Tag: US Supreme Court

Today in America 03MAR2024 – Half Life Crisis www.halflifecrisis.com

 

There is so much occurring simultaneously in the national discourse that the truth tends to be muddied up.  Today I bring clarity to these many issues.

This article will be broken down into a few parts in order to segment some of the craziness.  It is going to be a bumpy ride, and although it will be a long article, this is the very top of the tip of the iceberg.  An open mind is advisable to read these passages, because it will shed some light on information that tends to be redacted in some news outlets and from the voices of many pundits & other influencers.

The good news is that I am truly independent, therefore I have no political motivation.  I am, however, very much against misinformation, because that affects us all – regardless of which side of the political spectrum we lean towards.  Enjoy the ride!

 

Trump is not “that” rich.

In case this is the first time you see it, Trump had to admit via his attorneys that he does not have the amount of cash he used brag to the entire world he had.  For many of us, realizing that Trump was nowhere as rich as he claimed to be it is not surprising.  It might however finally dissuade a lot of his loyal followers in the MAGA base to finally leave him.  The reason is because many MAGA followers just tolerated his antics because they thought he was a multi billionaire.

In case you were not aware, Trump recently lost two separate civil cases and was ordered to pay several million dollars in compensation.  Most of his supporters still think it is a “witch hunt” perpetrated by President Biden.  Of course that isn’t the case, and these problematic cases of sexual assault and fraud he was found liable in two separate courts, occurred well before the Biden Presidency or the Trump Presidency [for that matter] even started.  Here is a quick synopsis of these two cases.

Both of these cases were handled by his attorney Alina Habba, who has been touted by her peers [meaning other attorneys] as highly incompetent.  Whatever the case, she is to my knowledge the only attorney who has cost her client almost half a billion dollars.

 

Trump’s Civil Fraud Case.

Trump was fund liable from swindling many investors through the span of several years.  Trump was directed to pay $355 million in penalties plus interests.  But the total figure starts at $454 million because it also includes people in Trumps orbit, to include his two elder sons.  The interest for the payments Trump owes each passing day he does not pay is $87,502 – and by the way the verdict took place on February 16, 2024.  So, this figure just keeps climbing more and more.

This case of course found out that he was lying about his wealth and that he overinflated his assets to get loans, and undervalued them when it was time to pay taxes.  The fact is that if he is unable to have this interest rate from rapidly accruing, that on its own is enough to ascertain that he simply does not have the cash to pay, or even to appeal the case.  Trump said he was going to appeal, but he needs to post the money upfront to guarantee he will pay if he loses again.  Which will likely be the case.

The fact is that neither banks, nor attorneys are lining up to support Trump.  Trump also asked to pay only just north of $100 million [or a fraction of what it is required] to appeal.  That was denied to him as it would have been denied to anybody in a similar situation.  Trump went onto making some unusual fund-raising events, which included selling some hideous $400 golden shoes and a $100 cologne that by the way sold-out, but won’t be making it to their customers hands until the Summer.

Another thing that sprouted, even if by proxy, was at least one Go-fund me campaign, and people were contributing to pay the legal fees of this billionaire.  There seems also to be some course of action of utilizing GOP campaign funds for his legal troubles.  But my understanding is that would be highly illegal. Which by the way, there is another case under that premise – this time for paying hush money to a porn star.

Bottomline, Trump said via his attorneys that if he pays the entire amount [even as a bond], which is close to half a billion dollars penalty, he would have to start selling some of his real state.  So, let’s put that in perspective.  Trump was ordered to pay that amount because he was found that he defrauded a bunch of people.  You know, as in taking their money, and now he does not have the money.  In other words, it was spent – not properly invested to grow.  This realization might finally be what turns off some of his base who considered him a financial genius.

 

Trump sexual abuse case.

On May 9, 2003 Trump was found liable for sexually assaulting E. Jean Carroll in 1996.  Trump was directed to pay $5 million.  But this case is a lot more nuisance than Trump simply being found liable for sexual assault, which under the New York statutes it is just different language that in fact found Trump liable of raping Carroll.  Yes, they found and were able to provide proof that Trump is a rapist.

What some people might not realize about this case is that the statute of limitations has already expired, and although Carroll was unable to go against Trump back in the 90’s – remember, these were very different times.  We have come a long way to being able to speak truth to power.  For some of us who were alive in the 90’s I can assure you that the world has moved forward by leaps and bounds, yet there are many who want to return back to the most short-sighted blunders in those years.

However, as the story re-surfaced, Trump started bad mouthing Carroll and made some very defamatory remarks against her.  The case went to court, Trump kept making some very low brow and insulting remarks in true Trump fashion style against Carroll – many of these remarks from very prominent platforms.  You know, double down and triple down.  So, the case ended up going to court for defamation.  This of course backfired on Trump, because not only he was stuck with a $5 million award payable to Carrol, but he also got all his sexual abuse past come to light.  It did not end there.

As expected, Trump was not happy at all with this, therefore he double down, and disparaged Carroll again.  And this once again backfired.  Remember, the case was already settled that Trump raped Carroll.  Adding to the miscalculation, Trumps attorney, Alina Habba managed to make things a lot worse for Trump, turning this $5 million original award into a whopping $83.3 million award, as Carroll won her case for defamation again.  It is very likely that Trump was the master mind directing Habba to say whatever is it that she said in the trial.  Of course, that was not a good strategy.

One thing is clear, Trump has not paid a dime yet for either one of these millionaire awards against him.  Which makes you think, if he really was a billionaire, paying off and then appealing could be a lot easier than accruing all this additional debt in interests, not to mention all the negative media attention that it puts on his supposed fortune.  For now, only some of his most fervent MAGA supporters are still onboard and will pay their hard-earned money to help a billionaire pay his legal obligations.  Food for thought.

Credit the link below to the Associated Press (AP) who is tracking Trump’s many criminal and civil cases.  They have a huge team of journalists who can do that in real time; it is only me writing for the Half Life Crisis site at this time.

Tracking the criminal and civil cases against Donald Trump (apnews.com)

Hunter Biden handed GOP House Representatives their own butts.

In a different part of our bizarre political discourse, the GOP have been hell-bent in an unsuccessful effort to impeach President Biden.  Bottomline, they have zero evidence.  If the evidence to impeach Biden existed it would have been plastered all over the planet, and there would be non-stop coverage of it.  That has not happened, nor will it, because what the GOP members are alluding towards simply does not exist.

In an effort to find some compromising links to Joe Biden, the GOP has been very adamant on pursuing dead-end leads related to the President’s son, Hunter Biden.  For context, Hunter Biden is a recovering addict, and in the past, he had done some shenanigans, and has gotten in some trouble before.  However, he has always made a conscientious effort to keep his father out of the spotlight, because he understands how important this is to his father’s public service.

For context Hunter Biden was still a young boy when Biden was elected to his first term in Congress.  Fast forward, there have been a lot of allegations trying to tie Hunter Biden to his father.  One of those sources was a former FBI informant who also was recently arrested because he was working with Russian intelligence in a concerted effort to interfere in US politics.  And yes, that was the GOP’s star witness.

For some time, the GOP have been trying to corner Hunter Biden in many insidious ways.  Even having sexually explicit images of him shown in the House Floor by Georgia Representative Majorie Taylor Greene.  Yes, that happened!  She showed what could be best described as revenge porn showing nude photos of Hunter Biden engaging in sexual intercourse during an official hearing.

And to add insult to injury, the GOP controlled House of representatives wanted to have Hunter Biden testify in a closed-door session – even though they had made this matter public to the entire country as the story of the century.  Well, this was originally rejected, and Biden even showed up to Congress when they were deliberating about holding him in contempt of Congress – yet the GOP rejected the option of Hunger to testify in front of the whole country right there and there.  You know, calling their bluff.

Fast forward to last week, and Hunter Biden did show up to a closed-door session, and handed the House GOP butts to them.  The transcript is pretty long, but it is worth reading.  The GOP Representatives tried to spin it as though it was a win, but for anybody with a 4th grade reading comprehension, you would be able to identify what the reality of the situation is all about.  And the fact that it was political theater came full circle.

All this waste of taxpayer money and congressional man hours was nothing but a gigantic waste of time many of us realized years ago.  There is no actual evidence to impeach Biden.

I recommend reading the entire transcript on the link below.  It’s pretty long, but it is worth it.  It might make you mad, or laugh in a tragically hilarious manner.

Hunter Biden Full Transcript House of Representatives closed door session. www.halflifecrisis.com

 

Reproductive rights are being threatened in the country.

You’ve probably been familiar with the overturn of Roe vs Wade by the Supreme Court that occurred in 2022.  This is of course one of Trump’s supposedly proudest moments.  And yes, this was possible because the three Supreme Court Justices confirmed under Trump were very much in favor of overturning Roe vs Wade – even though they denied during their confirmation hearings to be inclined to do exactly that.

Just like many of us realized that they were going after Roe vs Wade making abortions illegal and a lot more restrictive depending on each state – the situation was not likely going to end there.  How do we know?  Because the indicators of moving a certain “theocratical” political agenda has been plastered on the wall all along.

There is a certain group of “Christian Nationalists” – which is not the same as Christians from all stripes.  In other words, not every Christian is a Christian Nationalist.  Many Christians actually disavow Christian Nationalists as extremists who happen to use Christianity as a platform to push a political agenda.  And Christian Nationalists are not shy about expressing that they want THEIR version of Christianity to be the rule of the land.  In other words, a theocracy based on their particular interpretation.  And yes, many of them are elected leaders.

For better or worse, this is actually a very unpopular stance – and in each and every one of the last several local, state, and national elections, the so called “pro-life” candidates have been defeated or severely underperformed at the ballot.  Why is that?  Because “Pro-Choice” does not equal “Pro-abortion.”  In other words, the majority of Americans understand the difference, and how each case is unique.  Further, they understand that the life and safety of the mother could be at severe risk with certain pregnancy complications.

And of course, most people are not onboard with forcing a woman to carry a pregnancy to full term, if the pregnancy was a result of rape or incest.  Especially considering that some young women get raped while they are still children themselves.  For example, should a 13-year-old be forced to carry to term the child of her rapist?  When Roe vs Wade was overturned, it now makes it illegal for this 13-year-old not be forced to carry a rapist child to term.  Think about that for a second – what if that 13-year-old young lady was YOUR child?

The fact is that what we are observing is authoritarian rhetoric disguised as morality under theocratic rules.  This situation is running rampant in America, and it has been largely normalized.  Why?  Because there are Christians all over the place, even though many fail to realize that their denomination is one of a few thousands in the world.  Yes, there are several Christian denominations, and they don’t agree in a lot of their doctrines – hence they have their own denomination.

Although many Christian denominations agree on certain points, there is a lot more than they disagree with.  Want an example?  Sure, how similar are the doctrines between the Jehovah Witnesses and the Latter-Day Saints?  How similar or different are the rituals between Catholics and Pentecostals?  How about the guys who handle dangerous snakes during service, or those who worship in the nude?

Yes, those are all just a few examples of devoted Christians.  Would you go to the nude service or the venomous snake-handling service?  So, under that logic, then you might not be ok if “a particular” denomination of Christianity becomes the theocratic rule of the land.  That is why there is separation of church and state I the USA.  Also, why churches get a tax exemption as long as they stay off the political discourse.  Although we all know that many churches are not only violating that law, but they are also very cavalier about pushing politics from the pulpit.

Some states have a higher concentration of politically charged religious following.  One of these places is Alabama, where recently, In-Vitro Fertilization or IVF is under attack, because they’re considering the cells in a petri dish being already a person.  Yes, this IVF has JUST become an issue – just a few days ago.  And it is taking traction on other states – mostly red states.  And if you think this is not expanding think again.

And by the way, there are many Christians who used IVF in order to become parents.  Now, this IVF procedure is in jeopardy because some people interpret their scriptures differently, and want to force everybody to interpret them in the same manner.  And yes, it is affecting also law-abiding Christians and non-Christians.

If you are a Christian – especially, if you’re a Christian, you might want to realize that there is a particular denomination which wants to take over the way YOU worship.  Yes, I am serious.  This is happening.  If you want to call them false prophets, or swindlers or opportunists, that’s YOUR choice.  And keep in mind that there is a segment of people who use religion as a way to prevent you from having ANY choice in the near turn.

For example, did you know that there is a bill being proposed in Virginia right now that is endorsed mostly by state-GOP legislators who want to make it a lot harder to get contraception over the counter?  So, think about this for a moment, there are people hell bent in not only limiting your options should a person get an unwanted pregnancy, but they are also making it harder to not get pregnant in the first place!

In other words, they are somehow working towards legislating about sexual intercourse between consenting adults.  I wish I was being hyperbolic, but just like Roe vs Wade and other indicators of theocracy working to replace our democratic system, this very much seems to be in the horizon.  Of course, that most people might not want to see it as such, because when we talk about religion it tends to hit a nerve on a great segment of the population… because they think it is singling THEM out.

Well, that is not the case, the reality is that a few are trying to impose their version of religion onto all of us while using the very same religious protections to hide their agenda, which is to ultimately negate religious freedom to the rest of the country.

There is a lot more to explore on this topic, and I plan on writing a full article and perhaps other additional content on this, because it will become a lot more significant sooner than later.  And if you think there are not people in high positions pushing for this to become the norm, think again.

 

The Supreme Court is perceived as MAGA-biased.

Lately the United States Supreme Court has been perceived as biased by a very large segment of Americans.  The reality is that there is an evident power dynamic difference.  If you have been paying attention, you’ll know that the great majority of the justices are very conservative.  And as I mentioned, three of them were recently confirmed during Trump’s term.

This is a good time to bring current Minority Senate Leader, Mitch McConnell who was the de-facto catalyst to pack the court with highly conservative, and MAGA friendly justices.  And McConnel is also the person responsible for denying President Obama from adding his nominated Justice to the Supreme Court, because that was during Obama’s last year in office.  Yet, McConnel pushed a conservative judge in the last year of Trump’s office.

For any of us paying attention, we realized this tactic from the start.  He was going to pack the courts, not just the supreme court but a lot of other courts in the country – to get a higher level of political advantage with like-minded people.  Some might say that is an unfair assertion, yet the proof to this assessment has come through via many cases that have gravitated towards conservative goals.  IVF is one such case.  There are plenty more, but not many of those cases make it to the national headlines.

But the scrutiny of the conservative Justices has also gathered more momentum after their decision to hear the case for Trump’s eligibility to be in the Colorado ballot.  This of course will put a delay on a resolution for other cases that are related to why the State of Colorado supreme court found that Trump’s election interference and role for the January 6 insurrection makes him ineligible to run for office.

And if you think for a few seconds about this concern to have Trump back in office, it makes perfect sense.  Trump has 91 criminal charges spanning several court cases, has been very vocal about some very divisive rhetoric, he was found to be a fraud and a rapist – and that is just a fraction of the many red flags anybody who is paying attention sees about Trump.  Hence, most Americans voted against him in 2020.  The difference is that he has alienated a lot of his base from that time.  And a lot of his supporters have not been afforded the full story either… so they might jump ship once the truth also reaches their eyes and ears.

Well, unsurprisingly the Justices who were appointed by Trump and other conservative justices are very much onboard with seeing Trump to run for another term, despite the myriad of criminal and civil cases against him.  And this is not me – as the author of this article – trying to put the integrity of the US Supreme Court in question – as far as how objective they are when it comes to political discourse.  This is the common consensus from many people reporting on this topic.

But what I will say is that the rulings and the precedent for each case do raise a lot of questions.  And one of the fears most people have is that there is a clear bias towards one segment of the population and a disenfranchisement of another – an even larger segment of the same population.  The proof is that the most “conservative” doctrines have not been popular at the ballot.  It is especially noteworthy that the MAGA segment of the Republican party is dwindling.  Even though, many remaining MAGAs are still very vocal.

I linked this article to tell you more about the particular case regarding Trump’s eligibility to hold office. Credit to the New York Times.  Even if you don’t agree with them, fact check them with media sources from all political sides – you’ll see the pattern soon enough.

Supreme Court Poised to Rule on Monday on Trump’s Eligibility to Hold Office – The New York Times (nytimes.com)

Conflicts continue to ramp up, and they are likely related.

And with the political discourse, we also have to realize that we have a very real linkage to the larger geopolitical stance of the United States on the world stage.  What we have to remember is that what happens in the USA resonates with the rest of the world with ripple effects that are mind-bending to some, and very clearly evident to others who can see the links to these events from a different vantage point.

What does that mean?  It means that even the situations who seen tangentially related at best, or totally unrelated are very much part of the same construct.  They are just not as evident when seeing it from a particular vantage point.  And that would not be a person’s fault, they are just not afforded that vantage point to see the big picture.

For an illustrative example let’s say you’re in a valley, and you are at the bottom of the valley inside a forest.  You might not be able to see the mountains around you, or even what is just a few yards from your vantage point.  But if you climb the mountain, you’ll have a much larger view of the valley and where everting seems to be located.  From there, you will be able to further explore with ease each area because you will have a better idea of how the terrain is laid out.

In geopolitics it is very much the same.  For people who are in their own echo chambers, or political bubbles – they will not be able to see how the events are laid out and how they relate to one another.  The way you can ascend this illustrative mountain is by understanding context.  This context raises your awareness of what is going on, and from there you can see the road leading to each event.  Keep in mind that each stage is going to have an inherited level of complexity, and it is meant to discourage people from keeping on climbing.

When I wrote my book AUTHORITARIANISM & PROPAGANDA The Puppet Master Tools, I provided some tools on how to see this context in ways that will help you climb to a better vantage point.  The geopolitical realm is complex, and it is also very contentious.  And the end result of many adversarial nations is to negate the USA from remaining the premiere nation in the world – and give an open avenue for adversarial regimes to take the USA’s place.  This has been happening for a while, and they will succeed unless we realize what its going on under our own noses.

I’ve said it before and it is worth repeating.  There are insider threats integrated within the confines of the United States of America, and in many countries that are allied or partnered with the USA.  Insider threats come in two big categories:

1. Witting Insider Threats:

These are people who are performing actions and supporting adversarial narratives and carrying out their desires willingly.  In other words, they are very cognizant that what they are doing goes against the USA and its influence in the world.  Even if they disguise themselves as patriotic.

2. Unwitting insider Threat

These are people who are too stupid to realize they are doing everything the witting insider threat is also doing, but they are just not aware they are complicit.  This latter one is a lot more dangerous than the first one, because they are easily manipulated.

And it is worth repeating that there are a lot of people in Capitol Hill and in other prominent platforms who are repeating and parroting those adversarial talking points verbatim!  I will be dedicating specific content to identifying how this works and how to defend against it.  Remember that these insider threats tend to be wolves in sheep’s clothing.  They will seem patriotic and even probably drape themselves in the regalia that screams USA – but they are repeating the points from their adversaries.

An easy way to see if that is the case is by looking at state-sponsored propaganda and news from an adversarial nation.  How do you know it might be an adversarial nation?  Well, if it is solely run by the state, then that means that the freedom of press is non-existent, and all narratives must concur with the government or be silenced.  So that is already a good pointer, because the USA has freedom of speech [at least for now], and you’re able to speak your mind without the government coming to violently retaliate against you and everything you’ve ever loved.

We still have this freedom we are very much taking for granted and there are a lot of nations who have recently lost it.  They didn’t pay attention to the same indicators I am mentioning, and it was likely there was somebody just like me trying to raise awareness, and he or she ended up screaming into a void.  I’m trying to change that trend, and fortunately there are many who see what I am seeing – we are just not communicating together effectively.  That is what I want to change through my writing.  HLC

 

The Muller report was a litmus test on how cognitive dissidence can be exploited for political purposes.  Many people are still confused about its importance.

 

The confusion perdures to this day.

The Muller Report is names after the Department of Justice (DOJ) Special Counsel Robert Muller, who was a prominent career law enforcement professional at the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) in the United States of America.  He was appointed to conduct a thorough investigation into possible Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. Presidential election.

Among the targets of the investigation, was included the recently elected U.S. President Donald J. Trump.  The reason was because there were credible allegations that his campaign had close unduly communications with the Russian Federation, and that his campaign conspired together with Russian operatives to get an advantage against Trump’s presidential opponent, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.  Russia stated on record they favored Trump over Clinton as President of the United States.

Before I move on, please find below the link to the entire Muller Report, as released to the public.  Please keep in mind that some of the released Muller Report [enclosed] to the public have been redacted for reasons of National Security.

Mueller Report (link via CNN)

IMPORTANT NOTE: It is worth mentioning that when citing Russia in this report, and on this article, it is not referring to the entire country of Russia – nor it is a so called “Rusophobic” attack. But unfortunately, the people involved in this report were from Russia. Any country involved in a similar fashion would have been cited on a consistent basis if they were under the scope of the investigation Mueller conducted. It is worth noting also that most Russian people (like most people around the world) are actually super nice, and they might or might not have a say, knowledge, or condone what happens outside their immediate purview.

You are welcome to read the entire report now (all 400+ pages), or after you finish this article.  We will be touching upon some of the important takeaways from the report.  The report itself is written in legal jargon, hence for some people it might seem counterintuitive to understand what Muller is actually trying to say.  That’s the nature of the beast, legal writing is very different than normal everyday vernacular.

For this article I will be using down-to Earth vernacular to ensure it is better understood.  And I said, “better understood” – because in legal terms words and context have a much encompassing terminology.  That is why it takes years of going to law school and passing a bar exam to navigate the vernacular.  To put in context the bar exam alone takes about 12 hours and it is extremely grueling.  Some of us (who are not attorneys, but) due to the nature of our jobs just so happen to be acquainted with that language to “read it” – but not to “write it” – if that makes sense.  E.g. You might be able to distinguish the difference between a high-quality and low-quality steak when you eat it, it is a whole different ballgame cooking it.

If you do end up reading the full report (which I recommend), it is best if you read it in little chunks, and with an open mind.  The report is obviously very well written, but for those unfamiliar with the lingo, it will be interpreted like “scripture” (as in a bible or religious text) – and create a misperception that it is subject to some interpretations – especially if a person has a particular bias.  However, biases are not the case when writing the report – Mueller himself was a Republican.  But it is possible that some people might find ambiguity.  Remember, this report was not meant to be read by the people, but rather by legal experts.

This in no way is demeaning to the general public, it is just part of the area of expertise needed for that particular specialty.  Just like a bartender might have some specific language they use for some of their mixology, or just like us Sailors have a very specific vernacular when we talk about Navy stuff, or just how mathematicians communicate with complex formulas.  Somebody outside those specialties might find it confusing if seeing it from the outside in.

Same thing with the Muller Report.  It has a specific language, crafted by experts in that field.  Fortunately, just like any cryptic language out there, there is a key to understanding in everyday terms what the intent and purpose for that report means to the general audience.  There is a reason why I put this in context.  You will see what I mean by that as you continue reading this article.

The Muller Report is inheritably complex, because it addressed a very complex issue.  Further, it was unprecedented because it was the first time a sitting U.S. President was involved in the middle of this type of controversy.  And of course, the environmental factors (not as in weather) in the country, particularly on political divisiveness – was making an already incendiary issue all the more volatile.  There were a lot of entities who had a lot to lose based on the findings of this report.  And those who had a lot to lose were both inside and outside the United States of America.

What does this mean?  The Muller Report was never just about Trump, it was a lot bigger than that.  It was about the possibility that third nation was interfering with the American Electoral process, and potentially getting away with it.  Trump was largely anecdotal, but had to play also a center role for the investigation because he just so happened to be the President of these United States.

 

Understanding the Report’s Context.

The Mueller report was not about finding “Collusion” – why?  Because Collusion is not a crime.  It was about finding conspiracy to undermine an American Electoral Process.  However, as Trump became extremely combative, and largely [on the Right-Wing of politics], attacks against Muller started to percolate, the scope of the investigation had no choice but to add instances of obstruction of justice to the mix.  Cause and Effect.

What does that mean?  Let me illustrate with an example.  Let say person “X” is accused of beating up his spouse.  An investigation into domestic abuse will start taking place.  So, let’s say that while this domestic abuse investigation is going on, person “X’ decides to antagonize and threaten the police officers with violence, and incites others to antagonize and threaten these police officers – as they are conducting the domestic abuse investigation.   What do you think is going to happen?  If you assessed that an additional charge will be added to the domestic abuse charge, then you will be correct.

Further, antagonizing the police and threatening with violence while they are investigating domestic abuse – is not helping person “X” case, is it?  Use the same analogy, but just change the charges and names, and that is what happened during the Muller Report.  The fact that Trump and is acolytes were attacking, disparaging, and denigrating the character of Robert Muller, made it very evident that Muller likely found a lead Trump and his acolytes found very problematic (against them).

Robert Muller himself got death threats, much like many other Trump dissenters had endured in the last several years.  Especially those with a platform.  But the death threats normally come from a Trump acolyte, or somebody who feel vindicated to do so in their [Trump’s] base.  I should emphasize that issuing death threats onto anybody is a crime.  And yes, it is a crime no matter if you do that face-to-face, by email, by social media, or any other method of communication.

And bear this in mind because of the wide context of the report.  Remember, the report is a snap-shot in time, but the significance of this report is a timeless tool about glaring vulnerabilities in the very fabric of American society.  And yes, the exploitation of divisive vulnerabilities is designed to be like that – divisive and confusing.  That is why I said that in the beginning it became a litmus test regarding our political stability.

 

Finding Trump guilty in the Muller Report

The official name for the Muller Report is “Report on the Investigation into Russian Interference in the 2016 Presidential Election” – this report encompasses two volumes, and spans for 448 pages.  In other words, the scope of the investigation was to find the facts about Russian Interference, which is not necessarily the same as an investigation about Trump, although Trump was certainly a significant factor in the entire situation – because Russia was favoring Trump over Clinton.

For us to understand the significance of this report, we have to understand that using semantics to fight the merits of the issue is not a compelling argument.  It is a lot more abstract than that, because we are dealing with a strategic-level adversary levering personnel near to the sitting President of the United States, in order to push their [foreign country’s] agenda.  This report is not about finding collusion, it is about connecting conspiracy behind the mechanics for which the favoring for Trump turned into action favorable to Trump.

Hope this is making sense so far, because it is about to get more abstract.  It is designed to be that way.  The adversary is not going to put this complex issue in a black & white, Fifth-Grade level of understanding – instead, this topic is an all-stars varsity multi-level strategy being played upon the US via its own political intricacies.  Again, it is designed to be highly complex, and that is why the actual merits of the case will seem counterintuitive to a great swath of the population.  Again, this report was not meant to be read by the general public, it was meant to be read by the top Attorney in the Country – The Attorney General.

And this is an important distinction.  Because Muller and his team had to be impartial in their investigation.  Hence, Muller (who was in charge of the investigation) was not going to declare “Guilty” or “Innocent” – among other intricacies we’ll talk about – that was not his role.  His role was to find facts, write about them, and pass to the Attorney General to (for a lack of a better word) decipher what was presented to him on this report, and for him to make a recommendation as the top law enforcement person in the Federal Government at the time.

And at this particular juncture is where politics started to get from ugly to very dangerous.  For as long as we can remember in the American discourse, the partisan political climate has become more and more polarized.  It was not designed to be that way – it was meant to give a voice from different points of view; but through the years demagogs and other special interest powers have created a wider division among politicians.  All this division is extremely convenient to regimes leading nations who have poised themselves as adversaries against America.

Some politicians (hopefully unwittingly) tend to play and parrot propagandistic points that are specifically designed to polarize America more and more.  The reason for the division is incidental at best, but certainly politics is a very visceral vehicle that gets people enticed to perform actions that can very well go against their own best interests.  They just don’t realize it does, because it is designed to make those victims feel like vindicated heroes, whilst making them believe they are the smartest people in the room.  Sadly, that is a very prolific manipulation tool.

The damage created to discredit the Muller Report is causing negative effects even today!  And that report was released in 2019.  For that reason, it is worth understanding what the political climate was back during those days.  And the short answer is, that the ENTIRE U.S. Government, all three branches at the time were Republican.  The Executive power (President), The Legislative power (Congress with the House & the Senate), and the Judicial power with a conservative majority.

If you were a Democrat, you had no chance to push any legislation at that time.  That of course changed in the very next midterm election when the House Flipped to the Democrats, and the Republicans lost the majority.  But by the time this report came over, it was all Republican Controlled.  This was very important for many political reasons, and of course gave a very high advantage to Trump as far as how the narrative would be controlled to the rest of the Republican political base.

Sadly, that means that if Trump was found guilty of any wrong doing, there was a snow ball chance in hell of a probability the GOP (Republicans) would even hint on giving Trump any level of accountability, let alone prosecute him, recommend impeachment – or any punitive action whatsoever for that matter.  Why?  Because that would be political suicide, that is why.

Politics are strategic by nature, and sadly this strategy tends to leave constituents out of the equation.  A shrewd politician would be able to plan several steps ahead and bamboozle a base of voters to believe a false narrative with little to no scrutiny.  Yes, it is designed to be that way.  A happy constituent tends to be one who feels their political leader is reading their minds, and doing their will – as faithful representatives of their democratic process in Capitol Hill.  You could argue, THAT is EXACTLY why they were elected in the first place to do, right?

So, what does any of this have anything to do with the Muller Report?  A lot actually, that is why I say it is abstract, and might even see tangential.  Again, it is designed to be that way.  When we look at the Muller Report there is not one page which reads “guilty” except to demonstrate that somebody pleaded as such to previous proceedings – for example, George Papadopoulos, who pleaded guilty to lying to investigators.  Papadopoulos was very close in Trump’s orbit – once he became inconvenient, Trump disavowed him.

Other big names in Trump’s orbit included Gates, Manafort, and Cohen.  The later was also known as “Trump’s Fixer” and better known for the case involving porn-star actress Stormy Daniels – when she engaged in what was described as a hilariously short and unpleasant, though consensual sex encounter with Trump – when his wife Melania was staying home with their still infant son Baron.  And I just want to add this part about the [if you can even call it] affair (which is factual by the way – however hilariously short). Because it adds to Trump’s character, and adds to why the overarching scope of his investigation is so important.  Lack of character is vulnerable to exploitation – and having the President of the United States of America having an exploitable vulnerability is very dangerous for the country.

Another big player is Michael Flynn, who also pleaded guilty for lying to the FBI about talks he head with Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak.  Note that in every mention of “guilty” was for already a person in Trumps orbit who have already been convicted.  It is important to pay attention to the fact that these individuals were very close to Trump – that is problematic.  Who wins if the President of the United States of America has people who have pleaded guilty to some very problematic allegations?  Regimes who are adversarial to America, that is who wins when this happens.

Letting Trump get away without prosecution, despite the findings of the Muller Report is what has prompted a lot of the cognitive dissidence that has endured to this day.  And this is really the crux of the matter.  Cognitive dissidence occurs when we let our biases control the narrative despite the facts.  There is always a lot more to the empirical facts behind the superficial context of a situation.  Some of the facts can certainly be obscured by misinformation, and lack of understanding of the full context.

In other words, when we are presented with a situation out of context, and we don’t have enough datapoints to ascertain the validity of those facts, then our assertion to those facts will be flawed.  Hence the correct answer will feel counterintuitive, despite the facts being against their core argument.  Again, it is designed to be that way.  And a lot of people have fallen into that trap.  It is not really their fault; a trap is designed to capture those unsuspecting souls.  Much like a con artist tends to be charming and engaging.  The difference is that with propaganda this is executed at a much larger scale and level of complexity.

 

Was Trump found Guilty?

Yes, he was found guilty of conspiracy of getting aid from a foreign government to help him with the election, and of obstructing justice and making all kinds of public acts of intimidation that among other things included death threats to Muller himself.  The key word is “found” – that is not the same as “declared” guilty.  Doing so gets into a semantic game that fosters cognitive dissidence.

This is how they differ.  Finding instances of guilt does not necessarily mean that a person is going to be held accountable.  For example, if you’re driving 20+ MPH over the speed limit, but there are no COPs around to pull you over, and issue you a citation for reckless driving – then you’re not getting accountability.  You (should) know that what you did is highly illegal and can put you in a pumpkin suit, and there are several witnesses to your misdemeanor.  Mainly every other car that you zoomed by – but they don’t have the authority to pull you over and give you a citation.  But it is very obvious to all witnesses that you were breaking the law.

Somebody being declared guilty, that means that somebody who has the jurisdictional power to give you accountability is acting upon those findings.  Following in the example, if a cop does pull you over and issues you a citation – the cop can start the accountability process, but not finish it.  It would be up to a judge (in traffic court) to give the verdict on the infraction.  Some judges might be lenient and let the speeder go with a warning, others might impose a heavy fine, others might send the driver straight to jail.  I’ve seen cases like this all the time – it largely depends on how repentant the person placed in front of the judge is.

So, let’s bring this into context.  Mueller (as the example being the cop on the above example) was gathering the information and writing the ticket.  But it was going to be up to the attorney General (as the judge in the previous example) whom was required to make the determination about if the president was found guilty or not.  The Attorney General at the time was Bill Bahr, and he gave the press a very misleading version of what Mueller described in the findings.  The point being that Bahr likely wanted to try to make this problem disappear.  Particularly because of the heavy political baggage it carried.  Finding Trump guilty would make the Republican party implode.

How so?  Well, the obvious thing is that if Trump was found guilty, then a lot of legal actions – none of which were convenient, nor had a precedent, would inevitably snowball out of control.  There was a lot of appetitive for the entire report to be released.  The GOP fought tooth and nail against it, but eventually it came out.  But it took a long time.  During that time there were countless attacks against Mueller himself, and many more death threats not only to him, but to other people who were in favor of releasing this document.  So, the fact that you can read it (even on this site) was a gigantic undertaking that was being prevented by the highest levels of government at that time.

There was an important caveat.  Because Trump was a sitting President – regardless if he was indeed guilty – he was NOT to be prosecuted.  Those were the guidelines at the time, because it was meant to protect against people from attacking a President as a political eruption… with the pretense that the President was indeed an innocent person.  Well, this is not very much the case in the Muller Report.  Although he does not call Trump with the words “guilty” he did say that he was not exculpated from wrongdoing.  And I said before, he was to present the facts, not to issue a guilty or innocent plea.  But rather point if there was culpability.  There was gargantuan evidence of guilt.

Using a “big word” such as not “exculpated” probably muddied the water – even though it is an accurate term.  “Exculpated” means “acquitted” – Trump was not acquitted, if we put it in non-thesaurus terms.  Muller went on to say that if Trump was not a sitting President he would have indeed been prosecuted.  So, what does that mean?  It meant that as long as Trump was President, then he was able to run that suspended guilt until he left office.  But once he was gone, then accountability would follow.  What would Trump’s next logical move be then?

Obviously, it was in Trump’s best interest to stay in power as long as possible!  For one, because the statute of limitations would run out on this – and besides he did so much other crazy s—t after this event that the Muller Report will seem like small potatoes in comparison.  But that does not mean it is any less significant, because this started a snowball effect for a lack of accountability to any sitting President.

Let’s talk about this snowball effect, this is a non-exhaustible list.

1. It forced the GOP to truly play ball and become Trump acolytes by choosing party over anything else Trump was able to get away with.  Doing otherwise would be political suicide.

2. It empowered other adversarial nations to flood the USA with propaganda.  The same type of divisive propaganda that has continued ever since – because it proved to be effective.

3. Fostered cognitive dissidence.  It is convenient for other nations when we are divided, and if there is a communication breakdown.  This first step was a proof of concept for adversarial nations as far as how people get lost in semantics rather than understanding the overall context.

4. The enemy is hidden in plain sight – who is the biggest enemy?  Our own biases are being manipulated by our own misperceptions.  It is designed to look black & white – but in reality, it is a very dynamic gradient.  Hence, even people with good intentions will not see the true depth of the issue – it is designed to be that way – much like an illusionist only shows you what they want you to see, but the mechanics of the trick are out of sight to the general audience.

5. If Trump was able to get away with this, then he was going to continue pushing boundaries until he would get push back.  He sure did, and hence he got impeached twice – and he is currently facing 90+ criminal cases, and a myriad of civil cases.  Accountability started after he left the office – and the investigation into the merits for these cases already started the process before he left the presidency.

6. A lot of people got turned off by Trump, but also a whole bunch of them got ignited their new found passion for Trump.  The Republican partly itself is very fragmented.  Some of Trump’s more vocal supporters are Republicans themselves; though the hate and attacks from MAGA Republicans are often directed to more “obvious” challengers – which are the Democrats.

7. Trump started a very dangerous precedent that made people around the world distrust the United States of America.  Who do you think wins when America gets isolated from NATO or other partner nations?  It is not the USA; it is the countries who want to get the USA to lose its primacy in the world.  By getting away from interfering with our political candidates’ process, this helps other countries who do not like America to perceive that the US candidates are for Sale.

8. Propaganda Points from other countries flooded the political discourse, and created an enormous social engineering campaign to find out which minds are more exploitable and obedient to Anti-American talking points, disguised as ultra-patriotic.  Yes, it sounds like an oxymoron – that is why I say it seems counterintuitive to many.  I wrote an entire book about it [AUTHORITARIANISM & PROPAGANDA The Puppet Master Tools], because it is affecting us all.

Authoritarianism & Propaganda: The Puppet Master Tools by J. Marcelo Baqueroalvarez | BookBaby Bookshop

9. The entire world was watching the proceedings about the Muller Report, and caused a worldwide mistrust in the American legislative process.  If the USA is not considered a reliable intrinsic arbiter of justice, then the rest of the world will start seeking for a “better alternative” to follow.  There is no shortage of adversarial nations who want to set that standard.  And if the USA is not holding their leaders accountable, then that becomes the norm for the rest of the world.  Like it or not, the USA can either set the standard for equal accountability under the law, or yield that option to any other nation who wants to impose their political agendas onto the rest of the planet.

10.    Interpreting the Muller Report on “semantics” rather than substance is a very fertile ground for Information Operations campaigns by adversarial nations.  In other words, they get to realize how naïve particular segments of the population are based on their lack of reading comprehension – and turn them into obedient parroting assets.  More importantly, by providing these out of context talking points, they will feel vindicated as though they have “won” a battle of wits with somebody else – when in reality they have not been afforded the entire context.  Plenty of people who are cynical about complex issues, but get hung up on semantics, are very much off-the mark on the actual substance of the matter.  And yes, that is extremely convenient and exploitable by adversarial nations.

 

Moving Forward, and Deprograming Compromised Minds.

It might sound idealistic, but there is a way to straighten up this slew of propagandistic campaigns pouring over the USA.  I use the Muller Report as an example, but there are hundreds if not thousands additional examples linked to Trump alone.  But he is not the only one who enjoys a cult following, many of his acolytes also benefit from that clout.  And even those who say that they don’t support him could very well be misled by thinking that “giving him a perceived fair” shot is a valid argument – when in reality, Trump was indeed guilty – hence, giving a “perceived fair shot” after he already has tilted the system on this favor is in fact a win for America’s adversaries.

What do I mean by that?  Lately, as I became an author, I had to start learning the intricacies of the social media world.  Not that I am super stoke about that, and I only hang out on the different platforms whenever I have some downtime.  Which is not that much time actually.  At this point in time, I am either checking my social media accounts while I am taking mini breaks during actual stuff I need to do in the computer – of if I so happen to be in a waiting room – as I have to sit and stay put prior to a scheduled appointment.

But no, debating people on Twitter (X) in 280 characters or less, or in Threads in 500 characters or less is not the only thing I have to do with my day.  Especially if the cognitive dissidence from somebody drowning in a glass of water that they poured themselves off proves it is too much of a waste of time for me to spend my scarce time dealing with them.  I’ve met all kinds of people, from super nice human beings, to well-intentioned confused people, to incredibly nasty individuals.  During the less desirable interactions, I am afforded the opportunity to use it as a metric on how this cognitive dissidence has taken a foothold in the propagandistic realm.

Generally speaking, some people who seem to fall into a certain category (being left or right), tend to trail a very particular pattern of biases.  All of which are very exploitable, and they have been exploited in spectacular fashion (even if they think they are winning an argument – thus prompting them to perpetuate that behavior).  To figure out if they have been deceived, sometimes it is as simple as doing a quick check by looking at their feed, their vernacular, their answers to other tweets, the memes they post, their level of misguided arrogance, etc.

It is similar but more complex when we validate and assess how some people (to include those I mentioned) have easily been manipulated by adversarial nations Information Operation campaigns, and other methods of exploiting their biases.  These are synonyms for propaganda.

And if you think only Trump supporters fall for this, think again.  Even those who are against Trump can be vulnerable to unwittingly support those who want to see Trump back in office.  And yes, it will seem counterintuitive to them as well.  I mentioned earlier in the article that this level of propaganda is at a high varsity level.  Most people sadly will read tweets, or read important talking points at a very elementary level.  Then it is very easy to hide gargantuan amounts of misinformation on a semi-superficial level of veracity.  Again, it is designed to look legitimate.  Especially to target those who superficially think they have it all figured it out.  There is plenty of room to add visceral responses in whatever falls through the cracks.

But for us who have been afforded a different vantage point, and have dedicated our lives to understanding these intricacies – the falsehoods stand up like a sore thumb.  Once you see it, you cannot unsee it.  It does not make us “better than anybody” – what it does, however, gives us a level of awareness that is otherwise hidden in plain sight.  Again, that is why I wrote an entire book about authoritarian propaganda [AUTHORITARIANISM & PROPAGANDA The Puppet Master Tools}.  And, it is also the reason why I keep writing these long-form articles.  Riding just ahead is extremely important, and many people are oblivious to that fact.

Authoritarianism & Propaganda: The Puppet Master Tools by J. Marcelo Baqueroalvarez | BookBaby Bookshop

The political discourse is full of misinformation, and when something important comes to light, it quickly loses the spotlight to another event – suddenly this previously important event becomes forgotten, and the facts for the argument become misconstrued.  In other words, it is easy to help a person you don’t like win, just by misconstruing the facts -even if in your mind you think you’re attacking this person, or “just letting the system” run its course – without really understanding if the system perhaps has been compromised.

I keep saying it, and will keep repeating it.  It is designed to be that way.  It can be frustrating at times when I talk to some people in Twitter, or other social media outlets and they are clearly confused about something, but in their minds, they think they are spot on, or that they had a sick burn on me or whomever they are debating.

Let me make this entirely clear.  First, I have a lot better things to do that debate somebody who clearly has not made their homework; and to build on that statement – they are just not ready to make the argument because their understanding has plot holes large enough to fly jumbo jets through it.  But in their mind, they might think they have it all figured it out.  Again, propaganda is designed to be that way.  There is always a lot more than what meets the eye, and a semantic battle is often non-compelling to the actual merits of a situation.

The Muller report found Trump guilty, but won’t not say guilty.  It found what it needed to find, which was conspiracy from a foreign country to interfere with our elections, and obstruction to investigate said obstruction.  That begs the question.  Why did Russia (in this case) wanted Trump to win over Clinton?

Think about it for a moment, and this will [hopefully] give you the “ah ha” realization about why the Muller report is so important.  Why did Russia favored Trump over Clinton to the point they would interfere with our election process?

The answer is obvious, but it is complex.  The obvious part is because Clinton would have been inconvenient to Russia.  That’s the obvious part (yes, I said it twice).  The complex part is the thousands of reasons for why this was the case.  And no, it is not just because Clinton was better prepared (like her or dislike her) than Trump for president between both candidates.  Learning the intricacies of government is not something that you can do in a short amount of time.  To put it in context, even our turnover whenever we have one military member taking the EXACT job we are performing, despite the fact they arrive highly trained for whenever they come from one unit to the other is a very thoroughly complex process.

The less obvious part is Trump’s character, and the character of people in his orbit – and how this can erode the trust of our institutions and the divisiveness that was going to create in the USA for years to come.  In that sense, it was a huge win for them (America’s adversaries).  Not only did democrats and republicans further polarized, it also destroyed in the internal political parties inside their own ranks – and further radicalized people (from either side) who think they are the only ones holding the truth – so long it is dissenting with the other side.

By enabling Trump to essentially get away with a bunch of problematic issues as they were found in the Muller Report (and his many controversies), makes it extremely convenient for America’s adversaries to push all kinds of other divisive rhetoric – and find a fertile ground to keep dividing us.  And yes, they are doing that even as we speak.  You’ll be surprised how many “patriots” and other unwitting acolytes repost a lot of propaganda points that are against their own interests – and most definitely against the interests of the United States of America.

Fast forward to 2024, and some people still think that the Muller Report found Trump innocent.  It didn’t, many people in his orbit went to prison because of it.  Trump would have joined them in a pumpkin suit IF he was NOT a Sitting President.  That is why, of course, it is worth mentioning why Trump will continue seeking the Presidency.  Because if he is not a sitting president, he is liable to prosecution.

Just pay attention to some of his rhetoric [especially the days circa when this article was written] asking for unabashed immunity for potential crimes.  Such as when his lawyer was asked if hypothetically Trump should be prosecuted if he directed Seal Team #6 to assassinate a political opponent – and he asserted that he would be ok, unless both he gets impeached and convicted by Congress… But keep in mind that even if that ever happens, then the political opponent is already dead in this case.

This is what the Muller Report found, that Trump has proclivity to do some certainly illegal actions – and use the limitations in the legal system to get away with it.  And the startling thing is that the partisanship in the system has enabled him to get away with all of this.  The Muller Report is only the dress rehearsal for a lot more than followed.  And it is worth reminding that the entire US Government was Republican led at that time, so there was no way they would hold Trump accountable or impeach him, because for the GOP, that would be a win to the Democrats – when in reality it would be a win for America, because it would hold every person equal under the law, regardless of party loyalty.  That course of action was convenient to adversarial nations too.

How can we solve this situation?  It starts with each and every one of us.  I cannot change your mind, I can only give you the facts, and spark that curiosity needed to continue researching the exceedingly deep levels of context affecting this situation.  I’m doing my part by writing from an objective perspective.  If it was a left-wing candidate doing the same stuff I would be writing about, and condemning them too.  Each person owns their own life, but their actions can positively or adversely affect collective lives if they cling to propagandistic blind spots that cloud their judgement.  HLC

 

Former US President, Donald J. Trump was indicted on FOUR criminal counts by the United States District court for the District of Columbia in August.

 

Twice Impeached, three times indicted former U.S. President.

On August 1, 2023, the United States of America versus Donald J. Trump (defendant) prepared by U.S. Department of Justice Special Counsel Jack Smith was released to the public.  This time Former U.S. President Trump was indicted in four criminal counts.  All of which are in connection to the 2020 Election and subsequent insurrection in Capitol hill which took place on January 6, 2020.

Before you continue with this article, I recommend you to read the entire indictment in the following link. The document is 45 pages long, but it is very well written and bring context to the issue; regardless if you are a Trump fan or not.  The way that is written will help you decide on your own, as you will be able to indecently verify all these allegations.

 

Read the entire indictment here

Trump DC Court Indictment 01AUG2023

 

Quite the read huh?

And as I imply in the spirit for this article, I am not trying to persuade you towards or against the former President.  Some people love this dude, others hate his guts… and a smaller percentage is indifferent towards him.  What we can agree is that some people who fall under the second category (who hate his guts) is that they consider Trump one of the most polarizing political figures in modern history.

And even those who do not agree with that statement, well – if they love Trump do they love everyone who does not like Trump?  Or do they hate Trump-hater guts too?  Spoiler alert, that is also – by definition – polarizing.

But the most important thing to understand for this article is what legal statutes are the basis for Trump indictment.  So let’s summarize (in case you did not read the entire indictment yet – for whatever reason.

Count #1 – Conspiracy to Defraud the United States
18 U.S.C. § 371

Count #2 – Conspiracy to Obstruct an Official Proceeding
18 U.S.C. § 1512(k)

Count #3 – Obstruction of and Attempt to Obstruct an Official Proceeding
18 U.S.C. §§ 1512(c)(2), 2

Count #4 – Conspiracy Against Rights
18 U.S.C. § 241

Like or dislike Trump, these are very serious charges.  And although Trump is called by name in the indictment, the document also mentions several Co-conspirators.  As of the time I am typing this article, the Co-conspirator names have not been released.  But if you have been paying attention to this entire saga you can pretty much tell who is involved.  And no, you might not be surprised at all once the names are officially released.

Until then I will not disclose who I am 99.999999% sure they are referring to.  But as this is an ongoing process, it is only fair to let the legal system do its thing.  Afterall, a person is presumed innocent until proved guilty in a court of law.  And although the indictment is very damning, it is up to the courts to run the process.  With that said, if an indictment of this nature is issued – it is likely because there is very substantial evidence for it.  Otherwise this document would not exist.  Simple enough.

In other words, we have to realize that it is not easy to compile such a lengthy document unless there is a lot of actual merit to these allegations.  A seasoned prosecutor such as Jack smith will not be letting such an important case be dismissed by a technicality.  Also, the manner of how it is written is very succinct, and is using very evocative language that is easily understood by the reader.  Even if the reader does not have a law-attorney-type background.  And that is very considerate of him, given the gargantuan significance of this case.  Afterall, legalize language can be quite confusing – by design.

What we do know is that if you do any search engine research on the topics covered, you will not be hard pressed to find copious amounts of information to validate the allegations in the indictment.  Nowadays, everything is recorded, and what we say or do will have lasting impacts.  Does that mean that we have to live in fear?  No, it does not.  What it means is that we should strive for being good people and not do intentional harm onto others.  However, accountability is still a thing, even if the person is ignorant to the reality they are doing something wrong.

For example, if a person kills another human being because rhetoric became a visceral response to some impressionable person – the person who actually carried out the physical attack.  What do I mean by that?  It means that some people could unintentionally be catalysts to rally another human being into doing something terrible – if this impressionable human being is convinced that what he/she is doing is the “right thing” under these artificial circumstances.  Charlatans have existed through history.  And they were always very persuasive.  But they have one thing in common, they will conceal the entire picture from their victims.  And although the faces had been different throughout history, we still see people become victims of a divisive rhetoric today.

Whatever the reason a person or a group of people perpetrate a premeditated crime, we have to remember that there is normally a motive.  Even if the actual person committing the crime is convinced that their actions were dully sanctioned and authorized by the “authority figure” of their choice and devotion.  This is exactly what this indictment is all about.  Defrauding people and pushing a false narrative that resulted in several high-level crimes to include the violence in Capitol Hill.

This indictment is not just about Trump being Trump… loving or hating his vociferous and often pedantic antics.  Some people love that shit.  Can’t say in good conscience that I share that sentiment, because to me the Presidency of the United States, regardless of who’s sitting in the Oval Office should be respected by their position.  However, respect for who they are as a person must be earned every day.  We say in the U.S. Navy that our rank must be earned every day.  This is especially true if you are holding any senior position.

Therefore the highest office in the land should be expected to have a much higher degree of decorum.  For example, you would not expect to see an Admiral in the U.S. Navy send a tirade of Tweets past midnight mentioning somebody (for example a private citizen) they for whatever reason dislike – or saying something unflattering about that person.  And in case you were wondering; no, U.S. Navy Admiral has been Tweeting insults to any person in that fashion.  Why?  Because that would be a behavior beneath the office of the Admiralty.  How should not a higher office be held a higher standard?  Or if you disagree, how can it not be held at least to the same standard?

I can go even lower in the food chain to illustrate this point.  A Third-Class Petty Officer – who is the most junior Non-Commissioned Officer Rank in the U.S. Navy; would get in a lot of trouble if he or she would have a midnight Twitter tirade against one of his shipmates for a disagreement in a way that embarrasses the U.S. Navy.  Especially if this tirade resulted in any sort of violence towards their shipmate.  Hope this makes sense when I talk about the decorum expected in a high office.

The Presidency of the United States of America is the most influential position in the world.  Like of dislike Trump, he has been no stranger to controversy, and quite a lot of legal action against him.  And not only against himself personally, but also a lot of legal action against many of his closer allies when working for him.  And yes, many of those closest allies parted ways with Trump… often in very bad terms.  So, just think about the trending of these unusual events.  Does that make sense to you?

 

Critical thinking and intellectual honesty.

It is ok to like or even love somebody and disagree with their actions.  Each person is free to choose heir own path.  It is our choice if we follow somebody who is going astray toward the wrong path.  Sadly, sometimes those who we admire the most are the ones who are a bad influence in our lives.  And even sadder is the fact that we might be reluctant to see that reality because of our blind devotion towards them.  And yes, it is traumatic to come to grips with that reality, if that applies to you.

It is not unlikely the time that we have been infatuated with an ex-lover.  You know what I am talking about, that person who you wrote love poems until sunrise, and for whom we were head-over-heels for one reason or another.  Yet, this person who was the object of your affection, at some point unfortunately ended becoming an “ex” for the very reasons everybody warned about.  It possibly took some time until you about finally reached the obvious conclusion of why this person was meant to be an “ex” – for very valid reasons you probably discarded outright when you were under the spell of infatuation.  It happens to us all, it is human nature, and it is ok to learn from that experience.

Something very similar happens in politics, or whenever we have any potential bias.  I am not even asking you to stop liking Trump, all I am saying is that if there are people who are raising some alarms about him, it is worth looking at what they mean by that in a pragmatic manner.  Is it possible that some of those are false alarms?  Sure, that is a possibility.  However, if you are intellectually honest to realize that you might have been misplacing your devotion, then you will be more likely to understand what somebody is trying to warn you about.

And the same goes for anything in your life.  For example, I’ve never rolled down the ladder-wells in the ship.  But I have heard and seen people falling, and it looked super unpleasant.  Does that mean that I want to fall down the ladder-well to confirm that it is unpleasant? Not at all… but I can understand the experience from those who suffered that unpleasant accident.  Hence, I would recommend also other people to be cautious when going up or down those ladder-wells.

Of course that when it comes to politics the situation will be a lot more complex.  But there will be tell-tale signs.  And identifying those is actually our responsibility as the adults in the room at this point in our lives.

If you are a Trump fan, just read this document (the indictment) very pragmatically.  But instead of thinking this case is talking about Trump change the name to anybody whom you don’t particularly like, or even better, someone you very much dislike.  If you could unequivocally condone those actions in the indictment even if the person is somebody you do not like, then congratulations – you’re intellectually honest.  Though, critical thinking might be skewed because those are very serious criminal allegations.  Just saying.

By the time I am able to post this article, I am sure that there is going to be a lot more stuff all over the news about this story.  And I will do my best to do a through follow up.  In the meantime, just like any “Today in America” series in my site, I want to put a time-stamp in our contemporary American History.  If you’re new to this series, check it out in this site.  It will give you a lot of contexts about what we are talking about today.  And this indictment for better or for worse has been a very important event in the history of our country.  HLC

 

The SCOTUS ruled to reject student loans forgiveness.  This is one of many important cases that seem to be seemingly decided over party lines.  Why is that?

 

Article 3 of 3 regarding the recent U.S. Supreme Court (SCOTUS) Rulings.

The U.S. Supreme Court Conservative Majority decided on several cases that will reshape the way U.S. legislation could be affected for generations to come.  This is the third of a three articles’ series covering the SCOTUS recent ruling, and what does it mean to America. This is an ongoing story about U.S. President Biden’s proposal to forgive student loans.

In the previous articles we spoke about the case regarding a fictitious same-sex web site – as in the fact that there were zero actual same-sex customers asking this lady for a web-site for their wedding.  The second of the series was about Affirmative Action and how the ruling in essence destroys Affirmative Action, and how it very well affect future minorities applications for a competing chance in society.  In this article I will talk about the Student Loan Forgiveness cases.  As I said there is also quite a developing-follow up story on that ruling.  In either case, for all of these cases the Supreme Court ruled 6-3. That means that the six conservative Supreme Court Justices decided against all dissenting parties for the three non-conservative Supreme Court Justices.

 

So, what is the big deal?

This case was for the Department of Education Et All.  versus Brown Et All.  The case entered argument into the Supreme court on February 28, 2023 and decided on June 30, 2023.  By the ruling on this case, then any alleviating of debt for exuberant federal student-loans was denied.  This request to alleviate student debt was set forth by President Biden during his last State of the Union Speech.  And to paraphrase, he argued that helping people finish paying the high interest student loans earlier will benefit the country.

And although this is actually true – if you understand the full context behind it, it is not without a lot of variables.  But starting from the basics, it is extremely expensive to get a higher education in the United States of America.  But it shouldn’t.  This was not always the case.  In fact, back a few decades ago, or even when the previous generation was of college age (especially baby boomers), a person could have paid for their college with the earnings of a summer job.  That is a far cry from what the cost of college represents today.

In fact, things have gotten not only exponentially more expensive when it comes to higher education – but also it became the norm for “minimum requirements” for many job positions.  Never mind that many of those job positions were well below a level of comfortable living, or even a sustainable living wage.  And we’ll talk a bit more about that in a moment.  Before that just consider this.  What if a debt kept growing and growing, and when you think it is almost eliminated, somebody with a bit more money buys YOUR debt and resells it for profit to SOMEBODY ELSE – while YOU as the borrower are still stuck with repaying it?  If you think that is fucked up and should be illegal; then welcome to the reason why getting respite from student debt is such a hot button issue being argued at this point.

And yes, that re-selling and interest hikes does happen.  For instance, once debt is out there for grabs and re-selling.  That means it can be bought and sold without notice to the original borrower, and this interest can hike exponentially.  For example, essentially making a 20K loan amount to be repaid balloon to 80K.  This is despite the fact that consistent payments have been made the entire time by the borrower.  That is the part a lot of people against respite for student debt don’t talk about. Most of the people looking for respite have very much paid well above their principal amount.  We’ll chat about this and a bunch of other myths about these “slick-students” and misinformation about student debt.

 

Victim Blaming. 

I’ve spoken about this in my writing at some point.  There are a few memes that show a stern looking cartoon dude with an easel and a pointer towards something that says “you borrowed money” and in the next slide points the same thing to “you pay it.”  Well, no duh!  And of course this meme is likely from a propagandist that is hoping most naïve people miss the point.  The point is that the number (amount) agreed in the loan has grown exponentially, and it won’t stop growing – no matter how much it gets repaid in installments.  And this type of debt is so harsh that not even bankruptcy or short of being dead will free you from it.

But wait!  It gets more insidious.  And to illustrate how bad it is, let me explain to you with an illustrative analogy.

Let’s say that you need to rent an apartment.  Because of course you need shelter and it is a basic necessity for urban survival.  You know, a place where to rest, to call “home,” and safe enough to hold your worldly possessions.  At the time you’re signing that lease there is a lot you don’t quite know about the world, after all this is your first time out and about living as an adult.  That’s ok, nobody is born knowing everything.  Mistakes are part of the human learning process.  And some predatory entities are hoping for you to be inexperienced enough.

So let’s say that in this case you agreed to pay for the lease an “x” amount of money per month, plus utilities, and “some maintenance incidentals.”  Let’s make it a round number and say that it was only $1000.00 a month for a studio apartment and you factor another $200.00 a month for utilities if you are frugal enough to have a “decent” lifestyle within your means.  But that is easier said than done.  Your job only brings $2000.00 a month after taxes.  So right of the bat you’re well above 50% of our income just to cover your most basic needs, which is to have a roof over your head with basic utilities. In other words a domicile.

You are making your regular rent payments, living a very frugal life.  Taking the bus instead of buying a car, eating at home instead of dining out, and tapering any entertainment that would hike your expenses.  After a couple of years of living in severe austerity you are able to save a couple thousand bucks for a security deposit and utilities downpayments, so you can finally move out and start a life elsewhere.  You calculate that in a few months you’ll be able to depart this area and accept a higher paying job elsewhere.  You’ve been working very hard to make this attainable, your current job has a very fluctuating schedule.  Sometimes you work mornings, and in short notice you have to work nights or other times.  All of which makes it harder for you to even attempt getting a second job.

However, suddenly the area where you are renting your studio apartment changes owners.  And suddenly your $1,000.00 payment hiked to $1,500.00 and if you don’t pay this higher amount, you’ll get evicted and even lose your security deposit.  What is the first thing that takes a hit?  Your savings.

Now you have to tap into that rainy day fund that took you so long to save just so you can maintain this meager status.  Which means that now you’re needing to spend $1,700.00 a month from your $2,000.00 paycheck to live in the same spot you were living before.  Somehow you make it happen, but your level of personal austerity is tighter than ever.

And just as things could not get worse, then somebody else buys this living complex and your new landlord demands a hike on payment.  And yes, stuff like this does happen.  Especially when renewed urban areas are growing, and displacing “lower income people.”

Suddenly your $1,500.00 a month rent payment balloons another $200.00.  So now, for you to stay in that studio apartment it will set you back $1,700.00 a month plus what you’ve been able to frugally set as expenses of $200.00 – so that leaves you $100 bucks for ALL other expenses.  You have now to figure out what to do next.  Surviving in a place you cannot even leave is costing you pretty much all the money you make in this particular town.  You’re living for working, and not working for a living.  You realize you cannot even move, because even trying to leave it will cost you more than you have even saved to pay a security deposit, the moving costs, and even transportation to another town.  Unless you want to incur more debt, and perhaps lose all of the little leverage you have over your life.

Despite all that, you’re finally able to work with one of your relatives to help you move out and live in a spare bedroom in their house.  And just as you thought this nightmare was over, the landlord sends you an astronomical bill about those “incidentals” you didn’t think about could come to haunt you when you signed the original lease.

You were always a good tenant keeping the place tidy.  The landlords never actually had to come to “fix anything” because you took care of the property.  However the last landlord claims that they caught some wear and tear and other maintenance issues that they “caught” after you left.  And you better pay this or go to court or face jail.  The damage they assess is well over $3,000.00 – and it better be paid quickly.  This is despite the fact that you were doing regular payments and the landlord was supposed to be checking the habitability of this place regularly to ensure there was no maintenance damage to the dwellings.  However, you cannot afford an attorney.  So you either pay the $3000.00 or try to fight in court and possibly lose the case, and be forced to pay $3000.00 plus attorney fees, plus court fees, plus any other expenses.  What would you do in this situation?  And yes, if you were in the same circumstances as this person.

I will let you read this over again, and try framing it in the lens of student loan that keep hiking.  I’ll do a more direct connection in this article  But I just want you to think about it for a second.  Put yourself in the shoes of this young tenant, with the same level of knowledge he would have had at the time.  It is easy to judge people from based on what “we know,” much like being a “Monday quarterback.” – For this exercise I need you to have outmost empathy.  What is your assessment?

 

The Federal Student Loans Reality.

This student loans debacle is a proverbial double edge sword.  A few years ago, it was “common knowledge” that as soon as you finish High School, you were supposed to go to college, pick a degree and park yourself in whatever industry you chose to affiliate yourself with, and make a comfortable living as an adult.

The reality is that a lot of people who did graduate college do not work in the field they studied.  And the reasons for this phenomenon are varied.  For example, there is such as thing as an oversaturated market.  When I was growing up in Ecuador before I arrived to USA, the degrees “everybody” was pursuing were as follows:  Business Administration, Economy, Finance and for some reason Clinical Psychology.

I have a friend who preferred to study cinema and pretty much everybody “who knew better” at the time said to him that it was a wasted career.  Fast forward and to my knowledge he is the only one who actually owns a thriving business in the line of work he followed as his passion and vocation.

Markets are relative.  And saturation of any industry could happen based on the supply and demand for that area.  For example, too many restaurants from a particular gastronomy-type in the same block could create an oversaturation for that market.  But what if the demand is very high and consistent, and everybody who fancies that type of food returns over and over again to the area, even if that means sampling each and every of venues menu available to the clientele.  But conversely, if there is a different type of clientele who do not care much for that type of food, or at least does not want to eat that similar style-food too often, then the entire group catering to that style of food will have a much harder time to be sustainable.  More than likely one of those will thrive and the rest who were not as good or competitive (and might not be flavor alone situation, but many other factors), could ultimately go out of business.

How this market will sustain or would change is anybody’s guess.  Neighborhoods change.  It could be as simple as somebody builds a community near by to bring more business to this area, or it could be detrimental such as somebody putting high tolls in a major road forcing people to take a different route.  We need to understand the obvious, there are always tons of factors outside our control, no matter how adept you are at planning, things will change at some point.  Sometimes in your favor, sometimes against you.

I also read about people blaming “liberal arts degrees” as the reason why alumni are unable to finish paying their student loans.  And guess what?   A lot of alumni with business, finance, administration, medicine, law, engineering, chemistry, or any other industry are also unable to pay their student loans.  Why?  Because these loans keep hiking the amount owed exponentially, and this makes very hard for anybody to repay it.

In other words, if the goal post keeps moving, then we are never able to catch up to the finish line.   The problem is that SOMEBODY OTHER than the parties originally involved keeps moving the goal post.  That is why we keep seeing this phenomenon growing and growing.  So that begs the question, how did it get to this?

 

Understanding Special Interest Groups when it comes to debt.

Debt is BIG business.  Yes, buying and selling somebody else’s debt is a huge industry.  And that is not only true for USA, but many places around the world had jumped into it.  And this can be very surprising to some people who do not understand that this is even a possibility.   I mean, who would like to buy somebody’s debt right?  Well, as I say this happens around the world, and it does not only apply to student loans.

So why do they do it?  Well, because there is a lot of profitability when somebody already had been stuck with a debt.  Some of these companies are able to buy somebody’s debt pennies on the dollar and then add their own rules against the original borrower.  It should be illegal, but it is not.  And when it comes to high-finances there are all kinds of legal loopholes and ways to navigate these opportunities. I won’t delve too much into that for this article for two reasons.  First because I can speak for hours about it, and this article is already pretty long.  And second because it might piss you the fuck off because of legalized way people can get other vulnerable souls in serious quagmires.

So, let’s keep this in mind when we talk about debt.  Somebody has a vested interest in keeping other people in debt.  Debt is a weird situation, because you need debt in order to be “trusted” enough to build a living.  But if you mismanaged it, it can destroy your life.  And this mismanagement is the key word, because YOU do not really have that much control over the management of your debt.

So, let’s do an oversimplified understanding of credit.  For the united Sates of America the way you are considered your creditworthiness is based on whatever the bureaus (who do not particularly care about you) have on file about you.   These bureaus are Equifax, TransUnion, and Experian.  And no, they do not really talk to each other about YOUR debt.  So, if you have a good rating in one of them, that does not automatically mean you’ll have a good rating with the other two.  And if you have no credit history, then you don’t get enough evidence to show your “credit worthiness.”   And life is very tough in America if you have bad credit or no credit.

Under the “Fair Isaac” construct, your FICO (Fair Isaac Corporation) score goes from 300 to 850 points.  It used to go to the mid 700’s for the highest possible score, but that scoring system is long gone.   Anything over high 700’s means you have all things considered very good credit, anything below mid 700’s it starts to be found “problematic” for lenders.  Obviously the lower the score the more “problematic” the person’s creditworthiness seems to those lenders – or to even think about extending you credit.  In other words, this number tells the lender how “risky” you are if “credit” (credit card, loan, etc.) is been given to you.  And guess what, when you have a low FICO score, then your interest to repay any loan (and a credit card is essentially a loan on demand) would be usually pretty high.  Which should be super counterintuitive that the less money you have, the more you have to pay for a debt, no matter how big or small.

And of course, this FICO score is based on your “available credit.”  For example, let’s say that you are starting out your credit history only manage to get a credit card with a $1,000.00 credit limit, and an insanely high APR, let’s say 20% interest.  That $1,000.00 is your “available credit” or the max amount you are able to “borrow” when you make a purchase with your card. And yes, have to pay back with actual money whatever you spend with your credit card.  But there is a catch, if you use more than 25% of your available credit then your FICO score takes a dive.  And if you don’t use it at all, then it also does not help you your credit.  So you need to pay “something” with this card in at least some intervals to show you’re “managing your debt.”

So that means that if you use this card with 1,000.00 bucks of available credit, when you make a $250.00 purchase, this already places you as a “risk” to the lenders.  Your FICO score likely goes down (and interest tend to go higher the lower your score), and if you don’t pay it in a “smart manner,” these 250 bucks will become a bigger and bigger number to repay -depending on the interest in your card.  Which as I said, for people with low credit it can be astronomical.

So let’s say for the sake of argument (and to simplify the math) that your card has a 10% interest.   That means that you are in essence paying 10 additional cents for every dollar you have used in your balance.  So let’s say that you were able to only pay $50.00 from the 250 bucks purchase in your first payment, and your balance now is $200.00 – is it only 200 bucks?  Careful, because there is a time limit before it balloons.

For all intents and purposes it is not, your balance is 220 bucks because 10 cents per every dollar is being charged to you – the 10% interest on the whatever reminder balance you have.   10% of a $100.00 is $10.00.  Yes, for this example 10 bucks per every 100 dollars.  Might not sound like much, but remember, you just paid 50 bucks and you are still stuck with 20 additional bucks before you can pay your $200.00 remaining balance.  And if you are not “smart” about managing your credit limit, these fees and interest will creep higher and higher.  By the way, that is why a lot of credit card companies will have a pretty “small” minimum payment required.  And if you guessed that this interest rate also makes your balance higher and keeps you as a higher risk to lenders AND lowers your credit score… congratulations, you’re paying attention.

But now that you understand the basics, the actual business model is more complex than that.  Afterall, the lenders need to make money, right? Sure, that’s not the problem, it is how this can be manipulated in a way that can go in overdrive and destroy a person’s financial stability.  This possibility of abuse is an unfortunate by product in the financial industries because the way you are supposed to forge a living in the US is by building creditworthiness and debt management.  Chances are that most people do not have unlimited amounts of money just piling around in their home… as in piles of cash.  No matter who you are, it is likely is that at some point you will need to make a significant purchase.  And this purchase will require credit.

Examples?  Sure, you might want a house, or a car, or furniture, or appliances, or services for your house that are expensive enough to deem financing.  None of the things that I mentioned are likely purchased outright with hard cash.  Why?  Because first of they are probably super expensive and most people are not likely to have the full amount in cash even if they have saved money for a long time.  This money is either tied up on a financial instrument or at the very least in a bank account.  And yes, banks are very leery about letting you make large withdrawals.  So if you go to your local bank and try to withdraw, say a couple hundred thousand dollars, that might not happen as easily as if you were withdrawing say 300 bucks.

In fact, many banks won’t even open a bank account with you if you don’t have credit history.  So think about this for a moment in the context you already have by virtue of this article.  If you have already been paying off your ass with high interest rates and everything you borrow has a high-as-shit interest because you are already paying a lot of money for any other necessity, then of course it is going to be harder to pay any of that debt off.  It is not so much as how much income you earn, but more about how much you’re paying in interest for a debt that keeps growing larger and larger.  This can creep very quickly, but so subtly that for some people it will look as a surprise when the number to pay back has raised like a rocket.

Predatory lending is a multi-billion-dollar industry, because it preys on the most vulnerable segments of the population.  These are ones desperate for ending an out-of-control debt.  But as I mentioned, generally speaking the individual person does not have that much control over their debt, even if they do everything right.  Whomever is holding your debt might very well make it harder to you at a moment’s notice.  That is sometimes even printed the very, very small fine print.

For example, let’s say that you own a house and your mortgage and escrow is financed by a particular financial institution.  But consider, what if the institution who originally lend you the money goes out of business and a suddenly a different financial institution buys your debt?  If you guessed that now you’re likely stuck to the whims of this new institution, and that you indeed need to pay that debt to them, then you would be correct.  It is one of those things that should not be legal that is very much legal, and there is a very strong lobby groups to keep it as such.

 

Let’s discuss the factors for Student Debt.

So now that you understand all that these deceptive tactics do exist, let’s compound the problem when it comes with student debt.  A lot of people who got student debt were already overcharged for a service that should have cost possibly only a fraction of what this artificially inflated price is demanding of them.  Pure and simple.

Going to college in the United States of America is insanely expensive, but it is extremely easy to get a student loan – yet extremely hard to repay them.

Think about it for a second in the most cynical manner you can.  Does that make sense to you as a person?  Of course it does if your end desire is to milk a student’s money for as long as you can – even years after they left your campus.  And to add insult to injury have them pay a lot more over time that what they would pay if it was even possible to pay it outright.

As I said before, for example a $20,000.00 degree plan that ends up costing north of $80,000.00 when it is finally repaid.  And of course this number is conservative.  The semester hours in the majority of higher-education institutions are exceedingly expensive, and that tuition does not include all the other expenses such as housing, text books, computer (machine, software and peripherals), office supplies, and a bunch of other shit that you need to do your schoolwork and homework.

Let me give you an example.   In the United States Navy we have something called “tuition assistance” and some of our Sailors can apply for that benefit in order to pay for the tuition of a college class or more (up to three at the time) while in uniform.  But attending these courses is still super expensive.  Why?  Because this aid does not include the text books and a bunch of other materials a lot of those classes require from their students.  And those required items can set you back a few hundred dollars.  And if you think you can use an older text book (even if your buddy took the SAME class the previous semester), then you are not paying much attention.  These text books are always super expensive and tend to be one-class only, even if the next semester it is the exact same class.

I know that for a fact because I have taken a few college courses while in the Navy, and got my degree before my time in uniform.  And even with this tuition assistance it can be very expensive for Sailors, and these text books prices were no joke, and often you could not sell it.  Or if you do, it will be for a faction of what you paid for.  By the time the class was over a new text edition made your super expensive book obsolete.  And if THIS text did not release a new edition, you could be sure that a different text book for the class would suddenly be required.   Also, if they don’t get a good grade the Sailor will have to repay the full cost of the class.  And of course, the higher education level for each college class the more expensive it is.

But of course, pairing it with the Operational Tempo and the Sailor’s duties and responsibilities, pursuing college while in uniform can be quite challenging.  Hence there is a limit of how many classes you can take per semester as military member.

For example, the number start at one class at the time, and depending if you have proven to your chain of command that you can manage you might be able to increase the number of college classes you can take up to three.  There are also a lot of other rules needed even to get the opportunity to apply for Tuition Assistance.  But getting money for college is such a big deal that it even works as a recruiting tool.  Who would have known?  But the point is that even with all that help, college is very, very, very expensive.

And only part of makes it so expensive are the aggregated costs.  I’ve mentioned the textbooks as one of those aggregated costs.  Let me give you an example.  When I went to college, one of my classes was for computer science – back in the late nineties.  The professor was a bit of an asshole.  But you had to purchase this extremely expensive textbook which really looked like a bunch of printed picture pamphlets with a ring… kind of like a big notebook.  This fucking textbook was over $300.00 bucks in 90’s money.

My bother took the SAME class before me, and now his expensive ass textbook was no longer valid for this class.

If you did not have it, this dumbass teacher would kick you out of class.  And no, you were not allowed to share it with another student (even if not scheduled at the same class time).   And he did kick a few students out of class because they did not have this expensive-ass book the first day of class.  Do you know how many times we used this fucking book?  Twice.  And in one of those times he made us RIP a page and fold it somehow for no particular viable reason except that to doodle some shit on it.

And yes, that was likely a way for him to know if somebody has borrowed this book from a different student.   Of course that bullshit tactic also made that expensive ass book non-resalable.  So now we were stuck with this fucking $300.00 plus book worth nothing in resale value.  And to add insult to injury the pages in this fucking book were already obsolete by the time it was printed.  Did we need a book for the class?  No, it could have been a damn power point presentation for all the material we had to use this book for.  I’m still angry about it and this shit happened in 1998.

I don’t know if somebody punched this motherfucker’s lights out, but I think I heard a rumor that it was the case from one of my old classmates with whom I shared the class.  He sure deserved it, but it was not me who punched him though.  Fucking punk-ass.

Stupid stories like that were not unusual when it came to textbooks and college.  I am sure it might be similar today in some instances.  But there are a lot of other aggregated costs. For example some trips, or meals, or dorms, or fees, or even social gatherings.  It is not like you can just be a ghost in college.  Because you also need to network and show face in the industry you are competing for.  And of course depending on your academic institution, they might not give a shit about your down time.  For instance, homework, and projects and other shit that is linked to your grade will take a lot of time to complete.  So if a person needs to study or work or make a living while finishing all their college work, it will be challenging.

I’ll be honest, I’ve taken several college classes while in uniform, but the last one was several years ago.  I have not had the time to take any more college classes.  I simply cannot afford the time, so I talk myself out of it.  Any down time I have I much rather spend it with my wife and daughter.  My job as it is – being on a ship is already insanely time-robbing.

But nowadays, there is a much higher realization to this paradigm.  A lot of people with college degrees are not doing very well financially, and other with an actual trade or marketable skill make a lot of money.  For example, a plumber or an electrician can out-earn many college grads.  There was no college degree needed for that trade, but as long as they get their credentials and certifications for licensing, they are good to go and can make tons of money.

I realized it as much long time ago, and that’s when I decided to really study for a career that aligns with the skills I love to perform as a person.  In my case video (multimedia) production.  Of course that because I am still serving in Active Duty my available time to do anything other than this job in uniform is very limited.  But if I am not “working” – this is what I like to do.  And I like the old adage that if you love what you do, then you’re not working a day in your life.  And I love multimedia production.  That’s what I plan to do after I retire.

For example, this bit of down time that I have (for example as I am underway at this time and finished my world load for the day), I am spending it on one of the many creative medias.  In this case writing.  I am lucky enough to have regular high income to allow me to create more and more of a portfolio on what I like doing.

In this case part of my content creation.  And this chance to write an article is part of what I have tumbling in my mind… yet, there is so much more stuck in my head.  So this is a win-win.  I get some therapeutical me-time, and I am able to give some self-peace to the rumbling in my mind.

And some of these rumblings are linked (even if by chance) to my environment and what I am observing in life’s history.  My primary job in the Navy is Analysis.  What I do is read a lot of stuff and figure even more stuff out.  And there is a lot of stuff which catches my interest because it falls under my purview in one way or the other.  My superpower is that I can make accurate connections to stuff that most people would never realize are indeed relevantly linked.   In fact, that is the entire reason why I started Half Life Crisis, so I can speak about all these things that I find relevant, and hopefully be able to shed some light on their vital importance.

And of course college and a more educated future society is of high interest to me – as a societal variable.  I’m in my 40’s so I am not sure if I want to do any more college.  But I do love learning something new every day… and I do learn a lot of new stuff every day.  It is part of my job.  But learning something new intended for public consumption that could benefit others society is not as meaningful if it gets stuck only between my two ears.  I am all onboard for people to pursue their higher education if hey so desire.  But I am unapologetically against for people to be cheated with exorbitant fees when they are trying to make a productive future for themselves.

In many colleges around the world higher education is attainable.  In other words you would not go bankrupted for pursuing a degree, let alone had to pay extremely tuition fees and additional costs for what its supposed to be your welcoming opportunity to the world.

I know some people have floated around the idea of making college free in USA, much like high school.  There is a huge lobby against it, and a lot of acolytes who might or might not really understand the full context behind it.  What these dissenters don’t realize is that the proposal is not making EVERY college free, much like not EVERY high school is free.

In fact, even now children’s parents can choose to send their children to a public elementary, middle, and high school in America.  Which means no tuition costs for the parents, but a valuable education and an enormous return on investment for the country as a whole.  And if the parents want to, they can very well send their kids to a private school of their choice (if they can afford it).  And yes, most of those schools are expensive as shit.  And yes, in both instances the teachers and staff do get a salary.  Although you could argue that public school educators in the US should get a higher salary.  But that is a different rant.

The proposal is to do the same with college.  Public College for those who desire and all the other universities and colleges that already exists they can choose to keep charging the astronomical fees to those students who choose to attend them – and pay those exorbitant fees.  Is that possible?  I would say yes, we toss a lot of money in a lot of stupid stuff that are funded by politician’s constituents.  Such as political election campaigns that take their elected officials super far away from their actual district or state.  So even if somebody is footing the bill, the fact the elected representatives are gone doing something else in the other side of the country, they are by definition not working for ALL their constituents.

Think about this for a second.  If a politician, does not matter if right or left of the political spectrum is campaigning for somebody else away from their area… how is this really benefiting ALL their constituents?  And I mean all, that means those who voted for and against this incumbent.  And taking their entire entourage and flights to all corners of the country… all that shit and more has a much higher price tag than an “expensive” college degree for somebody.  Just saying.

 

My proposal.

How about a pilot program on a free college?  And see what is the return on investment.  Push some people to work on an Associates on a particular skill level and see how does this help the economy (proportionally).  Would that work?  Spoiler alert, it does.  I have friends who have studied abroad with free tuition sponsored by a foreign government.  Even on higher level degrees.  My friends only had to spend some money for their room and board and learn the language in the country they visited.  However, the return of investment was great because it opened commerce-networking between both nations and expanded their culture (for the sponsor country) to the foreign students.   And of course, it helped their own country students, because they only had to focus on learning and then applying their skills to the betterment of their county.  I won’t say the name of the country today – but it was one of the richest European Countries.

I might talk more about that in a future article or podcast whenever I get a chance to talk to my friends who were afforded these opportunities.  The great USA can do as much as that – if desired.  With the price of some political contributions this could very well sponsor more than a few people’s entire college degrees.  Again, there is a very high return on investment if you make it easier for people to get educated and apply those skills in the economy.

And before you call me any epithet that rhymes with socialist, I am not a socialist, communist, nor a liberal.  You know where I am getting this idea from?  The mighty United States Navy.  I dare anybody in the right-wing side of politics call the U.S. Navy a negative epithet that rhymes with communism.  Doctrinally, this is one of the reasons why the U.S. Navy is the world’s mightiest.

I’m actually pretty excited about this idea.  Contact me if you want me to discuss the full playbook, because what I will describe is just the apex on the tip of the proverbial iceberg.

The U.S. Navy has countless schools and each school provides lectures.  And guess what you get with a lot of these schools?  Semester Hour Accredited College credits!  Sailors as junior as Second-Class Petty Officers are phenomenal instructors, many Sailors do hold Master Training Specialist qualifications.  And their thruput is not only enormous, but it also is immediately relevant to the fleet.  In other words, skills learned in these specialized schools serve to maintain fleet readiness.

And guess what?  A lot of the curriculum already has their publications, which we don’t make Sailors “buy an expensive text book” – but they do have all the professionally relevant references.  And yes, if there is new information it does get added to these books.  In other words, no need to spend insane amounts of money on textbooks for pure-profit.  And sometimes experts get invited to provide lectures to the class.  I have in-fact been invited to facilitate parts of lectures in my area of expertise to some high-level courses.  And people have earned college degree credits by stuff I have taught them – if even by proxy, whenever I was invited to support their learning.

In the Navy, just like in the rest of educational institutions – some classes are better than others.  Some instructors are better than others.  Some school houses are nicer than others.  But they all have something in common, their graduates are required to use the knowledge in an applied manner.  The ultimate test is not the final exam, but the actual application of these skills in real life.

So, why not give this a try?  A free college with accredited college hours, and taught by U.S. Veterans.  The text books are printed for the students, there is no tuition fees, all teachers and staff are paid a living wage.  And if the students do not pass the class, they have to pay for the cost of the course.  Except that is not going to be the prohibiting cost of other colleges and universities.  It does not need a gigantic campus, and any donated infrastructure can very well be used as a tax write-off to the donor.  Win-win.  I’ll give you one better – there is a gargantuan number of unused office spaces and commercial real state all over the county.  Use some of those to educate our next generation.  Revive all that unused real-state.

Let’s give it a try for a couple of years, see the return on investment based on knowledge and skills pushed back to society.  What does that produce?  Fully educated, non-indebted citizens who are ready to use their skills in the real world and use their earnings to buy stuff to incentive the economy, rather than having to save every penny to pay high interest loans.  Want to learn more, hit me up, we’ll chat.

What I can bet you is that many colleges DO NOT want this to happen.  Why?  Because then these higher learning institutions would have REAL competition.  I say, let’s see who can push better students and have their alumni been better return on investment for the country.   Just like we have phenomenal High School students who make our country greater than ever.

We know the return-on-investment works based on how much support a school district gets.  Although there are people who want to defund public schools altogether too.  But remember what I said.  There is a lot of money (for a few greedy people) in keeping people paying exorbitant debt forever.

I don’t know how far my words would travel.  But moving the idea from my head into a written form (in this article) is the first step.  I will likely write a manuscript about it whenever I finish my current projects.  Hopefully with all this context we all can agree that whomever is paying student loans could very well use some respite to start LIVING.  There is a much higher return on investment when a person can use their money to buy stuff in the economy, rather than paying high interest fees to some asshole who keeps buying and reselling their debt.  These opportunistic entities keep students as slaves of these artificially inflated interest rates.  Now you know why this case in the Supreme Court will likely won’t end where it did.  HLC

 

The SCOTUS ruled for the disestablishment of Affirmative Action; again through what it seems to be falling under party lines. This raised many concerns.

 

Article 2 of 3 regarding the recent U.S. Supreme Court (SCOTUS) Rulings.

The U.S. Supreme Court Conservative Majority decided on several cases that will reshape the way U.S. legislation could be affected for generations to come.  This is the second of a three articles’ series covering the SCOTUS recent ruling, and what does it mean to America. Let’s take a look at the disestablishment of Affirmative Action.

In the previous articles we spoke about the case regarding a fictitious same-sex web site – as in the fact that there were zero actual same-sex customers asking this lady for a web-site for their wedding.  It seems that I will have to do a follow up on that article, because there is a lot more skewed facts we are learning.  In the next article we’ll speak about and the Student Loan Forgiveness cases, there is also quite a developing story on that.  For all of these cases the Supreme Court rules 6-3. That means that the six conservative Supreme Court Justices decided against all dissenting parties for the Three non-conservative Supreme Court Justices.

 

So, what is the big deal?

This case was for the Students for Fair Admissions, Inc.  versus President and Fellows of Harvard College.  The case entered argument into the Supreme court on October 31, 2022 and decided on June 29, 2023.  By the ruling on this case, then affirmative action gets de-facto disestablished by any other educational institution who would want to prevent admissions based on the language for Affirmative Action.

This case is also a huge deal because to reach to affirmative action it took a lot tribulations, and even blood-shed from previous generations.  How?  Let me give you a few; police brutality, domestic terrorism, lynchings, unfair-trials towards minorities due to hate and segregation, etc.  There is plenty of evidence for those unsavory times in our history.  Not only world-history, but also our very own American History.  But collectively we’ve gotten better as a nation.  This reverse in ruling will set us back.

Does that sound hyperbolic?  Many people who think that all the unpleasant challenges minorities from the past had to endure are surpassed; yes, people who subscribe to that thought would like to assert as much.  But the fact is that although we are a lot better than we were in decades past, there is still disenfranchisement, racism, and other unsavory factors that in many ways subjugate people in our country.  Especially the subjugation comes via some confused personalities who consider minorities “different,” or worse “inferior” to them.

And if you are from the school of thought that such a situation does not occur in America, then congratulations, you’re in a privileged stratum; and likely insulated from the harsh realities a lot of Americans face as a fact of life.  And privilege does not mean that you have to be in a particular socio-economical group.  Yes, even if you are a minority yourself.   Privilege is a lot more complex than simple skin color, or even how much money you have in the bank.  And that fundamental misunderstanding is why it can be such an incendiary topic to deal with for some people who just “don’t see what the big deal is all about.”  And of course, it opens the door to a lot of confusion and misinformation for anybody who would prefer to keep a particular segment of the population misinformed.  Remember, misinformation equals undue convenience to somebody pushing a nefarious agenda.

For this article I will not delve too much into the history of Affirmative Action, because there are plenty of scholars who go in exuberant detail about these tribulations.  What my intent brings to the table is to understand how this false dichotomy works in a contemporary reality, and provide a point of view that is often obfuscated.

In either case, remember that YOU are NOT responsible for any unsavory thing any of your ancestors might have perpetrated towards others. Even if this unsavory deed was unintentional.  With that said, we are all very much responsible for what we do now.  And understanding how these otherwise obscure factors play in the very fabric of our society is a good starting point.

 

The importance of Diversity.

One of the strengths that truly makes the United Sates of America the most influential nation in the world is one her greatest treasures, our diversity.  Having people from all walks of life and collaborating in a manner that allows us to join our collective knowledge and experiences is the very reason why we’ve been so successful in the world stage.  In other words, our diversity breaks an otherwise homogenous mold that curtails our very progress.  However, this success has not been attained without a lot of roadblocks along the way.  Particularly from people who have a distain for diversity.

And the fact is that a lot of those people who are acting as road-blocks for diversity might not even be aware of the negative role they are playing.  For example, there are those who are unwittingly racists, homophobic, or otherwise extremely offensive to a segment of the population.  And yes, people who fall under that category might even feel personally insulted by the very insinuation that they are being accused of being unfair to other people.  Well, as a minority in the country I can tell you that this happens a lot, even to me personally.  Most people, just like me, just won’t make it obvious we have been insulted – or that we are being treated in a condescending or patronizing manner.

Let me give you an example from my early U.S. Navy years.  I worked with a couple of Sailors who were born in Mexico, I was born in Ecuador.  In our department there was this other Sailor born in the U.S. who was married to a lady also born in the U.S.  Well, this lady thought it was acceptable, funny, and even “cute” referring to at least one of the Sailors born in Mexico as “Taco.”  Yes, you read that right.  She would greet him with a very engaging smile and endearing tone “Hi Taco.”  In her mind this was acceptable.  And for the record, no this was not acceptable.  However, the group would be the better person and just rolled with it.  It did not make the situation any less cringeworthy.  Yes, she did that quite often.  And true that maybe she did not mean it in a bad way.  To this day I truly think she thought it was cute or endearing.

Personally, I have been subjected a lot of episodes while in USA and even while in uniform in the Navy.  Again, some of these offenders were perhaps unaware of their exceedingly insulting remarks or attitudes towards minorities.  And to be honest, in some instances it even seemed futile to even try to rationalize it with them.  It is an abstract concept to explain, but if you have ever had to deal with that then you know EXACTLY what I mean by that.  And the fact is that ignorant comments and actions towards minorities are essentially commonplace.  And again, if a person is coming from a more privileged stratum, they might be unaware of their actions.

And yes, some of those ignorant remarks might be coming from one minority against another, or from one group of people to another.  Neither case makes this acceptable.

Rewinding back to our history, and not needing to go too far back, we can see several instances of minorities or other underrepresented groups in society being disenfranchised.  And understand that this does not imply that people in the majority, or those who are not a minority are automatically bad people.  That does not what I am trying to say at all.

In fact, the majority of people in the United Sates of America, no matter what color of skin they have are actually very much open to diversity and very cognizant of what is and is not acceptable in society.  That is by the way one of the reasons why we are the most influential country on the planet.  For you see this is not a “race” issue pers say, it is a “people” issue that gets clouded by people who do not understand that we are actually one race, the human race.  In scientific terms, we are all part of the homo-sapiens species (which means wise man as in man with knowledge).

Which makes it the more cringeworthy that some educational institutions were against this level of acceptance.

In other words, being tactful to one another is not just a race thing, it is a common courtesy thing.  For instance, we are not supposed say a derogatory or condescending remark to another human just because we feel entitled to do so.  Doing so does not make somebody superior, just makes them an asshole.  The same thing is true when someone is being patronizing or condescending to others because they just happen to look a bit different on the outside.

And understanding this multicultural strength as a nation is something I hold very dear.  While attached to this ship (USS COLE DDG 67), I led the Diversity / Multicultural Committee for several months.  A different person onboard gest appointed for a range or months to lead this effort.  For me it was between 2021 and 2022.   We had a lot of celebrations onboard for ALL our Sailors.  Example of for that included Black History Month, Women’s History Month, Pride Month, Asian & Pacific Islander Month, Hispanic Heritage, etc.  Everyone onboard was welcome and invited as we celebrated our diversity onboard.  Which includes people from all walks of life and even a lot of U.S. Navy Sailors who were born abroad, but serve in our Armed Forces.

And for anybody who would have any confusion, these events were not a way to disenfranchise anybody from a Caucasian group, even though there is no “Caucasian Month.”  Of course every Sailor understood this, but I bring it up because I realize that in the rest of the country there are several people who don’t quite get it.  So I figure it should be explained.

Every segment of the population who gest a “month” to celebrate is because they had unfortunately been oppressed by the status-quo in some shape of form.  And yes, it too a lot of tribulations (which at least in some cases included people from any of these minorities being brutally murdered for speaking up), and after a lot of litigation finally resolved by the incumbent Supreme Court ruling to reverse negative trends – and afford actual equal opportunity.  The level of equal opportunity we enjoy today was not automatic to the segments of the population with a designated “celebration” month.  Each one of those events are celebrated as a reminder of how we can right some wrongs even though it took a lot of effort on each case.  It helps us remember that the opportunity to even talk about it was never automatically granted.

For example, did you know that women were considered second class citizens in the great USA for a while, and they could not vote until the year 1920 after it was introduced to Congress in 1878 – that’s 42 years later, by the way.  So in that example alone, race was not the only defining factor.  That was a case of sexism and misogyny.  Has sexism and misogyny been eradicated around the world, or even in the USA?  (No, it has not).  But what I can tell you is that a country’s culture does take time, sometimes significant time to evolve.  And this could span a few generations depending on how “normalized” the subjugation of a segment of the population was enacted in a particular society.

Let me give an example close to home.   When I was growing in Ecuador, even as contemporary as the early 90’s – that country had very much enforced gender roles.  And these would be enforced by both men and women, especially those women from a previous generation (one and two generations back).  Examples of that shortsighted world included but were not limited to the following:  Women should be in the kitchen, and men should be in the garage.  Yes, that stark.  Girls would pay with dolls, and boys would play with cars.  Women were supposed to have long hair, men are supposed to have short hair.   Men were looked down or even called a derogatory euphemism for LGBTQ if they wanted to wear earrings.  And I can go on for hours, but this was not only limited to Ecuador.  This status-quo in some ways ware the norm around many places in the world.  But it was missing a fundamental sense of self-governance and self-expression.

Does a man who is choosing wearing long hair makes him any less of a man?  Back in Ecuador as I was growing the school authorities would say “yes” – my rebuttal was as follows:  Well, look at history and some of the greatest conquerors had long hair, and were quite ornated themselves.  Further,  back in the day male monarchs and nobles were the ones wearing high-heels.  Then again, what is your definition for “less of a man?”   I wrote it this way because I wanted the wheels in our minds to start spinning on the inner monologue and inevitable conundrums.

 

A subjective understanding.

The crux for this topic is actually not “black and white,” instead it is a very complex gradient.  And that is why I chose to write about it.  The core issue is very subjective, because what one group could find offensive could be considered acceptable by a different group.  What does that mean? Remember my example about the lady who called the gentlemen born in Mexico “taco?”  In her mind this was totally acceptable, and she likely even meant it as something endearing.    Was that endearing for this gentleman?  No, it wasn’t.   It was cringeworthy, but he did not want to hurt her feelings, because it would have demonstrated that she was exceedingly tone-deaf and “accidentally-racists” when it came to the way she just in essence repeatedly insulted him.

And I said it before, but it is worth repeating it.  For some of us who are in any kind of minority groups, there is literally a bombardment of instances we face like this.   Some more on the nose than others.  When that happens, most of us just look the other way, because even trying to rationalize or to bring attention to that issue to an offending party is exhausting.  In other words, when a person is that misinformed and essentially ignorant to why they are being offensive, that means that they have already missed so much more context.  Therefore trying to even bring them to a point where they are committing the actual infraction is already many layers into the weeds.  And trying to explain that to somebody if you want to correct them, it really becomes something we don’t even want to deal with.  No matter how tactful we are, the aftermath is not going to be pretty.  And we know that.

If YOU have been one of those tone-deaf people who had committed such a faux-pas, and were not confronted… the following might be a tell-tale sign if you fucked up.   Immediately after you said something insulting or ignorant, the first reaction for the person was to smile (not showing teeth), with a slight bend in their brow, slow tilting head down and raising their eyes slow up level and keeping a few seconds of silence… while holding this closed-no-teeth-smile.  Then they might even laugh and say (sarcastically) something either self-deprecating or change the subject.  In between the time you said something stupid and somebody caught it, there is a lot of information moving in their heads – they are assessing if it is relevant to even address what you utter that was so wrong.  If it was so wrong that it was borderline impossible to explain how idiotic was your comment in less than 25 seconds, then they will deflect.  You’re not worth their outrage, even if they are insulted.  They learned all they needed to learn about your tone-deafness and will either avoid you or keep on living, but they might cringe a little every time you are around.  Now you know.

Again, if you every had to deal with this situation, then you know exactly what I mean by that.  Somebody committing an offense could very well be unintentional.  But that does not mean that it was not an offense.  And yes, people saying stupid thing do come in all skin colors. That’s why I said it is a human thing.

For an illustrative example, let’s say somebody who does not know how to tune an instrument – let’s say a guitar, takes upon himself to “tune” somebody’s guitar.  And in this attempt to do something nice for somebody (such as tuning the guitar), he pops a string because in their failed attempt to tune instrument overtightened a string past its tensile strength.  Sure, it can very well be an honest mistake and no harm was intended.  But the damage is done.

But preventing from this string to be popped would have taken some knowledge about understanding the tensile strength of a string, and what frequency (note) is supposed to ring when properly tunned.  In other words a process with proper context.  Depending on the circumstances a broken guitar string is not quite a big deal, and if somebody has another set of strings it can be replaced quite easily.  But what if this happen while a person was in travel and there are no string replacements around?

This guitar-string analogy serves to illustrate how an unintended remark can be perceived by somebody.  Sometimes it won’t be worth the drama to even get mad about it, after all guitar strings need to be changed once in a while.  But the circumstances will vary on the urgency to address the situation.  For example, what if the string was broken just minutes before a performance.  Even if you change the string on the spot, guitar strings take a bit of time to settle.  In other words you need to retune it a few times before it maintains the correct note for a sustained amount of time.  For example a full song.

Similarly with remarks, even if it is addressed on the spot, there is an aftermath that requires to settle the issue.  And to be honest, that can be very exhausting.  Fortunately, most people in the U.S. are well-rounded enough to understand these subtleties when interacting with other human beings.  But there are also a non-insignificant number of people who are oblivious to these, and are often repeated offenders.   As I mentioned to you before, I personally had dealt in similar circumstances with a lot of people while in uniform, and well before I was wearing a military  uniform.

 

How does this tie to Affirmative Action?

For better or for worse, the segments of the population are still segregated – despite many herculean efforts to minimize it.  It has been minimized for great swats of the population, but it has never been eradicated or fully mitigated.  Why?  Because people are complex, and the culture is not static – it is dynamic.  Things will ebb and flow in our perception of our cultural dynamics.

What Affirmative Action did was allowing for a more equitable starting point for all citizens.  Deepening on our socio-economic demographics, some people will be born with a more privileged lifestyle than others.  This does not imply that those with a higher privilege have done anything wrong, and that is not what Affirmative Action is intending.

For example if a child parents work in a manner that will provide a better future for their kid than what they (as parents) experienced, then the child is by definition more privileged than the parents.   For example, let say that the parents both grew up in a small apartment where they had to share a single room with two siblings and the entire family had to share a single bathroom, but now their child has been afforded their own bedroom with in-suite bathroom.  That means that this child has a more privileged level than his/her parents and grandparents.  This child’s starting point is already further advanced than were his/her parents had at a similar age.  By the way, that is what most parents strive for.  I know I did for my child.

When we put this in a larger population context, there is plenty to understand about how people live and were brought up in the environment they called home.  True that people from every color skin had some tribulations to go through, but there were some segments of the population that were still further behind because it is based on their generational disenfranchisement.  For example, a lot of people who were segregated during the Jim Crow era.  And yes, there are a lot of people alive who were very much alive when racial discrimination was legal in the United States of America.  Both on a privileged and non-privileged extreme of the equation.

I have actually met a lot of people who grew and lived during the Jim Crow era.  In case you are not familiar with what I am referring as the Jim Crow era, this is a dark period of time in U.S. History when black people were considered lesser human than white people and it was illegal for both races to share many common services.  For example, black people were not allowed to dine in the same place as white people, or sit in the same part of the bus, use the same restrooms, live in the same neighborhoods.  Let alone marry somebody who had a different color skin.  And there was a lot of domestic terrorism against black people, which included lynchings.  Lynching is a dehumanizing way to kill a human being, for example  there were cases where black people were not only beaten up, and hanged, but also castrated or even inserting their own severed genitalia in other orifices (mouth or anus).  And yes, some of these dehumanizing spectacles happened in front of cheering crowds (which included children).  There are horrific historical photographs depicting as much.

And there were a lot of elected legislators who lobbied against repealing Jim Crow laws.  And Jim Crow’s genesis (for the name) was itself a derogatory depiction of black people.  Back in those years, even in cartoons the depiction of black people portrayed them as lazy, gullible, uneducated, and dehumanized.  And some of those vestigial demeaning tropes endured several decades as “acceptable” in many societies around the world.

I remember even as a kid when they used to play on TV those old cartoons that had those depictions.  I always cringed when those came on TV and I would just flip the cannel or turn the TV off.  I just hated to see how dehumanized people were being depicted.   I was a child, and I did not understand it yet, but now that I know about history, it is clear as day – and thank goodness we have improved, but this dehumanization of other people not been fully eradicated.  There are people who still feel superior to others based on very incidental reasons, such as the color of their skin.  Some of these levels of discrimination happen under a “safe group” – others are very outspoken about it.

Fast forward a few decades and the gradual improvement of these situations presents a favorable environment for all – on the surface.  However, although legalized in a less-obvious manner, certain segments of the populace remain marginalized from that critical “starting point” before they are even able to start to “compete” with the rest of society.  In other words, a tilted baseline that is unfavorable to a particular segment of the population makes it a lot harder for that segment to get started, let alone succeed.  It is not that people in these segments are any less capable that the rest of the population who were afforded a higher starting point, it is just that they have a different (lower, often much lower) starting point.

Let me illustrate this point with an analogy.  Let’s say that a person will be competing in a 400meters sprint race.  All competitors will be on the track at a certain time, and when the gun-shot sounds-off they are all supposed to sprint as fast as they can towards the finishing line.  Whomever reaches the finishing line faster wins.  Simple enough – for that part of the event.  That is not the issue, the issue is what happened leading to that event.

Let’s say that a some of the athletes competing in this 400m. sprint get a full night rest, get transported to the event in a comfortable vehicle (not too hot or cold, and in a manner that won’t cramp their joints or mess up their posture), and have enough time to chill and be ready for the race.  Which could include a sensible meal and proper hydration, and as they prepare for the race have the right equipment – such as proper shoes and racing attire.  Sounds commonsensical, correct?  Well, that optimal situation might have not been afforded for everyone.  Perhaps not by negligence but due to the circumstances in their environment.

For example, let say that one of those athletes has food insecurity and their nutrition is subpar, or they cannot afford proper footwear (either too loose, too heavy, or too slippery).  Maybe they did not get a chance to get enough rest because of several other responsibilities that take their time ahead of the race, maybe fabric for their attire is not very breathable or not properly tailored creating restriction of movement.  Maybe they could not afford to get somebody to drive them to the event, and had to walk a significant amount of the route before making it to the track.  All these tribulations had to be resolved before they even “start the race.”  What are the expected results for this athlete?

Well, it can go one of several ways.  The most likely is it that they will not win first place, as they were already fighting a lot more factors other than the actual race.  Mathematically it is a lot to identify, deal with, and overcome.  Less likely but probable, they might place second or third and still have a medal to show off for their effort and athleticism despite all the handicaps put ahead of their starting point.  Or the least likely case, arrive number one despite all obstacles.  Surely, the victory would be deservingly celebrated because of the overall achievement despite all odds.  And yes, “inspiring” stories like this do pop out from time to time.  Maybe not just sports-related, but surely occur.  Afterall, these achievements are obviously meritorious.

Now, just for a moment let’s consider what would be the situation if a person was afforded the opportunity to succeed in their own merits by affording them an opportunity to lessen the many handicaps, tribulations, and obstacles they had to face to reach the starting line.  Yes, I made that sentence super long for a reason.  In other words, leveling the plain-field so they can compete in their merits in their desired field.  If you think that is fair, well congratulations you understand the premise of Affirmative Action.

Confused, and in some instances bigoted people think that this leveling the Plainfield for a starting point is akin to give an “advantage” to a minority, or otherwise disenfranchised groups.  That is not what it is about, it is about helping those who might not be afforded to arrive at the start-line in the first place.  This principle has helped America grow exponentially because it opens the door to talented people from all skin colors and backgrounds to become the person they are meant to be.  This does not mean that they are afforded opportunities other people in a more privileged circumstances would not get.  And the sad part is that a lot of people with strong platforms tend to spew that kind of misinformation.

Affirmative Action was actually a good thing for our country.  This allowed many innovations that took genesis in the minds of a minority to benefit the entire country, and even the world.  Do yourself a favor.  Just perform a simple search engine search and look for successful minority owned business in the USA and their positive impact.  And you can see it for yourself – you don’t have to take my word for it.  This goes to imply that anybody regardless of skin color is capable of achieving greatness if given the opportunity. It shows that we are all one race, the human race.

If you forget virtually everything I’ve said in this article, just remember this:  Affirmative Action is about affording people from different backgrounds a balanced starting point where everybody gets an opportunity to succeed based on their merits.  Not everybody was afforded that opportunity.  The SCOTUS ruling is implying that all segments of the population are fully balanced – there is a lot of dissentions of that.  I have to admit I agree with the three Supreme Court Justices who distended and voted for keeping Affirmative Action (Justices Sotomayor, Jackson, and Kagan).  If I could wave a magic wand, I would wish that Affirmative Action would be re-established once again.  Apparently, a big part of the country who understand it also agrees with my sentiment.  Thank you for reading this far, I hope this sparks a much-needed conversation.  HLC