Author: malcolm

Malcolm writes stories, poems, articles and essays about a variety of topics. He also builds guitar pedals and makes weird music.
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Initial Thoughts on Life in Australia

I moved to Australia with my wife in late June 2023.

In a word, it has been awesome.

I’ve lived abroad before, and am also well aware of the propaganda model of media in the United States, but the disparity between what is promoted as the most free and best country on Earth and the reality of how it compares to a “similar” nation is astounding.

Here are some broad-stroke comparisons with obviously lack nuance and, while based on some actual research, are primarily based on subjective observations and, for lack of a better term, vibes.

The US has a budget deficit of 1.4 trillion dollars. Australia has a 19 billion dollar surplus. These figures are dramatic enough in difference that it doesn’t matter which country’s dollars these figures are described in.

The US has crumbling infrastructure, even within its cities with the greatest public transit in the country. Sydney (the only part of Australia I have any notable experience in) has beautiful infrastructure and it is easy to live without a car – public transit may not be as robust outside of the larger cities, but I’ve never experienced anything close to this in the US, even cities such as Minneapolis and Chicago.

Australia has a 99% literacy rate with (if my sources are accurate) 54% of the population (age 25-34) holding some form of tertiary degree, the 9th most educated in the world. The US has a 79% literacy rate. I couldn’t find a source comparing the exact same age group in which the US made it into the ranking, but according to this, 37.5% of people over 25 in the US have graduated from some form of higher education.

Australia has universal healthcare for citizens and permanent residents, while in the US, a citizen getting a nasty illness and needing to pay for treatment can spawn at least one hit television series.

Basically, Australia spends a lot on social programs and yet ends up with a surplus. Any discussion on social spending in the US is shot down as something which is unaffordable.

I can listen to a conservative on Australian TV without feeling like I’m consuming poison. It even seems like the various political parties and people who subscribe to them can discuss things together without demonizing one another.

Voting is compulsory in Australia, and several states in the US are actively trying to restrict who can vote. Australia also has a ranked choice system, making it difficult for any “extremist” belief to gain much political traction. This is great for preventing fascism from spreading, but, unfortunately, until socialism loses it’s “extremist” public perception, leaves socialists struggling as well. Just because Australia will implement some pro-socialist ideas does not mean it isn’t still committed to capitalism.

Australia is trying to make amends for what they did to the people who lived here before colonization. It is common for large institutions to point out that they are operating on stolen land. There is still much to be done, but in the US, some states are putting up roadblocks to even learn that there is anything in the past to atone for.

People in Sydney say there is a cost of living and housing crisis, yet, compared to small town Virginia, it has been relatively cheap to live and easy to find an apartment. The way the media here frames things, it sounds like food used to be free here.

My wife and I will be attending some of the best schools in the country (which actually makes them some of the best in the world). Even factoring in the cost of living in Sydney, we will require less student debt than to just get the same degrees in the US from remotely similarly well regarded institutions.

It really is a shame I didn’t take some nationalist up on the offer to help me pack! For those of you in the United States, I would strongly recommend that you do.

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a dense kind of Helsinki

Kafkaesque sadness, saffron authentic dress,

I don’t know at all.

Kaleidoscope gig, functional jig,

Jacqueline and James halting on drum skins,

and Haskell-made programs.

Lakes lie fallow, leering and hollow,

Kermit dufs unending shallow sheep,

and Ekhafni escapes again.

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When I Fell Victim

[Sniff] Ideology.

Ideology runs deep. If you think you have no ideology, you are mistaken.

It has come to my attention that some things I wrote for last year’s non-fiction posts were steeped in ideology and at least somewhat reliant on propaganda which I had unknowingly digested.

For example, some of the things I wrote about Russia, China, and North Korea, could use further examination. The claim that they do not have good intentions is, frankly, baseless. While they certainly do have some problems regarding human rights, to highlight them alone tacitly implies that their “enemies” are meaningfully different in this regard. To go as far as to not even define what “good intentions” relies on simply eating out of the trashcan of ideology. A more accurate way of expressing what I was really thinking is that these nations have perspectives and goals which do not fall in line with what the United States wants other nations to do.

North Korea is an easy target, but this is largely because the Korean War has more or less been shoved own the memory hole in the United States. North Korea’s attitude towards the United States and their consequential desire for nuclear weapons (which, if they were a country which submitted to US business interests, would be seen as deterrent rather than war-mongering) only makes sense through the lens of history. The fact is the United States ran a genocide campaign in the Korean War, carpet bombing targets of no military value. The United States has “forgotten” about this, but this memory is very much alive and well in North Korea, and very much informs their foreign policy. Of course war is not something to be wished for, and nuclear war even more so, but see North Korea developing nuclear weapons as a bad sign is only half of the story. North Korea is sanctioned by the world and is trying to protect their own interests, and is operating from the perspective that, if well enough armed, they will no longer be considered a viable military target by anyone sane enough to actively avoid nuclear war. This is the reasoning behind basically any country to develop nuclear weapons, to create a situation where out-right full-scale war is unthinkable. Obviously, a better option is diplomacy, but it takes two to tango.

Russia is another easy target. Their war in Ukraine is unjustifiable, but that alone overlooks the complexity of the issue, including the role other nations have played in this conflict. For one thing, this conflict began much earlier than 2022, and the current media coverage overlooks not only this fact but how that conflict actually began with any amount of nuance.

And then there is China, who the United States seems dead-set on provoking a war with. Have you noticed how it seems China can only do wrong in the US media? They are either viciously adept authoritarians or bumbling fools. If the Chinese government prioritizes stopping the spread of COVID-19, then they are trampling on their people’s freedoms and are an authoritarian regime who just simply dislikes freedom. Yet when they ease up on their restrictions, they are a weak state that can’t handle a pandemic. Never-mind if the protests they did this in response to may have involved the United States government paying people to protest, or how their government met protest by listening to their demands rather than brutalizing the people. As far as US media is concerned, if China does something, it must be bad. If China has a weather balloon go stray, it simply must be a spy balloon. Even if it was a monitoring balloon, US officials have acknowledged the very real possibility that it was blown off course and not intended to spy on the US. Any other balloons detected are a threat from China and worth shooting down with missiles worth several thousand dollars–even if these detected balloons turn out to be 12$ hobbyist projects. The US was in such a hysterical state following the balloon incident that they were openly speculating that aliens may be responsible.

My previous “analysis” left out the nation which most countries see as the greatest threat to world peace, the nation with the most military spending, and the nation with the most out-sized military presence outside of their own borders as being a potentially bad sign of things to come. And that is because acknowledging these facts leaves the status quo, it is not mentioned day-after-day in the media, it is not refreshed in the mind of its citizens constantly.

Parroting the status-quo does not need sources, it is taken as “common sense,” while anything even one step removed from it requires pages of text to justify. Case in point: if I saw Mao was responsible for hundreds of thousands of deaths as part of a brutal regime, this is accepted at face-value. Refuting this point with what actually happened takes about 40 pages.

My article regarding the partisan split was missing a large enough part that it is worth writing another article specifically on it–that the gulf between political parties in the United States is largely imaginary. Yes, the people are polarized, but what both parties actually value and represent are capitalist business interests, they just focus on the handful of social issues where they disagree. In the United States there is a right-wing party, and a far-right party. You can you choose between the capitalist party and the other capitalist party. To be sucked into the illusion that these two groups really have that much difference between them is yet another example of eating out of the trashcan of ideology.

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Drawing Lady

The paper is off-white or maybe cream. She has a steady hand. The charcoal stains her fingers as she presses against the page. It makes a gentle sound.

She looks up from the page.

She returns her gaze down, and bites her chapped lip.

She struggles to understand why she struggles to draw a completely straight line. Her hand is going where she wants it to. But the line is always sloped one way or another.


	


	





		

		
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The Most Obvious, Most Troublesome Story No One Seems to Acknowledge
	


	
	

		

Despite what you may have heard, there conclusively was interference from Russia in the 2016 election. Aside from the FBI indicting several people, at least one Russian oligarch has admitted this.





Putin’s goal in this was to sow seeds of doubt in democracy. To show that one of democracy’s greatest weaknesses was among its guiding principles – government by the people. To show that the people cannot choose what is best for themselves.





Fast forward to January 2021 and people have been convinced that it was the 2020 election which was unfair, despite a lack of any real evidence, resulting in an insurrection. Fast forward to 2022 where the Republican party is focused on seizing what used to be non-partisan positions which in some way oversee election procedures, only to find that they actual do need popular support to gain power.





While things appear to be working out, we seem to have forgotten Putin’s role in this. Political polarization has increased, and along with it, hostility, and large swaths of the American population living in separate realities. No one seems to be talking about how this was likely Putin’s plan to begin with – to lead some to believe that autocracy has more merits than democracy. The right-wing of America, “coincidentally,” seems more and more on board with allowing Putin to illegally invade and annex portions of a sovereign nation, unaware of who may have lead them to this stance – that has been lost in the noise.





Part Nine of Nine Months of Non-Fiction.

	


	





		

		
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The Strangest Music I’ve Ever Made – The Oiloid Syrup Double Gem Story
	


	
	

		

It was winter.





I was living at my mom’s house in those days, out in the cornfields of Ohio. My bedroom was positioned so that rain would often beat directly against my window.





It was raining.





The rain was making such a pleasant sound, I decided I’d set my little voice recorder that I record music with next to the window.





But immediately after this, it felt like I should play some music. I had been very interested in lowercase music at the time, and I thought the rain and the sounds of me walking around and flipping switches would be interesting to hear. But as the moments passed, I was inspired to actually turn on an amp and play some guitar.





After a bit of playing around with pedals and my guitar, I kept the recording running while I did some cleaning up and sitting around.





This result was a little strange, but included vast swaths of very quiet, subtle sounds.





This is when things got weird.





In my editing software, I kept amplifying the quiet parts until what had been near silence was now quite loud. And all sorts of strange sounds emerged. Like the ghosts of robotic goblins or something. I was transfixed by this strangeness.





For song titles and the album name, I opened up a text-editor and just started randomly hitting keys. I looked for things which resembled words in the mess, and the final result was Oiloid Syrup Double Gem.





Part eight of Nine Months of Non-Fiction.

	


	





		

		
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Speculation of Bad Things to Come
	


	
	

		

I have a difficult to shake feeling of impending doom.





An unsaid but, let’s face it, common opinion: North Korea, Russia, and China, in as much that nations can be personified, do not have good intentions, at least not from the perspective of most other nations.





This is not to say they are fundamentally evil, or that there is no logic underlying their actions and apparent thoughts.





But that is what is actually troubling. These are not the actions of deranged people – they are deliberate plans, standing on logic which, while I do not agree with, accept to not be nonsense.





At the time of this writing:





  • Russia has been in the process of seizing Ukraine
  • North Korea has been developing nuclear weapons
  • Relations between China and Taiwan, as well as China and the United States, are deteriorating





Considered alone, these separate issues are troubling and even cause for alarm. But considering the ties between these nations, something much larger could be on the horizon.





None of these nations have expressed out-right disapproval of each other’s actions, none of these nations can truly rely on any nation but each other, to varying degrees, at least.





For the time being, that seems to be the only connection among them. But in the future, they may very well be seen as the prelude to a horrific, global conflict – assuming this conflict leaves anyone standing in the aftermath.





Part seven of Nine Months of Non-Fiction.

	


	





		

		
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The Alarm Bell is Blaring
	


	
	

		

The end of Roe v. Wade isn’t even the beginning.





Gerrymandering has put the Republican party in a position where it can win elections with a minority of votes. This minority is small enough that they can rely almost entirely on those susceptible to disinformation and misinformation campaigns. Those tactics may not work on everyone, but they don’t need it to.





The people overseeing elections are more and more driven by partisan motives than ensuring the stability of democracy. This, combined with gerrymandering and a fresh slate of voter-suppression laws, strongly favors unpopular Republicans winning elections. In my nearly 32 years alive, Republicans have won the popular vote for president exactly once.





The structure of the Electoral College and the Senate also grants unfair advantage to Republicans due to their dominance in small, rural, mostly white, low population states. The structure of these bodies, as well as the filibuster, were made with good intentions, but they have been corrupted. Rather than preventing tyranny of the majority, they have enabled a tyranny of the minority. Rather than ensure the Senate thoroughly debates before passing laws, they ensure gridlock.





The Supreme court is packed with partisan-motivated judges, marking the departure from that branch of government from pursuing their duties as intended in the Constitution. The court’s new purpose is to translate the far right’s ideology into law without being restrained by pesky public opinion.





Add to this the Republican party’s new fixation with authoritarianism and the result is the imminent end  of democracy in the United States. There has already been one attempted coup with extremely limited repercussions for the leaders of it. All signs point to this becoming a larger problem.





More and more, it seems that two distinct nations are sharing one territory. Unless the ideological gap can be bridged and both groups can agree to live in the same reality, there is little hope for the future of this country. These issues run deep – deeper than can be resolved by expanding the Supreme Court or removing/reforming the filibuster. These problems are solvable, but require reaching some form of consensus. They requiring both groups (putting aside how the fact there are essentially only two groups is in itself a problem unforeseen by the Framers) to be able to agree to disagree about some things in order to do anything to improve the state of things in this nation.





Partisan solutions kick the can further down the road, just long enough for the opposing party to gain power and do the same thing. Each party views the other with fear as a malevolent threat to the continuity of the nation and their lives, and more and more, they see violence as being a justifiable retaliation. Blocking the other side becomes more important than objective improvement. Even if a large amount of this polarization is more emotional than policy driven, even if has more to do with people’s ideas of the other than the reality of the other,  democracy still crumbles as a result.





Optimism is not inherently a bad thing, but if that is all people are counting on, consider the fact that it was primarily the optimistic Jews who did not flee Hitler’s Germany while it was possible. Wish in one hand and shit in the other, and see which hand fills up first.





When a smoke alarm goes off, it turns off shortly when it isn’t a serious fire. The democracy alarms have been blaring for years – it might be time to exit.





Part six of Nine Months of Non-Fiction.

	


	





		

		
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The early 2020’s have already poked a new hole in Federalist No. 10
	


	
	

		

James Madison argues two important points in this paper.





One is that in a so-called pure democracy, society “has no cure for the mischiefs of faction,” such as falling victim to populist strongmen or the oppression by a dominant party.





The other is that the solution to this issue lies in the representative government of a republic.





These papers played an important role in shaping the language of the United States Constitution. About 230 years later, on January 6, it was demonstrated that representative government is not a stalwart defense against “the mischiefs of faction.” The United States has developed a faction which is committed to strongman ideology, and the general factionalism attitude has left Congress more or less incapable of performing their duties.





Part five of Nine Months of Non-Fiction.

	


	





		

		
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In Defense of the Unquantifiable
	


	
	

		

Humanity has gained a lot through using the scientific method, but we must not allow hubris to reduce the whole of existence to what is quantifiable.





The subjective experience, inherent at the very least to humans, and possibly inherent to matter itself, does not lend itself entirely to measurement. Mental experiences may be correlated with brain activity, but, perhaps, the extent to which one causes the other may not be knowable.





Unfortunately, many things may not be knowable. Take a look at mathematics, particularly logic. While math is often taught as methods to solve problems involving numbers, at its core, it is built upon proofs, carried out by using axioms and inferences. As phrased by Gödel in his famous Incompleteness theorems, math is incomplete – in a consistent formal system, there are statements which cannot be proven nor disproven, including proving that the system is, in fact, consistent.





In other words, there are mathematical problems which can be clearly articulated which cannot be solved, at least not by using mathematical techniques. Logic and math being of the utmost importance in the realm of science leaves open the possibility that there exists scientific problems which can be articulated and not proven – that there more in the universe than conceivable to the human mind. Scientists, at least in part, already agree that the nature of reality we experience is constructed mentally – why assume that what we perceive is the fundamental truth?





To paraphrase the astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson, the universe is not obligated to make sense to us. Everyday ideas, like time, might have more to do with how we as a species experience reality rather than being an actual aspect of it. A understanding of time without respect to human perception may exist, but it is an open question as to whether or not this is knowable. What else falls into this same category?





Simply put, we do not know what we do not know. Maybe someday, there will be a rigorous scientific understanding of luck, of “bad juju,” etc. Maybe someday, there will not be. Whether or not we have this rigorous understanding does not mean that these events do not occur, if nowhere else, in our minds.





Part Four of Nine Months of Non-Fiction.