Metaverse – So much Worse?

?

 This blog is about human nature, the changing cognitive process with evolving interactive social technology and whether the Metaverse, at least as currently contemplated, will replace most forms of online personal interaction. We see businesses opening online stores, law firms having online offices, entertainment venues offering unique content and travel companies offering virtual travel around the world. You can visit your friends (the coffee isn’t so great), attend classes, play games, and go for a stroll in the park, even if surrounded by lion and crocodile. What’s not to like or anticipate in this anything goes universe? 

If the barrier is the cost of accessing this world, mostly in the form of hi-tech goggles able to sense the user’s movement, folks (particularly the younger demographics) already spend fortunes on social interconnectivity, content and, most of all, very pricey smartphones. There are payment plans, which drain you slowly and demand increases for “necessary” upgraded. Will surging inflation and the potential of a recession temper these “buy” and “subscribe” decisions? Are economically impaired families gentrified out of participating? Are younger demographics willing to trust in Mark Zuckerberg’s vision of the future? Will this explode? And if it does explode, does it grow or fade? Is it easier to accept during pandemic?

The first inquiry must focus on the obvious early adopters, usually teenagers. The trends on mental processing from living in an overconnected world are well documented. Based on numerous studies, the American Psychological Association tells us: “Over-usage of technology harms the brain systems connecting emotional processing, attention and decision-making. Another study links anxiety, severe depression, suicide attempts and suicide with the rise in use of smartphones, tablets and other devices.

“Fear of Missing Out (FOMO) is defined by The New York Times as ‘the blend of anxiety, inadequacy and irritation that can flare up while skimming social media’. Social media is blasted with pictures and posts of scrumptious dinners, raging parties and enviable travel check-ins.” V. Mohamad Ashrof, Impact of Social Media on Our Attention Span and its Drastic Aftermath published in CounterCurrents.org, December 4th. In short, social media is addictive and part of a sense of belonging. 

But social media also allows abusive behavior, outspoken anonymity that has now gravitated into the world of “acceptable” in real life. One only has to look at the evolution of real-world political confrontation and highly opinionated and often vituperative and horrifically incorrect mass or niched media. “The ability to see how our actions impact others every day is essential to a healthy society. In 2010, a University of Michigan study found college students were 40% less empathetic than they were in the late 70s and early 80s, and that students were less likely to endorse statements like ‘I often have tender, concerned feelings for people less fortunate than me,’ or ‘I sometimes try to understand my friends better by imagining how things look from their perspective.’ As narcissism increases empathy levels fall.” Ashrof.

Additionally, the increased proclivity of younger demographics, bombarded with information, to be forced into a multitasking universe – understanding that multitasking is not doing several focused activities at the same time but, instead, it is rapid focus-shifting – is the product of a universe of constant interruptions and demand. The world that defines life today, one that has impacted the young their entire lives. The result: difficulty in pursuing in-depth complex tasks and a severe decline in emotional intelligence that requires time to feel. “People with a short attention span may encounter problems for any length of time without being easily distracted… A lesser attention span can have several negative effects, including:

• Poor performance at work or school

• Missing significant details or information

• Communication difficulties in relationships

• Data wouldn’t emerge as knowledge, as the data is being bombarded haphazardly.

• Empathy and the kindness it sparks are essential human traits. Decrease in attention span decreases empathy.

• Big picture is lost, and easily carried out by propaganda.” Asrof.

The target demographics for introducing the world to the Metaverse are precisely the young people who fit into the above categories. How do you ignore the world outside the Metaverse, always beckoning, when you have drifted into that alternative reality? How do you multitask? As one dons the goggles, one steps into a world where the only distractions and interruptions are in that world. Not from smartphones. Not from real world expectancies and demands. Death and injury are not real. Poverty is irrelevant (if you can afford to be in the Metaverse). You are a captive of Mr. Zuckerberg’s vision. How’s that notion doing with that most relevant Z Generation and younger?

In a survey conducted between February 16 and March 22nd that polled teens from 44 states, with an average age of 16.2 years, the results confirm that the Metaverse does not seem to be gaining the traction some social media gurus predicted: “If the metaverse is the next generation of digital life, it will have to sell itself to the next generation of digital kids. But according to a survey of the Gen Z cohort, many teenagers are skeptical over the idea of a vaguely defined online world, despite the hordes of young people on game platforms like Roblox, Minecraft, and Fortnite.

“Half of the 7,100 teens surveyed in financial firm Piper Sandler’s biannual Gen Z research project said they were unsure, or had zero intention, of purchasing a device to access the metaverse, such as a virtual-reality headset. Meanwhile, just 9% said they were interested to the point of making a purchase, and 26% said they already own a device. Of that 26%, only 5% entered the metaverse daily, and 82% less than a few times per month.

“While those figures might seem to trample ambitions for a sprawling network of cool kids and influencers, companies still appear hopeful, with metaverse-like gaming platforms offering up a steady stream of festivals and concerts with popular musicians like Lil Nas X, BTS, and Ariana Grande. (In fact, those events have smashed records, drawing tens of millions of viewers.) Meta launched Horizon Worlds in December, the first experiment in its stated quest to dominate the future of VR. And others are targeting an even younger crowd, with Fortnite creator Epic Games recently raising $2 billion to build a kid-friendly metaverse in collaboration with the Lego Group.

“Horizon Worlds, however, may have a tougher time luring today’s teens to its 18-and-older platform. According to analytics firm Morning Consult, less than 50% of Gen Z is interested in the Facebook parent’s main metaverse or its business-meetings offshoot Horizon Workrooms.” FastCompany.com, April 11th. Millennials and X-Gen? Forgetagboutit! And as teens fears about the war in Ukraine and climate change rise, the lure of the Metaverse is even less.

I’m Peter Dekom, and just because a new social media technology is new and cool, one that clearly does not care so much about working-aged adults, does not mean it will soon dominate society.

Has the Uncivil War Begun

I’ve asked the question whether the United States is a representative democracy – see my recent Democracy, Anocracy or Plutocracy? blog – and empirically determined that we are not. Our system of government, particularly as applied in the modern era, places us somewhere between an anocracy (a hybrid between autocracy and democracy) and a plutocracy (rule by the privileged class). A twice impeached populist president has nonetheless appointed new justices to the US Supreme Court, creating a radical right-wing, activist majority hellbent on reversing well over half a century of civil and individual rights legislation and precedents.

With the exception of slavery – which would have died anyway in a mechanized world – the bulk of issues separating the Union from the Confederacy still define a significant part of the red/blue divide today. Add to this toxic mix the rise of the “me, me, me and only me” fast-track monied American aristocracy with more wealth, even corrected for inflation, than we have ever experienced before. The new celebrities. We are on the verge of generating the first trillionaire on earth. Money and guns talk, science and educated classes are disparaged, and extreme minority religious views are now shoved down the throats of all Americans. The Supreme Court has played an instrumental role in this destruction of true “equality-based” majority rule.

The trend? Recent decisions statistically favor white Christians over other classes. 81% of cases with material religious issues now favor exclusionary or discriminatory practices of minorities with extreme right-wing Christian views. The rural value of gun ownership seems to trump the rising death and destruction from the barely controlled proliferation of firearms, recently resulting in what the NRA says it at least 15 million semiautomatic assault weapons in civilian hands.

The Court began this recent downward trend towards reversal – effectively turning into an unappealable, unchallengeable, highly partisan legislature – before the Trump era. It started with the dramatically flawed 2008 Antonin Scalia opinion in Heller vs DC: the first Supreme Court ruling, ignoring the “well regulated militia” language and erroneously citing British law in the late 18th century, to declare ubiquitous gun ownership a fundamental American right. Since this ruling, gun violence in the United States has exploded, with mass shootings (almost 150 so far this year alone) redefining the modern era here.

In 2010, the Court ruled (in Citizens United vs FEC) that business and comparable structures had the same First Amendment rights as individuals to communicate via uncapped political contributions for candidates and causes they embraced. This decision resulted in a vastly more right-wing explosion of political cash, further resulting in the election of new kind of populist, right-wing candidate: the “we will never compromise” right-wing, often conspiracy theory-driven Republican in search of that biased cash. Traditional conservatives were literally driven out of the party (hence the marginalized “Lincoln Project”). Tax cuts and probusiness legislation proliferated across the country. Companies in disagreement with right-wing polices were now punished.

The 2013 Shelby County vs Holder decision literally repealed the salient provisions of Voting Rights Act of 1965 (most recently amended and reaffirmed in 2008), and those states once forbidden from imposing voting restrictions were now unleashed. Bolstered by the disproven mythology that the 2020 election was completely fraudulent (note that the Republicans elected on the same ballot they deem fraudulent are not giving up their elected offices), every state once directly governed by that voting statute (and virtually every other red state) immediately enacted the very voter suppression laws that the Voting Rights Act was intended to prevent or reverse.

In December, the Gorsuch Court – as my April 20th Accountability, Responsibility and the End of the Robert’s Supreme Court blog points out, Chief Justice John Roberts no longer truly helmed the Court once Amy Coney-Barrett joined – sustained most of those voting restrictions and refused to halt a de facto rejection of Roe vs Wade (1973), by a new Mississippi statute, in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization. Interpreted widely that Roe would either be reversed completely or severely limited, those red states that had not already limited or banned abortions enacted laws to reverse the law as applied under Roe.

In January, the Supreme Court (in Biden vs Missouri) chipped away at the federal government’s ability to contain COVID; it issued a stay of the OSHA vaccine-or-test requirement on private businesses of 100 or more workers, dealing a setback to the Biden administration's effort to control the COVID pandemic. However, the Court did allow Biden to require healthcare workers and those working for the federal government to be tested or vaccinated, with right-wing Justices Samuel Alito, Clarence Thomas, Neil Gorsuch and Amy Coney Barrett dissenting. Trump appointees were obviously against reasonable controls, even as necessary to contain COVID.

For example, in April, Trump-appointed Florida U.S. District Judge Kathryn Kimball Mizelle, describing the CDC’s mandate simply to ensure that public spaces are “sanitized” in Health Freedom Defense Fund, Inc., et al., v. Biden, et al., scrapped the CDC mask mandate from most public transportation. A surge in the Omicron variant, already under way, immediately accelerated. That decision is under appeal, but if affirmed, it would cripple the CDC’s current and future ability to deal with pandemics.

Additional battlelines were being drawn as fighting a red state “culture war,” limiting public school classroom to teach and public library rights or hold books which discussed “critical race theory” (including gender differences). Texas and Florida became leaders in passing statutes to ban these practices and create the right of private citizens to sue schools and teachers to enforce these bans. Such prohibitions now proliferate in red states. The Confederacy was still honored, including by Mississippi’s official one month celebration of that defeated, pro-slavery movement. Florida also got into high gear, after Disney opposed the state’s anti-CRT legislation, by stripping the Mouse House of their preferred-controlled status over the land in and around their Orlando Disney World theme park.

Not to be outdone, in April, Texas Governor Greg Abbott demanded that financial firms doing business in his state disclose their climate polices. Presiding over a major oil and gas producing state, Abbott has consistently opposed measures to reduce fossil fuel usage (which Abbott has called an illegal “boycott” of Texas firms). Abbott’s State Comptroller, Glenn Hegar, formally sent that demand to more than 140 financial firms, with a rather unambiguous underlying threat that maintaining such policies may well result in severe restrictions for such firms to do business in Texas. “The mounting pressure in Texas reflects a broader effort by Republicans nationwide to scrutinize companies that back policies championed by many Democrats, such as reducing carbon emissions, securing abortion rights or supporting LGBTQ teaching in schools.

“Republicans in states including West Virginia and Kansas have introduced legislation similar to that in Texas, which bans government agencies from investing with firms seen as cutting ties with the energy industry… ‘What it means practically is Texas doesn’t want to do business from a policy standpoint with those companies,’ Hegar told Bloomberg…” Bloomberg/AP, April 27th.

In the end, there are two Americas separated by irreconcilable differences, and even as younger demographics have profoundly different values, the polarization engendered by contemporary politics is only growing wider. Will the younger generation rise fast enough bring this country together… or are we inevitably becoming, as my, April 25th blog called it, The Separated States of America?

I’m Peter Dekom, and as any student of history who has drilled into the rise of dictatorships knows, what we never thought could happen here… is happening here.

Wanna Buy a House? Good Luck with That

 

U.S. Census Bureau and U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, Median Sales Price of 

Houses Sold for the United States [MSPUS], retrieved from FRED, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis

Soaring home prices have defied even inflation, rents hot behind. To look at the numbers, we need to know what the words mean. According to Statista.com, “The Housing Affordability Index [HAI] uses data provided by the National Association of Realtors (NAR). It measures whether or not a family earning the national median income is able to afford the monthly mortgage payments on a median-priced existing single-family home. An index value of 100 means that a family has exactly enough income to qualify for a mortgage on a home.”  The NAR no longer uses a fixed rate metric, which generally results in a higher interest rate, choosing an adjustable rate instead, and assumes a 20% down-payment.

The HAI in January hovered around 148, a highly exclusionary number on its own. But the NAR indicated it would not publish the HAI expected in May. Why? Average US interest rates, based on current inflationary trends, roughly doubled in a day. From 2.67% to 5.08%, and the HAI will be increased by a staggering number as a result. Even before the rate hike, American home ownership was becoming elusive for those first-time buyers. “Not only did the usual expensive metro areas like Los Angeles and New York rate as unaffordable, but so did many regions many of us think of as far more accessible, like Detroit and Cleveland. In fact in a full three quarters of the country, home ownership was out of reach for the average worker.” Inc.com. 

After the above mortgage rate hike, those numbers are just getting so much worse. “Here's a not-so-fun fact: The monthly mortgage payment it takes to buy the typical home in the U.S. is now up by a staggering 55% compared with the start of last year.” NPR, April 8th. In short, if you do not already own a home and have an established interest rate, only cash buyers, higher income Americans or those with substantial existing equity are going to be able to buy a new single-family home.

The American post WWII dream of home ownership, already significantly diminished, is fading even faster. But even as we seem to be transitioning into a nation of renters, we are watching rent-as-a-percentage of income skyrocket in major metropolitan areas from a prudent but pricey 30% to 50% or more. Rentals are rising across the land by 10% or much, much more. Housing affordability is one of the top political issues facing mid-term candidates. Inflationary pressures, particularly fossil fuel costs due to Putin’s war and those companies ready to take advantage of the upwards costs, are a political hot potato in search of a solution. 

There is a housing shortage, partially reflected in the exponential rise in homelessness, that is distorting the marketplace so fiercely. Today, we not only have the endemic homelessness of those with addiction or mental health issues but hordes of new individuals who simply cannot afford to rent a home, a tragic reality compounded by the significant dearth of viable rental housing aimed at the lower income renters.

Indeed, there is a crossing between the dearth of rentals and mega-billion-dollar corporations, some now owning thousands of homes. These companies buy available houses, often sight unseen, for cash with a very short (or no) escrow or preconditions, invest an average of $15,000-$25,000 and flip them into the rising rental marketplace. The ease of the sale, the instant full-price-or-higher cash price, is exceptionally attractive to many sellers. 

Buyers get squeezed out fast, some writing personal letters to the sellers to convince them not to take that cash offer, and what once was an “owned” home moves into the rental category. Some maintain that these written pleas, usually based on writing skills and shared values, are secretly perpetuating racism in the housing market, already plagued with the historical neighborhoods created by redlining, a bank practice that effectively created neighborhoods where racial and ethnical minorities were de facto excluded.

There just isn’t enough affordable housing. The April 11th Motley Fool notes: “The National Low Income Housing Coalition (NLIHC), a not-for-profit organization focused on advocating for affordable housing, found in its 2021 GAP report [measuring available housing at varying levels of income] that for every 100 extremely low-income renter households, which are those who earn 30% or less than the median income for the area, there were only 37 available homes for rent in 2019. Those earning 50% or less of the median income had 60 homes for every 100 households… Today's affordable housing crisis goes a lot further than housing the nation's poorest families. The number of those who can no longer afford to buy or rent without majorly exceeding the recommended income threshold of 30% is rising due to the movement of the markets over the last two years…

“Homes that were once considered affordable as related to the median income for the area have increased pricing to match market rents, further reducing the supply of affordable homes. The cost of rent jumped 10.1% from 2020 to 2021, with some markets seeing rent prices climb in the 20% to 40% range year over year.” With the above mortgage rate hike, which is factored into rental pricing, bad will soon be impossibly horrible. 

It takes time to build new housing, supply chain disruptions and higher labor costs have pushed the cost of building materials literally through the roof, and appropriate land is hard to come by. States like California, where high housing costs are normal, have passed statewide enabling statutes, trumping local zoning laws, to build small rental units on existing homesites. Resistance has been fierce. In warm-climate Los Angeles, the upcoming mayoral election will probably rise and fall on the homelessness crisis. 

Other efforts to reduce build costs and speed up the process involve the new use of large-scale 3D printing (concrete extrusion walls versus wood), with one home just completed in a Richmond, Virginia suburb. This massive transition, the increasing exclusion of average Americans from affordable home ownership creating a nation of renters, is more than economic displacement. People with less of a stake in a home are vastly different political animals than those who own their homes.

I’m Peter Dekom, and the polarization issues facing America will only grow worse in the schism between the haves (homeowners) and the have-nots (those who are forced to rent). 

Democracy, Anocracy or Plutocracy?

  

Democracy is a form of government in which the people have the authority to deliberate and decide legislation ("direct democracy"), or to choose governing officials to do so ("representative democracy").

Anocracy or semidemocracy is a form of government that is loosely defined as part democracy and part dictatorship, or as a "regime that mixes democratic with autocratic features." Another definition classifies anocracy as "a regime that permits some means of participation through opposition group behavior but that has incomplete development of mechanisms to redress grievances."

Plutarchy is a society that is ruled or controlled by people of great wealth or income. 

Wikipedia.

What is the political form that defines the United States as it is today? Most Americans would still rely on the assumption that we are a democracy, more specifically a representative democracy. But that description has never been accurate. Under a pure representative democracy, all citizens would have equal protection under the law and have equal voting power. Yet, not only are we moving farther away from these standards as gerrymandering and voter exclusion/marginalization/suppression become a revised new normal, but our system of federal elections for example, has elected five US Presidents (recently George W Bush and Donald J Trump) who lost the popular vote. 

On top of that, the powerful US Senate, where those elected serve six-year terms, allocates two Senators from each state regardless of population. Wyoming, with under 600 thousand residents, has the same two-Senator representation as does California, with 40 million. When you combine the above political distortions, a resident of a rural-dominated state, with a small population, has almost double the voting power of an urban-dominated state with a vastly greater population. Thus, 30% of the United States elects 50% of our Senate. It’s little wonder that this rural values skew, not reflective of majority opinions, elevates religious issues, gun ownership and even outdated cultural prerogatives as dominating political vectors.

The predominant view of our democratic allies – mirrored in the UK’s prestigious journal, The Economist’s view of the United States as a “flawed democracy” (literally a “hybrid regime”) that is not a truly representative – is that the United States is not a true democracy. That “hybrid” description, amplified by the January 6, 2021, Capitol insurrection, steers this view in the direction of “anocracy,” a word recently added to the global vocabulary to reflect a growing movement of elected autocrats or de facto autocrats. Indeed, in 2022, the United States, which was already slipping year-to-year, fell to 19th measured by Freedom House’s annual Human Freedom Index.

But we have also moved farther to an exclusionary form of governance by giving the rich vastly greater pollical clout (individuals and business entities now imbued with “individual rights”) under a 2010 Supreme Court ruling, Citizens United vs FEC, which legitimized uncapped contributions in support of candidates and political issues that would be crimes in many other democracies. Effectively, rich and highly biased contributors would flash their extensive wealth at an extreme position via a dedicated SuperPac campaign, and early-stage candidates, who in pre-2010 were never been able to raise much funding in their nascent political careers, would eagerly embrace that extremist view to turn that campaign spigot in their direction: A mega-contributor to our heavily polarized nation and our gridlocked, no-more-compromises, Congress.

Fundamentally, even our system of taxation places those with asset-based wealth at a huge material advantage over those who earn a living. Except at pivotal transitions (asset sale or testamentary transfer, for example) and real estate-based property tax, we do not tax wealth. We tax income. Hence, many billionaires face lower tax rates than the lowest wage-earners in their business operations. The federal tax code is so slanted in favor of asset wealth that over 50 of our most successful corporations pay no tax at all. The rich can borrow against their wealth and deduct the interest, roll over that debt every few years, and live very well without paying taxes on those cash infusions.

Recent case in point, from a man who is likely to become the world’s first trillionaire: Elon Musk’s successful flirtation with acquiring Twitter, which effectively allowed the activist investor to overcome that company’s poison pill and assure that his voice will always be widely heard without fear of being removed from that platform. He did it without having to create a taxable transaction by selling Tesla stock. Instead, according to the April 22nd LA Times/AP, he set up $46.5 billion credit base (from which he could borrow – the final price: $44B) from Morgan Stanley and other banks, partly secured by his Tesla stake (and other equity assets), to implement that takeover. Musk used his wealth to pay for his whim to wield more power while, once again, sidestepping the tax man. With Citizen’s United supporting rich corporate speech, Twitter finally succumbed to “cold hard cash” to become a rich man’s mouthpiece disguised as “free speech.” Taxpayers were screwed again.

We have greater income inequality in the United States than ever before. Our political system gives those with money the campaign power to keep laws that favor not taxing wealth while taxing earnings. Guess who wins there? The pandemic allowed big companies to cut staffing that would never been possible during normal times, replace workers with artificial intelligence-driven automation, which, along with the 2017 corporate tax cut (creating a massive deficit that impacts all Americans), exploded their values. 

As reported by the April 22nd Associated Press and Bloomberg, the Brookings Institution’s recent release of survey information showed “Shareholder gains have outpaced those of workers by 50 to 1 during the pandemic, researchers say… Investors in 22 companies gained $1.5 trillion during the pandemic. Workers gained $27 billion… 

“The report — which focused on 22 industry leaders, including Amazon.com Inc. and McDonald’s Corp. — found that stockholders added some $1.5 trillion in wealth from January 2020 to October 2021. The companies spent about $27 billion on additional pay and bonuses, and five times that amount on dividends and stock buybacks, the Washington think tank said.” The tight job market and the widened income gap between workers and owners/most senior managers are the biggest impetus to increasing efforts to unionize the American labor force, as the notable success at a growing number of Starbucks and Amazon facilities does attest.

So, what is the answer to “What is the political form that defines the United States as it is today?” It hovers well within the definitions of an anocracy and a plutocracy. It clearly is not, however, a representative democracy under any meaningful analysis, moving farther away from that definition every day.

I’m Peter Dekom, and America is no longer the land of opportunity and upward mobility; it has become instead the land of opportunists. 

 

The Art of Promoting a Distorted View of Reality, Polite for Lying

 

           1946 Newspaper Ad

“I didn’t do it, mommy.” “It’s a Chinese hoax.” “I’m protecting the Ukrainian people.” 

In the world of military strategy and the gathering intelligence on opponent, the justification for feints and deception is overwhelming. A white lie, like “Sam, that jacket and pants look great on you” when loud purple meets pink plaid, is fairly inconsequential. Lying on mandatory government form or to the FBI can get you arrested for perjury or worse. But every kid in the world has tripped into the world of exonerating distortion at some point. And no, George Washington did not chop down a cherry tree and confess. “Mason Locke Weems’ biography, The Life of Washington, was first published in 1800 and was an instant bestseller. However the cherry tree myth did not appear until the book’s fifth edition, published in 1806.” Mount Vernon.org.

Camouflage to allow hunters and prey to survive in the wild is one of nature’s most sacred lies. When your dog does something wrong, and they know it with tail wagging, their sheepish downcast look when they are confronted tells you that the tail wag was a “lie.” Wow. Can seriously sentient beings live in a world of complete honesty? Humanity has been grappling with “truth” since philosophical thought began. The ninth Biblical commandment admonishes against false witness. 

The ancient Greek traveler/historian Herodotus wrote about a period around 500 BC and is credited as the “Father of History,” but his embellishments and accounts have also earned him the dubious title of the “Father of Lies.” There are modern era genocide distorters – from Holocaust deniers, Turks who claim the slaughter of Armenians in the WWI era never happened to present day Japanese who deny the “rape of Nanjing” and now Vladimir Putin’s take on his war – and abundant stories of politicians blaming others for their most series missteps. 

With the rise of mass media, particularly the need of modern 24-hours-a-day news “channels” to fill time, the institution of lying seems to have exploded. Indeed, “marketing” and “advertising” seem almost elevated – why do we need consumer protections agencies again? – compared to the mangle of political proselytizing and mass media, exacerbated by a seeming uncontrolled, globally manipulated world of social media and bot-driven tailored distortion right down to individual communications.

We’ve been writing books and witnessing scholarly articles about the phenomenon for decades now. Look back just a few years and see how we perceived the wrath of truth in a simpler time. An often-cited book includes News and the Culture of Lying: How Journalism Really Works, Paul H. Weaver (The Free Press, 1994). His thesis, noted in the Harvard Business Review in May-June of 1995, is: “The U.S. press, like the U.S. government, is a corrupt and troubled institution. Corrupt not so much in the sense that it accepts bribes but in a systemic sense. It fails to do what it claims to do, what it should do, and what society expects it to do.

“The news media and the government are entwined in a vicious circle of mutual manipulation, mythmaking, and self-interest. Journalists need crises to dramatize news, and government officials need to appear to be responding to crises. Too often, the crises are not really crises but joint fabrications. The two institutions have become so ensnared in a symbiotic web of lies that the news media are unable to tell the public what is true and the government is unable to govern effectively.” 

Indeed, “marketing” and “advertising” seem almost elevated – why do we need consumer protections agencies again? – compared to the mangle of political proselytizing and mass media, exacerbated by a seeming uncontrolled, globally manipulated world of social media and bot-driven tailored distortion right down to individual communications.

The Trump era, with unbridled support from mainstream news sources, elevated conspiracy theories into the realm of “presidentially endorsed truths,” effectively substituting obvious facts with obvious but soon generally accepted “lies as truth” among his constituents. Like the “Big Lie.” The resulting amp-up of Congressional gridlock, reflecting our rising “irreconcilable differences” polarization, has rendered our federal government useless in domestic policy and barely functional when it comes to existential global issues. Our only recent consensus is that Putin is really bad, and Ukrainians need our help. Without truth and a recognition of genuine threats, how exactly does our government protect us?

Without valid statistics, scientific validity, we actually may push ourselves into an unlivable planet. Governmental inaction is made so much worse by mainstream corporate mendacity on critical issues: “In a new survey of 1,491 executives across different industries around the world, CEOs and other C-suite leaders said that sustainability was a priority. But 58% also admitted that their companies were guilty of greenwashing; among leaders in the U.S., that figure rose to 68%. And two-thirds of executives globally questioned whether their company’s sustainability efforts were genuine.

“The anonymous survey, conducted by the Harris Poll for Google Cloud with executives primarily at companies with more than 500 employees, has mixed messages: 80% of executives gave their companies an ‘above-average’ rating for environmental sustainability. The majority of leaders both at large corporations and startups said that sustainability is a priority for them; 93% said that they’d be willing to tie their compensation to ESG (environmental, social, and governance) goals, or already do. But 65% said that while they wanted to make progress on sustainability efforts, they didn’t actually know how to do that.” FastCompany.com, April 13th. Lies have always resulted in unnecessary pain, suffering and death, but the denial of known and very provable facts could wreak more havoc, inflict more death and pain, than the Earth has ever experienced. In wars. Pandemics. And most of all: climate change.

I’m Peter Dekom, and echoing a slight modified cry from the 1970s, can we just give truth a chance?

The Separated States of America

More than one historical pundit has suggested that Abraham Lincoln made a very big mistake by not allowing the South to secede. If you look at the political red-blue battlelines today, it does seem as if the issues that gave rise to the Confederate fracture, updated as mechanized farming has long since replaced slavery, are still the hot topics, particularly in the completely fabricated schism: the culture wars. What would life be like today if the Confederacy were a separate nation? Indeed, that the State of Mississippi is celebrating “Confederacy Month” would not seem so completely out of place. Many believe that a blue-state coalition would vastly outperform the economic output and value of a red-state country, even with Florida and Texas.

But red state governors are making their own foreign policy, even entering into de facto treaties with Mexican states – a prerequisite for Texas Governor Greg Abbott to stop the economy destroying secondary inspections of trucks just crossing the Mexican border that carry 2/3 of the agricultural products consumed by Texans. Despite the fact that we are a nation of immigrants, that Ronald Reagan opened our border to the greatest influx of immigrants from Mexico since California was annexed by the United States, stopping immigrants at our southern border (not our border with European white Canada) has become the Magna Carta of the great American populist movement.

To understand exactly how far red state governors have gone, how completely untethered as they believe themselves to be from the US Constitution, you only have to look at their recent state approach to mounting military movements in defiance of US law “to secure our nation’s borders.” Writing for the April 20th Los Angeles Times, Molly Hennessy-Fiske explains: “Texas Gov. Greg Abbott is facing mounting pressure from far-right and former Trump administration officials to immediately declare a migrant ‘invasion’ at the U.S.- Mexico border, under a constitutional provision that would allow local law enforcement and National Guard troops to stop migrants at the border and send them back to Mexico.

“The federal government is responsible for enforcement of immigration laws. But a pandemic rule that has blocked more than 1.7 million migrants attempting to enter the U.S. — Title 42 — is scheduled to be lifted May 23 by the Biden administration.

“Abbott and other officials have said that could cause a spike in migration, with up to 18,000 migrants arriving at the border daily. Already the number of migrants at the southern border increased 33% last month from February to 221,303, according to figures released Monday by U.S. Customs and Border Protection. That’s 28% more migrants arriving than March 2021. Several thousand migrants are waiting to claim asylum in camps just across the border from Texas’ Rio Grande Valley.

“Former Trump officials at the Center for Renewing America, a conservative think tank based in Washington, are pushing Republican governors in border states to act soon to prevent those migrants from entering the U.S. and to deter others from making the journey. Officials have reached out to Arizona and Texas leaders, arguing that under the Constitution’s ‘invasion clause’ and ‘states self-defense clause,’ states are entitled to define what they consider an invasion and defend themselves by expelling migrants.

“Arizona Atty. Gen. Mark Brnovich, a Republican running for U.S. Senate, released a legal opinion supporting the plan this year, arguing, ‘The violence and lawlessness at the border caused by transnational cartels and gangs satisfies the definition of an ‘invasion’ under the U.S. Constitution, and Arizona therefore has the power to defend itself.’ Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey has demurred, stressing steps he’s already taken to secure the border. On Tuesday, he announced a ‘border strike force’ agreement with 25 fellow Republican governors, including Abbott, to combat cartels and other border crime. Texas leaders also have yet to respond publicly to the plan, but local officials say they’re considering it.

“‘The Trump administration was actually trying to protect the state against the invasion, while the Biden administration has made it worse,’ said Ken Cuccinelli, a former Homeland Security official under Trump, now a senior fellow at the Center for Renewing America and one of the plan’s main proponents.

“It wouldn’t be the first time states used the invasion clause to confront the federal government over immigration. In the mid-1990s, half a dozen states, including Arizona, California and Texas, sued the federal government alleging its failure to stop illegal immigration violated the invasion clause. But federal courts rejected the claims, ruling they were ‘political questions.’

“Simply because the courts didn’t decide the issue doesn’t mean a governor has the power to declare a migrant invasion and start enforcing federal immigration law, said Emily Berman, an associate professor who teaches constitutional law at the University of Houston.

‘There’s nothing that gives the governor authority to ‘invoke’ the ‘invasion clause,’ ’ Berman said. ‘It would be a stretch to think that it was up to a governor to unilaterally determine the existence of an invasion.… Even a common-sense interpretation of the word ‘invasion’ does not describe what is happening. Russian tanks are not rolling over the border. That’s what an invasion looks like.’ ” Yup, those same cartels who benefitted from lax gun laws, particularly in Texas and Arizona, that are the clear and unequivocal source of almost the entirety of the cartels’ guns, particularly those with large magazines easily converted to fully automatic.

Just as Florida’s Ron DeSantis, probably jealous that he does have a border war to fight with Mexico, is willing to punish Disney for its political speech by taking away their tax breaks, a flagrant violation of the First Amendment, the Arizona and Texas (the two red states that border Mexico) are willing to usurp the federal government’s constitutional control over international borders and the military by simply applying a judicially rejected “invasion” label. Oh, it does seem as if calling the January 6th attack on the US Capitol “ordinary citizens engaged in legitimate political discourse” (an official GOP statement) nullified, at least for that red state constituency, any thought that that assault was the insurrection effort it was. Tell that to the almost 800 individuals criminally charged (where trials have advanced, almost all have pled guilty or have be convicted) in connection with that coup attempt. So much for a party that supports “law and order” and then makes a mockery of our own Constitution.

I’m Peter Dekom, and it’s just too bad there isn’t an easier way to let red America go and be their own country, hanging itself by a seriously retrograde radical right, rather than having to endure such absurd populist rantings and unconstitutional efforts.

What Does Putin Want, What Does It Take to Stop Him, What Are the Risks

"Above all, we should acknowledge that the collapse of the Soviet Union was a major geopolitical disaster of the century. As for the Russian nation, it became a genuine drama. Tens of millions of our co-citizens and co-patriots found themselves outside Russian territory. Moreover, the epidemic of disintegration infected Russia itself."

Russian President Vladimir Putin in April of 2005

“You want to provide the other side with a victory speech. It doesn’t have to be a real victory. It just has to be able to be portrayed as a victory. (Remember ‘Peace with honor’?) The challenge we face is that there is no clear result that leads to a victory speech for Putin.” 

Bill Ury, Harvard scholar and global strategy expert.

What Does Putin Want, What Does It Take to Stop Him, What Are the Risks

The son of factory workers, Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin was born on October 7, 1952, in Leningrad, Soviet Union (now Saint Petersburg, Russia). Fluent in German as well as his native Russian, and after initially considering a career in law (he graduated with a law degree from Leningrad State University), Putin instead joined the Soviet KGB (the Committee for State Security; a mixture of our FBI and CIA) in 1975. He then served as a foreign counter-intelligence officer (above picture) for 15 years, spending the last six in Dresden, East Germany. After leaving the KGB in 1991 with the rank of lieutenant colonel, a lower and undistinguished rank for a retiring officer (he left in 1991), his ambitions moved him into political arena of a nation very much in a post-Soviet transition.

According to ThoughtCo.com: “After moving to Moscow in 1996, Putin joined the administrative staff of Russia’s first president Boris Yeltsin. Recognizing Putin as a rising star, Yeltsin appointed him director of the Federal Security Service (FSB)—the post-communism version of the KGB—and secretary of the influential Security Council. On August 9, 1999, Yeltsin appointed him as acting prime minister. On August 16, the Russian Federation’s legislature, the State Duma, voted to confirm Putin’s appointment as prime minister. The day Yeltsin first appointed him, Putin announced his intention to seek the presidency in the 2000 national election.

“While he was largely unknown at the time, Putin’s public popularity soared when, as prime minister, he orchestrated a military operation that succeeded resolving the Second Chechen War, an armed conflict in the Russian-held territory of Chechnya between Russian troops and secessionist rebels of the unrecognized Chechen Republic of Ichkeria, fought between August 1999 and April 2009.” His brutality in Chechnya earned him the tough guy reputation he cherishes to this day. 22 years later, Putin continues to lead Russia, having amended the Russian constitution to eliminate Presidential term limits, with an iron hand and a rubber stamp Duma. 

Over the years, Putin has openly tried to reconfigure several Soviet republics, which had gained independence, back into Mother Russia or at least directly under Moscow’s complete control: Georgia (using force in 2008 to prevent Georgian “genocide” in South Ossetia) and Crimea (under the guise of protecting ethnic Russians, in 2014, he simply marched into this Ukrainian state and annexed it). His recent defense of ethnic Russians in Eastern Ukraine was the precursor to the current war. But nothing made Putin’s blood boil more than former Soviet republics’ joining NATO or former Eastern Bloc allies gravitating towards the West. Like Ukraine. To Putin, having this mass of armed foes on his border was unacceptable. And nothing makes Putin more popular that invading “enemies of the Russian Federation.”

In his annual address to the Duma in March 2018, days before another election, Putin stated that the Russian military had perfected nuclear missiles with “unlimited range” that would render NATO anti-missile systems “completely worthless.” While U.S. officials expressed doubts about their reality, Putin’s claims and saber-rattling tone ratcheted up tensions with the West but nurtured renewed feelings of national pride among Russian voters.  But containing NATO – and sending a message to any other former republics or allies that they risked invasion if they did not tow the Putin-directed line – was his clear and unambiguous message. 

Obviously, the United States, under an unholy relationship between Donald Trump and Putin, didn’t care in 2018.  Withdrawing from NATO was on Trump’s table. That the Russian press openly touts that Russian interference brought Trump the US presidency in 2016, and believes it can repeat that effort in 2024, seems to slide past the consciousness of most Americans. Trump was always jealous of Putin’s unbridled power, unchallengeable and absolute; the Russian leader’s policy of never retreating, always doubling down became Trump’s mantra. Truth, laws and moral standards were inconvenient disposables. Putin’s knowing savagery against Syrian civilian targets was simply “the way he does things.”

That Putin miscalculated NATO’s and Kiev’s response to his invasion of Ukraine is obvious. But he may still attempt to divide NATO, especially if his ally French presidential candidate Marie Le Pen replaces Emmanuel Macron. I have written about his path to this divide and conquer strategy, if Putin is willing to make good on his recent warning to Western leaders against continuing to supply Ukraine with weapons. But unless he is deposed, extraordinarily unlikely no matter how many Americans believe that is possible, Putin will not stop unless he can declare victory. Victory in his fabricated campaign to support ethnic Russians and “de-Nazify” neighboring Ukraine. Otherwise, this is most probably a very long and withering war. 

Putin’s rather poorly trained army, lacking workable tactics and the ability to communicate and coordinate with other ground units, much less companion air and naval forces, is suffering and very clearly diminished. Russia has already lost 20% of its tanks and a prominent heavy cruiser. His casualties are now estimated at well over 15 thousand troops. He’s handed the war over to the general who butchered Syria. Russian soldiers are expendable. Russian workers are watching an approaching major recession are expendable. His military is in shambles and looks more like paper tiger. Ukrainian civilians are being slaughtered by indiscriminate Russian missiles, bombs, artillery and just plain being shot. Evidence of genocide is everywhere. Putin does not care. 

Like it or not, Putin has the support of his people, the leader of the Russian Orthodox church and a not-insignificant American constituency of right-wing zealots. Putin’s only real choices to stop NATO and the West are to draw them into the war or just wear them out. Knowing his military is not up to the challenge, many believe that could force him to use military assets that border on weapons of mass destruction or rely on severely debilitating cyberattacks on Western countries. 

But Putin knows by now that his army, as it exits, was literally brought to its knees by motivated Ukrainian forces, armed by NATO, with no real air cover. He also knows Biden is scared to add enough to this mix to provoke what the US President believes to be WWIII, even as Russia has not been weaker in a very long time. Can Putin fire a single missive across the Polish border, literally into a NATO nation, to see if NATO will do what it says? Can Putin outlast the budget drain and inflationary pressures that the West faces by continuing to support Ukraine? A year? Two years? The American public is notoriously impatient with foreign wars, and Putin believes he can sway the US presidential election in 2024… if the war lasts that long. 

And if NATO caves, withers or dissolves, what then? What is the message that China, still eyeing annexing Taiwan by force, will read? What happens to the Swedish and Finish applications to NATO? How much does global stability depend on a strong and resilient NATO stand against Putin? Is NATO even able or willing to do that? How long will it take for America voices to demand our pulling back? Can the great western alliance finally be stilled… as China and Russia step up?

I’m Peter Dekom, and the answers to these questions will determine the face of the planet for a very, very, very long time.