Self-Censoring

August 15, 2026 — Pat Bertram

I’ve been sitting here for a while, trying to figure out what — if any — of the many thoughts and worries going through my mind I want to write about, or if I should keep them to myself.

I hadn’t realized how much I censor myself, both in speech and in blogging, but I do it. A lot. There are too many triggering topics where a single remark or a simple question gets the full hate treatment. If you don’t believe what a certain group wants you to believe and dare to say so, it seems to unleash the beast that people try to hide offline. Or maybe they don’t hide it offline. Maybe, because I spend so much time alone in my little corner of the world, I’m just not seeing it. It does seem, though, that people are too willing to accuse others of hate speech, racism, fascist, or whateveraphobia. (At least one of those “phobias” is a realistic fear and shouldn’t glean the hate that it does, but still, in this political activist climate, you’re only allowed to say what is “approved.”) To those people, there is no rationale for a different belief. It’s all emotion, all the time.

Luckily, I don’t get a lot of that blowback, but that’s mostly because I tend to stay in the middle where I open myself to getting bashed from both sides.

I could still write about my concerns, of course, but the unpalatable truth is, although I like getting comments, I don’t always want to know what other people think about what I think about if they disagree with me, especially when it comes to certain hot subjects. Like “gender-affirming care” for minors. I’ve already been shot down more than I care to be over that one. And even merely asking questions of adults who have transitioned has left me with fewer friends. And when it comes to transwomen in women spaces, there again, I have questions that bring me no answers but accusations of cruelty, since the transwoman I know still prefers women. (Something no one talks about, and no wonder, if everyone gets shot down for simply asking a question.)

There are also people I admire, but since I know too many people who hate them, there’s really no point in trying to explain the good I see because . . . well, just because.

And then there’s all the truly insane political stuff — people who hate this country are being elected to various offices. How is that even possible? But oops. I shouldn’t have mentioned that. Just the question itself earns a person one of those whateveraphobia slurs.

The way I used to deal with uncomfortable issues was to write about them, but nowadays I need to be careful what I say, not just because the internet is forever but because I’m a lot more sensitive to censure than I like to admit.

So here I sit, rejecting one topic after another as I try to figure out what to blog about today.

I guess the answer is I’ll just post this discussion I’m having with myself about whether or not to continue self-censoring.

The answer, apparently, is yes, I will continue to try to keep my mouth closed and my fingers off the computer keys when it comes to certain topics.

Besides, there are enough opinions floating around; the world doesn’t need mine, too.

[What’s truly amazing about this post — to me, anyway — is that exactly ten years ago today, I posted an Open Letter to Blog Readers where I said that this was my blog, “If you are upset by anything I say, remember, this is not necessarily about your truth. . . . It’s about my truth and I cannot sort out my truth if I don’t mention the things that trigger a spate of emotionalism.” Apparently, things have changed so much in the world, or perhaps just in me, that I’m not comfortable talking about my truth. Though truly, in a lot of cases, I have no truth, just a lot of questions that seem to prove to people that I am not on the right side of the issues today. Well, I do tend to point out hypocrisy and irony, but that’s to be expected when there is so much of it going on, where they want us to believe things that are not true and to believe things that once were touted as good but are considered evil now that a different group is running things.] 

***

Pat Bertram is the author of Grief: The Inside Story – A Guide to Surviving the Loss of a Loved One

Posted in being me, blogging, history/myth, internet, life. Tags: , , , , , . 4 Comments »

Satisfying the Unsatisfied

August 6, 2026 — Pat Bertram

A recent poll shows that the biggest demographic supporting socialism and communism in the United States are not the “workers” that those communist mayors and politicians are pretending to support but young, college-educated liberal women who have discovered that their expensive degree is totally worthless, and that they are not earning what they think they should be.

Something struck me when I read that: it seems as if the expensive liberal colleges give students an unrealistic idea of how the world works, not just because of their conditioning, but mostly because they were living an extremely wealthy lifestyle: able to do what they want, buy what they want, play around with the courses they want, and all with minimal supervision. And then after graduation reality hits. They don’t get to keep up that lifestyle. Not only is the bill coming due for the loan, but a degree doesn’t get them anything more than an entry level position with an entry level salary with a boss who gets to tell them what to do.

That’s the way it’s always worked — you start out at the bottom and work your way up (unless, of course, you have an inside track). You also have to work, to show up, to put in the hours.

That expensive education also left them with an unrealistic view of the toll communism and socialism has always taken. Some of the members of the so-called democratic socialists have pledged themselves to China. Doesn’t anyone learn history anymore? Multiple millions died in China from starvation because of stupid decrees and because of executions during the cultural revolution and before. And currently there are all sorts of human right abuses. And this is what they support? And want to import? As if we don’t have enough problems.

Another weird thing about this push toward communism is the resurgence of that old “seize the means of production” fallacy. First of all, people who spouted that nonsense have generally been wealthy (you can see that even in the people being elected today — rich folk who never held a job trying to run a major city). So they take over production — then what? How are they going to run businesses when they can’t even run a city?

What might have worked a hundred and fifty years ago, when the population was much smaller, could never work today. (World population in 1900 was 1.6 billion, today it’s 8.3 billion.) Local industry was common back then, so the business might have been easier to take over, but today? How would that even be possible, considering how little of anything is made in the United States? And the companies that are here creating jobs, are often owned by other countries. They would simply pull out. And then there’s the stock market. That’s not local. People all over the world own stocks in major global corporations. They’re not about to let some penny-ante mayor take over their investment. And what about all the retirement funds invested in these companies? Suddenly, they’d all go broke, and then what happens?

I suppose this whole “wealth tax” that’s being touted here in the USA (while it’s being quietly rolled back in every country that has already tried it) could be their idea of seizing the means of production, but still, people in the United States today are not stuck in a tiny village where they have no say. Even if their voice is silenced or their vote ignored, they can move. No one is going to stick around and let what they have worked a lifetime for be taken away by the overeducated who feel underpaid.

Let’s pretend for a minute that they can seize the means of production — who’s going to run everything? The politicians who can’t run what they’re supposed to be running now? Those overeducated twits who feel so put upon? The CEOs and company managers who are currently in charge? No one would accept that kind of pressure if they’re not getting paid any more than the lowest worker, so they’d simply stop doing any work. The workers would, too, because why should they do any more than anyone else — so what you end up with is a competition to the bottom, not to the top.

And so, the world collapses. And why? Because some people think they deserve more than they got, and so other people need to give up what they have simply to satisfy the unsatisfied. The problem is, unsatisfied folk are never satisfied, and so they demand more.

How would that end? I have no idea. I just hope I never have to find out.

***

Pat Bertram is the author of Grief: The Inside Story – A Guide to Surviving the Loss of a Loved One

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Biased Behavior

August 5, 2026 — Pat Bertram

What happened to justice being blind? What happened to impartiality? When did bias become the main criteria in judging cases or reporting news? And isn’t “activist judge” an oxymoron?

Biased behavior, and the acceptance of it, seems blatantly . . . well, biased. There was a time when news people strived for at least the appearance of impartiality, when judges supposedly heard cases based solely on the law and the facts, not wealth, race, power, their own political aspiration, or any other prejudice a judge might have. Nowadays, it seems, things have been turned upside down. For example, a judge released a repeat offender who was here illegally because she claimed she couldn’t know his motivation. Who cares? A courtroom is not a whydunit. The guy assaulted people and had been arrested multiple times. That was proven. End of story. But the judge let him go, anyway, and he assaulted another woman. Other judges have let people go, even conspired in their release, simply because they were here illegally. Apparently, too many judges feel bad for people here illegally, and so they forgive even the most unforgivable crimes. For every criminal who’s on the deportation list, it seems there’s a judge who wants to keep him here.

But what about the victims? Shouldn’t the victims count, too?

Apparently not.

Yep. Justice.

And then there are the all the judges supposedly arguing on the constitutionality of various edicts, but instead, “activist judges” use their rulings to promote their own agendas. Appointed judges have way too much power, even over those who have been elected to positions of power.

You don’t hear a lot about obstructionist District Attorneys or how they wield their immense power, but too many refuse to prosecute minor and not-so minor cases. It used to be that shoplifting was a punishable crime, but then the cap was raised to $1,000 — anything less wasn’t worth the court’s time. And now the cap is nonexistent. People are allowed to loot stores without any consequences except that the store goes out of business. (And suits are brought against the store owner for daring to leave the area.) This disinclination to charge criminals extends way beyond shoplifting and into major cases such as assault, which is why so many people with huge numbers of arrests are never brought to trial let alone convicted.

When the offender is seen as the victim, when legal citizens have less rights than those here illegally, when “justice” is really injustice, when a judge’s ruling is obstruction for the sake of obstruction, when “news” so biased that it becomes propaganda, where do we go from here?

I don’t normally feel old. I’m just . . . whatever I am. But writing this, wondering all this, makes me realize that perhaps my time has passed. Growing numbers of people seem satisfied with overthrowing the truth, the law — and not incidentally, the constitution — and letting chaos rule.

Is that really the world they want to live in? Or are they so biased that they’ve become blinded to the truth?

***

Pat Bertram is the author of Grief: The Inside Story – A Guide to Surviving the Loss of a Loved One

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A Brief History of Election Fraud

August 2, 2026 — Pat Bertram

The claim of no election fraud in the USA would be laughable if it weren’t so . . . fraudulent. I don’t know if people who say the elections are secure are truly ignorant, naïve, being ingenuous, or flat out lying, but election theft has been part of our heritage from the very beginning. Remember Tammany Hall? Probably not, if you’re one of those generations who were never taught history, but Tammany Hall was a Democratic political machine in New York in the 1800s that kept one hand in the till and the other hand on the voting lever. They bribed and intimidated their way into power, controlled city contracts, embezzled millions from the taxpayers, traded favors and jobs to immigrants for votes, turned in ballots for dead people, and “miscounted” votes.

In 1946, in what is known as the Battle of Athens in Tennessee, returning veterans fought an actual gun battle to prevent Democrat candidates from committing voter fraud.

Lyndon Johnson apparently stole his Texas Senate seat in 1948 with a late ballot drop of over 200 votes. The theft was so egregious that it was pursued all the way to the supreme court, but the court, for some unknown reason, declined to hear the case.

The Kennedys stole the 1960 election. Well, Joe Kennedy did, anyway, by manipulating (buying?) the Illinois vote. (He wasn’t exactly a sterling character; he made a fortune by aggressively exploiting weaknesses in the stock market. Because he knew the system so well, FDR appointed him to clean up the stock market and to get rid of all the practices that made him so rich.) Nixon wanted to challenge the vote and fight for the presidency, but his handler, the Bush patriarch — yes, those Bushes — told him to back off and that he’d get his turn. (Remember at the end when Nixon said that they wouldn’t have him to push around anymore? He didn’t mean the electorate. He meant the Bushes.)

In 1982, a grand jury found that in Chicago alone, there had been 100,000 fraudulent ballots. Some people were even convicted.

Voter fraud has been widespread in Colorado for a couple of decades at least, though these fraudsters are more discreet about it — no late-night drops of exactly 35,000 votes. No major changes to the big cities that might have more oversight. Instead, as they have bragged to researchers, they tweak the ballots in the smaller areas where a few votes here and a few there make a huge difference. In fact, one guy bragged that he knew the names of thousands of dead people in Colorado, and he could get them to vote when necessary. (If you ever wonder how Colorado, one of the most middle-of-the-road states, became rampantly leftist with only 25% of the electorate registered as Democrat, that’s how it happened. If you’re also wondering why they went after Tina Peters so hard, this is it — they needed to make an example of her so they could keep their scam going.)

Even worse, what voters vote for don’t always stay the course. Many years ago, Colorado tried to pass a bill that gave gays preferential treatment, sort of a DEI before DEI. Colorado voters voted it down, but Barbara Streisand and her ilk decided it was anti-gay, though it wasn’t. She made a huge national stink, and suddenly, the whole thing disappeared. I never did understand that — the government of Colorado overriding the votes of its citizens to pacify an aged celebrity who didn’t even live in the state. But they did it.

So, safe and secure elections. Right. If you believe that I have a bridge to sell you.

Until the elections of the past decade, it didn’t matter who won anyway, because Democrats and Republicans have almost always been two sides of the same coin, both betting that coin against the taxpayer. If you doubt my word, ask yourself why so many of the politicians supposedly representing us refuse to pass legislation that the majority of citizens in both parties want and need. You probably won’t like the answer.

***

Pat Bertram is the author of Grief: The Inside Story – A Guide to Surviving the Loss of a Loved One

Posted in history/myth, life. Tags: , , , , , , . 15 Comments »

No Feeling of Vindication

August 1, 2026 — Pat Bertram

I’ve been sitting here mechanically playing a game of solitaire and letting my mind make sense of what is going on with the Covid hearings without any input from my emotions or a mental push from my conscious mind.

It’s odd — I don’t feel any vindication at having known exactly what was going on back then. Hints of the “conspiracy” were running through threads of pandemic panic, and since those same conspiracies (not theories, real conspiracies) have always been in the background of any biological or chemical weapon development (especially since such research has been banned for decades), it was apparent to me what was happening. I also had the advantage of the years of research that formed the back story of my novel A Spark of Heavenly Fire, in addition to a well-developed sense of pattern recognition. (I originally wrote “over-developed,” which leads to a tendency to draw connections among events that might not have anything to do with one another, but in this case, I was right on target.)

More importantly, for me, I didn’t have anyone telling me I couldn’t see a grandbaby unless I got the shots, or any other such personal coercion, so I was able to deal with that whole horror on my own terms. As to why I never wrote about my suspicions back then — it was due to a rather feebly developed sense of self-preservation. (I say “feebly” because it’s obvious from some of my more recent politically leaning posts that the thin veneer of self-preservation is wearing off.) They scared me with all that talk of arresting people who didn’t have a certificate of vaccination, and apps to track people or to turn in people you knew who didn’t comply. Too much like the “big brother” in 1984, who turned out to be one’s fellow citizens. And they were silencing anyone — even doctors and nurses — who told a different story, and some of those people are still paying the price for telling the truth. So I kept my mouth shut, both online and off. Not that it would have mattered — no one cared what I thought.

I mostly feel sad for all the people who got caught up in the megalomania of this man and who were forever damaged by his policies. But despite what we are hearing about his diary, a betrayal of such enormity never comes from a single bureaucrat. He needed backers, protectors, accomplices, media people to keep the fear escalating, lawmakers to force into law edicts that people would otherwise not have gone along with, governments to coerce people into compliance, gatekeepers to cover up the truth, governors to create unnecessary mandates, and everyone to tout “the science” and ridicule the non-believers. If you’re wondering why he’s taking the fifth despite being pardoned for his crimes (and even though “taking the fifth doesn’t hold in such a case like this because he’s already protected), it’s that if he lists names, he’s a dead man. Literally. I have no doubt names of consequence are hiding behind his silence, but although I can guess at some, other names are lost in the utterly secret roster of the global elite that has always wanted to destroy this country (and now, apparently, most of the world, too). He was the face of the pandemic, and now he’s the sacrificial goat. Everyone else who was complicit will simply go on with their lives as if they don’t have blood on their hands.

I doubt I would have paid much attention to what is coming out in the hearings, even with his thunderous silence, but there’s so much else coming out now, things that have been kept secret for generations, things I’ve known from my research without knowing a lot of the specific details. And the details are appalling. And appallingly sad. The huge amounts of money — trainloads — that are moved out of the treasury with no accountability. The utterly corrupt career politicians. The creeping communism. The activist groups that keep free speech for themselves but gag everyone else for disagreeing. Proof that outside operators have almost always interfered with our government, paying off those who are supposed to be on our side.

All this might be shocking to people who are hearing about it for the first time (if, in fact, they are hearing about it since the alphabet media are generally silent on anything that doesn’t fit their leftist narrative), but it’s not shocking to me.

I do feel sad for myself, though in a more general way. A lifetime of trying to peek behind the scenes to get glimpses of the truth has led to . . . nothing, really. Well, it did lead me safely through the pandemic where, despite my fears (and, oh they were so good at playing on our fears!), I was able to stick to my convictions. But other than that?

Just sadness.

***

Pat Bertram is the author of Grief: The Inside Story – A Guide to Surviving the Loss of a Loved One

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The Joke’s on Us

July 31, 2026 — Pat Bertram

Sometimes I wonder if we are the victims of some sort of practical joke, as if those who are running things are giggling up their sleeves at how gullible we are. At the last minute, they will yell, “surprise!” And then they will triumphantly tell us that the Democratic frontrunners for the 2028 presidential election are all a joke and that someone really great is hiding behind the scenes.

Or they will tell us that the billions upon billions of dollars that have been stolen by fraudsters was all a minor misunderstanding, and that there’s nothing going on. It’s all in fun, you see.

Or they will tell us that they knew all along that those thousands of criminals with multiple charges let out on a cash-free bond (or simply not charged) would commit another crime, but so what? Apparently, we’re all spoilsports who can’t take a joke.

Or they will tell us that the push for Americans to cheer the Islamists as they spread terror throughout the world was simply their way of gigging us, and that of course no one supports them, especially not all the woke folk who would be immediately beheaded or thrown off a building if they brought their pride parade to that murderous regime.

Or they would tell us that the push for Communism in the United States isn’t really happening. That they just want everyone to be kind and to “share,” as if that forced sharing isn’t merely theft from the workers (who they profess to support) and given to those who don’t contribute anything.

Or maybe they would admit that just for fun, they turned everything around, that the so-called aggressors they wanted everyone to hate were really the victims merely trying to defend themselves.

Or maybe they are laughing themselves silly at the tragic irony of all those American-hating Muslims living in the vicinity of the greatest terrorist attack on the United States. And laughing themselves even sillier at all the mayors and other petty politicians who think they are world leaders.

Yeah, right. We might all be being duped, but unfortunately, it isn’t some sort of practical joke. Though maybe it is — I had to laugh at a video of people protesting the mayor of New York, and the speech-to-text program translated their yells as “Remove my dummy.” Unfortunately, he might be a lot of things, though I doubt he’s a dummy.

I’m lucky — none of that is visible from my yard, so if I turn off my computer, and go outside, those “jokes” becomes less real. What is real in my yard is no joke — plants struggling to survive in the heat, but so far, so good.

***

Pat Bertram is the author of Grief: The Inside Story – A Guide to Surviving the Loss of a Loved One

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White Supremacy Culture?

July 22, 2026 — Pat Bertram

I read something yesterday that so shocked me, I’ve spent the past hour backtracking my digital footprints to make sure that what I thought I read was actually what I read. And it is.

So, the House Oversight Committee is questioning the Smithsonian bias, especially the exhibits in the National Museum of American History, which apparently is following through with the leftist agenda of emphasizing the country’s historical oppression and wickedness rather than anything patriotic.

I understand that the oppression is part of the back story, but it isn’t the entire story. Nor do past oppressions define where we are today. This is like people judging me by what my great-grandfather did. He apparently had two wives, though not at the same time, at least I don’t think he did. One he threw down the stairs, the other he locked away in an insane asylum. He was also a scientist of note, working with Edison and others of that ilk. So what does any of that say about me and my family today? Nothing. Absolutely nothing.

Still, the museum’s emphasis on framing history as oppressors/oppressed is typical of what is going on today, so that didn’t shock me. What did is something that came out during the hearing. Apparently, the Smithsonian uses something called a Mass Action Toolkit (MASS = Museum as Site for Social Action) to ensure that the museum promotes equity, inclusion, and anti-oppression and that it focuses on transforming society, which quite frankly, should not be the museum’s mission, especially one predominately funded by taxpayer money. (Hence the hearing.)

And even that isn’t shocking. The whole world, it seems, wants to be able to do what they want on the taxpayer’s dime.

So, the shocking part: the Smithsonian’s Mass Action Toolkit lists politeness, objectivity, individualism, linear thinking, planning for the future, avoiding conflicts, managing time, protecting property, a sense of urgency, and worship of the written word as characteristics of white supremacy culture.

What??? Politeness? Objectivity? Individualism? Linear thinking? Planning for the future? Being on time? Those are characteristics of white supremacy? No. No. No. They are characteristics of a civilized person, someone who strives to be decent and who treats others as they want to be treated. Those aren’t white things, nor are they bad things. Those should be characteristics for everyone to strive for. As for “a sense of urgency.” I have no idea what that means, nor do I know why the written word is a problem, unless it’s because too many people don’t know how to read.

Who makes up this stuff? Who believes it? And what is anyone supposed to do about it? Start being rude? Learn how not to read? Give up our individualism and follow the crowd even if it’s leading us off a political cliff? Become as biased as those who are aligned against anything that might be considered white culture? And what the heck is “white supremacy culture,” anyway? Just being white? Just existing?

Even writing this, I find the whole thing shocking and disturbing and unbelievable, but apparently, this nonsense is being sold as truth.

I’m going out to work in my garden. That, at least, makes sense to me.

***

Pat Bertram is the author of Grief: The Inside Story – A Guide to Surviving the Loss of a Loved One

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Time Eating App

July 21, 2026 — Pat Bertram
Daily writing prompt
What app eats up most of your screen time — and do you even feel bad about it?
View all responses

I had to look up “app” since I wasn’t sure which, if any, of the sites I pay attention to are apps or just websites. While WordPress, does have an app, which I used back in my traveling days, I only use the online website to write, edit, post, and respond to comments. Other than that, there is a hidden object game I play, and apparently, it’s considered an app. I don’t feel bad about playing the game. I used to play a lot, even spent money on game tokens, but I don’t play as much as I used to and don’t spend any money, so I’m okay with whatever I feel like doing. Besides, it’s something interesting to do, gives me a feeling of connection to a few people, and helps keep my focus narrow and away from the world at large.

Which brings me to my other main app. X is considered an app, not a website, at least according to Google AI, so who knows the truth of it. (Google AI is not only terribly biased but I have found it dead wrong on many occasions. As the saying goes, “Garbage in, garbage out.)

The only reason I pay any attention to X once I stopped promoting my books (which, come to think of it was way before Twitter became X), is that a news aggregator I follow is on there. I found him on Facebook originally, but FB has had some issues with the videos the aggregator posts, and considering my own Facebook issues, I followed him over to X.

I don’t feel bad about paying attention to his posts because I like his summaries and commentaries of the videos I don’t have the patience to watch. There is a lot going on in the world today that I am interested in, mostly because the USA is trying to undo generations of globalist control of the country — something I’d been studying for decades. I thought the control was a foregone conclusion, so it’s been great to see the push back. Considering the stakes and how much of the backstory I know and considering how unbelievable the whole thing is (both the long-term, word-wide conspiracy — not a theory, a real conspiracy — as well as what is happening to undo some of that) it’s as if I’m reading a thriller in real time, not just seeing history repeating itself.

JFK also tried to take on the outside controllers of this country. Two and a half years before he was assassinated, he was irate at having been lied to by his own intelligence agencies, and he said, on April 27, 1961, “We are opposed around the world by a monolithic and ruthless conspiracy that relies primarily on covert means for expanding its sphere of influence — on infiltration instead of invasion, on subversion instead of elections, on intimidation instead of free choice. . . . Its preparations are concealed, not published. Its mistakes are buried, not headlined. Its dissenters are silenced, not praised. No expenditure is questioned, no rumor is printed, no secret is revealed.”

A hundred years before that, Lincoln lamented that he was fighting two wars, the one in front of him and the one behind. The one in front was his attempt to keep the union together so they could together fight the one behind — the globalists who were already trying to take over the USA through control of its money, as they had from the very beginning. And after all that, in 1913 the USA ceded control of its money anyway.

So, it’s been interesting watching new players in this ancient fight, though I do pray for the people of this administration since those who previously fought this same battle were killed or had their reputations destroyed. It’s a harrowing time, more than most people know.

Eventually, I will have to give up paying attention. For every step the USA moves away from the controllers, the controllers (via the leftists, domestic terrorists, the one-sided media, the money people, to name a few in addition to global forces) pull us two steps back, which isn’t exactly good for my peace of mind since there’s nothing I can do about it anyway.

For now, I don’t feel bad about this expenditure of my screen time because it gives me a modicum of hope, but if the battle is ever lost for good, I will turn off the outside world and go back to paying attention only to what is my immediate vicinity as I did for most of my life.

***

Pat Bertram is the author of Grief: The Inside Story – A Guide to Surviving the Loss of a Loved One

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Singing Our Laws

July 18, 2026 — Pat Bertram

People have often used songs and rhymes as memory aids. In fact, I still have to run through that ditty we learned in grade school when I need to know how many days in a month. You know the one:

Thirty days hath September,
April, June, and November,
All the rest have thirty-one,
Save February at twenty-eight,
But leap year, coming once in four,
February then has one day more.

To be honest, I only remember the first four lines; I had to look up the mnemonic to find out the last lines because I never need them. I know how many days February has.

A memory song we learned was the alphabet song, though again, I don’t need to ever sing it (and the world thanks me for that small favor) because I do know the alphabet.

Something I didn’t know until just now when I read it, was that in a lot of previous societies, laws were written in verse so that they could be sung in public places to inform people of the rules, and also so that they could be handed down the generations without the usual tendency of people to unwittingly change what they heard.

This made me smile, thinking about doing such a thing today. Can you imagine? We are long past the days of Moses’ 10 laws and Hammurabi’s 282. In fact, we have so many laws, they are uncountable beyond a guess that they are in the many millions, which makes sense when you consider that the Federal government, state governments, and some city governments all have dedicated legislative branches that do nothing but make up laws to pass. Often, those laws become obsolete, such as any laws pertaining to horses and buggies, though they are seldom removed from the books. More frequently, laws are piled one on top the other, though the first law, if upheld, would do the job. Such as insider trading. There are laws against insider trading, but apparently, Congress excused themselves from those laws (how, I don’t know), so now, if they really want to ban insider trading, they have to create new laws to ban something that is already banned. In addition to laws (or under the heading of law might be a better phrasing), there are millions of statutes and regulations. And any ruling by a judge in a trial becomes law if only by precedent.

So, all those laws now extant in the United States. How long to you think it would take to sing that song? Decades? And if they were all etched in stone like Hammurabi’s code, how many times would the necessary stone tablets encircle the earth?

Enquiring minds are simply . . . enquiring.

***

Pat Bertram is the author of Grief: The Inside Story – A Guide to Surviving the Loss of a Loved One

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Technology in 2046

July 16, 2026 — Pat Bertram
Daily writing prompt
What’s a piece of technology you’re convinced will exist in 20 years?
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I’m not convinced anything will exist in twenty years. In fact, I truly doubt I will exist in twenty years, so it won’t matter to me what, if any, technology will exist at that time. Chances are, technology will progress as it always has, with artificial intelligence becoming more and more prevalent and changing human lives in ways we can’t even imagine. Of course we can’t imagine — the changes will be coming from non-human intelligence, something so alien that it certainly doesn’t care about anything human. Any pretense at human emotion emanating from those ones and zeros will be just that — pretense.

Besides, we have no idea, really, when and if a cosmic catastrophe will happen. Over the billions of years the earth has existed, there have been many such events, events that seem to have changed the earth’s environment almost overnight. We all know of such events — the dinosaur extinction and the wooly mammoth extinction, to name two. The prevalence of flood myths, of the world standing still, of night becoming day all seem to reference other extinction events.

The truth is, despite all our vaunted science expertise, we really don’t have that much knowledge about how the sun — or any other cosmic body — affected the earth over those billions of years. Our human history is such a tiny fraction of the earth’s history. We live in a rather temperate and stable time, when we think the way the world is today is the way it always was and always will be. What else explains the prevalence of mobile home parks being set up in tornado alleys, towns being constructed on flood plains, and people building cabins in fire zones? When terrible things happen to people in these areas, it’s always a shock, though it shouldn’t be. What is, wasn’t always. A dry flood plain today wasn’t always dry, and it’s still subject to rare and not-so-rare floods.

And if the cosmos weren’t enough of an inimical neighborhood, we have the political situation, too. Here in this country, it used to be the goals were the same, the differences in political parties were due to differences in the means of achieving those goals. Now the goals are so widely divergent they hardly seem to be describing the same country. Most people want us to remain a constitutional republic, but a growing vocal and volatile group wants to tear the whole thing down, get rid of the constitution, the government, the entire criminal justice system, and let chaos and poverty take over. (Which I don’t understand. What do these people think is going to happen to them when they have destroyed this country? They will be living here, too. Or are they so stupid as to they think they will be the ones running things? Or so brainwashed as to believe the country will suddenly become a utopia with no crime and Kumbaya everywhere?)

Some people believe we’re headed toward a civil war. Others think we’re heading toward a world war, complete with nuclear weapons going off everywhere.

I don’t want to believe either of those scenarios, just as I don’t want to believe in a major cosmic event, but what I’ve learned during my many years is that the world does not run on my beliefs. If it did run on my beliefs, we would be living in a utopia because everyone would be spending a lot of time at home, working in a garden, reading, or writing rather tame blogs without a lot of emotion, and certainly no rage or outrage. Just kindness and smiles for everyone — well, almost everyone.

Still, let’s assume there are no major upheavals, civil or cosmic, and in twenty years, the world is more or less continuing on the same road to total technology as it is today. I still wouldn’t have an answer to the question because I’m not convinced of much of anything, though I’m pretty sure technology will have outpaced my need for it. To be honest, it already has.

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Pat Bertram is the author of Grief: The Inside Story – A Guide to Surviving the Loss of a Loved One

Posted in being me, history/myth, internet, life, writing. Tags: , , , , , , , , , . 6 Comments »
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