Oh, Hole!

I’ve been busy with a lot of writing in the past few days that I found it difficult to do much writing on my spare time. This is the gift of Twitter. It scratches my writing itch without sitting down and investing too much thought in it. Not that my diatribes in this Website take so much time and thought, but it’s just not very efficient writing stuff out in this format.

I just finished watching “Hit So Hard, The Life & Near Death Story of Patty Schemel.” I’ve occasionally enjoyed Courtney Love, but I always liked her band’s sound, and I’m guessing a lot of that comes from Patty Schemel’s drums. It’s a decent documentary which touches up on the history of the band, spends a bit of time on Nirvana and Kurt Cobain, goes into Kristen Pfaff, homosexuality, the whole getting kicked out of Hole, and never really gets too deep or preachy when it comes to Schemel’s struggles with drugs. Quite frankly, I think the documentary loses direction and forgets what it’s trying to say. I don’t really know who to recommend it to unless you’re really into Hole, Nirvana, Patty Schemel or curious about the whole drug thing.

Not grunge, but the death of Scott Weiland still bums me out. Chris Cornell, another person who was not quite grunge at the time, especially when they opened for Guns N’Roses, was found dead in what appears to have been suicide. He may now have had issues with drugs, not the type of drugs that killed Weiland or Pfaff, but Ativan, something that was prescribed to him to treat anxiety disorders and depression. Now I don’t mind drugs, prescription or otherwise. But I don’t like demonizing certain drugs while pushing others. Don’t use that; take these instead. Don’t take heroin; get a prescription for Oxycodone instead. I think if we just step back, stop demonizing drugs and drug users, and look at what we’re all doing in terms of what’s legal highs and what’s not, we can all be a safer, more responsible society. It may not have prevent all drug overdoses, be it legal drugs or otherwise, but I’m sure it would cut down sad stories.

 

The Presidency in a Lon Fuller Cave

When is a criminal act a criminal act? I remember studying R v Dudley and Stephens.  In the case, four men were shipwrecked, and with little hope of making it to land and one of the men fallen into a comatose state, two of the men decided to kill and eat the dying man in order to survive. One of the men refused to participate. The case was a precedent in establishing that necessity doesn’t justify murder. If I remember correctly, it was also a test on the reaches of the law, and whether the fact that the men were lost at sea and therefore out of the reach of legal powers, makes the law inapplicable to them during the act, much like a legal Schrödinger’s cat.

This is somewhat related to the “Case of the Speluncean Explorers” written by Lon Fuller for the Harvard Law Review. It’s a though experiment where Fuller gives a hypothetical case of cave explorers who were trapped in a cave, and in order to stave of starvation, drew lots on who to murder and eat in order for the rest of the men to survive. He wrote about five judges’ differing opinions on the case. I would not explain all of the judges’ reasoning, but one judge argued for setting aside convictions since the “murderers” in the case were out of the reach of the laws of society and thus were in a state of nature and under natural law. Under natural law, rules are governed by reason, and it is only reasonable to kill one person in order for the rest to survive. The purpose of the law forbidding murder, which is deterrence, also doesn’t apply to them under such a state because A. they were in an extreme situation B. it could be argued that preventing one murder would lead to more deaths, and C. which legal authority would prevent the murder in such a state?

This brings me to the current issue of the growing case against Donald Trump. In order to hide possible collusion with Russia during the election, Trump may have committed several indictable offences already, committing crimes to cover up a crime. He may be tried for intimidating witnesses and obstruction of justice when he tweeted about James Comey after firing him and Sally Yates during her questioning. He may be guilty of obstruction of justice when he inquired about his own investigations, asked for the investigations to end, and fired people investigating him. And even asking for a loyalty pledge from his own investigator is obstruction of justice and a criminal conspiracy should Comey have agreed to pledge to Trump. There’s also him tweeting about the supposed tapes, which if they do exist, could also implicate him in whatever crime he’s trying to blackmail Comey with, or would make him guilty of obstruction of justice and destroying evidence should he say that he got rid of the tapes. This is just for the past couple of days. It doesn’t take into account the original issue of collusion with a foreign government as well as conflicts of interests regarding his businesses.

Now, with all of these low-hanging fruit, would someone try to remove Trump from office? I’m afraid the president of the United States is in Lon Fuller’s cave as well. The country is in an extreme state, and just like the laws of society could not touch the men in R v Dudley and Stephens while they were at sea or the men in the cave, no one can touch Trump unless the people in power are willing to look for a crime. By virtue of him being in power and with the Republican majority being tied to their party, Trump might as well be killing and feeding on people while stuck in lawless isolation. He could hand the nuclear codes and all state secrets to Vladimir Putin while kissing him in the mouth during a press conference and it won’t be an offense unless people are willing to call it so. So far, he seems to have gotten away with so many offenses but people are willing to look the other way and not punish him the way other normal citizen would rightly face consequences in a civil society (“grab them by the pussy” anyone?). Trump is out of the reaches of law at the moment. Someone please bring him back to where the rest of us are before he causes any more damage.

 

Korean Elections, Ugh.

I’m trying really hard not to write about depression, so instead about my own personal depression, let’s talk about how depressing the election is in South Korea right now. How depressing is it, let me list the ways!

The election, instead of being divided by regional ties is a divided between generations, the older conservative generation versus the younger conservative generation. Now, this wouldn’t be very depressing. It’s actually quite promising since it’s the younger generation breaking free from old-fashioned thinking, but I really think this push for progressivism would only be short-lived. I predict it’ll die once the political players are safely in their place. One of the candidates (Ahn) used to be popular among young people, that is, until he got wise and learned how to be a politician. In the end, these are all politicians, and the people still high with their victory over getting the president impeached might be disappointed with the un-sexy reality of politics once seats are no longer at stake.

The leading conservative party candidate demonized gay people as harbinger of AIDS. He also had an anecdote on his book about not stopping his friend drug a woman and rape her. Why include it in the book, who knows? He also recently talked bragged about not talking to his father in-law for years until his death. Sounds like an awesome guy. This guy might be president tomorrow.

Despite who wins or who loses, the THAAD missiles pointing at North Korea with a radar system looking into China will probably still be in place. It’s going to be a while before those useless missiles are removed from the peninsula, if they’re ever to be removed. Meanwhile, South Korea will still continue to suffer strained relations with China as long as those missiles exist.

Older Korean conservatives are looking into the US and Donald Trump as if he’s a role model. These are the same people who made the daughter of a former dictator president (she later got impeached). These people are waving the American flag around.

One of the candidate’s (Yoo) daughter got attacked/molested during a campaign stop. The man was arrested and is being charged, but apparently his defense is that he suffers from some sort of mental handicap. Mental handicap. He is a member of a homophobic and misogynistic rightwing group who posted pictures of the incident online.

Speaking of homophobic, the leading progressive candidate doesn’t seem to care much about gay people either. Although he said he wouldn’t do anything legislatively to oppress them or give them additional rights, he said he personally doesn’t have any stance regarding gay issues. Yay, progressives!

In any case, the leading progressive candidate (Moon) will probably be the next president of Korea. He promises to overhaul the country and undo many of the evils that happened during the last two conservative presidential terms. This is all good. He’s quite the experienced politician himself, serving under the late President Roh, who, compared to recent Korean presidents, was reasonably good if not for the allegations of influence peddling later in his term. Oh…