Paper Tiger Phenomenon

Ye olde Paper Tiger

The events taking place in the US government over the past couple of months indicate that it is a paper tiger when it comes to protecting itself from domestic enemies (Trump Nixed Enforcement Actions Against Nearly 100 Favored Corporate Lawbreakers).

The old song by BB King ("Thrill is Gone") comes to mind:

"In 1970, Walt Kelly’s beloved cartoon character Pogo famously uttered the phrase, “We have met the enemy and he is us.” At that time, the little possum’s observation could be categorized as humor or satire. Today it has been elevated into the realm of prophecy."

(Topping Americans’ new enemies list: The other political party). When one person in one political party can dismantle a government containing the most powerful military on Earth that government is a paper tiger.

Because there are no serious expectations of any internal threat anymore, the paper tiger is plain to see.

Nevertheless, the oath of office indicates that domestic enemies are real, and even requires that all government personnel must be totally aware of that reality:

"I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter. So help me God."

(Oath of Office, emphasis added). Many government officials who took that oath are not doing what eventually led to the Civil War in the USA.

That became a time when many domestic enemies waged literal war against other Americans.

So, it remains for the courts to do the job congress and other government officials should be doing (Tracking Lawsuits Against Trump And Musk; A Guide To The Many, Many Lawsuits Against Donald Trump And Elon Musk; Doggett).

The trillions of dollars spent on the military does nothing to change a domestic paper tiger which presents no barrier to an internal demise of US governmental strictures:

"The more challenging question is; how does the military defend the literal Constitution from domestic enemies? In his farewell address, President Washington raised the possibility of constitutional enemies rising from within the federal government:  '… ambitious and unprincipled men will be enabled to subvert the Power of the People, & to usurp for themselves the reins of Government; destroying afterwards the very engines which have lifted them to unjust dominion.' 

He also presented a dilemma by stating earlier in the same address: 'The very idea of the power and the right of the People to establish Government presupposes the duty of every Individual to obey the established Government.'  Members of the military are subordinate to the federal government and are required to obey the laws and orders established by these agencies. There could be a circumstance where an order or law is unconstitutional, in which circumstance the military member could, and perhaps should, refuse to obey the order/law. However, such disobedience puts them at substantial risk if their assessment of the order/law is wrong."

(Military vs Domestic Enemies?, emphasis added). The dangers of the military not being sufficiently aware of how to protect against domestic enemies led to the Posse Comitatus Act:

"Whoever, except in cases and under circumstances expressly authorized by the Constitution or Act of Congress, willfully uses any part of the Army, the Navy, the Marine Corps, the Air Force, or the Space Force as a posse comitatus or otherwise to execute the laws shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than two years, or both." 

(Wikipedia; cf. Will The Military Become The Police? - 13). A coup or insurrection using the military is a crime that should not be improperly pardoned.

Closing Comments

Some citizens are concerned that the current government is in fact a paper tiger in terms of being able to protect against a domestic enemy tiger.

The next post in this series is here.

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The Saturation Chronicles - 7

Mesopelagic

Data from the following ocean areas were used to produce the graphs presented in today's post: Equatorial Indian, NW Pacific, Mediterranean, North Atlantic, Red Sea, North Pacific, Persian Gulf, Sea of Okhotsk, Equatorial Pacific, Sulu Sea, North Indian, South Indian, Southern, Bering Sea, Sea of Japan, Equatorial Atlantic, Arctic, South Atlantic, and South Pacific.

The pelagic depth levels are not exact in all publications (compare this to this), so I added the meters of those depth levels to each graph so as to make it clearer.

The issue which the graphs are used to illustrate is the heat saturation (a.k.a. ocean heat content) at various depth levels.

Epipelagic

Those depth levels receive and emit infrared photons a.k.a. potential enthalpy (h^o) pursuant to the Second Law of Thermodynamics.

The basic observation that scientists adhere to is that the photon current a.k.a. heat flux travels from hot/warm molecules to cold/cooler molecules of seawater.

Since the photon current is constantly on the move when seawater temperatures fluctuate, taking the temperature of seawater at various depths is how the photon current is watched and recorded (The Photon Current, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16 , 17, 18, 19, 20, 21).

Bathypelagic

In the more recent posts of this series I mentioned that my hypothesis is that heat saturation of the oceans could be the cause of the unexpected severe atmospheric heat increases.

That is, since the ocean is known to have absorbed 90-93% of increases in global warming induced temperature, if that percentage of atmospheric temperature absorption decreases (saturation percentage decreases), the atmospheric temperatures will thereby increase accordingly.

There are a lot of factors involved with the phenomenon "when, why, how  is a photon absorbed into an atom or molecule of seawater"?

Multiple Levels: Epipelagic, Mesopelagic,
Bathypelagic and Abyssopelagic

It is not well known what takes place at the quantum physics level in terms of what issues are taking place which must happen to establish quantum level conditions that determine which one of "this photon or that photon" is the one to be ejected out of the atom or molecule (etc) and into a colder one.

We know quite well what takes place at the instances when we are taking the sea water temperatures, because it is a simple exercise of watching warm water lose heat and cold water near it gain heat until equilibrium is reached.

You know, sixth grade experiments with a water bottle.

But, even the professor holding the water bottle and telling us in this "experiment ... fresh water in this bottle expands when we warm it, which proves that the expansion of the vast oceans causes 30-40 percent of the global sea level rise."

Anyway, the graphs are based on WOD in situ measurements from 1950-2023, and are simulated from 1900-1949 based upon those in situ values.

I asked an AI program "what makes photons exit an atom or molecule?"

It replied:

"Atoms and molecules have specific energy levels, or orbitals, where their electrons can reside.

Excitation:
When an electron absorbs energy (e.g., from a photon), it can jump to a higher energy level, becoming 'excited'.

De-excitation:
Excited electrons are unstable and tend to return to lower energy levels, a process called de-excitation.

Photon Emission:
During this de-excitation process, the electron releases the excess energy in the form of a photon.

Energy Correspondence:
The energy of the emitted photon is equal to the difference in energy between the two energy levels involved in the electron's transition.

Spontaneous Emission:
This process, where an electron spontaneously transitions to a lower energy level and emits a photon, is called spontaneous emission.

Other Emission Methods:
Photons can also be emitted through other mechanisms, such as stimulated emission (used in lasers) or when a particle and its antiparticle annihilate.

Generative AI is experimental."

That does not tell me what I wanted to know: how an atom or incredibly smaller electron, or the other quantum particles alone, or all of them collaborating together in synchrony, have and use quantum thermometers/binoculars, or other quantum detectors that measure and recognize factors which they determine equate to "time to emit an infrared photon" ... 

But I digress.

I have no idea what specific quantum phenomena causes a photon in the photon stream to exit the atom or molecule it is in, having been absorbed there while traveling at the speed of light from a colder atom or molecule, to then head for an even colder one.

Abyssopelagic

I travail in the simple realm of the thermometers (CTD) where heat in the ocean water pushes the thermometer column up and down.

But, that does not mean we can't become alarmed when those thermometer (CTD) values tell us that saturation is growing closer, in many places around the ocean world, to a point on the saturation scale which tells us that the ocean is not absorbing as many solar photons as it once did.

Closing Comments

Which means, if the Dredd Blog hypothesis is not falsified,  that the atmosphere is going to do some surprising things to our atmospheric thermometers that specialize only in atmospheric temperatures.

The next post in this series is here, the previous post in this series is here.

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Lyrics here.

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