View From The Peanut Gallery

The Great American Divide Isn’t What You Think For the last 50+years “the peaceful transfer of political power” meant a 4-8 year rebranding of the ruling paradigm designed to preserve the policy, perks, economic, legal and legislative advantages of the governing class. In 2016 election ushered in a division some say is a significant as the election of 1860. Many think it is the clear division of political ideologies. While this true, there is another split and in my opinion, is generally not recognized and ultimately more profound. First some context. The complex, interdependent infrastructure that supports modern life in America operates with such reliability that unimaginable amounts of goods and services are conceived, produced and distributed with seamless regularity. It takes a massive natural catastrophic event to interrupt it. The downside is that the demands are so great a broad interruption lasting two weeks or more would result in chaos in every major city. Ok, wh...

Are Human Beings Equal? The DNA among all humans is startling similar. Research from Stanford place it as high as 99.9%. If this is accurate- it is what makes human beings equal. Everything else is up for grabs. The inputs that result in inequality are seemingly without end especially in our era of social justice. All are based on violations, egregious or not of modern notions of morality, ethics, justice, etc. Subcategories of, gender, race, sexual orientation, personal identity, equality of outcomes and environment are contemporary hot buttons. These competing grievances are not equal. Some are considered imperative or crimes against humanity others are not. Often overlooked is that the definitions, on which they are based are fluid and change over time in response to social, cultural and technological inputs. For example, the contemporary definition of the word gay describes sexual orientation not emotional state. Are there metrics which are common to human action and not ...