April 13, 2025

The Case for Compassion

Let me be clear: I do not know how this will play out, or how long it will take. I do know it will be very painful. It will cost lives and hopes and shatter dreams and lead through much darkness.

But in the book of John, in the very first chapter, verse five recites the promise: "And the Light shone in the Darkness, and the Darkness could not encompass it."

Whether you are a believer or not, there is a profound truth to that promise: Where light exists, darkness is not complete.

In the morning of my life, I never questioned the light or the nature of the light. I took it for granted that the light would not only endure, but continue to grow.

Approaching the midday of my life, I saw the shadows beginning to gather, but I kept a reflexive, unexamined faith in the the light. I never questioned but that there would be a 'happy ending' that would banish the shadows.

But the shadows kept gathering. Thicker and faster, even as the light bore its victories. It was too late for some, but I lived to see gay people released from the very real threat of prisons and mental institutions. I lived to see them marry.

I lived to see a Black man become President of the United States.

I lived to see two women run for President of the United States.

I lived to see Native sovereignty claw a series of small victories from the ashes of lies and betrayal called "treaties".

I lived to see understanding grow that the lives of creatures other than human beings are vital, not just to our survival, but to our ability to thrive and evolve and live meaningfully.

But still the shadows gathered, deeper and greater, rolling up from the horizons of the human flaws we refused to address, the weaknesses too painful to acknowledge.

And my faith began to waver, for I had not examined it. I had simply accepted it: Of course, light would prevail, eventually. But as the darkness grew, and the poison tentacles of fear gathered in hundreds, and then thousands, and then hundreds of thousands, and then millions... the cold fingers of despair grasped my heart.

As the midday of my life passed, I saw fear and its servants, greed and cruelty, rise triumphant in the wake of xenophobia and denial.

I knew only one thing with certainty: I do not want to embrace the darkness. I do not want to give fear the victory over my own heart. I do not want to become indifferent to cruelty and inured to greed and emptiness. I do not want to die to hope and love and connection and kindness and the belief that I can be better, not worse, than I started out.

That was the beginning of my examination of faith. The unquestioning belief that somehow, some way, some external power will ultimately bring about the happy ending, was comforting while it lasted, because it was easy. I could just keep trying to be a good person myself, but leave the bigger stuff up to whatever's out there making sure right will triumph in the long run. But when millions of people are so overwhelmed by fear that they can no longer see humanity in anyone different than themselves, that easy belief is a frail straw.

What is asked of me? What does this faith demand?

I will never stop learning the answer. But first and most important, from a depth of human experience that transcends differences among us, forming a common thread through all kinds of philosophies, ethical codes, and belief systems: Love my neighbor.

Not just the neighbor with the rainbow flag, or the neighbor who turned out at the Capitol march last week. They are easy to love.

I have to find a way to love the neighbors overwhelmed by their fears, distorted by their hatreds, repulsive in their cruelties. I have to find a way to embrace those who take refuge in their indifference and buttress their denial with ignorance. The ones who feel so small inside that their only choice is to make others smaller.

I don't know how to do this, in the sense of action, yet. I know a few things about how not to do it, argument being the major one. That is so difficult for me because I am a champion arguer and debater with all the facts and the knowledge 'on my side'. It is very seductive to tell myself that it is an act of love to enlighten their ignorance and stupidity with the facts.

But as I enter the evening of my life experience tells me that such 'love' most often has the paradoxical effect of driving someone deeper into denial and ignorance. I'm not good at enlightening others, just good at 'winning' arguments in my own estimation for a temporary ego boost. (Full disclosure: I had to abandon my early attempts to become a teacher. It's not in me.)

What, then?

I will start with the intent. Intent is not action, but action that originates from intent may have greater effect. I will intend, not to change those in pain, but to find, and act from, compassion with them. I will not condone their cruelty but I will mourn for the fear and pain that makes them see cruelty as acceptable. I will intentionally look for their humanity even as they dehumanize others to protect themselves from the terror of differences.

Right now the only actions I can comprehend and find the will to undertake are the simple human ones of treating the scary people as human beings. Listening not to their hate but their pain. Looking for some common joy and sharing it, even if it is only a beautiful sunrise or the joy of a happy dog being walked.

The "me" from that midday of life scoffs at this, for such small things are... well... small. I always imagined myself doing big, heroic things.

But compassion is light, and I will try to carry it. Some in the shadows will flee from it, I know. But perhaps some will draw a bit closer.

And the darkness will NOT encompass it.

For what remains of my life, I will not lose this faith, I will keep examining it. I will seek out as many simple ways to intend and act compassion as I can. If an opportunity to do something larger arises, then I will be stronger to act on it, for all those small actions. And if not, I will leave the accounting to my child and grandchild, and hope that it has helped me reach "better than I where I started."

meditatively,
Bright

April 3, 2025

CALM DOWN!

It's just FINE with Comrade Putin if the American economy lands in the shitter for a couple of decades.

ALL IS WELL!

helpfully,
Bright

March 30, 2025

Let's Talk About America's Bifurcated History

One strand of this history is what I'll call "School History." Since Parson Weems in the post-Revolutionary era, this history seeks to imbue Americans with a sense of the uniqueness of this nation, pride in its accomplishments, and hope for its future. If you are not a history fan, this is probably the history you remember: The American Revolution. Possibly the Whiskey Rebellion. Maybe the War of 1812. Certainly the Civil War. The Westward Expansion. Industrialization. The Gilded Age and the early reformers and trust-busters. World War I. The Labor movement. The Depression. World War II. The Civil Rights struggle and the Cold War. Vietnam and Watergate.

Have I hit all the high spots you remember from your schooling? If you had good teachers, you probably also covered some of the more troubling aspects of American history, such as the genocide of the indigenous peoples and the post-Civil War failures of Reconstruction and the rise of Jim Crow in the South. But very likely those episodes were considered aberrant and the remedies, from the 19th Amendment enfranchising Native Americans to the Voting Rights Act and Loving V Virginia, evidence of American moral strength. The overall theme being, "Yes, mistakes were made, but one of America's greatnesses is to reconcile and transcend such mistakes and create new heights of wonderfulness."

School History is pretty, and it's not entirely mythological. There are a good many facts sprinkled in with the dates and slogans.

Then there's "Archival History" for want of a better term. This is the history that isn't based on textbooks written to appeal to the broadest ideological mean to sell the most units. It's the history that relies on primary sources: Public records. Newspapers, books, magazines. Advertisements and corporate reports. Correspondence and diaries. Interviews and transcripts.

Let me be clear about one thing: Archival History is just as subject to the bias and agendas of its compilers and reporters and analysts as School History is to the demands of textbook publishers and school boards. Shelby Foote's Civil War history is impeccably timelined and documented as to which regiments were where, when, how they moved and fought, who led them, etc., but his identification, conscious or otherwise, with the racist traitor losers of the Confederacy is unmistakable in his choices, narrative and commentary. Much depends on when a writer was writing - new information can peel back surfaces and expose whole new realms of causation, participation, and influence.

Archival History is not gospellike in any sense. It is not inerrant and what was received truth even as recently as ten years ago can be overturned - sometimes with a single discovery, but more often with the slow efforts of historians to investigate, locate new sources, verify existing sources, apply new analysis and connections, and expose previously-hidden or ignored facts. Someday, perhaps, the "drip genocide" of missing and murdered indigenous women will be regarded as one of the defining horrors of America's late 20th and early 21st Century, documented and investigated and analyzed and exposed on a scale we cannot imagine now.

To me, the biggest dissonance between School History and Archival History is the extent to which, in each, a single factor has appeared as the prime moving force of historical events. In School History, the ongoing quest to pursue the intangibles of "liberty" and "freedom" is the powerful engine that built a Constitutional Republic and slowly pushed the imperfectly realized vision of the Founders ever closer to full achievement. It is the best and noblest and most altruistic interpretation of America.

In Archival History, the most powerful engine is the flip side of that altruism: The drive to keep and concentrate power of all kinds - political, social, and economic - in the hands of those who believe themselves entitled to it, by virtue of race, class, and money. Every hard-won victory for have-nots, be it ethnic groups, labor, women, the urban poor, immigrants or the hardscrabble farmers, has been gained by a slow and contentious process of propaganda, organizing, political maneuvering, and all too often, violent conflict and tragic sacrifice.

The stories of School History are bright with moral clarity and simplistic cause and effect. The stories of Archival History are intricately layered with light and dark, moral ambiguity, flawed heroes and unintended consequences.

Orwell was dead on about history: "Who controls the past, controls the future: who controls the present, controls the past." His observations about how The Party maintained its unbreakable control included the passage, "Every record has been destroyed or falsified, every book rewritten, every picture has been repainted, every statue and street building has been renamed, every date has been altered. And the process is continuing day by day and minute by minute. History has stopped. Nothing exists except an endless present in which the Party is always right."

This is why it matters when tyrants sack libraries and burn books, when propaganda overwhelms information, and when a corrupt and venal regime, attempting the quintessentially American feat of concentrating power and wealth in the hands of those who believe themselves entitled to it by race, class, and money, requires our primary archive of historical experience to focus ONLY on what they define as "greatness."

They WILL fail.

And Archival History will have the last word, and it will not be kind.

prognosticatorially,
Bright

March 26, 2025

"It Ain't the Crime.... It's the Cover-up" (TygrBright takes it all back.)

Yesterday I said: "Oh, get real. What's going to happen about that security breach? NOTHING, that's what."

When I'm wrong, I'm wrong.

To be fair, this was when they were sticking to their "Nobody told ME" and "Mistakes Were Made" talking points, which provided a warm, gooey ambiguity for their right-wing press proxies to fling more mud into the water and escalate the confusion.

But when they're wrong.... uh... nope! NEVER HAPPENS!! They're literally NEVER WRONG!!

What, throwing classified info onto an unapproved public-facing app on a dozen or so unsecured cell phones owned by the HIGHEST LEVEL INTEL TARGETS IN OUR GOVERNMENT?

It didn't happen!

Sure, there was a Signal group chat. So what? None of that was classified!

NONE OF IT!!



ummm...

Mike Waltz is already preparing his metaphorical sword for falling on.

Shit's getting real interesing.

Do I think this will accomplish much?

MMmmmm... probably not a whole lot. But it'll rack up some damage points.

Proving once again the old Watergate take-away that "It's not the crime, it's the cover-up" remains an important lesson for those in power.

interestedly,
Bright

March 25, 2025

Oh, get real. What's going to happen about that security breach? NOTHING, that's what.

Bupkis.

Niente.

Zilch.

There will be a ton of hand-wringing and pearl-clutching in the national 'mainstream media'.

There will be a lot of earnest, scary analysis and warnings from people who know what they're talking about and know exactly how serious this is but have zero power to do anything about it.

Some Congressional Democrats will "demand hearings" which they will not get.

There will be massive tut-tuttery from the Democratic establishment.

There will be a bunch of yawns from the GOP.

And there will be no response at all from Putin's team in the White House, because THEY ARE DOING EXACTLY WHAT HE WANTS THEM TO DO, and that's all they care about.

And no one can stop them anymore.

realistically,
Bright

March 4, 2025

Lament for Leadership

Almost up to the firing of the first artillery round at Fort Sumter, most of the "leaders" of the United States- politicians, newspaper publishers, business solons and even many mainstream church leaders- abrogated the moral imperative to dismiss the stain of human bondage from America's proud flag in pursuit of a futile effort to 'save the Union' through compromise with and appeasement of the slave states. While the belief that peacefully maintaining the Union was a nobler cause than ending slavery doubtless provided some comfort to their own deep-engrained but unacknowledged racism (read up on it, I dare you: "We don't want them slaves but we certainly don't want them here, slave or free," many Northerners freely acknowledged), none of these 'leaders' were capable of seeing beyond the immediate crisis they were trying so desperately to avert.

None of them, making soothingly rational arguments about negotiation and accommodation preserving peace and brotherhood among the states, could see the stark truth that a peace to preserve the ability of tyrants to continue their oppression unmolested, is no peace. None of them could see that rational arguments about the economic consequences of war and the horrors of bloodshed, merely cloaked the desire to continue their own comfortable existence without having to attend to the vast bleeding wounds of slavery.

These leaders, many of them old enough to have heard the first-hand tales from grandparents of the sacrifices to bring America into existence, some old enough to have fought themselves for America's survival in 1812, had decades of staring into the abyss of dissociation between the ideals of America's Declaration of Independence and the shameful Constitutional compromises that seemed necessary to create a Union to secure that Independence. It was the way things were.

Industrialization, expansion westward, and the booming economy fueled by waves of (mostly European) immigration that supplied low-cost labor to the North, created an insulating barrier of prosperity guarded by the conservative interests of banks and the growing power of Wall Street and other financial traders. At all costs, these leaders believed, it was necessary to preserve the fabric of trade, the structure of law and order as it stood.

And so, standing at the crossroads of history, they blocked effort after effort by those who clearly saw the inevitability entailed in the intransigence of the Southern holders of vast human "assets" to bring the 'peculiar institution' to an end and reorder the nation's future without the horrors of the block and the whip, the coffle and the manacles. They sold the nation's heritage of "Liberty and Justice for all" for a mess of cotton-trade pottage and their own continuance at the levers of power. Many, even most of them, honestly believed they were doing what was right for the nation and its future.

And so the beast slouched closer, and closer.

It was the younger people, a generation with less investment in the inertia of 'how things are', feeling stifled and cramped in the ever-narrowing pale created by the preservation of slavery, who stamped restlessly through the streets in the parades of the "Wide Awakes", supporting the stated anti-slavery agenda of the newborn Republican Party. It was the younger people who formed dozens of Northern militias, when the War Department had fewer than a hundred employees and most of America's standing peacetime Army (less than 20,000 all told) was deployed at western frontier forts.

How close! How close those leaders came, with their Crittendon Compromises and their seven-point Constitutional Amendments to enshrine slavery irrevocably in the fabric of America, to creating an ever-more-oppressive domestic tyranny on behalf of the slaveholders. How hard they worked, with their Old Gentlemens Convention, to keep America in the sewers of moral and economic degradation, all in the interests of moderation, cooler heads, experience, negotiation, gradualism and compromise.

Now we stand at another crossroads of history. A demented tyrant has sold our nation to a brutal adversary. His minions have been set free to loot and destroy America for their personal enrichment to further Putin's agenda of destroying the liberal West. Each day brings new victories for Russia and humiliations for this once-proud nation's ideals of freedom and equality.

And what, I ask, are our 'leaders' doing? Here in New Mexico we know better than most the price of fighting a Cold War against Russia. Are my Congressional delegation committed to standing up and shouting "NO!" to our domestic tyrant and his Russian master and his traitorous minions? Will they take a stand, and cease to give any countenance to the feeble chaotic machinations of a legislative body eviscerated by treason and supine indecision? Or will they tacitly assent to Putin's victory, and facilitate the subjection of free Americans under the name of domestic order and a feeble attempt to preserve peace and normalcy?

Then we need younger leaders. We need the clear-eyed vigor of America's next generation and their commitment to preserve the freedom of their children and our grandchildren. The leaders who sit in Washington telling themselves soothing fables about how such domestic storms have been weathered in the past, how disunity is always overcome by time and experience and prosperity preserved, need to stand aside or, at the last resort, be pushed aside.

Stand up! Let the tyrant speak to a half-empty chamber. Give him no countenance, no toleration, no latitude. No pious fictions about 'decorum' and 'tradition'. Rise and lead!

I would have that chamber half-empty. Or have half of the chamber draped in the blue and gold of those fighting the Russian tyrant for their own freedom, the allies we have shamefully betrayed and deserted to serve the purses of our own traitors and the triumph of our age-old foreign adversary. You stand at the crossroads of history, and history will record whether your names will be listed with Buchanan and Crittendon and Jefferson Davis, or with John Brown and Abraham Lincoln and Ulysses S. Grant. Rise and lead!

passionately,
Bright

March 1, 2025

I got an email from the Social Security Administration today.

The subject line was "Help Us Slam the Scam" and the email body identified several techniques scammers use such as:

• An unexpected problem or offer of a prize or benefit increase,


• Pressure to act immediately, and


• A request for an unusual payment like cryptocurrency, gift cards, gold bars, and wire transfers, even with the promise of keeping your money “safe."

The email went on to urge me to educate myself about Social Security scams, and share their "Scam Alert" newsletter link.

Although I know this email came from an unattended internal auto-generator, I could not resist clicking the "Reply" button and typing the following:

"THE CALL IS COMING FROM INSIDE THE BUILDING"

And sending it back to them. I hope some AI gets a momentary hiccup trying to process that one.

wryly,
Bright

February 27, 2025

A Parable of Cookies

This parable starts in the Room With The Table Where Important Things Happen (the Room). There are some guys in the Room, standing at the sideboard to collect their cookies.

Before they can take their cookies, though, there's a loud noise at the door.

It's a bunch of women, trying to get into the Room. "Let us in! We should be at the Table Where Important Things Happen, too!" they holler.

The guys glance at each other, bump fists in solidarity, and rush for the door. Working together, they successfully shut it and bar it against those uppity women.

Filled with a glow of accomplishment, they take their seats at the Table Where Important Things Happen, and their cookies are brought to them.

Guy A, who is white and well-educated (I don't need to tell you that ALL the guys are cis-hetero, do I?) gets sixteen cookies.

Guy B, who is also white, gets six cookies.

Guy C, who is brown, gets two cookies.

They tell a few dirty jokes about the stupid women, and then Guy A leans over to whisper in B's ear: "That brown guy wants your cookies!"

C is, indeed, staring in frustration at the two cookies on his plate, and then glancing resentfully at the other plates.

B glowers in suspicion, but before anything can happen, the guy from the sideboard comes over wearing a t-shirt that says "Government".

"Guys", Government says, "What we need to do is build a bakery so everyone has more cookies."

The other three guys nod in agreement.

"Okay," Government says,"Each of you give me some of your cookies and I'll use them to get the bakery built and bring you guys more cookies."

So he takes five cookies from Guy A, and two cookies from Guy B, and one cookie from Guy C.

"I've got eight cookies now, to do this bakery thing. You, Sir" Government points to Guy A "Take these four cookies and build the bakery building. Be sure to put in vents for the ovens. I'll go give the other four cookies to the farmers supplying the ingredients and the workers doing the baking." And he vanishes.

A nods, takes the cookies, gets out his cell phone and gives a few orders to his henchfolk.

Guy A now has fifteen cookies.

Guy B now has four cookies.

Guy C now has one cookie.

The guys sit there a while, and then A leans over again and whispers to B "The brown guy's down to 1 cookie - I bet the terrorists are going to try and recruit him to have a revolution and take your cookies."

C is looking very unhappy, and B is looking even more suspicious, when Government returns, to save the day.

"Guys, the bakery just produced its first batch!" and Government doles out more cookies: Seven to Guy A, three to guy B, and one to guy C.

Guy A now has twenty-two cookies.

Guy B now has seven cookies.

Guy C now has two cookies (again.)

A frowns, looking at the others' plates.

Then he leans over to whisper to B again. "That's not fair! Government just DOUBLED the brown guy's cookies! Did we get OUR cookies doubled?"

B does a quick count to verify and shakes his head. Although he'd been looking happy before to go from six cookies to seven, now he's looking angry again.

A tells B "If you give some cookies to me so I can run for office, I'll be Government and I'll make sure that your cookies get doubled. And I'll do it by getting rid of that brown guy - he's nothing but a troublemaker, anyway. We'll dump him out there with the women."

So B gives A five of his cookies, leaving him with two.

A runs for office, becomes Government, and has his goons hustle the brown guy out of the Room With the Table Where Important Things Happen. He takes C's cookies and gives them to B, doubling B's remaining cookies from two to four.

"See? I'm not like that asshole Government we used to have! I doubled your cookies!" A says proudly.

"No one could have done it but ME!"

parabolically,
Bright

February 18, 2025

Where is the counter-narrative? WAKE UP, Congressional Democrats and DNC!

We know WHAT they want to do: First, facilitate a smash-and-grab raid on the U.S. Treasury; second, take a wrecking ball to the U.S. government, destroying its capacity to function in both foreign relations and domestic administration.

We know WHY they are doing it: To get all the money, and satisfy the foreign tyrants whose assistance got them into power.

Now we are seeing HOW (and they're not exactly making any secret of it): They're controlling the narrative by flooding all the channels of communication with chaos and AI-generated 'support', and releasing an endless series of outrageous statements and appalling actions in a Gish gallop of distraction.

Imagine how impossible it is for those who pay little attention to politics to understand what's going on in the blizzard of clickbait, 'to quoque!', red meat to the base, crazy-ass shitposting, and constant noise?

The most effective weapon against them is a consistent, fact-based, carefully-curated stream of counter-narrative, delivered by an authoritative source.

The key words in the previous statement are:

"Consistent" - frequently- maybe even daily, at first.

"Fact-based" - relying on verifiable evidence from multiple sources - documentary evidence of high quality and/or multiple reputable sources willing to go on-record to confirm facts.

"Carefully-curated" - curated to highlight only a couple of items at each briefing, pulling the most important from the stream, selected and framed by experts who understand how to communicate critical issues to maximize impact.

"Authoritative source" - The most authoritative source is a large, public group with positional impact and critical 'skin in the game' and clearly visible, understandable bias.

What this adds up to is the equivalent of an "Opposition Press Office" in a Parliamentary democracy. (It often includes a "shadow government" of individuals with particular 'portfolios' of expertise and issues as well, but that's another post.)

So, a well-funded operation that provides frequent official briefings of sufficient importance for mainstream media to attend. You need:

• People gathering information


• Fact-checkers and source-documentation staff.


• The equivalent of an editorial staff to make the selections about what to feature and how.


• Writers, framers, videographers, photographers, etc. to assemble compelling presentations.

And you need a "FACE" - the shadow Press Secretary, as it were. This must be someone with a supernatural ability to think on their feet, someone who can frame, respond, re-frame on the fly and make the kind of impact desired.

It's not cheap to do this.

On the other hand, it's not gonna be cheap to rebuild the government from a smoking heap of ruins in a post-apocalyptic landscape of poverty, despair, and decay, either.

The Democratic Party, and Congressional Democrats of both houses, need to step up.

NOW.

Have the guts to take the flak for not being able to respond effectively to everything, all at once. Have the thick skin to persist through the second-guessers and armchair editors who know you could have made better choices or better framings. Deal quietly on the side with the howls of pain and wrath about how you're ignoring so many things that are really important to so many people.

Keep your heads down, and just do it, and keep doing it. Eventually this clear, fact-based counter-narrative, delivered with welcoming panache to a media increasingly unnerved and threatened by the tyrants on Pennsylvania Avenue, will have an effect.

I hope to hell someone with connections forwards this or links this or somehow or other it gets to the right eyes. Because I truly think it's our most powerful tool, and the need is more than critical.

hopefully,
Bright

February 11, 2025

The Nerd Reich is Gaming Comments

Please be aware:

In a lame attempt to portray support for the fascist agenda, one of the Nerd Reich's first priorities has been to set up an enormous AI-controlled botnet to game the "comments" sections of news, discussion, and social media sites.

See it in action:

Go to YouTube or any other non-moderated (or loosely-moderated, or AI-moderated) discussion site, and post something factual and critical of the Reich's actions OR supportive of humane, compassionate, liberal ideas.

Come back a surprisingly short time later, and see the vast array of apparently-customized (that is, referencing the content or nature of your post) comments vituperating, calumnating, applauding the horror your post expressed outrage at, applauding the Reich and dehumanizing any opposition.

At first, they look 'genuine' - while similar, the wording and even the phrasing varies and an array of focus points will be used, rarely the same two comments in a row. The bots even "like" and respond (amplify) each others' comments. This is a quantum leap ahead of the crude botnets of the 'teens.

The objectives are to a) Make it appear as though their actions are widely supported by ordinary netizens; b) Crowd out any actual discussion or commenting by real people (especially those opposed to the cruelty and dehumanizing agenda they are pursuing); and c) Intimidate, vilify and even terrorize their opposition.

Ideally, they want to shut off discussion altogether. Sites that will not switch to a rigorous bot-detection/exclusion moderation model (or, ideally, human moderation buttressed by such tools) will be encouraged to shut down "comments" functions, leaving fewer and fewer areas of public commons on the internet where thoughtful discussion can take place.

With luck, some of the "good guys" on the 'net will shortly create and maintain lists of sites that have bot-resistant discussion and comment sections available, and we can use those in preference to the fetid swamps of YouTube, etc.

And there's always DU, of course! Share it with your friends. And throw a little extra in the tip jar (buy a few more hearts) so that our Admins can keep the bots at bay with the latest defense technology.

informatively,
Bright