Author: Ming

At the age of 46, I suffered a stroke and am doing my best to recover and put that behind me. My brain works differently now, which I recognize due to my former profession as a programmer. Though I do not FEEL different, I recognize that I AM different with different behaviors than before. This makes me very strange. And I was already very strange before this consciousness-altering event. So who am I now? I can still write, so sometimes, I think I'll do that.

Today, you… tomorrow, me.

Ok. Biden’s our guy, now. I know some of you don’t like that. That’s okay. And it’s okay to be hurt by that, and I’m sorry that this is the situation we’re faced with.

But I want our guy to win. So that means I have to do something to help make that happen. But how?

Here’s what I’m going to do. And I learned this right now because I tried to do it and couldn’t. What did I try to do?

I tried to find an old twitter conversation by a black voter who described what it was like growing up in the south with establishment politicians coming to visit them in their homes and their church.

This was a first-hand account of what the Democratic establishment meant to black voters. It was a good summary of why Biden won big with black voters on Super Tuesday.

But here’s where I failed. I couldn’t find it. It was just one of many opinions on Twitter about Biden vs. Bernie and was lost in that cacophonous noise. But now, I believe that it is a voice which deserves to be amplified. However, I failed to save it anywhere, and Google searches merely return that noise.

So here’s my action item, and I hope you’ll follow suit to support Biden in defeating Trump: Save those articles. Save them in your browser bookmarks. Save them and categorize them to inspire people who may need it.

Because black Democratic voters believe that Biden is a good ally to them. And I want to be a good ally to black Democratic voters myself. To do that, I will amplify their voices within my own social bubble so that people will hear that black voters deeply believe in Biden. And hope that the people in my bubble will come around to understand what Biden means to so many people who came out to vote for him on Super Tuesday.

With that power, we can make their faith in Biden come true by amplifying their voices so that the message trickles up through all of our barely intersecting social bubbles up to the top where the political establishment can hear it.

That’s not too hard to do. You don’t have to hold your nose to vote for Biden. You can listen to the voices around you for whom Biden means the culmination of a lifetime of fighting for civil rights since the 60’s. Biden himself might not have been on the right side of that fight at all times. But the Democratic establishment definitely was, and black voters know and remember that. Let’s not let their trust go unfounded. Let’s work with them and for them because black and brown people have chosen this, and this is what we can do to be good allies and honor their choice.

I’m all in for Biden. I hope you are, too.

America is a kakistocracy now, just like Atari Games was for a long time before its demise

Frustrated, I always chanted a soothing mantra to myself, “They’ll collapse under the weight of their own incompetence.” And one day, they finally did. There was no joy and no vindication in the schadenfreude. They simply collapsed, as expected.

What happened at Atari Games was kakistocracy. Long before I was hired there, some idiots came into power and found the formula to stay in power— they kept promoting their idiot friends and formed a political faction to suppress competence or anything that might challenge their power. Competence is the most dangerous threat to a kakistocracy. And so, over time, the competent people who could have turned things around were one-by-one sifted out. The best people at Atari either self-selected to form other companies with each other to get away from the idiots, or else they were forced out by the politics of the dominant political groups. I got in there late, but I saw it all happen, nonetheless.

Sarah Ellerman I just realized something. Trump IS Atari Games! Remember when the management at Atari frustrated me all the time? I’d come home pissed off at You Know Who constantly. When I first started, it didn’t bother me because I wasn’t on the front-lines of their stupidity. But as my role became more prominent, their stupidity become more intrusive and obstructive of my desire and ability to succeed on Atari’s behalf.

And that is exactly what’s happening now with the GOP. Have you noticed that the best and smartest GOP members have renounced Trumpism and the GOP? There are numerous articles of such principled people. What are left after this sifting are the unprincipled people. The best of the Republicans have already moved on, to leave the idiots to at the helm to themselves, just as the best people who formerly worked at Atari left to form Activision and Electronic Arts, companies which still exist, while the biggest grand daddy, with all of its money and power— Atari, failed to remain relevant,except in the fantasy of Blade Runner films.

This is what we are experiencing with the Trump’s executive handling of the Covid-19 emergency. This is how kakistocracy operates. I experienced it first hand at Atari Games, and so I recognize its tell-tale signs. It’s primary concern is maintaining power, because each individual within the kakistocracy knows intuitively that it is undeserving of the riches afforded to it. So, all tools and efforts are to maintain the lies and deception of governance while looting the treasury for as long as it will be allowed to do so.

Eventually, the kakistocracy produces the outcome exactly as I had predicted of Atari Games so long ago: “It will collapse under the weight of its own incompetence.” The only solace here is that it actually takes a long time for the rich flesh of the corpse to be stripped away, so America will lumber along, crippled by these parasites before it eventually stumbles and succumbs. That lengthy time buys some reprieve and hope to change course.

We shall see. Things won’t end immediately. This crisis is an opportunity for riches and re-election for Trumpism. And there may even be a continuance after that. America will make a rich corpse for the parasites to feed on for a long time. We can still carry on as normal inside of its bloated, sore-infested, pustulant corpse for as long as our lives will allow, shortened as it may be by the very existence of this parasite.