Late last year, I wrote a series of posts where I highlighted three specific areas I thought the U.S. government might overreach and do something really stupid in 2018. Jeff Sessions didn't waste any time making my first prediction look prescient.
Here's an excerpt from that post, Expect Desperate and Insane Behavior From Government in 2018 – Part 1 (Cannabis):
To see a world in a grain of sand
And to see heaven in a wild flower,
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand,
And eternity in an hour.
A robin redbreast in a cage
Puts all heaven in a rage.
A dove-house fill'd with doves and pigeons
Shudders hell thro' all its regions.
A dog starv'd at his master's gate
2017 was a tumultuous and extremely binary year for a considerable number of Americans. For those who thought everything was going swimmingly during the Obama years, Trump's election wasn't simply a shock to the system, but an extinction level event for civilization that handed the U.S. government to bunch of Putin-controlled fascists. In stark contrast, Trump's election was seen as divine deliverance by his devoted cheerleaders and red hat wearing obsessives. Finally, someone from outside the swamp had successfully trash-talked their way into the Presidency.
Dressed in red velvet, she trampled under her reckless feet the stray flowers fallen from other heads, and held out a salver to the two friends, with careless hands. The white arms stood out in bold relief against the velvet.
Last week, my brother and his longterm girlfriend entered these United States at JFK international airport in New York City. She's a Chinese citizen with a tourist (B1/B2 visa), which leads to many restrictions on when she's allowed to enter and for how long. They are always meticulous about playing everything exactly by the book, and this time was no different. The only unusual thing about this latest episode is his girlfriend happened to encounter an authoritarian and power-tripping U.S. Customs and Border Protection officer, who pulled her into a room and immediately began berating her.
Over the next ten years, I suspect the concept of a college education will be questioned to such an extent, and by so many people, that all assumptions we currently hold dear will be discarded. The spark for this momentous shift will start, as is so often the case, with simple economics. Too many young people have taken on too much debt to get jobs that didn't require this education they were told they needed.
There are several components, but the real shocker is that more of us aren't embracing the current age of access to mastery of any topic. But that may not be so surprising—most of us were taught to be passive learners, to just "get through" school. It's easy to be lazy. The rewards of becoming an autodidact, though, include igniting inner fires, making new connections to knowledge atnd skills you already have, advancing in your career, meeting kindred spirits, and cultivating an overall zest for life and its riches.
Education consists mainly of what we have unlearned.
- Mark Twain
Correction: Since I published this post, a material mistake in my analysis has come to light. It affects the entire tone of my writing, and is thus significant enough to highlight and address.
It appears the psychopathic officer yelling the preposterous demands and needlessly escalating the situation toward an execution of a U.S. citizen, was not the cop who shot and killed Daniel Shaver, but another officer, Sergeant Charles Langley. Sergeant Langley has since retired from the force and moved to the Philippines. Not kidding.
In the first two installments of this series, I discussed the potential for the U.S. federal government to make some spectacularly foolish moves against its own people in the realms of cannabis and Bitcoin. My basic assumption is that government tends to despise freedom, and that "leaders" of an empire in decline like the U.S. are particularly vulnerable to very bad decisions.
