Well, here it is, a couple of weeks after my last post. Before that, it had been a month. Given the way the blogs are displayed (and not displayed) by GateHouse Media, I wonder if anybody other than my buddy Carlo (whom I email every time I publish a new blog) reads them any more. I don’t know, since Gateway doesn’t publish page view statistics, which, to be fair, most sites do not. Medium is a notable exception. Another irritation is that the FB and Twitter links used to post T&G blogs on social media are no longer functional. Yet, being the trouper that I am, I am going to assume that I have an audience larger than the number of people that would fit in one of those phone booths that used to be everywhere. This time, I am going to diverge from my usual progressive political editorializing, and dive into a different pond, that of modern technology and how it feels to me that it is evolving.

I am from the baby boom generation. Right in the chronological center of it. I grew up and lived most of my adulthood in the belief that human agency is the currency of the world. My world, anyway. In other words, virtually all tasks that need to be done require a human being to accomplish. Not just as a technician or troubleshooter, but as a necessary function of the task at hand. In other words, to build a car, you needed a person to put the parts together and do the welding. The main automation was the conveyor belt that moved the product down the line. That has changed gradually over time, not so gradually since the internet of things has been in existence. Now automation is the standard in most manufacturing operations. I used to work in plastics factories, mostly in injection molding. Anybody who knows anything about that kind of work in the seventies and eighties knows that it was a low-paying, high turnover type of job. We used to have to manually operate the injection molding machines, opening the gate to remove the product from the mold, and then trim the excess plastic and put the product in a box. Now just about all of that has become automated. Millions of jobs have disappeared as a result of automation and robotics in manufacturing.

The big news in automation lately has been in the operation of motor vehicles. Computer technology is creating a scenario in which we are going to be passengers in our own cars in the not-too-distant future. This has obvious upsides and downsides. Some of the upsides are that people will no longer be de facto age-limited out of their automobiles or age-restricted from driving. Drunk driving will become a thing of the past. What I don’t like is the loss of agency, the loss of being captain of my own ship. Whether it’s my car or my motorcycle, I was able to afford to buy it, and I am allowed to pilot it all by myself. It’s a pride thing, I guess. What they are saying is that the technology is coming not all at once, but piecemeal. I just bought a car that has a camera for backing up. I never had that before. I believe it also has crash-avoidance technology. See, that stuff is good. Who can complain about being stopped before you hit somebody by your lack of attention to the road? Likewise, with the backing-up camera, nobody can object to being able to see a toddler behind your vehicle who may be too short to see over the rear trunk apparatus. It is only going to grow, and I don’t see the changes as being benign. You go from being your ship’s captain to being a crew member observing the voyage. And don’t get me started on the impact this vehicle tech stuff will have on my favorite hobby, motorcycling. Already, motorcycles are not held in high favor by the general public. Some of this is the fault of motorcyclists themselves (or should I say ourselves). Obnoxious behavior, exhaust pipe modifications to increase loudness, that stuff is on us. But there is a prejudice as well, and that is a topic for another blog. What I am saying is that it wouldn’t be too hard to imagine anti-motorcycle lawmakers, with the support of a motorcycle-hating public, outlawing motorcycles on public roads on the grounds that they are too dangerous to be on the streets with all the self-driving cars and trucks. I don’t know what kind of laws are going to be enacted with the advent of digitally-mastered vehicles. It’s one thing if the technology gives us more choices. It’s another thing if it removes our choices and eliminates a category of recreation enjoyed by many people.

It will all come out in the wash. There will be a lot of trial-and-error involved, and it will be a gradual process. Since I am a baby boomer, I probably won’t be around to see the final evolution of digital driving. That suits me fine. I am glad I grew up in a time when cars and motorcycles were the ultimate in expressing one’s individuality and driving skills, and when a person could earn a good living working on the line.

It has been almost a month since my last blog post. Not that I haven’t been busy. It’s just that, in my life, there is only so much you can write about before it becomes repetitive. Now I can see the challenges for real, paid columnists who have a weekly deadline to come up with something both new and good. So I will write a blog summarizing my disgust with the Republican machine that controls most of state and federal government in the United States.

One thing everybody agrees on is that this country’s infrastructure is in dire straits. There are more than 55,000 bridges in need of repair, about 10 percent of the total. Europe’s public transportation system puts us to shame. Yet, the Republicans consistently have refused to invest the necessary funds to improve our roads and bridges. Almost all Republicans who hold national office have signed Grover Norquist’s no-new-taxes pledge, in which the signer promises never to vote to raise taxes for any reason, under any circumstances. So nothing gets done unless it can be done without raising the necessary revenue for it, which involves raising taxes.

What the Republicans are doing to try to stay in power are really the only things they can do at this point. Eventually, demographics will make it impossible for a party that caters to Caucasian voters to stay in power. But for now, they are doing several different things to make that day as far away as possible:

1. They worked diligently to win control of state government. Then they used that control to redraw legislative districts to Republican advantage.
2. They used scorched-earth tactics to gain a seat on the Supreme Court. The more conservatives there are on the highest court and secondary circuit courts ensure that:
3. The Republicans’ efforts to suppress minority and young voters succeed when challenged in court.
4. Wealthy Republican donors are working with an organization called ALEC to ensure that large corporations are able to buy votes and rig elections.
5. The Citizens United decision by the conservatives on the Supreme Court puts ALEC in a very powerful position to buy the government they want: Little to no regulation on climate, few to zero protections for the consumer from predatory banking practices, tort reform that seeks to disallow injury victims of corporate malfeasance to sue for redress, also seeks to limit class action suits against polluters, etc.

The last item I have on my list is a big one. It makes all the other things in my numbered list possible. This has been going on for a long time, and I have addressed it in other blogs. It is the tribal instinct that the Republicans have inserted into their voter base. By appealing to prejudice against the “other”, whether it’s blacks, immigrants, foreigners of any kind especially nonwhites, they have convinced people to vote against themselves. Lyndon B. Johnson made a famous observation that if you convince the lowest white man that he is better than any black man, he will let you take his money. And that, they do exceedingly well.