Tag Archives: internet

Why Goats Can’t Vote …

Posted on by under education, Election 2024, Political commentary, Social commentary, voting rights

I originally wrote this post in May 2016, nearly six months before the election in which Donald Trump would lose the popular vote, but manage to get enough votes in the right places to slide into office on the Electoral College vote.  And now … well, here we are again.  Although more than 7 years old, I think this post is just as relevant today as it was then.

What if voters across the U.S. suddenly decided to read the Constitution, to educate themselves in the ways of our democracy?  What if they took their right to vote responsibly, instead of simply responding to bluster and television ads? What if they actually took the time and trouble to seek the knowledge that would enable them to make wise decisions in November? I read the following quote earlier today, “Never have so many people with so little knowledge made so many consequential decisions for the rest of us.”  It resonated with me, because that is precisely how I see the upcoming election.  Citizens, some of whom have never voted before, will be going to the polls armed, not with knowledge of how our government operates, not with knowledge of what the candidates actually stand for, but with what they have heard from television, their friends, and social media blurbs.

When a person from another country wishes to become a U.S. citizen, there is a process, a road to citizenship, at the end of which they must pass a citizenship test.  I have no issue with this … if they are going to live, work and vote in the US, they certainly should have some knowledge of the history and inner workings of the country.  Just for fun, let’s look at some of the questions that have appeared on this test from time-to-time and see how we do:

  1. What territory did the United States buy from France in 1803? (Louisiana Territory)
  2. We elect a U.S. Representative for how many years? (2 years)
  3. What is the economic system in the United States? (Capitalist economy)
  4. What year was the Constitution written? (1787)
  5. If both the President and the Vice President can no longer serve, who becomes President? (Speaker of the House)

Now granted, these are not rocket-science questions, but there are 100 of these questions, plus an applicant for U.S. citizenship must survive an interview which includes 10 oral questions, of which 6 must be answered correctly.  Now for the interesting part.  In 2011, Newsweek asked 1,000 citizens/voters to take the citizenship test.  Only 62% of those who took the test passed!  If we extrapolate those numbers, it would appear that 38% of the voters headed to the polls in a few months do not have even basic knowledge of the government for which they will be selecting a leader!

More than 60 percent did not know the length of U.S. senators’ terms in office (six years). And 43 percent couldn’t say that the first 10 amendments to the Constitution are known as the Bill of Rights. Only 30 percent knew that the U.S. Constitution is the supreme law of the land. Only 36 percent could name all three branches of the U.S. government. Only 62 percent knew that the U.S. Supreme Court was tasked with determining the constitutionality of legislation. Fewer than half of Americans knew that split decisions in the Supreme Court have the same effect as 9 to 0 decisions.  This is pathetic. These are the people who are going to pick, not only the president, but also 34 senators and all 435 representatives.  The people who will make the decisions that will affect our lives, are going to be elected by people who do not even understand what our federal government does or how it functions!  If you aren’t scared yet, you should be!

PrintI could go into a whole spiel about why people are so ignorant of the basics of our government, ask questions about exactly what the schools are teaching in civics classes, but there is, I think, a better question:  Why do people not care enough to educate themselves?  100 years ago, even 30 years ago, this might have been forgivable.  But today, with the vast resources available to every man, woman and child via the internet?  No, there is simply no excuse for not having a basic understanding of how government works, or at least is supposed to function.  No excuse for not understanding what the issues facing the nation at this time are, or what each candidate believes, and learning whether their past actions actually support their claims.

When the framers of the Constitution wrote the document back in 1787, they purposely made the language simple enough for We The People to understand.  That included farmers and craftsmen.  One could reasonably expect that if it was understood by a farmer 229 years ago when the average person had less than 8 years of formal education, almost every registered voter today should surely be able to understand it.  And it doesn’t take long to read … it is, after all, only 7,591 words, including amendments.  An easily readable document, yet it would appear that a large percentage of voters have not done so.

There have been numerous attempts recently at ‘voting reform’ that serve to disenfranchise certain groups, such as the poor, Hispanics, and African-Americans. I would propose instead of requiring certain forms of identification that are likely to disqualify voters based on race or income level, we mail each registered voter a ‘voter-aptitude’ test similar to the citizenship test.  Any voter who scores below 75% would not be eligible to vote in the November election. Even if they cheated by looking up the answers on the internet, at least they would have learned something, expanded their knowledge and become more worthy of making the decisions that will ultimately affect my life … and yours.

I honestly am not trying to sound like a snob.  I am simply appalled at the number of people in this country who will be choosing a president, senators and representatives based only on what they see on television or read on Facebook memes. I think we should have the right to expect our voters to be at least as qualified as we expect immigrants to be in order to make these choices. Knowledge is what sets humans apart from goats … it’s why goats can’t vote.

informed-voter-is-good-voter

Apologies And Thoughts …

Posted on by under Global Issues, Political commentary, Racism & Bigotry, Social commentary

My apologies, but there can be no Saturday Surprise today.  In light of the terrible Ethiopian Airlines crash on Sunday, then the tragic mass shootings at two mosques in New Zealand by a white supremacist on Friday, I simply could not get into ‘fun’ mode and felt that perhaps it would be inappropriate anyway.  Saturday Surprise will, hopefully, return next Saturday.

I am deeply disturbed and saddened by both of the aforementioned events.  Each took the lives of innocent people, and each was preventable.  And, while the causes of the two may seem to be completely different, they really aren’t all that different.  They both track back to arrogance and a sense of entitlement.  Today I would like to share a few of my own thoughts about the two aforementioned events with you.

First, the crash of Ethiopian Airlines flight 302.  I’ve already written about this at some length and won’t repeat what I’ve already said.  But this crash could easily have been prevented.  Boeing knew that the 737 Max 8 had a flaw, and one crash had already occurred, Lion Air flight 610 on October 29th, 2018.  Boeing was negotiating with the FAA for a software fix when the government shut down and talks came to a halt for 5 weeks.  And the rest is history.

This, my friends, is a tragic example of capitalism run amok.  Corporate greed.  Profit vs people’s lives.  We live in a corporate world, where governments pander to rich industrialists such as Boeing, Smith & Wesson, Exxon, General Motors and many others.  People are put on the back burner.  People’s lives take a backseat to the bottom line.  189 people lost their lives on the Lion Air flight and 157 people lost their lives on the Ethiopian Airlines flight.  346 people died because Boeing was more interested in their profits than in those 346 lives.  How many lives will be lost due to the burning of fossil fuels, because coal and oil companies care more about profit than lives?  How many will be lost due to the spraying of known toxic chemicals on the food we eat, because ‘Big Ag’ cares more for its bottom line than your life or mine?  The time has come … actually came long ago … to rein in capitalism, to impose strict safety regulations on every company doing business.  Will it happen?  Probably not, for those corporations buy our politicians about as easily as we buy a can of peas.

There is a lot of blame to go around for the killings at the Al Noor mosque and the Linwood Islamic Center, it would seem, for everyone seems to be pointing fingers.  Many blame the internet and social media, and yes, there is an element of blame there, since the killer had apparently been posting images of weapons and a “manifesto” for his actions online.  Some blame right-wing leaders, such as Trump, who have given voice to and even encouraged and emboldened the white supremacists, and certainly they must share a portion of the blame.

But, the reality is that the internet is … us.  It is people, expressing their opinions, their hopes, sharing family moments, keeping up with sports, communicating, and in some cases, promoting hate.  People.  Trump and other right-wing personas exist only because they are given a voice … by people.  Who is to blame?  The man, Brenton Tarrant, who planned and carried out the massacre, and any associates who may have helped him, certainly carries the lion’s share of blame.  Perhaps he got his ideas from radicals and white supremacists on the internet, but who put those ideas out there?

I propose that there is enough blame to go around for most all of us.  Sure, Donald Trump opened a can of really nasty worms with his hate speech, his call for a Muslim ban, his denigration of all races other than Caucasian.  But people did not have to fall in line behind him.  They did, because they chose to, not because he forced them to.

But here’s the other thing, and it is, as I think about it, the main reason I write this blog:  We have an obligation to speak out, nay … to SHOUT out … about the injustice of Islamophobia, of homophobia, of misogyny, of white supremacy.  It is not enough for those of us who know it is wrong to just shake our collective heads and roll our collective eyes when these things happen!  It is NOT enough to send “thoughts and prayers”!  Unless we wish to keep seeing bastards like Brenton Tarrant shooting up mosques, shopping malls, movie theaters and schools, then we need to use our voices.

Remember that oft-quoted quotation by Martin Niemöller?

First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a socialist.

Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out— because I was not a trade unionist.

Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—because I was not a Jew.

Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.

We need, more than anything, to have conversations, not screaming matches, not hateful speech on social media sites.  We need to speak to and treat each other with respect.  It is okay to disagree, but we are getting absolutely nowhere by demeaning others and shouting at the tops of our lungs.  But speak we must, for to remain silent is to ensure that tragedies like those from this past week will be ever prevalent.  Freedom of speech is not only a right, but also a responsibility. Will we sit quietly by and allow bigots to rule the world in which we live? Think about it.

Something to Ponder …

Posted on by under Political commentary, Social commentary

In this day where everyone seems to have to wear a label – democrat, republican, moderate, liberal, conservative, neo-conservative, snowflake – David Brooks is hard to pin down.  He has been dubbed a moderate, a centrist, a conservative, and a moderate conservative.  He has even been called “one of those Republicans who want to ‘engage with’ the liberal agenda” {gasp!!!}, “not a real conservative” or “squishy”.  To me, labels can mean whatever one wants them to mean at the moment, or nothing at all.

David Brooks is a Canadian-born American who is currently a columnist for the New York Times and commentator on PBS NewsHour.  Along with The Washington Post’s George Will and a couple of others, he is among the conservative writers who gets my attention, commands my respect, whether I agree with him or not.

Mr. Brooks’ column of March 11th  is, I think, worth reading and giving some serious thought to.  This particular piece is neither right nor left, conservative nor liberal, but it is, rather, a statement of our ‘techno-society’, for lack of a better term.  Give it a glance, then give it some thought.  Are we walking straight into the mouth of the giant alligator?  Your thoughts?

If Stalin Had a Smartphone

Suddenly technology has a centralizing effect.

David-BrooksBy David Brooks

Opinion Columnist

I feel bad for Joseph Stalin. He dreamed of creating a totalitarian society where every individual’s behavior could be predicted and controlled. But he was born a century too early. He lived before the technology that would have made being a dictator so much easier!

In the first place, he’d have much better surveillance equipment. These days most interactions are through a computer, so there is always an electronic record of what went on.

The internet of things means that our refrigerators, watches, glasses, phones and security cameras will soon be recording every move we make. In 2017, Levi Strauss made an interactive denim jacket, with sensors to detect and transmit each gesture, even as minimal as the lifting of a finger. Soon prosecutors will be able to subpoena our driverless cars and retrieve a record of every place they took us.

And this is not even to mention the facial recognition technology the Chinese are using to keep track of their own citizens. In Beijing, facial recognition is used in apartment buildings to prevent renters from subletting their apartments.

One Chinese firm, Yitu, installed a system that keeps a record of employees’ movements as they walk to the break room or rest room. It records them with blue dotted lines on a monitor. That would be so helpful for your thoroughly modern dictator.

In the second place, thanks to artificial intelligence, Uncle Joe would have much better tools for predicting how his subjects are about to behave. As Shoshana Zuboff wrote in her book “The Age of Surveillance Capitalism,” when you are using Google, you are not Google’s customer. You are Google’s raw material. Google records everything you do; then it develops models that predict your behavior and then it sells those models to advertisers, which are its actual customers.

Thanks to this business model, some of the best minds in the world have spent tens of billions of dollars improving tools that predict personal consumption. This technology, too, has got to come in handy for any modern-day Stalin.

Third, thanks to big data, today’s Stalin would be able to build a massive Social Credit System to score and rank citizens, like the systems the Chinese are now using. Governments, banks and online dating sites gather data on, well, everybody. Do you pay your debts? How many hours do you spend playing video games? Do you jaywalk?

If your score is too low, you can get put on a blacklist. You may not be able to visit a museum. You may not be able to fly on a plane, check into a hotel, visit the mall or graduate from high school. Your daughter gets rejected by her favorite university.

Back in Stalin’s day, social discipline was so drastic. You had to stage a show trial (so expensive!), send somebody to the gulag or organize a purge. Now your tyranny can be small, subtle and omnipresent. It’s like the broken windows theory of despotism. By punishing the small deviations, you prevent the big ones from ever happening.

Fourth, you don’t have to go through all the trouble of staging a revolution. You just seduce people into a Faustian bargain. You offer to distract them for eight hours a day with animal videos and relatable memes, and they surrender their privacy to you and give you access to their brains.

As online life expands, neighborhood life and social trust decline. As the social fabric decays, social isolation rises and online viciousness and swindling accumulate, you tell people that the state has to step in to restore trust. By a series of small ratcheted steps, you’ve been given permission to completely regulate their online life.

This, too, is essentially what is happening in China.

As George Orwell and Aldous Huxley understood, if you want to be a good totalitarian, it isn’t enough to control behavior. To have total power you have to be able to control people’s minds. With modern information technology, the state can shape the intimate information pond in which we swim.

I don’t want to pretend that everything will be easy for the Stalin of the 21st century. Modern technology makes it easier to control people, but it also creates a mind-set in which people get much angrier about being controlled.

When people have a smartphone in their hand, they feel that they should have a voice, that they should be broadcasting, that they should have agency and dignity. When they discover they are caught in an information web that is subtly dominating them, they react. When they realize that ersatz information webs can’t really create the closeness and community they crave, they react.

Angry movements and mobs arise spontaneously. What you get is a system of elite domination interrupted by populist riots.

Human history is a series of struggles for power. Every few generations, just for fun, the gods give us a new set of equipment that radically alters the game. We thought the new tools would democratize power, but they seem to have centralized it. It’s springtime for dictators.

A Spot of Humour …

Posted on by under Humour

This morning I was desperate for a bit of humour, thoroughly in a blue funk over the state of the world, the state of my carpet, and the state of my mind.  I went just ambling through my stash of files and websites, thinking to start working on my next post.  As I mindlessly wandered through the vast network of ‘everything-you-never-wanted-to-know-about-anything’, I came across this video.  Ho-hum … oh well, might as well check it out … click … and I found myself suddenly with a smile on my face, chuckling mindlessly.  I just had to share it!

Meet Poncho the police dog as he demonstrates his CPR skills on his human partner:

Keep this one somewhere handy, folks, for those days when you think you’ve forgotten how to smile!smile

Why Goats Can’t Vote … Redux

Posted on by under Election 2018, Political commentary, Social commentary

Recently I was having a conversation with our friend Hugh about voters and how so many are uninformed … should we even encourage those who haven’t taken the time to learn about the candidates, their  platforms and the issues, to go to the polls and cast a vote?  Later, as I was thinking about that conversation, I remembered a piece I wrote last spring, and thought that, with the mid-terms coming up in a few months, perhaps it was appropriate to run this one again.  (Yes, laziness/tiredness and my frequent companion, mind-bounce, all play a role here too.)  One of our goals in the coming months needs to be to encourage people to vote, certainly, but we need to also strive to help people understand the issues, understand the candidates’ views.

What if voters across the U.S. suddenly decided to read the Constitution, to educate themselves in the ways of our democracy?  What if they took their right to vote responsibly, instead of simply responding to bluster and television ads? What if they actually took the time and trouble to seek the knowledge that would enable them to make wise decisions in November? I read the following quote earlier today, “Never have so many people with so little knowledge made so many consequential decisions for the rest of us.”  It resonated with me, because that is precisely how I see the upcoming election.  Citizens, some of whom have never voted before, will be going to the polls armed, not with knowledge of how our government operates, not with knowledge of what the candidates actually stand for, but with what they have heard from television, their friends, and social media blurbs.

When a person from another country wishes to become a U.S. citizen, there is a process, a road to citizenship, at the end of which they must pass a citizenship test.  I have no issue with this … if they are going to live, work and vote in the US, they certainly should have some knowledge of the history and inner workings of the country.  Just for fun, let’s look at some of the questions that have appeared on this test from time-to-time and see how we do:

  1. What territory did the United States buy from France in 1803? (Louisiana Territory)
  2. We elect a U.S. Representative for how many years? (2 years)
  3. What is the economic system in the United States? (Capitalist economy)
  4. What year was the Constitution written? (1787)
  5. If both the President and the Vice President can no longer serve, who becomes President? (Speaker of the House)

Now granted, these are not rocket-science questions, but there are 100 of these questions, plus an applicant for U.S. citizenship must survive an interview which includes 10 oral questions, of which 6 must be answered correctly.  Now for the interesting part.  In 2011, Newsweek asked 1,000 citizens/voters to take the citizenship test.  Only 62% of those who took the test passed!  If we extrapolate those numbers, it would appear that 38% of the voters headed to the polls in a few months do not have even basic knowledge of the government for which they will be selecting a leader!

More than 60 percent did not know the length of U.S. senators’ terms in office. And 43 percent couldn’t say that the first 10 amendments to the Constitution are known as the Bill of Rights. Only 30 percent knew that the U.S. Constitution is the supreme law of the land. only 36 percent could name all three branches of the U.S. government. Only 62 percent knew that the U.S. Supreme Court was tasked with determining the constitutionality of legislation. Fewer than half of Americans knew that split decisions in the Supreme Court have the same effect as 9 to 0 decisions.  This is pathetic. These are the people who are going to pick, not only the president, but also 34 senators and all 435 representatives.  The people who will make the decisions that will affect our lives, are going to be elected by people who do not even understand what our federal government does or how it functions!  If you aren’t scared yet, you should be!

PrintI could go into a whole spiel about why people are so ignorant of the basics of our government, ask questions about exactly what the schools are teaching in civics classes, but there is, I think, a better question:  Why do people not care enough to educate themselves?  100 years ago, even 30 years ago, this might have been forgivable.  But today, with the vast resources available to every man, woman and child via the internet?  No, there is simply no excuse for not having a basic understanding of how government works, or at least is supposed to function.  No excuse for not understanding what the issues facing the nation at this time are, or what each candidate believes, and learning whether their past actions actually support their claims.

When the framers of the Constitution wrote the document back in 1787, they purposely made the language simple enough for We The People to understand.  That included farmers and craftsmen.  One could reasonably expect that if it was understood by a farmer 229 years ago when the average person had less than 8 years of formal education, almost every registered voter today should surely be able to understand it.  And it doesn’t take long to read … it is, after all, only 7,591 words, including amendments.  An easily readable document, yet it would appear that a large percentage of voters have not done so.

There have been numerous attempts recently at ‘voting reform’ that serve to disenfranchise certain groups, such as the poor, Hispanics, and African-Americans. I would propose instead of requiring certain forms of identification that are likely to disqualify voters based on race or income level, we mail each registered voter a ‘voter-aptitude’ test similar to the citizenship test.  Any voter who scores below 75% would not be eligible to vote in the November election. Even if they cheated by looking up the answers on the internet, at least they would have learned something, expanded their knowledge and become more worthy of making the decisions that will ultimately affect my life … and yours.

I honestly am not trying to sound like a snob.  I am simply appalled at the number of people in this country who will be choosing a president, senators and representatives based only on what they see on television or read on Facebook memes. I think we should have the right to expect our voters to be at least as qualified as we expect immigrants to be in order to make these choices. Knowledge is what sets humans apart from goats … it’s why goats can’t vote.

informed-voter-is-good-voter

Once Again … We Have Met The Enemy …

Posted on by under Social commentary

Those of us who write, who share our words, thoughts and ideas with the public, have a responsibility.  That responsibility is to get our message out with respect, without crossing certain lines of integrity.  In 2009, a picture spread across the internet depicting President Obama taking the oath of office seen through a rifle scope with the President in the crosshairs.  That crossed the line.  Many, many other disturbing, disgusting and downright grotesque memes have been created, pictures shared, and articles written that crossed the line.  That is one of the downsides of free speech, but since we cherish and protect our right to free speech, we must also use good judgement.  We must police ourselves so we do not open a door for somebody else to do so.

I’m sure you have all seen the photo of Kathy Griffin holding a prop that is supposed to represent the bloodied head of Donald Trump.  I will not place that picture on this post, nor on any other, as it so blatantly crossed a line that it does not belong anywhere, certainly not on this blog.

Ms. Griffin has since apologized, whether with sincerity or not, I do not know.  It does not matter.  There are some things that cannot be fixed with an apology, and this is one of them.  Words spoken in hate can never be unheard, and images such as this one cannot be unseen.  With the far-reaching, long lasting capabilities of the internet, apology or no, this image will be around for a long, long time.  And children will see it and have nightmares.  Donald Trump’s 11-year-old son Barron was reportedly quite upset … understandably.

In order to post such a heinous photo, in order to imagine the idea of doing so, one must possess a warped mind, one without the filter of a conscience.  I neither know nor care who thought of the idea, whether it was Griffin herself, or a publicist, or Joe down at the pool hall … it was wrong.  It is equally wrong for anybody to share that photo on social media, yet some are doing so.

In a conversation this morning about this photo, I said that anybody who shares this photo is wrong, but then, the more I thought about it, I concluded that anybody who does not condemn this behaviour is, in their silence, tacitly approving.  I do not mean that everyone has to post on their Facebook account that they condemn Kathy Griffin and the photo.  However, for myself, since my blog is all about culling out instances of injustice and cruelty, and shining a light on them, how can I ignore this? If I speak against the hate of people like Wayne Allyn Root and Jeremy Christian, then I must also speak out against Kathy Griffin and those who assisted her in creating such a terrible image and spreading it far and wide.

I have no love or respect for Donald Trump, as you all know by now.  However, this really wasn’t about Donald Trump … this was about respect for society as a whole.  How many people have pulled up their Facebook account only to have that image in their face?  Thousands?  Hundreds of thousands?  Millions?  How many of them were children?  How many were disgusted?  How many laughed?  How many shared the image with even more people?

Griffin is a stand-up comedienne who has released six comedy albums, all of which received Grammy Award nominations. She was, until a few minutes ago, slated to co-host CNN’s coverage of the annual New Year’s Eve program with Anderson Cooper, but early this afternoon, CNN announced that they have terminated their agreement with her.  She has basically thrown a lucrative career in the trash bin … and for what?  She lowered her standards and will pay the price, which is as it should be.  Perhaps if she had bothered to think about what she was doing …

I do not feel sorry for Trump, though I’m sure some will.  I do not feel sorry for Griffin.  I do feel sorry for those of us who have to see this sort of trash every day, and I feel sad that some people have completely lost respect, lost compassion for others.  There are so many more important issues, but stupid things like this distract our attention. Democrat or Republican … everyone should find this type of behaviour unacceptable.  Yes, we have freedom of speech, but let us use some good judgement and common sense, let us not forget about respect for others.

Why Goats Can’t Vote …

Posted on by under Political commentary, Social commentary

What if voters across the U.S. suddenly decided to read the Constitution, to educate themselves in the ways of our democracy?  What if they took their right to vote responsibly, instead of simply responding to bluster and television ads? What if they actually took the time and trouble to seek the knowledge that would enable them to make wise decisions in November? I read the following quote earlier today, “Never have so many people with so little knowledge made so many consequential decisions for the rest of us.”  It resonated with me, because that is precisely how I see the upcoming election.  Citizens, some of whom have never voted before, will be going to the polls armed, not with knowledge of how our government operates, not with knowledge of what the candidates actually stand for, but with what they have heard from television, their friends, and social media blurbs.

When a person from another country wishes to become a U.S. citizen, there is a process, a road to citizenship, at the end of which they must pass a citizenship test.  I have no issue with this … if they are going to live, work and vote in the US, they certainly should have some knowledge of the history and inner workings of the country.  Just for fun, let’s look at some of the questions that have appeared on this test from time-to-time and see how we do:

  1. What territory did the United States buy from France in 1803? (Louisiana Territory)
  2. We elect a U.S. Representative for how many years? (2 years)
  3. What is the economic system in the United States? (Capitalist economy)
  4. What year was the Constitution written? (1787)
  5. If both the President and the Vice President can no longer serve, who becomes President? (Speaker of the House)

Now granted, these are not rocket-science questions, but there are 100 of these questions, plus an applicant for U.S. citizenship must survive an interview which includes 10 oral questions, of which 6 must be answered correctly.  Now for the interesting part.  In 2011, Newsweek asked 1,000 citizens/voters to take the citizenship test.  Only 62% of those who took the test passed!  If we extrapolate those numbers, it would appear that 38% of the voters headed to the polls in a few months do not have even basic knowledge of the government for which they will be selecting a leader!

More than 60 percent did not know the length of U.S. senators’ terms in office. And 43 percent couldn’t say that the first 10 amendments to the Constitution are known as the Bill of Rights. Only 30 percent knew that the U.S. Constitution is the supreme law of the land. only 36 percent could name all three branches of the U.S. government. Only 62 percent knew that the U.S. Supreme Court was tasked with determining the constitutionality of legislation. Fewer than half of Americans knew that split decisions in the Supreme Court have the same effect as 9 to 0 decisions.  This is pathetic. These are the people who are going to pick, not only the president, but also 34 senators and all 435 representatives.  The people who will make the decisions that will affect our lives, are going to be elected by people who do not even understand what our federal government does or how it functions!  If you aren’t scared yet, you should be!

PrintI could go into a whole spiel about why people are so ignorant of the basics of our government, ask questions about exactly what the schools are teaching in civics classes, but there is, I think, a better question:  Why do people not care enough to educate themselves?  100 years ago, even 30 years ago, this might have been forgivable.  But today, with the vast resources available to every man, woman and child via the internet?  No, there is simply no excuse for not having a basic understanding of how government works, or at least is supposed to function.  No excuse for not understanding what the issues facing the nation at this time are, or what each candidate believes, and learning whether their past actions actually support their claims.

When the framers of the Constitution wrote the document back in 1787, they purposely made the language simple enough for We The People to understand.  That included farmers and craftsmen.  One could reasonably expect that if it was understood by a farmer 229 years ago when the average person had less than 8 years of formal education, almost every registered voter today should surely be able to understand it.  And it doesn’t take long to read … it is, after all, only 7,591 words, including amendments.  An easily readable document, yet it would appear that a large percentage of voters have not done so.

There have been numerous attempts recently at ‘voting reform’ that serve to disenfranchise certain groups, such as the poor, Hispanics, and African-Americans. I would propose instead of requiring certain forms of identification that are likely to disqualify voters based on race or income level, we mail each registered voter a ‘voter-aptitude’ test similar to the citizenship test.  Any voter who scores below 75% would not be eligible to vote in the November election. Even if they cheated by looking up the answers on the internet, at least they would have learned something, expanded their knowledge and become more worthy of making the decisions that will ultimately affect my life … and yours.

I honestly am not trying to sound like a snob.  I am simply appalled at the number of people in this country who will be choosing a president, senators and representatives based only on what they see on television or read on Facebook memes. I think we should have the right to expect our voters to be at least as qualified as we expect immigrants to be in order to make these choices. Knowledge is what sets humans apart from goats … it’s why goats can’t vote.

informed-voter-is-good-voter

I Am A Spoiled Brat!

Posted on by under Social commentary

You may remember a little over a week ago I posted a piece entitled “Where Has My Internet Gone??? And Why Do I Care???” in which I bemoaned the fact that for … gasp … two whole days my high speed wireless internet service was down, hence I had to communicate by means of my cell phone and its teeny tiny screen/keyboard, using 4G (I still don’t know exactly what that is, but it enables the cell phone, if nothing else). It was actually one of my most well-read posts. Well, I sit here tonight with internet, two computers at my disposal, a warm house and a full belly, and I think about this. Let me share with you one response from a reader who lives in Ghana:

“This is hilarious for so many reasons. First, as I don’t have a laptop or a PC, I do basically everything on my smartphone: Blog, Facebook, Twitter, IG, Snapchat, WhatsApp, Type notes, etc so its kinda weird to see you “underuse” your smartphone.
Secondly, I’d kill for a 4G internet connection. The only place you’ll get WiFi here are in big offices or universities and even then they are usually either password protected or slow. Oh yes, and in rich people’s houses lol. So us ordinary people have to stick to mobile internet connection with the fastest available now being 3G although you won’t get that everywhere.
Lastly, I just returned from a field trip at a location that had really poor internet and I wasn’t so bummed about it. I was pleasantly surprised to find I didn’t really mind being without internet tho noe that I think about it, poor internet connection is different from nonexistent internet. I always knew I still had the option at the back of my mind.I dont know what I would have done if it was completely unavailable.”

And suddenly, a light bulb moment … I am so very spoiled! We are all so very spoiled! Not just about this, but numerous things began crowding my mind. A week or so ago, I was so highly annoyed because, upon returning from the grocery store, after spending over $100 to feed a family of 3 humans and 8 cats, there wasn’t room for all the produce I had purchased in my refrigerator! Seriously??? How many people do not have access to fresh lettuce, green peppers and broccoli, and how many more cannot afford it even if they have access? And I am complaining because I have access, can afford it, but don’t have space to put it when I get home with it?

And then, another light bulb moment … it isn’t just me, but it is the majority of people in this nation, perhaps in the entire western world! I always thought of myself as pretty much down-to-earth, pretty frugal, trying to help those who are less fortunate. I never thought of myself as a spoiled brat … we are by no means wealthy, we live on my daughter’s salary and my social security check, plus whatever extra we can bring in. But suddenly I see that while we are not wealthy by U.S. standards, by global standards we are indeed wealthy and privileged! I sit here tonight, typing on a 3-month old Dell laptop computer, my home is a comfortable 75 degrees, my belly is full from a meal of chicken wings, potato chips and a cookie, I have a fat, well-fed cat on my lap … who could ask for anything more?

I cannot speak, not do I intend to, for the entire western world. I do know, however, that those who complain about the US economy, who worry about our jobs, who are incensed by higher prices in the grocery store, higher rent, utility costs, etc., and complain about no increase in the social security checks this year are living a life of luxury compared to the majority of the world’s population.

So yes, my internet was out for two whole days and I was inconvenienced. Bottom line is I have internet, I have a computer, I have a roof over my head, food on my table, heat, clothes to wear, a washer & dryer in which to wash my clothes, a refrigerator in which to keep my food and an oven in which to cook it. I am among the wealthiest in the world. I want to remember that. We all need to remember that. I am grateful.

Where Has My Internet Gone??? And Why Do I Care???

Posted on by under Personal, Social commentary

It is amazing and sad how reliant we have become on communication technology.  Monday morning, I awoke to find both landline and internet service was out.  I won’t bore you with my frustrating attempts to contact our service provider (or maybe I will, but that is a whole post in and of itself) to determine if there was a system-wide outage or only our home, but at the end of two hours it was determined that the problem was in our lines somewhere and a repair technician would be required.  The soonest date available for this was Wednesday, two days hence.

Okay, I have a cell phone that can use 4G, whatever the heck that is, to connect me to the outside world, so it won’t matter that all three computers in the house are without communication and I cannot connect outside with my Kindle, right?  Since I am visually challenged, the phone is a little harder to see, but with my 500x magnifying glasses, it is a workable solution as long as I can keep it charged.  No problem, right?  I have been saying for quite some time now that I am going to take a full week and stay off the internet so I can get some major projects done around the house without distractions, so what better time, right?

Okay, so first things first.  Maybe I should just try to re-set the wireless router … just one more time.  Third time’s a charm, right? And maybe if I use some canned air to blow the dust out of the trunk jack coming into the house … could be just dust, right?  Nope, none of that worked.  Okay … let’s get busy and … wait … there is a guy up the street who works for the telephone/internet company we use … maybe if I went and asked him … okay, forget that.

The upstairs hallway really, really needs a good cleaning.  I trudge up all fifteen steps, look around for a minute, run my finger through the dust on the mini-fridge … eh, there’s always tomorrow, right?  Back downstairs, I look at my laptop again … nope, still got that annoying little yellow slash across the wireless icon.  Sigh.  Okay, this is the time I would normally spend writing, during the quiet hours while the felines are sleeping off their morning meal and before my granddaughter gets up.  I won’t be able to post to my blog, but since I won’t be wasting time being distracted by trolling social media and news sites, I should be able to knock out at least two or maybe even three blog posts and have them ready to post on Wednesday!  Excited now … I know the first one I wanted to write, inspired by the story of the armed invaders squatting on a federal wildlife preserve in Oregon.  Now I just need to do some research … hit the Firefox button … “Please check your internet connection”.  Oh.  Yeah, that.  Never mind … I can figure this out.  Turn off the WiFi on the cell phone so it automatically goes to 4G, and it may be small, but I have magnification glasses and a small lighted magnifier.  Check.  Go to email, as I am sure to have a few news digests in my inbox featuring the story I am looking for … yes, there’s one.  Click.  Wait.  Click.  Wait.  Wait.  Still waiting.  Click click click … smack phone against palm.  Back at home screen.  Repeat steps 1 thru 5.  Sigh.  This is not working.  Let’s try re-setting the wireless router one more time.

Forget writing.  I know … I will work on getting some more music on the iPod the girls gave me for Christmas!  That will be fun … oh, ITunes only works with internet.  Fine, I’ll just go mop the kitchen floor and then read for a while.

This was how it went for two days, and the upside is that I nearly finished a 700+ page book by Tom Clancy and read part of another about Franklin D. Roosevelt and WWII.  But this whole thing made me realize how pathetic our reliance on the internet is.  I felt adrift and cut off, even though I was able to converse via text and chat with a few friends on my cell phone.  Did I mention how hard it is to type on a teeny-tiny keyboard and how much I detest “auto-correct”? I felt almost as if I were in a “time-out” being punished for some wrong doing.  How did this happen?  What have we become?  I was not alone in this feeling, as my granddaughter went through basically the same withdrawal process that I did, thinking that since she couldn’t get on Facebook or any of her favorite art sites, she would just load some games with her Nintendo points card … oops, afraid not!  I remember the days before cell phones, before the internet as we know it today, and even before personal computers.  We all seemed perfectly happy back then.  At least I remember being happy before I even knew it was possible to do all the things we do today.  So what happened and how did it happen?  Should we be worried, or just accept it and move on … until the morning when we wake up and find that …. GASP … the internet is out!!!!