March 29, 2021

A lot of violence in the news with shootings in Virginia Beach, Boulder, and Atlanta.

The George Floyd murdered trail has just begun. Today in the news a woman was killed while a passenger in a car when someone fired on her vehicle due to "road rage". Our government is now going to do another study on gun violence in the U.S.A. In Myanmar the military has killed 114 civilian bystanders including a child of five due to the strike against the military coup. Jamal Kashoggi was allegedly assassinated in the Saudi Embassy in Turkey ordered by the Saudi Government by crown prince Mohammed Bin Salman and Alexie Nalvalny an opponent of Putin was poisoned by the Russian government according to  Konstantin Kudryavtsev an agent involved in the poisoning. He was lucky to escape to the west for medical treatment where the nerve agent was verified in his almost demise. Our president Biden labeled Putin a killer. Amnesty international posted a blog claiming more than 7000 people killed by orders of President Duarte of the Philippines in six months 2020 https://www.amnesty.org.uk/philippines-president-duterte-war-on-drugs-thousands-killed. Shana Grice was murdered by her stalker in her bedroom after calling the police repeatedly five times about his stalking and threatening behaviors. She was fined L90 by the police for failing to disclose she had a prior relationship with the stalker. The police department has apologized for their inaction and biased behaviors firing one of the officers. 

So I'm going to discuss what's going on. We humans become violent killers readily when told to cause mayhem and murder such as our recent insurrection in Washington D.C. Battering their way into the capital with security and police trying to prevent their entry some seemingly hell bent on finding selected legislature and government officials to harm security forces were severely injured with one death. Milgram's experiments show how easy it is to have others tortured. The Stanford University prison experiments show how easy it is to have students act like psychopathic prisoners and students act like sadistic guards. Our history of lynching black people shows us that we can objectify the black as deserving of hanging and even have a picnic with our children while the victim is dangling for alleged acts that he did not commit at all. Tromfin Lysenko was responsible with Stalin for millions of deaths. He was in competition with Nikolai Vavilov a prominent agronomist who studied grains of all sorts attempting to find ways to overcome famine and death. Lysenko a Lamarckian believer that if you subject grains to cold they will adopt and produce a greater harvest after subject to cold and then planted. Millions died in Russia due to a famine caused by fake science supported by a dictator who was ignorant and a bully. Vavilov was imprisoned and died due to forced starvation in a cell while his work now has contributed greatly to modern agonomy.

The Cuban missile crisis is an example of how our human self righteous competition over the best form of government and our competition for resources and domination can lead to almost nuclear winter for our planet. We versus them. If we view our opponents as other and dehumanize their existence but instead characterize them as disgusting and abhorrent (Saposky) we are deluded and dangerous. By enjoining conflict rather than resolving conflict and finding common ground for discourse and understanding we then find reasons for murder and mayhem. So North Korea now has nuclear weapons, Iran maybe soon, Israel has, India and Pakistan are unstable, China is ready and Russia can not be trusted. Well, I'm describing a human precipice for annihilation. 

Women and ethnic differences are a mix of categories that has made the news and is related to prejudice and then violence. So the group that is mostly white in identity, has had privilege and standing above the others (women and ethnically different) believe that their standing may be in jeopardy because the other now is in equal competition for privilege, jobs, residence locations, educational benefits, etc. Am I describing the present Republican Party in the U.S.A.? Well, best stay on the top of the heap by voter suppression! Georgia's new voter suppression law is blatant Jim Crow and I have not read any pushback from the national Republican Party against it. Yeah and keep the filibuster going to prevent any legislation from passing that may help redress wrongs and benefit the other. Mitch McConnell declared mayhem in congress if the Democratic Senators attempt to curtail the filibuster. His declaration is no different from his past behaviors as Senate majority leader in the past. Well, let's think. If successful with voter suppression we no longer will have any semblance of democracy but instead more conflict (Heather Cox Richardson has a good historical take on the genesis of voter suppression history  https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/?tab=cm#inbox/FMfcgxwLtGntzkTHVcTKMKHxjSGfbMxM). We got all those weapons such a assault rifles and guns so more murder and mayhem. We don't need conspiracy theories such as Qanon to voice our prejudices against our opponents those Jews and do gooders who want to have sex with children (crazy huh!) we can just have the Republican Party perpetuate delusional propaganda. 

Octavia Butler is a science fiction author who has written Xenogenesis a three book saga. The start Dawn is on a spaceship in which humans are awakened from hibernation after being rescued from Earth. Humans had rained down on earth through an apocalyptic war of destruction such devastation that the earth was uninhabitable for centuries. The rescuers of humanity was alien species who were very intelligent, and interested in preserving the best qualities of the human and other earth life forms so the earth then could be repopulated but with alien human combined species. Humans were not to breed again due to hierarchical competition and violence which was part of their nature so they are viewed by the aliens as very dangerous. It took as hybrid human alien to convince the aliens to allow the humans for propagate and colonize Mars though the aliens had little hope the humans could succeed since they were so self destructive. The way the aliens decided on important issues was through consensus. They had the ability to communicate together so all facts were available to all, all prejudices were available to all, all criticism and reasoning for and against was available to all. Then there is a group decision. Which in this instance was to allow the humans to breed, colonize, and live unencumbered and without assistance from the aliens. The consensus was they would fail but that they deserved another chance. 

Dear Leonard I could leave this post as is but I'm an optimist. I do agree with myself that we are violent, often in error, selfish and uncaring about the other, irrational and quick to decide on sometimes violent solutions. Yet we can overcome these tendencies, care about each other, and allow differences to let us grow more inclusive. Maybe our disregard for mother earth leading to global warming and serious environmental problems can shake us into recognizing our need to change and humanize the savageness of our nature. Is there a way for us to communicate fully like our fictional aliens so we can have consensus rather than conflict, maybe compromise, and Machiavellian maneuvering, so that there are only winners and losers?

Leonard