Clear up things through 1) Using familiar tools to understand Kosovo 2) Be committed, in your efforts, to harmony between your personal Serbs and personal Albanians 3) Utilize to Internet links on the Balkan battle

4) And refer to an Identitarian paths traveled from 2023-2021.  5) Be the entertainer in you--and be the solution for others

1) SOME OF THE "KOSOVO WAR FOR DUMMIES" FOR THE CONFUSED TO UNDERSTAND

Identitarianism is renowned for its divergent yet harmonious halves: self + others.  Yet it is felt for those who stumble upon the first part and get confused. 

Below, the notes add --background-- to the Kosovo idea.   Just in case your eyes roll over “consumer goods are the Serbs” and “the stimuli that comes in contact with your senses”. 

Point one

The “Kosovo” war as an outlet for your stress ^is no different^ than acting out fantasies through intense movies, video games, and music.

Point two

+ Memes! These Internet phenomena take existing image and adds a new message to it; result is the image has been appropriated for humorous or dramatic effect.  So in applying memes to the “Kosovo” idea, substitute similarly personal struggles, and commandeer the 1998-99 historical conflict to your own private life.

In the same fashion of the current girlfriend tagged with “my 13 other videos I haven’t start”, at the top ... take the very thought of the Serbs of Kosovo.   Like a news photo.

Ask yourself “what are the things I like?” from the catechism … and write your answer over that image in your head of the Balkan group. That’s the spirit!

Everything goes according to plan? Then an original photo is now seized to your own meme; rather than for the effect of amusement, but for *peace of mind* instead.

Point three

It’s an adaptation.  Your Kosovo is an adaptation of 1999’s Kosovo, ^in that same way^ the Oscar-winning movie “West Side Story” updates Shakespeare’s “Romeo & Juliet”. Or switch the musical for the “Romeo + Juliet” postmodern flick. 

For you, it's +a simulated Kosovo War+, like students similarly participating in mock trials or Model United Nations.  

But conduct your private self towards benign stress relief!

Point four

Why Kosovo and not other war-like, authoritarian places?  In Afghanistan and Iraq, entire Ameurocan counterinsurgency units have came and gone. 

Other “minority rule” areas never pursued the option of suppressing the guerrillas so hard.   Example being, the Israeli forces in the West Bank.    
> Also in "dominant minority" states, the minority is too large (the Sunnis in Saddam-era Iraq).  
It's harder to achieve that state of nihilism, if you empower oh-so-many things in life! 

2) ULTIMATELY, IN THIS IDENTITARIAN GAME, YOU HAVE TO WIN THE HEARTS AND MINDS OF ALBANIANS

+ ...But meaning has its costs.  
As I wrote on "a self to believe in", have AN IDEA, A VISION for conflicting parts in your personality to be eventually be content with.

Such a live + let live outcome can apply to Serbs + Albanians, but also to DCS; say, Dreamers + MAGAers.

+ The modernity we cope with… rose in the Balkan crisis. One that had real-life Albanian tragedies.

As economics tensed demographics--Kosovar Serbs went north for jobs.

And Albanian birthrates up? They outnumber others.

Like global selfishness up... an uptick in complex problems outnumbering us. Plus EACH PERSON has their own Battle of Kosovo moment in their past lives.

A personal equivalent of 1389, a personal episode influencing one today!

+  Jun 13, 2020: It was 22 years ago where, in my reaction to growing up DCS, my study of political/religious regimes went underway.

Today, Kosovo 1999 is the historical example to cognitively govern myself.

But I use that war to manage hardships, not support Serbian nationalism in real life!

I was born to Polish immigrants, so I have nothing political/personal with today's Kosovo. 

So it’s free to be independent, if not a province. 

And it was me at age 13 who made this discovery of belief … maybe because my mental puzzle is more monolithic and straightforward?

A melting pot DCSer puzzle may have quite a lot of *specialized* pieces, however. For them, using that ideology part may disrupt too many other parts.   Disrupt their kaleidoscope of things liked on social media. 

So being open to overlooked ideas is gratitude! 

3) GET A BETTER PICTURE, THROUGH THESE ONLINE LINKS ON THE 1999 CONFLICT

15 min news report of  the 1998 situation of police vs. guerrillas on the ground, none yet in the sky: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FjlbJDZaANQ&t=38s

The eyes have it: See the KLA ((0:55 to 1:10 of the video)) + NATO experience in the Kosovo War: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vwP3P86u6e

Brothers in Arms: Hell's Highway FULL GAME Gameplay Walkthrough

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wvopp5jVBcU&t=3193s

+ Actual screens of a third person shooter scattered throughout. 3PS is pertinent as the visual for this video games you’re playing … is lent from actual news photographers and video cameras that took place in the Balkans war.

+ In these two videos, dismiss the idea of taking sides. These reenactments of the Kosovo War here are about cinema, not ethnically based politics. Better study these videos to help you envision the “video game in your head.”  

To have a model of the mind put to understanding ... similar in spirit as Freud's ideas of the id, ego, and superego.

Racak

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IwFEEfj6xJ4&t=4256s

Highlights: 

4:38 Casual ambush by the KLA
33:15 Exchanging of fire in a village street

1:10:05 Pursuing of guerrillas in the woods

Kosare

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ULb6rrN0wCs&t=5482s

Noted points:

8:20 More concealed rebel ambush

1:28:20 Backing by tank firepower

1:40:40 Repelling the other side’s advances

Example of a combat in Kosovo: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attack_on_Prekaz

Want more in-depth?  Here's the Kosovo region, it's history + it's people: washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/inatl/longterm/balkans/overview/kosovo.htm
 

https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/library/world/europe/kosovo-airstrike-articles.3.html

4) REFRESH TO 2023 & 2022

                         2024

                    Human Nature, as it Could be   

            Potentially Utilized, is on the Ballot

           Commentary that rolls on through around 2K24, landing at the Trump-Harris debate

People, when it comes to election day, are making choices that involve other people—not choices that involve AI calling the shots.  Irrespective of the need fulfillment a particular voter pursues via their selected candidate, political participation is still about relating to others.  This behavior, coordinated by the marketing and media outreach of well-coordinated, slick campaigns, is as much a social function as tying the knot, attending a house party, or volunteering for a nonprofit.   These are activities are all so, regardless if anyone is keeping score.  Elections, like many bonding opportunities, are free for people to toss their hat into the ring.  However, matters of raw geography can cut aspirants down to size.  One example in 2024 was Nikki Haley, who secured a tenure as a governor and polled as actually being the more “electable” Republican candidate.  When it came to the affairs of an entire nation, though, household names mattered more than her in the primaries.  Similarly that winter, Texans had to bow down to the broad, federal law of the land—as interpreted by the Supreme Court--on the use of barbed wire on the Mexican border.  

And this geographic principle extends to other side of the aisle, as leftists are loyal to a location.  There’s no way around this, as to focus on working within a specific jurisdiction on Earth is the way to the cherished programs of Medicare & Social Security; peace of mind in retirement does not just drop out of the sky.  From a different perspective, Vladimir Putin promoted the Russian motherland—the place—to further mobilize his citizens to the frontlines in Ukraine.  To brainstorm politically, could there be a Suez Canal-type shortcut around these particular, interloping turfs, to a home all people can claim?  Try claiming an emotion, which by itself, is a human universal.  So if the very notion of feeling is common to people everywhere, then it’s an exactness—a science, a one world order to be shared.  Yet it’s more art for mankind to get there, as you may take a horse to water, but can’t make it drink . . .

Voters, though, still can give a harsh assessment on the state of their society.  Joe Biden’s economy can show progress in the statistical numbers—just, as it is often the case, not progress in the opinion polls.  Why would him, plus other incumbents like Emmanual Macron & Justin Trudeau, not thanked by their publics following the post-pandemic economic recovery?  For these moderates, their Enlightenment-derived liberalism may be backfiring on them.  As a case study, take Thing Y and place it before liberalism.  What if you were make Y fodder for an even greater good, such an employee giving a bribe to further advance his or her position?  Such a practice of the ends justifying the means cannot always be permitted in a liberal democracy.  Thus in democratic capitalist society, Y’s value is on its bottom line; the direct benefit, without strings attached, when a producer serves a customer.  Yet this “bottom line” attitude on conducting business has been so standardized, so reduced to symbolic communication, that such assent come telegraphically, like the “Approved” stamp.  This subtle sense of ordinary citizens exercising their right to “free speech” extends to them voicing their political sentiment, for Biden as a mere brand in the minds of Republicans can so rub them the wrong way.  

        *    *    * 

The president of the United States isn’t the only source of public arousal.  Further controversy has emerged in the Israel-Hamas conflict, with global public opinion claiming their own horse in the race.  Not even Bill Clinton presiding over a photo-op handshake between Yitzhak Rabin and Yassir Arafat could bring a lasting peace after generations of enmity built up by Middle Eastern Jews and Muslims.  Yet, as a quick fix, both sides express their grievances through the press.  Media coverage can help reach kindred spirits within a broad, global audience.  However, to take one follower of the current events at a time, this practice lacks an equalizing effect: news access varies by income level.  To bring up a hypothesized case within the Arab world, a Bedouin pastoralist may be less media savvy than an NGO worker in Dubai.  Extending this global disunity to a grassroots level, divisions over Gaza persist—and this global spirit of discord has also found its way into the halls of Congress, where picking the Speaker of the House has become a battle royale.  But what will it take to admit defeat?  The Japanese and Germans in 1945, lacking echo chambers back then, were effectively brought to heel.  This was the case, for they suffered a total defeat in a total war.  Yet in a world so interlinked today, a total defeat sparked by the equivalent of Hiroshima or Dresden carries so many consequences—consider the mere accessibility of semiconductors tied to the status of Taiwan.  Could even a further amount of slight instability be too much for the already gridlocked globe to stomach?

Of the bitter pills to societally swallow in the 2020s, inflation stands tall.  It eats away at people's incomes--and raises may not be enough to make up for it. How is that when, according to the Economic Policy Institute, salaries for CEOs are up 1400% since the late 1970s rise of neoliberalism?  Take the logic of the “imperial presidency”, with a potent leader before geopolitical challenges.  Similarly, firms use that reasoning to compensate, in a likewise risky market, a strong executive. Pitted with this wage discrepancy, employees may not enjoy selling their labor power.  Yet they’ll do so to remain middle class.  Reversing, in order to correct the situation, how all people act on their needs is limited; such a topping of the GDP apple cart could risk more of a downturn.  But people can reverse how they see themselves.  As democratic capitalism is not really rested on being wealthy and free, but the potential of attaining that rank—the right to go after a sense of prosperous security.  For the “potential”, whatever it may be though, is just a mental construct as self-regard—and stress and anxiety, as well. So, in the quest of an abstract dream, the door could be open by the latter two subtle factors to infiltrate one’s mental makeup, making the final product more uncertain.  As a result, certain minds are less equipped for certain issues: entitlement programs in Western countries running out of funding, the target 2027 date for the invasion of Taiwan, and the anticipation of global temperatures to rise 1.5 degrees by 2050.  What is certain, and what is not?  The less modern unclarity that there is in particular mindsets, the more settled these psyches get.  Correspondingly, with them spared of indistinct frustration, commercial interests can then exploit & gouge less.  This may lead to concrete action for concrete problem solving--and an economy easier for all to bear, price wise.

        *    *    * 

The Trump-Biden rematch was not the epic equivalent to the Ali-Frazier series.  As the winner of this Washington bout was poised to be the one who scares voters the least.  It turned out that the fright got to the campaign within: Biden’s frailty and subsequent polling decline prompted social liberals to dissuade the 46th president to step down as nominee.  To stem the panic, Democrats rallied around Kamala Harris to helm their party’s ship.  But in the midst of all this, wouldn’t a society’s dynamism stem more from love, rather than fear?  Such resilience of democracy during the 20th century world wars arose from the patriotic love of one’s country.  Now the bad one in this political race is the one will make America crumble like Rome.  Despite more at seemingly at stake this year, it’s still cut out for a candidate: act in an atomized society.  One with people so on their own, that in having the free autonomy to formulate their political views, many have already decided whom to vote for.  With so much preset in the electorate, isn’t it futile for democracies to carry on their billion dollar campaigns?  Perhaps political races—and their politicians—might be less needed in a society made less complex.  In that sense, more citizens’ disputes would lack authorities to intervene in—as it pertains to the latter, cutthroat black & white thinking that arises over the ballot can drop.  Could we all share the same fate? If we are connecting the world economically, why not let go of strict decision making and do so emotionally?

Emotions, though, still get out of control, as it showed at an attack launched at a Donald Trump rally on July 13th.  Seemingly, the attempt on Trump’s life showed that the cycle of partisan rancor had gone too far.  As much as the Democratic opposition had a dire view of Trump in power, the scenario of the fallout from that event’s bullet slightly changing direction was to them an even worse course for the milieu to take.  Yet the tight campaign ensured that the political “temperature” would remain high.  Even more so, the whole systemic individualism in democratic capitalist society does not exactly intend for all of us to be in it together.  To allow Trump, in this apparatus, to relinquish his fist-pumping “fighter” persona would mean also relinquishing the entire mass media so a leader—any leader—won’t be magnified.  Political parties everywhere take on the spirit of systemic individualism, as to zero in on the voters’ desires is to play to this premise: telling people what they want to hear.  It’s a drive made into routine by technology, as a Fitbit can read exactly what a person seeks in heart rate and peace of mind.  But to fixate directly into that which an individual “wants to hear” is bound to exclude what’s not “heard”.  Thus to take from economics, a “free lunch” is lost.  To reach out amongst the many diverse peoples of the world, will this orientation towards the precluding particular make it harder to respectively win “hearts and minds”?

        *    *    * 

Winning citizens over is not how it used to be.  For the American duopolistic sides were once neatly classified into being center left and center right.  Hence by now for the 2024 election, modernity increasingly is where the line gets drawn: social liberals wanting to ride its train, and populistic conservatives that are balking at it.  The progress that the former espouses can get boundless.  But it’s different to “modernize” the memory & traditions that a Donald Trump voter holds dear.  As well, a matter of honor is in play: a national conservative bloc likens the Biden-Harris theoretical program of woke globalism—and track record of inflation—as a throwback to Jimmy Carter, the leader the last time they felt America needed this must “saving.”  Tap into the notion of human sentiment as an entity that never sleeps, going across borders—and throughout periods of time.  

The sense of shame that the emotionally charged populist right in the West feels about establishment figures like Olaf Scholz can fill their minds like totalitarianism did in gripping in the similarly aroused citizens of 1930s Germany and Russia.  Charting the future of that last autocratic ideology in Marxism-Leninism was an unsure endeavor, as Time magazine’s Person of the Year issue for 1981 had it that the people could brace for the Cold War to “escalate dangerously in the decades ahead.”  One less hazy forecast to muse: another bloody transfer of power in the United States come January.  That act may constitute an existential threat to democracy for some; such perpetrators of an act, though, may be teaching the opposition that “they won’t get away with stealing the election this time around.”  Maybe there’d be lasting agreement on both sides, if such a people held lasting focus, lasting interests.  Yet in a complex, attention span-starved society, where is one with a sole, un-distracted priority to pull off such an enduring task?

        *    *    * 

Both Harris’ Democrats and Trump’s Republicans believe that the United States is “the greatest nation on Earth”; the former specifically proclaimed this in her convention acceptance speech in Chicago.  As well, it may be inferred that each candidate, deep down inside, does not enjoy being wrong.  But to solve that problem, how to pinpoint what exactly is “wrong”, how has a belief gone bad?  Problem is, that this idea may be buried in one’s mentality--and it can too hard for outsiders to ascertain the inner truth through surface-level observation.  What Harris does outwardly show to others is the pushing forward of the agenda of an infirm Biden, but through her own revived persona of an energetic, determined prosecutor.  Republicans who would control respective chambers of Congress may not find that character very entertaining.  As arbiters of these antagonistic camps, elections can still hold fast.  As Trump eventually gave up his office following the Capitol riot—hours after vowing that he “would never concede.”   The naturally fragmented electorate, after all for Democrats, can be a check on the MAGA national conservatives representing a wide majority of the people.  

But electorally confining a side like the AfD, Fidesz, or National Rally can also, when their leaders are further caught in a struggle, make them miscalculate.  As the issues outpower the individuals, no matter what side of the aisle they are on; the issues assign human beings to play the parts in history’s story, not the other way around.  And more than ever, these masses of individuals are intricately involved--and harder to reach--in the wage earner world.  Instead of a clearcut, specific war against what Hitler, Tojo, or Mussolini set forth, today it’s an offbeat deal regarding abortion clinics, swarming migrants and how to save at the grocery store.  To serve the array of people vaguely involved with the latter few situations, who can detect what’s all on their particular minds?  And by playing this type of game, how long can people keep living in their heads?   Perhaps what could conquer these topics en masse is people joining together en masse.  Aiming for such a one-worldism may be aiming for mere symbolism, rather than focusing for what’s for substance.  Yet for this “story”, life is done in one take; with one’s instance of behavior that suddenly becomes a mistake, there’s no immediate way to edit out the bad memories he or she may acquire.  Instead, truly actualized global cooperation in the spirit of Henry George has a goal to Spaceship Earth-style stage the events we’re all actors in, for fun’s sake—and our security, too.  In an election with miscalculating losers, looking up to this narrative can be rather a win-win.

2023

                                                                               Freedom Remains Not Free

      After free, yet fractured society split during the crises of the 2020s, will even further liberty get things back on track?

Choice makes democracy possible; what election with only one candidate to pick from can be called democratic?  Yet the everyday ethos of democracy--having any given individual pick from options to make the best possible decision--is more critical than examining whether a country’s political system is fully democratic or not.  It shows that while Jerome Powell did not earn his position from winning an electoral race, the choices he makes as Federal Reserve chairman has the potential to offer the most relief on the inflation crisis.  Vladimir Putin also, as an albeit more malignant counterpart, is a public figure who also did not consolidate power from free and fair elections.  But he too must make selections: how serious should Putin be, in regarding a possible defense of Crimea, of using tactical nuclear weapons?   

It’s up to rest of the public to generally hold these figures accountable, to prevent them from miscalculating.   Limiting bad options for these officials to select from has its shortcomings; eliminating a choice means eliminating another invested business or player. Neither may any leader find essential ideals in democratic capitalist society (DCS): such values in the United States have been remade and are contrasting.   This is shown as the Democratic Party built a coalition by celebrating progress and the Republican Party, in a personal path to knowing itself, rallies more around nationalism. To offer the leaders a more reasonable course to chart, what could be most important for rest of the populace to understand about leaders like them?  Deciphering their maturity levels may offer gains.  That matter goes with how individual humans—and similarly, to industrializing countries—develop.  Yet an exact clean break from a youthful person to an adult lacks. Better to approach such murky maturity by being comfortable with a world that’s discomforting—not panicking from both personal and political uncertainty but rather, to at least get more used to it . . . 

A diversity of interests allows for more complexity—and seemingly, more for leaders to worry about.  Yet components of diversity can serve as potent societal checks and balances against a single entity, particularly against an ambitious one emerging.  Shows socialism, to play by the rules in a more consumer-meeting, voter-empowering Western Europe, had to lower its sights as social democracy; elsewhere, societies unacquainted with developed Western life lacked the inhibiting norms and institutions that would curb socialism from hardening into Marxism-Leninism.   Successful countries in the former have left other more neoliberal societies on the outside today filled with “Denmark envy.”  

These states may have successfully developed capitalist democracy to be socially compassionate—or is there an impression of it all being done?  Might citizens complying to a given political platform and government policy have them actually fearful of it?  It is true from one perspective, fear of disease has spurred the growth of medicine and life expectancy.  For other solutions, though, the world is more attuned to dealing in fear than asserting effective control.   The European Union, in being geared towards a carrot and stick way to bring its members in line, is a tempered global example of the former.  What if this pent-up fear among global peoples were to explode one day?  Technology, like that of a cell phone camera capturing the death of George Floyd, may only hasten the day when this happens . . .

Such sweeping economic changes arose from the Industrial Revolution, still lacking a universal agreement on how to properly respond entirely to it. It was a given prior to this 19th century rise of machines, that an average African was as poor as a typical European—or anyone else on the globe.   Now since then, it’s been a new a recurring pattern to address about the inequality brought out by that Revolution.  Yet the interest for one to secure a living for oneself often upstages the urge to make humanity unified in a sense.  This occurs in a certain entity, in concern over another threat, allows another power of unequal standing to act as a protector.  Entrenched Republican activists may continue their partnership with a beleaguered Donald Trump, a registered Democrat only fourteen years ago, if they feel he’s the best to prevent the country from a "radical left" onslaught in 2024.  

A similar mindset is for NATO arms exporters serving the non-member Ukraine, as Brussels-tied commanders seeks where fiscally possible to impose punitive damages on Vladimir Putin's future ambitions.  To ensure protection once and for all, moderation can lack.  In addressing the Taiwan question, such a mitigating spirit is also absent.  As it is quite uncharted territory to merely test the waters on how initial direct fire between China and America would eventually end up as, given that both are amongst the globe’s dominant nuclear powers.

2022

                                                    Envisioning a Future with No Second American Civil War, abridged version

The 21st century has worldwide technology, worldwide economics. Yet why isn’t there a corresponding worldwide politics? Correcting this deficiency would do great help for those pushing for all the globe to be on the same page on all-encompassing issues like climate change. To make this a reality, could there be a drive, an inspiration for what globalization hasn’t pulled off yet: the collapsing of all borders? This type of ethos wouldn’t just have electoral benefits. At the lowest level, human judgments, assumptions, and stereotypes can be rife when at the verge of approaching a stranger. 

In a new situation when one crosses the line to interact—finally get it over with---the anxiety is over with. Correspondingly, situations get magnified to global proportions, and nations can get uneased at the potential of dealing with a foreign neighbor or differing ethnic group. This problem of space was evident in the 1990s conflict between Hutus and Tutsis, where Time magazine noted that "Rwanda is an explosive crucible that nations watching from a comfortable distance have no idea how to handle." Moreover, a de-boundarying spirit could extent to the workplace where fewer parameters in a job could lead to more autonomy . . . 

Like jurisdictions for politicians, capitalism depends on places and geography. As big and small systems respectively depend on a sense of family—nationalism for millions of countrymen to mobilize citizens toward macroeconomic goals, communalism for microeconomies like a kibbutz. For the former, the media is critical for this bond to work. Yet were pandemics foreseen and debated during press coverage in the Western democracies, during the 2018 American congressional and 2019 European parliamentary races? Such is the flaw of “stable” capitalist society as it is now and a lack of vision . . . 

       *   *   *

Society under such “abstractions” in 2020 was not so good, so 2021 had pressure to make up for it. But high inflation and supply chain problems arising at the year’s end were not the holiday cheer to end things in style. These issues do have a common denominator, a source from where the problem may stem from: the bold exercise of freedom. This manifested in consumers emancipated to demand more following stingy pandemic days. While at the same time, truck drivers hampered the supply and distribution of goods by quitting their jobs for a more promising career. This contemporary era of many participants in a process-- “mass economics”--is brought together by people acting in their own self-interests. Yet what central authority whatsoever is there when the invisible hand has more DCSers involved? Such was the case in the financial crisis at the turn of the 2010s, when specialization of the industry changed how loans were repaid: now banks made money from the transaction itself. 

New players were involved to handle these loans, now converted into mortgage-backed securities, thus necessitating more people getting their piece of the pie. As well, a need for responsibility for all of those players involved—including the house flippers who instead approached homes like ATMs, and drove up the prices into bubble levels. Even though this Great Recession volatility eased up, similar implications of “mass economics” were apparent in the present-day inflation crisis. The prevalence of rising prices was contagious, as when one firm raises prices, other businesses may follow suit. To offset what was seen to be instigating corporate greed, introducing stimulus checks were an initiative to democratize matters. Yet, as a result, might have been that the way the checks were spent may have increased the money supply . . . 

       *   *   *

Uncertainty though, is less celebrated than facts; it can also be said that facts are greater than opinions. Consider, though, how facts hold up against laws. As laws come from agreements: a leader has ideas, others carry them out. Yet to implement this, agreements can only become possible when all involved share the same opinion. This notion is backed up by the Oxford Dictionary, defining “agree”, as having “the same opinion about something.” Democracy isn’t so fixated on the facts of the majority. Rather, it is geared towards the opinions of the majority. And such sentiments march on: economic systems today depend on the customer always being right. This sets up the Anthropocene as the today’s supreme law of the land; the era of humans in effect means the era of opinions . . . 

Democracy, as it stands, may not be getting all these warring parties on the same page. Maybe expecting change through sheer voting isn’t working; it can get redundant when each election, even after 2020, becomes “the most important one in our lifetime.” Maybe it’s more necessary to change the one practicing “democracy”: the democrat. That is, by intellectually conditioning each person involved in the political system to more noble ends . . . 

Democracy somehow has to get its citizens involved. It depends on its subjects sharing the same goal: the seeking of a better life. Whether it’s conservatives thriving under less regulation, or liberals pleased with the safeguarding of “marriage equality”, seeking personal advantage is a notion that both sides of the table are in unison. This idea of private progress is personified on a mass scale by the European Union. Unlike other peoples around the globe united by a common language or history, member states identifying with the EU is made possible by the pursuit (similar to other points on “seeking gain” in this essay) of intrinsically advantageous notions of peace and prosperity. 

Was, for the EU and NATO, “advantageous” expansion towards Ukraine a Titanic heading in collision course with an iceberg? For democracy, whether be in Eastern Europe or elsewhere, overcoming the globe’s Putin bloc doesn’t mean pleasing the illiberal democrats of the world. Rather, it’s about the centrists getting out of the populists’ way--leaving the MAGA, Fidesz, PiS, and National Rally people alone. That would leave the “End of History” proponents with a more enduring ideal: people will adhere to the supply and demand principle, forswear the abolishment of private property, and value high that of public opinion. That’s capitalistic democracy. Yet navigating such public sentiment involves media magnification that exposes the warts of one side--ammunition for that particular perspective’s rivals to use.  

2021

            It’s the Stupid Economy: The Market Gets a Transformative Hold on its Subjects (selections)

+ Thanks to an industrialized world that is both affected by and craving change, the services sector of the economy has rose to outpace its primary and secondary counterparts, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. But this New Economy can play it less fairly than its raw materials and manufacturing cousins.  The industries of the working class, that field saddled today with the connotations of the Rust Belt, actually is just in terms of assessing concrete progress.  To show for it, consider a good from a factory.  It is tangible; faults in physical labor are obvious to all those involved.  Examples include tires formulated to blowout en mass, or an e coli outbreak resulting from a food processing plant. 

Yet for a service, it is something that’s more having its sole arbiter in a person’s head.  With these tertiary jobs, it’s vaguer.  Given that the services industry is based on knowledge, it thus founded on notions that exist in the pliable mind.  This entails the customer or the client making decisions tied to a mood in real time.  Case in point is a judge who comes to the courtroom haunted by a fight last night he had with his wife; in this context, the jurist, in forming his own opinion, has such other, psychologically malleable factors from even outside his profession . . .

It is a given for professionals to provide food, administer health care, build homes—plus someone has empower them with the energy and the technology to all this.   Yet what preceded this wage-earner world had a upside.  In closing the door on the forager era, civilization substituted the code of wildlife predators for government-enforced laws and society-induced norms.  These were necessary to make humans more physically safe, but at a cost of leaving them more psychologically submissive?

. . . This outcome may not have been economically intended all along.  For what kid says, “I’m going to an insurance agent when I grow up?”  Be employed in finance?   Aspire to make a living as a hedge fund manager?  Entering these careers wouldn’t come about sheerly by free will.   Instead of freedom as the founding principle in DCS, necessity has the become the hallmark.   It’s these combined needs of a self-asserted citizenry that can prevent one person—the individual that DCS is supposed to champion--from truly entering employment out of voluntary interest.  Professional volition cannot be so much out of one’s own accord; the diversions like entertainment, exercise, and hobbies that workers escape into can so contrasting from the workplace reality.  Thus, there is a polarization: a professional can be either trapped into a state of labor or indulge in a realm of recreation.  For many, chances for a world in which both of those sphere overlap is bleak . . .   

. . . That may be reflected by leaderless AI taking charge: DCS has created an economy so complex to be beyond the fathoming of individual people to decide on. Would such robots be needed in the 1700s? No use for driverless cars; AI would have run out of tasks to do beyond a cotton gin. 

. . . As prosperity rises for a people of the globe so do expectations. And added innovation to a socioeconomic system is at the same time added sophistication. What if, for a good or service, one small part was to risk being flown off?  If that complex whole gets jeopardized, leaving modern unpredictability accompanying modern progress. Such was the reality posited in Time magazine, discussing in July 1987 of “the Cold War fading away”:  if fighting shooting wars move to fighting over “ideas, values, and potency of economic systems”, what evolves next then?  Is the End of History the beginning of AI?  

5)

                           As Late 1990s Pro Wrestling Pushed the Envelope, So It Too, Can Help Today’s Society Be Pushed Towards Fulfillment

  "Our days might not be any longer, but they can sure be better."

      "The match ... fans, we gotta go to a break.  I have no idea of what to say.  Stay with us."

Thirty years ago this Memorial Day, disgruntled ex-WWE employee Scott Hall fired the first shots that would be the New World Order’s rise in WCW—and by extension, to reign of the Attitude Era in the professional wrestling world. Yet, decades into the new millennium, Hall’s spirit has even more potential for the future. To understand the nWo ethos, and its subsequently sparked Attitude Era, organizations like WWE tap into the importance for fiction: the capacity for imagination. That concept makes humans human--and not animals. Especially true when reality today deals with the inflation ensuing from the COVID-19 pandemic, political partisanship, racial tensions, rising global temperatures and a slew of other problems in how the new millennium really turned out to be.

The Attitude Era—with its boldness echoed by the emergence of edgy Eminem, the crudeness of “South Park”, and the cult following of “Fight Club”—may have been bigger than wrestling itself. A time, in which had the post-Cold War United States as the last superpower standing, pushing ahead with the advent of the Internet offering promise to a new, global century. Fast forward decades past Y2K, and new promotions emerging in sports entertainment. For those counting on WWE to be finally given stiff competition and usher in a better product, as did WCW with the Monday Night Wars, they were in for a disappointment in the spring of 2021: NXT walked away from going head-to-head with AEW Dynamite. So what's the point for people to wait for that next Golden Age of professional wrestling to come? Maybe, when the original Monday Night Wars ended, a wrong direction was taken in 2001. Better put, following the lead of Scott Hall’s *influence* over 1996 Nitro, it’s overdue for an something similar, an emulation of sorts: the taking up of wrestling personas by the ordinary wrestling fans themselves to *influence* the rest of the world. 

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Could the concept of men in tights pretending to beat each other up, impact one’s life at work and at home then? Going back to story-telling central to our species, professional wrestlers are top characters to draw out of a narrative and into one’s own daily being. These grapplers have a grounding in reality—The Rock is Dwayne Johnson with the volume turned up, as explained by the legend himself. Yet with total fantasy in contrast, the actress Scarlett Johannsson. and her Black Widow character are firmly split off in real life.  This is where wrestling comes in: the point is not to win or lose a match, but to do whatever it takes to impress a crowd—the resilience from within. So, the worker takes the equivalent of “bumps”, giving it all in his or her societal roles, while at time, getting a “pop” from his coworker audiences. And most vitally, a “pop” within—self-respect. Thus, a “rough day at the office” can be seen as the glass half-full.  In doing this, those around this wrestling-inspired character can see a display that’s more passion than cynicism: mimicking wrestling promos into everyday conversation. Talking enthusiastically like a wrestler before the public eye—as if one were on camera--is the antidote to cynical reaction to participating in mundane bureaucracies.

Can this whole idealistic picture be put into ordinary practicalities?  Consider the layman Vince Russo in his real-life role in editing the WWF’s magazine, who pioneered the cocky tinge later found in his fellow grapplers Steve Austin and Shawn Michaels.  Done so though his own gimmick of “Vic Venom”, this journalist indeed carried “attitude” enough to receive a promotion to become the top writer of the WWF’s programming.  If Russo could pull this disposition in everyday, edgy personas, then why not have doctors, lawyers, or teachers show off arrogant “attitude” at the forefront of their respective professions?  It must be admitted that, obviously, not every profession directly serves an audience like pro wrestling; an accountant filling out a tax return, for example, need not be concerned about not a throng of spectators, but instead, his or her own particular client. Furthermore, a commercial airplane pilot is tasked not with impressing the passengers, but with safeguarding them.  Thus, this white-collar order lamented in “Office Space” is seemingly here to stay, as capitalism seems to deliver better goods & services than whatever communist regimes could offer. 

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Yet when the former was ascendant in Cold War victory, the author of “The End of History” Francis Fukuyama frowned upon an order “of economic calculation, the endless solving of technical problems, environmental concerns, and the satisfaction of sophisticated consumer demands.”  Perhaps a way through the pervading impersonal is to—while in labor—actually have one imagine they are inspirationally in service of some audience like professional wrestling is.  Being with them in spirit, at least, with “the people”.  With some society, one can look up the masses like a Roman Catholic looks up a patron saint for guidance. Here, this 21st-century faith can be derived from spectacle-driven grit than individualist-oriented “technical” bottom lines.  If any abrasive confrontations with team members & customers arise from being involved in showmanship, workplace stress could be framed in all-in-good-fun like worked shoots and its kin in comedic roasts. With all this, the ball could get rolling to the extent that people will rethink how they direct their consumer spending towards oh-so modern industries like healthcare, finance, and IT—all newcomers in the annals of how 200,000 years of human history has been organized—which would then trickle down to affect what jobs are actually in demand for the third millennium.  A new economic epoch where trying matters more than winning.  This liberating emphasis on the “E for effort” as a financial arbiter shown by Jim Ross in the documentary Beyond the Mat: “I don’t care who wins, I don’t care who loses.  As long as we got an ass every eighteen inches, I’m a happy man.”  

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And adopting the character of a grappler matters even more in a brave new future of artificial intelligence and automation. These machines will displace professionals from healthcare to the trucking industries, but there’s one role these robots can’t assume: self-promotion. It is only humans, in the vein of bombastic wrestling, that can sell themselves and hype their talents. Analysts speak of universal basic income to figure out the question of dislocated workers. Why not have these unemployed masses be also compensated--not by their 9 to 5, everyman skills now made supplanted by AI--but by their drive to go to any length for a “crowd reaction”? For example, just having a two-man oral competition in front of a voting audience of colleagues over who cut the most creative “promo”—that may be for starters. When it comes to meeting a tight deadline, the algorithms are set to resolve a problem more efficiently than the mind of a worker. Yet in the end, this novel order of publicly demonstrating before peers for the sake of gaining respect and recognition can be more alluring than turning out the same goods and services, upon pressure by the same bosses and paychecks.

The spirit of the squared circle has quite the hold on people, as each of us are scripted to die one day like any given match is booked to have a predetermined winner. Thus is the need to be ready for whatever the global economy throws at you—like the shock of a barrel of oil suddenly reaching $100 in days this spring—make a “larger than life” character strong enough to take on the unpredictability of crisis; wrestlers know injury lurks every time upon stepping in the ring. From this awareness of one’s “gimmick”, true self-confidence about yourself arises. Then, each day--each planned moment just as it is done in kayfabe--can count in one’s life on this Earth.