Shooter rooters

In the wake of the targeted murder of the CEO of United Healthcare, I was disheartened to see how many people on-line are rooting for the killer. Yes, there are real problems with the state of healthcare in the U.S., but do you really want to hand justice over to vigilantes?

In the movies, Batman is a superhero. But in reality, he would be a monster. Vigilante justice seems may seem great until the vigilante starts to go after someone that you don’t think is the enemy. And that decision won’t be up to you — it will be up to the guy with gun.

There has been much talk about that wrong-headed movement on the Left to “defund the police”. This time it seems to be people on the Right echoing a similar sentiment: Who needs cops when you’ve got a guy with a gun as judge, jury and executioner?

I for one am very much in favor of the police. In reality, complete anarchy is not a form of freedom. It’s just another way to live in a prison.

Pardon?

I was very happy to read that the President pardoned his son after all. When you are dealing with thugs, you need to be a realist and acknowledge that you are dealing with thugs.

As many have pointed out, if Hunter had not been a member of this particular family, there simply would have been a plea deal, as is usual in such cases. There actually was a plea deal in place, but Republican pressure made it fall through.

Given everything we know, we cannot pretend that we are transitioning to a normal American administration. There is every reason to believe that the creep would have continued to torment the only son of his perceived enemy, if only to entertain his base.

In the immortal words of Joseph Mankiewicz: Fasten your seatbelts, it’s going to be a bumpy night.

Temporal insurance

There are many examples in science fiction of somebody winding back time to change things. And we have all had the experience of saying “I wish I could go back and do that differently.”

Suppose time travel did exist, and we were each of us on our own personal timeline in a branching multiverse. In that reality, you could always go back and change the past.

On the surface, it would seem that there is no paradox, because the reality you create that second time around would, from your perspective, become the only reality. These sorts of do-overs would be seen as a kind of “temporal insurance”.

Is such a reality even theoretically possible, or does it fall apart due to self-contradictions? I can definitely see some issues.

For example, in your universe, you could always win at the stock market. But if everybody wins at the stock market, then the very concept of a stock market stops making sense.

I suspect that such examples will lead to multiple contradictions. Living together with 8 billion fellow humans seems to be incompatible with a world in which each of us is uniquely fortunate.

Which definitely raises some red flags. But could we mathematically prove that such a world is impossible?

And ending and a beginning

For me the last eleven months have been an extremely eventful. I am sure that at the end of this year I will look back on 2024 with a mixture of awe and exhaustion.

So it is odd to find myself, as of this morning, at the beginning of the final month of this already jam packed sequence of 365 days. I am sort of hoping that these next 31 days will be more restful and less eventful than the 334 days that have just gone by.

But you never know. 2024 might still surprise me.

To do is to be

I know that Jean-Paul Sartre never actually said “To do is to be.” That attribution is found within a piece of graffiti described in Kurt Vonnegut’s 1982 novel Deadeye Dick.

That particular grafitto has a long and illustrious history. It went through many stages of evolution over time, and has a fascinating provenance.

But that’s not the topic of today’s post. Instead, I would like to focus on those actual five words “To do is to be.”

Personally, I find that life seems to have more meaning for me when I am engaged in what feels like a productive creative task. If I am making something, and I believe that it is new and worthwhile, then everything makes sense.

When I am not doing that, it feels as though I am mainly treading water. I can only enjoy things passively for so long. Then at some point I just have to create something.

I can’t say for sure that this is a healthy way to live. But it sure is productive.

Ostensibly

I’ve always wondered about the nature of Thanksgiving. There is indeed something wonderful about a holiday that millions of people can share in, regardless of their religion or belief system.

Yet the rather dark and complicated history of Thanksgiving aside — how it began depends very much on who you ask — I can’t quite figure out the exact nature of the current holiday. I mean, that is, beyond the fact that people eat a big meal together on a Thursday.

Ostensibly Thanksgiving is a secular holiday, because ostensibly we are a secular nation. But if it is a secular holiday, then who exactly are we giving thanks to?