Month: November 2016

I was watching this great video on the 5 greatest challenges facing African Americans, and it occurred to me “where are the psychologists in the political arena?”  Most all of them lean hard Left, because rhetorically that is where most of the compassioning, and empathying, and hugging and crying is, but how many of them, in their own practices, would validate across decades self pity and the victim mentality?  How many of them would ENCOURAGE people to become martyrs?

How many of them would encourage people in unhealthy codependent relationships with the victims?  How many of them would say it’s perfectly OK to parent your undeveloped child like they were 5 across a lifetime?  How many would say it’s perfectly OK to treat grown adults like children, provided you can convince them first that they are helpless?

How many would validate fits of destructive rage of the sort seen particularly in Portland, where most of the destruction–as indeed many locals have pointed out–is directed at people who AGREE WITH THEM?  That is the same thing that happened in Ferguson, where most of the rage–the amygdala hijacks, the unregulated limbic system activation–was directed at the homes and businesses of fellow blacks?

How many of them would accept as healthy grown adults treating the Federal Government as Santa Claus, and the act of voting like handing Santa your Christmas list?

What is pathological in individuals is pathological in societies.  As above, so below.  Self similarity.  Fractals.

I don’t think we went a week between whenever Trump announced his candidacy and the present which was not called Trump’s “worst week ever”.  They are making a fucking story out of his going to dinner.

This won’t stop simply because the people resoundingly repudiated the media.  What will happen is that numbers for Drudge and Breitbart and Infowars and Frontpagemag and others will continue to go up, and all the people doing the hyperventilating will see their numbers go down even more.

Yes, there is a built in constituency of about 40% of the Electorate that wants all this bad news.  But if it was not obvious before, it should be obvious now that the breakfast and dinner tables constitute “social media”, and Mark Zuckerberg can’t do shit about what intact families discuss at home and in family gatherings.

And most of us GET that the New York Times is fake news.  MSNBC is all spin, all the time.  They don’t try to report the news: they try to CREATE it.  And a fucking bangup job they have done: they have convinced large segment of the electorate that our next President is Hitler, despite ZERO evidence that could even BEGIN to back up such insane, irresponsible, reckless, and likely even criminal claims.

This election plainly did not stop with the election.  They are trying every trick they can think of–and when it comes to cheating and bullying, the Left is quite inventive–to pretend that the American People did not tell them to go fuck themselves.

So, as I said: block by block, building by building.  Every time Trump takes a shit or sneezes we are going to hear “scandal”.  This can’t go on forever without everyone losing patience, though.  Until now, it was possible for viewers to cling to the idea that this latest scandal, this latest “worst week ever”, would finally end Trump.  Once he is in office, that narrative is very quickly going to lose steam.  It’s tiring and pointless.

All this relentless propagandizing is destroying the Left.  As I have said, for propaganda to work, you have to live in that bubble.  Once you realize that everyone around you is telling you lies, getting away with it consistently is impossible.  The circle of the initiates, the membership in the cult, shrinks rapidly.  Only a small, utterly indoctrinated group would contemplate someone like Ellison as party chair, but that seems to be the direction they are going.

Yes, you can hijack a party, and push it to the Left.  This has been done.  But once you lose the trust of the rank and file, once you SHOW THEM beyond any reasonable doubt, that you are a radical, what you have left is an irrelevant fringe.

Republicans did not just win the Presidency and both houses of Congress.  We made gains in virtually all State legislatures.  The Democrat tide is going out, because they chose to separate themselves from psychologically healthy people just trying to live normal lives.  They have nothing to offer such people.  They are not the party of the working class.  They have not helped blacks and Latinos.  They don’t support economic growth.  What is left that matters to most people?

As it has evolved, the real root purpose of the Democrat Party is to give meaning and purpose to rudderless drones who are unevolved emotionally, instinctively hostile to most of the world, and intellectually incurious.  They might read Marx and Chomsky and Zinn, but only to reaffirm their biases.  Curiosity is seeking out the new, and that is not something they do. If you are not one of them, they hate you, and their Party is only too happy to support them in that.  It is a cult.  The leadership may change, but the facts do not.

Are you willing to accept the idea that there is no forgiveness because there was no crime?

I speak to some of you, only.  The rest will not understand my question.

It seems obvious to me that what Trump has done is bring the Republican Civil War into the White House, where it has some chance of working itself out.  Uber Establishment, Uber Alt-Right, rubbing elbows regularly.

Here is the thing: Trump was able to appeal directly to the people in the face of establishment Republican opposition, but if he wants to get a fraction of his legislative agenda actually through Congress, he has to make nice.  He has to mend bridges, soothe egos, press the flesh.  Politicking will be needed before deal making can happen.  That this would be so has always been obvious.  Trumps main virtue is that he has the balls to walk away from bad deals.  That doesn’t mean compromise will not be needed in many cases to get the deal done. That’s how the world works.

Ponder the audacity of calling the first Constitutional Convention in I don’t know how long.  Since the repeal of Prohibition?  Modern Presidents have simply arrogated to themselves rights not contained in the Constitution, so even though the existence of, say, the DEA ought likely to have required a Constitutional Amendment, it was simply done.

Even the repeal of Obamacare will require politicking.  That’s just how it works.  And the truth is we likely won’t get all we want.  But we will get our Supreme Court picks, the will to enforce our immigration laws, the likely repeal of Obamacare, avoiding a war with Russia over non-existent interests in Syria, and a regime not committed to the demise of our nation.

Give Trump time.

I think it would be useful to describe the street protests–the flag burnings, the Mexican flags, the calls for the assassination of Trump, the calls for and actual violence directed at Trump supporters–as a precipitation of the headless ones.  They were hidden in masses, but were not obvious to many people.

Ponder people with Mexican flags marching against Trump.  They are not just saying it is OK that they are here illegally, but that it is NOT OK that the rest of us are here, and voting, even though we were born here and this is our country.  What a shitty attitude.

And it seems likely to me that many people who have been lifelong Democrats because their parents were Democrats, and their parents before them, are going to look at all this and say: this is not my party.  These are not my people.  Indeed, I suspect many did in the election already.

There was a time when it was possible to say that Democrats and Republicans both loved this country, and simply differed on how to improve it, how to protect it, how to govern it.

But when you burn an American flag, you are turning your back on individual rights, on the rule of law, on a tradition of peaceful negotiation of difference.  You are shitting on the very ideals which allow you to be a complete fucking idiot in public.

Of course this makes sense to many people, but I doubt very much that what the Democrats have manifestly become will ever appeal to more than perhaps  one fifth of the population.  Everyone who values common sense and common decency will shudder, and run the other way.  It is ugly, grotesque, scary, what they have become, and they have now become it in public, in very obvious, very blatant, undeniable ways.

I remember reading many years ago, in high school, that Rene Descartes used to lay in bed in the morning and dream, and that that is where some of his best ideas came to him.

And I remember feeling–this is not the word I would have used–that thinking logically about how to think logically, that using geometric proofs to demonstrate how we all should be and what is universally true, was wonderful.

And without doing more research to see if my sense is correct–what I am about to say may be very stupid and should be considered as such by those more erudite on this topic than I–I feel that someone with trauma in them, unprocessed emotions below the neckline, would  naturally gravitate to a life above the neckline, particularly one in which one could speculate and speak in the abstract about what may lay below the neckline.  We are all animatronic robots, animated by souls, is a logical supposition, for someone disconnected from their body.

But I feel, I feel, waves coming at me sometimes in my bed (my futon: I follow the Asian custom and sleep on a thin cotton mattress on the floor that I fold up after making in the morning) of complete transmissions.

My Eden poem came like that, and I’m afraid I likely lost much of it.  I will say though that that poem meant a lot to me.  I felt a kinship for Adam and Eve.  My blood is their blood, their sins and honest errors haunt me now too.  And Eden was never destroyed: it was just forbidden for a time.

Through all that is Andrei Tarkovsky, the visual poet.  Yes, that is the phrase.  His father was an actual poet–quoted in the Mirror, and referenced in Nostalghia–but he goes the next step.  Eden as the inner sanctum of Stalker.  Eden as the healing pools of Nostalghia.  Eden as the panicked crowds running, running, running in the Sacrifice.

Then of course, my Eden.  Can we not return to something?  Can what was lost never be found again, even if we move forward in Dream Time?

Ah, I lie there and feel kinship with humanity.  Sometimes by body is rocked and my heart pushes its every last drop of energy into the world.  I doubt I can explain what I mean.

My life is an odd one. I am not like other people, even though I am very much like other people.  I see people, and sometimes their stories come to me, and sometimes they don’t.  So many hearts have been broken, so many never even allowed to grow.  Brutal gardeners refused to water them, and cut them off from the sun.  They are stunted and alone, but so often they do not even know it.  They speak of “the world”.  We speak of how they are, what they don’t understand.

And all through this I feel I would suffer a thousand incisions, a thousand bites, for a tiny fraction of the wisdom I feel in the air.  It is there, but I have not yet made it my friend.  This is my fault.  It is certainly my fault.

Tarkovsky has a drunk Russian (Nostalghia)  dreaming of being in the ruins of an ancient church, and a female angel asking of God “show him a sign”, and God says “I show him all the time, but he does not see.”

I reach and I suffer, and I feel.  My faith is actually strong, although that may not be obvious.  This will work out eventually, and I am prepared to endure until it does.

Perhaps I should not have written this.  I am drinking, but I am not drunk, but as rambling as this is, it is an expression of something deep and important within me, and may yet touch you, my friend I have not yet met.

God did not nail Christ up to the cross.  He was nailed up as the result of human evil–human ignorance, pride, stupidity, greed, vanity, intolerance.  He was the victim of the Beast within all human breasts.

And the Church which bears his name inverted it all.  Where he spoke God they speak demon.  Where he spoke freedom they speak submission.  Where he spoke individuation, they speak collectivism.  Where he spoke heaven, they speak hell.

Self evidently, freedom is not living in a world where all are slaves to an ideology or a tyrant, where one sees the same closed eyes and same closed hearts everywhere one travels, all looking to heaven and sinking like stones.

The crucifixion happens whenever light attempts to enter into our souls and we smother it because we fear it, because we fear where it may lead us, because as bad as our circumstances and feelings may be, we always dread worse.  And so what is good is killed, smothered, battered and left to die.

This is the human condition as it exists today.  Not everywhere, not with everyone: of course not.  And things are gradually improving, in fits and starts.  Good psychology is emerging, useful understandings are taking the place of old cliches, about sin and redemption.  Political philosophy consistent with actual individual liberty and open and honest spiritual striving has come into being.

I don’t know why I pretend to be a prophet, but I write as the spirit moves me, so I guess that is something.  Whatever else I am, I am resolutely connected to the ideal of living my own life, and no one else’s.  Give me my pain, but also grant me my wings.

One of the first things necessary to end segregation was to call it wrong.  It was necessary to call Apartheid wrong.

And it remains necessary to call the treatment of women by Muslim nations wrong.  It remains necessary to call their treatment of gays wrong. It remains necessary to call their radical intolerance of all beliefs and practices different from their own wrong. People funded by Saudi Arabia are LITERALLY crucifying people in public streets for the “crime” of being different.

We read that it is insulting and demeaning to single out Muslims as a group we do not want.  GOOD!!!  Perhaps they will do some introspecting, and ask why we would feel that way.  By and large, they know how we are.  They watch our movies, and television, and likely play our video games, at least in the wealthier homes.

And by and large they seem to hold us in contempt, because we do not believe in ourselves.  We preach equality of the sexes, but ignore their refusal to allow women to go to school, to drive, in many cases to even leave the house without a male relative.  There is no mass condemnation of the gang rapes and murders practiced particularly by our nominal ally Pakistan.

There is no effort that can be called serious in Europe to ask them to integrate, or to punish those who call for the overthrow of their adopted countries, and their Liberal systems of law.

There is no outcry when homosexuals are beheaded in public squares after trials.

No one objected to the shaming of Southern white segregationists.  No one objected to the boycotts and divestments associated with undermining Apartheid.

Surely there is nothing wrong with refusing to allow in people practicing similar and often worse creeds, PARTICULARLY when they are surrounded by their coreligionists, who could easily allow them in as refugees?

These people do not think like we do, granted.  They are nasty, selfish, mean.  They have allowed the refugees from a war in 1948 that THEY STARTED to languish for 68 years.  Generations have been born and have died in refugee camps.

But this is not our fault.  And a large problem the so-called Palestinians have had is that they shit everywhere they go, and nobody wants them.  The Jordanians don’t want them, the Lebanese don’t want them, and the Syrians have not wanted them.  To a great extent, these fools have brought this fate on themselves.  Do not pity people whose whole aim in life is to use your pity as a weapon against you.

We have no moral obligation to accept millions of Syrians.  On the contrary, we have an obligation to destroy ISIS, to allow some structure to be rebuilt, and when that happens, all of these people will have homes again.

Trump needs to stand his ground on this issue. How else can we spark needed discussions?  How else can we get these appalling social practices changed?

The Electoral College exists for two reasons.  The first was to make sure that large cities did not overwhelm the countryside–which after all contains most of the land in this country, most of the physical mass.  With regard to this aim, Trump’s election was a logical consequence.  Most of America is red.  Most of most counties across this country are read.  Most of us are law abiding and peaceful.

Here is a good treatment of this topic: https://moderatesunitedblog.com//2011/02/electoral-college-systemgood-or-bad.html

If the opponents of the Electoral College had it their way and we adopted the direct-election system, no candidate would ever visit the 30 smallest states (population) in the U.S., including New Mexico. Every campaign would be based around the big, urban city. If you don’t live in NY City, Los Angeles, or Chicago, you wouldn’t see the candidates. The idea is to be sure all votes in a district have power. Ideally no single party, race, ethnic group, or other bloc, nationally large or nationally small, will dominate any of the districts– which for now happen to be the 50 states plus Washington, D.C.Some political experts argue that the Electoral College robs voters of their individual power. A physicist from MIT named Alan Natapoff, in 1970, questioned that belief and he worked on a theorem that would show the people the value of our Electoral College. He worked on a mathematical explanation to identify the voters’ power in an electoral system versus a direct popular voting system. He asked himself, “What is the probability that one person’s vote will be able to turn a national election?” The higher the probability, the more power each voter commands. Almost always, he found, individual voting power is higher when funneled through districts–such as states–than when pooled in one large, direct election. It is more likely, in other words, that your one vote will determine the outcome in your state and your state will then turn the outcome of the Electoral College, than that your vote will turn the outcome of a direct national election. A voter therefore, Natapoff found, has more power under the current electoral system.

The second reason we have an Electoral College, and the reason Senators also were originally elected by the State legislatures, was to prevent mobs from being stupid.  The House is intended to be rambunctious and to be in continual revolt and turmoil.  Elections are direct, and every two years, and people’s moods change often.

The Senate, in contrast, has six year terms, and was intended to be the slower, more thoughtful, counterpoint to the House.  On the one hand you give the people a very direct voice, but on the other you balance it with men who are ideally well educated, of solid character, and beyond the need for continual campaigning.  If we had kept the old system, they would not have needed to campaign at all.  Our Constitution truly is a work of political genius (with its only flaw, as I continue to say, the failure to prevent the possibility of an activist Supreme Court).

But to the point here, the intent was to prevent truly bad candidates from getting into office.  The Left, of course, argues that Donald Trump is the truly bad candidate.  But Hillary, in something which has never happened before in our country, to my knowledge, emerged as the nominee despite being clearly guilty of MANY felonies, and under CURRENT investigation for many more at the Clinton Foundation, with criminal charges on all accounts being very likely.  I do continue to wonder if Comey closed the latest server investigation only after striking a deal that she would not be President.

So even in the unlikely event 20+ Electors could be persuaded to change their votes, which would be highly unethical, and highly politically destabilizing and likely physically dangerous to themselves, they would be changing their votes to someone who may well provoke a Constitutional crisis, or at least crisis of governance, as prosecutable crimes emerge from the investigation.  I don’t think there is any reasonable doubt many laws were broken, and that given evidence she thought was destroyed was in fact kept, that a solid and effective criminal case can and will be brought.

And Bill Clinton CAN be arrested.  He is no longer the President.  Hillary would have to be impeached and removed, but he could go to jail immediately, as, I’m sure, could Chelsea.

Looking at all this, it is easy to see how they may have agreed to play ball and just fade into the woods.  It would not surprise me to learn that HILLARY’S people are canvassing the Electors, to make sure they don’t vote for her.  Their reign is over.

Chuang Tzu taught that perfect goodness is crooked.

I would say that all sailors will tell you that to find a straight line in the ocean, one must look far beyond and above it.