Electronic World: electrocutes instantly

The social network is lately full of scandal. Scandal production rises to meet the speed of communication. Is there more scandal-- or just more reporting? Trump's adultery, Michael Cohen's payoffs, Stormy Daniels making a media splash-- has been happening since Adam and Eve or, at least, since Luci and Dezi took over the television airwaves.

So, what has changed?

Transparency. The incredible transparency that allows us to get the dirty details on everybody. Think of the big names that disappeared from the scene almost instantly-- Charlie Rose, Louis CK, Russell Simmons, Matt Lauer, Harvey Weinstein, Al Franken, Elliot Spitzer, Bill O'Reilly.  Those bights ignited, burned quickly and disappeared in the blink of an eye.

The speed of collapse has changed. Decades of stardom gone in a few days.

We learn too much sometimes--  the sexual behaviors of Dustin Hoffman, bothered me. I liked his movies... including Midnight Cowboy and The Graduate most of all. Now I have to push Dustin Hoffman's rumored sexual behaviors out of my mind when I watch those films.

Ronan Farrow turns out to be the Sherlock Holmes of our era. Ronan did what The New York Times, Washington Post, etc could not do without him-- got the #metoo movement going.

Ronan got published in The New Yorker to get those Harvey Weinstein stories out. Ronan entered the annals of American history with his reporting on Harvey Weinstein. Ronan began his public career on shaky ground He failed as a MSNBC TV personality starting at too young. But he came back as a muckraking journalist and has changed society. Maybe Ronan has a political future?

Woody Allen is Ronan Farrow's father. Ronan stuck tightly to his sister's accounts of Woody having abused her sexually as a child. We have no proof of what actually happened but does that matter? Once the rumor takes hold, publish the rumor. Suddenly Woody seems guilty in the court of public opinion. Nobody cares to hear Woody's side of the story.

Woody has a wonderful sense of humor. Now I gotta consider Ronan's sister when watching a Woody Allen film. This places Ronan's sister on equal footing with Woody Allen-- one of the great comic geniuses.

Donald Trump has eluded the rapid fire dangers of the social network. Trump has brilliantly exploited the technology to great advantage.

Interesting the Donald Trump figured out Twitter at 70 years of age. Donald showed a preternatural ability to recognize Twitter as such an effective tool. He revolutionized American politics with the Twitter method for communicating with the electorate, at least his portion of it. This has nothing to do with morality. Twitter is available to us all.

Just remember... the electronic world electrocutes instantly.

James Comey (Don Quixote) tilts at America

James Comey is a modern day version of the Don Quixote—knight-errant. Comey, just like Don Quixote, is deluded and a master of bad judgement. Quixotic has become a word and it means “exceedingly idealistic; unrealistic and impractical.”

Like Don Quixote crossing the countryside, James Comey has made the scene at countless TV studios. His story now is “how I got fired by orange hued Donald Trump” just for being a good guy. Funny…Comey’s inept handling of things may have changed American history.

Comey, a long, lanky man with a certain similarity to Don Quijote, now pleads his innocence. Comey may have torpedoed Hillary Clinton’s run for president in the final days when he announced the re-investigation of her emails. An FBI director jumping into the election at a point just 10 days before the election, doesn’t have any precedent in American history. Comey used his nobleman’s jousting pole and bashed Hillary to the ground a few feet from her lifelong goal—the Presidency.

Comey’s first windmill— presuming Hillary’s election victory before it ever happened and feeling he had to ensure her legitimacy—blew up in everybody’s face. Comey may have elected Donald Trump! And then Comey got fired by Trump. It’s all a TV show, right?

Comey, like the confused Don Quixote, created by author Miguel de Cervantes, plunged ahead against perceived foes, chimeras, shadowy outcomes, but somehow intruded upon reality. 

Note the connection between James Comey and Don Quixote: 

Don Quixote's tendency to intervene violently in matters irrelevant to himself, and his habit of not paying debts, result in privations, injuries, and humiliations (with Sancho often the victim).

(Wikipedia)

The connection becomes clear. Just as Don Quijote roamed the countryside looking for enemies, Comey now roams the land looking for TV studios to promote his new book—A Higher Loyalty. 

There is a higher loyalty here—to James Comey himself. And Comey’s main loyalty seems to his book sales. First he interfered in the 2016 election. That’s something to write about—though he spins his role in the whole affair. 

With the Comey book tour promoting A Higher Loyalty he’s stomping his oversize shoes all over the Mueller investigation. The man has a talent for inserting himself deep into the heart of American history. Comey seems impervious to his own real motives. The man is being disingenuous or lacks candor. The silver lining, Robert Mueller was brought in to handle the investigation.

Comey, an admittedly telegenic presence, has some of the hangdog appeal of Don Quixote, the Man of La Mancha. He claims to be a knight in shining armor— working on behalf of America. 

For my money, he is more the knight-errant. 

Austin vs Texas (What the Right Wing Despises)

I live in Austin, Texas. We just got chosen as the best place to live in America for the second year in a row. Interesting that a city built most recently by hippies, artists, musicians, liberals and free-thinkers, has been consistently valued as wonderful place to live.

Austin emerged as a burgeoning city of creatives-- based on the proximity of the University of Texas at Austin. The town attracted IBM and that set the tone for our eventual status as a center for high tech. Technology and creativity make a strong combination.

Austin has problems-- traffic congestion, high cost of living, de facto segregation based on income disparity, and long, hot summers. Almost takes a millionaire to buy a house in Central Austin but people keep flocking here and adding to the population.

Employment is good in Austin, Texas. People can get jobs. There are enough jobs in Austin that you can actually quit your job and feel confident of finding another. Just like all of America from about 1950-1990, before the world turned global and industries and jobs moved to the places with the cheapest labor-- (i.e. China). We have it pretty good in this central Texas city.

Austin collides with rest of Texas when it comes to belief systems.

We are right in the middle of the state, but Texas thinks differently than Austin once you get beyond the city boundaries.

I studied a right wing Texas newspaper from just down the road in Abilene to find out what the rest of Texas thinks. The red votes in Texas are conservative and feel strongly about the conservative roots of cowboy culture. The frontiersman carried a gun on his hip. He needed it for survival in the 1880s. Now a gun seems more like a hobby, a talisman, a symbol.

What do the blue voters despise?

1) The "Democratic" media.
2) The United Nations
3) California-- too liberal, too expensive, proliferation of minorities
4) Gun control
5) Critics of Donald Trump
6) Sanctuary cities-- Austin is one
7) Leftism-- calling the left "a hate cult"
8) Barack Obama
9) Hillary Clinton
10) Sharia Law-- viewed as a real threat to the American system of laws.

Strange how Austin has thrived and prospered in the middle of. The Peoples Republic of Austin attracts young, creative types like a magnet pulls iron filings.

The one thing we all agree on-- the Houston Astros are great!

Insight to a Killer

The following paragraphs gave me more insight into Nikolas Cruz, the Parkland, Florida killer, than all the news reports combined.

I Tried to Befriend Nikolas Cruz. He Still Killed My Friends.

By ISABELLE ROBINSON
MARCH 27, 2018

PARKLAND, Fla. — My first interaction with Nikolas Cruz happened when I was in seventh grade. I was eating lunch with my friends, most likely discussing One Direction or Ed Sheeran, when I felt a sudden pain in my lower back. The force of the blow knocked the wind out of my 90-pound body; tears stung my eyes. I turned around and saw him, smirking. I had never seen this boy before, but I would never forget his face. His eyes were lit up with a sick, twisted joy as he watched me cry.

The apple that he had thrown at my back rolled slowly along the tiled floor. A cafeteria aide rushed over to ask me if I was O.K. I don’t remember if Mr. Cruz was confronted over his actions, but in my 12-year-old naïveté, I trusted that the adults around me would take care of the situation.

Five years later, hiding in a dark closet inside Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, I would discover just how wrong I was

Isabelle Robinson's account of Cruz throwing an apple at her captures the sadistic mind of the future killer. We have all faced an aggressive act from a hostile person. Maybe that makes Ms. Robinson's commentary so poignant. Most of us have never faced the barrel of an AR-15, or any firearm for that matter. 

Cruz's depraved act, attacking an innocent student with a hard-thrown apple, seems easier to grasp at that level. That he would return years later an open fire with an assault rifle seems only like the same act-- on steroids. Or on semiautomatic weapons...

Cruz's recent Adoptive Parents:

We haven't heard much about the Snead family, James and Kimberly Snead, the adoptive parents to take Nikolas Cruz into their house in recent months. The Snead claimed to know nothing about the serious suspicions surrounding Cruz.

The Sneads encountered Nikolas Cruz very late in the process. They had a son of their own, a Douglas HS student who was in the building when Cruz gunned down his former classmates and teachers.

The Snead family offered a few comments, reported by CNN, and they proved upsetting. :

The Sneads allowed Cruz to bring his firearms into the home, but they made him buy a locking gun safe, they told the Sun Sentinel. James Snead thought he had the only key to the safe, but he now believes Cruz kept one for himself, he told the paper.

They said they told Cruz he needed to ask permission to take out the guns.

"This family did what they thought was right, which was take in a troubled kid and try to help him, and that doesn't mean he can't bring his stuff into their house," Lewis, their attorney, told CNN.

Unfortunately "his stuff" included an AR-15.

Isabelle experienced the unvarnished Nikolas Cruz five years before the tragedy. Her article makes a strong case for Cruz's classmates not having played a role in his unraveling. Cruz had unraveled years earlier, and most likely his downfall began in the cradle. Cruz sounds like a dispassionate robotic killer. He had a penchant for hurting people-- whether with an apple or bullets. 

The thing that makes me wonder— how a recent addition to your home, in this case an adoptive young man with a troubled history—arrives on the scene with his personal AR-15 and red flags don’t go up.

The Sneads didn’t take notice… Neither did the rest of the country until the Douglas High School students took action.

Trump meets a Two Headed Monster (Mueller and Avenatti)

Donald Trump, the ultimate shape shifter and media maestro, may have met his match in the form of a two-headed monster-- Robert Mueller, the last Boy Scout, and Michael Avenatti, the steely-eyed junkyard dog litigator.

Mueller must be the exact opposite of Donald Trump. Mueller seems squeaky clean and entirely scrupulous. In an era of leakage, no secrets escape from the Mueller camp and he methodically probes the last presidential election. Mueller is organized. Trump likes chaos. Mueller walks past the TV cameras with a sense of purpose. He's intent on protecting us.

Trump is a different story. He may be the first president to not age in the job. Trump love himself so much he worries less for the nation. He didn't divest from his business interests. He cares more about the Trump brand than being leader of the free world.

Michael Avenatti, the attorney for porn star Stormy Daniels, has a Mueller-like focus but with a different agenda. Avenatti has Trump-like instincts for finding the weakness in an opponent and staying on message. Avenatti has the unflinching gaze of a race car driver. That's because he is one.

Steve Bannon reportedly said the #metoo movement posed a major threat to Trump presidency. Stormy Daniels does not spring to mind as the poster child for the #metoo movement. But Stormy and lawyer Avenatti have the personality requirements for facing Trump down-- in the courtroom and/or in the court of the media circus. Avenatti has an impressive resume-- an all-star student at George Washington University Law School, in Hollywood, including the O.J. Simpson civil case, and behind the wheel of a race car. And Stormy's resume speaks for itself.

Avenatti told us to "buckle up" for the 60 Minutes interview of Stormy Daniels next Sunday. I can think of at least one person who will be watching...

America's Kids Under Siege (guns and social media)

Maybe you remember your high school days? Peer pressure was intense, no doubt about it. Something about adolescence makes everybody want to fit in, to conform, and to win the love and approval of friends and family. The desire for success leads kids to go out for sports teams, dress in the coolest fashions and learn the lingo of the peer group. Today's kids face several new enemies (1) the social network, and (2) maniacs carrying powerful weapons on to campus.

The social network poses a bigger threat for young people.

It is very unlikely that a crazed individual will enter your kid's high school with the goal of mowing down a group of innocents. Parkland, Florida proved that it does happen. Television brought us there immediately.

Parkland, Florida felt different. We all went to high school. We could relate to being in the classrooms and the thought of an intruder with an AR-15 boggles the mind. Gun lovers complained about FBI's inept performance in not following leads and they have a point. I liked the father who appeared at Trump's White House gathering and said "9/11 happened just once. We were determined that it never happen again." He spoke angrily about why previous mass shootings did not cause enough outrage to bring the school shootings situation to a halt?

We are unlikely to see any changes in gun control laws. Gun owners do not want to be denied just because a few nut cases get out of hand and mow down the citizenry. They have a point, I suppose, and worry constantly that someone "will come and take away the guns." Not sure we have any evidence of that and I wonder where the fear comes from?

The mass shooting of a campus began in Austin, Texas-- my hometown with the infamous Charles Whitman climbing to the top of the tower on the campus of The University of Texas at Austin. That was 1966--

On August 1, 1966, Charles Whitman climbed to the top of the University of Texas Tower with three rifles, two pistols, and a sawed-off shotgun. The 25-year-old architectural engineering major and ex-Marine—who had previously complained of searing headaches and depression—had already murdered his mother, Margaret, and his wife, Kathy, earlier that morning. He fired his first shots just before noon, aiming with chilling precision at pedestrians below. “The crime scene spanned the length of five city blocks . . . and covered the nerve center of what was then a relatively small, quiet college town,” noted executive editor Pamela Colloff in her 2006 oral history of the shootings. “Hundreds of students, professors, tourists, and store clerks witnessed the 96-minute killing spree as they crouched behind trees, hid under desks, took cover in stairwells, or, if they had been hit, played dead.”

At the time, there was no precedent for such a tragedy. Whitman “introduced the nation to the idea of mass murder in a public space,” wrote Colloff. By the time he was gunned down by an Austin police officer early that afternoon, he had shot 43 people, thirteen of whom died.

(Texas Monthly)

We've had many years to learn from the Whitman massacre. 

The Vietnam War lead to demonstrations-- and a social movement-- a movement based on peace, love and equality. Times were different. That was the television era. The medium has moved from television to the cellphone. Everybody looking into their own phone....

White House: a revolving door!

re·volv·ing door

noun

1. an entrance to a large building in which four partitions turn about a central axis.

   • used to refer to a situation in which the same events or problems recur in a continuous cycle.

     
     

     "many patients are trapped in a revolving door of admission, discharge, and readmission"
   • a place or organization that people tend to enter and leave very quickly.

     
     

     "the newsroom became a revolving-door workplace"

Donald Trump dismisses FBI bigwigs (James Comey), fires former confidantes, turns against his most loyal early supporter (Jeff Sessions). and eats coffee boys (George Papadopoulos) for breakfast. 

Donald may turn to Temp Agencies to fill these positions.  He enjoys not adding USA Ambassadors to countries across the globe. No American ambassador presently assigned to South Korea.

The Donald keeps government employees on the unemployment line, denizens of the Deep State are stuck in basements, shooting pool or playing video games until things change.

Why Trump's rapid turnover. He has turned the White House into a revolving door atmosphere. If you grew up in New York City, you know revolving doors. They are found on the ground floor of high rise buildings.

Trump loves added his logo, the name Trump, to the top of these buildings. Revolving doors symbolize speed and efficiency. Maybe Trump's childhood visits to Manhattan made a big impression-- a regular primal experience.

"I'd love to send people flying through those doors when I grow up," young Donald may have thought.

Trump's dismissals of personnel are not always that-- and many resignations have been thrown in the mix.

Recent developments: Rob (accused wife beater) Porter fired... Hope Hicks resigned. Hope famous for being a Trump confidante. She answered to the Mueller investigators. Made a dash to the revolving door afterwards... Gary Cohn bolted. Cohn, Economics advisor, folded up his laptop and headed back towards Wall Street.

 Look-up The Art of the Deal, and see what Trump;s co-author Tony Schwartz had to say. Ain't a pretty picture. Schwartz's comments on Trump's short attention span bring to Fire and Fury by Michael Wolff.

Revolving Door. Let's get the invention facts:
American inventor Theophilus Van Kennel reportedly hated holding doors open for women, so he created energy-efficient revolving doors to cure his social phobia.
(Noah Friedman, Business Insider, Dec. 19, 2016)

And from Wikipedia:

Theophilus Van Kennel  was recognized for his invention with the John Scott Medal by the Franklin Institute in 1889, founded the Van Kannel Revolving Door Company, which eventually was bought out by the International Steel Company in 1907. International Steel Company is the parent company of International Revolving Door Company.

Van Kennel invented and owned Witching Waves, an amusement ride introduced at Luna Park, Coney Island, in 1907.

Witching Waves is an interesting name for the amusement ride at Coney Island by Van Kennel.  

Mysterious waves lapping at the shore. Waves washing ex-White House staffers out to sea... Witching Waves describes America's continuous turnover rate at the top. 

Mr. Trump professes conflict is key to his management style. Hard to argue with the pugnacious president.