Thursday, March 5, 2020

Entertain The Madness

We are solicited to action here, apparently, because the madness of "Chaos as Entertainment" wasn't quite ironic enough. Or perhaps simply because not only does one never want to piss "The Madness" off at all anymore, one must work, pro actively, to keep it happy, now that it appears to be in charge.

I hasten to add that the "Entertain The Madness" phrase is an actual piece of advertising text, being used currently by at least one, fairly noteworthy, online retailer of computer, and electronic stuff (a reputable merchant I can assure you, whom I have purchased from myself).

It's supposed to reference "March Madness," of the hoops variety of course, with new, super refined, 4K, and 8K, TV's to watch it on.

As often happens, however, the advertisers who write the copy don't always catch extra shades of meaning (that only a purveyor of metaphors would likely catch). Extra shades juxtaposed so as to demand that deeper questions be asked.

Which is why I, for one, also to have wonder how much sporting madness is going to be able to overcome biological, environmental, and leadership madness, now that life in general is just about as fed up with us as we seem to be with each other. So much so that any large, public gathering, type of event, may suffer great losses before people can be anesthetized again into blissful ignorance. Whereupon I also have to wonder just how long anybody is going to be attending any more campaign rallies. Even Trump Chumps might get the message there, otherwise their "Dear Leader" might actually have to risk getting truly poetic justice sent upon him; talking only hypothetically, of course, as we would never wish that on anyone. Not even that particular "gentleman."

It is interesting, though, just how similar sports madness, and political madness, can both go into amazing extremes; with all of the excess one would expect of something that now revels in over sized rivalry, and divisive competition, making it not only irresistibly attractive, but also a fertile ground for corruption, marginalization, addiction, and now intimidating control (would the athlete abuse scandals, doping and other cheating scandals, have happened otherwise? Would we have the hypocrisy of a Supreme Court Chief Justice admonishing a Senator for pressuring other Justices, when the President himself now feels quite free to intimidate any Federal Court witness, or Juror).

How could it be otherwise, though, when the underlying dynamics at work here, are actually quite revolutionary, and quite by very natural relationships; if for no other reason than "what goes around, comes around." And of course because electrified acceleration of everything naturally makes every recursive process turn faster anyway. Which certainly makes anybody making silly statements like "People don't want a revolution" all the more ridiculous; and that for no other reason than technology is already doing the "revolutionizing" for us. And whether the average working stiff out there fully appreciates the "Swimming With Sharks" competition (where so many of us are made so desperately sharp, to undercut each other) that's now so rampant, or not, it is a mistake the tech titans, and captains of capital, or at least the ones with 50 billion or more in market cap, and cash, are always loathe to make.

This is also why it is such a joke that America hates Socialism. As the Fed rate change clearly indicates, making money much cheaper for those who already have large stashes of it. And certainly, back when "Quantitative Easing" was in play, along with the Ryan tax giveaway, before the Dems took over the House of Representatives. All of it then putting a multi trillion dollar total to the subsidization "Big Money" gets, just as the rest of America is told we can't afford Health Care for all, or a living wage, or good schools for all, etc., etc.

The payoff for the rest of us was supposed to be jobs of course. But that becomes ever more problematic every year, as automation makes the continued, reliable store of value, in human labor, ever more subject to a cheaper alternative. Not to mention the fact that having livelihoods tied to ever more amplified want, fueling ever more amplified consumption, is no longer sustainable at all, to begin with.

The bottom line here is this: Continuing to do "Business As Usual" will seal our doom. Work must be redefined, and a new way to organize community life found, if we are to avoid this doom. `


[Post Note: Every article referenced in the header graphic that tops this post, except for the "Out of Antarctica" article, were taken from one of the two Google image searches listed just below. J.V.]

Images For Government As Reality TV


[Post Note: I, for one, feel compelled to make note of one factor I haven't seen, or heard, much comment on yet. A factor that relates to the meme, more favorably emphasized by the Right, than on the left, where it's supposedly, in a bigger picture view, a good thing that the main threat here is only for a limited set of vulnerable populations; keeping the emphasis there on the aged, and their infirmities, and not so much on the infirmities one gets, for various reasons, as a marginalized population. Bad as that might actually be, there is, inherent in this kind of thinking, an omission of imagination that is astonishing. I say that because one need only take a small moment to consider viable possibilities that ought to concern even healthy, younger demographic groups; and it goes like this:
In a new world, of now two, separate, flu symptom related, virus born illnesses, where the new one is at least ten times more lethal than the already established variety, suppose you are unlucky enough to first catch a new variation of the established flu. And because you're young, and busy, you seldom take the time, let alone have the time to keep reminding yourself, to take whatever flu shots the government tires to provide. So suppose further that that little dance with the virus devil sets you back quite a bit, in order to get over it. Leaving you weakened in other words; generally, as well as specifically to your immune system's response capabilities. And then, unlucky you, you get the new guy on the block version. At which point, dear reader, you are truly rolling the dice as to what is going to happen. And I can only hope you think long, and hard on just how problematic that roll might be. And after that realize you really do need to be involved in how things absolutely have to change J.V.]

Images For Coronavirus In America


Out of Antarctica, churnings of climate change



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