Month: December 2012

Noodling around for a paper on preventing successful mass murders (Hint: the shooting stops quicker if people are shooting back), I found this paper from Cass Sunstein, written just after Obama was elected and before he was inaugurated.

Sunstein does something in the Obama administration, but I forget what, officially.  He’s a czar of some sort.

The net is that he wants to claim that anyone who does not believe the dominant narrative on 9/11, or in global warming, or in a number of other things he has stuck in there, is suffering from a lack of information, and that a possible appropriate response is “cognitive infiltration” of target groups. 

Interesting.

To the House members who blocked the latest deal, I have two words: fuck and you.

As I understand it, the plan was to raise taxes on those making a million or more.  EVERYONE should have grasped that this increase was purely symbolic.  It will have no effect on our national debt, our annual deficits, and little effect on the people it was targeting.

But why the fuck do you think Democrats keep winning elections (Hint: like the one they just won)?  Because they effectively portray Republicans as the party of greedy white men.  What IN GOD’S NAME DO  YOU THINK BLOCKING THAT TAX INCREASE SAYS?  Huh?  Any answers?  I’m waiting. 

It says VOTE DEMOCRAT.

Principle is a means to an end.  Every decision any one makes about anything is a means to an end.  The principle of less government means more freedom.  More freedom is a means to greater self development.  More self development is a means to greater happiness, and happiness, itself, can be grown.  It is a proper end.

But the end, here, is less government, is it not?  Do we help or hurt that cause by giving people more reason to vote for our ideological opponents? 
I reiterate: fuck you, jackasses.

Last night I was dreaming about Christmas shopping, just sort of taking in the orgy of spending on things that happens this time of year every year, and the Doors song “My Wild Love” kept going through my head.

Think about your own childhood.  Are some of the strongest affects not related to things and not people?  Think Rosebud, who encapsulated a lost innocence in Citizen Kane (Cane?  I’m not going to look it up).  I think back to a Rat Patrol lunchbox I had when I was a kid, my first.  I didn’t know what Rat Patrol was, but I liked the jeeps with the machine guns.

Or candy.  Think back to the candies you used to eat.  Extend the sensation, and see what else is around you, what memories, long hidden, come up.

We live in a world in which the transient and frivolous characterizes most of our most important emotional moments.  The more you connect with people, the less stuff you need.  Conversely, the more alienated you feel, the more objects come to serve the role of nurturing.

“My wild love”‘s lyrics are irrelevant.  What matters is the sense of a Indian chant, of a ritual, of a communal connection.  I think my intuition was trying to grant me a clear juxtaposition.

And to the point, many tribes accused the white man of being like locusts, consuming everything in front of them.  To a great extent, this is true.  Just look out your window and imagine what it looked like 200 years ago.  For most of us, that is a very different picture.

We need cultural reform.  The Socialists want to kill our souls and put us in boxes.  This is not needed, not for human survival, not for cultural survival.

In these pages, I have proposed what I feel strongly are workable solutions to ALL our problems-spiritual, scientific, political, economic.  ALL our problems can be solved well, in ways which promote ecological sustainability, generalized well being, and happiness.

This is an interesting perspective.  You have to consider the source–black helicopter central–but the media used is NBC and the like.  The initial reports were that they found two hand guns with him (Glock and SIG were named specifically, with one a 10mm and other a 9mm if memory serves), and an “assault rifle” in the car.  There is no reason to doubt either of these claims.  But the autopsies showed that a “long gun”–i.e. a rifle–had been used.  How do we explain the contradiction of a dead Lanza a hundred yards or more from the alleged murder weapon?  Were there two shooters?  Was Lanza brainwashed, as alleged with the Batman shooting as well?  I keep an open mind, and it seems there are some plainly incongruous facts here.

As I say from time to time, I reserve the right to be stupid, to appear nuts, and to contradict myself.  My purpose is to engage with the facts at hand at any given moment to the best of my ability, as even small changes in the factual landscape can lead to large changes in my conclusions.

What we have now does not appear to make sense.  I want to be clear: the emotional costs of a large hole in the dominant story will be ENORMOUS, and the pressure to put this “behind us”–as if an unsolved murder of 20 children can ever really be put behind any serious, honest person–will be huge.

I want to add as well my black helicopter, tinfoil hat perspective, just because I CAN.

The MOMENT this attack happened my first thought was that the media narrative that had been gaining traction around the possibility of a massive cover-up regarding Benghazi, and the possibility that Obama is effectively committing treason, albeit in a deniable way (he can claim his aim was to support Syrian self defense in the face of relentless genocidal attack, even while he was making sure the jihadists got the best weapons), was going to be derailed.  There was going to be a sea change in the media weather.

As I have noted before, I count 3 other times when a sort of wind was blowing that suddenly dissipated due to some tragedy.  As I look at the month preceding the election, I had a sort of vision of a Romney victory the night before the first debate.  But I ALSO had a dream of people being voluntarily decapitated, the night before Sandy hit the Jersey short.  I don’t know what, if anything, besides normal weather caused that storm, but it FELT like a literal spiritual black cloud coming in.

This feels the same way.  We need to ask some hard, very  unpleasant questions.  Obama’s grandmother died the night of his election.  Is it POSSIBLE she was murdered?  He didn’t like her, as far as I can tell, and I doubt she was holding on for his election.  He used her illness as an excuse to fly out to Hawaii in the heat of the election–when Hawaii was not a State in contention–but also at a time when the birth certificate was threatening to become an issue.  Did he really fly out there to bully State officials into silence and then cooperation?

I will note in passing that Donald Trumps $5 million offer to give to a named charity if Obama will release his records remains unanswered.

To the point here, was Lanza a Manchurian Candidate, who got sent a GO signal by someone close to Obama?  I know: how would anyone suggest something so monstrous?  I will counter with this: how could anyone contemplate with apparent equinimity the murder of 10 million Americans, as Bill Ayers (who has dined in the White House at least once) did?  If other people are doing the shooting, you are dealing in abstractions not different than cartoons. 

And was it NOT coincidence that Ayers appeared trampling an American flag in the New York Times, on
Sept. 11, 2001?  Was someone connected both with the attack and the Times sending a coded message?

Ayers–who as I have mentioned is a strong candidate for having been the actual author (you can Google search more links) of both of Obama’s books–said ”I don’t regret setting bombs. ”I feel we didn’t do enough.” He said this on a day in which I have argued bombs were plainly used to bring down at least Tower 7, and by extension likely Towers 1 and 2.

Even if everything I just said is true, there is no reason to give up hope.  Hitler set the Reichstag fire, but the fact is that if people had not reacted by granting him more power, his quest to be a dictator would have been thwarted.  Even granted UTTER cynicism and disregard for human life–even the lives of little children–there remain many honest Americans.  Even 99% of Obama’s most robust supporters think they are helping humanity, not hurting it.

I have to admit that the shooting in Newtown bothered me much less than the revelation that Obama may be intentionally intensifying a war in Syria that might leave a million people or more dead, and then result in a dictatorship that denies the citizens basic rights they have NOW.  Assad is not angel, but the Muslim Brotherhood consists in demons who will drive all light from the country in the name of God.

Benghazi should continue to be our focus. 

I have thoughts pop in my head on occasion, especially when I am tired.  Tonight, after a very long, very tiring day, the thought popped up “I want to be an assassin”.  Now, when this happens, I ask myself “was that my thought, from my unconscious, or a communication with someone else”?  Many of you may roll your eyes, but I do believe in telepathy.  The evidence, if you actually examine it objectively–which is to say in a spirit of sincere scientific inquiry–is overwhelming.  Certainly, I am not schizophrenic.

I looked at it, and thought “that is Adam Lanza”.  He wanted to be an assassin.  He wanted to shoot people in their beds.  He wanted to be thorough.  Why did he shoot his mother four times?  Quite obviously if the first shot was in her face, that was sufficient.  I think he was living out a fantasy of being a professional, and professionals don’t leave anything to chance. 

Why did he shoot the kids twice?  Same reason: professional diligence.  Why did he pick small kids?  Because he was a coward, and he knew no one would fight him.  He shot himself the moment a man with a gun showed up.

I don’t think he was crazy in any formal way.  I think he developed a warped way of interacting with the world by doing too little of it.  Think about this: he lived in a HUGE house, he was 20 years old, and he didn’t have a job, didn’t complete the last two years of high school (in my understanding), and played video games ALL THE TIME.  He seemingly had no friends, and his mother more or less fostered a bunker mentality by believing that the end of the world was coming, or at least a general social collapse.  That house must have felt something like the house occupied by the ghosts in the Nicole Kidman film “The Others”.  He’s alone all the time, probably with an overprotective mother, spending hours and hours and hours in a hypnotic trance.  Reality testing would blur for him.  When he shot himself, he quite possibly may have been thinking he was rebooting a game.

I am very tired, so this may make no sense.  I will offer once again the excuse that it has long been my belief that the more ideas you have and express, the more ideas you will be able to have and express, and the greater the variety, the greater the likelihood you’ll occasionally stumble like the blind squirrel upon a really interesting kernel of deep truth.  Often I am exploring in the dark, and will admit as much.

Tomorrow should see a number of posts that I have in backlog. 

There is a very simple argument to be made on this issue: IT’S ALREADY BEEN TRIED.  We banned assault rifles and high capacity magazines from 1994 to 2004.  It had no measurable effect on crime or mass shootings, but did create an enormous demand for the weapons.  Put another way, the ban put MORE guns into circulation than there were before, but that fact had no net negative effects.

There have been two mass shootings stopped by private citizens with guns, one in Texas and one in Oregon, just in the last week.  The fucking media won’t cover them.  Unless there are a lot of crying women, they don’t want to know about it.

For my part, I think “gun-free zones” should be eliminated in all places where there are not already armed guards, as in State and Federal buildings.  I would even allow concealed carry in banks.  If someone is going to rob one, they won’t need a gun permit first, but if they come in and fear they might get shot, that changes the dynamic.  One bank down in Texas did that, and they have not been robbed since.

I was praying the other day, and “help me learn to hate without anger” came out.  I have this sort of valve I turn to let the deeper parts of me flow out into the light.

As often happens with me, I said it without understanding it.  But when I thought about it, it goes back to my post on hate a week or two ago.  Hate is the difference maker.  It is what DEFINES a social order.  The basic refrain “hatred of sin is the beginning of wisdom” echoes throughout the Bible, particularly the Old Testament.

But what would hate without anger look like?  As I feel it, it would be a sense that THAT–say shooting children to death–is ALWAYS wrong.  It is an instinctive, visceral reaction.  One need not follow it with anger, but I think a sense of disgust should be present.  For a moral virtue to be real, you must have a sense of sin rooted in you deeply.  If you lie, you must feel disgust.  If you cheat, you must feel disgust.  You must hate in order to have a meaningful, meaning-creating form.

Can one not definitionally distinguish between Statists and true Liberals by asking what the locus of conscience–which is to say expressed morality–is?

Statists claim that societies, not individuals, are moral.  The only criterion for morality is equality among those ruled.

Individualists claim that the proper unit of morality is the individual conscience.  Since there can be no other unit of PERCEPTION, and since morality is simply a way of viewing the world, I see no possible argument which could counter the position of the Individualist.  Societies are dividual.  They break into parts.  The parts are the INdividuals.

Thus, Socialism is inherently a creed which rejects individual conscience, and in so doing, as I have pointed out often, IN REALITY entrusts morality to individuals who, in having adopted socialism as their creed, have already rejected moral absolutes. 

This is why sadism becomes an essential element in societies fully constituted on socialist principles.  If there is no sense of right and wrong, then might makes right, both in the sense of physically imposing its will, but also in the sense of creating a morality in so doing.

This article is interesting on several levels.   I will key on one: “the high point for mass killings in the U.S. was 1929, according to
criminologist Grant Duwe of the Minnesota Department of Corrections.”

Is mass killing perhaps just a part of the human race, when not expressable through war? Look at this description of running amok, which is a term originating with the Malays:

In a typical case of running amok, a male who has shown no
previous sign of anger or any inclination to violence will acquire a
weapon, traditionally a sword or dagger, but presently a variety of
weapons are used, and in a sudden frenzy, will attempt to kill or
seriously injure anyone he encounters. Amok typically takes place in a
well populated or crowded area. Amok episodes of this kind normally end
with the attacker being killed by bystanders or committing suicide, eliciting theories that amok may be a form of intentional suicide in cultures where suicide is heavily stigmatized.^{[citation needed]}
Those who do not commit suicide and are not killed typically lose
consciousness, and upon regaining consciousness, claim amnesia.

What I would submit is that when people are not connected with nurturing others on a deep personal, meaningful level, this sort of thing is inevitable.  The question is how to build a better society that does this.

As I have said, my personal idea is the creation of millions of little tribes of 24, in which completely unregulated emotional expression is a regular feature, and based upon Wholotropic breathwork; autogenic relaxation; what amounts to group therapy; Kum Nye; and intense exercise, of which the best example is CrossFit, and perhaps very long endurance marches or swims.

At some point, I literally imagine having structures with a chapel, a robust gym, relaxation rooms, and perhaps even a bar.  I have visions of groups of people singing drinking songs together, with big steins of beer. We could have dancing classes.  It would be a true community center. 

Note, too, that COMMUNity and Communism have the same root.  Communists want connection, but use means which make it impossible except through the intermediation of fear and violence, which of course are also a form of dysphoric connection.

I recently started the process of founding a non-profit to focus on building this, but am presently stymied by not having ready access to a board of directors.  Apparently there are websites linking people with boards.  I will pursue this after the first of the year, when I should have more time.  I have asked several people, but the ones with the professional standing to warrant inclusion have not responded.  I think they think I’m nuts. People don’t found churches.  Nuts found churches.

If you are reasonably successful, though (a business owner or professional of some sort), and have an interest in serving on an unpaid basis, please email me at [email protected] .  My intent is to get enough money to pay for certification as a Breathwork Facilitator, and eventually to focus on buying a physical structure to support my project, and then convincing other people in other cities to do the same.  This is the level of response needed, in my view, to the crises we face.  Words are not enough.  No book anyone will ever write will make the difference we need.