GRILLING GOD: 2

Good morning, Lord. I’m delighted You’ve taken time out from what undoubtedly is a hugely busy schedule. It would be even more delightful if I could actually see You of course.

Be thankful; I am merely trying to spare you a painful radiation burn.

Ah... like Moses when he came down from Mount Sinai?

Yes, Moe glowed like Rudolph’s nose. Anyway, kiddo, what’s on our little mind today?

Well, Lord, this is a bit awkward... I mean this subject.

Don’t be shy.

It’s about g-g-g-gay marriage and... You know... um... ho-ho-homosexuality.

Oh. That.

It’s confusing to traditional and religious people. We hope You might clarify it for us.

Clarify?

Culture is changing very rapidly here on Earth, and many of us don’t know how to handle it all.

I thought I long ago made Myself very clear. Did I not? Well, speaking of My old friend, Moses, what did I tell him about all this?

Just a second... let me check it out in my Old Testament... let’s see now... oh yes, here it is. Genesis 2:24...

     Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh.

What’s not clear about that? It takes a male and a female to make new generations. Two bulls won’t turn the trick, nor two cows. Good grief, man, it’s just the natural order.

Well... Lord... that was a long time ago. This is the modern era. We can make children in test tubes. People don’t believe in those old rules, don’t You see? That’s the problem.

So. Did Moses bring some plain and simple rules down from Sinai? For instance something about thou shalt not murder?

Yes. I believe he did. Yes.

Do you and your people still believe that rule?

Most of us do, yes.

Is that not also an “old rule?” These are rules of nature. Natural laws. Man does not murder man. Man does not dishonor his mother and father. Man does not lay with man. Your people are a stiff-necked lot.

“Natural” law? What does that have to do with religion and You, Lord?

Let me show you something, dumbbell...

(God suddenly makes space/time around the interviewer change...)

Whoa! What’s going on here!

Can you see how this works? Your science calls what seems to you to be chaos... the interaction of fields. Sub-atomic particle spin, integer and half-integer. Virtual particles that pop in and out of your reality like champagne bubbles. All that gibberish. Your physicists invent equations for all this because they don’t really understand how or why it works. But they know it works.

God, please! My head is spinning! What does it all mean?

Sorry, I should have realized your tiny brain isn’t equipped to handle all this.

(God makes space/time revert to what we think of as “normal”)

Oy! What a relief. Thanks, Lord.

What you saw there was nature. Cosmic perfection. Natural law. I created it and its rules way back in The Beginning. What you need to understand is that I use it as a tool. I don’t go around zapping wicked people these days. It’s boring. So I give the slightest nudge to these fundamental fields, and it vibrates its way up through the microcosm to your dimension, and in due time, kaboom. Depending upon My judgment, something good or something very bad happens.

But our people say they are just trying to be tolerant. Being Christian. Nobody should be hurt by bias. Tolerance is a good thing, isn’t it?

Tolerance? For good things, yes. Wrongful things, no. Tolerance of unnatural things is a creeping cultural infection. So your culture becomes tolerant of one more thing after another, all of which I told you is wrong. Tolerance of wrong-doing is complicity!

You scare me when You raise Your voice, Lord. Well, yes... I understand Your point... but...

Again with the buts. I gave you rules. If you don’t abide by them, don’t blame Me for the consequences.

Consequences?

How thick can you be? Your “sophisticated” culture may believe that what happened at Sodom and Gomorrah is nothing more than a biblical myth. I am here to tell you it is not. So read it...

Okay, okay... just a sec... okay here it is... in Genesis Chapter 8...

And the Lord said, Because the cry of Sodom and Gomorrah is great, and because their sin is very grievous; I will go down now, and see whether they have done altogether according to the cry of it, which is come unto Me; and if not, I will know. 

Now, you can guess what their grievous sin was, can’t you?

I think so. Among other things, I’ve heard it was men... You know... umm... “knowing” other men.

Bingo! And the punishment?

Ohboy...

The Lord rained upon Sodom and upon Gomorrah brimstone and fire from the Lord out of heaven; And he upheavaled those cities, and all the plain, and all the inhabitants of the cities, and that which grew upon the ground.  (Genesis: 19)

Are You saying You might do the same thing nowadays?

Oh, I might have gone a bit overboard in my anger towards the people of the plains. I shall use a more measured approach this time. Slower. A more subtle nudge in the microcosm. Spare those who still follow My... as you say... “Old rules.” Perhaps more along the lines of the messenger I sent. You know, My Earthly Son, the young man you saw fit to crucify? Did his immediate followers not also warn of consequences?

For this cause God gave them up unto vile affections: for even their women did change the natural use into that which is against nature:
And likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust one toward another; men with men working that which is unseemly, and receiving in themselves that recompence of their error... (Romans: 1)

Uh-oh... recompense. Whoop-ass. That’s not good. I was hoping for a different answer, Lord.

Of course. Your kind always does.

Lord. I hate to say it, but I don’t think my people will heed the old rules. They are past that point. Some believe that we have so over-populated the world that we no longer need so many mother and father marriages... because we don’t need more people. They believe nature is at work here to slow down our population growth. Maybe that’s why they are on a cultural rampage. Soon anything will go.

Yes. Unfortunate.

I don’t like the way you said that. Is there nothing You can do to bring us back to our senses?

Did I not give your kind free will and intelligence to choose between what is right and what is wrong?

We seem to be happy with“free,” but that there will part... not so much.


Well, kiddo, you’ve put in your request... frankly, I’ve grown exasperated by your people thumbing their noses at Me, so I am not so inclined to step in. They are daring nature. And nature rarely loses a dare. Just when you think you are winning... boom! You get your keister kicked around the block again. You never learn, do you?

I must be on my way. A bocci tournament with Micael and the Seraphim on Ophiuchus IV. Then rush over to a distant galaxy to save forty quadrillion good souls who have been praying to Me to save them from a rather large and ominous patch of dark matter (which incidentally might be heading your way next)... it’s about to obscure the life-giving light of the stars in their galaxy. And I must do all this just before afternoon tea. 

Ahhsome.

Be thankful. Your problems here are trivial. Just a few “old rules” for you dumbbells to follow. Try it.

Well, ta-ta.

Okay... see Ya.’ And Lord... thank you for the advice. But I think I’ll start refurbishing my old bomb shelter. I have a feeling I might be needing it.

MAINSTREAM MEDIA: THE ONE-SIDED COIN

When I was a kid, long ago and far away, my Uncle John bought me a “magic trick” set. Among its many wonders were a magic coin, and a deck of cards which you could magically turn from a normal 52 different card deck into 52 identical fives-of-diamonds. No matter how you flipped the coin, I could make it come up “heads” 100% of the time, or if I chose to, “tails” 100% of the time.

There were other tricks in the kit. I quickly learned that in order to make everything come out his way, the magician not only needed to learn how to manipulate the items with unerring slickness, but how to manipulate his audience with the same slickness.

I wasn’t much gifted in the way of slickness; my tricks inspired few oohs and ahs but plenty of giggles. I did learn something useful though. It was always far easier to manipulate folks’ perceptions if they wanted to believe. They wanted to believe this kid could turn a normal deck of cards into something else right before their eyes; pull cards out of thin air; and that by sheer will, he could make a two-sided coin turn up “heads” every time.

Though very, very few of us kid magicians ever grow into David Copperfields or Penn and Tellers, the awareness of how easy it is to manipulate an audience tends to make us skeptics of the highest order.


Particularly disturbing is how reporting and analysis of today’s news events is every bit as manipulative of the news audience as my ol’ reliable one-sided coin trick. News, no matter its source and venue, can no longer even pretend to be unbiased. Every report, analysis and editorial is designed to raise the well-measured passions of the core audience of any one particular news venue. They decide what to feed their audience according to the day’s rules of political correctness. Anyone thinking outside their narrow PC rules is headed for ostracism or worse. There will be only one side of a coin tolerated. The PC side. No other thoughts allowed if they might cross into politically incorrect territory.

Even as the basic who, what, where, when of news events are reported, the viewer/listener has been manipulated into seeing the event as the media wishes you to see it. You are fed only agenda-driven news and analysis. Whether you believe it’s done by design or by ignorance is irrelevant. It is done. And, once again, the news audience has been had.

Here is the bare-bones essence of a recent event:

A young man sitting among a congregation of church goers suddenly pulls out a hand-gun and starts shooting, killing many of them, including the preacher.

Reported in such a way, devoid of any politically or culturally loaded adjectives or phrases, it is neither heads or tails. It is just a very nasty coin. But the event is so awful, so compelling that audiences’ blood lust demands more. If news outlets fail to satisfy their lust, people will begin filling in completely imagined details on their own. Or to use highly technical language, they will pull kaka out of their own arses. Knowing this, news outlets begin adding images, innuendo, interviews and analysis which sculpt the image on its one-sided coin. Or to use a highly technical news term, they pull kaka out of their own arses. But since they are The (bow your head) Media, fronted by self-proclaimed high priests and priestesses whose pontifications thou shalt not challenge, their kaka is accepted by all non-magicians.

News people aren’t magicians but neither are they stupid. Like magicians and carny barkers, they know that most of you want to believe. Itching to throw down your entry fees to once again be had. News editors, reporters and analysts seem to be driven by an insatiable need to out-PC their competitors. In order to prove they are in the very dizzying heights of our cultural atmosphere, they season their interpretation of events with innuendo, images, statistics and outright nonsense supporting their view. And because it is usually done before any actual facts are in, nonsense it is.

If this is so, one concludes that much of what is presented by the news media as “fact” is little more than fabrication. Not completely truthful. Bordering on lies. Kaka. Or at the very least misleading. Perhaps so. But most news events, if reported honestly and fully, would at least show the coin has two sides. In the eyes of a large audience either or both sides of any coin may be valid. Now it will be your own bias if they show you both sides but you still refuse to see anything but one.

Most of us have our favorite news outlets. This could be a function of the personality of the presenter, or presentation style, or simply our own personal political bent, or maybe we can only get one tv or radio station in clearly, or perhaps it’s just plain old habit. Whatever the reason, it is still possible... no... it is imperative... to see both sides of the coin. But the more politically correct the audience, the more it will choose not to see.

We have created a culture not only of biased news media but of viciously biased news audiences! An intelligent news consumer ought to be able to hear either the heads or tails version of a news event, and by careful, open-minded analysis of that side, easily deduce the other. Fair judgement doesn’t demand you believe one – or either – side, but it does demand your awareness.

And so, disregarding all sense of balance, each news event is presented, politically correct, embellished, seasoned with all the day’s cliches, cooked to satisfy the appetites of its audience demographics:

A young white terrorist sits among a congregation of black Bible students at an historic black church. The young man, a known supporter of apartheid, with a history of arrests and drug use, suddenly pulls out a .45 caliber hand-gun, which his father gave him for his birthday, and starts shooting those poor innocent black leaders around him, killing most of them, including a well-known rising star preacher.


My notion is the only unseasoned, unembellished, genuine universal human reaction to such an event is to choke back your gasp, shake your head in silent sad disbelief, or furrow your brow and mutter Oh my God while feeling your eyes getting wet. Oh, I’m not telling you how you should feel... people will feel the way they will feel. But PC often has them muttering brainless cliches because they think it’s expected. Few people have the gift of capturing the moment in extemporaneous comment. I certainly don’t. It’s what people mean when they say “I am lost for words.” Everything beyond that is banal kaka.

News reporters cluster around anyone connected, in even the most remote way, to the incident; poking their licorice ice cream cone mikes in their faces, trying to interview police and sheriffs and friends and relatives of the victims and perpetrator as if anything they say will cast light or meaning onto yet-to-be investigated murders. In this case there is no doubt. Dylann Roof essentially confessed to the cold calculated slaying. Yet we are still fed the “senseless murder” baloney, as if murder sometimes makes good sense. Murder is inherently evil. It is anti-life. It is a vote in favor of violent death over life.

But the other side of this evil coin is young Dylann’s thinking. Upon first glance, perp-walked in cuffs and flack jacket, he looks like another stupid kid. A loser. What could make him capable of such a heinous act? Is there anything which might mitigate this monstrous deed? Is it only pure evil? Was he possessed? No. He is a cold, calculated murderer. But one quick read through his “manifesto” reveals the other side of this coin; a tortured young man; one who has thought things through and come to a conclusion which in its stark assessments of today’s world and America’s failing culture reveals a surprising intelligence, if such a thing may be said of a cold-blooded killer. Awkward. Racist as his conclusions might be, they bring some perspective to his behavior. He is a smart loser.

Mitigating circumstances? There can be none. But newspeoples’ innuendo... now that’s kaka of a different color. Listen carefully to the innuendo in how the media framed the crime. As if it would have been less horrible or more understandable had it not been perpetrated in “an historic church.” Or less horrible if the victims were not all black. Or less horrible if he were not white. Or not young. Or not sitting among the congregation like a snake waiting to strike. How did the news media know the victims were “innocent” people? They took no time to check before making their “expert” pronouncements. What if Roof had used a blow-gun or bow-and-arrows, or samurai sword, or a bomb? Is there, in the minds of news people, a more politically correct way to murder?

This is what news-speak innuendo is designed to do. To lead you down the garden path to a lynching. Not every crime that happens is leaden with far-reaching implication. Cries of “gun control!” Plenty here. But few seem to add the same politically correct innuendo when gangs of same-skin young men, perhaps with unpublished manifestos, mow each other down outside “historic black churches,” with guns and knives not “given to them by their fathers,” et cetera, ad nauseam.

The sad thing is if this young racist really planned on sacrificing himself to his beliefs by murdering those he saw as the destroyers of his culture, he could hardly have chosen a more innocent, sympathetic group. In that there is genuine outrage. Had he the moral courage, like Charles Bronson’s character in the “Death Wish” series, to chose his targets (as he wrote he wished he could have) from among the gangs in his city, perhaps losing his own life in the process, the story would be very different. It would have challenged the arbiters of the politically correct tyrants. It would have been a coin with two well-defined sides which they couldn’t disregard.

In no way will it mitigate his crimes, nor make them any less evil, but if Roof ever gets the opportunity to express his thoughts in an open court or forum, an open-minded public may find some truths in his tortured fears. The other side of the coin. Yes, young Dylann is smart alright... but not smart enough to see through cowardly outside racist influences... not quite smart enough to conclude that cold-blooded murder as a cure is far, far worse than what, according to him, is the problem.

THE TRUMP INTERVIEW WE WISH WE COULD SEE

G’day Mr. Trump, and thank you for seeing us this morning. Swell office you have here... what a view! And all those awards.

(Trump) It’s nice to talk with you. Incidentally, I enjoyed your grilling of Hillary Clinton.

So... you’re really in this time, Donald... congratulations... a serious campaigner for president. Everybody knows you; you’re a celebrity, but polls suggest when it comes to political office there are many who wouldn’t vote for you... going so far as to say “no matter what.”

When they hear my plans for Restoring America, a lot of them will come over to my side, believe me.

Let’s get this “Mexican immigrants” issue out of the way... what about your recent comments about Mexico not sending us their best? Criminals? Drug dealers? Rapists? The liberal media jumped right on you for that. I’m sure you see some of the hate spewed about you on the internet.

Look, anybody who thinks I hate all Mexicans are too stupid to bother with. What I said is true. Just look at the news almost every day. Some illegal who came over our southern border, was already convicted of some crime, deported several times comes back and robs, murders, even rapes here on our soil. I know many of Mexico’s good people. I know their leaders. They have no use for these criminals either! Why do you think they’re doing so little to stop them from coming over here? They figure, hey, let America’s stupid leaders take care of them. 

Many of these haters on the internet are paid by my opponents. They’re unemployed kids... well-off middle-class American kids who don’t know what they’re talking about, really. The truth is I feel sad for these kids. Some of them are older too! We’ve got to move them up from living in their parents’ basements to real jobs and careers. Obviously they have some ability so they can do better than being losers who attack me. Envy is a waste of time.

Some think you’re arrogant... a blow-hard. Not to be taken seriously.

I think the losers who make these stupid comments don’t even know what those words mean. They confuse confidence with arrogance. They don’t like what I have to say because, unlike others, my opinions aren’t poll-driven.

 Are you saying President Obama is poll-driven?

I’m not running against Obama. I may be running against somebody who is even farther left than he is. Somebody who promises what polls say the crowd wants; than if elected, will disregard all the promises, pushing us farther to the left and barter with America’s sovereignty.

Some on the ‘net make crass jokes about your hair. Does that bother you?

Only if they’re hairdressers. Or maybe Serge Normant.

(Laughter).

My opponents try to distract from the serious issues at hand. Let’s face it... I’m smarter... have greater intuition... others are afraid to take the issues head-on. I’m not. If you hate me because of my hair, who’s strange, you or me? These paid flunkies know I’d be great in a one-on-one debate on national tv.

Better than Mitt Romney? 

Mitt’s a very good friend of mine. He’s a good guy. He is such a good guy that even though he could have handed Crowley her ass in that last debate... okay, he might have needed a weight lifter to help... but he hesitated. He blinked. So... he lost.

You won’t hesitate to hand your opponents their hind parts?

[Very broad smile]

Your detractors bring up financial bankruptcies and other issues in your background. What about that?

They know nothing about business and economics. That’s why they’re going nowhere. Bankruptcy is simply a legal financial tool, like any other legitimate financial tool.

And by the way, these same detractors have no problem supporting somebody who is morally bankrupt.  

How will a Trump Presidency be different?

My goal is to restore America’s greatness. Obama has made us the laughing stock of the world. Nobody respects weakness. The president doesn’t want confrontation. He fancies himself the professor of cool. But he’s a lousy negotiator. Vladimir Putin runs circles around Obama. China is eating our lunch, and if Obama ever gets his trade deal... and I use the term ‘deal’ loosely... the Chinese will eat our dinner and our dessert too. The president draws lines in the sand, red lines, then spends months delaying decisions on everything... meanwhile blames everybody else for his own weakness. If I ran my business that way, I’d be in the poorhouse. Those scuff marks on his shoes are from kicking the can down the road. The next president will be stuck with terrible problems Obama caused.

You believe you can deal with those problems better than, say, Hillary?

Of course.

Look, I know Hillary... she’s a friend of mine. Bill, too. I know them all. But just because a woman shares Bill’s bed doesn’t make her as good a politician as he is. [Mischievous smile] If it did, there’d be a lot more women challengers for the Democratic nomination. So, yes, I can deal with the problems better than Hillary. Or any of the others.

What makes you so sure?

Because I know how to build things, how to negotiate, I wrote the book on the art of making good deals. A best-seller. Look at my record of accomplishment. I’m not Washington, DC. I’m not out to build my celebrity. I don’t need quid pro quo. Unlike our current president, who nobody ever heard of  before he ran for this office – and most other candidates – I have all the celebrity and wealth I need. Despite what some believe, my motives are altruistic. I’m doing this for a higher cause. I consider it an honor to be an American citizen. I owe this great country a great deal. It pains me to see what these losers have done to our nation in this new century. They have cheapened the value of citizenship in the United States. They are handing out free tickets and bringing every kind of problem to our country. It solves nothing. Maybe it gets them more votes. But it makes everything worse for America. I want to repair the cracks in the mortar that held us together so well since the end of World War Two.

I believe you do.
How would you handle the mess in the Middle East?

I’ve said it before; right now, our friends don’t trust us and our enemies don’t fear us. I know them all. You know what they tell me? Our allies think everything our commander-in-chief does over there is for show, politics, not to stop the enemy. He tells our enemies exactly what we are going to do, when and where. I won’t tell them a damned thing... in fact I will mislead them. I will never involve our military in a mission whose goal is anything short of victory for the United States. We can’t be sending our young men and women into battle without being 100% behind them. It’s tragic what this president and his Secretaries of State have done to our military.

Would you use more military force?

The best military action is to build up your military so your adversaries would rather negotiate with you out of fear and respect than to go to war. So the best military strategy is designed to avoid military action. Reagan knew that. It works. If you’re playing poker, you want your opponents to believe you’re holding a royal flush in your hand.

I know many Iranian leaders. They’re making Obama look like he just fell off the turnip truck. He’s so desperate to make a deal with them that he will concede anything just to get it. And the Iranians know it. Look at how it’s going. They get what they want; America gets zip.

You believe Obama and his administration are really that inept?

As I said, I’m not running against Obama, but I am running against his terrible record, and Hillary is part of that record. Now look, I’m not saying he is sympathetic to our enemies in the Middle East, like some people think... but if he were... this is exactly what he’d do. Weaken our military by handcuffing the commanders. I know many of these guys. They’re great guys. They tell me how frustrated they are with Obama and his weak leadership.

If a U.S. president was sympathetic to our enemies in this region, he would funnel heavy weapons and financial support to our enemies by sending it to our “allies” in the region, knowing all the while our allies will run from battle, leaving everything there for the enemy to take as spoils. This keeps happening over and over, doesn’t it? What’s really going on here? Bottom line is, we seem to be supplying the enemy with military equipment they can’t easily get elsewhere. So, you can say Obama is inept if you like... those are not my words... but he may be devilishly clever.

What about our economy and jobs?

Nobody out there can beat my record of job creation. Obama is out there playing golf, I’m out there building golf courses. While Hillary and her entourage are staying in hotel rooms and renting office space, I’m building high quality hotels and beautiful office buildings. I’ve created huge numbers of jobs. Successful tv series, beauty pageants. These are not minimum wage jobs either. They’re high paying jobs that support families who go on to buy homes and cars and tv’s and all the things that move the economy in the right direction.

Like Trump ties?

I see you’re wearing one of my favorite colors. I see a lot of them on tv pundits and personalities. Everybody notices you now, right?

Do you still believe Obama isn’t a natural born citizen?

To quote Hillary, what difference at this point does it make? Let’s just get through the last months of this administration. Cross your fingers. Pray, if that’s your cup of tea.

Do you believe you can do anything about the deteriorating race relations in our nation?

Listen to me. Obama, Holder, now Lynch and the rest of his “restorative justice” crowd have set race relations back to where they were in the 1950s! I don’t have to tell Americans what they already know. But when we restore America’s greatness in the eyes of the world, it will effect every citizen in this nation... everything else will take care of itself. 

Pride encourages people to better themselves in ways Big Brother can’t. And incidentally, belittling our nation, as our President and First Lady like to do, whether on purpose or not, inspires no one but America-haters. The Trump brand of pride will inspire those on every level of society. They will feel it, and want to live up to their own potential. That – not living on government dole – is the real promise of America.

The Federal government needs to stay out of State and local issues. Police departments under leadership like ours here in New York are fully capable of reforming any injustices which may exist in their forces. I know these cops. They’re good, hard-working people, many are friends of mine. Believe me, this hatred of police in America is ridiculous. Obama is using it like he uses every other controversy, as an opportunity to advance his leftist ideology; Federalize the police, the health industry, unions, banking, manufacturing, transportation, land ownership, food, water resources and all the rest. If you like bureaucracy, if you think Amtrak, Obamacare, the Post Office, and our immigration system are models of efficiency, well, keep voting for these Washington insiders.

As much as I personally like the other Republican hopefuls, I know them all, they’re good friends, I know none of them can beat Hillary and Bill.

Well, Mr. Trump, as much as I would love to ask you about illegal immigration and so many other issues, I know your schedule is pressing. Perhaps we can do this again when your campaign gets rolling. So, let me thank you for your time and provocative answers. We look forward to hearing your plans to restore America, and we wish you all the best!

Thanks. We’ll do this again. It’s going to be fun. 


(To see our assessment of Trump’s qualifications for running for president click here to see our earlier posting) 

“THEIR FOOT SHALL SLIDE IN DUE TIME”

There is nothing under the sun which will not be corrupted by the hand of Man.

The title of this post is from Deuteronomy (32:35). Elected officials beware.

In our time, the digital revolution has created a new class of criminals and a new class of detectives. This revolution was made possible by the binary code system (deceptively simple strings of plain ol’ ones and zeros introduced to the Western world by Gottfried Leibniz as far back as 1679! – appearing in his Explication de l'Arithmétique Binaire). Without the invention of high-speed solid-state electronic processing of information in binary code, we would still be living in the analog world of the mid-1900’s when corruption was, by contrast to today, “small potatoes.”

In the mid-1900s, TVs displayed their fuzzy pictures by painting them on large glass tubes. Telephones were big, needed wires, and did nothing but carry voices. But the messages were rarely recorded. Cars were vehicles to get you from one place to another. But they didn’t broadcast your every move. If you wanted to see a movie, you had to go to a movie house. But nobody outside the theater knew what you were watching. Music came to our ears via radio or phonograph records, later, audio tapes. But no-one beyond earshot knew what you were listening to. Photos were made on film, which had to be taken somewhere to be developed and printed. But the photos weren’t viewable by everyone in the world. Banking was slow and often required you to go to the bank. But your accounts weren’t vulnerable to criminals in foreign countries. The reason? There was no internet. 

To those of us old enough to have lived in the mid-20th Century, the improvements in technology which have since brought about all the marvelous things we now take for granted have been nothing short of startling. But even more startling are the ways our fellow men have so quickly and thoroughly corrupted each and every item of technology as it came along.

How convenient, the internet. Virtually instantaneous transactions of all kinds. Banking, commerce, buying, selling. But the proliferation of “security” firms and software indicates how insecure are your transactions. All your personal and financial information stored in the form of the little bitty 1’s and 0’s, with nothing but a few bitty 1’s and 0’s keeping thieves anywhere on earth from stealing your identity, money and reputation.

The security of your home, your car, your business, your personal relationships, your finances, your messages, your habits, all hang on the arrangement of flimsy strings of little 1’s and 0’s. The internet is a voracious vacuum, sucking up the world’s quadrillions of 1’s and 0’s. There is great wealth to be made with these giant piles of quasi-real bits. Somewhere, they are saved, filed, and distributed to anyone willing to pay, or anyone with a judge’s nominal okay, all the aforementioned 1’s and 0’s which divulge your financial transactions, messages, business and personal relationships, who you know, where you shop, what you buy, what you eat, wear and like. Your posted photos, videos, music, travel and virtually everything else you ever do, say, or use. 

Your electric meters are also collecting your power habits. Are you using too much electrical energy? What hours are you using it? Your bills will reflect your government officials’ opinions about your private habits. Maybe you are using your electric toothbrush too much. Your gas meter will tell “them” about your home heating, water heating, cooking and everything else you are doing with gas. Your water meter also communicates back to the water company in binary. Are you bathing too much? Flushing too much? Watering lawns too much? All this information doesn’t simply stay in the archives of the electric, gas and water companies. It’s all available in the form of the damnable 1’s and 0’s to those with the interest and wherewithal to lay their grubby hands on them.

Passwords? Don't be ridiculous; whatever your passwords may be, they are recorded and read in the form of 1’s and 0’s. How convenient Leibniz’s simple binary system, no? Allowing an electronic device which can sort through millions of 1’s and 0’s at virtually the speed of light, until, for good or for evil, it finds the pattern it’s been programmed to search for. Maybe yours.

Senator Rand Paul politically announces the passage of his bill limiting the NSA digital “spying” on American citizens. That is laughable. It does nothing whatsoever to limit everything else mentioned above.

Now, why is today’s corruption different from that in the last century? Back in the day, political/corporate corruption might involve thousands of dollars. Which, at the time, seemed like a lot of dough. It was relatively easy to cover up this kind of corruption. Hand some official an envelope stuffed with $20 or $100 bills, tear up the envelope, and poof! No record. Over time, corruption has grown far more widespread and far worse in degree. Today it involves millions if not billions of dollars. These transactions usually don’t involve paper money but electronic transmittals through several financial laundries, each having its own stinking pile of binary 1’s and 0’s.

But the internet’s smelly pile of 1’s and 0’s also makes this magnitude of corruption more vulnerable to tracing, more easily exposed, because the internet allows the army of researchers and hackers in the white hats to dig through the bad guys’ puke-laden 1’s and 0’s, in their efforts to expose those whose feet of clay have slid in their own corruption.

As we are seeing in each day’s news (also brought to most of us by 1’s and 0’s) “Their foot shall slide in due time.”