That's who they are

The fact that the Army suggested that we do not wear our uniforms when in public due to the harassing and bullying of returning Vietnam veterans, helped shape my opinions about politics.

The parallel between that and what the same people are doing with ICE and border agents should be helping you shape yours.

My First Time - A Vote was Purchased

We went to the beautiful old Washington County Courthouse in Jonesborough, Tennessee's oldest town, to get copies of some recorded papers printed.  Walking up the foot cupped steps, passed the brass plaque with the Ten Commandments, and into that ageless old building smell, we were happy to find the office on the first floor.

When we registered to vote, we had to get up to the third floor where the corridors were narrow enough to be designed by a submarine engineer.  The first floor office is off of the main lobby.

Upon entering the cramped Register of Deeds office, I noticed the lady at the desk had an "Elect Teresa  Bowman, Register of Deeds" t-shirt on.  Upon looking around, I saw that all but one of the ladies in the office had the same t-shirt.

The first thought was that this was certainly probably illegal, but I soon returned to the business of the day, asking the lady in the t-shirt if she would be so kind as to look up everything they had on Hickory Lake Homes.  It being the one without any hickory trees and about 20 minutes from any lake.

Upon moving here and spending over 30 hours on the phone with CenturyLink to get the Internet straightened out, I learned to keep calling back until I got a southern American woman's voice.  They are compelled to flow with their nature and help people.

In a southern voice so kind that she could have named any price, she told me that the copies would be 25 cents each.

'Okay.  So, Teresa, she's the one, huh?"

"Yes she is.  That's me, and I would appreciate your vote."

I felt a bit embarrassed about not seeing the t-shirt resemblance, but she did look a few years older (and a little heavier) in person.

At this time a male suit walked in asking in a no-nonsense voice about audit papers.  Teresa told us to please excuse her.  She was the only one there that could help this guy, and told us Peggy would help us - she knows just what to do.

Peggy, younger, with a properly supportive t-shirt got to our recordings and printed them out.

"How much is all that," I asked. Looked like about 75 pages.

"Oh, that's all right, Sweetie.  Just vote for us in the April primary."

I kept my voice down, turned my head a bit and squinted,  "It's my first time, you know.  Having my vote bought."

Looking at me askance, she said, "Ya'll ain't from around here, are ya'll?"

Giving me that southern eye-bat wink that always shakes up my balance, she said, "It may take a little getting used to, but you'uns will learn to love this mountaineer heritage we have around here.  Scotch-Irish, you know.

"I can tell about people ...  Ya'll gonna be one of us soon."

Picking up our papers, we walked out unable to stop laughing about how we could not wait to come back to the Washington County Courthouse and tried to think of some reason for doing that.

The Happiness of Astronomers

Astronomers are the happiest people on earth.  Their sense of wonder and curiosity animates a permanent smile on their faces as they spend endless hours and money simply raptured in the pointless pursuit of more questions.

A Fish Doesn't Know he's Wet

Probably true.  But he does know when he is dry.



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I brought up the following Facebook comment at our table at the diner this morning:

 "I don't find much relevance for capitalist
 philosophy with the business owners that I know."

Vacant looks turned into vigorous facial expressions and discussions followed.  The fish/wet thing came up with the question of whether the fish considers water a philosophy.

This led to a philosophical discussion of air and it would be necessary to have a philosophy of it if you wanted to breathe.

When I mentioned bartering some were quick to add that trade with chickens is trade with a different store of value, and therefore, capitalism.

That deteriorated into one man's vague college memory about when they used chess pieces for money.

"Yep, I brung a queen in to git a bag of tobackah and some rollin' papers, and the clerklady gave a rook and two pawns in change."

Then some tried hard to be serious.

"If it ain't using capitalism, they must be state run, state owned, or state regulated.  That's the difference."

"Mebee they's got slaves instead of paid labor employees."

"If the owners control the production and they get an income from their labor, the relevance is in every aspect of their lives, whether they find it or wish to ignore it, they are immersed in it."

The topics then drifted into food, the weather, and what to do with the rest of our lives.

Jacob mentioned if it ain't raining he was going out for fish tonight.

Stock Buybacks

I often find myself thinking about a junior high Earth Science teacher, who in 1961 was so embarrassed that President Kennedy had to step in front of the nation and show Americans where Vietnam was and what it looked like, that he was compelled to action the very next school day.

An imposing figure, boxer, adventurer, weight lifter, and mountain climber, his furiosity over the situation got our attention when he said, "This atrocity will not stand as long as I have the control to do a small part to alleviate the situation. This being Earth Science, I have decided that you will learn the earth.

"Every river, every country, every mountain range, every state, province, continent, ocean, major lake, desert, plateau, and whatever I can't think of right now will be burned into your American brain.

"I fear the day that a future president will have to stand in from of America with a map of the United States and show them where South Dakota is.

"For this semester you will be immersed in maps: first with the names of all the natural and political features, then tested with blank maps you will be instructed to fill in."

And we did.

I wonder if JFK felt like apologizing for being so elementary.

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The study and learning of our economic system would also seem to be important, but judging by people's comments on social media, very few Americans have the slightest clue how our economy and money systems work, and why they work so well. Many of these commenters consider a corporation's main purpose to be at odds with the vague concept of the Common Good, which has a variety of definitions in the minds of the beholders that are all far from common. Without discussing the unfortunate mistake of thinking that our system itself is wrong, and therefore whatever the main actors in our system (corporations) do to advance their purpose is wrong, I'll be Mr. Prentiss. On the fact that the system is the best, most efficient, fairest, and most commonly good that man can come up with, consider the following: The purpose of a pure corporation is to grow wealth and profits, and, as a result, to maximize shareholders' wealth by paying dividends and increasing the stock price. it is a wonder that the tax reform has motivated so many corporations to reward their employees rather than plow the money into wealth growing activities. After a short lesson on the very basic concepts of corporations and stock prices, I'll

try to answer that. Shareholder wealth is the appropriate goal of a business firm in a capitalist society. In a capitalist society, there is private ownership of goods and services by individuals, and to survive it must show a stream of increasing profits. Those individuals own the means of production to make money. The profits from the businesses in the economy accrue to the shareholders. When business managers try to maximize the wealth of their firm, they are actually trying to increase their stock price. As the stock price increases, the stockholders' wealth increases. As the stock price goes up, the market cap of the firm increases and the net worth of the stockholder increases.

Profits and a good outlook toward the future economic climate does this every day, but... A fast and effective way to increase shareholder wealth is a stock buyback. The company goes into the stock marketplace and purchases its own stock, driving up demand for the stock, and decreasing its supply. (I can almost see you, Mr. President.) This makes the price go up. Kind of basic, but either misunderstood, or considered an evil system because some people believe that all income should be equally distributed, and the wealth in a system like this is distributed unevenly, as is all wealth, everywhere, under all economic systems. So why would a corporation, if pure to its tenets, use tax reform to increase the wealth of its employees? It doesn't make sense in a linear, scientific corporate definition way, but may become clear with addition of the human nature variable. The motives to reward employees are as varied as the people who run these corporations. Some may think it is being socially responsible and think that is a pure and noble pursuit, but for the most part, they are directly bowing the first and foremost purposes of the organization - to survive and grow shareholder wealth.

And it follows that loyal, qualified, long term employees with high morale will help the corporation achieve its goals, work hard to advance themselves and the company.

Whatever the reasons, as a person who appreciates how near perfect our system works as it parallels the currents of human nature, I am comforted to see how surprised the critics were when so many corporations have been and will continue to generously reward employees with the tax reform money.

As an additional note to those who philosophize failure, the corporate tax reform has no expiration date and you can't buy your own stock forever. They will have to do something else with all that money very soon.

School Shootings - What to do in the Meantime

A national ban on the sale of semi-automatic rifles is passed.

Everybody is to be screened every five years at the DMVs and schools for mental illness.

In the meantime out of the over 100 million privately owned rifles in the US, a guess would be 75 million are semi-auto.

In the meantime, serious mental illness affects almost 10 million Americans.
In the meantime, how many kids are going to be sitting ducks unable to defend themselves in unprotected schools?

• One entrance
• Metal detectors
• Trained and certified, armed protection
• School Resource Officer training for all personnel
• Safety drills.

Once all the semi-auto rifles are gone and mental illness is cured, all that stuff can stop.

Extent of Employee Benefits of Corporate Tax Reform Not Reported

With well over 400 businesses reporting how their employees, customers, and their communities are being rewarded by their employers, the estimate is that this number represents about 10% of the actual number of companies participating.

Company owners who were contacted cite a number of reasons for not making it known. 

The majority cite a value of just doing what is expected.  John, the owner of a regional chain of landscape nurseries, stated, “I don’t put out news releases about our work with local charities or how we give bonuses to those employee that go above and beyond with their customers.  The help with personal situations like long-term family problems like disease, financial disasters, deaths, and such, to me, is just between me and my employees, and I don’t really want to use that to promote the business.

“You know what we have done for our employees with the tax cut money, to me, is just like paying the bills on time, keeping the grounds clean, taking care of customers, employees, vendors, and such.  It’s part of the job.  Nobody’s business but ours.”

On a darker side of the political climate, we found a group of businesses that were taught a lesson about what they say and do these days.  Some downtowns are getting a new lease on life by converting old storefronts to craft breweries, restaurants, music venues, coffee shops, art galleries, and trendy gift and craft shops that appeal to the 18 to 34 demo.  These people are generally upscale and current with the fashionable values and politics. For the most part, so are the shop owners.

Daniele owns a coffee shop and music stage in a trendy part of town.  She has three full-time employees and four part-timers.  She is used to putting out releases and has an Internet service that blasts them out to local media outlets.  “We have the usual specials and unique drinks from time to time, but I really need to let everybody know who is performing that night,” she explained.  “I prepare releases just about every day.”

So when Daniele forecast the savings she was about to receive from the tax cut she wrote a release about the raises she was giving everybody, the extra paid time off for charity work, and additional help with their health insurance premiums.  When the news hit the usual outlets the next day, everything seemed quite normal and routine.

The next morning, like most other small business owners, Daniele was up hours before opening to do paperwork, clean up a bit, do some maintenance, and set out new displays.  When she arrived at the shop her heart sunk when she saw the destruction.  Broken windows, spray-painted walls inside and out with profanity laden anti-Trump graffiti.  Equipment inside was broken, chairs thrown against the wall, and paint everywhere.

Daniele went outside, sat on the curb and cried as she called the police.

Later that day in interviews with neighboring shops and stores fear was in the air.  Some, not all, had also begun to share their tax relief with employees with bonuses and raises, with customers with price reductions, and the community and downtown area in various ways.  Some never intended to promote their generosity, but the ones that had plans to said, in confidence, that they now planned to be quiet. 

Military Parades

I was in a few of those when a dignitary came to the fort - a visiting general, a senator, even some foreign generals. Nothing really big, but still cool.

I never was gung-ho much then, but being in those parades, being a part of that patriotic pageantry, that show of might, discipline, and past glory is quite impossible to describe. But I'll do it anyway.

It's more than pride, more than patriotism; it's the honoring of the history, lives, families of all those that were willing to die for us, died for us, were wounded for us, sacrificed wealth, family, security, happiness for a lot of people they were connect to by values they shared in anonymity.

And I got to walk right there alongside of them, in the same steps, to the same cadence as if I had a right to.

There is a missing piece to those who think that kneeling is simply a quiet, peaceful protest. And it's OK with me if they are never able to experience these un-shared emotions of forged anger/pride and heat treated love/protection, because that kind of worthiness has to be earned. And if the piece is missing, it won't appear, and there is nowhere to store it.

It looks like there is going to be a big one. The big thrill, a dream of a lifetime would be to participate, but it would all come back to me if I could just be there.

Stock Market Corrections

Dow 11/08/2016 18,332

Dow 01/26/2018 26,392

A proper correction would be -2639 to 23,753

We need to get a total drop of 2639 to call this the long-overdue, needed, and very healthy correction (defined as a 10% drop) what it should be. It's the nature of markets to get overbought in a long term run up and the slack has to be removed before it can resume its upward trend.

Corrections are like cleaning the litter-box. They are dirty, messy, unpleasant, smelly, and required for household health.

I'm not predicting anything, just stating market theory based upon history.

Corrections are triggered by events - a bad earnings report by a bellwether, a major disaster, an assassination (sorry haters, not this time), or in this case a rise in the interest rates and a fear of a continued rise. This would make problems for servicing the nation debt, making it more expensive to grow businesses, drops in sales of things that require debt (cars, boats, houses, RVs and other big toys).

Plus, the guaranteed return of a 10 year treasury note is getting to look better than risking money in the stock market.

They tell you that market prices are based up the future earnings (and dividends) of a company. They even have formula to make predictions. Of course, if the experts were right, we could get very rich, very fast, but as is the case, more often than not, they have their heads up their asses.

here are very accurate formula that consider these variables plus a top of technical data. But the brunt of these have been dampened by regulatory brakes.

Market prices are based upon the perceived direction of the stock, or, in the case of the newer index options, the general direction of the market.

The Crumb Report - The Sunday Comics and the Joe Btfsplks

You can see the foreboding by the shoe appearing in the lower left-hand corner of the first panel of the comic strip. The impending appearance of a character that is compelled to destroy the impact of anything good.

A report of a pilot that safely lands a disabled plane saving hundreds of lives gets countered with a story about the pilot's weaknesses.

Relating how your vacation weather was seven days of beautiful warm sunshine is countered with the dangers of sun on the skin.

You know the guy, the Joe Btfsplks of the world that can't let a good report go uncountered by his chronic unhappiness. He will always be around coming up from time to time to try to bring you down into the hole that he's in.

Ignored clouds are gone before you know it.

Recreational Drugs is a Bad Idea

[A significant rewrite to a published 2012 post. - JK]

If you and your friends are sitting in the patio around the fire pit enjoying a joint as the burgers are sizzling in the gas grill, you probably don't understand why people think that the recreation use of drugs is dangerous.

To many, a number of ruined lives and deaths are acceptable so that you can choose your method of recreational intoxication.

I saw people die. I saw people who would die soon.

They say that it's not a gateway drug, a drug that gets you in the door to access and use other drugs. A drug that introduces you to other drugs. A drug that introduces you to other people who use and have access to harder drugs. A drug that removes the stigma of illegal drug use for an otherwise above ground person. A drug that limits your social connections to other people with similar interests. A drug, without which, you are less likely to die from the perils of addiction. No, it's not that.

On the other hand, 100% of those people I saw die, 100% of the hundreds deep into the risks and dangers of drug use that I knew, started out on marijuana and soon hit the harder stuff. Would that be a gateway? No, some experts tell me that it isn't a gateway because the rats' chemistry did not change. So I guess it's not.

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I saw people die.  This is about one of them.  Probably a good one.

Anne would come to my un-air conditioned upstairs apartment to sleep in safety.  She would show up about every five weeks or so when she could no longer stand the meth induced paranoia.

I don’t even know how it started or where we met.  For all I remember she just showed up one day, followed me home like a stray cat.  She never knocked. She would climb the stairs like an old woman, give me a nod as she stared at the floor, “Hi,” and then flop down on the twin bed cot in a side room by the large double-hung windows held open by a small paint-worn two-by-two that took the function of a long-time broken counterweight cord.  I would slide the curtain across the doorway and leave her alone.

I would come and go into what was a normal life in the crowd I was in with back then as she slept - usually off and on for about three days.  She may have eaten some, too - I never could remember if was her or me that messed up the kitchen.  If I was there when she got up, I would make sure she had some real food before she left.  Sometimes I would come home and she would be gone - no note, but the bedding was folded, dishes washed.

That was the extent of our relationship.

Thin with death-pale wooden skin and cheek bones showing, Anne cropped her dark black hair short.  She didn’t tell me where she was from, but a South Dakota accent is hard to affect.  I couldn't tell if she was pretty then, but I could tell she was pretty at some time in her life.

Every once in a while a glimmer of sophistication, upper class richness broke through from a spark in her eyes and an almost smile that could have been mistaken for a twitch in the corner of her mouth, but extinguished as fast as it came.  I could see it again as she walked down the stairs to leave - in another lifetime she had been taught to carry herself with confidence, privilege, and style.  There was a story in there that I never got to hear, maybe I was spared.

Anne belonged to a loosely knit group of speed freaks.  A very, very odd fringe of the already strange drug culture.  Little food, many cigarettes, no sleep for days created fear and conspiracy plots galore that fed on themselves and grew as the talk escalated.  Parked cars meant surveillance; a click on the phone was a tap;  crowds meant being tailed, strangers were not tolerated.  Trust outside the group was not tolerated either; trust inside the group was fragile, cautious, intermittent.

I came to a quiet thought on a stifling hot day while watching the wasps fly around the un-screened gap at the top of the window in the side room, that Anne hadn’t shown up for a long time.  I couldn’t get too worried about the unpredictable, but I couldn’t shake her out of my mind either.  A feeling like you get when that rounder tomcat you've been feeding doesn't show up the day after the temperature hits -10.

I remember my friend Jake tell me that he thought Anne and her mischief lived in a two-story clapboard house close to the center of town near the Italian Village Restaurant, but cautioned me never to go there:  “Those people are jumpy and afraid of their shadows.  You might as well poke a bumblebee nest.  They have weapons and the cops have no need of them, and they expect the same.”

I was over that way to buy a used text book and curiosity got the best of me. I went up to the porch that looked like what Jake described and got not just a little bit scared.  The faded blue wainscot with blistered and cracked paint was bulging down from the porch ceiling as though it was holding water, but that did not seem out of place for the times and the neighborhood. I knocked and a thin young man with face-gaunt of experience way beyond his years answered the door with a Camel unfiltered hanging from his lips.  A smoke stained hand was holding the screen door from losing its bottom hinge.  The lines of his face were accentuated by a heavy dark black three-day beard like empty winter trees define the mountain ridgelines.

He looked both ways down the street, checked for parked cars, then looked at me.  "I suspicion ya'll don't live in this neighborhood?" he questioned with a slight sign of cautious trust in his eye tempered with that southern instinct to be wary of an unchangeable human nature.  His eyes caught mine for a second then went past me, through me, like an uncompleted, compelling thought took over.

“Hi, I’m a friend of Anne’s and I wondered if she was OK.” I managed to say trying to look over his shoulder as he then moved to block my view.

“Ya'll ain't from this neighborhood, I can see. You Jim?” he answered back.  The vacant stare from a minute ago looked like it captured a ounce of trust.  His shoulders relaxed after he said my name.

“I’m Jim.”

“Come on in.  Smoke?  All I's got is Camels.  They's the only ones that keeps people from bummin' from me.  And they smoke good.  plus...”  he pointed to the baggie of well ground pot ubiquitous in places like these.

His country dialect and language struck a few matches.  Some of the country locals in Southern Illinois picked up the bias of the Chicago and other northern city students and took clear advantage of that to make fools of them.  Rather than use the standard Mid-Northern English they had learned to pass with when they had to, they would affect their own English to corroborate the city-thinking of them as unsophisticated and stupid.

With that stage set, negotiations would always fall to the locals' advantage.  Their "aw shucks" bumpkinisms allowed the unsuspecting to let their guards down, apply the safety, and return to the holster.

With my guard up and weapons ready (never learned where the safeties are), I continued with caution.

I pointed to the short pack of Camels, and seeing it half full said,"Thanks,” We went into the old kitchen and sat.  You could tell that the house came furnished, like the other student rentals on this end of downtown.  The stuff was expendable crap at the time - today mid-century modern priceless.  The inside was dark - the windows were curtained with multiple layers of those thin, patterned Indian sheets that were sold at the import shop where the hippies bought their brass ashtrays and knickknacks.

Surprising clean - no dirty dishes, no cluttered counters, the yellowing of the vinyl due to age, not dirt.  Contrary to some current Southern writers, meth addicts can get compulsively active.

“Anne spoke some about you.  You were kind to her - she trusted you.  You should feel special about that.  Those that hang around here see narcs and haints around every corner. Yeah, she about trusted nobody, but she never said where you lived.  We all appreciated the care she said you gave her and we never asked about you.

"Anne had Type 1 Diabetes and she spent times not taking her medicine shots.  She comaed for a month and died two weeks ago.  Her parents came down and took her back home.  It’s weird, Man, we don’t sleep much around here and there she was, in a coma.”

It was no use asking for his name.  Either it was one of those dumb monikers that hippie herds used, or some other fake name.  He smoked his Camel down to about 3/4 of an inch and stuffed it into a surprisingly dirty ashtray filled with angled cigarette butts and their ashes, and roaches that will add to the glow in a hookah bowl when money gets tight.

“The cops don’t even check these things out anymore.  They suspicioned we cleaned the house out before we called them.  They tested for dope in her system, but they know hit’s hopeless trying to bust anybody.  Sometimes I think they wished we would all end up like 'at - all dead, and stuff.  Take the worry and effort out of hit.

“Monk and French left after that.  I’m the only one left and the others don’t come around here anymore - speed freaks are nervous enough without they see dead people.”

“What was her last name?" I asked starting to put my guard down.

“Beats me, I ain't even sure her first name was Anne.  The cops found her parents somehow - you might want to check with them.  She started out in schoolin' for a degree down here.  Could be she has records.

“Be needin' some crank…?  For the studyin'…”  nodding to the used blue Norton Anthology of English Lit I just picked up.

I stood up to leave, put my smoke out. “No thanks.  Thanks for the smoke… and the info.”

"Here.  Hit's just some green and yellows, not electrified crystal.  Makes learnin' interesting.  Hit's the least I can do for your helpin' Anne and all."

"Alright.  Thanks."  The unlabeled prescription bottle ended up in my pocket.

The twenty minute walk back seemed short as I spent it thinking.  About the others that died or disappeared, the soon to die and the miracle survivors.  And I thought about God, Who surrounded me like a cloak.  Without authority, I spoke, "Not now. Maybe later.  I'm not ready."  My words had no range, no echo, stopped short a few feet away, like talking in a padded room.

I never went to the cops or the school and tried to forget about Anne and her friends.  I wouldn't have known what to say to her parents, if I found them.  And I looked like somebody they could easily blame for her death.  I know now what to say, but it's too late.

I think about her, now whenever I read about the marijuana stores popping up in the West.  I know I did not have the tools to do anything to save anybody from the lives and deaths they led, or prevented them from getting to that point of no return, and Anne was just one of many horrors I experienced in that dimension beyond sight and sound.

Suicides, faces scratched bloody from the quinine itch, skeleton bodies, weak bones, vacant eye sockets, insanity, family estrangement, and lots of hepatitis.  A Hieronymus Bosch world of pain, poverty, sadness. It's the room in No Exit, except you're alone.

It can't be explained how the adventure of marijuana use becomes tolerated by the psyche to a common place that makes the pursuit of greater drug adventures become risk-less. This rarely happens with alcohol - where you just get drunker and try a fruit flavored vodka.

Alcohol removes the fear of the danger to act; while marijuana, inhibiting the action, removes the fear of the adventure of the drug itself.  With sanity surviving a session of extremely powerful pot, the idea of something even stronger becomes less fearful. Once you enter the sad world of recreation drug use, you are then put into contact with people who offer you those adventures.

The same person that was right when he told you that all the bad hype about pot is wrong and trying pot is fun and harmless, is now saying the same things about meth, coke, pills, and other stuff.

The horrors that will escalate as a result of universal access to marijuana are far more terrifying than the horrors that we are experiencing as a result of the illegal drug trade.  And generally, the horrors of the illegal drug trade are earned by those who we could not care less about, while the horrors of drug progression are placed up the road for our kids, friends, and family.

Did Obama Say that Fox News Fans are from a Different Planet?

It's not that, as Obama says, "...we don't share a common baseline of facts."  It's that the interpretation of those facts as baked and sliced for us by experts differs.

For Example:

When Obama said "If you watch Fox News, you are living on a different planet than if you are listening to NPR."   In that sentence  (disregarding the verb disagreement) "watch[ing] Fox News" is equal to "listening to NPR" and those two phrases can be interchanged.

The same meaning can be applied to the sentence, "If you listen to NPR, you are living on a different planet than if you are watching Fox News."

Given the audience reaction to the original statement, the second one would have been preferable, due to the removal (or at least the delay) of the hate Fox opportunity the first one (unwittingly?) presented.

Another example of the equity balance of the sentence is "If you walk on Mars, you are living on another planet than if you are walking on Venus."  Totally interchangeable places.

If Obama wanted to take a swipe at Fox News, as has been reported, this comment fails to do so.  It places Fox directly opposite NPR in orbit around the interpretation of facts.

The misleading reporting of this simple statement of Obama's is a result of many aspects of the polarity of news narratives, positions, biases, and viewers. but these two are salient:

It is assumed that Obama was aiming at Fox News, because he has done that in the past, and it is generally accepted that Fox is conservative and NPR is liberal.  By extrapolating these opinions, to all phases of discourse between news outlets, the error becomes instinctive.

As somewhat poetic in its implications as a practical example of what it was actually saying, the experts would rather use this simple statement as cannon fodder for the mistaken belief that we are more divided that ever.