ESAUS--OR WHAT?

To all who gave a con their vote on Tuesday or before: do you know what you've done?
Do you really know for what you've voted?
To those who've sold our common birthright for the false promise of lower prices for milk, eggs, bread and gas: you have been hornswoggled by this con. Indeed, if he legislates the McKinley-era type tariffs he wants into law, expect to be paying a lot more for the goods you need and want!
That big plasma TV screen you'd like to buy? If it's made anywhere but in the good ol' USA, you'd better buy it now because anything made anywhere else, starting next year, will be 20 to maybe 100 percent more expensive! And why? Tariffs, that's why!
I need to ask God's forgiveness on a fairly constant basis because I am looking forward to, a year or so hence, to drinking your bitter tears over seriously high prices and smacking my lips to boot!
Then again, I might have tears enough to shed myself at the same time if Project 2025 gets its greedy hands on our SSI and thereby impoverishes us--and tens of millions of others! How many people do y'all know who rely on Social Security for at least a large chunk of their income, if not necessarily the bulk of it? Do your parents of grandparents rely on that? Know anyone incapacitated in an industrial accident who now needs that income? Or who do you know with chronic illnesses? Mike Johnson, Repiglican Speaker of the House, looks forward to ending the Affordable Care Act and having those people thrown out on the street to die. Very likely he and his political owners will dance on their graves as well, after making sure you're not looking. If you are, they know how to assume pious poses with remarkable speed!
And how many hunters have voted for the Orange Con? I got news for you: the policies that he means to pursue via Project 2025 will probably denude your favorite hunting grounds and eventually make them disappear. Do you think that preserving those areas is not connected with being 'green'? Well, enjoy (Muhahahahahahaha!) the consequences of your seriously large mistake! This might be a really serious matter; I've no idea how many impoverished rural fellow citizens rely on hunting to put meat on the family table. Will they be able to keep doing so? I wonder; so should you.
Last but by no means least: how many of you showed what dough-faced dinkyjohnnies you really are by not being able to bring yourself to vote for a woman at all, never mind a woman of color, however capable she might be? Wisconsin, Michigan and (I am bitterly ashamed to list a home state here!) Pennsylvania, ye all have shown yourselves to have more than your share of such dinkyjohnnies--and probably not all of you dough-faced as well. I saw the percentages of African-American and Hispanic males who fell for the con's scam! In any case, you showed us, both on Tuesday and before then, eight years ago, what your real problem is!
The only thing I have to say to those who've voted to make us cry is: boy, have you ever missed the point! We almost never cry for ourselves, but almost always for people, creatures and other life-forms in greater danger, and less able to help themselves, than are we. Including....y'all!
Do you really think that deluding yourselves that others are suffering more will ease yours? When your children cry from hunger, will it ease your mind to think that blacks and browns are hurting more?
Y'all remind me of John 1:5: 'The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness comprehended it not.'
But to be fair, we are not completely enlightened either. Certain Yankees (and by that I mean New Englanders, not generic Northerners) act as if their region has a patent on virtue, and that addytood (to put it in 'Philadelphian') seems to have largely infected our educated class. David Brooks is right to point out that our educated class doesn't seem to see or comprehend how much working people require serious respect, not condescension, from them. Our educated class needs to listen to working people of all colors with much more open minds--and not with any predetermined agenda of our own. Brooks is right about that.
You've voted against your own actual interests with remarkable ignorance, and perhaps malicious ignorance, at that. Our educated class is by no means guiltless in this; I admit that. But in the end, it was you who sold our common birthright for what amounts to cheaper French toast, which is equivalent to a mess of pottage all right!
And I thought you all hated French things!

DEATH TO ALL SHARIAHS, BY WHATEVER LABEL!

 As propounded by nearly all Islamists, 'shariah' law is of the Devil.
That's right. You read that right.
Why do I say that? Simply this. As I contemplate those societies ruled by it, I notice that nearly everything in that code is directed towards keeping all the real power in the hands of a few males my age and older, including many of the young women.
Thus, a secondary aim of 'shariah' law is to keep the males between the ages of 18 and 25 from seizing what the older males have (mostly) stolen and divvying it among themselves, including and, perhaps, especially, the young women.
And to this end, they seek to outlaw music and, of all things, female laughter! Why? Because these might EXCITE the young males, who are such babies that they have NO self-control whatsoever! Of course, they are probably also jealous of the simple joy of life that such laughter can, and often does, betoken!
We who live in countries where more female flesh is seen ought to drive it into the heads and hearts of these diabolically-inspired male bipeds that we, not they, are the manlier ones: are we excited to the point of rape by bikini-ed women? For a preponderance of men here and elsewhere, the answer is a definite NO.
We, not they, are the ones who have learned (I admit, to varying extents) to control our hormones rather than be blown about by them!
I can hear a foaming reply from some of them, viz. "You have NO manly hormones in you; there is nothing you need resist! WE are the manliest; liquid fire runs through our veins!!"
I think the best answer to this and other such garbage is, "Ye-ah, dude. Whatever." Then, as they dance with foaming from their mouths, pass the popcorn and the iced tea. Then get ready for some serious conflict.
I say anyone and everyone living in any democracy who says democracy should be killed and shariah 'law' take its place ought to be immediately deported to a country so ruled! Then we'll all be quite happy, won't we?
Warning: we do have those here who seek to institute a 'Christian' version of shariah law. The best-known plan now goes by the name of Project 2025. Advocates of that can be deported to Russia, which is probably the closest thing to what they lust to do to us here.

TRIBES AND FAMILIES

More thoughts stringing themselves together. This particular string starts with why, in today's world, people leave their native countries to go and live elsewhere. As a general rule, people tend to leave places that feel as if they are 'closing in' on their inhabitants and seek out places with both more room to breathe and more secure ground under their feet. These two things are not contradictory, as some ignorant Randians might think, but rather complementary. For without the security afforded by a rule of law and some measure of popular participation in the making of those laws,  safety for one's life, limbs and goods becomes a horrifyingly chancy matter for an individual and her family.
People migrate to where they can breathe easier in terms of safety and/or can be better fed, clothed and sheltered than in the native lands. Or they migrate in pursuit of a particular ideal, whether it be making a new nation or resurrecting an old one. But I suspect such migration as that to be relatively rare.
In any case, for a society to be attractive to immigrants a rule of law, trusted and upheld by the large majority of its citizens, seems to be a prerequisite.
It follows that whatever evaporates or vitiates trust of that rule will, if unchecked, impoverish and re-tribalize a modern society. Such theft of trust re-converts a polyglot federation to a collection of mutually hostile and perpetually warring tribes. This includes all that discourages wide participation in politics and government and which discourages civil discussion of issues about which most of us feel pretty deeply. The so-called Republican party and the noise machine of Faux News, Rush Limburger and all his mimics are indescribably guilty, guilty, GUILTY of such discouragement and, to a dangerously snowballing extent, have been guilty of such discouragement for at least forty years and probably more. Their attempt to put themselves above the law and then to use the law as a club to beat all non-white non-straights-and-males down is a big part of this as well.
Jew-haters claim that Jews break up other 'tribes' while keeping their own intact. Intact? Just how intact are they, one can wonder, when there are probably above 100 million people on this globe with some ancestral connection to ancient Israel, yet who do not call themselves Jews, Israelites or even Hebrews?
The reason for why some remnant of the nation of ancient Israel still calls itself that is probably The Tetragrammaton, aka YHWH. Get it?
I can think of another nation whose beginning includes at least the partial abandonment of tribalism based on DNA, on the 'sib' which was the first political unit of most Teutonic tribes including the Angles, Saxons and Jutes. When those three tribes conquered and settled the greater part of Britain and began the stop-and-go of making it into something called 'England', many sibs were broken up. A man might be a resident of, say, Sussex while his brother or cousin lived many miles away in Essex. And so on. And so the basic societal unit changed from one based on DNA to one based on proximity, on shared residence. As settlements settled, DNA crept back as at least a partial determinant, but not necessarily the primary one.
That process was repeated as first Englishmen, then Dutchmen and, later, border English, Scots, and Scotch-Irish settled along the Atlantic seaboard.
In the last case, whole communities crossed the Pond and went west looking to grab land from the natives. It can be argued they never abandoned the sib or clan as the basic societal unit and thus remained at a more primitive stage of development than other colonial societies. Sarah Huckabee Sanders, and those who agree with her, seem to underline this as they don't acknowledge anything but 'blood', aka DNA, as the maker of what they call 'families' but might better be called 'relational clusters'.
'Family', as Robert Frost wrote, is 'the place where they have to take you in', where they acknowledge you as 'one of us' although years might have gone by. But DNA ain't necessarily the determinant. I suggest the determinant is how much love we feel among our 'families'. If, when we're there, it's more a matter of compulsion of some kind (including 'family duty') than wanting or needing to be there--well, I will be bold and say this: that ain't no 'family'; just a common DNA, or, 'relational' cluster of bipeds! Most relational clusters at least attempt to be families, to give credit where it's due.
The extent to which that ideal is realized is certainly highly debatable.
Democrats seem to at least begin to understand that family is where we each feel safe and cared for in ways which we need and can best get there. Where we are built (back?) up and not torn down, but where we're also kindly called on our particular forms of b.s. 'Republicans' at least act as if they don't understand this and don't want to. It must be plain that the Democrats are the ones who are, in the best and broadest sense, the genuinely 'pro-family' party.

FACTS & TRUTHS

 

I just heard Professor Tim Snyder explain that, for democracy to survive and flourish, we need a common understanding of the facts and the truths they show us. Quite true.

And for that to happen, any society needs a vigorous self-critical component. Part of why Western societies and culture still dominate the globe is that the West's common culture may not have been born in the next thing I'll mention, but it was definitely fostered and nurtured in the creative tension between two highly self-critical societies. One (Athens) is characterized by rigorous empirical observation. The other (Jerusalem) is typified by its understandings of divine revelation.

Both societies were and are highly self-critical; I might almost say exceptionally so. The late Samuel Huntington commented; Western superiority primarily emanates from our superiority in organized violence--that is, our armed strength. But whence cometh that superiority but from our scientific primacy? And whence comes THAT but in our willingness to test new ideas and, thus, either make new tools OR adapt tools from elsewhere?

Our diversity and willingness to try what's new are strengths, not weaknesses. One real weakness we might have is forgetfulness of our societies' underpinnings--that is, we forget how rooted both in Scriptural understandings and empirical science we are!

I defy anyone to show me any society, at anytime, anywhere, that has a self-critical sector as vigorous as do Western societies and cultures. And yes, I admit that sometimes that sector is shortsighted sometimes and goes overboard in its criticism of its own mother cultures. And that it takes a liberal to admit that--most harmfully in its response to Israel's defending itself in this current war.

Any society's self-critical sector needs to defend the best in that culture while going at those parts of the culture which are actually hangovers from times not as 'enlightened' as our own and which contradict those things for which we say we stand!

At the same time, we dare not ('dasn't' for old-time Yankees) admit individuals from other societies who are dedicated to the destruction of ours. I support a wholesale expulsion of Islamists (not Muslims per se) from ALL Western nations! We can know them because, when we bring up their uncomfortable truths, they start 'screaming' in one way or another. We also have such truths, but some of us at least are working on them. Are their societies?

I don't think so!

Anyhow, as we prepare to vote, ponder this post, and beware of all those who duck from the light of truth, be they Islamists from elsewhere or our own native fascisti, whatever they call themselves!

Vote for she who does not duck from truth--Kamala and Tim!

  ·

TRUTHS ABOUT DEMOCRACY & AUTOCRACY

 It seems like this is the time to write such a post as this.
Back during the tie of our revolution and what is now called our 'Federal' era, there was quite a bit of talk about comparing, to quote Sam Adams, 'the tranquillity of servitude to the animating contest of liberty'.
What it seems didn't occur to anyone was, servitude ain't tranquillity. I wrote such a post and titled it so; here is a link to it.
https://www.blogger.com/blog/post/edit/1544353602029642191/8505401765231773381
And one thing even I didn't mention much was, how stressful it can be to 'dance attendance' on a thoroughly corrupted despot of either sex. Which is probably why many wise men and women kept away from princely courts and the like and were also often careful to stay out of the sight and hearing of such despots.
Now, democracy is by no means based on any Rousseauvian Enlightenment claptrap such as the Inherent Goodness of Humankind. We are nowhere near that good, and democracy knows this. Indeed, it's based on the sound ground that none of us corruptible bipeds deserve to be trusted with anything near absolute power and that, accordingly, power ought to be divided in such a way that no one has anywhere near more power than is good for them (or the rest of us) and, also, that no one is left without a voice and some chance to exercise it. This is true not only of mere political but also of economic and financial power; perhaps especially true of the last two types of power.
"Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely."
This all-too-true saying was coined and popularized by the great Lord Acton, a mid-Victorian political luminary. In the past, we have assumed that the wealthy will be less open to corruption as they already have all the material benefits they may want. This has also proven to be only a partial truth. Yes, we have had such public-spirited rich folks as the Cecils, many of our Founders such as Washington, Jefferson and Madison and, later, the Roosevelts, Kennedys and (let's be fair) the Lodges and Cabots.
However, in recent years we have seem far too much of what Teddy Roosevelt justly called the 'malefactors of great wealth' who are indeed quite corrupted by the possession of too much wealth and too much power. Those such as Musk and Trump and the latter's supporters seem driven by a lust for absolute power, including a desire to bring feudalism into the 21st century USA!
While autocracy cherishes outward (and often phony and misleading) signs of religious devotion, democracy is actually essential for the growth and strengthening of true religion. In direct proportion to any faith being part of the governmental establishment anywhere, its religious fervor will be largely persecutorial and, thus, contrary to the will of God. Real faith is fostered in an atmosphere of liberty of conscience and only in that atmosphere!
Democracy also necessitates a number of things without which autocracy can muddle along and which it indeed fears and tries to suppress: first, a citizenry educated in the spirit of science and which seeks real truth, which has as little to do as possible with telling thugs what they and their toadies want to hear! And they never want both the good and bad of any story, never mind the ugly. (Wah-WAH-wah!) But all three elements, along with the beauty often created by the struggle between them, are necessary so that the good from history can be strengthened and the bad needn't be repeated. (Wah-WAH-wah-wah!)
Second, a press unafraid to ferret out corruption (which is just about necessary for autocracy!) among those entrusted with power by the public and still more among those possessed with great private power. We need a truth-in-reporting law and maybe a set of them!
Democracy is the only form of government capable of correcting its mistakes--and mistakes there will be, always, this side of Judgment, in any government. All of us are susceptible to corruption or just being badly informed; yes, myself included. Let's remember that even Jesus addressed a rich young man thus: "Why do you call me 'good'? There is none good but God."
But this should be no excuse for not trying to be good; we only need to remember that mistakes on our parts will be inevitable. And democracy gives us the means of correction. It can take a while but is far less dependent on the whims of we corruptibles than is autocracy.
And that is why we need anti-lobbying laws and publicly financed election campaigns too.
Some may think this a paradox, but it is no such thing in a system which needs truthful information to run well. We also need civil servants who know their actual jobs and who can explain in plain language, with a minimum of 'shop talk' (if any) how they serve We The People!
I feel a bit like I'm bouncing these points around; it may be that other fingers can articulate these matters better than this aging pale male. Still, I hope that this at least begins to make the case for the defense, preservation and, yea, the extension of democracy and the continual push-back against autocracy!
Remember something ol' Harry (Truman) once said: "If you want to live like a Republican, vote for the Democrats." Rarely was a truer word spoken, even by that blessedly blunt president.
I think in 1980, too many of us thought we were aristocrats and voted accordingly. We can never afford to forget how plebian nearly all of us are. Real aristocrats look after the real welfare of those lower down the ladder. They (we?) understand that, 'When we all do better, we all do better.'
Not to mention that, by removing the 'super' from 'super-rich', we actually help to save their precious souls from absolute corruption and them toppling over into the fiery Pit on the lip of which they walk! Seriously; think about it!

BEHIND WHICH EYES?

 As the Democratic ticket hangs between its choices, certain questions must be asked: of the thirty-some representatives and four senators begging Biden to withdraw, how many have significant racial minority populations in their districts? What are they afraid of? Do they think their soccer moms will either go the other way or stay home in November? Allow me to suggest that, if the party keeps the issues of reproductive choice, public education (for) and a vibrant economy alive, that happening gets less and less likely? Or are they afraid that the cash spigots from what are still probably mostly neo-liberal donors for them may dry up?
Or do their districts still have relatively large percentages of those pale males I call doughfaced dinkyjohnnies? How many 'shiny object' voters might these districts have who will respond more positively to someone who only looks and sounds 'commanding' but with no truth behind it as opposed to a commander who is sometimes not very commander-like, but who knows his/her business thoroughly and has used, and continues to use, that knowledge for the benefit of the people s/he serves?
Maybe we should push harder on that point. The representatives who serve districts with either high racial minority populations or even high proportions of struggling whites within the Democrats (looking at those Philly suburban districts which were red and are now blue) are still silent or, now, openly supportive of Biden/Harris. This ought not to be ignored; no block of voters is more loyal to or works harder for Democratic candidates across the ballot than politically engaged African-American women, especially (I guess) the church ladies among them.
There was once another Democrat at the top of the ticket who many 'pros' thought would go down in thumping defeat and they were terrified lest he should take the party with him. But he ran--and he won. And this was with defections on both the party's right and left! Anyone care to guess this man's name?
Harry S. Truman. Good ol' Harry.
And now we hear rumors that the 'Republicans' now want to force an outright resignation from Biden!
I think only Roger Daltrey and The Who have words for whence this noxious nonsense emanates!
Allow me to explain: the MAGAts, who now own and run the formerly Republican party, are lineal (mostly political) descendants of those who wanted ol' Milhous to fight to a finish and who probably bear a mighty grudge against onetime Establishment Republicans as well as nearly everyone else who ain't one of them! So, to The Who's lyrics from the song with the intriguing title of Behind Blue Eyes:

I have hours only lonely
My love is vengeance that's never free

Remember, vengeance is what Trump and indeed most MAGAts, now live for! And a few more interesting lyrics which stir the pot:

No one knows what it's like to be the bad man
To be the sad man behind blue eyes

And a little further on:

No one knows what it's like to feel these feelings
Like I do--and I blame you!


Do you understand? They blame us for their half-century of butthurt and they now seek any kind of revenge including forcing the resignation of a well-working Democratic president! And also they blame anyone else but themselves for something else. Back to Roger again:

No one knows what it's like to be hated
To be fated to telling only lies

FATED? Like hell, you doughfaced dinkyjohnnies! NO ONE is FATED to that! You--yes, YOU--have CHOSEN to be among the ones who, according to the Book of Revelation, 'loveth and maketh a LIE'
You have the power to turn and repent as have a growing number formerly among y'all--but yet you cling to the lies which act as walls between us all!
Well, let me tell y'all something: those to whom you've made yourself feel superior by hating them know very well how it feels to be hated for something about your person you cannot change! Nearly everyone with skin darker than raw dough knows how that feels, beginning with Jews and going right on through skin shades to Africans and those of African heritage in our common hemisphere!
And so your toxic bread which YOU have cast upon the waters comes back to you now! I am also a pale male and any patience I might have had for your butthurt whining is LONG gone! And Trump also lies to you when he says, it's all right to hate. Now you know the feeling you've inflicted on others and, Jaye (my late first wife), forgive me for using a phrase you never liked to hear from me--you are justly served!
Forgive this digression; I mean my point to be that, while the African-American community, especially the women, stand with Biden/Harris, so will I. It is they that uphold democracy, the rule of law and the truth in general most steadfastly and among whom big mouths with fat wallets and shiny-object chasers seem to have the least influence. And no group works harder for Democratic candidates up and down the ballot. And that those calling for Biden to withdraw are those least influenced by these worthy women. We cannot afford to mutilate their enthusiasm in the way some neo-liberals seem to want to do, because without that--it they stay home--we really are done for!

LADIES, FORWARD MARCH!

 Yesterday, I heard there was a new petition signed by above fourteen hundred African-American ladies which expressed a disinclination to have Biden step down from the nomination. I don't know what else that petition contains yet, but I've also heard a rumor or two that, behind the mostly elite clamor for that action, is the desire to remove Kamala from contention for the top spot.
I don't know about any other pale males, but this one smells a large white rat at this point.
On my dad's side, I come from the Southern white minority that were called 'scalawags' by the ex-planters during Reconstruction. The ex-planters called them that because they were willing and able to participate in the Reconstruction state governments which also included freed people and Yankee carpetbagger transplants. They were mostly independent farmers, artisans and shopkeepers who refused to use slave labor and whose voices had been muzzled in nearly all the slave states by 1840. That is, before the war.
If anyone reading these words cares to, y'all just try and convince this scalawag in his late sixties that something other than racism and sexism are in motion here!
I am only too used to party bigwigs, most of whom are still also pale males, living in terror of more doughfaced dinkyjohnnies skittering away from tickets headed by anyone other than a pale male who at least can convince others he's more than just another d.d. But now we must all ask ourselves, aren't most of our d.d.s already gone, either to MAGA or the next world? I mean, if Georgia--Georgia, for Pete's sake!--can elect Jon Ossoff and Rev. Raphael Warnock, albeit by squeaker margins, maybe we'd better re-examine our old assumptions!
If Biden really has to go, maybe it really is time for a Democratic ticket headed by Kamala and with, say, Governor Josh Shapiro or maybe Mark Kelly as her Number Two! If Georgia can elect both a Jew and an African-American as its U.S. senators, why not?
But I also strongly suggest that, nobody knows the answer to this, be it affirmative or negative, better than politically engaged African-American women. And I also strongly suspect that being one of their church's ladies also helps in this respect. Or, sometimes, even a rabbi. Tamar, could I possibly forget you? Jamais de ma vie!
Is any group of voters more loyal to the Democratic party than these good ladies? And who does more of the legwork for, spends more time on (including persuading others to vote and vote our way) campaigns for Democratic contenders at all levels of the ballot? And who contributes a growing proportion of campaign budgets to boot?
One mistake too many 'officers' make, in nearly any organization, is: they don't listen enough to the foot soldiers and the non-coms (or their counterparts)!PleasepleasePLEASE, let's not be making that hoary, ancient mistake yet AGAIN!I just heard some members of the CBC might be wavering; but this aging 'scalawag' will wait until the good African-American ladies--those most loyal of party members, who are probably the most hardworking, at least proportionally and who are the canniest pragmatists of voters themselves--speak out, one way or another.
These black pearls certainly have been in the background much too long, but it's not for me, nor any other pale male, to 'put them up where they belong' or to do anything but make way for them and welcome them to all our ranks, including the top ones! And this pale male, for one, waits your call!