Words and why they piss people off.

I'm guilty. Guilty as hell.

Guilty of being literate. Guilty of having read hundreds of books in my childhood and subsequent adulthood. I can speak from direct experience that through the process of reading (as well as many years writing) you can make surprising strides in your understanding of words and language without having completed college courses that relate.

Rocking my good ol' High School Diploma (Class of 85' ...go Cavaliers.....bleh) I find it astonishing just how often I confuse the fuck out of grownups with words and sentence patterns I take for granted.

I suppose I should explain myself. I come across an otherwise innocuous picture on Facebook, posted/shared by a friend of mine.

Slightly cynical, but mostly funny I decided to read a few of the comments. And the comments, well, they spoke precisely to the obvious cynicism.

Three comments in line before I respond were as follows.

"Lol.How about a girl capable of making a commitment!"

"Or telling the truth.."

The lady who posted this responds... "I'm capable of both"

...and then I say this in reply to the thread...because anyone reading this exchange would have to see that well.....there's some cynicism going on...and it's wholly unnecessary.

"this is a mistake we all make....conflating our bad experiences with reality....and it's difficult...extremely difficult....to not become cynical.

almost as difficult as realizing ones own cynicism is what is really getting in the way."

.........

Oftentimes people accuse me of being rather "preachy". And perhaps that is true to some degree. But I have this illness where I have to respond to things I am utterly convinced through a lifetime of experience are things that get in the way of our happiness. And, I stupidly feel compelled to share my thoughts.

I'm still really not sure how those two sentences could be unclear, and yet the follow up commentary made it obvious that quite a few didn't understand what I said. Like at all.

And in the context of the picture and the subsequent cynical comebacks it should have been painfully obvious what I was saying.....shouldn't it have been?

Are words like "conflate" and "cynical" too difficult? Did I magically piss people off with words I learned before puberty?

I suppose I take the subject matter a little too seriously, and a little too personally given my long running singledom.

My initial reaction would have been thinking that perhaps I said too much....or that I hit a little too close to home with that comment. But I didn't comment in an unkind manner. I actually went out of my way to be careful and deferential with my conviction that WE are largely the ones that create our own conflict by believing our own bullshit. I even made a specific effort to use the word "we", because I've been as guilty of such a cynical view of women as the original poster apparently has of men (though admittedly tossing in Santa and the dragon made it palatably funny).

But I actually think it was just the words I used that confused, and that's actually more troubling.

Words are the tools of ideas. Language matters. Without it understanding is incomplete, and misunderstanding nearly a given.

If any of my friends wonder why I often go out of my way to spend five sentences of my time explaining something they'd think one sentence would cover...it's is precisely because of this.

Monetary Security

I ran across a post in my Facebook feed today about the ability to skim credit cards, specifically pointing out the vulnerabilities of RFID cards. The video wasn't entirely truthful, and borders on fear mongering.

https://www.facebook.com/video.php?v=10152895235582418&set=vb.112344632417&type=2&theater

First of all, RFID cards are rarer than hens teeth. And the guys little "case" had both RFID and magnetic loop detectors. Magnetic loop detectors can glean the same info from older normal everyday magnetic stripe cards. None of this is new, or news. Just remember that the video is featuring a man who charges you money to protect your identity.

The reporter then claims to have used this guys equipment to skim a colleagues card (with permission) and made a purchase online with L.L. Bean. I decided to check so I went to L.L. Bean.

Bottom line you cannot purchase from L.L. Bean with merely the credit card number. They, like nearly everyone else online, asks for expiration dates, CV2 codes, and billing zipcodes. Two of those things are not revealed in a skim, so I call bullshit on a reporter trying his damndest to make a sensational story.

Here's the inconvenient truth.

Actually doing something with recovered numbers without fully expressed account names, billing zipcodes, CVV2 codes found on the back of the cards is a whole order of magnitude more complicated than implied and would require the resources of organized crime to do anything meaningful with, unless your laundering stolen card numbers through flimsy security overseas websites for merchandise (or for an asian or eastern european crime syndicate). Things do get more dicey if the numbers are used to make a physical card however as I'll cover below.

Smart cards (the ones with that thingy that looks like a SIM card (it actually *IS* a SIM card) and tap pay systems with phones are an order of magnitude safer than anything else you pay with, except for cash.

What is the least safe method to pay for anything? Personal checks. Given that most companies process these electronically as an ACH transaction, they are the absolute least safe thing you can use. The numbers on the bottom of the check are the only thing required for a transaction to process and can be easily duplicated by criminals with 1980's tech...merely by stealing your mail to get those numbers off of a check and printing their own...with their own names, addresses etc, to get past the one thing companies do check. ID's...which can be easily faked. Electronic ID checking does not verify who you are. ID checking is merely done to look for "flagged" ID numbers of people who have bounced checks.

Low tech crime is made easier by a high tech world you're not willing to join. This is why you should tell your parents and grandparents to STOP WRITING CHECKS. They are a bad idea, unless you pay bills and drop those bills at the post office. Putting bills in your mailbox in this day and age is phenomenally stupid. And you might as well tell them and everyone else you know that direct deposit makes sense for equally simple reasons. The ability to easily cash payroll checks is quickly going away as banks and retailers do not want the risk, because they can be so easily duplicated and stolen. You can also tell your older friends and relatives that it'd be a good idea to be more cautious doing credit transactions period, at least until Smartcard reading systems are more widespread. Why? Because in a brick and mortar scenario you are never asked for your CV2 code or billing zipcode. The idea here is having the physical card represents equivalent security to a pin code, but this is incorrect. People are encouraged by banks to do credit transactions, and they reward you with "points systems", but here's the inconvenient truth. Firstly, if you think running a bank card linked to your checking account as credit gives you the fraud protection of a proper credit card (based on a line of credit) you are woefully mistaken. The law about this changed in 2008. If it's linked to your checking account you have no greater legally obligated protection from your bank than you do if you do a debit transaction or write a check. Secondly those rewards are paid for by retailers, because banks get to charge retailers nearly three times the transaction fee of a debit transaction. THAT is what pays for those rewards. Thirdly, credit is a weakness in the current system precisely because all it requires is the physical card without a pin code. Credit cards can be easily duplicated. The pin code used in a debit transaction is nowhere on your card and is verified in an encrypted network transaction. Sadly most debit cards are also Visa cards...and this is by design. Banks make more money off of the higher credit transaction fees than they lose through fraud. 

If it's a debit Visa, you're as likely to be on the hook as you would be if it weren't a Visa.

By November of this year PCI Compliance regulations will demand that all retailers than use national credit and debit card processing networks install NFC and Smart card compatible payment systems (these have been the norm every where else in the world for over a decade). These systems are encrypted and create one time use "numbers" that are tied to a time window (they're only valid for a few seconds, and are NOT YOUR CARD NUMBER). They are also pretty much impossible to skim without physical access to your card or device.

If retailers fail to install this newer equipment they will be on the hook for any fraud. Not you. Not your bank. So there is a strong impetus to comply. However.........

Companies like Walmart and Home Depot (and a few dozen others) are railing against this and are attempting to put in place their own system, known as Current-C, which is far less safe but far more profitable for them, because it's cheaper and forces consumers to bear the brunt of fraud protection by turning electronic transactions into ACH (checking) network transactions, in essence a system barely safer than already unsafe personal checks. This will require signing up for Current-C and giving your banking information over to them explicitly. This saves those companies anywhere from 20-50 cents per transaction compared to existing and future debit and credit charges they pay, and puts all of the burden of fraud protection on you and your bank.

It's a changing landscape, but you have to be aware and change with the times.

Perception

In order to have an opinion about anything you have to begin with a series of basic assertions and assumptions. And even though we prefer to have our worldviews grounded upon concrete experiences and ideas, the truth of the matter is that this isn't really ever the case.

The reality is that we, as human beings, choose how to approach the world around us based on many often contrary sets of stimuli and ideas. As a fundamentally tribal species of primate we do share many foundational traits regardless of ethnicity or culture, the evidence of which is all around us. And yet when these similarities become modulated by culture they can also lead to vast and shockingly opposing worldviews.

One need only be a passingly attentive student of history to realize one fundamental truth about human beings. Humans can be convinced, at the level of the individual up to the scale of whole societies, to value the wrong things. Granted, by even making such a statement, I am making a truth claim about what constitutes right and wrong. And that my friends...is actually the point of this little blog post.

Before we make judgments about the things we observe and experience in our lives, we modulate our opinions through a series of foundational ideas we rely on as “our truth”. Whatever that “truth” might be for you or for me might be different, true enough, but in my experience the differences are often negligible. Rather, what I often see and experience is people in general seem to share a commonality in ethical considerations that they merely fail to apply as globally to their existence as they think they do.

My foundational philosophy is painfully simple, and one that doesn't require the structure of a dogma or ideology to support (which is perhaps the primary reason I'm both not religious, nor all too keen on things like political affiliations).

• Learn more about myself and the world around me than I knew before.
• Know and experience the value of compassion and love for those around us, and strive to alleviate suffering where you can.

You'd be surprised how far that can get you, and all without dusty iron age books or authority figures telling you what to believe, value, or fear. Simple in statement, yet complex in practice, it does at least save you from the pitfalls of being wrong about something because you valued authority over evidence. It doesn't absolve you from blame, rather it lays the blame solely where it belongs when things go south (i.e. namely at your own feet), which is equal parts humbling and liberating.

Learning is the most difficult aspect of this simple philosophy of mine. Because it requires that you actually pay attention. It demands that you devour information. And it requires you to be healthily skeptical of almost everything, even and especially of things you might at first glance agree with.

To make decisions based on the knowledge gleaned from learning you must also equally grasp the real nature of compassion and love. And it's really here where the difficult ideological battles occur.

The nature of love and compassion can be deconstructed in scientific and evolutionary terms, but often that truth is largely meaningless to most people. For some reason, to many, being able to explain why our emotional frameworks work as they do somehow cheapens the experience. I think this is the reason why people hold onto ideas like “spirituality” or concepts like the human soul, because it is somehow more comforting than accepting that how we experience the world (and our place in it) is all due to a few pounds of meat in our skulls.

This “otherwordly” nature most people ascribe to their ethical frameworks is, in my experience, almost entirely why people can often value the wrong things. The other significant reason is simply the fact that people can be convinced that almost anything is true, even if it's a truth that is demonstrably false. Even if it's something that goes against our nature.

I recall this image being discussed in a book I recently read.

One of the most difficult things to do is fake a smile. One of the reasons why we revere actors in our culture is that they have mastered the difficulty of portraying believable emotions. It is the reason why actors have to immerse themselves in a character, because it is nearly impossible to portray emotions that you do not inwardly experience. It is also the reason why 3D CGI can come across as creepy (hence the term “the uncanny valley") because human facial expressions are complex and nearly impossible to fake.

Because of this it is perceptual childs play, from a scientific perspective, to spot genuine and fake smiles in a photograph. As human beings we do this intuitively, but thanks to the analytical capabilities of machines we can and have raised this to a fine art. As such, the photograph above has been shown objectively to clearly depict people feeling genuine happiness and joy, within themselves and with their colleagues. There are no fake smiles there, so it'd be difficult to think of these people as monsters wouldn't it?

The fact that the picture is of the administrative staff of the Auschwitz concentration camp, a place where unconscionable horrors against our fellow humans took place, in no way seems to have interfered with their ability to have fun. Disturbing? Perhaps. Telling? Most definitely. And what it tells us is a rather disturbing truth about ourselves. Remember this picture the next time you form some opinion or other about a fellow human being.

One of my favorite quotes, which is also an important foundation of my second point about compassion is this.

“Anyone, anywhere in the world, for any reason suffering needlessly is enough reason for me to question my values.” - Penn Jillette

There are many things I would not find myself agreeing with that have crossed the lips of that guy, but this isn't one of them.

The next time you feel compelled to form an opinion on some trending topic of the day “gay marriage, transgenderism, racism, guns, free markets, vaccines, government regulation, contraception, gmo's etc...” at least do yourself the courtesy of going back to your foundations and asking yourself whether or not the opinion you have formed tracks with what you say you value and believe in.

It keeps you from letting your perceptions and innate biases steer you on the wrong course.

How To Offend People In Three Easy Steps!

Have you ever wondered to yourself, "Self, how can I insure that people are offended by what I say, think, value, and believe?"

Well look no further than this handy guide. I'm here to help.

1). Pick a subject. And, it can quite literally be anything. Ping pong balls, feminism, bacon sushi, etc...

2). Say whatever you think about this subject. Preferably one should stick to a discussion they are familiar with. Ideally you do want to know what you're talking about, but this is actually optional.

3). Wait...

That is all. There are no other magical steps required. Congratulations! You have now almost with certainty offended someone!

Now lets discuss why giving too much of a shit about someone elses offense is a waste of effort.

For instance, what do the following words mean? Try to come up with a definition that will fit into a conveniently sized sentence.

- Feminism
- Atheism
- Dogma
- Agnosticism
- Humanism
- Egalitarianism
- Political

I could make a much larger list of course, but these are words in particular I have experience with. What I tend to find is that such words have varying definitions depending on who you talk to. I'd wager that everyone who might read this blog post will at least have a slightly different take on these words.

Some few will have near instant knee-jerk reactions to merely seeing these or other "certain words". And what usually happens is a process of demonization, or merely discounting the quality and precision of ones words, all because of disagreements over what particular words mean.

This will often incite further discussion, though often of an unproductive variety. This aspect really depends on who might be in the discussion.

The thing to keep in mind, in any intellectual endeavor is simply this. Expertise does matter. More importantly, ones lack of expertise matters too, but this is something you have to remain open to and aware of about yourself as much as those you engage in conversation.

I'd personally love to be invited to a symposia on cognitive neuroscience or even quantum mechanics. Those are two "hobby subjects" of mine that I find both fascinating and intriguing. I feel I've learned quite a bit, at least from a laypersons perspective, about both fields. And, I even feel I could construct a talk to give at such an event. I'm reasonably confident with at least some of my understanding of the topics.

What I am not however is a neuroscientist, nor am I a physicist. Though I would feel comfortable giving a talk in front of neuroscientists and theoretical physicists, I wouldn't pretend to posess knowledge they do not have about these fields. I would be very careful to be deferential to the expertise surrounding me in the room. And this deference wouldn't mean I had nothing of value to contribute. However, and here is my point, the value of my contribution would be judged. And it would be judged by those with greater knowledge than my own.

Being offended is merely not liking what you hear. Sometimes that offense is genuine, but as often that offense is not.

There is value in knowledge and expertise. There is a huge value in understanding the language you use. If people are unable or unwilling to face the discomfort within themselves to better their own understanding, it's just too fucking bad. And this is true of myself, yourself, and anyone else who becomes embroiled in a discussion.

The pope doesn't attend symposia on molecular biology, nor is he ever invited to speak at one. It is as unlikely that a physicist would be invited to issue a Fatwa on the Kasimir Effect. In many realms of discussion expertise not only matters, but is vital.

Not all opinions have value, and some people? They're just fucking stupid. :P

Scary Words

So today I'm sharing a reply to a Facebook thread. Sorry Valerie! :)

It was a thread about GMO food myths that started a rather lively debate. One that I just had to jump in to. Here is what I had to say about it.

It is merely important for rational ideas to be the foundations of policy and public discourse, and very little of the GMO fear mongering I see demonstrates any of this in practice. 

I certainly won't argue that corporatism isn't a huge and foundational problem in this country with far reaching and detrimental ramifications. But by the same token there is hardly any real credible evidence that GMO foods present any health dangers in and of themselves. What few legitimate concerns there are, are in reality monoculture concerns when examined critically.

Sure there are other concerns with GMO's, real ones. But those are primarily political and economic ones. Having basic foodstuffs become legal entities of intellectual property for one. This is of course true worldwide with seedstock, and true regardless of whether the stocks are a GMO variety or not. GMO's however do make the issue more intractable from a legal perspective.

The deeper issue here is one of deciding how we're going to feed people. Even today we live in a world where an astonishing number of fellow human beings go to bed hungry. Most of the people that don't owe practically their very existence to one agricultural geneticist, Norman Borlaugh. If ever a person gets my vote for being the greatest human being who has ever lived, he is top of my list.

Ever heard of him? I suggest learning about him. And I'd suggest learning more about how food "works". I work in a food related industry, and it is quite eye opening to realize how popular trends in foods play out within public discourse, and how we all pay the price to varying degrees for good sounding ideas that fail to materialize as anything remotely good when attempted at the scale of a society.

Organics? Here in particular is an area of food where naivety comes into clear focus. When you walk a produce rack and compare organics and non organics you naturally notice the organics are more expensive. And while it is true that organic farming is more expensive (and land intensive and usually water intensive) this is only a part of the story. Organic methods tend to lead to less attractive produce on a pound per pound basis, and *THIS* is primarily what drives up cost to the end user. That less attractive looking produce simply doesn't end up on your local produce rack. We are jaded and let our eyes and decades of expectation determine whether or not something is "good" or "nutritious".

It gets worse. Because organic methods are intrinsically less safe at scale, and because imported organics from asia, central america and the e.u. face less legal scrutiny than international mail.....AND BECAUSE POPULARITY DRIVES PEOPLE GIVING A CRAP IN THE FIRST PLACE, our markets are flooded with excess "organics" that end up as food ingredients. 

As someone who sees manufacturer and FDA driven product recalls on a regular basis I can say with certainty two things. Most safety related product recalls today are driven by food ingredient country of origin issues. It is an ironic twist given our countries huge problems with monoculture, corporate dominated farming (from political and price stability standpoints) that most of our food safety problems now exist because of public backlash against big AG. The second thing? As these are safety related issues, we in the food industry react IMMEDIATELY, because of liability concerns. Maybe 40 years ago most of these recalls would be headline news, but today with our monolithic media only a handful of these ever see major coverage.

...and don't get me started on "gluten free"...one of the largest public health scams of the century...

People like "feeling" like they're a part of something important. They want to "feel" like they are making good choices. And unfortunately this often leads to "joining" things, like movements. And equally tragic this often means people latch on to ideas because they have a community to be a part of. It is however equally important that what you believe be based on reality, and reality is usually more complex and less forgiving than a tshirt.

As one of my favorite people once said, "If feeling good and wasting your time sounds like a good idea, maybe Heroin is for you!" 

There are legitimate concerns with GMO. And indeed there are hugely legitimate concerns with corporatism. But they are not the same concerns. It's best to at least begin wrapping your mind around the real complexities here before you let scary words bamboozle you into valuing the wrong ideas.

Privacy

One of the most important ideas we value in our day to day lives is the idea of privacy. We consider it a foundational idea from which we construct our lives and our choices about how we choose to live them. I wrote extensively about this topic many years ago, long before Edward Snowden was out of grade school.

Long before most people really cared about it. Long before most people considered it under siege.

But it is under siege, and has been for a very very long time. But does it matter? And more importantly if it does, exactly why does it matter?

I tend to see it like this. Not only is our parochial idea of "privacy" an illusion, it isn't even the proper language to describe what we should be caring about.

A practical example...

Zabasearch.com . Want to breadcrumb your way into knowing personal information about someone?

Here's me looking myself up. And I literally did this just now. I opened a new tab and searched for myself, saved a screen capture and imported it. And with knowing almost nothing about myself except for my name and roughly where I live I can figure out which of these would directly relate to information about myself (two of the listings do).

Most of the hyperlinks on an individual link out to pay services (this is how Zabasearch itself, being free, affords to do this), so really you hit a brick wall pretty quickly. Or do you?

If you click through, you'll find a link to my blog as the sixth link in a google search (even has my ugly mug). Big data services like Intelius dominate the rest of the links, and with them you have to pay.

All of $10. Pretty cheap if you ask me. Want to date me? Want to hire me? Just curious about me because I've ticked you off in a forum thread?

This shit is easy. And cheap! And stuff like Zabasearch is just the tip of the iceburg.

And??? This has nothing to do with "privacy". What do I mean??

You won't find very much in the way of unfortunate information about me online. Part of the reason for this is signal to noise ratio. I happen to share names with a moderately famous PGA Pro Golfer. He has way more public exposure than I do, so search results that are relevant about me get pushed much further down in search results.

But, if you are tenacious you will find me. You will find out about my voluminous anime collection. You will find out about my family, my children, and likely find out at least some information relating to my divorce sleighride twelve years ago if you dig deep enough. You might even be able to find out what kind of erotic material online stirs my Kool-Aid. For the record, my tastes are pretty vanilla insofar as that goes. :P

But one thing I am certain of is this. You will find nothing whatsoever about me that I'd not simply tell you if asked.

I wrapped my mind around not only this illusion of privacy ages ago, but also how meaningless it is as a concept. The way most of us view this topic, well it should be more focused on a concept of anonymity rather than privacy.

The only privacy you and I and everyone else has, or has ever had, is the one we're innately stuck with. Our minds and thoughts. This is all we've really ever had. Once a thought or idea is voiced to another, privacy is dead in the water as a concept.

So lets talk about anonymity, because this is the real concern here. And truthfully it largely no longer exists. Whether or not this given truth really matters however, is a more complex idea.

As I say above, given a little tenacity you can easily "find" me. Indeed I realize this. But this works in both directions too. For instance, back many years ago I was an active writer and editor for a few tech publications. As an editor and co-owner of a website it made sense that I keep track of the search engine reach of the things I wrote, for numerous reasons. I wanted to be aware of negative press and negative feedback (which would affect our readership and advertising partners) and any plagarism.

I've had a series of constantly running daily searches on me and my life going since 2004. And it's not paranoia. I set these up back when they were relevant to the business at hand and they just run on their own. I get an email from google whenever relevant data about myself gets indexed anywhere on the public web. Most of the time it's info that leaks through about that PGA Golfer dood (hell I still occasionally get his professional mail).

Having had this free (and painfully easy to set up) service going for a decade has been informitive. Firstly it is equally easy to set this up....on someone else that isn't you. And I haven't done this of course, but there's absolutely nothing stopping me.

I have done searches on people before. Potential dates and mates are an easy target certainly, but I've only gone there when I've hit brick walls that concern me. When stonewalled about things you should know about people you might consider getting horizontal with it is difficult to know whether someone is merely being cautious, or whether someone has something to hide. And to be clear only a handful of times has this saved my bacon. But it did, and that's the point I'm trying to make.

Insofar as myself? I stopped caring about my anonymity a long long time ago. I've been on the internet in one way shape or form for 27 years, which is longer than the world wide web has even existed. I figured out a long time ago the importance of being who you are. Of how to stay under the radar, but accepting that there is no way whatsoever to be invisible. Of owning who you are, what you like, what you do, and how you go about all of that.

Our lives are increasingly a mishmash of what we say and do in the physical presence of fellow humans, and what we do in the digital realm, which is also in the presence of fellow humans. And our innate psychology tends to make us "care" more about what we do face to face than what we do behind a screen.

This is a mistake. Indeed it is *THE* mistake.

And it's a mistake that so many people make so reliably. Because I'm rather network and computer savvy, and because I think rather deeply and deviously, I've actually been involved a few times in my life in bringing this painful reality to the fore. It is an unpleasant business too, which is why these days I shy away from being involved with it.

Nevertheless I've been consulted with on several occasions. Cheating spouses. Porn addictions. I could go on, but you get the gist.

Secrets. It's always about secrets.

I don't believe in secrets. I stopped valuing secrecy a very long time ago. AND YOU SHOULD TOO!

Secrets are simply statements that say you aren't willing to be honest, and this almost always starts with being dishonest with yourself. Secrets have almost no value. They protect almost no one. They offer up little in the way of comfort, or safety, or kindness. Sometimes it is necessary to hurt other peoples feelings, but we shy away from doing this if such a conflict also costs us something we value.

So lets recap...

Privacy...is an illusion.
Anonymity...is nearly impossible.
Secrets...are stupid ideas largely in the way of embracing your existence.

Any questions? :)

The American Spring - A sad day

Well, today was supposed to be the big day.

An estimated (according to operatives like Alex Coffey) 10-30 million americans were to swarm onto the National Mall in Washington D.C. to kick off Operation:American Spring.

A cursory head count from one of the several live video feeds from the mall today (thank you internet age) shows about 100 people, most of whom are touristy types staring at the couple of dozen banner wavers.

Unless we assume the rumored FEMA encampments were miraculously filled up in the span of 24 hours with rounded up "patriots", this must indicate some level of failure on the organizers parts.

It is abundantly clear that the lunatic fringe of the right is angry. Indeed one could say that the lunatic fringe of the left is also angry. And there are plenty of people who wouldn't align with either of these camps at gunpoint who are also angry. And there are a lot of things to be angry about.

A crappy economy. A vanishing middle class. An education system where even the government profits from it, at the expense of students. Healthcare reform that, while better in some ways than what we had, is still lipstick on a pig. Too big to fail banks that are bigger and more profitable than ever. And a political process driven by money, greed, and special interests.

Today's lack-of-an-event reminds me in a very roundabout way of the Occupy Wallstreet movement. Though eventually disbanded, they were actually able to pull something off and stay organized and relavent for quite a long time. And it's clear why this was so.

There was no hatred. True, there was a deep and strong sense of injustice, and a lot of righteous anger, but no blanket "blame" in the same sense we see with the extreme right Tea Party wackadoodles. Within Occupy, we saw participants of various genders, creeds, colors, religions, ages, and socioeconomic status coming together for a common purpose. Sadly one that didn't resonate loudly enough.

Most of the noisemakers who were loud and obnoxious enough to have gotten the attention of media for today's nonevent? Largely angry aged white men. People willing to ignore all the easily obtainable evidence about Clive Bundy, who is merely a deadbeat. People who are convinced that FEMA is going to round up millions of Americans. People who expect martial law any day now (I've been hearing this one periodically for years now from a relative). Still waiting...

I have a family member who is one of these people. And it is a frustrating reality to see how genuine concern, anger, and ire can become so easily twisted into conspiracy theory chaos simply because someone is blinded by that anger.

We do have real problems in this country. Real concerns. But they are not conservative concerns. They are liberal ones. Every single solitary social advance that has ever come to any citizen in the United States has been fought for diligently by progressives, and fought against with equal fervor by conservatives.

Today's angry non-event shows more clearly to me than anything recently just how clueless right wingers have become. More importantly it shows how deftly the right wing establishment is at keeping it's fringe occupied with nonsense, just to keep them stirred up....and on their side.