I Planned a Return at Age Forty - Didn't Happen

I started another blog a few months back called Zen in the Art of Being a Jerk (https://zenintheartofbeingajerk.blogspot.com/), where I talk about how much I like heel wrestling characters.  One of the typical heel characters is often referred to as the closet champion.  This is the champion that refuses to face all challengers, and ducks as many as he can in order to try to artificially increase the length of his often undeserved title reign.

In that spirit, when I was a powerlifter in college, I legitimately feared competing in the very difficult open division.  I was able to compete in the teen division, the junior division, and the collegiate division, and it was much easier to place in those specialized divisions than it was in the open division.  But after college, the number of specialized divisions is slim pickings, and lifters are pretty much forced to compete in the open division.  It isn't until age 40 that you can compete in a masters division for older lifters.  So before I graduated, I joked to my college buddies saying I would avoid competing after college and wait until I'm 40 years old to compete again.

Now at age 44, I'm just too beat up to be anything near competitive.  My digestive issues are the main thing, but my hip flexors bother me on squats too, and last time I tried heavy bicep curls my hand was numb for darn near a month.  I simply can't push myself hard when training anymore without risking injury.  Sure, I could still sign up and lift super low weights in a competition, but that's just no fun.  I guess some guys can keep going strong at that age, but not me.  My back injury in my 20's sealed the deal, and once that finally cleared up a few years later, all my muscle was gone, I had just started a family, and I simply didn't have enough incentive to return.  Then when those digestive issues set in after I hit my late 30's, it was very clear that my competition days were over, never to return.

3rd Grade News

I always like how Trump called the news the Fake News.  Because in some ways he's kind of correct.  I understand not everyone in the population has the mental capacity to read very much (or the free time or interest for that matter), but the choice of articles, and the choice of headlines in particular, are often quite abysmal in order to generate clicks.  They really do seem to be intended, not always to be false as Trump implies, but always to be FAR over-simplified to little more than a catchy slogan that leaves a whole lot of relevant facts out of the account.  Both the left wing and right wing media are very guilty of this.  Probably not EVERY piece of media has this fault, like local newspapers for instance, but online stuff like Yahoo news and the articles it links to often fit this description to a T.  Fox news probably as well, although I haven't paid attention to them in a while.  But I remember in the past they'd take small sound bytes from speeches, ignore the rest, and run with the sound bytes as if those alone said as much as a dissertation.  That is not good journalism.

So I think I'd rather call it 3rd Grade News than Fake News, because it simplifies things too much, where maybe some of the facts are accurate, but they leave out a lot of relevant information to paint a false impression.  I think Lisa Simpson said it best when she said, "As usual, the playground gets the facts right, but misses the point entirely."

I guess the news does what it can to generate revenue and keep afloat.  I know I sure as heck don't like to think deeply about politics much in my time away from work, and I don't blame anyone else for not wanting to either.

I Usually Vote Republican, But Understand Why Many People Don't

I believe in the last general election I voted in, I chose one Democrat, and everyone else I chose on the ticket was Republican.  

As much as I dislike progressivism, I can't deny that there are some things moderate and even staunch Democrats stand for that have genuine merit.  Showing concern for the environment and making sensible efforts to control pollution is certainly not a bad idea.  Showing compassion for refugees attempting to escape from an oppressive government to start a new, honest life looks like the right thing to do as well.  Increasing the tax burden on those who have benefitted greatly from living here and can easily afford the increased burden is difficult to argue against too.  So I certainly understand why people often vote against Republican stances and don't blame them for doing so.  Particularly when economic conditions for the general population are not doing so well under the Republican watch and when a rude fellow with a questionable record and a lot of inherited money is put in charge of the land.

In fact, most of the time I vote, it isn't because I love the Republican stances at all.  I just can't stand the progressive stances.  The ones that look for fault in every darn thing and refuse to be satisfied.  They rarely give those that they are against a clean slate and a chance to start over.  In their eyes, America is forever a land of bigots and will always be racist, sexist, xenophobic, and whatever accusation you want to throw against it - because it was without a doubt a major part of the Atlantic slave trade hundreds of years ago - long before its birth and all the way until the mid 1800's.  

Now, SHOULD progressives hate America forever because of this glaringly awful part of its history?  Don't they have a point?  Maybe so.  But man, if you're going to hate a country, or anything else, that much - you know, FOREVER, no matter what it does in the future - then just don't even be a part of it.  Go to Europe (even though it doesn't have anywhere close to a clean slate as far as its history of human rights goes), or start your own country.  It makes no sense to hate something so much that it can't ever redeem itself, yet to still stay associated with it.  

So until the forever unsatisfied progressives exit the picture, it will be difficult for me to consider lending my support to anyone - even a moderate - who fails to strongly differentiate himself from such a negative and hopeless group that prides itself on unachievable yearnings.  Even if you give this progressive group everything it wants, that's still not good enough because it cannot erase the past.  And the best way to deal with anyone who can't be satisfied with anything you ever do going forward is to simply ignore them.  Why waste effort to appease those who can never be appeased?  

But American progressives do not have to stay in this forever-unsatisfied purgatory.  They can climb out if they so wish without sacrificing much, if any, of their push for improved human conditions.  I think they just need to realize that a big part of changing the future is to accept that the past cannot be changed and to go from there.

That said, do I blame people for picking permanent America-haters over convicted felon Trump?  Do I blame people for picking convicted felon Trump over permanent America-haters?  No.  I don't blame either one.  Why?  Because some decisions are tough and prioritizing can be difficult.  I'm not even proud of my own decision.  But I think I'd be even less proud if I chose otherwise.

Trump is really doing the exact same thing I would do if I was in his position regarding the progressive extremists.  He's completely ignoring them, and even going actively against them.  I have never seen a politician before him have enough brash guts to do that.  So that's one thing about the man I can admire and support, even if his personal life isn't much different than Bill Clinton's.  It really does get exhausting seeing moderate politicians trying to appease the unappeasable, which I witnessed for many years.  FAR too long.

Bart vs. the Space Mutants vs. the Fundamental Theorem of Calculus

Bart vs. the Space Mutants was an insanely hard game on the old 8-bit NES Nintendo system.  I think anyone that played it before knows it.  It's harder than proving the fundamental theorem of calculus. You know how I know this?  It's because I took a Real Analysis course in college where we did actually prove the fundamental theorem of calculus, and I got a B in that course.  But I NEVER could beat Bart vs. the Space Mutants.  Not as a kid or an adult.  The furthest I got was level 4.

Of course that game isn't even the hardest one on the NES.  There were a lot of games on that system I never could beat.  Never could beat Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles on there either.  Or Beetlejuice.  Or Home Alone.  Or Addams Family.

The hardest games I actually COULD beat were Mike Tyson's Punch Out and Adventures in the Magic Kingdom.  The Magic Kingdom one wasn't quite as bad once I figured out what the stars were for and how I could use them as powerups, and how to use the candle in the pirate level.  But even then it was no picnic.  Space Mountain was still pretty tough to me.

Those old NES games sure were tough.  Especially since a lot of them didn't have any kind of save feature.  Heck, a lot of times you were lucky to even get a password.  Some of the games I could beat with a Game Genie, but of course since it's cheating, that doesn't count.  Some of them I STILL couldn't beat even with a Game Genie.

A Chekhov's Gun Critique

The philosophy behind Chekhov's gun makes sense on the surface, where you don't put something in a story unless it comes up later, but I think there's an interesting technique that I've seen in the Sherlock Holmes short stories where stuff doesn't come up later, but still kind of serves a purpose.  

Often Watson will reference other cases at the beginning of a story, some of which actually appear as short stories themselves and some of which never make it to print.  You may ask, "What's the point of even mentioning the case if it will never come up again?"  And my answer to that would be that it makes the world appear much larger than what we actually see.

Pleasantville 2

To the best of my knowledge, there has never been any kind of sequel planned to the movie Pleasantville.  But I sure love that movie.  Grew up watching Nick at Nite in the early 90's, and so it reminds me a lot of that channel.  

I imagine the sequel would be the citizens of Pleasantville slowly realizing  more and more of the problems that come with open-mindedness that encounters no resistance.  Things like struggling single parent prevalence, profane language dominating entertainment media, addiction to technology, etc.  And then they'd slowly become more open to some of the ideas behind self restraint again.  

And when some small behavior exemplifying restraint is accomplished, a small part of the world would lose its color and return to black-and-white.  Even though not everything would return to what it once was as far as culture and behavioral customs go (racial integration in particular would remain), enough things would revert so that eventually the entire world would turn black-and-white again, slowly biding its time over the years before it becomes open to introducing color and a spirit of open-mindedness once more.  

So it's kind of like a reversal of the main idea of the first film, which focused on the problems with restraint and how the world became more colorful when restraint was cast aside.

I like this idea because it shows that to everything there's a season.  There are seasons of opening up and there are seasons of restraint.  Pros and cons to both.  Open up some, step back a bit, open up some, step back a bit, and keep the pattern going.  The cycle repeats, probably indefinitely.  I believe there are historical examples of this cycle in the past, but at least for the time being, there does not seem to be a prevalence in literature of periods of voluntary self restraint dominating a culture.  Temperance movements have popped up here and there against alcohol, but that's all I'm aware of.

The Trolley Problem in Star Trek TNG

I believe a Reddit forum somewhere discussed this, but I didn't want to participate in a conversation there, so I'll just post a little bit about it here.

Counselor Troi is studying to get the credentials to potentially move up to a captain's position.  But she keeps failing a simulation section of the exam Riker gives her, and he won't tell her why.  Eventually she discovers on her own that the reason she kept failing was because she kept the well-being of each individual person in mind, even when the health of the entire ship was on the line.  

She finally realizes her first duty is to the ship, and so when she next takes the exam, she orders the simulation of LaForge to go in and fix a warp core breach, despite knowing it was going to kill him.  That time she passed the section.

At that point, she realized she didn't want to be a captain anymore.

So the solution to this problem really depends on the duty of the decision maker.  It may mean actively ordering someone to their death if it saves the ship, or perhaps actively sending three our four ensigns to their deaths if it saves the captain and first officer.  Whatever is optimal to keep the ship afloat on its mission is key.  Even if it's not pleasant to think about.  Being an effective leader requires tough and unfair decision making sometimes and it's certainly not for everyone.  I know I often avoid assuming such a position when I can.