There is nothing wrong with Texas' Governor Abbott putting barriers on the Rio Grande to prevent immigrants from illegally crossing over into America. If you want to come in, there are rules and designated pathways to follow. America should make it as difficult as possible for anyone to enter, otherwise.
If someone wants to enter your yard, you insist that they enter through the gate. If they want to enter your home, they cannot climb through the window. They must enter through the front door.
A child may call his father or mother "hero," but we will not call them "heroes." We are more likely to call them "good parents." Nature equips women to be good mothers, and men to be good fathers. Not all men and women live up to that ideal, but that does not mean that those who do are thus extraordinary, and thereby, heroic.
Likewise, policemen are not heroes because they intercede to protect a public citizen from harm. It is his job. That is what he is paid to do. Same thing for teachers. They are not by definition heroic. They are paid to teach. If you do not pay them, most of them, probably, will not teach; neither will officers police, nor firemen fight fires. That does not mean they will not risk their lives to save your child from a burning building. I suppose a number of men and women would do that. And, if they do, they will be heroic, mainly because it is a split-second decision, and no external force - like payment for services - compel them to act. They are driven only by a sense of humanity. There is heroism. It is far less common than we want to believe. Yet, it exists as potential energy within each of us.
There is a teacher in us, and a fireman, and a policeman, and a soldier. That person may never be called upon, or he/she may rise up out of us in the next instant. Such is the hero in us all. It has nothing to do with a uniform. It has everything to do with our sense of humanity when humanity needs us most.
Stop whining. A. I. is here to stay. Either become more creative to start writing better scripts, or find different jobs, the kind that are not so directly challenged by A. I.
What are Hollywood writers doing to distinguish themselves, anyway? I hear another "Mission Impossible" movie is out - one expected to be a blockbuster. Why? "Mission Impossible", like most sequalized movies are made for A. I. intervention. Like all done movies, once done, "Mission Impossible" is pure content. A. I. feeds off of content. Feed it a movie, and watch it spit out sequels like ninety-going-north. That is all Hollywood asks nowadays. Most of the movie-going public is non-discerning, anyway. Say, "John Wick" or "Indiana Jones," and they automatically think they are in for a treat, (even though Hollywood and its writers had barely broken a sweat.)
A. I. is not the problem. what is needed in Hollywood is writers with the balls to stand in the breach, a la John Henry, and take on the false god... a writer comme moi.
If A. I. can write a better movie, then any writer sitting on his pen should get out of the way. Personally, I do not believe A. I. can write a poem better than I can. And, like John Henry, I would put my soul on the live to prove it.
Any of you picket-sign-carrying softies ready to put your soul into your work? Do it, and I doubt A. I. anywhere can touch you.
The two leading candidates for president of the these United States in 2024 is Joe Biden and Donald Trump. One is physically decrepit, the other is morally bankrupt. Seventy percent of the country does not want Biden to run again; sixty percent does not want Trump. Nonetheless, this nation, because of its twisted and antiquated electoral system, is able, and willing, to force these two done men down America's throat. Sick.
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The nation that prides itself on law and order has distributed, (by hook or by crook), 400 million guns to its 330 million citizens. And, these citizens are not bashful about using their guns-shooting one another at a clip that leaves all other nations on Earth appalled. Sick.
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The richest nation on Earth is witnessing homeless encampments spring up in every city in America. The phenomena is fueled by mental illness, illegal drugs, illegal immigration, and a general lack of dignity - people who refuse to care, refuse to work, refuse to respect the rights and space of others.
This is 2023. There is no war. There are no Dust Bowls. The stock market is sky-high; unemployment is at an all-time low. This is not 1929, before FDR's New Deal, when shanty-towns sprung up because that is what good people had been reduced to in bad times. This is purposeful decay, and sloth. It is a portrait of a great nation protected by two oceans on either shore, and two friendly nations on its northern and southern borders. No other nation on Earth is so ideally situated. So, what do we do? We attack ourselves. And, we will lose. Sick.
"There are more things in Heaven and Earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy."
- Hamlet, Act I, Scene V
Just thinking: Perhaps for every man, woman, and child killed by an American-made weapon oversees, a man, woman, and child is killed by an American-made weapon on the streets of America.
Without much thought, we seem to take an unseemly pride in the number of Islamists we kill by drone in the Middle East; in how we tacitly approve the 10:1 ratio of Palestinians killed by American-backed Israelis; and celebrate Russians killed by American-made Heimers and howitzers, and soon, our own cluster bombs in Ukraine.
But, what of the karma, balance? Death is demanding; life is on call. A notch in our belt in Bakhmut may be answered by a corresponding notch from the southside of Chicago.
I wondered about this, even as the news flashed of a man in Queens, New York who randomly shot people - apparently for fun - from the seat of his scooter. Where does such wantonness come from? How is it reckoned?
President Clinton, toward the end of his second term, ordered a missile strike on a large pharmaceutical plant in the Sudan. (He had erroneously believed that terrorist activities were being planned there.) Fortunately, he did not kill 3,000 people, which would have equalled the number of Americans killed a year later on 9/11. He did, however, destroy an economic sector that, to the Sudanese, may very well have been equal to America losing the Twin Towers. Though they determined that no terrorist activity was transpiring at that Sudanese plant, I doubt that "Big Bill" said so much as a "sorry."
Think of it this way: East calamity we foster will reverberate back upon us with an equal force, kind of like Newton's Third Law of Motion: "For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction." So, a death there could mean a death here? Sounds weird; even far-fetched. But, impossible? I think not. Shakespeare said, "There are more things in Heaven and Earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy." That opens us up to endless possibilities.
In 2022, there were 647 mass shootings in the United States; there are 369 (as of July 10) this year. That is thousands of deaths, and tens of thousands of wounded each year in America, or likely, about the same as the number of mean, women, and children killed and wounded each year in our interventions overseas. Coincidence? Or, is something metaphysical at work? Just thinking. There are more things in Heaven and Earth...
