Winter is Coming...

 

by Craig Willms

Hey Nero, put that fiddle down!

Winter being an unsubtle metaphor for war it is always right around the corner. Even at the height of summer we know winter is coming. Our country is waking up from a long slumber - and it needs to. With a new administration we are seeing a renewed effort to prepare America for a war we hope we never have to fight. Unfortunately, we are miles behind. Do we realize that the nation that spends more on defense than most of the rest of the world combined is not prepared to win wars? 

America in its lore and continuing self-image is the nation that defeated the Nazis and the Imperial Japanese. Well, for one we didn't do it alone and we were an unapparelled industrial power then. We are no longer unapparelled and we are a greatly diminished industrial power today. 

Short of leveling the world in a nuclear holocaust we haven't the army or the industrial might required to win a major war. With the advent of drone technology and precision munitions military actors from anywhere could castrate our nation. 

I bring this up because we have an undercurrent in the political rhetoric that seems hellbent on taking Russia to war for their crimes against Ukraine. The EU and the American left are saber rattling as if war with Russia is the only rational solution. President Trump campaigned on stopping the current wars, while rebuilding our fighting capacity and ridding the Federal government of waste and fraud, yet he is being opposed at every turn by the peace and love party. Other than opposing Trump at every turn because he is Trump none of this computes. Up is down, left is right, hot is cold and good is evil. 

The entirety of the Biden years were devoted to absolute nonsense. They beat their chest like rabid gorillas and then went to garden parties with their transvestite friends. They goaded Russia with covert and not so covert actions in Ukraine for more than a decade while floating NATO expansion over and over... This while they attempted to dismantle what is left of America's industrial and energy substrate and encouraging our chief ally to do the same. The EU is a military joke - and they know it. The one nation with the skill and work force to be a significant industrial power has been laid to waste by preserving butterflies and flowers. Germany is lost, and with it so is Europe. France, the other legitimate power, is stumbling in the weeds of its own contradictions and Great Britain is a shell.

The question is, were the Biden puppeteers really fiddling or was it by design. In all honesty I believe it was the latter. 

The left, the communists, let's call them what they are, want the United States and our capitalist ways to fall. It's not even debatable. Their political opposition, the feckless Republicans and the country club crowd want to act like we can give in to the leftists here and there as well as spread out productive capacity (and get cheap labor to boot) and magically all will be well with the world. Well obviously, that's wrong. Giving into the left only emboldens them. Nothing is ever enough. They are children and they want it all. Even in the face of utter failure nothing will turn these people into moderates. Their ideas must be crushed, Karl Marx must, for once and for all, be completely discredited. Please.

Trump sees that. He coopted the Republican party to inject a dose of reality. Time will tell if he can succeed, if he's allowed to, that is, if he can get out of his own way. If he can subdue his titanic ego - a very tall order - he can take a giant step toward making America sturdy again. It seems his top priority is to reindustrialize the nation and re-militarize our armed forces. That seems like an oxymoron considering armed forces is another term for military, but what Biden's puppeteers were doing was sissifying our military and making it a social justice cause instead of a fighting force. I hope enough people can see that. 

Because America is protected by oceans and supposedly friendly neighbors to the north and south, we have a measure of protection, or at least we did. What Canada and Mexico have been doing violates the friendly neighbor clause. They are staging ground for China to flood the U.S. with their cheap goods and their drugs (and Chinese migrants). Our friendly neighbors also use tariffs to prevent American goods from wrecking their own production. As in, from what I hear, 250% on dairy products from the U.S. Lately we've been hearing the term "reciprocal tariffs" instead of just tariffs so that the point can be made. Almost every country protects its industry with tariffs in one way or another, this is nothing new.  Trump is playing tit-for-tat in order to prod manufacturing back to our shores. It's smart. But the media makes it seem like Trump is just being a jerk and rocking the boat because he can. Well, yes, he can, and he should. 

If war was to come to us in a big way right now, we'd be screwed. Our delicate infrastructure could be devastated before we could ramp up a war machine. We don't even make the components in this country that support our own infrastructure. The left would get its dream and the rest of us would be living hand to mouth, groveling for scraps. The United States would go the way of the Romans, a footnote in the history books. That's what the leftists want. Please tell me you can see that...

Free to Choose Free Will

You can choose a ready guide in some celestial voice

If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice

You can choose from phantom fears, and kindness that can kill

I will choose a path that's clear, I will choose free will

                                                                                Rush ~ Permanent Waves

by Craig Willms

It's a concept that engenders strong feelings. Some people get incensed by it, other people become smug. The religious see it as essential, atheists disregard it as a fairy tale. Society codifies it in the law, while science often dismisses it as a an illusion. Embedded in the mystery of consciousness and the meaning of life our free will is a subject for the ages. 

There are those such as myself who can't see an argument against it, and others who see all happenings as pre-determined. While neither side really knows nor can know the truth of the matter, it doesn't stop the endless debate. 

I have had the argument over free will any number of times, never coming to consensus, obviously. Arguments on Internet forums convince no one to change their view, but argue we must, if only to fortify our own positions. I've racked my brain to contrive an angle, construe a got 'ya moment to end this argument once and for all. Of course it's not going to happen, determinism is a self-sealed argument, it cannot be breached. 

In an earlier post called "Free Will is Not Just an Illusion" I made my arguments, all of which can be countered with determinist platitudes. Still, nothing convinces me we are some kind of machine doing only what the pre-written program allows. 

I fully concede that we don't actually choose what we like or what disgusts us. It's just there... We don't get to choose what comes naturally, or things we are undeniably bad at. These facts about us are true, but is that free will? I don't think so. These, as with the color of our skin or the type of hair on our head, are immutable characteristics, not choices. Free will is something we choose, consciously and sometimes without much thought. I absolutely acknowledge that free will is constrained. Free will exists in our power to decide within the constraints of the moment. There are numerous things in our lives that we have no choice over. We obviously had no choice in being born, or who our parents are, or where we enter this world. I don't think anyone is arguing that. It seems to me with live in a dualistic world - some things are determined by a past occurrence setting all the factors and there are other moments where switches exist for us to choose. Both can be true. We don't need to be so rigid about it. 

I go through my life and try to think of moments when I decided something, exercising my free will that is so profound that it can't be laid at the feet of a deterministic world. Have I ever succeeded? Unknown. I keep coming back to a decision I made 32 years ago to quit drinking. Did I make the decision or not? Did someone else make it for me? Did I have no choice in it at all? Good questions, but they are the wrong questions. It wasn't one decision on one day, it's a decision I make every single day. Obviously I make this choice of my own will - everyday. 

We make choices like this all the time. We choose to eat well or not, exercise or lay low, treat people with kindness or any number of variations, righteous or not - every single day. We can choose to disregard the consequences of our choices and allow the chips to fall where they may. It's out of our hands, it's meant to be. Regardless, we all know they are choices that can go either way based on our personal will. Is that not what free will is?

My decision to stop drinking was informed by my upbringing. Does that mean I had no choice, that my hand was forced? I don't think so. My six siblings had the same foundation in their upbringing and each chose differently. None followed our fathers path, which was to allow alcohol to ruin his relationships. None followed my path either. For 32 years I chose everyday to not drink alcohol, tomorrow I could choose differently, what's stopping me. Determinism? The universe? God? My Mom?

So, is my choice to forgo alcohol use determined by how others might react? Might that be the why??? Might they reject me and that's what forces the decision on me. Not likely. In fact, my friends would be thrilled, I'd be a lot more fun. Even my wife wouldn't threaten to leave me, she might like a 'funner' me. There were no threats to me with regards my drinking at the time. No one was being put out. My choice was based on a potential future that tracked with my fathers. I did not want that. I'd like someone to boil that scenario down to determinism.

Is free will an illusion of control? Are we slaves to cause and effect? Who's to say. We make deliberate choices every day. Are these decisions forced on us? Yes, some of them are. But... Right now, I'm choosing to go upstairs and make some cinnamon sugar toast and a cup coffee. Yes, I'm choosing - it's my free will. Why would you want to argue with me about that? 

One foot in front of the...

 

by Craig Willms 

3/10/2025

In an earlier post called "The Hole In My Head" I was issuing a warning to family and friends that I felt the oncoming headwind of dementia. There is no actual evidence or diagnosis official or otherwise, but one knows oneself, and I'm losing it. It really doesn't matter to me if you see it or not, I do. Bear with me.

What am I talking about exactly? I've mostly forgotten why I even started writing this down, but one thing that stuck with me during this morning's adventures was how flabbergasted I got doing a few simple things. 

Now, part of my challenge this morning was actually technology related, and yes, may have been confusing to your average 60-something senior. But IT was something I did for a living just a few short years ago, it should have been like riding a bike. What was it? I was resetting a password!!! Three rounds of frustration and at least two tech support phone calls, finally, as my wife looked over my shoulder as I did the exact same thing for the third or fourth time - and this time it worked. I was the kid with the kindergarten teacher urging me on. You're such a good boy, you try so hard.

Later that morning I was driving down to my hometown, going to a friends place to payback some money I'd borrowed. I'd been at his house once before but didn't remember exactly where it was. No, that's not the issue, no one can be faulted for not knowing someplace that they've only been to once. It was that I was having trouble navigating my hometown, a town that has been etched into my permanent memory. Regardless of cosmetic changes my internal compass should have gotten me through that town with my eyes tied behind my back. I had taken the fabled 'back roads' to kill time waiting for him to text me the street address. There were traffic circles that never existed before, and some new streets and buildings but the land was the land, it covered all the same ground. I had trod these acres a thousand times before. Somehow, I was LOST? Then just as the text dinged, I recognized a landmark and was back going in the right direction. 

From there I tried use my now infamous internal compass to navigate the way to my friend's house and became so turned around I had to pull over so I could input the address into Google Maps. Despite the fact that Google Maps was having a stroke this morning it should have been easy to just listen to the voice on the radio speakers pointing the way. Still, once more I had to stop and 're-calculate". Finally in a fit of disbelief I pulled over again and looked at the address I'd put into Google Maps - My God!!! Where is this place??? Then I looked up at the house I had stopped in front of and... There it was - my friend's house. Sheer luck, I think...

These were not hard things to do, not rocket surgery, as they say. I am not incompetent, I never have been. I can do a lot of things pretty well, not that I'm an ace at anything in particular, but I can walk, talk, chew gum and subnet mask your IPv4 Class C network all at once. Or at least I could. Not so sure anymore. I've only been away from my career for 3 years and it's all gone. Ah, they say we remember what's important. Well, let's hope so.

This was not the first time when driving that I didn't know where I was, it worries me a bit. I've always snapped back fairly quickly, so I've never been panicked. This morning, I couldn't make sense of someplace familiar with a voice guiding me turn by turn to my destination. It was like one of those frustrating dreams where try as you might you never actually make it where you're going.