By RICHARD JOHN STAPLETON

I agree with Ralph Nader and Bruce Fein in their opinion.

The Impeachment Managers, especially Jamie Raskin, made excellent presentations to the full Senate, clearly and logically building and analyzing their case; but a few cowardly dim Dems made a poor call in the final minutes of the Game behind closed doors, which cost Dems the Game, assuming they really wanted to win, once again selling progressive Dems down the river.

They should have insisted on calling witnesses when they had the chance no matter the risks or how long it took. Nothing was more important than doing everything Dems could to convict Trump in the eyes of all Earthian humans, to send a permanent powerful message proving that democratic consensual truth can rule when threatened and confronted by the lies, machinations, violence, and crime of gangs.

In this case two hundred or so of the gang members will be punished with fines and jail time for their crimes, but the gang leader got away with his crimes scot-free, thanks to 43 Repugnant Senators voting to acquit, of 100 Dem and Repub senators voting. Seven non-repugnant Republicans voted to convict.

Most of the 43 Repugs voting to acquit did so because they thought it would help them get reelected, and/or they were afraid of violence or sanctions against them emanating from their own voters back home, or from Trump himself. They were cowards afraid of being considered a traitor to the Repug gang and cause. So they made themselves traitors to truthful law-abiding humans everywhere by voting to acquit. Repug senators now resemble gang leaders and members more than they do truthful law-abiding citizens.

In this case democratic consensual truth was overridden by yet one more arbitrary Senate rule, that required a sixty percent majority vote to convict a president in an impeachment trial. Why not require a seventy percent majority? Or just a simple majority? It’s as if US senators through time have tried to minimize real democracy in the senate by adopting arbitrary petty unfair rules.

This is not rule by constitutional law; it’s rule by whim and conniving capricious Game-playing, designed to protect the vested interests of political parties, senators, representatives, and presidents who want to keep their jobs. I was taught in history lessons back in grade school that “our wonderful American democracy” was supposed to be governed by elected citizen representatives who would go to Washington for a few years to use their common sense to vote their consciences on various issues and then go back home to live happily ever after managing their farms and businesses. I never dreamed back then that most of them would want to hang out in Washington for a living the rest of their lives.

This exemplifies what’s wrong with the US government. Rules are passed to favor political parties and persons not to cause efficiency and effectiveness of operations. This penchant for rule-making has turned the process of USian government into a process of Game-playing, rewarding connivers and manipulators, Adapted Child and Critical Parent people, who enjoy adapting to and using petty rules and playing psychological Games, such as NIGYSOB, Now I’ve Got You, You SOB, fostering constant competition and conflict, requiring I’m OK — You’re Not OK life positions to function, almost obliterating Adult ego state objectivity performing their duties, causing an incredible waste of time, energy, and money to get anything done resulting in real improvement for we the people of the US or citizens of Spaceship Earth.

As this televised invasion and Impeachment Trial made clear and obvious, tremendous energy is required to get anything done in Washington because the rules of the Game have been rigged in all sorts of ways to protect the vested interests of various individuals, groups, and organizations, almost destroying real democracy in governmental operations. Consequently what is needed in the US Congress is something that will eliminate most of their arbitrary petty rules and master-servant processes that limit real democracy. Rather than waste time trying to rig committees and elections to give various members unequal power, such as the obscene unfair power possessed by the villainous and treacherous Mitchel McConnell as the Senate “majority” leader, the now-“minority†leader, what they need to do is use a Classroom De-Gamerâ„¢ I invented such as the one demonstrated above. Give each member of Congress a number, and when openings on necessary committees arise or discussions of bills need to be conducted spin the spinner and select new committee members or a member to start a discussion in a group, wherein all members have an equal chance to say what they think about problems, alternatives, and recommendations, using their common sense, after the randomly-selected De-Gamer-selected leader of the day decides to stop talking. That would create real democracy and eliminate most of the psychological Game-playing that wastes untold time, money, and energy day in and day out managing states of affairs of the US Government, which are now in considerable disarray considering all branches around Spaceship Earth.

Based on what I saw and heard on TV in shots of halls, offices, and other rooms in the Capitol Building, and in commentary, watching the insurrection and the impeachment trial start, escalate, and play out, it seems to me today’s senators and representatives plodding about in and occupying the halls, offices, restaurants, pubs, gyms, beauty shops, and other rooms of the Capitol Building ought to enjoy their habitation and its amenities and perks, catered to by hundreds of excellent well-trained servants. The architecture, paintings and other art objects, overall decor, and intricate details of the building are exquisite and awe-inspiring. Several people on TV during the invasion and impeachment trial remarked about how easy it is to get lost in the Capitol Building, containing hallways heading in various directions at various angles, secret rooms and what have you, in a linked labyrinth. It’s no wonder gang leaders needed to take reconnaissance tours of the place allegedly led by senators or representatives the day before the invasion in order to be able to find specific senators and representatives they wanted to capture, once they broke into the building. One capitol policeman was clever enough to trick invaders into following him down a wrong hallway instead of knocking down a door where the invaders were, behind which several congresspeople were hiding. It’s likely the anger of the loser-survivor gang invaders of January 6, 2021 was to some extent caused by envy they felt for winner-survivor congresspeople.

Mark Twain in his time said the US Congress was the largest criminal class in the world. Many of the January 6 gang invaders thought much the same about today’s Congress members, having been primed to hate them by their supreme gang leader, former president Trump. On the bright side, senators and representatives might now have less concern than they did about getting reelected, since they now know violent gangs can break into the Capitol Building in broad daylight. They might now think running a boring farm or business back home might not be so bad after all.

I also agree with this article, “The Capitol Siege Was White Supremacy in Action. Trial Evidence Confirms That,†by George Yancy.

Mainstream TV media generally lied by omission about this white supremacy issue during the invasion during the early stages. I told my wife I have yet to see a single non-white face in the crowd, but they’re not saying anything about it. It’s also interesting that some of the violent white gang members had no compunction about chanting and saying they wanted to do serious harm to white congresspeople, especially Nancy Pelosi and Mike Pence, by violent means, including gunfire and hanging. In some ways they resembled a very large lynch mob.

I watched the whole thing, both the insurrection and the trial, on MSNBC, occasionally switching to Fox So-Called News to see what kind of picture they were painting of the invasion and trial for their audience. At times the events were riveting and horrifying; at times the presentations were inspiring and exhilarating, watching the good guys; at times they were disgusting, watching and listening to the bad guys, Trump’s dissembling lightweight lawyers; but the whole psychological Game was sickening and depressing in the end, like watching your team lose an extended days-long Superbowl game by deliberately fumbling the ball on the one yard line as time ran out.

MSNBC did a good job technically showing the Game in real time, the greatest show aboard Spaceship Earth at the time, a massive panoramic extravaganza started, promoted, partially orchestrated, and starred in by one of the biggest con artists of all time, reality-show star Donald T. Trump, surpassing by far the circuses of P.T. Barnum & Bailey. Maybe Trump really is a “stable genius”, a strange and evil genius, a pantomime clown with the vocabulary of a sixth-grader.

This was the sickest part: “McConnell Says Trump ‘Responsible for Provoking’ Attack, After Voting to Acquit; Trump Says MAGA ‘Has Just Begun’.† 

Trump also possesses magical Houdini-like skills extricating himself from seemingly hopeless predicaments, and so far he’s been lucky. McConnell and the other 42 Repug senators voting to acquit and Rescue Trump, despite the facts of the case that were clearly and professionally presented and explained by the very competent House Impeachment Managers, proving beyond a reasonable doubt Trump incited an insurrection against the US government, won the Game for Trump at the end with their 43 acquittal votes, thereby insulting human common sense and decency in a display of greedy, thuggish, disingenuous, despicable, cowardly human behavior, which, thanks to an arbitrary rule requiring a 60 percent Senate majority to convict a US president in an impeachment trial, can now result in disastrous consequences for all USian citizens, possibly anarchy and civil war, leading to military states of affairs in the US resembling states of affairs happening in the Middle East and North Africa in the last seventeen years, with war lords and gangs roaming about the country conquering and controlling whatever they can as long as they can.

If so, hopefully the USian military will be more successful fighting a “war on terror” inside the US than it has been fighting a War on Terror outside the US.

Since January 6 internal agitations between political gangs and between political gang leaders and political gang members in the US now resemble more and more the internal agitations of war-torn Game-playing countries in the Middle East and North Africa, aided and abetted in some cases by the Game-playing USian government and its military forces, ostensibly to spread and preserve “democracy” around Spaceship Earth, to control oil supplies for chosen people in NATO countries and elsewhere, and to preserve faith in the “American” dollar as the Earthian reserve currency in international trade.

Regardless of what common sense might tell you, a 57 percent majority of the US Senate voting to convict Trump was not good enough to really convict him. Trump was three votes away from conviction, a very narrow Houdini-like escape from his much-deserved condemnation.

Convicting Trump would have led to his disqualification from ever again holding a USian political office, and his personal vampire-like MAGA fascist gang in the US, containing probably at least thirty million true-believer loser-survivor followers, would have figuratively had a wooden stake driven through its hard heart. Instead, tragically, because 43 Not-OK Repug gang members and leaders in the US senate Rescued Trump with their acquittal votes to win the psychological Game, Trump and his gang members can now continue to threaten, harass, and recruit Victims inside the US, as they try once again to install an authoritarian fascist regime in the US, with Trump as president in 2024, depending on the verdicts of civil and criminal trials Trump faces in the meantime. May the 43 Repug senators voting to acquit Trump, thereby Rescuing him in this monstrous psychological Game, live in infamy for their flagrant discounting of facts, common sense, consensual truth, and human dignity.

What are grade school teachers supposed to tell their students about this psychological Game in Usian history lessons?

_______________________________

Richard John Stapleton, PhD, CTA, certified transactional analyst, educator, octogenarian emeritus professor of management, writer, editor and publisher at Effective Learning Company.

If you wish to make a comment about this article please scroll to the RESPONSES option at the top of this page included on the masthead of this blog and make your comment there.

By RICHARD JOHN STAPLETON

Rout Logger’s Group: To Save Earthian Civilization is a work in progress. While settings, plots, theories, objects, and narratives in this novel may be loosely analogous to the same that have happened in various realities, the names, actions, and attributions of characters cast herein are fictional. All parts of this novel will be published in the Effective Learning Report at various intervals on the Internet, subject to revision at any time, hopefully culminating in a final print edition offered for sale to the public.

Copyright 2020 by Effective Learning Publications. All rights reserved. No part of this novel may be copied or printed on paper without permission. Share on the Internet as you wish.

To refresh yourself about what happened in earlier episodes, go to the following website addresses:

Internet Episode 1, https://blog.effectivelearning.net/the-group-to-save-spaceship-earth-part-1/.   

Internet Episode 2, https://blog.effectivelearning.net/the-group-to-save-spaceship-earth-episode-2/.

Internet Episode 3, https://blog.effectivelearning.net/the-group-to-save-spaceship-earth-episode-three/.

Internet Episode 4, https://blog.effectivelearning.net/the-group-to-save-spaceship-earth-episode-four/.

Internet Episode 5, https://blog.effectivelearning.net/the-group-to-save-spaceship-earth-internet-episode-five/.

A list of names of forty cast members with a short biographical blurb about each is presented in Internet Episode 1.

INTERNET EPISODE SIX

SESSION FOUR

FEBRUARY 2020

DALLAS, TEXAS

The Truther Selected Martin as the rooster crowed

Martin—Here we are in the Heart of Texas, or should I say in the heart of Texas traffic.  I don’t think I have ever seen such a tangled mess of traffic in my life, cloverleaf intersections and entrances and exits everywhere.  I’m lucky I took a cab in from the airport.  I can’t imagine how anyone could learn to get around in this mess of highway mazes.  I never realized Dallas was as large a city as it is.  On the other hand, once you get into the hotel, it’s like we are home again.  One central city hotel is about like another. 

As a religious studies professor it seems to me the biggest problem right now is people not having a firm set of anything they can believe in, something to put their faith in, not knowing whether there really is a god, and if so, what kind of god. It seems to me the alternative prescriptions are all authoritarian, dogmatic and doctrinaire, telling people not to question what the bible says. On the other hand, can humans develop some sort of non-authoritarian god , a non-anthropomorphic god, with no human characteristics, that does not care for anyone personally or human relationships, who merely creates certain scientific principles and phenomena, such as what we can see, hear, and feel in the physical world, the verifiable world of cause and effect, somewhat akin to the great  spirit of native peoples on north America, as mentioned in that article Rout made us read during our last session. 

It seems to me this is what is most akin to what is really going on in reality.  I have not seen one scintilla of evidence with my own eyes that any sort of god has ever told anyone to do anything or who has ever done anything because of having been asked to do something in any sort of prayer.  Thus there is no way to have any sort of human-like relationship with any sort of god.  On the other hand one can believe in and have faith in the laws of nature.

This kind of god created by humans themselves would simply be a human spirit that infuses humans with confidence and courage, and an ability to see reality for what it is.  This god is similar to what was recommended in ‘The Evolution of Spaceship Earth, Inc.’  This is what I recommend today, that humans evolve such a god and spirit and forget about heaven and hell and dogma and doctrine and authoritarian threats.

Ellen—I am inclined to agree with you, Martin.  On the other hand, I do not believe most people would take this view.  Most people have been so ingrained with authoritarian religious notions and threats of everlasting hells and such, and even physical punishment on earth, such as beheadings, floggings, and stonings, and the like that they would never go along with this. Some people even remember that humans were burned at the stake for not believing certain religious dogmas and doctrines not too many years ago.

Margaret—As a civil servant for the government I can tell you in our current political culture you had better keep your mouth shut about such things when at work and at most places or you can damage your career.  You might not get fired for talking about such things but you can be punished in other ways, not promoted or not given decent raises.  The best thing to do about religion is not say anything about it in public.

Clarence—As a lawyer it’s interesting to me how religious people especially evangelicals keep trying to cram religious oriented laws down the throats of people, even the idea that there should not be separation of church and state, and god runs everything.  There are those in the US who are just like the Taliban in Afghanistan, who want to turn the US into a religious theocracy of some sort.  There are those who think that god should actually run the country. Remember Bush II telling us god told him to invade Iraq? We have had presidents in recent decades, such as Bush II who told the USian people that they actually did things like start major wars because a god told them to.  Now this is really problematic.  Did Bush II actually hear a voice in his head that he really thought was god who told him to go to war?  I doubt it.  Was he lying about this?  Most likely but who could prove it?  The problem is nothing about god can be proved, and consequently manipulators and despots can use the notion of god to manipulate people at will, which is lying of the worst kind, but there is nothing anyone can do about it. Trump does this sort of time all the time, even participating in religious rituals with a sanctimonious look on his face, and later saying to others in private he thought it was pure bullshit.

Napoleon—It’s similar to the don’t ask don’t tell policy of the military regarding homosexuals.  Just pretend it does not exist. Even if you believe it does.  There ain’t no way in hell to win that war.  People have been fighting over religion for centuries and nobody has ever won one yet.  Yet the major religions are as strong financially now as ever.  True enough there are more nonbelievers percentage-wise than there used to be.  I’m not sure about the numbers on this but I am pretty sure most people are not as brainwashed by religion as they used to be.

George—There is no way you can win an election in the US today if you do not pretend to believe, without saying things like god bless you and God bless America and such.  Bush II is a good example.  He got religion here in Texas when he lost an election for a minor post, and vowed he would never get out-Christianed again.  That’s why he started hearing god talking to him in his head, maybe after he gave up drinking.  When you get right down to it religions are like political parties.  People, some people at least, are so fearful of what will happen to them after they die that they will pay money to preachers to save them from hell, and some are so greedy that they will sell their souls on earth to get a better seat in heaven, but most in my opinion join religious organizations to gain political power and support in their communities to satisfy their own selfish day in and day out needs, or to help insure that they are not marginalized or punished in some way.  Joining a church makes people feel more secure, especially politicians, in their daily lives and careers, not only in their presumed afterlives.

Luke—I’ve stood it as long as I can.  I sold my soul to the devil for five thousand dollars a month to come to these meetings and put up with the blasphemy I’ve heard, and I have tried to keep my mouth shut, knowing full well it was hopeless trying to convince you sinners of the error of your ways.  I am now convinced this group is the work of the devil, a plot of Satan conceived in the very bowels of hell, where you people, or at least most of you, most assuredly deserve to go.  I have tried to pray for you and for your immortal souls, but I am losing my patience. You are damned for questioning and criticizing the holy word of the Lord. 

Julia—I wish we didn’t talk about this.  It makes me sick to my stomach. 

Paul—I wish we didn’t too, but we have to.  Who can sit back and watch and listen to what is happening to our world and not say something about what one thinks is the truth of the matter?  For sure some of the most serious hatreds and problems including wars are still being caused by or partly caused by religions and religious beliefs, dogmas, and doctrines.  What is the major cause of war?  I think the main cause is simply a lust for power and arrogance. People not only want to possess power but to have the ability to tell others what to do, bullies fighting other bullies just for the fun of it, but the next major cause of war is poverty, too few resources poorly distributed to satisfy needs, so one group or organization or country is always trying to steal resources from others. It’s built in to society, but religion is a factor since it enables people to get power, as has been discussed today.  What is the solution?  Outlaw religions?  Communist Russia tried that.  Look what happened. They not got poorer and poorer economically while they got politically more powerful developing nuclear bombs and military might, but they wound up getting rid of not only communism but atheism, after realizing shooting off their nuclear bombs would surely result in their own destruction.  Putin and Russia are now as hypocritical about religion as were Russian czars. The place is now run by Putin as a military dictatorship and oligarchy for the rich, using their longtime orthodox religion much the same as Russian czars did to manipulate and exploit serfs before the Russian Revolution of 1917.

Joan—As you know I work for an insurance company and I can tell you religion is not something you want to talk about at work in in a large insurance company.  In fact you don’t want to talk about anything but what you have to talk about doing your job.  Most people who work for a living do not have time to think about religion.  It is not only irrelevant it is unproductive. It saps the productive energy of workers.  One fringe benefit to having a good job like I have is that you do not have time for or any responsibility for even thinking about religion, you are free of it at work.  I think all people should be.

SESSION FIVE

MINNEAPOLIS, MINNESOTA

MARCH 2020

Much discussion had occurred on various subjects but it was disjointed and unorganized.  Should Rout start writing some sort of book or report for the donors now letting them know what had transpired?  It was not easy keeping track of all the common threads in the discussions in terms of content, but it was even more difficult to accurately note and assess the changes that had occurred in the personalities of the group members.  The group had become more cohesive and more Game-free and it appeared some of them were now enjoying participating in the discussions rather than just going through the motions.

It was becoming clear the new Corona virus, Covid-19, was a real and serious threat and would cause The Group to cease operations in its current face-to-face format. Rout decided not to open this for discussion in this session. He would let the group members know what the donors had decided to do about the Covid pandemic during the first two weeks of April.

The Truther selected Marshall as the rooster crowed

Marshall—Well, being a weatherman it seems to me the biggest problem today is climate change, caused by human-caused global warming, burning too much fossil fuel. As you know there are no easy answers.  But probably the major problem is that must humans have not accepted the fact that human caused climate change has happened.  Personally, I think it goes back to the religion problem.  It seems to me most people believe a god will solve all their problems regarding the environment.  They do not believe the problem has to be nor can be managed by humans.  They believe since god is all powerful he must want the climate to be the way it is, since he created the earth and all its processes, including the climate.  And to some extent they are right. What power does the average person have to affect the climate working alone? Absolutely none if only a few individuals worked on the problem, but if all humans, all seven plus billion of them now on Earth, worked on the problem they could perhaps help correct the problem, by doing things such as driving cars less or changing their diets to consume less food produced by processes requiring fossil fuel.

Factory agriculture is a problem.  It requires using automated machinery instead of human energy to plant and till crops, machinery requiring the burning of fossil fuel as an energy source and instead of controlling weeds and insects by human energy chemical fertilizers are required, many of which are chemically derived from fossil fuel that has to be heated and processed.

I watched the town hall meeting last night and listened to the democratic candidates giving their opinions on climate change.  I was surprised that most of them agreed that climate change is real and is a threat.  Some of them hammered the point home that humans only have about eleven years before it will be too late to prevent catastrophic consequences, possibly extinction.

As several of them pointed out hundreds of human species are being rendered extinct right now, largely caused by increases in human population.  The human population has about doubled in the last fifty years requiring quantum increases in resources to feed and house them.  If the human population should double again in the next fifty years this alone could insure human extinction and the extinction of most other species on earth, largely because of habitat destruction.

As some of the candidates pointed out humans need to start thinking about Spaceship Earth more and worrying about their nations of origin less.  Selfishly pursuing your own interests as an individual or as a group, especially as a member of a large nation, could cause human extinction.  Selfishness is a major problem. Humans have got to think more altruistically and benevolently or else the end is nigh, or so it seems to me. 

How to get humans to do this it seems to me is a major problem.  This sort of change will require changing not only economic systems and but also religious systems. The capitalistic economic system is basically obsolete. How to shift from what we have now to a viable and feasible economic system is perhaps the greatest problem. 

Quite naturally this is going to require cooperation between nations and much less competition.  I agree with the author of the Evolution of Spaceship Earth that this is the way to go.  I’m not sure however whether we have enough time left for this sort of evolution to naturally occur and correct the problem.

John—it might be feasible to write computer code to use something like linear programming as suggested in the Evolution of Spaceship Earth, that Rout had us read back in the Asheville meeting, but how could you possibly make the required political and religious changes.  In all organizations the biggest problem is not writing computer code to make the organization more efficient but resistance on the part of managers and others who do not want their power an perks to be reduced.  If you look at this problem within countries the problem is horrible.  Can you imagine getting heads of all corporations worldwide and current stockholders within corporations worldwide to consent to turn over their power and perks to computer programmers who would write computer code to determine what and how resources would be used to produce and distribute the necessities of life to all humans around Earth in an optimum manner, including using clean green energy sources instead of fossil fuel.  It would require a massive redistribution of wealth the likes of which has never been seen on Earth before.

Socrates—Right on John. People have a will to power and having power is what makes the world go round.  You can build a case if you were to cut the power of people to this extent it would cause widespread depression, loss of self-esteem, life satisfaction, and whatnot.  What good would life be if there was nothing to work for as goals?  If all you had to do every day was sit around and wait for your dividend checks to get deposited in your bank account what sort of purpose in life would be this be.  In effect there would be no purpose for humans.  Relative to computer artificial intelligence systems they would be worse off than children relative to their parents in terms of dependence and the like.  Buckminster Fuller’s notion that humans should never do work that machines can do better is one of the most dangerous propositions I have ever heard of.

Sam—Yes, but what option do we have but to at least try to bring something of this nature about?  I assure you I will continue to write articles advocating this sort of thing,  the problem though is how do you get people to read such articles?  One of the major problems right now is that there is so much information out there from so many different sources on the Internet that no can possibly absorb it all.  How can anyone have any impact as an individual?  The national security administration right now can capture just about any human transmission that is made electronically, emails, Internet posts, and what have you.  They have a data center out in the middle of a desert capable of storing billions of transmissions daily.  The problem is even using computers they have no way of sifting through the data so as to pick out what is most relevant.  Most writers and social activists are preaching to their own choirs, small numbers of people.

Barbara—As a housewife I feel as if I am a fish out of water here but I will say something.  Most of you people are far more qualified than I am to say things to this group.  But what difference does it make if  you are qualified or not.  Nobody knows anything for sure.  When I am not taking care of my kids or doing chores around the house I do sometimes listen to the news and learn a little about what you are talking about here.  I have no idea what linear programming is and I know nothing about computer programming.  I have no idea how it’s done.  But I can tell you most of what you are talking about here would never be mentioned on the TV programs I watch.  Most people like me are totally shut off from these kinds of questions and issues.  I can’t imagine how anyone like me could possibly be of any value in working these sorts of problems out.  Why would you want to pay me five thousand dollars a day to just sit here and listen and say something about something I have no idea about is beyond me, but so long as you keep on payin’ out the money I have no choice but to keep on comin’ to these meetings.  I need the money for my family.

Albert—I’m with you Barbara, except I am a university professor, not a housewife, a professor of sociology, and I can assure you I am not qualified to write computer programs or depose corporate chief executives or convince politicians we need a new economic system.  But I can say something about class structures which are relevant here.  As Karl Marx pointed out most economic activity is class based, and classes evolved from high to low with a hierarchy and various levels of well-being, prestige and power.  It seems to me so far in history class structures have never been eradicated in societies.  This Spaceship Earth idea involves  a basically classless society, one class of shareholders in a giant monolithic corporation, owning one share of stock, who receive all their necessities of life as a dividend on their one share of ownership stock.  They in effect own Spaceship Earth, which if it were to be implemented today, would entail about seven and one half billion stockholders.   On the other hand, this system would allow humans to do other things on their own in small businesses and careers for additional money and rewards, based on their inherited abilities, whether artistic, athletic, or whatever, or do mundane service jobs for extra money if they wished.  In this sense there would still be a status hierarchy in such a society.  How you would regulate the winners in this process to prevent what the winners do now by exploiting the less fortunate I don’t know.  Would the AI computer system somehow do this.  Some people are now afraid AI robots could become so much more intelligent than humans that they would rule the roost at the top of the status hierarchy, and possibly decide to exterminate some or all humans.  If AI robots should develop general intelligence that exceeds human general intelligence as much as computer accuracy and data processing speed doing mathematical calculations now exceeds human capabilities, then what hope would humans have of ever controlling them? Quite a few smart people are beginning worry about this.

John—Yes, but bear in mind that up to now computers can only do what they have been programmed to do, and they cannot make mistakes.  They have to do what they are told at all times.  Abraham Lincoln said there are two types of people who never amount to much in life, those who cannot do what they are told, and those who cannot do anything but what they are told. Computers and AI up to now fall into the latter category. They are very useful efficient idiots. The issue is whether computers can ever learn to program themselves about something that has not already been programmed into their computer memories.  If they are never able to truly program themselves then if humans make sure they never tell them to do anything antisocial then nothing bad will happen.  At the same time one can also build a case that humans are incapable of programming themselves to do something that has not already been caused to happen in their memories. 

Ellen—I majored in accounting in college and I took some computer courses and learned a little something about programming but nothing we studied was remotely like what you are talking about here.  It is one thing to figure out how much money a business made in one year or what its assets and liabilities are but to think you could develop a system to produce and distribute goods all around Earth in an optimal fashion is off the charts.  I don’t think it could ever be done.

Bubba—I’m with you Ellen. I’m a farmer and I sure don’t want anyone telling me what to produce and who to sell it to.  Why that is pure socialism or communism.  And its un-American. Hell, anybody should know that is nothing but bullshit. Excuse my French.

Hellen—Being a nurse I can tell you no computer can ever take over my job.  Somebody has got to be there face to face to help people when they get sick or hurt.  You can use all the computers you want to diagnose diseases and prescribe treatments but there is no way you can program a  computer to do what nurses do, such as giving someone a shot for example, or taking blood pressure.  Such treatments would be part of the necessities of life, but it could not be allocated or produced by a computer, or would the computer decide who would be given treatment or not, in effect making decisions about who would live or die because of having some sort of disease but who could not have treatment?

Judy—I’m just a housewife too and I can tell you it would be nice for many of us to know that we would be entitled to food, clothing, and shelter because of owning one share of stock in Spaceship Earth.  What would it do? Have it delivered to your door using something like Amazon or Fed Ex.  I’m all for it.  Bring it on as soon as possible.

Andy—I would assume police services would be considered a necessity of life.  How would a computer allocate what us cops do?  Some things just cannot be decided by computers.  Or is it this wonderful computer system would somehow get rid of bad guys.  Would everyone being born rich so they did not have to work eliminate crime?  I doubt it. Some criminals just enjoy being criminals. They do it for the fun of it.  They get bored just sitting around doing nothing.  Seems to me this Spaceship Earth idea would make life boring as dirt.

Adam—It is interesting that the economics profession has historically had very little to say about the problem of boredom.  It was assumed if there were no limited resources that people would have sense enough to figure out how to entertain themselves.  Besides this Spaceship Earth idea assumes certain people would want to entertain others for extra pay.  Are you saying Andy that you think some people can only entertain themselves by committing crimes.

Andy—No, not necessarily, but I am saying I think some people like to commit crimes to entertain themselves.  They get some sort of kick out of it, some sort of psychological charge.

Trudy—For whatever it’s worth I can tell you as a psychotherapist that some people do like to commit crimes to satisfy their psychological needs.  There is a psychological Game called Cops and Robbers that has been identified by transactional analysts.  People get used to certain kinds of strokes for doing certain kinds of things in early childhood, such as being naughty and trying not to get caught.  People play psychological Games of all sorts for stimulus, structure, and recognition.  There is more to life than food, clothing, and shelter.

Martin got selected next by The Truther as the rooster crowed

Martin—It seems to me homelessness is one of the greatest problems in the US and around Spaceship Earth. For sure poverty is the majority cause or symptom but mental illness is also a cause.  Many of the homeless are indeed mentally ill.  The alternatives include constructing better mental health facilities and more treatment centers, and of course programs to eliminate poverty.  President Lyndon Johnson in the sixties in his Great Society program attempted to eliminate poverty in places like Appalachia and elsewhere.  Needless to say it did not work, or at least it did not work for long.  Poverty in the US is now increasing.  Curing poverty entails possibly doing many things, creating more government jobs, infrastructure jobs, requiring raising taxes and cutting military expenses among other things.  But you can also build the case that the capitalistic system is also to blame.  Some stay the solution is more socialism or socialism period.  I agree that we need more government ownership and control, more socialism.  That’s what I recommend.  And for sure I recommend Bernie Sanders for president in 2020.

Thank you Truther for selecting me to start a new discussion.

Marian—I am not sure I agree with you that homelessness is the most serious problem right now. I fully agree it is a serious problem for far too many people.  As a retired school teacher I am one of the lucky ones in that I have a defined benefits pension plan, something that is becoming more and more of a rarity in the US.  Corporations stopped providing them for most workers many years ago.  Thus my husband and I have a better retirement than most people, and we are not particularly worried about homelessness for ourselves.  On the other hand, many older retired people are.  Most of the homeless I am sure do not have even Social Security benefits if they are old enough to be retired.  Almost no one could live on the maximum Social Security benefit payment right now.  But for sure it helps.

I recommend that the government increase Social Security benefits by requiring rich people to pay the full Social Security premium on their full incomes, more than only on up to two hundred thousand dollars per year or whatever it is they now pay. That might be enough to keep Social Security solvent for a long time.  I have no idea whethwe it would be feasible to increase Social Security payments but for sure they need to be increased for most people.

Paul—I agree with you Marian, but the problem is that many people today will never have even the full Social Security benefit however inadequate that might be for retirement income. There are probably millions of people in the US who do not contribute to the Social Security system for a lifetime.  There are people working in the so-called underground economy who are paid in cash.  They are not listed as employed or unemployed with the government or employers.  Many are undocumented migrants.  This ties in with the whole employment problem, which is worsened by automation and AI.  More and more jobs are being taken over by machines. I read just a few days ago that McDonalds has now figured out a way to automate its order-taking process. Someone has invented a robot that can take orders and somehow dispense food. So even these low paid manual labor jobs could be eliminated. Truck drivers are at risk of having their jobs eliminated.  If you eliminate jobs currently requiring humans to drive some sort of motorized vehicle you are talking about a lot of unemployment. 

More and more the Spaceship Earth article Rout had us read in Asheville is becoming more and more relevant.  I have seen several Internet articles advocating basic income schemes.  One of the democratic presidential candidates, Yang, advocates allocating one thousand dollars a month to all citizens, which is more than the Social Security benefits of some citizens who retire now.  While the one thousand a month would help it would not be enough to live on.  The Spaceship Earth plan advocated distributing the necessities of life to all Earthian human citizens which for sure would cure the problem of retirement.  In effect no one would ever have to retire under this scheme since the necessity of life shipments would never cease until death, speaking of which, the article assumes natural deaths will result in a serious lowering of Earth’s human population through time through natural attrition, natural deaths exceeding births, until Earth’s human population reaches a sustainable level.

The overall problem however is horrendous.  What it boils down to is that billions of would-be workers alive around Spaceship Earth are basically unneeded as workers. You don’t need that many manual labor workers anymore.  What you need are thinkers and problem solvers, mind workers, if you will. Buckminster Fuller was quoted in The Evolution of Spaceship Earth as saying governments could eliminate all unemployment overnight by awarding mind grants to all citizens.  And for sure you don’t need that many billionaires, people who don’t work for a living but who travel around and do whatever they want to do thanks to the wealth they have inherited and/or amassed. And you sure as hell don’t need billionaires to provide surplus money for investments, grants, and such. Central bankers can create all the new funny money you need for this by just punching digits into computers and calling the numbers money.

To rationally allocate resources in the short run given where we are technologically and maintain even a semblance of the quality of life and human dignity we have now billions of humans would have to be provided the necessities of life free or the small percentage of humans alive who are currently needed for thinking and problem-solving work would have to sit back and watch billions of humans starve.

On the other hand, it seems to me there is little chance Yang’s idea of even one thousand dollars per month of basic permanent income happening in the US would have a chance of passing anytime soon.  And imagine trying to implement something like this around Spaceship Earth, now populated by almost eight billion humans.

I recommend however at least trying to implement something like Spaceship Earth Inc as soon as possible, which would require a serious overhaul of the capitalistic system.  Just saying we need socialism is tantamount to saying nothing because there is nothing concrete in such a statement, just poppycock and blather.

The Truther selected Sam as the rooster crowed

Sam—Well, it seems to me right now that the biggest economic and political problem around Spaceship Earth is this matter of polarization.  Not only in the United States but around the world people are getting more set in their ways and are getting angrier as their economic and political plights worsen, as their incomes stagnate or go down, as their lives become more and more precarious.  Here we are on the cusp of another global recession or depression, maybe worse than 2007, maybe as bad as the 1930s.  Trump is in the White House and Biden is being touted as the front runner of the Democratic National Committee.  He’s the obvious choice of the corrupt DNC and the Deep State as the Democratic presidential candidate for 2020 to run against Trump.  We will again be faced with the choice of choosing between the lesser of the evils, picked and manipulated to serve the interest of establishment politicians and the deep state. 

Maybe the most worrisome thing is what seems to be increasing anger and tendency to violence between extremists on the left and right.  I read on the Internet that regardless of who wins in 2020 there could be violence and bloodshed.  We have scattered shootings now by extremists or terrorists or whatever you want to call them in the US against other groups.  This sort of thing could worsen after the presidential election in 2020.

Regarding the alternatives for dealing with this I supposed the best thing we can do is resort back once again to the Hope for a Better Day Strategy.  Since there are no known answers at present.  What could be done that has not been tried.  This Game-free seminar approach was supposed to help correct this problem.  Well we have been talking in this group for several months now and I can’t tell it has done one whit worth of good in the broader environment.  Sure we have learned to tolerate one another more in this group given our diverse backgrounds, but what about similar groups in the outside world in the meantime. For sure they have not gotten any better off. Most are locked into their small worlds seeing and hearing the same stuff over and over. We have got nothing but politics as usual and more kicking the can down the road.  Humans not only in the US but in most European countries are following a similar path, and if anything right-wing extremists are gaining the upper hand.  It looks like humans are inexorably heading into a dystopian fascistic world, less freedom, less human dignity, less human security, with global warming and climate change hanging over their heads like a Sword of Damocles.

Of course I recommend that Rout and his donors make public what has happened in this group and spread the word that people can learn to get along better and see the viewpoints of other polarized people better if subjected to a Game-free group such as this one, especially if you pay them five thousand dollars a month to do it.  The problem is where are you going to get the kind of money these rich donors have coughed up for this experimental group.  Sure you can bribe people to get together in a group such as this if you have enough money, but how could this ever happen generally in the real world?  Rich people like being rich and they are not going to willingly give up their riches and power, which they think they honestly won and deserve.

But that’s about all I can think of recommending right now.  For sure I do not recommend any sort of military action.  That has been disastrous in the last five or six decades. All it’s done I can see is cause more and more military expenditures every year. Socialism? Big deal. How is it possible to even dream of making something like this happen anytime soon.  And what is socialism? There is no clear-cut definition of socialism, what degree of socialism etc.  More taxes? Sure raise the taxes of the rich as much as you can, but good luck, since they have already bought off the politicians, and voters keep voting for their friends who will also be bought off in Washington, inundated as it is with billions of dollars of lobbying bribery money flowing around the place like flood water from a massive hurricane. Infrastructure spending? Yes for sure. But where is the money to come from? Yes seriously raise taxes on the rich sending tax rates back to eighty percent or more, but good luck making it happen. Do you want to keep creating more funny money? Money is almost worthless now; seventeen percent of all sovereign debt around the world is now in negative interest rate money. People are loaning their worthless digital money to their governments at negative interest rates just hoping they will get some of it back to buy things with in ten or more years. How fucked up can an economic system get?

So I recommend to you my fellow Spaceship Earth DeGaming group members that you keep taking five thousand dollars for one day’s work or bullshitting as long as the donors see fit to dole it out. And I recommend trying to set up similar groups around Spaceship Earth as soon as possible by any means possible.  The only hope is to create new peaceful consensual answers to new economic and political systems.  What Earthians have now is not working.   

Paul­—I agree with you Sam.  Somehow Earthian humans have to improve their communication systems.  One can build a case right now the Earthian human world is insane.  Most economic and political systems are obsolete and dysfunctional for eighty or so percent of humans alive on earth, but some are satisfied, the rich, and powerful, and the brainwashed, the poor who think believing what they are told is somehow satisfying since they are actually superior to non-believers, believing believing what they believe will cause them to live in eternal bliss eternally after they die.

The only hope somehow is for Earthian humans to construct better educational systems.   And I am not talking about the current school and university educational systems around Earth. I am talking about the total educational process, starting at birth, the whole set of messages humans are exposed to from biological parents and others in their earliest years, and even the electro-chemical messages they receive in the wombs of birth mothers.  Somehow Earthian humans have to be given permission to think about reality itself, from an early age, not just believe what they are told, in many cases told by parents who do not have a clue about what is really going on, and may not care what is really going on, who spend their time watching soap operas, sports and entertainments and distractions of all sorts, political, religious, or Hollywood fantasy.

Luke—Ah, the one and only Paul, the fount of wisdom has spoken. And after several months of brainwashing I must say I am beginning to agree with him.  I must admit I don’t believe like I did.  I mightily fear in my heart of hearts that this might get me sent to hell for losing my faith. I still believe the one true Lord God is merciful. Maybe He will understand how I fell in with this group, knowing how much I needed the money. Maybe he will forgive me since this group made me do it.

Albert—Don’t worry Luke.  I think you will be fine.  One thing no one has brought up in our discussions is that in the beginning there was nothing in the universe except bosons and quarks.  There were no people.  Everything evolved from those basic particles over eons.  Humans came along several billion years after the first bosons and quarks started evolving into higher matter. If we go back to that so what. It will be part of a natural process, global warming or no global warming on Earth, a trivial event in cosmic history.  

As to there being an alternative universe nobody has ever seen before, even with the most powerful telescopes, I doubt there is such.  There is the slightest chance there might be I suppose, but I doubt it. 

Regarding the argument there must be something there or millions of people would not believe like Luke used to believe, it seems to me all religions came about because of the inherent unfairness, precariousness, and banality of human life.  People knew they would inevitably die, which was sad enough, and they knew that pain and misery could befall them at any time. Were they happy? Sure for fleeting moments but most of the time they lived under dread and anxiety, which caused them to fight for more resources than they really needed, trying to steal for gain and power and wealth, and so forth, and it caused them to assume there must be some sort of god-like forces making things happen, so they developed various religious systems.  In my opinion those who imagined there were multiple gods making things happen were more correct than those who imagined there was only one god making everything happen.  Any reasonably bright human would have known that various natural events were causing the plights of various members of their family and community.  Some died of this that or the other, some were killed by wild animals, snakes, and so forth, some were killed by hostile tribes. Some seemed to get through their short lives much easier and better than others. Many people assumed some sort of god must have blessed them, while they thought those who had horrible difficulties and problems probably brought it on themselves one way or another. 

In reality these effects observed by humans were the results of inevitable cause-effect chains existing in infinity.  Most likely there is no free will; if so everything is either accidental or inevitable, depending on how you look at it. Events are like dominoes falling in infinite cause-effect chains. Every event is both an effect and a cause of other events.  Rather than see that some people were merely unlucky enough to be the results of cause-effect chains producing certain diseases and negative events and others were lucky enough to be the result of cause-effect chains inevitably producing good health, good looks, intelligence, wealth, prestige, power, etc., they assumed gods and humans were making these anomalous unfair events happen, and thus various individuals deserved to be reviled, pitied, admired, praised, rewarded, condemned, punished, exterminated, etc. This un-managed unfair process enabled various kinds of power people (priests, preachers, kings, queens, barons, presidents, fascist dictators, corporate CEOs, generals, etc.) with communication skill and charisma to dominate weaker humans who believed power people were chosen favorites of the god(s), and thus were entitled to require weaker humans to hand over to them as their god-ordained rulers labor, food, money, and other necessities of life, for performing rituals and playing psychological Games, i.e. for Persecuting, Rescuing, and Victimizing various kinds of humans, groups, and organizations, practicing mumbo-jumbo.

The best hope for Earthian life is that new and better imagoes, scripts, schemata, and behaviors will be caused in human brains, hopefully causing humans around Earth to implement Game-free democratic I’m OK—You’re OK groups such as this one, that will help change a disastrous mindless master-servant I’m OK—You’re Not OK authoritarian course, that humans around Spaceship Earth have set, heading full-sail into hell on Earth.   

TO BE CONTINUED…

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By LISA WALKER

Regardless of what shape school takes for your child, be it remote, in-person, or some combination of the two, you’ve probably figured out there are advantages and disadvantages to learning at home. During these uncertain times, many parents have questions about sustaining their children’s mental and emotional well-being, supplementing their education, and accommodating specific needs while also supporting the teachers. We hope the following guidance will help.

Working With the Teacher Helps You and Your Child

You and the teacher share a common goal: providing the absolute best learning experience for your child. Supporting their teacher can give you an even better understanding of your kid while also offering you a chance to partner for your child’s best interest. There are a few things you can do to show your support and appreciation to the teacher.

Be Patient

Being patient and forgiving as the teachers try to figure things out is the best thing you can do. Everything changes rapidly – like guidelines teachers have no control over whatsoever – and because some parents have a hard time understanding this, it can create friction between you and your child’s teachers. Remember, you have a common goal: your child’s education.

It is also essential to check your emails and read them carefully. Because things are always changing, it’s critical to stay updated about what is happening at your child’s school.

Let the Teacher Know If Something Isn’t Working

Many things that are happening in schools and online are new for teachers and students alike, so if you notice something isn’t working, you should speak up. Open communication is crucial, and teachers are willing to work with parents to change how they do things.

‘Thank You’ Goes a Long Way​

Write a short thank-you note or an email showing you value them or have your child make a card. Just let the teacher know you appreciate their efforts in a friendly way.

Supplement Your Child’s Education

Depending on your child’s learning style and age, you may need to support them differently; however, you can do a few things – no matter your child’s age and study style – to keep them on track while they are learning online.

Plan a Routine Together

Try to set up a routine that factors in online learning, homework time, and age-appropriate programs to watch online or on TV. Also, include playtime, reading time, or various Look for ways to enjoy these activities together so you can spend quality time with your child.

Have Open Conversations

Encourage your child to ask questions and voice their feelings. Keep in mind that your children will each have a different stress response, so be understanding and patient. You can do this by inviting your child to share their thoughts about something and follow their lead. Also, ​​make sure your child has the materials necessary to complete all assignments, whether it’s a laptop, schools supplies, a Wi-Fi connection, or a PDF reader – whatever they need to complete their work.​

Provide an Environment Conducive to Learning

Providing a great environment that helps your child with learning isn’t always easy. If they’re isolated, it can be challenging to check in with them, but if they learn at the kitchen table, for instance, they may be too distracted. It is even more difficult when everyone is at home, and the family is complaining or arguing.

For one thing, tension and clutter can cause major distress. To alleviate these triggers, it’s crucial to make some changes around the home. Open the blinds or curtains to allow in as much natural light as possible; a lack of natural light can negatively impact mood and focus, making you and your child feel tired, which can hamper concentration levels. Decluttering and cleaning can infuse your home with positivity, which in turn helps to relieve stress, eliminate tension, and improve the whole family’s sense of well-being.

Provide Immediate Positive Feedback

​Every time your child concludes a distance learning instruction, provide positive feedback. This can be as simple as placing a checkmark or a sticker on the assignment, but it can make a significant contribution in helping to motivate your child.

With a bit of creative thinking and effort by you, as well as your child’s teachers, your child will continue to build their skills, knowledge, and confidence, and have a great learning experience.

__________________________________

Lisa Walker is the proud SAHM (Stay at Home Mom) of two adorable but feisty sons. She enjoys trail hiking and beach-coming with her husband Jake when not busy with her boys and home improvement projects. She created NeighborhoodSprout.org as a passion project to share her love of homeownership with others.

By COURTENAY BARNETT

We all can breathe a sigh of relief that Donald Trump is no longer in the White House. Yes, but I am now a bit older than in 2008 when Obama made his way in for a first in Presidential history and along with many others I then felt a sense of satisfaction that America had finally moved on. However, reality did set in as the events unfolded. 

This time around there is no real thrill nor anything but a willingness to make a calm and less than enthusiastic assessment of what America really faces. I think I can categorise into three sections – the knowns – the unknowns – and the in-betweens 

Knowns 

America faces an unprecedented combination of challenges. On the economic front if one is to remove  the blinders, then the country is comparable to 1930s depression days challenges; on the cultural and political front the country is deeply divided – if only one considers the need to have thousands of troops and disinvite the public at large from celebrating the inauguration of their new president; and on the health and medical front America finds that it has had more people who have died from covid-19 than soldiers lost in all of World War 11. These ‘knowns’ are  more than a handful for any President – but there are more to the ‘knowns’ . 

Biden will ( rather already has) reversed via Executive Orders a significant list of Trump era policies.  

Unknowns 

There are big issue items for Biden to deal with and these can be but guessed at right now. Troops will remain in Afghanistan and in northern Syria. There may be some reversal on the excesses of Israel in seeking to have East Jerusalem as the unified capital and on-going settlement expansions ( maybe Biden  will seek to rein in these provocations). He is unlikely to comment on the recent Apartheid law which reserves certain offices for Jews only. The fundamental support of the US for Israel will not change otherwise. At a guess the Biden will return to the Iran deal. I assume that Biden will want to restore the Obama era rapprochement with Cuba. 

In- betweens 

I can but gawk at the US approach towards Venezuela in seeking to dictate to the Venezuelan people who should be their president as chosen by the US for them. It remains to be seen whether or not Biden will move in the direction of less bullying towards Venezuela. Note – I said ‘less bullying’ – for I still anticipate bullying to continue – only question is to what degree.  

With regards to China, Biden being a rational person, I assume, will not pursue Trump’s trade war but instead will seek to engage in negotiations with China over trade rules.  

Overall 

It is the economy and the structural instability which is America’s present really big challenge. I do not see or anticipate Biden doing here what is logical and necessary ( albeit overall I see him as a rational and sensible man). America knows its problem of having a massive deficit and permitting the military-industrial complex to command almost half of its entire budget. The latter exacerbates the former. Yet, each new president continues down that path which  serves well to worsen the overall economic problem. What Biden will do is pump in a massive stimulus package which will serve well to boost the economy and improve the jobs situation.  

My approach would be a 1930s form of stimulus from bottom up; Biden, at a guess, will be closer to a Obama 2008 top down form of injection of funds.  

So there – that is how I see it. 

Congratulations President Biden! 

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COURTENAY BARNETT is a graduate of London University. His areas of study were economics, political science and international law. He has been a practising lawyer for over thirty years, and has argued public interest and human rights cases. He has published numerous articles in the Effective Learning Report. He lives and works in the Caribbean

By RICHARD JOHN STAPLETON

Most of this essay was recently published in the Effective Learning Report in The Earthian —21. About seventy people read it, which was a relatively high number for ELR articles. Given that the major mission of the ELR is to educate humans around Spaceship Earth, hopefully publishing some of this content again with some new content under a new title will pick up a few more readers.

Here’s to all Georgians: Vote for Ossoff and Warnock tomorrow, January 5, 2021. Enough is Enough!

Unbelievable. I never heard about anything like this before, happening yesterday. I listened about one hour to Trump in a telephone call last night browbeat and threaten the Georgia Secretary of State and the Georgia Governor using churlish demeaning street language, with his mealy mouth lawyers protecting and backing him up, ganging up on the Georgia Secretary of State and his lawyers, squelching them, with one harangue, tirade, psychological threat, and flight of fancy after another, riddled with lies.

Much of what Trump said was scurrilous and unprovable, but in the attack Trump psychologically insulted and demeaned the Georgia Secretary of State and threatened the secretary and his family with bodily harm, not overtly socially saying he would do the secretary or his family bodily harm but psychologically implying the secretary and his family were in danger of harm by angry Trump supporters, “notifying†the secretary he was in danger because of not overturning the election for Trump.

The bottom line is that Trump lost the 2020 USian presidential election fair and square by seven million popular votes nationwide; but he magically thinks if he can overturn just one state by force that will be enough to override the whole election thanks to the insane USian electoral college…when if Biden supporters had done for Biden what Trump supporters did for Trump digging up quasi-plausible evidence of voter fraud in various states they could have found just as much quasi-plausible evidence of voter fraud working against Biden as Trump.

Yet this monster of a president and some of his radical right supporters would have you believe there was zero voter fraud working to Trump’s advantage, and to them the only possibility is that this poor little innocent Lord Fauntleroy of a president was seriously picked on and cheated by bullies. And they magically think if only the Georgia Secretary of State will just “find†poor Donald eleven thousand or so fraud votes he can stay in office.

Just when you think USian culture can’t sink any lower it takes another nosedive.

Here’s the leaked telephone conversation posted yesterday for your listening education furnished by the Washington Post: https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-raffensperger-call-transcript-georgia-vote/2021/01/03/2768e0cc-4ddd-11eb-83e3-322644d82356_story.html.

Ego states are states of being including thoughts, beliefs, behaviors, feelings, gestures, body language, and other signals determining how people come across with others in communication episodes, whether parent-like, adult-like, or child-like, in all kinds of situations.  People switch ego states depending on who they are communicating with and what sort of circumstances they are in, whether they are parenting, working, socializing, teaching, having fun, playing Games, or whatever.  They transmit messages from three ego states in themselves to three ego states in others in pair vectors, Parent-Parent, Adult-Adult, Child-Child, Parent-Child, Child-Adult, Adult-Parent, or whatever possibility.  These transactions are especially meaningful in situations in which there is some sort of authoritarian system involved, such as parents parenting children in homes, teachers teaching students in schools, or bosses bossing subordinates in a business or political organization, which normally entail primarily Parent-Child transactions. In general however the more Adult-Adult transactions there are the better things go in families, schools, businesses, and political organizations. 

Here is a passage from my book Business Voyages, pp 167-168, presenting an overview of psychological Games:

“When psychological Games are going on, psychological transactions are being conducted simultaneously with the social level, overt transactions. Ulterior, non-verbal hooks exist.The straight spoken messages are transmitted on the solid vectors. The ulterior messages are transmitted in a non-spoken covert way on the dotted-line vectors. Psychological Game players seek various payoffs for their Games. Many attempt to make fools of their mark or target. They may seek a payoff of triumph or one-upmanship. Some seek payoffs of justifiable anger, dejection, humiliation, etc. Some games are self-debasing. Games involve basic dishonesties of various sorts. Game players pretend reality is not as it is. Discounting occurs. A discount is any act that has the effect of reducing the significance of objects, events, people, problems, or possible solutions to problems (Schiff & Schiff, 1971). When people “cut one another down,†they are discounting one another and are playing games. If you “feel in your gut†someone is belittling you or is trying to make a fool out of you in some way, chances are you are being lured into a psychological game.

“The Drama Triangle, invented by Stephen Karpman, MD (1968), is probably the best Game detector available. Psychological Games are designed to create drama strokes. What creates drama, in soap operas, movies, stage plays, etc., as in real life, is the existence of Persecutors, Rescuers, and Victims. What makes movies, soap operas, and other dramatic episodes dramatic is the existence of some poor helpless damsel in distress who must be rescued from some heinous villain by some knight in shining armor. Or a fairy godmother must rescue some poor dwarf from an evil witch living deep in the forest, or some such. Some people still like to act out these sorts of roles on the stage of life. If you find yourself being chased around a Drama Triangle as a Persecutor, Rescuer, or Victim, you are in a psychological Game. It is possible there are real good guys and bad guys and helpless victims in some situations. Where real problem situations exist due to scarce economic resources, etc., people compete out of necessity and may not be involved in psychological games. But when people start unnecessary competitions because they are bored, or need strokes or recognition, or want to be parented properly, or want to be in a superior or inferior position, they start Games and create the Game drama roles. A psychological game is a fake war.”

Script messages are transmitted socially and psychologically as I have shown and explained with diagrams in my books. Unfortunately I have not shown one of these diagrams in this blog, having not taken the time to get jpeg pictures of them made to get them posted to my computer desktop to download into this WordPress program. Ah, the joys of desktop publishing. Yeah, right, I probably am a little lazy. If you want to see what a transactional analysis script diagram looks like right now scroll to the top of this page and click on ELR Editor’s Daily Shares. You can see a picture of a TA script diagram in the assemblage of pictures on the left of the page that will pop up, having been accepted by my Facebook program in a non-jpeg format.

A TA life script diagram shows the three stacked Parent, Adult, and Child ego state circles representing parent, adult, and child ego states for each parent and child. The solid lines in the diagram denote overt spoken social messages and dotted lines denote covert psychological unspoken ulterior messages.  Social messages are verbalized overt auditory messages; psychological messages are covert non-spoken ulterior messages transmitted by body language, emotional states, and after the fact positive or negative stroking as people react to situations and feel and do things.

Scripts in families are created automatically when parents transmit various messages to their children from various ego states socially and psychologically, in and out of awareness.  Scripts are life plans generally decided before the age of eight by offspring based on script messages transmitted to them by their parents and others.  Since parents by and large transmit the same script messages that were transmitted to them before they were eight years old script messages in families can remain intact for many generations.  According to transactional analysts script decisions made before the age of eight have lasting effects determining three general life outcomes:  winner, loser, and non-winner.  These decisions can be redecided and updated later in life but it’s not easy for most people. 

Psychological Child-Child ego state script injunctions are what cause the most trouble for people in their lives.  Script injunctions forbid appropriate behavior in the here and now. Script injunctions are caused by emotional and behavioral requirements created by families through time as they adapted to and coped with problems and environmental forces that may have been appropriate in past environments, but which are inappropriate in here and now more benign and hospitable environments. 

Opposing script messages transmitted by parents can put a child in a Not-OK bind in childhood and throughout adolescence, assuming a divorce has not already occurred, causing considerable trouble within a family, since the child cannot please both parents in the presence of both parents. This Catch-22 can put parents in worse Not-OK positions vis-a-vis each other if the child makes a social or psychological level decision about which parent is right, increasing Not-OKness in the family system as a whole, including the child.  

What many people need is psychological permission to violate and ignore their psychological outdated obsolete family Child ego state script message Injunctions, not only to increase their own OKness but the OKness of all living members of the family system, and the OKness of Earthian humans in general, for that matter.

Two common family script Injunctions in most cultures are Don’t Think about the true nature and causes of states of affairs and Don’t Feel certain feelings, such as glad, mad, sad, or scared, when certain things happen in certain environments.

Joe Biden at least socially comes across projecting an I’m OK—You’re OK life position. Donald Trump unfortunately comes across socially and psychologically projecting an I’m OK, my buddy is OK, nothing else is OK, and we are going to make the world pay life position. Even more unfortunate for all Earthians around Spaceship Earth Trump’s buddies Putin, Kim Jong Un, Bolsonaro and others also operate from this sort of life position.

Here is what Martin Groder, MD, one of my transactional analysis mentors at Chapel Hill, NC in the late 1970s, had to say about this sort of thing in what I called Martin Groder’s People Map, in a passage I wrote and published in 2011 in my book Business Voyages: Mental Maps, Scripts, Schemata and Tools for Discovering and Co-Constructing Your Own Business Worlds, pp. 148-150:

The Human Spectrum

“Humans generally give little thought to what kind of human they are and where they fit in the spectrum of various types of humans. Countless philosophers, writers, social scientists, priests, preachers, ordinary humans and others have categorized Earthian humans in various ways through time. Following is a schema developed by Martin Groder, MD, a psychiatrist, organizational development consultant, and entrepreneur, who also had a degree in physics (Groder, 1977). Groder developed this schema while working with inmates of the federal prison system at Marion, Illinois in the late 1960’s and early 1970’s. He was involved in a process of changing hard-core criminals into law-abiding citizens. Such a process would challenge the abilities of the most skillful and powerful of change agents.

“According to Groder, humans vary on two fundamental spatial dimensions. One dimension is Okness, which is estimated on the horizontal axis of Figure 1 (sorry, I could not get the Figure 1 image to copy and paste here, so you’ll just have to imagine it, or read Business Voyages or Born to Learn); the other dimension is the energy level of the individual estimated on the vertical axis.

“People vary in terms of how OK they see, feel about, and experience, (1) themselves, (2) the other individual, (3) their group, (4) other groups, and (5) the world. In Groder’s terms, they are OK or not-OK with respect to I, You, We, They, and It (the world). Groder estimates how OK they are on each of these five existential dimensions on a scale of -1 to +1, -1 being as not-OK as possible and +1 being as OK as possible. Thus people with extremely high self-esteem would be at the +1 level regarding themselves; someone with extremely low self-esteem would be existing at the -1 level regarding themselves. People could exist at any level in between, at -.5, 0, +.25, etc. on all five of the OKness positions, the positions of specific individuals with respect to themselves, buddies on a one-to-one basis, groups with which one belongs, other groups with which your group cooperates or competes, and the world in general. Summing the 5 existential OKness positions for an individual (I, You, We, They, and It), the highest possible OKness rating would be +5 and the lowest possible would be -5. A +5 person would have the highest possible feelings of Okness regarding his OKness, the OKness of his buddy, the OKness of his group, the OKness of other groups, and the OKness of the world. Such an individual would have very positive feelings and thoughts for self and others. On the other end of the spectrum, a -5 person would have the lowest possible feelings and thoughts for self and others. Very negative people tend to end up in prison. Very positive people tend to end up cultural heroes. Probably the most profitable life position for an entrepreneur in a capitalistic economic system would be I’m OK, my employees are OK, my company is OK, the world is OK, but my competitors aren’t worth a damn, since this position would motivate his or her sales employees to steal business from competitors to increase the profit of the company.

“Entrepreneurs have higher energy levels than middle managers and normal people. It takes less energy to be a normal person than anything else. Entrepreneurs in Groder’s schema have approximately the same energy level on the vertical axis of Figure 1 as Monsters, the -3 OKness level convict leaders of other convicts. Monsters have the life position “I’m OK, my buddy is OK, but everything else is not OK, and I am going to make the world pay.†According to Groder, it’s more difficult to change the energy level of a human than the OKness position. In rehabilitation work, Groder attempted to arc people across the gap of Figure 1, and make +3 OKness level entrepreneurs out of -3 monsters, +2 OKness middle managers out of -2 OKness creeps, slobs, lunch buckets, etc. Sometimes people arc across the gap the other way. Honest entrepreneurs can turn criminal. Entrepreneurs are winner-survivors; Monsters are loser-survivors. Winners achieve goals and objectives; losers do not.â€

What is winning in this context?

Feeling good about yourself, your best friends, your groups, other groups, and the world.

Trump has a high energy level. His OKness life position at present unfortunately may be -3 or lower. Whether he’s a winner-survivor or a loser-survivor remains to be seen. Seems to me he has made his plight worse doing what he has done since losing the 2020 USian presidential race fair and square, his latest last straw being his orchestrated and scripted telephone call performance yesterday threatening and demeaning the Georgia Secretary of State and the Georgia Governor, not to mention all the honest hard working public servants who did their jobs well conducting the Georgia election.

How seventy-four million USian voters could have voted in the first place for someone with Trump’s feeling, thinking, behavioral, and personality dysfunctions is astounding.  Donald Trump has had long-standing problems getting his psychological, social, and sexual needs met in OK ways, probably from his birth to now, despite what the billions of dollars he got his hands on could buy, made possible by leveraging the four hundred or so million dollars his parents gave him to play with buying vanity gambling casinos, luxury hotels, golf courses and the like.

It’s even harder to believe seventy-four million voters in the US voting for Trump might see themselves and others as having zero to minus three (0 to -3) loser-survivor Not-OK life positions; but maybe that’s possible, come to think of it.

No kind of economic or political system will work for everyone if bad guys get control of them at the top, and the worst bad guy at the top of the USian government right now, now that Trump is done, is Mitchell McConnell, the Repug thug majority leader in the USian senate, and the only OK way to get rid of him is to vote for Warnock and Ossoff, which will give Dems control of the USian federal government, with the unfortunate exception of the USian nine-member supreme court controlled by six appointed Repug radical right judges.

On the other hand, how much good this will do remains to be seen.

The US has a decent constitution created and written at the end of the 18th Century by lawyers and rich merchants in the north and lawyers and rich slave-owning plantation owners in the south of the territory on the east coast of North America recently conquered and stolen from American Indians by Europeans in the names of their monarchs, linking together several previously quasi-autonomous states subservient to the English monarchy. These merchants and slave-owning planters got tired of putting up with the rules and taxes of the English monarchy, so they rebelled and won their independence, making themselves the new powers that be in the “new world,†creating their own rules and regulations. The new constitution was designed to protect their vested interests couched in noble idealistic language glorifying the natural rights of humans based on the proposition, they said, that all humans were created equal, which according to most definitions of the word equal was a lie. It might have been they were created to be equal, but if African slaves were born equal they did not remain that way for long in the real world, for many decades up to the Civil War. This same sort of unequal state of affairs still exists among USians. Humans now living in the US may have been born to be “equal†but they did not stay that way for long after birth, thanks to the nature of the USian culture, economic system, and political system, an evolving miasma emanating from a nauseating profusion of superstitions, beliefs, customs, rules, regulations, and laws imagined and enacted through time in myriad groups and organizations to increase inequality among participants. Mitchel McConnell did not acquire the power he had in the USian senate because of his good looks or what is written in the US constitution. It came about because of rules senators passed to make it easier for Repugs and Dems in the Senate to gain unfair advantages in the management of states of affairs. The USian congress, senate and house, now has almost no real face to face democratic discussions of any issue among all senators or representatives. Business is done behind closed doors by small committees who decide what will be voted on, legislation initiated and written in many instances by lobbyists for powerful corporations; and the senate majority leader now has the right and power to personally decide what will be voted on by the Senate as a whole, regardless of what committees decide. There is almost no face to face I’m OK—You’re OK democratic discussion of any issue in the Senate as a whole. A similar process has also been co-constructed in the House through time for the same reasons.

Unfortunately this I’m OK—You’re Not OK process is not confined to the USian federal government: It’s pervasive in families, schools, churches, and organizations and groups of all sorts, thanks to a Little Fascist some transactional analysts think is embedded in the archaic Parent ego state in the Child ego states of most humans, harboring a deep-seated desire to reign superior over others.

Postscript. It’s not that all Dem voters are paragons of virtue, intelligence, compassion, fairness, and justice working for the good of all USians and Earthians. In my opinion, most dim Dems did not have enough good sense to vote in their own best interests for Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren for president in the 2020 Dem primaries. On the other hand, they did at least get rid of two major threats and impediments to USian progress, Trump and McConnell.

One USian King of the Senate reigning about one decade has now been deposed. Will the next one be any better? Not much if nobody changes the rules of the senate for how senators do business, that were designed to foster inequality and to pay back powerful special interests, leaving scraps for inferior losers.

I have covered ego states and scripts in my books Business Voyages and Born to Learn: A Transactional Analysis of Human Learning,  listing common Parent ego state script messages and Child ego state injunctions.  All parents do not transmit the same script messages creating considerable variety among family scripts and outcomes.  Certain life scripts conveniently fit certain roles, jobs, professions, careers, political parties, and what have you more than others, providing fresh recruits already scripted for job openings, slots, roles, and positions in an economy, which is fine so long as the economy does not change very much.  Unfortunately since 1980 in the United States the offshoring of high wage blue collar jobs to foreign low wage countries and the use of more and more computer technology to increase the profits of USian corporations has rendered many family scripts obsolete. 

Donald John Trump did not invent himself. He was scripted to do what he has d0ne. The feeling, thinking, and behaving patterns that caused Trump to do what he has done have existed in Trump’s family for generations. His parents knew full well what Trump is like. His mother said so, saying she worried about him getting into politics, saying he had “no common sense.†She and her husband had to have known giving him four hundred million dollars was dangerous, like giving a very young child matches or a loaded gun to play with. Yet they knew he had a lot of energy and a physical presence, demeanor, and cachet that appealed to a lot of people; and they knew he might make a big mark in the world in their name, in one of the biggest ego trips of Earthian history.

A bitter pill to swallow found embedded in my books Business Voyages and Born to Learn is that everything that happens is either predetermined or accidental, as the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein postulated in his book of propositions, Prototractatus; and therefore no one is to blame or praise. Believing and acting otherwise will simply perpetuate the same sorry I’m OK—You’re Not OK life position that has bedeviled humankind since time immemorial contributing to if not causing repeats of historical abominations such as genocides, wars, slavery, economic depressions, famines, mental illnesses, and social collapses.

For more information regarding my use of Transactional Analysis  https://www.itaaworld.org/  to create better discussion groups and democratic processes read my book Born to Learn:  A Transactional Analysis of Human Learning.  https://www.amazon.com/Born-Learn-Transactional-Analysis-Learning/dp/0692584331

For more information on how to co-construct better organizations and economic systems using transactional analysis read my book   Business Voyages:  Mental Maps, Scripts, Schemata, and Tools for Co-Constructing Your Own Business Worlds. https://www.amazon.com/Business-Voyages-Schemata-Discovering-Co-Constructing/dp/1413480810

See my article “The Evolution of Spaceship Earth, Inc,† https://blog.effectivelearning.net/the-evolution-of-spaceship-earth-inc/   for some management science ideas on how human Earthians might eventually co-construct an economic system that is viable and satisfying for everyone aboard Spaceship Earth, making it possible for all Earthian humans to develop an I’m OK—You’re OK life position. 

This entails Earthians peacefully reducing through natural attrition the human population aboard Spaceship Earth, never doing work that machines can do better, and delegating the day-to-day management of systems for scheduling, producing, and distributing the necessities of life to artificial intelligence programs and supercomputers, humans having shown time and time again they are not up to the job.

This can be programmed using linear programming based on the general algorithmic matrix algebra form

Max CjXj, s.t. AijXj ≤, =, or ≥ Bi

As I explained in “The Evolution of Spaceship Earth, Inc.†  https://blog.effectivelearning.net/the-evolution-of-spaceship-earth-inc/

Flying aboard an airliner about to land at night moving at four hundred miles an hour at thirty thousand feet with cloudy and rainy weather below, which would you rather have landing the plane, the plane’s radar and computer system or the pilot and co-pilot, seeing nothing out their windows but clouds and lightning?

I am indebted to Buckminster Fuller for teaching me in his book Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth the metaphor in the above paragraph and planting seeds for other ideas in my essay “The Evolution of Spaceship Earth, Inc.,†such as computers being the best hope for mankind and humans not doing work that machines can do better, being paid to think instead with what he called mind grants. To my knowledge Fuller was the inventor of the appellations Earthian and Spaceship Earth.

For details regarding my transactional analysis and management science qualifications read “ELR Editor’s Academic Vita†at https://www.effectivelearning.net/rjs-academic-vita.html or by scrolling to the top of this page and clicking on the post for my vita on the masthead of this blog.

TO RESPOND:

Unfortunately it seems to me one can build a case politicians spend most of their time playing psychological Games (Persecuting, Rescuing, and Victimizing people), wasting high percentages of their time and energy pastiming (bullshitting) and engaging in rituals (shuffling paper, filling out unnecessary forms, attending perfunctory meetings with lawyers and others, making up and passing petty rules to advance their selfish interests, etc.). Almost everything done in so-called foreign policy is a move in a psychological Game it seems to me.

It’s not easy, impossible some say, to separate relevant from irrelevant focal points in order to comprehend global cases, systems, and processes, while being inundated with fake news and true facts of states of affairs generated daily around Spaceship Earth, made public on the Internet, and elsewhere, to see what’s really going on, using primarily inductive and analogical reasoning, based on probability, not deductive logic. Almost never can anyone prove with deductive logic that a general proposition about psychological, social, economic, or political states affairs is absolutely true. About the best humans can hope for is to develop consensual answers that are generally acceptable and true based on probability.

It’s better to be honestly wrong than dishonestly wrong. Telling someone something you know is fake as if it were true is worse than telling someone something that’s fake because of genuine ignorance. A good case in point these days is most USians calling FICA insurance premium payments “payroll†taxes. It’s hard to know if parrots calling FICA payments payroll taxes really do not know any better or if they really do know better but are covertly lying about it to go along with the crowd to get political brownie points for conforming to a big group lie slandering and defaming Social Security.

It seems to me most lying is lying by omission, people not telling people things they know are true that others need to know. Whether lying by omission is more or less harmful than lying by commission, telling people things you know are false and fake, is debatable, as is proving whether it’s getting easier or harder for most people to know what’s fake news and what’s not. Political parties, Earthian governments, and Mainstream media lie by omission with alacrity, information withheld from ordinary humans about the Julian Assange case being a notorious current case in point. Mainstream USian media not mentioning there were no visible black rioters among Trump’s invaders of the US Congress when it was in session to declare national state votes for president valid is another.

If you have ideas on how to democratically discuss in Game-free ways economic and political problems and opportunities in something like the Ogeechee Economic Forum at  https://www.effectivelearning.net/ogeechee-economic-forum.html

go to our RESPONSES page and let us know about them at  https://www.effectivelearning.net/responses.html .

I do not sell subscriptions or advertising or solicit donations for the Effective Learning Report but I would like to sell more books. If you feel you’ve gained value from these pages and would like to reciprocate go to our Effective Learning Publications page and purchase one or more copies of my books at   https://www.effectivelearning.net/effective-learning-publications.html  .

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Feel free to forward, share, post, print, or otherwise circulate this essay any way you see fit.  

Richard John Stapleton, PhD, CTA, certified transactional analyst, educator, octogenarian emeritus professor of management, writer, editor and publisher.   

THE EARTHIAN, Number Twenty-One, Effective Learning Publications, https://www.effectivelearning.net/effective-learning-publications.html 32 East Main Street, Statesboro, Georgia, USA, January 4, 2021.    

THE EARTHIAN is a digest of articles containing facts, perspectives, theories, models, analyses, and recommendations concerned about existential states of affairs affecting all species of fauna and flora around Spaceship Earth. Recent relevant articles written and published by intelligent hard-hitting truth-seeking writers in Internet journals about psychological, social, economic, political, military, religious, and ecological states of affairs around Spaceship Earth are linked below as sources, following a usual comment by the editor.

“ASK LESS WHAT YOUR NATION CAN DO FOR YOU—ASK MORE WHAT YOU CAN DO FOR SPACESHIP EARTHâ€

OR SO IT SEEMS TO ME RIGHT NOW

By Richard John Stapleton

Here’s to all Georgians: Vote for Ossoff and Warnock tomorrow, January 5, 2021. Enough is Enough!

Unbelievable. I never heard about anything like this before, happening yesterday. I listened about one hour to Trump in a telephone call last night browbeat and threaten the Georgia Secretary of State and the Georgia Governor using churlish demeaning street language, with his mealy mouth lawyers protecting and backing him up, ganging up on the Georgia Secretary of State and his lawyers, squelching them, with one harangue, tirade, psychological threat, and flight of fancy after another, riddled with lies.

Much of what Trump said was scurrilous and unprovable, but in the attack Trump psychologically insulted and demeaned the Georgia Secretary of State and threatened the secretary and his family with bodily harm, not overtly socially saying he would do the secretary or his family bodily harm but psychologically implying the secretary and his family were in danger of harm by angry Trump supporters, “notifying†the secretary he was in danger because of not overturning the election for Trump.

The bottom line is that Trump lost the 2020 USian presidential election fair and square by seven million popular votes nationwide; but he magically thinks if he can overturn just one state by force that will be enough to override the whole election thanks to the insane USian electoral college…when if Biden supporters had done for Biden what Trump supporters did for Trump digging up quasi-plausible evidence of voter fraud in various states they could have found just as much quasi-plausible evidence of voter fraud working against Biden as Trump.

Yet this monster of a president and some of his radical right supporters would have you believe there was zero voter fraud working to Trump’s advantage, and to them the only possibility is that this poor little innocent Lord Fauntleroy of a president was seriously picked on and cheated by bullies. And they magically think if only the Georgia Secretary of State will just “find†poor Donald eleven thousand or so fraud votes he can stay in office.

Just when you think USian culture can’t sink any lower it takes another nosedive.

Here’s the leaked telephone conversation posted yesterday for your listening education furnished by the Washington Post: https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-raffensperger-call-transcript-georgia-vote/2021/01/03/2768e0cc-4ddd-11eb-83e3-322644d82356_story.html.

Before I get into the meat of recent relevant states of affairs around Spaceship Earth I would like teach a little transactional analysis theory, being a compulsive teacher. If it bores you skip down a few paragraphs to where I get into why Joe Biden is a better deal than Donald Trump and why you need to vote for Warnock and Ossoff rather than Loeffler and Perdue.

Ego states are states of being including thoughts, beliefs, behaviors, feelings, gestures, body language, and other signals determining how people come across with others in communication episodes, whether parent-like, adult-like, or child-like, in all kinds of situations.  People switch ego states depending on who they are communicating with and what sort of circumstances they are in, whether they are parenting, working, socializing, teaching, having fun, playing Games, or whatever.  They transmit messages from three ego states in themselves to three ego states in others in pair vectors, Parent-Parent, Adult-Adult, Child-Child, Parent-Child, Child-Adult, Adult-Parent, or whatever possibility.  These transactions are especially meaningful in situations in which there is some sort of authoritarian system involved, such as parents parenting children in homes, teachers teaching students in schools, or bosses bossing subordinates in a business or political organization, which normally entail primarily Parent-Child transactions. In general however the more Adult-Adult transactions there are the better things go in families, schools, businesses, and political organizations. 

Script messages are transmitted socially and psychologically as I have shown and explained with diagrams in my books. Unfortunately I have not shown one of these diagrams in this blog, having not taken the time to get jpeg pictures of them made to get them posted to my computer desktop to download into this WordPress program. Ah, the joys of desktop publishing. Yeah, right, I probably am a little lazy. If you want to see what a transactional analysis script diagram looks like right now scroll to the top of this page and click on ELR Editor’s Daily Shares. You can see a picture of a TA script diagram in the assemblage of pictures on the left of the page that will pop up, having been accepted by my Facebook program in a non-jpeg format.

A TA life script diagram shows the three stacked Parent, Adult, and Child ego state circles representing parent, adult, and child ego states for each parent and child. The solid lines in the diagram denote overt spoken social messages and dotted lines denote covert psychological unspoken ulterior messages.  Social messages are verbalized overt auditory messages; psychological messages are covert non-spoken ulterior messages transmitted by body language, emotional states, and after the fact positive or negative stroking as people react to situations and feel and do things.

Scripts in families are created automatically when parents transmit various messages to their children from various ego states socially and psychologically, in and out of awareness.  Scripts are life plans generally decided before the age of eight by offspring based on script messages transmitted to them by their parents and others.  Since parents by and large transmit the same script messages that were transmitted to them before they were eight years old script messages in families can remain intact for many generations.  According to transactional analysts script decisions made before the age of eight have lasting effects determining three general life outcomes:  winner, loser, and non-winner.  These decisions can be redecided and updated later in life but it’s not easy for most people. 

Psychological Child-Child ego state script injunctions are what cause the most trouble for people in their lives.  Script injunctions forbid appropriate behavior in the here and now. Script injunctions are caused by emotional and behavioral requirements created by families through time as they adapted to and coped with problems and environmental forces that may have been appropriate in past environments, but which are inappropriate in here and now more benign and hospitable environments. 

Opposing script messages transmitted by parents can put a child in a Not-OK bind in childhood and throughout adolescence, assuming a divorce has not already occurred, causing considerable trouble within a family, since the child cannot please both parents in the presence of both parents. This Catch-22 can put parents in worse Not-OK positions vis-a-vis each other if the child makes a social or psychological level decision about which parent is right, increasing Not-OKness in the family system as a whole, including the child.  

What many people need is psychological permission to violate and ignore their psychological outdated obsolete family Child ego state script message Injunctions, not only to increase their own OKness but the OKness of all living members of the family system, and the OKness of Earthian humans in general, for that matter.

Two common family script Injunctions in most cultures are Don’t Think about the true nature and causes of states of affairs and Don’t Feel certain feelings, such as glad, mad, sad, or scared, when certain things happen in certain environments.

Joe Biden at least socially comes across projecting an I’m OK—You’re OK life position. Donald Trump unfortunately comes across socially and psychologically projecting an I’m OK, my buddy is OK, nothing else is OK, and we are going to make the world pay life position. Even more unfortunate for all Earthians around Spaceship Earth Trump’s buddies Putin, Kim Jong Un, Bolsonaro and others also operate from this sort of life position.

Here is what Martin Groder, MD, one of my transactional analysis mentors at Chapel Hill, NC in the late 1970s, had to say about this sort of thing in what I called Groder’s People Map, in a passage I wrote and published in 2011 in my book Business Voyages: Mental Maps, Scripts, Schemata and Tools for Discovering and Co-Constructing Your Own Business Worlds, pp. 148-150:

The Human Spectrum

“Humans generally give little thought to what kind of human they are and where they fit in the spectrum of various types of humans. Countless philosophers, writers, social scientists, priests, preachers, ordinary humans and others have categorized Earthian humans in various ways through time. Following is a schema developed by Martin Groder, MD, a psychiatrist, organizational development consultant, and entrepreneur, who also had a degree in physics (Groder, 1977). Groder developed this schema while working with inmates of the federal prison system at Marion, Illinois in the late 1960’s and early 1970’s. He was involved in a process of changing hard-core criminals into law-abiding citizens. Such a process would challenge the abilities of the most skillful and powerful of change agents.

“According to Groder, humans vary on two fundamental spatial dimensions. One dimension is Okness, which is estimated on the horizontal axis of Figure 1 (sorry, I could not get the Figure 1 image to copy and paste here, so you’ll just have to imagine it, or read Business Voyages); the other dimension is the energy level of the individual estimated on the vertical axis.

“People vary in terms of how OK they see, feel about, and experience, (1) themselves, (2) the other individual, (3) their group, (4) other groups, and (5) the world. In Groder’s terms, they are OK or not-OK with respect to I, You, We, They, and It (the world). Groder estimates how OK they are on each of these five existential dimensions on a scale of -1 to +1, -1 being as not-OK as possible and +1 being as OK as possible. Thus people with extremely high self-esteem would be at the +1 level regarding themselves; someone with extremely low self-esteem would be existing at the -1 level regarding themselves. People could exist at any level in between, at -.5, 0, +.25, etc. on all five of the OKness positions, the positions of specific individuals with respect to themselves, buddies on a one-to-one basis, groups with which one belongs, other groups with which your group cooperates or competes, and the world in general. Summing the 5 existential OKness positions for an individual (I, You, We, They, and It), the highest possible OKness rating would be +5 and the lowest possible would be -5. A +5 person would have the highest possible feelings of Okness regarding his OKness, the OKness of his buddy, the OKness of his group, the OKness of other groups, and the OKness of the world. Such an individual would have very positive feelings and thoughts for self and others. On the other end of the spectrum, a -5 person would have the lowest possible feelings and thoughts for self and others. Very negative people tend to end up in prison. Very positive people tend to end up cultural heroes. Probably the most profitable life position for an entrepreneur in a capitalistic economic system would be I’m OK, my employees are OK, my company is OK, the world is OK, but my competitors aren’t worth a damn, since this position would motivate his or her sales employees to steal business from competitors to increase the profit of the company.

“Entrepreneurs have higher energy levels than middle managers and normal people. It takes less energy to be a normal person than anything else. Entrepreneurs in Groder’s schema have approximately the same energy level on the vertical axis of Figure 1 as Monsters, the -3 OKness level convict leaders of other convicts. Monsters have the life postion “I’m OK, my buddy is OK, but everything else is not OK, and I am going to make the world pay.†According to Groder, it’s more difficult to change the energy level of a human than the OKness position. In rehabilitation work, Groder attempted to arc people across the gap of Figure 1, and make +3 OKness level entrepreneurs out of -3 monsters, +2 OKness middle managers out of -2 OKness creeps, slobs, lunch buckets, etc. Sometimes people arc across the gap the other way. Honest entrepreneurs can turn criminal. Entrepreneurs are winner-survivors; Monsters are loser-survivors. Winners achieve goals and objectives; losers do not.â€

What is winning in this context?

Feeling good about yourself, your best friends, your groups, other groups, and the world.

Trump has a high energy level. His OKness life position at present unfortunately may be -3 or lower. Whether he’s a winner-survivor or a loser-survivor remains to be seen. Seems to me he has made his plight worse doing what he has done since losing the 2020 USian presidential race fair and square, his latest last straw being his orchestrated and scripted telephone call performance yesterday threatening and demeaning the Georgia Secretary of State and the Georgia Governor, not to mention all the honest hard working public servants who did their jobs well conducting the Georgia election.

How seventy-four million USian voters could have voted in the first place for someone with Donald Trump’s feeling, thinking, behavioral, and personality dysfunctions is astounding.  He’s had long-standing problems getting his psychological, social, and sexual needs met in OK ways, probably from his birth to now, despite what the billions of dollars he got his hands on could buy, made possible by leveraging the four hundred or so million dollars his parents gave him to play with buying vanity gambling casinos, luxury hotels, golf courses and the like.

It’s even harder to believe seventy-four million voters in the US voting for Trump might see themselves and others as having zero to minus three (0 to -3) loser-survivor Not-OK life positions; but maybe that’s possible, come to think of it.

No kind of economic or political system will work for everyone if bad guys get control of them at the top, and the worst bad guy at the top of the USian government right now, now that Trump is done, is Mitchell McConnell, the Repug thug majority leader in the USian senate, and the only OK way to get rid of him is to vote for Warnock and Ossoff, which will give Dems control of the USian federal government, with the unfortunate exception of the USian nine-member supreme court controlled by six low-OKness Repug radical right judges.

On the other hand, how much good this will do remains to be seen.

The US has a decent constitution created and written at the end of the 18th Century by lawyers and rich merchants in the north and lawyers and rich slave-owning plantation owners in the south of the territory on the east coast of North America recently conquered and stolen from American Indians by Europeans in the names of their monarchs, linking together several previously quasi-autonomous states subservient to the English monarchy. These merchants and slave-owning planters got tired of putting up with the rules and taxes of the English monarchy, so they rebelled and won their independence, making themselves the new powers that be in the “new world,” creating their own rules and regulations. The new constitution was designed to protect their vested interests couched in noble idealistic language glorifying the natural rights of humans based on the proposition, they said, that all humans were created equal, which according to most definitions of the word equal was a lie. It might have been they were created to be equal, but if African slaves were born equal they did not remain that way for long in the real world, for many decades up to the Civil War. This same sort of unequal state of affairs still exists among USians. Humans now living in the US may have been born to be “equal” but they did not stay that way for long after birth, thanks to the existence and nature of the evolving USian culture, economic system, and political system, fostering a maddening frustrating miasma of nauseating superstitions, beliefs, customs, rules, regulations, and laws imagined and enacted through time in myriad groups and organizations to increase inequality among participants. Mitchel McConnell did not acquire the power he had in the USian senate because of his good looks or what is written in the US constitution. It came about because of rules senators created to make it easier for Repugs and Dems in the Senate to gain unfair advantages in the management of states of affairs. The USian congress, senate and house, now has almost no real face to face democratic discussions of any issue among all senators or representatives. Business is done behind closed doors by small committees who decide what will be voted on, legislation initiated and written in many instances by lobbyists for powerful corporations; and the senate majority leader now has the right and power to personally decide what will be voted on by the Senate as a whole, regardless of what committees decide. There is almost no face to face I’m OK—You’re OK democratic discussion of any issue in the Senate as a whole. A similar process has also been co-constructed in the House through time for the same reasons.

Unfortunately this I’m OK—You’re Not OK process is not confined to the USian federal government: It’s pervasive in families, schools, churches, and organizations and groups of all sorts, thanks to a Little Fascist some transactional analysts think is embedded in the archaic Parent ego state in the Child ego states of most humans, harboring a deep-seated desire to reign superior over others.

Postscript. It’s not that all Dem voters are paragons of virtue, intelligence, compassion, fairness, and justice working for the good of all USians and Earthians. In my opinion, most dim Dems did not have enough good sense to vote in their own best interests for Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren for president in the 2020 Dem primaries. On the other hand, they did at least get rid of two major threats and impediments to USian progress, Trump and McConnell.

One USian King of the Senate reigning about one decade has now been deposed. Will the next one be any better? Not much if nobody changes the rules of the senate for how senators do business, that were designed to foster inequality and to pay back powerful special interests, leaving scraps for inferior losers.

I have covered ego states and scripts in my books Business Voyages and Born to Learn: A Transactional Analysis of Human Learning,  listing common Parent ego state script messages and Child ego state injunctions.  All parents do not transmit the same script messages creating considerable variety among family scripts and outcomes.  Certain life scripts conveniently fit certain roles, jobs, professions, careers, political parties, and what have you more than others, providing fresh recruits already scripted for job openings, slots, roles, and positions in an economy, which is fine so long as the economy does not change very much.  Unfortunately since 1980 in the United States the offshoring of high wage blue collar jobs to foreign low wage countries and the use of more and more computer technology to increase the profits of USian corporations has rendered many family scripts obsolete. 

Donald John Trump did not invent himself. He was scripted to do what he has d0ne. The feeling, thinking, and behaving patterns that caused Trump to do what he has done have existed in Trump’s family for generations. His parents knew full well what Trump is like. His mother said so, saying she worried about him getting into politics, saying he had “no common sense.” She and her husband had to have known giving him four hundred million dollars was dangerous, like giving a very young child matches or a loaded gun to play with. Yet they knew he had a lot of energy and a physical presence, demeanor, and cachet that appealed to a lot of people; and they knew he might make a big mark in the world in their name, in one of the biggest ego trips of Earthian history.

A bitter pill to swallow found embedded in my books Business Voyages and Born to Learn is that everything that happens is either predetermined or accidental, as the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein postulated in his book of propositions, Prototractatus; and therefore no one is to blame or praise. Believing and acting otherwise will simply perpetuate the same sorry I’m OK—You’re Not OK life position that has bedeviled humankind since time immemorial contributing to if not causing repeats of historical abominations such as genocides, wars, slavery, economic depressions, famines, mental illnesses, and social collapses.

For more information regarding my use of Transactional Analysis  https://www.itaaworld.org/  to create better discussion groups and democratic processes read my book Born to Learn:  A Transactional Analysis of Human Learning.  https://www.amazon.com/Born-Learn-Transactional-Analysis-Learning/dp/0692584331 

For more information on how to co-construct better organizations and economic systems using transactional analysis read my book   Business Voyages:  Mental Maps, Scripts, Schemata, and Tools for Co-Constructing Your Own Business Worlds   https://www.amazon.com/Business-Voyages-Schemata-Discovering-Co-Constructing/dp/1413480810

See my article “The Evolution of Spaceship Earth, Inc,† https://blog.effectivelearning.net/the-evolution-of-spaceship-earth-inc/   for some management science ideas on how human Earthians might eventually co-construct an economic system that is viable and satisfying for everyone aboard Spaceship Earth, making it possible for all Earthian humans to develop an I’m OK—You’re OK life position. 

This entails Earthians peacefully reducing through natural attrition the human population aboard Spaceship Earth, never doing work that machines can do better, and delegating the day-to-day management of systems for scheduling, producing, and distributing the necessities of life to artificial intelligence programs and supercomputers, humans having shown time and time again they are not up to the job.

This can be programmed using linear programming based on the general algorithmic matrix algebra form

Max CjXj, s.t. AijXj ≤, =, or ≥ Bi

As I explained in “The Evolution of Spaceship Earth, Inc.†  https://blog.effectivelearning.net/the-evolution-of-spaceship-earth-inc/  

Flying aboard an airliner about to land at night moving at four hundred miles an hour at thirty thousand feet with cloudy and rainy weather below, which would you rather have landing the plane, the plane’s radar and computer system or the pilot and co-pilot, seeing nothing out their windows but clouds and lightning?

I am indebted to Buckminster Fuller for teaching me in his book Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth the metaphor in the above paragraph and planting seeds for other ideas in my essay “The Evolution of Spaceship Earth, Inc.,†such as computers being the best hope for mankind and humans not doing work that machines can do better, being paid to think instead with what he called mind grants. To my knowledge Fuller was the inventor of the appellations Earthian and Spaceship Earth.   

For details regarding my transactional analysis and management science qualifications read “ELR Editor’s Academic Vita” at https://www.effectivelearning.net/rjs-academic-vita.html or by scrolling to the top of this page and clicking on the post on the masthead of this blog.

TO RESPOND:

As usual this month’s THE EARTHIAN  links and cites as SOURCES recent articles written and published by clear deep-thinking hard-hitting independent writers on various Earthian states of affairs.

Some Game playing goes on in the articles, i.e., a writer is psychologically Persecuting, Rescuing, or Victimizing someone or some group or organization; but it seems to me the writers are generally trying to paint accurate pictures of what they think is really going on in relevant significant Earthian states of affairs using their Adult ego states.

Unfortunately it seems to me one can build a case politicians spend most of their time playing psychological Games, mostly wasting their time and energy pastiming (bullshitting) and engaging in rituals (shuffling paper, filling out unnecessary forms, attending useless meetings with lawyers and others, and the like). Almost everything done in so-called foreign policy is a move in a psychological Game it seems to me.

It’s not easy, impossible some say, to separate relevant from irrelevant focal points in order to comprehend global cases, systems, and processes, while being inundated with fake news and true facts of states of affairs generated daily around Spaceship Earth, made public on the Internet, and elsewhere, to see what’s really going on, using primarily inductive and analogical reasoning, based on probability, not deductive logic. Almost never can anyone prove with deductive logic that a general proposition about psychological, social, economic, or political states affairs is absolutely true. About the best humans can hope for is to develop consensual answers that are generally acceptable and true based on probability.

It’s better to be honestly wrong than dishonestly wrong. Telling someone something you know is fake as if it were true is worse than telling someone something that’s fake because of genuine ignorance. A good case in point these days is most USians calling FICA insurance premium payments “payroll†taxes. It’s hard to know if sayers calling FICA payments payroll taxes really do not know any better or if they really do know better but are covertly lying about it to go along with the crowd to get political brownie points for conforming to a big group lie slandering and defaming Social Security.

It seems to me most lying is lying by omission, people not telling people things they know are true that others need to know. Whether lying by omission is more or less harmful than lying by commission, telling people things you know are false and fake, is debatable, as is proving whether it’s getting easier or harder for most people to know what’s fake and what’s not. Political parties, Earthian governments, and Mainstream media lie by omission with alacrity, information withheld from ordinary humans about the Julian Assange case being a notorious current case in point. Mainstream USian media not mentioning there were no visible black rioters among Trump’s invaders of the US Congress when it was in session to declare national state votes for president valid is another.

If you have ideas on how to democratically discuss in Game-free ways economic and political problems and opportunities in something like the Ogeechee Economic Forum at  https://www.effectivelearning.net/ogeechee-economic-forum.html

go to our RESPONSES page and let us know about them at  https://www.effectivelearning.net/responses.html .

Feel free to respond with comments and criticisms about any of the SOURCES listed below using the RESPONSES post on this blog masthead at the top of this page; but please refrain from making ad hominem attacks. Criticize and correct any of the facts, data, evidence, reasoning, and conclusions in any of the articles; but please refrain from slandering and defaming the characteristics and reputations of the authors illogically using slanderous or defamatory comments trying to prove their arguments and conclusions in their articles are wrong, and yours are right.

I do not sell subscriptions or advertising or solicit donations for THE EARTHIAN or the Effective Learning Report but I would like to sell more books. If you feel you’ve gained value from THE EARTHIAN and would like to reciprocate go to our Effective Learning Publications page and purchase one or more copies of my books at   https://www.effectivelearning.net/effective-learning-publications.html  .

FOR A FREE SUBSCRIPTION TO THE EFFECTIVE LEARNING REPORT AND THE EARTHIAN: Email rjstapleton@bulloch.net and enter the word Subscription on the subject line.     

Feel free to forward, share, post, print, or otherwise circulate this edition of The Earthian any way you see fit.  

Richard John Stapleton, PhD, CTA, certified transactional analyst, educator, octogenarian emeritus professor of management, writer, editor and publisher.   

SOURCES:

January 4, 2021

Carl Bernstein ought to know what he’s talking about, being one of Earth’s foremost expert witnesses dealing with the problem of lying by omission.

“Carl Bernstein: This is the ultimate smoking gun,” CNN video,

www.cnn.com/videos/politics/2021/01/03/trump-georgia-votes-raffensperger-call-tapes-bernstein-sot-vpx.cnn?fbclid=IwAR2l6n8Jl73Nzgb0KwO6AO0ut4vz3p6blrhq3Z3_4ymFEbKS1_DwAMm0Q_g.

January 4

Do it again, along with their dear leader Little Lord Fauntleroy Trump who finally got what he deserved.

“Congress expelled 14 members in 1861 for supporting Confederacy,†by Biba Adams, YAHOO!NEWS, https://news.yahoo.com/congress-expelled-14-members-1861-163055839.html.

January 3

It’s a good thing Assange will not be extradited to the US because US prisons are too harsh in the opinion of the Brit judge. It’s not good the judge did not disagree with the US about the charges.

“UK judge blocks US request to extradite Assange,†Aljazeera, https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/1/4/julian-assange-extradition-2.

January 3, 2021

A major issue alright, meriting much thought and discussion.

â€2020’s Legislative Attacks on Gig Workers Will Change Labor Forever,†by Robert R. Raymond, TRUTHOUT, https://truthout.org/articles/2020s-legislative-attacks-on-gig-workers-will-change-labor-forever/?utm_campaign=Truthout%20Share%20Buttons&fbclid=IwAR2hp4UENOHcLHXHQsVKUYKdl1jqw0SEKhkSNbFZqqmBWvKu5AIE_0yhadM.

January 2

Here’s how the USian Deep State does business as usual making good on their psychological agreements with their friends in the USian federal government.

“Here Are All the Banks That Paid Janet Yellen $7.3 Million in Speaking Fees in the Past 2 Years,†by Tyler Durden, ZEROHEDGE, https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/here-are-all-banks-paid-janet-yellen-73-million-speaking-fees-past-2-years?fbclid=IwAR3JRclo44yteRFmQ_0fnYeMdNmu0FeZIzixxJ45JgY3jkzpt3DARD3rGXc.

January 2

Single pay Medicare for All anyone?

“Big Pharma Rings in New Year by Raising Prices on 300 Medications,†by Kenny Stancil, TRUTHOUT, https://truthout.org/articles/big-pharma-rings-in-new-year-by-raising-prices-on-300-medications/?utm_campaign=Truthout%20Share%20Buttons&fbclid=IwAR04nzEMmmAypwy0HzrLSoHdlpOYrIklDqBzsGGZghrgYxZwGyWEA489y7w.

January 2

Now here is a real party pooper.

“Petit-Bourgeois ‘Normalcy’ Pining at the New York Times,†by Paul Street, COUNTERPUNCH, https://www.counterpunch.org/2021/01/01/petit-bourgeois-normalcy-pining-at-the-new-york-times/?fbclid=IwAR1g9optROgXFL_XdfefhuMUVGXiyyX1w3asnmycF3qNCfycou_d6Y2XnHQ.

January 2

My opinion expressed on Facebook: “But there’s no evidence of significant voter fraud, you liar! (me playing like I was speaking to Ted Cruz).â€

A repug response to me on Facebook: “With all respect, I could say you are lying too. The commit (sic) about Hitler (believe if you tell a big lie over and over sooner or later most people will believe it). Pelosi on video made that same commitment stating that was how the Democrats did it. There is so much fraud in our government it amazes me how it is still functioning at all. I’ve read your articles and the majority of what you are stating is just your opinions, not fact.â€

My response to the repuglican on Facebook: “Just proves it’s impossible to win an argument with brainwashed people like you and me. The only hope is that the better brainwashing will win in the end.â€

“Ted Cruz Leads Senators in Challenge To Wednesday Electoral Count; Demands Emergency Audit,†by Tyler Durden, ZEROHEDGE, https://www.zerohedge.com/political/ted-cruz-leads-senators-challenge-electoral-count-demands-emergency-audit?fbclid=IwAR01nA1-pt4p2XY7X6JiTwK4PBmmoPKw6Hqfv_SIekHSCCa7XMXtJ2l5fJs.

January 2

Great contemporary environmental overview

“Roaming Charges: It is What It is But is That All There is?,†by Jeffrey St. Clair, COUNTERPUNCH, https://www.counterpunch.org/2021/01/01/roaming-charges-it-is-what-it-is-but-is-that-that-all-there-is/?fbclid=IwAR1Ua70thWd2PLz8OnS4Y2JsWJUVhoHPMh3T6GnzgwMGJ5k0MgzVm-NWsqg.

December 31

Say it aint so Joe

“Yes, Americans are Fat. The US Military is Fatter,†by Thomas Knapp, COUNTERPUNCH, https://www.counterpunch.org/2020/12/31/yes-americans-are-fat-the-us-military-is-fatter/?fbclid=IwAR10hclcbd9lJKdBM5lcW-5ZiWPI3ZUuAsOQll50hk59pjD5yE0oav9LT38.

December 31

Back to business as usual

“Biden and the World: A First Look at His Foreign Affairs Team,†by Mel Gurton, COUNTERPUNCH, https://www.counterpunch.org/2020/12/30/biden-and-the-world-a-first-look-at-his-foreign-affairs-team/?fbclid=IwAR19UpSON_ciML6TCcREAwbnGQEkwLHMrNfOfJNauzVuB1Jk8au32Zb7zaY.

December 31

Say it aint so Joe

“2020 Latin America and the Caribbean in Review: the Pink Tide May Rise Again,†by Roger Harris, COUNTERPUNCH, https://www.counterpunch.org/2020/12/31/2020-latin-america-and-the-caribbean-in-review-the-pink-tide-may-rise-again/?fbclid=IwAR1EUt3Spx5nzCBmM1ffnqTWBPOaCLWHvnm2BfQwSEdyEB_JAXgBiYq-Gdg.

December 31

Generally agree. Trump looks and acts more like a fascist dictator than he really is; but he was and is an authoritarian nevertheless, and he seems to be doing everything he can to destroy I’m OK—You’re OK democracy any way he can before he leaves office three weeks from now.

“The Threat of Authoritarianism in the U.S. is Very Real, and Has Nothing To Do With Trump,†by Glenn Greenwald, SUBSTACK.COM, https://greenwald.substack.com/p/the-threat-of-authoritarianism-in?fbclid=IwAR3yanm9SJ3P_eiT2Y2gY8gXSQmgaaLd-rsYLAjdUGIGgGLYquKuvDH73QQ

December 31

Excellent article. Seems to me the only way for everyone to get survival needs met from here on is to peacefully reduce the Earthian human population through natural attrition (natural deaths exceeding births every year) so living humans can enjoy an adequate slice of a smaller pie year after year until sustainable levels are reached all around Spaceship Earth.

“2020: The Year Things Started Going Badly Wrong,†by Gail Tverberg, OUR FINITE WORLD, https://ourfiniteworld.com/2020/12/23/2020-the-year-things-started-going-badly-wrong/?fbclid=IwAR1De64WK9I1pKJ9z6r6VuCipV_fAGhJZ6MqRndt15bwMHJcRv58BHBQ1tU.

December 31

This linked list of articles published in the ELR covers Trump’s time running for office and living in the White House since 2016, up to now with about three weeks left to go.

“A List of All Articles Published In the Effective Learning Report Since September 2016,†by Richard John Stapleton, Effective Learning Report, https://blog.effectivelearning.net/a-list-of-all-articles-published-in-the-effective-learning-report/?fbclid=IwAR0MaJqOKIsryZ8aDz3Zv67tW0LiZfA2JCy-nb6smTVLkn8fNrL1E2qOWbQ.

December 23

One positive aspect of Trump’s latest impulse here is that it exposed the selfishness and greed of members of congress paying back their supporters in business as usual dirty Washington pork barrel payoffs embedded in the 5600 pages of this bill all USians will have to pay for one way or another sooner or later. If you think the two hundred or so thousand dollars US reps, senators, and presidents are paid as salary per year is their real income when in office you are sadly mistaken. Most of their money is made on the side one way or the other, including trading in the stock market, as Perdue and Loeffler exemplify .

“Covid-19 catch-22: Regime-change policies come packed with US pandemic relieve,†by Alexander Rubinstein and Jeb Sprague, THE GRAY ZONE, https://thegrayzone.com/2020/12/22/covid-regime-change-us-pandemic-relief/?fbclid=IwAR1EUt3Spx5nzCBmM1ffnqTWBPOaCLWHvnm2BfQwSEdyEB_JAXgBiYq-Gdg.

December 23

Insidiousness

“Trump Kicks Covid Bill Back to Congress; Demands $2,000 Stimulus, Shreds Lawmakers Over Mountain of Debt,†by Tyler Durden, ZEROHEDGE, https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/trump-kicks-covid-bill-back-congress-demands-2000-stimulus-shreds-congress-over-mountain?fbclid=IwAR3O0dB9tornqM0sxMSqwAiBWJ0quTchOHr_od1sdJSL90LmRybp6gW7WyQ.

December 23

Genealogical scripting makes a difference for anyone.

“ELR Editor’s Genealogical Scripting,†by Richard John Stapleton, EFFECTIVE LEARNING REPORT, https://blog.effectivelearning.net/stapleton-genealogy/?fbclid=IwAR0iXQJ2rIL6aRR3dD2fGXzWlPFyYWjmC0lQo-LAOC8-qXi_tRAiQc-dX8w

December 21

Some more great research by Ellen Brown

“Tackling the infrastructure and unemployment crises: The ‘American System’ solution,†by Ellen Brown, INTREPID REPORT, http://www.intrepidreport.com/archives/31597.

December 19

Say it aint so Joe

“Donald Trump’s Final Act: Snuffing Out the Promise of Democracy in the Middle East,†by Vijay Prashad, COUNTERPUNCH, https://www.counterpunch.org/2020/12/18/donald-trumps-final-act-snuffing-out-the-promise-of-democracy-in-the-middle-east/?fbclid=IwAR2ws2iLE2NOOFSIf8j01yIkYPdoDatCTgLa3HME9Ok__7jY8Uesw4kUc4k.

December 19

An interesting well-written story about the evolution of the USian culture and economy

“What Shall We Call It?,†by John Davis, COUNTERPUNCH, https://www.counterpunch.org/2020/12/18/what-shall-we-call-it/?fbclid=IwAR0kkjfBXsMFMCVlkoqFKGmk_nYLJ6Mv8b11f73IHjc6e9okOSq_GV-hcfE.

December 17

Chavez could be right. How did the billionaires get to be billionaires? Not by working, by owning stock and other assets that increased in value astronomically as they slept, significantly caused here of late by highly intelligent and creative computer technology hired hands working for billionaires writing computer software that eliminated jobs previously requiring human physical labor.

If there are no physical labor jobs what are the alternatives right now? Let people starve or UBI? Or what else?

You can’t eat computer technology that’s for sure. And most people aren’t skilled and knowledgeable enough writing computer software to work for billionaires owning the stock of corporations.

“Former Goldman CFO Calls for Universal Basic Income ‘To Stave Off Revolution’,†by Tyler Durden, ZEROHEDGE, https://www.zerohedge.com/political/former-goldman-cfo-marty-sachs-calls-universal-basic-income?fbclid=IwAR12ECNFAXHESk2dOrb3rrUL1Uf26mXJGMu3d4ANeygGatGktx2vy00v08Y

 

By Lisa Walker

Fitting fun side gigs into your busy teaching schedule doesn’t have to be hard. In fact, there’s a variety of flexible opportunities that you can do part-time during the school year. Side gigs are not only a great way to make extra money, but they also allow teachers to enhance their skills and expertise in various fields that may be beneficial to students. These also give teachers the ability to apply their skills to relevant fields like computer science, engineering, math and technology. Below are some examples of fun side gigs that any teacher can fit into their busy teaching schedule.

Tutor

Teachers already have an advantage if they want to take up tutoring because of their teaching skills. This is a great way to spend personalized time with a student who is having trouble in certain subjects. This may also be done after school, and you can even set your own hours and rates. There are also a variety of tutoring-based websites for both on-site or online tutoring.

Camp Counselor

Being a camp counselor is a fun way to delegate duties and activities to kids during school breaks. Camps also tend to fill up quickly since school is out of session, which creates a high demand for camp counselors. You’ll also have the opportunity to go on field trips and adventures with kids, so this job is perfect for teachers who love the outdoors. Check out your local community organizations to apply for a camp counselor spot.

Babysitter

Babysitting is a great way to make extra money after school throughout the school year. You’ll be helping out other parents while watching and playing with other kids. This can be as easy as helping kids with homework, watching TV or playing board games. You can make a profile on various babysitting-based websites or connect with parents in your neighborhood for child care opportunities.

Tour Guide

Being a tour guide is a fun way to spend time outdoors while discussing the fun aspects of the city you live in to tourists. You’ll also get to spend time with people of all ages, including kids, elderly folks and everyone in between. This is also a fun way to incorporate exercise into your schedule, since some tour guides spend time walking tourists around the city. You typically receive a base hourly wage plus the potential for tips from tourists, so a little personality goes a long way. Call your local tour guide company for openings.

Dog Boarding

Dog boarding is an easy way to make extra money while playing with dogs in a home environment. This job is ideal for when a friend or neighbor is out of town and needs someone to take on dog sitting tasks. Duties may involve walking, feeding and playing with dogs, so this is great for teachers who want a relaxing side job during the school year.

Dog Walking

For teachers who just want to spend some time playing with dogs, dog walking is a fun way to get some exercise while catching some sunshine. This is also a great job for teachers who want some quiet time from kids and school activities. Ask your neighbors if they’re in need of dog walking services, or create a profile on dog walking websites, which allows clients to contact you. You can also charge your own rate and set your own hours, making this a flexible opportunity for the busiest of teachers.

Bonus Tip: It’s time to select your entity type!

Registering your services as a legal business entity with the state requires selecting an entity type. While there are more than a dozen different types of business entities recognized by state governments, including the traditional C-Corp corporation, many business owners are opting to form an LLC. LLCs provide a number of advantages, including their flexibility, security to owners, and the ease in setting them up. An LLC can be created in about five steps.

Fitting a fun summer job into your busy teaching schedule is easy thanks to the variety of options that are available. Not only are these types of jobs a great way to make extra money, but they also offer flexibility, potential exercise opportunities and rewarding benefits for helping out friends, neighbors and students.

Lisa Walker is the proud SAHM (Stay at Home Mom) of two adorable but feisty sons. She enjoys trail hiking and beach-coming with her husband Jake when not busy with her boys and home improvement projects. She created NeighborhoodSprout.org as a passion project to share her love of homeownership with others.

By Lisa Walker

Photo by Unsplash

People with disabilities often have more difficulty in the workplace. They are more likely to experience discrimination, unemployment, or underemployment than the general workforce. If you are a young person managing a disability, this might already sound familiar. You may be eager to work but are unsure of your opportunities. One solution is to go into a career in business.

If you think you don’t have enough experience to pursue business, think again! Here are four common questions for business careers, with answers that take into consideration the special needs of people living with a disability.

What are the most profitable business degrees?

Most colleges and universities offer special grants and tuition discounts to give people with disabilities an equitable chance at an education. In addition, there are many state and federal tuition assistance programs for people with disabilities. People on a budget can work toward a 2- or 4-year degree, or even a master’s or MBA, for little or even no cost in fields like:

• Business Ownership
• Economics ($97,000)
• Healthcare Management ($88,000)
• Project Management ($81,000)
• Organizational Leadership ($77,000)

What kinds of internships are the best for business?

The best internship for you is one that gives you direct experience in the field you choose. It’s important for people with disabilities to consider an internship with a company reputable for accessibility, is close to home or school, and has remote work options.

For those on a budget, be sure to choose an internship that pays. You might be responsible for supplying some of your own supplies, like a laptop, so save money by looking at used ones with a warranty on Amazon Warehouse Deals. You’ll also want an internship that gives you opportunities like:

• Getting direct experience with the software you will use in your field.
• Having a one-on-one mentor who will treat you with respect and give you opportunities to learn.
• Building a portfolio of experience to use in interviews.
• Applying best practices in specific projects.

What can I expect in an entry-level position?

Landing your first job in business may be intimidating at first, especially for people with disabilities. You might feel worried that your abilities won’t be seen for your disability. Give yourself confidence by dressing your best for your interview. People on a budget can get discounts on clothing that makes you feel strong and successful by using Nordstrom Rack coupons. An entry-level position can mean a lot of things, especially if you are going into:

• Marketing, expect a coordinator position in public relations, user experience, or communications.
• Accounting, expect a bookkeeper or payroll assistant.
• Project Management, expect a coordinator or support role.

How do I build my network to increase opportunities?

Business is more about who you know than what you know. For people with disabilities, this can be a really effective way to start. Stay in touch with your professors, mentors, coworkers, and former supervisors. Better yet, stay on good terms.

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By Richard John Stapleton

This is insane.

The man has no moral or ethical basis for saying this in this Tweet.

<blockquote class=”twitter-tweet”><p lang=”en” dir=”ltr”>Biden can only enter the White House as President if he can prove that his ridiculous “80,000,000 votes†were not fraudulently or illegally obtained. When you see what happened in Detroit, Atlanta, Philadelphia &amp; Milwaukee, massive voter fraud, he’s got a big unsolvable problem!</p>&mdash; Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) <a href=”https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1332352538855747584?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw”>November 27, 2020</a></blockquote> <script async src=”https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js” charset=”utf-8″></script>

The problem is not unsolvable.

All Trump has to do is do the right thing and honor the decisions of legally elected officials of state legislatures and federal judges who have emphatically stated in all ways Biden won fair and square in one of the most secure elections ever. As anyone with any common sense knows no US presidential election could ever be declared 100 percent accurate with human-counted numbers in a voting process this large. Some errors and maybe a little fraud are bound to happen in a counting process with numbers this large in a US presidential race covering fifty states and almost unnameable voting precincts and locations. How many finalists in USian presidential races in recent memory could have done what Trump has done, claim their loss was caused by fraud?  Quite a few. But none of them did. Why not? Because all of them had common sense and some sense of honor, decency, and fair play.

Trump is psychologically lying about the reality of this situation and is in effect psychologically threatening civil war and the destruction of our democratic voting system with this Tweet. He’s a fascist dictator at heart who accidentally got to be president of the US thanks to the insane USian Electoral College and who now does not want to give it up like a petulant spoiled brat child not wanting to give up a piece of candy. He’s never been a believer in democracy and has never obeyed rules he did not like in his life, running the corporations his inherited money enabled him to own like a fascist dictator (six of them into bankruptcy), basically a thug with the morals and ethics of an alley cat. Why should he start believing in democracy now?

Hopefully the only hope of US citizens who believe in real democracy to avert civil violence will not wind up the US military who have historically pledged themselves to uphold the US democratic rule of law and Constitution by not following the orders of irrational presidents should any order attacks on USian civilians to stay in power. Whether the military will in this case remains to be seen if worse comes to worst if the US Supreme Court stacked 6-3 with right wing Repug loyalist ideologues should decide to give Trump the presidency another four years despite his democratic vote loss, which, should it happen, would be a tragic case indeed: six ideological Repug loyalist Supreme Court judges overriding the judgments and verdict of over eighty million real jurors in this case who did what it took to vote against Trump .

On the other hand, Trump it seems has decided it will behoove him to contest the election while knowing he does not have enough power to override the US Constitution backed by his 73.9 million voters, or his six lackeys on the Supreme Court, after losing the presidential race according to traditional rules of the US voting system by over seven million real votes to Biden’s over eighty million real democratic votes, while Biden also beat Trump with over three hundred funny votes to Trump’s 232 funny votes, i.e., Electoral College votes.

And as anyone with a lick of common sense should know there is almost zero chance there could have been over seven million votes involving errors and fraud in Biden’s favor in the 2020 election, with no error and fraud votes in Trump’s favor.

Only a world class a_ _&*#$ would do what Trump has done under these conditions, demand absolute proof he did not lose because of fraud and illegality.

As I have previously discussed in an Effective Learning Report article I think Trump is a second and possibly third-degree psychological Game player, especially playing NIGYSOB, NOW I’VE GOT YOU, YOU SOB. Trump probably knows there is no chance he can get the election overturned, but is demanding proof he did not lose the election due to fraud and illegality before moving out of the White House to fleece and shake down his deluded supporters with fund-raising Tweets, emails, and other communication contacts demanding that they contribute money to his legal offense fund to get the election overturned, knowing some of the proceeds of the hustle/scam (now reputed to be over $200 million) will remain in his own coffers after he leaves office. Is the man capable of this kind of venal duplicity and lying? You bet.

After one of the most secure and accurate US presidential votes in history the US still has a sociopath in the White House creating anxiety and anguish for millions of people while fanning fires of chaos in the US and around Spaceship Earth with his insane Tweets, this last one hopefully being the last straw, grasped by a desperate dangerous greedy man with no conscience.

Unlike Nero who merely fiddled while fires burned Rome of their own volition, Trump has so far spent his last almost three months as USian president after losing the election playing golf and stoking fires of blind ignorant class hatred doing what he has always done for a living after his parents gave him 400 million dollars to play with—hire people and fire those who cannot do, or refuse to do, what his majesty orders.

_________________________________________

Richard John Stapleton, PhD, CTA, certified transactional analyst, educator, octogenarian emeritus professor of management, writer, editor and publisher.   

By COURTENAY BARNETT

Dear beloved we are gathered once more at the altar of the almighty truth.

Our sermon for today is entitled ‘Joe Biden: war or peace?’

As outgoing President Trump does his last hustle to collect as much as he can, obtain allegedly to support his litigation to retain the presidency  with the court’s assistance, our time and attention is better spent more realistically focusing one’s mind on the prospects and policies of President-elect Joe Biden. To do so with a measure of realism the structure of the US system needs to be understood.

US system

There are two critical constants for any president of the United States of America:-

1.         The dictates of the military-industrial complex; and

2.         The foreign policy trajectory, as actual military policy, of ‘full spectrum dominance’.

The US economy is dominated by military production. In a  succinct and prescient manner, in the early 1960s in his farewell speech, then President Eisenhower explained in a quite precise way how the military had begun to dominate and dictate to the US economy :-

(https://www.ourdocuments.gov/doc.php?flash=false&doc=90&page=transcript)

As a compliment to that reality, investment in the military is extended by doctrine into a policy that since the end of World War 11( WW11) assures that the US aims to  achieve  control over all dimensions of the global battlespace.

For decades each new President has presided over a new war or US military intervention. Carter had Panama; Reagan had Grenada; George Bush senior had Iraq/Gulf War 1; Clinton had Yugoslavia; George Bush Jr. had Iraq/Gulf War 11; Obama had Libya; Trump did not have a new war.

It is interesting that Trump is embraced by his supporters as an America first ‘isolationist’. He did try to secure troop reduction in both Afghanistan and Syria. He found himself in conflict with the US military and Pentagon. His ultimate undoing was that his leadership style was chaotic, erratic, unpredictable and inadequately consultative. In consequence, he succeeded in either insulting or annoying sufficient numbers within the electorate that he was voted out of office.

Within the framework just described one can rest assured, President-elect Joe Biden shall remain safely within the confines of  established US military policy.

Whether Biden claims for himself a new war is a matter one but  can guess on. His history and personality provide helpful predictive hints. In large measure Joe Biden’s voting record confirms that he has voted far more consistently to support US war efforts than he has ever opposed overseas military ventures. His political predisposition reveals a status quo middle of the road politician inclined more to the centre and right than to the left. At his age he is not likely to change when in office as president.

The question therefore is – war or peace?

I anticipate more likelihood of the former than the latter if history is the best predictor of the future. 

Circumstances so dictate. 

Should there be doubt as to the nature and record of the politician with whom we shall be dealing with as President, then let us examine the factual and quite accurate record on Joe Biden when he helped march the US into the Iraq war:- 

Joe Biden – over to you.

AMEN!

________________________________________

COURTENAY BARNETT is a graduate of London University. His areas of study were economics, political science and international law. He has been a practising lawyer for over thirty years, and has argued public interest and human rights cases. He has published several articles in the Effective Learning Report. He lives and works in the Caribbean