Blog - David Helkowski
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Trump Scum Pool

You've likely seen news about the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool and the "repairs."

I have thoughts.

The first is that this thing is hardly new. It was build in 1923. It is over 100 years old.

My question is why there is any issue in maintaining this thing. It's made out of concrete. There are pumps and filters to keep the water circulating.

In recent history they improved the "waterproofing" of it for one purpose: to have less water leak out of it.

It isn't some sort of rocket science to have a pool of water. There are millions of them around the world. Admittedly this one is pretty big, but the science of how to have a pool of water and keep it from being an algae incubator is well understood.

So when I saw news of Trump suddenly rushing to "fix it" and blowing smoke about how he was going to make it beautiful, my main thought was "Another nothing-burger, who cares".

I thought that in part because of the many years I lived near DC and 80+ times I've been to DC, for many of them the thing didn't even have any water in it. I always thought that was strange but it also didn't particularly matter to me.

Just like I don't even care about the Washington Monument at all. Why? Because it's a dick. Historically such towers are fertility symbols and are meant to denote a penis. So I personally find the thing offensive in the first place.

It is neat to demonstrate ability to construct large objects but go check out the Mito Art Tower or the Ushiku Daibutsu. They are both way more impressive than both the Washington Monument AND the Statue of Liberty together. And neither of them are a pointy penis.

I'm saying this to establish a baseline of my care about monuments in DC. I don't. At all. They are shit in the first place from my view.

I do appreciate the museums in DC. They are awesome. When they aren't shut down because the US can't manage to pay its government.

I'm drifting away from the point dragged by the strong tide of US governmental idiocy. Let's get back to the topic. The scum pool.

My question was why there is any issue maintaining it.

There isn't. You just have to do it correctly, and they aren't. Follow the original plans with modern improvements.

"Just have a pool company seal it like a swimming pool" ain't it. There is more to it.

But all that is so boring and doesn't matter to me because I don't care about the pool in the first place. Which leads me to my next question and the actual focus of this post.

Why is idiotic bullshit like the reflecting pool a stumbling point for the US government? When, why, and how did the US government become a pathetic joke?

Let's even set Trump, the flaming orange haired babboon, aside for a moment. I don't really care about Trump at this moment because it's a dead and rotting issue for years now.

I want to ask the larger question. Let's split it up. I'll shorten "US Government" to USG.

When did the USG become a joke?

Why did the USG become a joke?

How did the USG become a joke?

When did the USG become a joke?

I don't know that I'm knowledgable enough about it to make an educated guess at this. So I'll make a horrible uneducated stab at it. Since, imo, that's all most US citizens could do either and/or would likely understand.

We don't need a history buff to spot obvious problems with the US.

You see, I think the key to figuring out all three questions ( when, why, and how ) is in noticing that we don't have to consider just the USG. Consider the whole of the US and it's status as a well functioning ( or not ) country. I don't think the USG went to shit by itself. I think the whole of the US went with it.

Before I choose my favorite punching bag as the culrit of failure let me list a few potential causes:

These all come to me nearly immediately and without much thought. Because they are real major issues with the US.

I'll run through them all with you.

Capitalism

I'll attempt to explain my understanding of what capitalism is:

Capitalism is a belief that the following makes sense:

For this moment I'm going to just leave it at that, because my teardown of capitalism is going to need another post ( or many ) by itself. You can imagine my issues here for now.

Power consolidation

A relatively small group of people control the US imo. Read into this as you wish. It's bad.

Runaway upper class

The upper class in the US has too much of the wealth and power. They abuse it. It's inevitable because of the distribution imbalance. Solution: redistribute.

Corruption

We have a known criminal as president. Do I need to say much more?

Bigcos

Anti-monopoly measures in the US don't work to prevent the sort of problems they were meant to. Those problems have found workaround to live on.

Christianity

It is a token religion people believe in only to feel better about themselves. Whatever quality aspects of it that exist have little to no effect. It has become a singing choir + club. Used primarily for justifying rotten behavior.

Offshoring of Production

Most things you can buy at stores in the US are made in China.

Collapse of education quality

The quality of K-12 education went to shit 50 years ago. Higher education followed and has not kept up with advances in technology or method. It is now credentialism and gatekeeping more than anything else.

The result? Americans are idiots.

Collapse of the family

There is no family present at home to care for children in the US and raise them properly any more. K-12 has become daycare. Even after that daycare is used as both parents work fulltime to survive in the US.

As K-12 nor daycare are equipped to raise children well, children are not raised well. The US is full of people who were raised badly and don't have the necessary training to be quality members of society.

Consumption society

IKEA instead of quality furniture. Expand to everything.

Zoning

Giant neighborhoods of houses without any stores or workplaces. Forced driving. This is opposite to all most all of known history from all countries. Only the US has embraced the idiocy to the maximum extent and damage.

Drug Use

Legalization of marajuana, of which not only is it obviously bad for your mind, but there are more and more studies showing it now that it is so widespread and becoming more so each year.

The US is a land of drugged up obnoxious dipshits.

Sloth

Americans are raised to view being lazy as awesome and success in life as being able to be rich while exerting no effort. Sloth is idolized.

Focus on individuals over community and cooperation

Americans are raised to view individual success of themselves ( or possibly their family ) as the ultimate success. They basically don't give a shit about others.

Obsession with entertainment

Do I need to even expand on this? It's so obvious. The US is primarily a producer of entertainment more than anything else. That's bad.

Retrack

I've jumped around briefly explaining what I mean by various degenerative aspects of the US. I've done little to defend my views on these points only presented them as is. I've done that in order to avoid getting drawn into a debate about the validity of my points.

The reason I brought them up is to explain how, why, and when in regard to reaching the point where repairing a pool of shallow water has become difficult and fraught with madness.

Essentially the people that result from the above issues are the same people who select government officials that are incapable of reasonably dealing with a pool of water.

And the scum pool? It's just a token for a broader issue of the US collapsing into idiocy. Here are some additional idiotic ongoings I consider equivalent:

You see, people have become SO fucking stupid that not only can they not educate themselves, care for themselves, avoid drugs, or have families, that they can't even do basic hands-on shit like maintain a fucking pool of water to avoid it from becoming a scum pool.

Let's consider this from a slightly different angle. I'll do this by presenting the issues I see as questions.

MMA held on the White House lawn

For 100+ years MMA ( well for however long of that MMA existed; replace MMA with cage fights before MMA came into existence ) violent sports were not considered acceptable to be endorsed and celebrated by top government officials. Endorsing such things wasn't even considered acceptable by famous celebrities.

A number of celebrities got shamed and lost respect because they were fans of dog fighting for example. Human fighting? Worse.

How did we reach a state where this just happens and people shrug?

Abortion becoming illegal -again-

For 50 years we had advanced our humanitarian views such that we respected woman's autonomy and control over their own body, health, and safety.

I've actually been in a pro-life march when I was a teenager and carried an anti-abortion sign. I think abortion should be decreased. I do not think the proper method is by illegalizing abortion, especially in a societal climate where women are often raped. Also in a climate where women are in poor health and having the child could endanger their health.

How is it that we made it 50 years in modern history including through the introduction of the internet, the great equalizer of information, and yet are now returning to views dictated by religions that believe it makes sense to kill animals to right a wrong? ( "sacrificial atonement" )

Speakers at Ivy League graduations getting booed

I'd have to dig into this but this is not a common thing to occur. How we we reached such a bigco dystopian state where famous speakers are so damned clueless that they can't comprehend what students will accept and what they will reject and boo? This isn't just bigco getting abusive. It is post-abuse. Not only are they hurting the common man but they have become blind to it.

Decreased life expectancy since 2014

This has been a long time coming. It has been widely understood for many decades that the US has an obesity problem due to eating low quality food. It's just getting worse.

How is it that the supposed best country in the world ( total bullshit by the way... US is shit imo... ) can't manage to take care of the health of their citizens any more?

The healthcare system is falling apart. Insurance for health has become a scam. You can't reasonably and affordably get good healthcare in the US unless you are rich any more.

This is a major disaster. How have we let it get this bad? Why are basic things such as MRI scans which is a stable technology for decades now so expensive in the US but cheap elsewhere?

Overdose deaths increased

This ties into weed use in the US. For so long we understood that use of weed is bad for you and is not something a self respecting quality human would do. Now... it's considered recreation? This is steadily fucking over the US and the people in it.

Legalizing it anywhere in the US was and is stupid, and stupid people are the ones getting hurt by it. And it's crazy popular now, because stupid people are abounding. Not because they are inherently stupid through genetics, but because they are raised in a culture that creates stupid people where they wouldn't otherwise be.

And yes, many of those deaths are from fentanyl and/or other drugs. Because even in a place where we have legalized some drugs, we still can't manage to sanely deal with those who get addicted and seek harder stuff. We continue to not help them and instead just let them drift into a spiral of addiction till death from it.

Housing unaffordability

How did we reach the state where myself, as a "rich well off Software Engineer in Seattle", could not even fucking afford a place anywhere in Seattle to buy and instead had to rent for the 5 years I was there?

That's fucked up and very strange. When the upper middle class can't even afford a house any more, we are totally screwed.

I personally believe the US has reached this because of this notion that it's reasonable and supportable for everyone to seek "passive income." Meaning to do shit all to deserve your life and instead seeking out ways to fuck over everyone else to put yourself ahead. In this case by being a shitty landlord and/or just by demanding an unreasonable amount of money to sell property you got cheaply or inherited.

I have a whole long story about how shitty my landlord was in Seattle. Maybe I'll share that sometime...

There is plenty of housing in the US. It's all insanely overpriced. The whole system is rigged to just keep increasing prices of this stuff. Guess what that causes? Inflation. We are headed for runaway inflation.

Educational scores of K-12

At some point before the 90s the US was considered to have one of the best education systems in the world. Since then? Absolutely fucking not. It's well known that K-12 has become shit, and higher ed after that is headed the same way.

How did this happen? How did we manage to understand how to educate people for over 100 years and then just let it all go to shit? AND be unaffordable even when it is actually bad and not worth getting?

Collapse of infrastructure

I live in Japan. Japan in recent history had a major Tsunami and in response they build over 200 fucking miles of giant walls along the coast.

The US? Baltimore? A single fucking bridge collapsed over 2 years ago and they still can't manage to construct a new one, driving Baltimore to continue its death spiral.

How the fuck did the supposedly amazing US go from being the most amazing place to being unable to build a single damn bridge that is needed?

And this isn't the only bridge in the US that is shit. All of them are headed that way. Hell as we've noticed random pools of water are headed that way. The US can't even maintain a fucking shallow pool of water let alone a bridge.

I showed AI this post so far and it was complaining about the Baltimore bridge being a bad example. I disagree. It's a great example but I'll give you another example then.

It took Seattle 19 fucking years to dig a single fucking tunnel to replace the viaduct along the water.

Meanwhile, in Japan, I've driven through 50 longer tunnels than that that have been constructed within the last 10 years.

AI says that Japan has constructed over 200 miles of tunnels in the last 10 years. The Seattle viaduct tunnel? 2 miles long.

Another example from my hometown of Baltimore is that of the Bethlehem Steel mill at Sparrows Point. In the 1950s it was the largest steel mill in the world, employed 30,000 people, and produced the steel for the Golden Gate Bridge and the George Washington Bridge.

Now? It's a derelict pile of rotting buildings. The US, once the world's dominant steel producer, now imports significant quantities of steel and no longer leads the world in steel production because it failed to remain globally competitive.

Consider that some more. The US can't even manage to produce steel better than other countries. And we are supposed to believe the US is "the best"?

Growing up in Baltimore every time I drove past that abandoned steel mill I thought to myself "this is the best place in the world? No way."

Every time I drove to DC to the Smithsonian I drove past derelict shopping malls and areas I would be afraid to walk around in without carrying a knife for self defense and I thought similar. Those dangerous places? They are within the I-495 loop and mere miles from the capital.

You can easily get mugged miles away from the US capital. Soon you'll be able to get mugged within the capital mall.

Think I'm exaggerating? The homicide rate for Tokyo is less than 1 per 200,000 people. The homicide rate for DC per 200,000 has ranged from 36-78 over the last 10 years.