Trumpanzees are the cultist followers of their eponymous Dear Leader. Six years after their excursion into assumed pseudoscience and self-destructive misinformation they still have visceral reactions to viruses. To them, the novel coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 is responsible for cheating their idol out of a political victory. In such a way they assisted the cynical aims of revanchist politicians in the United States' most conservative party. It was an application of Josef Goebbels' Big Lie. They would have us believe COVID was responsible for a massive fraud foisted on the Nation's population. They insisted that the pandemic was actually a hoax, that our guard dog health system was an ideological front to enslaved god-fearing capitalists, that public hygiene and sensible precautions were a kind of tyranny, and they insisted the vaccine to stop the plague was poison or worse!

So now hantavirus has shown its face and the studious Scientific ignorance of that ideological subpopulation cannot fathom the reality. Like wise with measles and whooping cough. As the COVID pandemic raged the MAGA faction exhibited some desperation in touting quack remedies for the alleged hoax killing humans in their millions. 

Pseudoscience so easily leads to quackery to explain what they miss. 

It is alarming how ugly the Conservative Party in the United States has become. The elections they lost have not settled for them, the still want revenge for their disappointments. Since the election of Barak Obama, and to a lesser extent the election of Bill Clinton, they have segued into full blown berserk mode; their politics and their luminaries are loathsome, their naked hatred is odious, their bigotry is embarrassing.

What is wrong with these people?

 Friend Philip 

So, this is an artifact of my first foray into the blogosphere, inspired by my desire to begin to explore the Multiverse. This blog was initiated for a Massively Online Open Course, an experiment in education that drew a good deal of interest. The original content on this first page is no more, as it is dreadfully dated and somewhat of a failure, as a machinima I wished to post was beyond my skillsets at the time. I entertain the notion I will post an abstract version of it later just because I need to practice that 'completeness' stuff.

♣♣♣

This portrait gathers all the main avatars I have developed on one of the virtual grids. You can guess which one, but there are quite a few out there. They are individual characters, with individual characteristics, through which I have been developing an alternate world which could possibly allow a universe for my writing designs. And they are just good clean fun!

A new MOOC: How to Teach Math. This is the first "internet artifact" assigned, and this post is mainly to provide a url for the above graphic. It is a concept map that contemplates the stumbling blocks to students having fair access to learning math. This is the first session of the course.

This is Socrates most controversial doctrine. He claimed that "No-one willingly does wrong." The first instinct is to deny it. But after consideration, provided there is nothing organically wrong with an individual, it is true. I submit no person decides to do something that will bring condemnation from friends, family and, even, strangers. Everything we do, even on the spur of the moment, has some rationale behind it, some kind of justification. Even the individual that thinks they might be on the edge of impropriety can accept their actions if they think no one will be harmed if they never learn of it.

There are many people we meet and hear of whose actions passeth all understanding; but I think, without excusing them for the consequences of their actions, we owe them at least a measure of compassion. Whether through ignorance, confusion or just plain stupidity, no thinking human wants to harm another for fun. There is no fun in it. The reason that many of us do the right thing is not, alas, because it is the right thing but because we want to avoid the punishment that will result later.

This is the basis for Mercy. The worse the wrong, the greater the actor will eventually pay, sometimes for the rest of their lives, with a misery that can never be washed away. Whatever short term punishment we can properly deliver will pale in a lifetime spoiled by a foolish act.

The most difficult problem comes with the pathological or the sociopath, the ones that have no way of knowing or caring for whatever wrong they do. Even worse, some of them delight in it. What should be done with such a one? Is it not cruel to confine them in solitary for the span of their lives? Should they be chemically or physically neutralized to stay alive but harm no others, rendered unaware of their surroundings? Would those remedies be no better, or worse, than putting them to death?

There are many friends that I once knew
Who felt the same special thing that I share with you
They've grown apart in different ways
I wonder if someone hears as I start to say
I'm Hoping love will last
I'm hoping love will last on and on
Why do I dream love's labour's lost
I'm just a face with a name that you soon forgot
But when I'm scared the most, the nightmare ends
Then safe and sound I awake in your arms again -
Hoping love will last
Yes I'm hoping love will last on and on
How can I go on alone when your love is all I've known
Sometimes we stay many miles away
You know you're here every minute throughout the day
Within my thoughts, so take good care
I only wait for the moments we both can share
Hoping love will last
Yes I'm hoping love will last on and on

---Steve Hackett