The Mother Of All Blue Waves Or Bust!

The way things are going, I just hope we have the mother of all Blue Waves this November.  MAGA is a cancer on the body politic that needs to be eradicated, root and branch.  That is why, much to the chagrin of some purists, I will continue to "Vote Blue No Matter Who" until such cancer is fully eradicated.  Then, and only then, can we even THINK about taking on what remains of the neoliberal duopoly, which we also need to do, of course. And I have faith that it will be a rout this November.  Because the alternative (Republicans winning again) would be much worse.

This is our LAST CHANCE to save what is left of our beloved Republic, if it isn't already too late.  Look, we KNOW the GOP will cheat by attempting to rig the midterms, but if enough people vote Blue that would become much more difficult to rig.  Those who don't vote, vote third-party, vote write-in, or vote Republican will thus be asking for a TON of karma when all is said and done.

(Mic drop)

Stop The Madness!

 (Mic drop)

5150 And 25th Amendment NOW! (AGAIN)

5150 and 25th AMENDMENT NOW!!!

Notice we didn't even need to say his name, for everyone to know exactly who we mean.

(NOTE:  Since he is now, for all intents and purposes, a "Florida Man", perhaps we should say "Baker Act" him instead of "5150".)

Trifecta of Tyranny

According to Dr. Google's infinite wisdom:

These three concepts—the precautionary principle, the prevention paradox, and the collective action problem—form a vicious cycle in public policy, public health, and environmental management. They explain why it is so difficult to address massive, slow-moving crises (like pandemics or climate change) until it is too late.

The Precautionary Principle argues that in the face of serious, potentially irreversible threats, scientific uncertainty should not justify delaying action. Instead of waiting for absolute proof of harm, the burden of proof is shifted to require proponents to prove an action is safe. [1]
The Prevention Paradox describes a situation where an action brings immense benefits to the population as a whole, but offers little discernible benefit to the individual who took it. For example, staying home during a pandemic protects the community from collapse, but makes the individual feel like they unnecessarily sacrificed their freedom. [1, 2, 3]
The Collective Action Problem occurs when multiple individuals or nations would benefit from cooperating, but conflicting interests discourage joint action. Because the Prevention Paradox makes the individual sacrifice feel pointless, it breeds "free-riding" where people wait for others to bear the cost of the precaution. [1, 2, 3]

To overcome this, your first step should be to design policies that align individual incentives with collective goals. Focus on shifting the "cost" of the precaution so that it is virtually effortless for the individual—or impose clear penalties for non-compliance. When navigating a specific policy challenge, ask yourself: "How can I make the safe choice the easy and personally beneficial choice for everyone involved?"

Google is correct overall to an extent, but the devil is always in the details.  These three concepts have their place, much like the related concept of "externalities" (in the Pigouvian sense), but they all too easily can be taken too far, misapplied, and used as a fig leaf for Orwellian-style tyranny.  Caveat lector.

And finally, remember what "public health" really has become in practice these days.  A good functional definition nowadays would be, "the art and science of delaying the inevitable".

The Pax Americana Is Over

If there were ever any doubts about whether or not the "Pax Americana" is over, those doubts have evaporated completely in the past year and a half.  From Trump alienating our allies to picking unnecessary fights with our adversaries, what was left of it is now gone with the wind.  Though, to be fair, it was already slowly but steadily declining well before Trump took over.

The Pax Americana was a period from 1945 until roughly 2025, eight decades of largely unipolar American global hegemony (dominance), and even more so after the Berlin Wall came down in 1989 and the Soviet Union, the only real rival superpower at the time, collapsed.  The very height of this supposed golden age was thus the 1990s.  This apex then came to an abrupt halt on the day of infamy that was September 11, 2001, and by the unnecessary wars of choice that followed under President George W. Bush, and became quagmires.  Meanwhile, America itself was being gradually hollowed out by neoliberalism since President Ronald Reagan and literally every single one of his successors (sorry, Clinton, and even Obama, you don't get a pass on this either).  And the ascendancy of other future superpowers (China for sure, and then India, Brazil, and possibly other countries too) and former superpowers temporarily experiencing a resurgence (Russia, I'm looking at you!) has made our world increasingly multipolar now.  This confluence of factors was already causing the Pax Americana to wane, but truly it was Trump (in both of his terms) that pushed it over the edge into the grave for good.

One could even call it, "The Decline and Fall of the American Empire", if that is a conversation we are ready to have yet.

This is truly the end of an era.  What comes next once Trump is out of power is not entirely clear.  While the Pax Americana was far from perfect, and was often quite costly and overzealous in terms of interventionism, looking back we can see that it did at least serve its purpose, for better or worse.  And the fact that it came to such an ignominious end under a wannabe fascist dictator like Trump, cannot really be a good thing on balance.

Stranger Than Fiction

It's stranger than fiction, how we've decayed......

Happy 250th Birthday, America!

Your friendly reminder that Trump and MAGA do NOT own July 4th.  They own January 6th, a day which will live in infamy.

Happy 250th Birthday, America!  And many, many more!