William Barr is the fascist Donald Trump has dreamed about since he lied while taking the Oath of Office on January 20, 2017. Trump wanted a thug and he got one in William Barr.
In 2018, when things were looking grim for Republicans in the upcoming midterm elections, President Trump conjured a crisis. He declared “an invasion of our country” by Central American migrant caravans full of “stone cold criminals,” “unknown Middle Easterners” and “gang members” who were “putting our country in great danger.”
Trump mobilized 2,100 National Guard members and then, days before the election, 5,200 active-duty U.S. troops. He declared a national emergency and told voters to “blame the Democrats.” The voters didn’t fall for the phony crisis, and the caravan menace fizzled.
Now another electoral reckoning approaches, and Trump is following the same script. This time, he proclaims that “sick and deranged Anarchists & Agitators” in Portland, Ore., and Seattle seek to “destroy our American cities, and worse.”
Disruption: disturbance or problems which interrupt an event, activity, or process
Last Saturday, July 18, 2020, my blogging was disrupted by WordPress, and my temper, calm for months, exploded. Before the COVID-19 pandemic I had lunch with friends every week and joined others in group meet ups. Thanks to the virus, I have lived alone since March 13. No one has visited me, and I have visited no one. Zoom, e-mails, phone calls, and WebEx help but cannot replace face-to-face visits.
Back to July 18 when I logged onto my iLookChina.net blog to schedule three new posts for August, my first thought when I saw the new editing page for WordPress was, “What the FUCK!”
I complained to WordPress and the little help they offered did nothing to end the stress from the disruption they caused.
I learned that WordPress was changing the Classic Editor I had been using for a decade to a Block Editor (whatever that is). From what I saw, I did not like the Block Editor and that feeling has not changed.
I was comfortable using the Classic Editor. I have better thangs to do than be forced to learn something new that stresses me out.
On Sunday, July 19, I wrote an angry letter expressing my frustration to Matthew Charles Mullenweg, the Founder and CEO of WordPress. When I write an angry letter, I never mail the rough draft. I wait a few days and then revise to filter out the worst of my anger. But that rough draft will never be revised and mailed to Mr. Mullenweg. Instead, that letter has been added to this post.
Matthew Charles Mullenweg, Founder and CEO of WordPress
WordPress Corporate Office Headquarters Automatic, Inc. 60 29th Street #343 San Francisco, California 94110-4929
Dear Mr. Mullenweg:
This morning I attempted to start scheduling the August 2020 posts for my https://ilookchina.com/ blog [806,254 hits/visits], and ran into an “alleged” improvement to the page where bloggers like me create their posts and schedule them. The changes to the WordPress editing page were so drastic that I couldn’t complete that task. I did not know what to do. I was lost. All the old menus were gone. I did see how I would upload a photo from one of the files on my desktop. I am not in the mood to learn how to use the new and disruptive Block Editor that is replacing the Classic Editor.
I always write my blog posts offline and copy and paste them into the Classic Editor that I have been using for a decade for all four of my WordPress Blogs.
WordPress just became the flaming straw that set off the fuse to my explosive anger. Somehow I managed to stay calm since March while billions of people around the world (including you) are struggling to avoid dying of COVID-19. Last month, when the electrical circuits in my garage blew out, I still managed to stay calm. Then last week, my HVAC system stopped cooling my house in the middle of a heat wave. That HVAC was a new system installed in 2017 for $18k, but I still did not flip my lid.
Then along came WordPress with its NEW Block Editor.
Why change something that was working? Why not set up an easy to find button where we are allowed to keep the old design over the new one? What is wrong with you guys? Keep it simple. Do not change the old so drastically that it becomes stressful to deal with.
In the short term, stress can leave us anxious, tearful and struggling to sleep. But over time, continuously feeling frazzled could trigger heart attacks, strokes, and even suicidal thoughts. “In short, yes, stress can kill you,” – The American Institute of Stress
In case you don’t know it, change is not always good.
Sincerely (not really, I’m too angry to feel sincere), Lloyd Lofthouse
High levels of cortisol caused by stress over a long period of time wreak havoc on your brain.
A few days after writing the letter to Matthew Charles Mullenweg, I read a piece from The San Francisco Chronicle. There’s a name for tech’s attitude problem: toxic positivity, Silicon Valley’s obsession with disruption and destruction of the existing order and evangelical embrace of the new. It’s better on the other side of the river, we promise … in recent years, that’s become its own kind of orthodoxy, where the only appropriate response to new technology, according to the insiders of Silicon Valley, is cheerleading. Criticism of technology isn’t viewed as rational skepticism by those for whom innovation has become a religion; it’s heresy.”
Forbes also published a piece on this topic. “The Myths of Disruption: How Should You Really Respond to Emerging Technologies? Disruption may be the most overused term in the business lexicon today. Every startup wants to disrupt the established order. Every incumbent is scared of being disrupted. Disruption is a rallying cry or a bogeyman, depending on where you sit. And no one is immune: if an executive dares to suggest that their industry is free from the threat of disruption, they are accused of being short-sighted or in denial, and heading the way of the Titanic or the T-Rex. I find this obsession with disruption a little disturbing. “
Years ago, I started rebelling against technology’s forced disruption.
I bought two Kindle e-readers. Then a couple of years later, I returned to reading books printed on paper and my kindles have been gathering dust ever since. Old fashioned books do not have batteries that need to be recharged and do not have software to update. This is ironic since the novels I have published have sold more than 60,000 e-books through Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and other bookselling sites.
The new should always be easier to use than the old.
I had a smartphone once, and after a couple of years I turned it in for a dumb phone. I do not text. I do not run around taking smartphone videos and photographs of myself. My dumb phone gets used about five-minutes a month. That smartphone was a fucking pain in the ass, always demanding attention to keep working.
Fuck that shit! If you want to replace something old with something new, keep it simple!
When I bought my first tablet computer, it lasted a day before I returned it, because it wasn’t easy to set up and use.
I have an HP laptop locked in a safe. I update the laptop once a month. If my desktop gets hijacked again by ransomware, that laptop will be my backup while the desktop is in the shop being unhacked.
The last two times I bought new cars, I refused to sign the contract unless the dealers replaced the satellite-linked, streaming radio with the fancy touch screen with a CD player that was easier to use. The only new shit I liked was the backup camera and the chirping thing that warns me when another car is in one of my blind spots.
I plan to do the same thing with the next car I buy. If the dealer wants my money, they have to replace the irritating new crap with a CD player, or I will start looking for an older, used car that predates the annoying disruptive tech. If I can afford to buy a new car every few years, I can afford to rebuild an old one when it wears out and even have someone add batteries and turn it into a plugin hybrid. I’ve read about people that have done that on their own.
I have news for disrupters like WordPress, Microsoft, Apple, and all the others tech geniuses. I do not want you disputing my life. I do that just find by myself, and when it comes to learning new things, I want to make that decision and not have it forced on me.
This might be my last post for all of four of my blogs if I cannot get the Classical WordPress Editor back. There is enough stress in this world without Donald Trump and Silicon Valley companies like WordPress generating disruption.
Will this be my last blog post? I do not know. I have been blogging for a decade. I have written and published 2,455 posts for iLookChina, 614 for LloydLofthouse.com, 1.444 for Crazy Normal, the classroom exposé, and 269 for The Soulful Veteran. That is a lot of writing, research, and reading. Those posts have generated more than a million reads or visits.
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Lloyd Lofthouse is a former U.S. Marine and Vietnam combat vet living with PTSD. He went to college on the GI Bill and earned a BA in journalism followed by an MFA in writing.
Several groups of Never Trumpers have created a media campaign that has gotten under Trump’s skin. He responds to them on Twitter, enlarging their audience. They don’t have loads of money, but they understand very well his egotism, narcissism, and vanity, and they hit their target time and again.
One recent ad from The Lincoln Project is a “Breaking News” headline in which the White House Press Secretary declares that “The president can read.”
VoteVets.org has posted blistering videos about Trump’s cowardice and betrayals.
onald Trump’s father rewarded him for his bragging, his lying, his cheating, and his willingness to subvert every norm. Donald Trump believes in nothing other than the myth of himself that he invented. Donald Trump was and still is a failure at everything he does except bragging, bullying, lying, and cheating.
I just finished reading Mary Trump’s family tell-all, Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World’s Most Dangerous Man.
I found it fascinating and horrifying. Mary is the daughter of Fred Trump, Jr., the heir apparent to the family business. The family consisted of paterfamilias Fred Sr. and his wife Mary. Fred Jr., Elizabeth, Maryanne, Donald and Robert.
The Trump family was dysfunctional and cruel. Fred Sr. was never satisfied. He pinched pennies, long after he was a multimillionaire.
When Mary’s father Fred Jr. tried to break free of the family business, he became a TWA pilot. He was the only family member to make a way for himself on his own. But his father called him a “glorified bus driver” and harangued him until he started drinking and lost his job, then returned to the family business. Maryanne struck out on her own and became a…
Do not let Donald Trump even try, because he is lying, narcissist, and psychopath that will do what Sweden did to let those over 60 die, if he thinks it will get him re-elected.
DR. JON TOLLINGER BLOWS THE WHISTLE ON SWEDEN’S PLAN FOR COVID-19 ELDERLY PATIENTS
I don’t do this often, but this one seems very important to me.
I have been skeptical of the ‘Swedish Experiment,’ the official Swedish response to the covid-19 pandemic, because anyone who know about epidemiology and vaccines knows that ‘herd immunity’ requires a huge majority of the population to be immune (est. 80-90%).
Then herd immunity makes it unlikely (not impossible) for people to catch the virus from each other, because there are fewer people carrying the virus around.
From the beginning, they said they were relying on people distancing, wearing masks, and behaving like civilized adults, and that this would allow them to not have to shut down the economy.
I was a police officer for nearly ten years and I was a bastard. We all were.
This essay has been kicking around in my head for years now and I’ve never felt confident enough to write it. It’s a time in my life I’m ashamed of. It’s a time that I hurt people and, through inaction, allowed others to be hurt. It’s a time that I acted as a violent agent of capitalism and white supremacy. Under the guise of public safety, I personally ruined people’s lives but in so doing, made the public no safer… so…
Police brutality in Minneapolis murdered a black man who allegedly used a fake $20 bill. Petty crimes are adjudicated in a court of law. Police do not have the authority or right to use lethal force when confronting an unarmed person. After a long string of similar incidents where black people were unjustly murdered, the killing of George Floyd ignited protests across the nation. Some of the protests turned violent, and fires were burning in widely scattered cities in the midst of confrontations between police and protestors.
Racism is America’s deepest, most intractable sin.
The explosion of protest is unlikely to lead to any productive change until the racists in the White House are ousted and replaced by people who are determined to fight racism. We currently have a government of old white men who have used their words and deeds to stoke the…
Market Watch reported, “Trump believes coronavirus will vanish with April temps — experts are skeptical warm weather alone is enough.” The evidence from the Southern Hemisphere says Trump is wrong as he often is with the conspiracy theories he hears from Rush Limbaugh or Fox’s Hannity.
If you listen to Trump, what do you have to lose?
The answer is your life, but if you are a gambler that always thinks the odds are in your favor, no matter how many times you have lost, go ahead.
Please, do it!
The meteorological seasons in the Southern Hemisphere are opposite to those in the Northern Hemisphere: Spring starts September 1 and ends November 30; Summer starts December 1 and ends February 28 (February 29 in a Leap Year); Fall (autumn) starts March 1 and ends May 31. The Southern Hemisphere’s Summer happens when the Earth is closest to the Sun, and their winter when the Earth is furthest. This makes their seasons even more severe.
Brazil’s 1st case of COVID-10 was on February 25 (in the Summer) and the first death on March 18 (in the Fall). By May 27, 25,598 Brazilians had died of the virus (and it was still Fall or Autumn). In February, the average temperature in Brazil is 95 degrees Fahrenheit with heavy humidity. In March, the average is 85 degrees with heavy humidity.
As May and Autumn come to an end and winter begins, in South America, deaths from COVID-19 totaled more than 35,000, and, I repeat, this was during the Southern Hemisphere’s summer.
Brazil’s president reacted like President Donald Trump and decided to ignore the virus and treat it like it was a hoax, that it would go away like magic. The BBC reported in April, “Coronavirus advice ignored by Brazil’s President Jair Bolsonaro. Brazil’s President Jair Bolsonaro has come under criticism for his response to coronavirus, most recently for attending an anti-lockdown rally where he was seen coughing without covering his mouth.”
The Wall Street Journal recently reported in May, “U.S. Coronavirus Deaths Top 100,000 as South American Cases Surge.” Is that surge because Fall is giving way to Winter?
Australia and New Zealand are also in the Southern Hemisphere and Australia’s first case of COVID-19 was reported on January 25. To date, Australia has reported 103 deaths. Australia, unlike Brazil and the United States, closed its borders on March 20 and also started to close all “non-essential” services like pubs and clubs. The Conversation.com reported, “The effect of Australia’s strict border control measures, implemented relatively early in the pandemic, can clearly be seen in the graph below (click the link in this paragraph to see graph). Federal and state governments introduced strict social distancing rules; schools, pubs, churches, community centers, entertainment venues, and even some beaches were closed.”
New Zealand confirmed its first case on February 28. All borders and entry ports of New Zealand were closed to all non-residents at 11:59 pm on 19 March 2020, with returning citizens and residents being required to self-isolate. Since April 10, all New Zealanders returning from overseas must go into two weeks of supervised quarantine. Politico reported, “How New Zealand beat the coronavirus by isolating itself from the world.” Only twenty-two deaths from the virus have been confirmed in New Zealand.
Who do you trust, Donald Trump or the scientific experts and the facts from the Southern Hemisphere?
_______________________
Lloyd Lofthouse is a former U.S. Marine and Vietnam combat veteran with a BA in journalism and an MFA in writing, who taught in the public schools for thirty years (1975 – 2005).
China’s public health bureau recently published a chart showing how important it is for everyone to wear masks in public because of the COVID-19 pandemic.
If you have not seen the chart, here is a simple translation:
ONE: The risk of infection is 100% when a healthy person without a mask is exposed to an infected person without a mask.
TWO: When a healthy person wearing a mask is exposed to an infected person without a mask, the risk factor is 70%.
THREE: When an infected person is wearing a mask and the healthy one isn’t, the risk factor is 5%
FOUR: When both the healthy and infected people wear masks, the risk factor is 1.5%.
Without the ability to test people weekly to discover who is immune because they carry the antibodies that protect them from the virus, or to learn if they are infected or healthy, individuals that refuse to wear masks in public are playing Russian Roulette with their lives and/or the lives of others.
In fact, the odds are a lot worse than Russian Roulette where you load a five-chamber pistol with one bullet, spin the chamber and then place the barrel under your chin and pull the trigger. The average pistol has five chambers that hold five bullets. With four chambers empty, that means the odds of blowing your brains out are only 20%.
Have you heard of Typhoid Mary? Mary Mallon, also known as Typhoid Mary, was an Irish-born cook believed to have infected 53 people, three of whom died, with typhoid fever, and the first person in the United States identified as an asymptomatic carrier of the disease. After she was identified as a carrier, she continued to infect others.
Did you know that mad dogs running loose in public are usually shot or euthanized because they are a threat to other animals and people?
_______________________
Lloyd Lofthouse is a former U.S. Marine and Vietnam combat veteran with a BA in journalism and an MFA in writing, who taught in the public schools for thirty years (1975 – 2005).
I have one good reason to support Joe Biden. It can be summed up in one five-letter word: Trump.
Reader Randy Abraham offers more reasons:
The twittersphere has recently been aflame over Bernie Sanders’ decision to suspend his presidential campaign, and then his recent endorsement of frontrunner, former Vice President Joe Biden.
His most fervent supporters contend that Biden offers them nothing beyond a “not-Trump” candidacy.
This is what I say to them.
How about a sane immigration policy that does not separate families in crisis or lock children in cages?
How about health care policy that would boost subsidies for struggling families, lower the eligibility age for Medicare, provide a public option, and negotiate drug prices with pharmaceutical firms?
How about forgiving student debts for low income students that were incurred at state and community colleges and historically black colleges and universities?
