Dronery: the Microdrama

Aerial photo from a low-end drone showing "jello" distortion

Three years in prison and a total of $277,500 in fines and penalties. That's what I could receive if I flew my camera-equipped quadcopter without marking an official FAA (Federal Aviation Administration) number on it. And that's just federal heat. Texas has its own set of rules and consequences.

Welcome to the fun world of drone flying!

I wanted to get a drone to use as a flying camera. I'm not real interested in racing them or building my own. I just wanted a flying camera. In this case, I wanted to be open and legal about it. (Disclaimer: I don't necessarily urge other people to be open and legal. I have specific reasons.)

Besides the federal laws, Texas has its own set of drone rules, some of which sound pretty weird. It seems to be legal here to take pictures with a drone in a public space, but only if you use a non-"amplified" camera, and you don't fly more than eight feet above the ground.

That's weird, because in a public space, people occupy the first six feet or so of the available airspace. Maybe seven feet if you count hats and hairdos. That's not where you want to fly a drone, because people!

I haven't been strong enough yet to try to figure out what an "amplified" camera is, or why they're so dangerous.

Who Are You Going to Kill?

Photo courtesy U.S. Marines in Japan via Wikimedia Commons
 Photographer Dirck Halstead

I've been trying to avoid thinking too harshly about Americans who support Donald Trump for president. I think it's the worst choice this year, but I can kinda understand it.

But some of you, including your candidate, have been making noises like maybe you want to end the American system and replace it with something else. Some of you are talking about violent revolution if this election doesn't give you the results you want. That I fully understand, because by training and nature, I'm sensitive to threats to the republic.

Now I know some of you will disagree with my characterization. It's not about getting the results you want, you'll say. it's about fighting corruption. Or maybe you'll say that you don't want to tear down the American system, you just want to fix it. Whatever. This definitional dissonance doesn't relate to my question. My question is:

Who are you planning to kill?

To My Former Co-Partiers of the GOP

I quit being a Republican in 2012, although the process began long before that.  But when I was an active Republican in the 1990s, I had no problem defending the party's history and platform. I walked a lot of precincts and made a lot of phone calls for GOP candidates, because the party had something to offer. Now look at it.

Seriously, take a good look at it. But first, get past that reflexive deflection you've been conditioned by the conservative media to employ. In fact, try to get rid of all that conditioning you've willfully embraced. Accept, for at least a moment, the idea that maybe Rush Limbaugh has lied to you, or that Fox News doesn't always give you the whole story.

Seriously, Republicans. Take your brain out of the fucking closet and use it for a change. Act like a genuine conservative, a person who tries to preserve the good ideas of the past because preserving good ideas is good for society. You have to be empirical to be that kind of conservative. You have to be honest with yourself if nothing else.

For the love of America, stop and think about what's going on!

Sympathy for the [Hillary] Devil

Image courtesy C-Span.org via Wikimedia Commons

The 2016 presidential campaign has already led me to one decision that cuts deeply across my political grain. If the election was today, I'd vote for Hillary Clinton. I think she's an awful choice, but when the alternative is a mealy-mouthed, shit-talking salesman, she's the least awful choice.

But I can at least hold on to my dislike for all things Clinton, right? I can still nurture the distrust I've developed for that family ever since the last time I voted for one of them, which was for Bill's second term as the governor of Arkansas, can't I?

Apparently not.

The Myth of White Male Privilege

Kentucky coal miner. Image source: National Archives and Records Administration

One thing I hear a lot from people in the social justice movement is a demand that straight white men like me both acknowledge and check our privilege. These demands are based on bad thinking.

The first problem with this thinking is that (get ready for it SJWs) it enforces a socially constructed privilege binary that doesn't reflect reality. It says that there are only two conditions that a person can occupy in American society. You are either oppressed, or you're privileged. There's no middle ground for people who go through life without suffering any special oppression or enjoying any special privilege. It's one or the other.

It Berns, But Not in a Good Way

Is Bernie Sanders my best choice?

I sat out the 2008 election. I couldn't bring myself to vote for either McCain or Obama. The 2012 election wasn't that bad. Obama had turned out not to be the socialist destroyer some people thought he was, and Romney was a classic example of a rich dickhead. Voting against Romney wasn't hard to do.

Now I'm feeling like sitting out again. The GOP has built itself into a party-first marketing organization that doesn't practice any of the principles it claims to champion. Hillary Clinton is a packaged, scripted politician who waits for others to clear the road before she jumps in front and pretends to be leading. As for Sanders, I kind of like the guy, but he seems like the classic problematic progressive. He thinks that having good ideas and good intentions is enough, but it's not.

Fuck the Revolutionaries

America's a drama queen nation that likes to dress up and play make-believe. A couple of sociopolitical movements highlight the problem.

Tea Partiers and Social Justice Warriors Are the Same People
One of America's drama-queen movements is the Tea Party. They like to see themselves as revolutionaries. They dress up in revolutionary costumes and chant revolutionary slogans, and they seem to consider themselves to be a group of noble people ready to fight to the death to support the most noble causes.

Another drama-queen movement consists of social justice warriors. They also like to see themselves as revolutionaries. They have a different costume aesthetic than the Tea Party, but they still love a good costume, and they have their own revolutionary language and slogans. Of course, they too think they're a group of noble people ready to fight to the death to support the most noble causes.

Naked Swamp Run

Virginia Swamp, Matthew Brady photograph courtesy of the US National Archives

I left the Marine Corps in 1981. My dreams of making it a career had been shattered by the low morale and general malaise of that service in the years following the Vietnam war. Even worse, nobody would let us kill communists in an effective and organized fashion, and if you can't kill communists, what's the point of being a Marine?

Back home in Arkansas, things weren't so good. The economy was in the toilet, so jobs were scarce. Even the electronics training I had received in the Marines didn't help, because I had learned to repair equipment that was thirty years behind the state of the art. I eventually ended up living in a ratty trailer at the back edge of a swamp, one that looked a lot like the photograph above, scraping by on odd jobs and foraged food.

Still, scrounging acorns and hickory nuts was better than scrounging out of trash cans at a rest area. Trust me on this...

One cold, drizzly November afternoon, I was having some kind of identity crisis. Who exactly was I? I knew myself as the kid I had been a few years before. I knew myself as the Marine I had become. But I wasn't sure who I was that particular afternoon, and I had no clue who I wanted to be. The more I thought about it, the more important it became for me to answer the question until finally I couldn't take it any more.

Greg Abbott, the Anti-Conservative

Texas governor Greg Abbott has released a plan calling for nine Constitutional amendments. This plan highlights so much of what's wrong with what passes for conservatism in America today.

Abbott's Plan to Change the Constitution: Restoring the Rule of Law

Let's go over three of the problems that are killing American conservatism: the denial, the radical vision, and the hypocrisy.