caucus99percent

free-range politics, organic community

War is nothing new, humans have used violent conflict to settle differences since the advent of bludgeons made from rocks and sticks. War, it's what we are, it's what we do. How much more evidence needs to be provided to prove that point? Stating mankind as civilized has been proven, time and time again, to be empty rhetoric. Are we really that far removed from the animal kingdom? Evidently not.

Has there ever been peace without first fighting a war? The concept of peace would be an abstract without the concept of war.

Peace works until cooperation breaks down and a tribe covets something that a neighboring tribe possesses. For early man it was arable land, now it's mostly for resources. That is the essence of empire and conquest.

It's a sad testament to our species, but there it is.

Vaccinations - Small Pox
I recently went down a rabbit hole I never expected. I was reading a bit on Quora, and came across an article about how, 250 years ago, 'a 52 year old Massachusetts doctor turned major general died screaming and blind in a tent on the Richelieu River, and the United States lost its best shot at making Canada the fourteenth state.' Hmm, interesting.

General John Thomas, a country physician from Kingston, Massachusetts died in that tent, of smallpox. His death, and the huge losses the army was suffering due to smallpox, led George Washington to have the entire Continental army inoculated, in secret, 8 months later.

Ok, so, ummm, I didn't know the history of smallpox, that there were inoculations before and during the Revolutionary War, and I didn't know about the difference between inoculations and vaccinations (which were developed in the late 1700s and early 1800s). Wanting to learn more led me further down the rabbit hole.

Inoculation or variolation (from the article on history.com)

Not that it matters to anybody, not even myself, but I mistook the Adventures of Donnie Fascist Pig Trump. I based my dismissal of the danger of Trump on the true life(?) stories of Jack Kennedy and Dick Nixon. Both were removed from office by sinister manipulation of reality. Jack was taken down by rifle fire and a bullshit story. Tricky Dick took it on the lamb after being framed for one of the few evil things that he did not actually do.

The pictures of Xi and Kim side by side during the state welcoming ceremony for Xi in Kim Il Sung Square in the traditional North Korean Baekdu bloodline style surprised me.

Good morning everyone.