) that something seems to be blinding me to the truth.

When everyone is connected to everyone, what ...? That's what I can't answer.

Actually, I don't even know the question. That's my problem.

What is the future of work? What must be done?

Still everything, right? Then nothing's changed.

What the heck am I talking about?

Drones. Utah's giant storage repository.

And now ... meet the Flame cyberweapon. It's malicious code that amounts to spyware at a level we've never seen before.

“Flame is a cyberespionage operation,” he told FoxNews.com.

Its prime goal: capturing data from a machine. To accomplish that task, this unusually large and complex espionage tool is made up of several modules designed to accomplish specific tasks, explained Liam O Murchu, operations manager with Symantec Security Response.

“It can record your keystrokes, it can record from the microphone on your computer, it can take screen shots, and it sends this info to a remote computer for someone to siphon off,” he told FoxNews.com.

Flame can grow and change, too: What makes this cyberweapon so powerful is the ability to be reconfigured with new modules that turn an infected PC or industrial control system into whatever tool a spy dreams up.

One module makes it a secret tape recorder, using the computer’s microphone to record nearby conversations. One makes it a radio, using a wireless Bluetooth connection to receive fresh commands and suck the address books out of nearby cell phones. One may turn it into a shredder, chewing through hard drives -- as the Wiper virus did to Iran’s computers.

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2012/05/29/world-most-sophisticated-cyber-weapon-burns-computers-in-middle-east/#ixzz1xdA11Rf1

Oh shit. Our government already has the capability to spy on anyone's home computer. It's building a place to store pretty much as much data as it wants, to be used no doubt when it wants. It has drones that can strike anywhere.

Oh shit ... oh shit oh shit oh shit.

Right now, it's for good intentions.

It makes me want to shut down my computer and get a job working nowhere near a computer.

Note: I'm probably gonna get some pushback on this post, so I'd like to add a disclaimer. I am aware that when the Democrats are in charge, the GOP flips out. I'll try not to overstate my point, and keep in mind that we conservatives do piss off liberals. (Sorry about that -- don't mean to piss you off.) In any case, I want to just add the thought that yes, this a complex issue, more complex than I'm saying, but I think there's a very valid point here and I don't want to caveat the crap out of this post. Maybe the issue is I live in a red section of the country, but I grew up in a blue section, and I can attest that politics is far more important to the bluers than the redders I know.

The question I'm asking myself is this: When selecting a presidential candidate to vote for, we need to ask: Is a Republican presidential candidate good enough to overcome the advantages Democratic presidents conferred upon them by cultural elites?

I recognize that there's some question-begging. I'm sure my Democratic friends think, "Are you kidding me?" What I mean, specifically, is that we have a cognitive elite in this country, and they are for the most part liberal or at least supportive of the Democratic Party. They are capable of arguing their points with considerable skill. And when there's a Democratic president, these cognitive elites give the president a pass on a lot of things. There aren't the same kinds of discussions.

For example: We don't discuss Guantanamo Bay any more. We don't discuss drone attacks. We don't really discuss the deficit -- suddenly it's good. Bush's 5 percent unemployment rate was a "jobless recovery"; Obama's 8.2 percent rate is rarely discussed. Fast & Furious is a massive scandal that under a GOP president, would be top news every day.

That is, if the Democratic cognitive elite are powerful (and they are), they naturally give a pass on all sorts of things to a Democratic president that they'd never tolerate from a Republican one. The cognitive elite simply calm down when there's a Democratic president.

This is an enormous advantage when governing. Is electing Mitt Romney worth incurring the wrath of the cognitive elite? We know the CEs already think we conservatives are prejudiced, stupid, ignorant(and unaware of it), emotionally driven, greedy, uneducated, and superstitious.

You see, Obama is given the benefit of the doubt on almost every issue. Unemployment. The recession. Libya. This has been good for the country. It adds some distance and pause to our decisions. Romney won't be given the benefit of the doubt. Can he be a good enough president to overcome this disadvantage?

I don't know. His squeaky-clean image, his Mormon faith, and his silver-spoon upbringing will have liberals seeing red. The public debate among the cognitive elites will get even nastier, which will make governance more difficult.

Hope I've made my point. Cheers.

1. There's a certain sort of blogger who's a believer and who argues with atheists. There are a lot of atheist commenters who argue with believers. I haven't done that. A couple two three times went through that, both in real life and online, and I don't do that anymore.

I just don't see the point. I don't believe anyone is an atheist all the time, nor do I believe that anyone has faith all the time. When I was sitting next to my father's corpse in the nursing home, even after I'd received enormous consolations from prayer a moment before, I had a piercing moment of doubt. He was dead. And that's it. I still recall it, just as I still recall the consolations -- they are not feelings, really, it's like making contact with God.

Anyway, I don't argue with people about God's existence because it is a factual question. Either God exists or He doesn't. (I suppose there could be a god-like creator who is nonetheless not omniscient, not omnipresent, etc. Imagine Dr. Manhattan from the Watchmen, just doing the best that he can.) My opinion on the matter doesn't change the underlying fact (one way or the other) one bit.

But I believe, and I doubt, and I assume everyone has similar types of experiences in various periods of their life. Now, if someone wants to know how to get into contact with God, I do know how they can do that.

2. Read a guy named Paul B. Farrell. Marine sgt., psychology Ph.D., MarketWatch columnist ... He sounds absolutely batshit crazy. He spends a lot of time predicting disasters -- I mean total, systemic economic and climate-related disasters. Guess what? If you predict disaster long enough, you will eventually be right.

3. Global warming. Why not hit all the big topics? Heh. I am a skeptic, as you know. I have a backup position that basically states knowing human nature as I think I do, if AGW is happening, we're totally, utterly screwed. People will not react quickly enough. But again, this is a fact or not -- if AGW is a fact, it's a fact, and my opinion of it or interpretive abilities don't matter. And if it's a fact, kiss your ass good-bye. If it's not a fact, you didn't act like chicken little.

4. Been thinking a lot about World War I. This is a war that destroyed the Russian Empire, the German Empire, the Austria-Hungary Empire and the Ottoman Empire. In a few short years, three centuries-old empires bit the dust. And for what? Because countries didn't see an algorithm hidden in their various treaties. Basically, it's Serbia pisses off A-H, who declare war; treaty triggers Russia, which triggers Germany, which triggers France, which triggers Britain. Only Italy figured it out -- it signed mutual defense treaties, but never signed on for an offensive campaign. So they told A-H and Germany that their war was an offensive war, and stayed out of it for a couple of years.

But what I've been thinking about is the mass stupidity of it. And the results were not just the war -- from the Armenian Genocide to Verdun. It was the result. All those empires' falling led to everything that bedeviled the rest of the century. Perhaps. Perhaps I'm wrong about that. But would a 20th century without a World War I still have had to fight communism, fascism and Islamism for the rest of the century?

Charles Krauthammer on drones.

He comes out against our government using drones on American soil. He's OK with it in Somalia, apparently.

My qualms about drones has hardened into complete opposition, not that I get to set policy. But I am against the use of drones except in a case of declared war, and then only on our declared enemies, and never on our own soil. We think we're clever right now -- we can hit anyone at anytime. But that won't always be true. And it will create levels of frustration that foments terrorism.

Not only that, but the use of drones within the U.S. is another step closer to a totalitarian military state. I don't think I'm overstating the point. One danger in any nation is the government can see its own people as a threat.

And just for the record, I am against bombing anyone in any nation with anything stronger than a pointy stick except in case of declared war.

We've been doing way too much bombing. We're solving one set of problems, but we're creating others.

In my scholarly leisure time, I found myself trying to figure out this puzzle.

Beat my head against the wall ... and after 15 minutes, I got it. Then hated myself for not seeing it sooner. No, I did not look up the answer on the Internets, either.

What to make of this? It was linked by Instapundit, and I think wrongly.

The Obama administration, including his czars and along with his closets Progressive supporters, are planning a manufactured insurgency against America. He is using the media to his advantage to garner both sympathy and support for his unfinished goals. He is desperately seeking a way to remain in office, even if it means the surreal prospect of an indefinite postponement of elections - if it can be pulled off. So far, he’s got the support of the majority of the DHS “brass” behind him, according to my source.

Read the whole thing. I don't link to it either to cast light on extremely far-right-wing paranoia or to agree with the substance. No, I want to talk about a couple of "tells" in CTs (conspiracy theories).

The first tell is a long windup. This draws you down a tunnel, and usually you find yourself feeling the world has gotten smaller somehow.

But the big tell is this one -- the cast of characters is all the usual suspects: Trilateral Commission, Bilderberger, "the Jews," one world government types. A good CT will usually find it irresistible to include all sorts of suspects, to include as wide a range of characters as possible.

A little like when World Nut Daily said the U.S. was to suffer a nuclear terroristic attack, the Islam-terrorist-acquired weapon from Russia was to be smuggled over our southern border by illegal Mexican immigrants who were to be given safe passage by the drug cartels. (I think a recent movie was based on this scenario, but the movie was much better.)

Or when the M-I complex used the CIA and funded by Texas-oilman to enlist Mob-connected anti-Castro Cubans to set up pro-Castro Lee Harvey Oswald to shoot JFK so the U.S. could have LBJ as president so he could enter the Vietnam War.

It just hits all the hot buttons.

Here's the real conspiracy: The devil wants our souls. He wants to sow discord, puff up our pride, flatter our vanity, dehumanize others, addict us to negativity and carnal desires, and finally to tear each other to pieces out of suspicion, hatred and delusion.

God wants to purchase you with the ransom He earned on the cross. He wants us to remember our common humanity and our home in Him, and to love one another, even those who wish us ill. Pray for our enemies and do good to him that harms you ... and all that. Love to the point of mockery, pain and even crucifixion. That's the Christian message, and it's always been the Christian message. Christians are called to love and suffering.

Our enemies are what they've always been: addiction, suspicion, hatred, self-seeking -- sin, sickness, evil and death.

I'm going to expand on the last entry.

Let's say I have an imaginary friend named George. Are you OK with that? Of course.

Now, say we are out to lunch and I want George to have a seat at the table, that I talk to George with you present, and that I order a meal for George.

You'd think it's strange, but as long as my conservations with George are civil, you'd probably file that under "tolerance of eccentricity."

Now the check comes. You expect me to pay for both my meal and George's, but alas, I say, "George will pay for his own meal." Now it's impacting you, and you'd insist that I pay.

"But you ate some of the good off George's plate! Very rude, by the way."

What I'm doing isn't illegal until I try to leave the restaurant. You insist that I pay for George's bill, and I insist that he can pay for his own bill. You argue that I'm asking an imaginary friend to pay for imaginary money for real food. I insist my friend is very much real.

Now say I resolve this argument when George tells me he's a little strapped today. So I pay.

Now say I try to register George to vote. You'd say, "OK, now you've gone too far."

I insist you're discriminating against him and compare you to poll-tax supporters during the segregation age. Bigot.

I call you a bigot, who wants to take away George's civil rights, and insist there is no ontological difference between the imaginary and the "real." I can define people as I see fit -- who are you to say George isn't real?

You want to ban imaginary friends! We shall overcome ...

And you say, "I'm not against imaginary friends. I just don't think they should vote."

I ignore that and insist you're a horrible bigot who is just like those who opposed liberation for African-Americans. We shall overcome.

*****

That's how strange pro-same-sex marriage arguments appear to me.

Same sex marriage is an ontological impossibility. We could not legally create one even if we tried. All we'd do is create an imaginary marriage and then swear it's bigotry to fail to acknowledge the impossibility.

And one step further -- you can't not know this. Natural reason and natural conscience tell you so. Just as in the above scenario, I can't not know that George cannot pay his own bill and that George cannot vote.

Same sex marriage is a mass delusion, as in, "extraordinary popular delusions and the madness of crowds."

Obama says same sex marriage should be legal.

So should unicorn farts; alas, there's no such thing.

Now you have a right to an imaginary friend. You can name him George and have long conversations with him. However, it's not bigotry if I fail to legally recognize your imaginary friend's civil rights.

If you want your imaginary friend to vote in elections, I'm against it. And I really don't want to hear that I'm discriminating against him because he's black, or that I want to ban imaginary friends.

I took my girlfriend down to the shore for the weekend, to visit the shore house. Decided to make it a lazy weekend — yes, some cleaning out, but we took time to get to the ocean (the house is on the bay). After a day of shore breezes and cold water, she asked me what I wanted to do. I said, get some steamed lobsters, and go back to the house and eat them.

So I stop by a place that says, "Live crabs," figuring they wouldn't discriminate against other kinds of crustaceans. She waited in the car, and I asked the guy behind the counter. Got a funny story about how he hadn't set up his lobster tank yet 'cuz it's the most expensive piece of equipment to run. Anyway, he gave me a couple of places to try, and some directions.

So she tells me that I should stop and ask where we can find live lobsters. I said the guy just told me. She ignored that and repeated it, and I said, "He JUST told me." And she said, "Well maybe someone else has another idea."

I ended up going to the place he suggested. She looks at the prices and realizes it's like another $8 a pound for cooked lobsters, and says we should just cook them ourselves.

"Do you realize they scream like banshees when you try to kill them?"

She laughed.

"Really, they're like, 'Ow. This water is really hot. This really fucking hurts!'"

She laughed. I figured with the amount of money we waste, an extra $20 is no big deal to avoid having to friggin' kill my own food.

Nope. She insisted.

We bring the lobsters home. Now, I was just going to drop them in the pot. But she called her ex-husband and asked him, well, what do we do? He said jab a knife in between the eyes and then hold them upside down, to drain out all that water inside them. Then toss them into the pot.

I have since looked this up on the Internets. You have to actually stab it all the way through.

So I tortured the lobsters instead of killing the lobsters properly.

Now, I sorta have two sides, a softer side that wants to live in peace and harmony with all living things and then there's the side that punched a rat to death in my kitchen. (It was stuck in a glue trap. I was a little pissed at it by then. I said, "Stay. The. Fuck. Out. Of. My. House." The periods are punches.)

Anyway, I was feeling ... well, softer that weekend. Just peace and harmony and ocean breezes and sandpipers twittering through the wash and all that, and here I have to drag out the caveman to friggin stab and boil a crustacean that looks you in the eye.

I jabbed the sucker, cracked its shell, picked it up, emptied out the water — and the thing's still alive. It's scrambling and squirming and all its little legs grasping.

Into the boiling pot, still wiggling.

Take out the other one, which was not pleased. Claws brandished. I was afraid it was dead. Nope. Very much alive.

"What's his problem?" I asked.

"He saw what you did to the other one."

"Think they're that smart?"

Grab. Jab. Crack. Flip. Empty. Into the pot. He squirms for like 20 seconds.

They came out well. We set the table overlooking the water. We even had a side table on wheels for the dismembered body parts we didn't intend to eat. Broke out the new lobster crackers we bought at the five-and-dime.

I may have overcooked the tails, but the claws were perfect. A good time for all but the lobsters, which were refrigerated, murdered, boiled, eaten, and their dead carcasses discarded in the trash, while the rest of them were digested.

Now she's like — "We gotta get a bigger pot and do that again. That was really fun."

And it was.

Seems to me that the facts are in dispute, except that a tragedy occurred. Until the facts are determined, I can't have an opinion. Except the usual platitudes.

What is a lefty by my definition? Hmm ...

I think a "lefty" can be distinguished from a "liberal" (in the American context) by their treatment of power. To distinguish "left" from right-wing abuses of power, I'd have to have two parts of the definition:

A. A commitment to causes we usually identify as left-wing (shit, a tautology), and

B. A willingness to use institutional or state power in an "ends justify the means" way, especially if the underlying principle ends up being "it's OK when we do it."

A lot of people self-identify with the Left, but I don't consider people members of the real Left (the faction I'm concerned about) unless they're willing to coerce/manipulate/damage people and property in the names of the left-wing causes, and in a way that's instrumental, that sees people not as individuals but as means to an end. I'd add a willingness to use power in a way that doesn't respect property rights.

Caveat: Both A and B are necessary. If, at some point, someone merely uses left-wing causes as a power grab, we're dealing with plain-old megalomania wrapped up in social-justice talk. This creates all sorts of ambiguities.

Personal lifestyle choices and beliefs don't add up to Leftism. These choices may be liberal, in the sense that they don't coincide with the status quo or challenge the status quo in some way, but without the power element, they are just that, personal choices.

In every case I can think of right now, if you are applying the same sets of rules to everyone, you avoid the kind of Leftism I'm discussing. Leftist abuses of power virtually always involve using state or institutional power to pick winners and losers in a way that favors some groups and hurts others.

Do we know through loving? Is there knowledge that cannot be reached through reason that we can achieve through love? If so, what does this say about the limits of reason?

I say yes. That's as far as I've gotten.

As you were.