LIVING CONNECTIONS

 This morning seems to be a time, for me, of connections revealed.
First, thinking again of Jesus's words as to what being 'the greatest' requires: 'If any of you will be the greatest, you must become the servants of all."
Second, my mind ricochets back to the story of the Fall. What was the first couple's original sin?
Wanting to be 'like God'. Perhaps a more accurate rendition might be wanting to be like how they imagined God Is? Think about this, carefully.
In any case, they wanted to take on something for which they were by no means ready. We still aren't, but  with God's help we cope with it. But too few of us ask God's help with this; we act as if we are already gods when the evidence is all around us about how godlike we ain't. And the first sign of this is our asking Lenin's question: Kto-Kogo? Who can do what to whom, we ask, usually with a view toward being one of those who can get away with murder or, more benignly, not being one who can be harmed with impunity. Too many of my own pale cast are aggrieved at not being among those who can get away with murder. As if their masculinity depends on them being able to go out and murder anyone of darker skin tone, and/or a different faith, whenever they're having a bad day!
More and more, it looks to me as if our Original Sin may well be wanting to think ourselves better than (fill in the blank) as per LBJ's saying this to young Billy Don Moyers, as he still called himself then. LBJ's words are a bit altered here to cover a broader problem.
"If you can convince the lowest [white man] [Arab] he's better than the best [colored man] [Jew], he won't notice you're picking his pocket. Hell, give him someone to look down on and he'll empty his pockets for you." And, conversely, when it becomes painfully clear that 'lower' groups can no longer be harassed or worse with impunity, there looks to be (almost?) nothing the former harassers won't do to be able to have such impunity back! Consider this carefully, along with this addition: those who seek equality, which usually includes real indigenes to a place, are willing to share. Colonists are exclusive; they never want to share power or wealth with other groups.
Those who seek to realize equality here on this continent are allies to indigenous peoples. And indigneous peoples are usually content with equality with others, unless those others seek to make themselves sole and exclusive masters. Which is how both Arabs in the Levant and peckerwoodies here want to be able to see themselves.
In the story of Cain and Abel, I believe the attitude with which Cain brought the fruits of his labor to the altar was (at least partly) as proof of how much more hard-working, and therefore how much better, he was than his brother. Which was, I suggest, why God was not pleased with Cain's offering. But like those who cling to seeing themselves better than others even to this very day, he didn't listen to God when God told him he needed to look within himself for the cause of God's displeasure. He dumped it all on Abel and consequently murdered his brother.
Anyone who has looked at a medieval chronicle may have been struck to the degree that tillers of the soil look down on pastoral peoples as lazy and less worthy than they. Cain tilled the ground; Abel was a herdsman. Need I write more?
Still, today, those who feel themselves immiserated and thereby (?) ennobled by their Hard Work and (especially?) their Hard-Earned money feel they have a right to look down on others who seek more joy in their lives. Mind you, preparation for joy can be, and usually is, hard work too, but work of a different kind. There's work that stretches the mind, heart and soul by at least semi-compelling us to care more for other living creatures and there's work which scrunches our minds and hearts. Or, maybe, it's largely how we see and do the work in front of us.
When we are brought face to face with the barbarities of 'our own people' and the evidence is pretty incontrovertible, we have work to do. Being ashamed of our paleness of skin, eyes or hair or of what our ancestors have done, does nobody any good. The question then becomes: how do we realize equality and socialize and expand democracy? We are all equally corruptible; we need to keep private power on short leash and a ceiling for how big we allow individual and family fortunes to become.
Part of this may yet be putting bullies down by hard means; let's hope they don't compel us to shoot back more effectively, but let's be ready for that possibility.

SERIOUS MALEDICTA

 I have just absorbed a shocking piece of news.
On the Saturday when the last presidential election was called, my wife and I stopped at a package store where we bought wines and beers at the time. The store had both a TV and a music-player in it. The song being played was Give Peace A Chance. Faux News was on the TV set calling the election for Biden. My wife expressed the hope that, now the election was decided, that there'd be some peace. The AMH (adult male hominid; I won't call him a man) behind the counter lethally threatened the new president-elect if he made any move to 'take guns away'.
Apropos of this, a close friend of ours just informed us that to even indicate a desire for peace marks a person as a Democrat hereabouts! Which means that a lot of people are lusting for the chance to shed the blood of others whom they hate, mostly with no cause at all except someone being different and, usually, more civilized and cultured, than they are! Their hatred is the fruit of fear cultivated by those standing to profit by it and of envy commonly held by these knuckle-draggers and their inciters against those who are, to put it plainly, both more humane and more human than they are, maybe more so than they will ever be!!
If they expect to shed the blood of such others, let me recall to y'all what happened with another band at least as ignorantly arrogant: The Marquis of Newcastle's 'white coats' were one of three armies of King Charles I during the English Civil War. They were effectively destroyed at the battle of Marston Moor. They had boasted that they would dye their coats red with their enemies' blood. Those coats were indeed reddened--but the blood was their own. As Shaw wrote: "If [people] will not learn until their lessons are written in blood, why, blood they must have, preferably their own."
I could not agree more. So, here follow the title features of this particular post:
May those who lust to shed the blood of their fellow citizens out of misplaced fear and/or wicked envy see that desire recoil upon themselves and their own even to the extent of breaking even their hearts of solid stone!
May those who desire power in their hands only see that desire recoil until they are left utterly without such power, political, economic and financial!!
May those who seek to feudalize our economy through inequality be compelled to do things they utterly detest doing for their next meal!!
May those who can think of nothing but fattening their already obscenely obese wallets or purses be left in the end with only small change and no power to stop urgently needed change in this country or on this planet!!
May those determined to die on the 'Whites Only' hill be granted that desire, but not before they see a really multiracial, multiethnic, multi-faiths democracy beginning to flourish in this land!! And may you live to hear from young native, Latino, and African-American men, "We don't want your daughters. Go and inbreed as you like until you die out and leave the earth a better place."
And may all ye who hoist black flags end up begging those who know very well how merciless you longed to be for that same mercy! May your guts run when that happens and all who smell you mock you with 'DOOOOOky boy/girl!"
I feel a heaviness after pronouncing such maledicta, so I will include the hope that all those on whom I have lain these words repent and turn to the God Who bids us to welcome and make room for the stranger and the outsiders, Who bids us to come and reason together with Him while reminding us that, thankfully, His ways are not our ways and Who would have us listen to each other.
Too long have we been encouraged to listen to the Trumpolaters who still want to kill us all; let them now hear us as a sign of their repentance! And bring out those who know hermeneutics!
Holy Writ informs us that anger 'rests in the bosom of fools'. Well, if the ammosexuals among us are governed by anger rising from fear and envy as opposed to those of us angry at the shredding of our common society, of democracy and of our Constitution (which does not make whites superior; at least when it's uncontorted), who then are the fools? Doesn't fear of the unknown and envy of those more civilized give rise to the anger of fools? I leave it to y'all, Gentle Readers, to decide that for yourselves.
To our side, I say: be ready for anything. That means exactly what it says. Anything, including full-scale violence from the ammosexuals and their minions.

BETWEEN TWO TERRORS?

I hope not. More than almost anything in my life, I hope not.
Which two terrors do I mean? Let's start with the earliest: the terror that the Inquisition fastened onto Spain in the later 1500s right into the 1600s. That was terror from the top down which claimed to be in search of secret Muslims and Jews with a very occasional Protestant stumbled over.
When the Inquisition came for somebody, it was almost always at night. And once the black robes had their intended victim, they would stop their mouths with something called an 'iron pear' or something like it so they could not cry out. I don't know if any of the Inquisition's victims were ever seen alive again but I'm not putting any money on that possibility. The effect of that terror on all the people was such as to stop any sharing and discussion of religion and spirituality for generations. I can see a connection between the Inquisition and the odious Fascist motto from the Spanish Civil War of 'Abajo la intellgencia! Viva la muerte! (Down with intelligence! Long live death!). Not to mention a connection between both and the current cavernous emptiness of too many Spanish churches!
I can see a day coming when the counterfeit 'Christians' of the Right try to enforce such terror on the rest of us. They who talk of 'the sin of empathy'. Yes, you read that only too rightly! Texas seems to be pointing and maybe paving the way for just such a terror on most of us and the Taney Court 2.0 will surely look the other way!
I devoutly hope I am wrong in this, but as I write I can see a time coming when we may have to use a Terror similar not to what I just outlined but to the French Revolution's Reign of Terror in order to save, renew and multi-racialize democracy and give equity a fighting chance.
Thankfully, it is still true that legal remedies are not yet exhausted. I'm terrifyingly unsure to how close we might be to that point, but we're not there yet. I'll leave it to those better informed than I to tell the rest of us how close we might be to there.
But one thing history should teach us about any and all fascists, whatever moves and informs them: they do not stop until they either have what they want or the decent people have lain enough of them low in the dust! If anyone can tell me and my readers anything which gainsays this, or suggests that today's right-wingers, whether they're labelled 'Christianist', 'Islamist', or anything else, are somehow not anti-democratic and, thus, FASCIST, I for one am all too ready to listen!!
But if they are fascists and, thus, can only be stopped by hot lead and cold steel, it's time for us to take advantage of states like Texas who make it so much easier to buy firearms and ammunition. It's time for us to buy weapons and ammo, form shooting clubs and/or 'militia' groups in order to learn how to use them, then hunker down for when they go over an irrevocable line. Maybe we should start with the nonviolent resistance some of us know and we all admire. The point of no return may be when they choose to mow down our people, cackling hatefully as they do so unhindered by any pigs in blue uniforms!
Once we win, who needs to visit Madame? All the Trumpolaters at all levels, for starters! All QAnon cultists! All the anchors of the right-wing Machine of Lies! All those politicians who have sold whatever passes for their souls to these devils! We must have laws protecting the right to vote and ensuring equal access to the ballot! The Electoral College must GO!! And we must have a Truth-in-Reporting law which will prevent anything like Faux News and worse from ever re-emerging! And the breaking of that law must be a felony of the highest degree!! More than that, I'm not yet sure about.
Again, I hope and literally pray that legal remedies will give us and our country what we need. I'm a palefaced Anglo-Saxon in my sixties and I'd much rather just live peacefully with my wife and our pets. I have no desire to be fighting a civil war in my old age, but if that's what we'll need to preserve and expand democracy and equity, make our country a truly multi-racial democracy, then that is how it will have to be.
So, fellow Democrats, liberals and progressives, let's take advantage of laws which make it easier to get lethal weapons than to vote. We may well need to only too soon.

NO BUSINESS DESPAIRING!

 "Allow me to say, in conclusion, notwithstanding the dark picture I have this day presented of the state of the nation, I do not despair of this country. There are forces in operation, which must inevitably work the downfall of slavery."
Frederick Douglass said this. It is in his address telling a white American audience what a sham the Fourth was to the slaves. On this day, it strikes me with considerable force that he did not despair. Two years before, William Lloyd Garrison had despaired and had shrieked, "Up with the flag of disunion!!" Seven years later, John Brown also despaired of nonviolent ways to end slavery and organized, planned and executed the abortive raid on the federal arsenal at Harper's Ferry for which he, in turn, was executed.
I must confess that, much of yesterday (July 4) I was keeping company more with William and John rather than Frederick. In the wake of the latest decision by which the Taney Court 2.0 basically said 'STIFLE YOURSELVES' to the people they don't really want to see voting as they actually allowed dark money to stay that way, I was in something of a funk. Me. A straight pale male, Anglo-Saxon no less, with an unimpeachably English family name, albeit with no real money, in despair over my country's lurching retreat from the things which really do 'make it great' to whatever extent it may be considered so.
Then again, that's also what Garrison and Brown were. They both despaired. Douglass, who had been an actual victim of the unconscionable slave system, did not despair. Let's all chew on this for a few seconds, shall we?
I don't know what made Garrison and Brown abolitionists. I'm pretty sure that, for myself, I see the full measure of my own freedom as inextricably tied in with an equal measure of freedom for each and every one of my fellow citizens regardless of sex and orientation thereof, of skin color, creed or national origin. I can see that, although such rights are equal on paper, they are almost anything but equal in actual practice. And such a sight enrages me. This is an 'advantage' I do not want for myself or anyone else. I say only real loo-sers want to hold on to such unearned privilege. I hope I'm not posing as a White Savior despite my efforts against that sort of semi-to-unconscious manner.
But my main point is, if the actual victims of a wicked system do not despair of our country, what business have I, born with at least some privilege due to my pale skin, gonads outside the rest of me and my heterosexuality, with such self-indulgence as despair? No. I shall take up my cross again and march with the rest and continue to do whatever I can to make sure all of us can have at least a voice in our country's counsels and, meanwhile, give five to Roger Taney II (Roberts) and Gabi D'Annunzio (Alito). Onward, then. On with the struggle, in the name of all who did not despair even when they were the system's victims!

'PALESTINE' IS ON HISTORY'S WRONG SIDE

 

I was going to wait and see but such a grossly lying title of a post as ‘Be Human; Support Palestine’ tipped me over the edge!
I will start here with some fairly recent historical background.
1695: An Ottoman census shows Hebrew surnames still make up a majority of Jerusalem residents and a large chunk of what some still call ‘Judea’.
What happens next? Here it comes.
1834: A local uprising is put down in typical Ottoman fashion. I doubt whether you want the details of what that means. In any case, the land is so depopulated that the Ottomans offer free land to any Ottoman veteran who will come and settle in present-day Israel/Palestine, be they Turkish, Macedonian, Epirean, Egyptian or Bosnian.
1868: Mark Twain publishes Innocents Abroad and relates how sadly depopulated and dessicated the Holy Land was then. He has no reason to lie.
1882: Even before modern Zionism began, Jews start returning to the Land of Israel.
1894: Modern Zionism begins when Theodor Herzl, reporting from Paris for a Viennese newspaper, hears a mob yelling, “A mort les Juifs!” (Death to the Jews!) in the wake of the trumped-up conviction of Captain Alfred Dreyfus for treason and his mind starts to mull over the ramifications.
Between 1900 and 1920 was when Jews started returning to their ancient land in a more organized fashion. They bought all the land on which they settled. Usually they paid twice "first with money and then with sweat and blood." They decided they would work the land themselves rather than be overseers. Still, they brought new life to a moribund land and, as they did, Arabs started coming in from neighboring areas.
In 1920, in the wake of World War I and the final collapse of the Ottoman Empire, the British were ‘given the mandate’ over, by agreement among the powers and between Prince Faisal and Chaim Weizmann, the area which was to be the Jewish National Home. Originally, it included the area now known as the Kingdom of Jordan.
However, Jew-hating elements in the British High Command found a way to frustrate this: they supported a Jew-hater from the powerful Husseini clan for Mufti of Jerusalem. Haj Amin el-Husseini had fought in the Ottoman army and saw the return of the Jews as the biggest obstacle to his quest for despotic power.
He also knew what ‘buttons’ to push to rouse the Arab population — much the same buttons as Southern politicians used to push to rouse up the peckerwoodies to vote for them. They’re doing it now, too.
Google and read a section of ‘dhimmi’ laws under Muslim rule and tell me how different it is (or, more likely, similar) to Jim Crow laws ans customs not only in the South, but throughout most of the country. Then google and read what LBJ said to a young Bill Moyers and reflect on the universality of the wicked joy of having someone to look down on!
So, what have we here so far? first, a land so largely denuded that the Ottomans had to offer free land to refill it. Second, it wasn’t refilled to much of an extent. Third, exiles returning with new technologies. Fourth, a clan who saw them as a threat to their power and whose head knew how to get the locals foaming by telling lies about the returnees meaning to simply turn the tables as opposed to crafting a bigger table for everyone in the land.
From 1920 to 1948, 100,000 more Arabs than Jews entered the Palestine Mandate. This was because the British pretty much let Arabs come and go as they pleased as opposed to the tight regulations they put on Jewish immigration.
The 1930s is where the ‘turn’ starts. Before 1940, nearly every Jewish community had its anti-Zionists and in some communities they were quite numerous. After 1945, they were gone — many murdered and gone up the chimneys. But when the Jews of Germany at first and then of Austria, Czechoslovakia and Poland sought refuge, no nation would take them. Repeat: no nation wanted more Jews.
This is something that no large number of Jews will ever forget — or forgive. Not for at least a thousand years. I for one say Jews are right to trust no one else with their safety and protection. And I do say the same as regards the native peoples and nations of the Americas and Oceania — that is, Australia and New Zealand. I also say the same regarding our own fellow citizens of African heritage. And had Rommel won at El Alamein and gone on to Palestine, El-Husseini would have had the extermination camps in the Dothan valley which he wanted to build and operate. So those who follow him are not as guiltless as they whine and wail; nowhere near the case!
There are many things in Israel of which I don’t approve, most of which have to do with racism of lighter-skinned people against darker-skinned. But most Jews and Arabs are the same olive shading. Besides, are we saying Jews should be more than human? Especially when we set the bar as low as many of us do for their Arab cousins? Read what brother Eldridge (Cleaver) had to say about Jews and Arabs after living in Algeria for seven years!
Let’s jump ahead to 2006, to the last real deal that Abbas killed between Israel and Fatah. Israel offered him 95% of what he asked for. And when Abbas told the then-Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia (now the late king) about it, the prince threw up his hands and expostulated, “You actually turned this deal down?! That’s it! We can’t support you anymore; you’re on your own!!”
As Jewish life and culture points back to what some call Eretz Israel and that it’s a settled fact that Jewish genomes, including the Ashkenazic genome, are still at least 75% Levantine Semitic, I consider Jews as the oldest indigenous people to their land.
And arising from that, I have an invitation to make and a pair of questions to address to the howlers against these particular facts. The invitation arises from the first question, which is this: Do you think that indigeneity has an expiration date, or that it ‘wears off’ after a certain period of time? If you do, I invite you to take that interesting little notion either to any Native powwow or, say, a Maori luau and see what happens then!
Second question is this: If Israel is a ‘European colony’, then how is it that Jews returned thither from elsewhere in the Middle East consistently vote Likud or even further right instead of, say, for the Arab List? I’d really like to know.
Finally, I’d like to say that I applaud any and all sincere efforts to ‘weave’ peace between Jews and Arabs in the land ‘from the ground up’. I suspect the current government looks coldly on such attempts, in which I feel the government is making a serious mistake. Bibi’s been too close with Kachites and their like for way too long. All the more respect from me for those who seek to ‘weave’ real peace in the face of coldness and hostility from both the current Israeli government and the PA.
But too much of what I’ve lately read might as well have been ripped from the pages of the Protocols. So I must speak the truth now.

POLITICS FROM THE NECK DOWN

Some weeks ago, I observed how poor we liberals and progressives are at dealing with human irrationality. I further observed that fascists of any kind live and die by irrationality. They'll only deal with facts convenient to their bunk lines.
I now suggest that a, perhaps the, line of separation between the democratic left and what might be called the alt-left is in their respective attitudes toward human irrationality. The alt-left is rare now, much weaker than it was when I was in college, but it does still barely exist. We of the democratic left tend to treat irrational human nature as either one's own concern or, sometimes, as an inconvenience or weakness which needs transcending. The alt-left seems to me to have declared war on human irrationality, without realizing that 1) in believing that they've declared war on human irrationality, they are actually living by it and 2) the result of such 'wars' on human nature from the neck down tend to be very bloody indeed and 3) there is no going 'back to the Garden' and attempts to do so result only in bloodshed and more bloodshed. Neither alt-side grasps that last.
If we can gauge someone's politics by how they deal with human nature from the neck down, it is still also true that the political spectrum is a globe with a democratic Prime Meridian on one side of it with the democratic left and democratic right on either side. On the other side of the globe is the Autocracy Date Line with the alts back to back along it.
The alt-right is today's great danger to democracy as we all know. They're the ones who seek to grab their target followers by the heart and the gut and, if they could, have everyone headless at the same time. Now is the time that the democratic left and right need to join together and work out a way of grabbing the hearts and guts of those we need in order to preserve and extend democracy!
We of the democratic left have always been very good at engaging our actual and hopeful voters from the neck up; now we need to do the same below the neck. We cannot afford to ignore human irrationality in this time when it has an alarmingly good chance of swallowing us all up--human civilization, perhaps human existence and possibly many other animals and plants we cherish and/or know are instrumental to our own existence and flourishing.
First step is, we need to quit playing at being entirely rational beings ourselves. That's probably a big part of why people who, taking a largely above-the-neck view of their interests, ought to support us, don't. It's probably a large source of motivation for 'owning the libs'.
Tell more stories from our own growing up. I could tell plenty, for instance, about growing up in one of the few successfully racially (and economically) integrated neighborhoods in the whole country, never mind the city, and how it continues to shape my own personality and politics. Most of the MSNBC anchors seem to grasp this now. We need to share these histories with others and we probably need to keep hammering them until those who don't want to believe our truth have no choice but to know what we speak is the truth!
Above all, we need to engage our fellow-citizens by their hearts and guts as well as their heads. Maybe it's because the alt-left is at war with human irrationality that it's so much weaker than the alt-right. We may not like the conclusions to which this fact may lead us, but if we mean to be real liberals, progressives and small 'd' democrats, we need to face that fact and follow its ramifications. In any case, we need to engage and involve our fellow-citizens with both urgency and hope. The first because the jobs at hand needed doing yesterday, the second because without it, too many of us may succumb to despair's inertia. We can't afford that now either. Now we must rally and organize to save our country, our planet and to save and extend democracy.

HEY JOE, WHAT D'YA KNOW?

An innocent African-American motorist shot in the back of the head, execution-style. Straight from the Purges of the 1930s in the USSR. Not the first and, deplorably, not to be the last and we all know it!
One of our major parties making deliberate plans to steal the elections from here on in, rendering our democratic processes into total shams. Yes, I know some will say, they already are but I'll debate the current percentage of sham in those events as of now.
A tyrannical dictator once said, "It doesn't matter who actually votes; what matters is who counts the votes." And our current fascist party, aka the 'Republicans', is making sure only they count the votes henceforth.
These two themes tell me that the spirit of another Joe (aside from our president) is stalking our country. He was born Jozef Dzugashvili in Georgia. (Not our Georgia; the one in the Caucasus) His father was by no means sure his son was his and took his suspicions out on the boy viciously. When the boy was a man, he took up with revolutionaries. He found out he could be a successful power player. He is known to us as Joseph Stalin. The words cited above were said by him. His is the spirit that rules today's 'Republican' party.
And if we let their plots succeed, purges, repeated purges, is what we can expect. And we can expect pseudo-science such as Lysenko's to knock out real science. This means serious lurching towards and probably over the climate cliff! The purges will be against people of color, first those who have power and influence. Then against the rest of them. We can count on the Jews being among those groups purged most viciously. That is one thing tyrants always--repeat, always--do.
There will probably be purges against 'race-traitors' like me. When they come for me, I for one will do my damnedest to take at least one of the thugs down. What about you?
It may have to come to open civil war if we are to preserve and, yes, extend our democracy. We liberals and progressives aren't very good at fighting. Some of us have non-violence training, which will be all the more necessary if and as things worsen. I just wonder, will it be enough? I hope it will be, but I fear we had better get ready to shoot back when our fascist Stalinists start shooting. What will we do if, and when, our fascists establish oligarchic dictatorship under 'legal ' cover? Will we knuckle under, and then be taken and murdered in the successive purges sure to follow? Or will we see through the 'legal' cover, shout out a glorious 'NO!!' and get marching, with either nonviolent weapons or 'traditional' weapons?
I fervently hope and pray that it will be the latter.
If and when it is, as the group Yes sings in the song Roundabout, I'll be there with you--!!