Politics and Science

            Ukraine fights Russia, not just for itself, but for the preservation of political and economic freedom everywhere. Sometimes after a country has an increase in democracy, and then later there may be democratic backsliding. For example, this is what has happened in Russia after the dissolution of the Soviet Union. Today in Russia, dissidents and protestors are arrested, discredited, or silenced. Barriers creating checks and balances between branches of government are removed.             Both democracy and capitalism require the rule of law, and the rule of law requires justice. Without justice, democracy and capitalism may devolve into dishonesty and exploitation. Ukrainians fight to preserve their freedom to dissent and protest, because Russians do not have those freedoms. If the United States does not continue to support Ukraine, that responsibility falls to the Republican Party, especially those in the House of Representatives.

I was reading articles about the solar eclipse, and one said that there would be another eclipse in Montana and the Dakotas in 2044. And then I wondered, what if instead of measuring time compared to the number of times required to revolve around the sun, what if I measured time compared to the amount of times I could flow down the Mississippi river? According to the National Park Service, the Mississippi river flows at about 1.2 miles per hour, and is about 2,340 miles long. 2,340 miles times (1hour/ 1.2 miles) =   1,950 hours. So a water molecule, if it traveled at a constant speed and never left the river, would take about 1,950 hours to travel the entire length of the river. I turn 33 years old next month. 24hours * 365 days *33 years= 288,288 hours in my lifetime. 288,288/ 1,950 is about 145. So I will be about 145 Mississippi’s next month! Edit: I fixed a typo.

I have a small poster of the quote from Teddy Roosevelt about the man in the arena in my hallway. This poem was partly inspired by it. The Man in the Arena   One. Where am I? What happened?   Two. I see the canvas. The lights turn on.   Three. Hands to the mat. Blood.   Four. Get up! Someone shouts, “Stay down!”   Five. There’s noise- Shouting and cheering.   Six. On my hands and knees, I look at the ground.   Seven. I tell myself, “Get up!” And stand.

               I watched the movie, “One Life” today. It’s about Sir Nicholas Winton, a London financier who went to Prague and helped almost 700 children, mostly Jewish, to escape to London. I also saw a Threads post in the past day or two that said that people do not learn the lessons of history. Keeping in mind events going on in the world, and antisemitism and islamophobia, as well as the events depicted in the movie, such as the invasion of Europe and antisemitism during World War II, I had the idea that people can have different motivations for studying history, one which is personal gain, such as profit or power, but another reason to study history is to prevent harm.

            Modern American culture tries to convince people to be afraid, and that their worth as a human is determined by their net worth. A person’s value is not determined by their amount of money or economic productivity. The American Dream consists of housing, healthcare, jobs (or income, such as maybe universal basic income), and having meaningful relationships. At times, some feel these are becoming more difficult to achieve. One of the steps of genocide is dehumanization. What is dehumanization? It usually consists of convincing people that another person, or group of people, has done something bad, or has some other bad quality. And because of this bad thing that they have done, or bad quality that they possess, then fear is justified. And then once you have convinced people that this group has done something bad or has some bad quality, and fear is justified, then once people are afraid, then violence is justified. In many ways, we are retracing the steps of the 1920s an

             Fear can be a tool of control- fear of communists, socialists, labor unions, Muslims, Jews, Catholics, the UN, other sexual orientations, gender identities, other races, teachers, professors, or vaccines. Fear of people does not solve problems. People are people first, and any other qualities are secondary to being human.             How do we define being  human? Humans have great language abilities. But there are people who have lost the ability to speak due to a stroke, or who never learned to read. They are human. You might appeal to our DNA, but a piece of human DNA is not a human either. You might appeal to our fantastically complicated brains, but there is a condition called anencephaly, in which an infant is born without a telencephalon, which is the part responsible for our most human behaviors. Infants with anencephaly are human too. Any quality that might be uniquely human, some people lack that quality and are still human. People can be kind, caring, and th