When you find yourself having to take a break from those that keep you on edge and stressed out, you can take the time to ponder with me some of the un-ponderable and the whimsical and lightly thought provoking issues you did not have the time to consider but now you may want to look into because you have a moment or two to spare or you just want some of your brain cells to be tickled out of slumber.
Thursday, July 31, 2025
".. And The Lawn Mower Is Broken"
Thursday, July 24, 2025
The Mamdanization of America?
Yes, Google redlined the word, "Mamdanization". It does not exist even in Urban dictionaries. Either it will fade away, like so many made-up words or indeed it will become part of our lexicon. The word will vanish with the next ebb tide if U.S. style democracy prevails and retains its capitalist economy. Or America, in fact, turns away from the pages of its storybook success filled with the realized dreams of its founding fathers and the millions upon millions of Americans who followed since, including those who chose to leave their own homeland to come here.
For the benefit of the international readers, the word above comes from NY city mayoral candidate, Zohran Mamdani, a self described socialist whose campaign promises include a lot of "free stuff" - from free bus fares to the public, government-run grocery stores, rent freezes, higher taxes to the rich, $30/hour minimum wage, replacing police with unarmed social workers, no cash bail, decarceration of prison inmates, etc.
Shockingly, during the primary, he bested a seasoned politician and former state governor of New York. Even more intriguing is that support for the kind of agenda he espouses is spreading to other local politics and the endorsement of a few congressional politicians. Not quite a national phenomenon yet but the fact that it is gaining traction, albeit slowly, presents a potential to influence the next generation. A generation, say, to develop within the next twenty five years which points to the year 2050. Sounds familiar? Four years ago, I wrote, "2050: The Ebb of the Tragic Trajectory of a Once Powerful Nation"
I wrote then in discussing the two challenges that confront the nation then and today, "One is about conserving the ideals and belief systems of what brought this country its decisive success for over two centuries. The other half is about liberally forging and fundamentally changing the country into something else. Worse is the slow but almost penetrating allure of socialism". I warned about it in 2021, long before Mamdani was even a politician, nor was socialism even considered a worthy subject in U.S. politics.
How serious is socialism? How bad can it be?
Let us be reminded to juxtapose the American experiment that began in 1776 with another that started in 1917 as the Bolshevik uprising, but more generally known as the Russian Revolution. It was five years after that, in 1922, that the Soviet Union was established. It played a major role during WWII in defeating the Nazis which made it a formidable force during five decades after the war in half of Europe. At which time the Soviet Union aimed to spread its governing doctrine not just in Eastern Europe but in Southeast Asia as well. It oversaw the division of Germany, the creation of the Warsaw Pact, and in Asia the birth of the CCP (China), North Korea (PRK), North Vietnam and Cambodia, that prompted diplomat John Foster Dulles to coin the phrase, "the domino effect" of nations falling to communism, sometime in the 50's. To the other side of the globe, Cuba's Fidel Castro succeeded in creating the lone Communist country in the Caribbean and efforts to spread it in South America failed to take deep roots with the death of Che Guevarra.
Then in 1991, the Soviet Union collapsed. Along with it, the reunification of Germany and the disintegration of the Warsaw Pact.
Let's go back to the idea of Mamdanization. Zohran Mamdani does not claim to be a Communist, instead he proudly declares that he is a democratic socialist repeatedly each time he is asked the question of his ideological philosophy.
Well, let us be reminded that the Soviet Union was formally known as the USSR. Lest we forget, the USSR stood for the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.
What about China? Formally, it is the People's Republic of China (PRC) but the political party behind the government is the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). The civil war that precipitated its creation covered the years from 1927 to 1949, which coincidentally followed the Russian revolution in 1917, after which the Soviet Union was born in 1922.
China almost became a failed state between the years 1958-62 when it was estimated that 15 to 55 million perished from widespread famine. The wide range of the estimate was primarily due to unreliable communication infrastructure across much of the rural population. Most analysts concluded that the cause was 30% due to natural weather and climate events but 70% was caused by mismanagement of its economic policies and archaic agricultural practices.
The question is why China is economically successful today and a military power to boot while the USSR failed. It made one major pivot. It started operating its economy like a capitalist system while keeping the government's grip on the execution of policies as a communist state. Proof of it is, according to Forbes magazine, that there are 450 billionaires in China, not including 66 in Hong Kong. That puts China in the No. 2 spot next to the USA's 902. Political control, however, remains ironclad; any sign of dissent is summarily quelled (Tiananmen Square, remember?).
Much of the world cannot begrudge China's standing because there is no arguing with success. Perhaps, it has found the golden key to open the case for the, "Benevolence of a Socialist System?, which I wrote on Dec. 18, 2020.
In one Mamdani's interview, he made it known that he abhors billionaires, and that they should not exist at all. He told NBC News’ “Meet the Press,” “I don’t think that we should have billionaires because, frankly, it is so much money in a moment of such inequality, and ultimately, what we need more of is equality across our city and across our state and across our country.”
If New York City elects him as mayor, the repercussions could conceivably lead the country to unprecedented political pathways never once before paved, let alone traveled on. The question is why his campaign is catching on.
It is possible that that portion of half of the politically divided electorate is latching on to the latest bandwagon of a political movement in place of climate change, social and environmental activism that appear to have their course run to the ground. Climate change noises have been reduced to a murmur that even Greta Thunberg shifted her attention away from it to Gaza in the midst of the Palestinian/Israeli conflict. Mamdani may have simply tapped into another radical idealism in a city under economic stress where a good portion of the young voters and the disadvantaged can latch onto. The lack of national leadership and absence of coherent agenda from Mamdani's political party created the kind of partial vacuum his ideas easily seeped into.
November 4, 2025, less than four months from now, will be a consequential day not just for New York politics but for the entire country. New York, clearly a major component, if not the center, of world capitalism can possibly be where the ripple effects will begin and spread throughout the world. That's probably hyperbole in the short term. However, twenty five years will be a long time if Mamdanization is allowed to take hold. Remember, Marxism started locally too and today it is not exactly dead.
Karl Marx and to a certain extent with the help of Frederic Engels in the mid-1800's started the economic and political theory that became the backbone of the Bolshevik revolution. That potentially is what could befall New York City.
What New Yorkers need to be mindful of is that 90 miles from the coastline of Florida is a Caribbean country that apparently time forgot, stuck to the 1950's era. By today's standards relative to Florida, Cuba is full of anachronisms. There we find 1955 Chevy Bel Air sedans still running as private transportation instead of in a car museum or as a collector's prized possession in the U.S. That's what communist socialism did and continue to do in a country known as the last place to subscribe to the original theory that Karl Marx insisted on.
And that is what Mamdanization will do to New York.
To the international readers, from Argentina and Brazil to Uruguay and Uzbekistan and Vietnam, I beg you all to make note of this. There are a few readers in Russia but I notice Austria and Germany have taken interest as well though not a single one from China. I urge everyone to remember that the great experiment that began in 1776 is still going on. Mamdanization will undo what great results that experiment had achieved for countless dreams to be fulfilled - a propellant that had long been used to push people to come to this land.
Ronald Reagan said it best:
Wednesday, July 16, 2025
Occam's Razor Revisited for 2025
From the JFK assassination to the most recent Epstein case, from UFOs to Big Foot and to the Bermuda Triangle, and last year's attempted assassination of Pres. Trump conspiracy theories continue to thrive from generation to generation of believers and skeptics; from the sublime academics to armchair speculators, from serious to the un-serious contributors to social media, from named to nameless influencers.
"William of Occam (or Ockham) was an English Friar born in 1285 who lived to his 62nd birthday". Occam’s Razor was named after him but he was not really the originator of the principle; however, he was known to frequently use it in his writings and arguments as a tool to get to the truth if it were obscured by the absence of physical evidence or reliable testimony". In a nutshell, it is summarized as follows:
"Occam’s Razor is a philosophical principle that says that in situations where there are competing explanations, we should prefer the simplest explanation since it’s most likely to be the correct one".
In other words, when one looks for an explanation from among several plausible alternatives, the simplest one is likely the correct one. However, even when an explanation seems complicated, it could and should still be expressed as simply as possible for everyone to understand it.
There is a caveat to that expression.
Presently, we have the Epstein file or "client list". Its supposed existence was either oversold that resulted in bated anticipation from the public, politicians and conspiracy theorists or there was no such file to begin with. However, once anyone and everyone comes up with all kinds of assumptions, conjectures and speculation, as usually presented in cases of conspiracy theories, the less likely it will lead to the truth. But in this case, it appears that either there was such a file or it was over promised by the Attorney General, or there was no such file to begin with. If there was some file, it was not what was originally expected.
Is this a case of Occam's razor's failure? Actually, this is, first of all, an interesting case where the "truth is obscured by the absence of physical evidence or reliable testimony" that is either intentionally kept away from the public or that there was no such evidence in the first place. Let's set that aside for now.
One rather more interesting story that has now been overshadowed by the file is the speculation as to whether Epstein killed himself or he was murdered in his cell while being held in a New York jail. Clearly, speculations started to swirl from there which pushed the existence of the file aside. Conspiracy theorists had a field day that lasted for months up to now, nearly six years later.
If we go by Occam's Razor, in the midst of all kinds of conspiracy theories - many of them had the complexity of a Robert Ludlum novel - the simple explanation is that he killed himself. In the case of the file or more intriguingly described as the "client list", the simple explanation is that there was no such list.
If the list existed, is it not likely there was a copy somewhere or held by someone else, i.e. by Epstein's most loyal partner, Ghislaine Maxwell? The Attorney General took a serious risk in saying that there was no such list if later such a list shows up. At this point, the beginning of another conspiracy theory is inevitably hatched. As we can see, in the absence of compelling evidence or testimony (Epstein's or Maxwell's and potentially others), the simplest explanation prevails. For the time being, that is.
From the once popular TV series, The X-Files, we quote, "The truth is out there,” says Scully, before following up with “but so are lies”.
We are at this point in a state of unknowing. Is this then the case of Occam's razor's dulling failure? Possibly, until such time, if at all, that compelling evidence is brought up at some future time. In such a case, Occam's Razor is no longer needed.
Thursday, July 10, 2025
A Few Things to Ask Charles Darwin
A young lion, with its belly full of forty pounds of wildebeest meat, was dozing off under a shade tree when a male hyena approached. The Crocuta, Crocuta, a species also known as the laughing hyena, was the first to speak.