Inspiration: an older gent’s complaint from Oklahoma about a brush with two drifted young people possibly wanted for crime elsewhere.
Here’s the reflection From the Awesome Conversation –>
A reminder at this point: https://conflict-backchannels.com/2019/10/04/an-american-report-card/ (10/4/2019). It’s hard believing the post has aged more than a year. Nonetheless, we have a large complex system for about 328 million people, and there’s a level of chaos in it served by criminal networks. The old “hippies” that would go on to “find themselves” may have distilled down to a wretched lot without a forward-moving cohort for channeling. The two cultures, criminal and not, glorified drifters and made an industry of the set loose young a long time ago. It still looks pretty on stage —
The American reality has not been so pretty for or with those so lost and rattling around desperate for basics and belonging.
Children, pretty much, depending on connections, family, and personal issues may be thrown into a . . . nothing, actually, deeply impersonal and mercenary, and one may wonder what that’s like today, so much attention having been paid to the “Baby Boom” generation and some successive as cohorts. Whoever they are now, they were all in it together (at Woodstock or Altamont or the Isle of Man — or places as meaningful in their generational journey).
Where are today’s American “set loose young”?
I’ve been at this desktop for so many years that I may even wonder at the look of the latest in disaffected lost youth. Sneakers, jeans, backpacks, and gadgets? Who holds on to what? How? Where are they going? What’s open (beyond the Amazon depot — or is that it?).
WHAT IF the United States of America were returned to aristocracy?
WHAT IF Americans less connected were returned to obedience to absolute authority?
Along the way, the Trump-hated Left has been off on its liberation trip with its eyes on universal basics and trashing of white male this and patrician that. What if the White Male Kingdom and America’s Old Money were gambling on some powerful representation themselves with the cooperation, of course, of police and military forces?
What if Trump’s World was primping to look like Putin’s World ordered by his loyal New Nobility and bounded by a corrupt faked up marriage between Church and State?
It took a century and a democratic revolution invoked by the Justice and Development Party (AKP) — a coalition of conservatives, reformed Islamists and Islamists that came to power in 2002 — for Turkey’s “Kemalist Occident,” or dalliance with the West, to end. With the mass resignation of Turkey’s military leadership last month, the last standing Kemalist institution, the army, has succumbed to the AKP’s decade-long political tsunami.
This political bookend for Kemalism suggests that AKP leader Recep Tayyip Erdogan is Turkey’s “new” Ataturk. He doesn’t have the cachet of being Turkey’s liberator, but he enjoys as much power as Ataturk once had.
The firing of Defense Secretary Mark Esper kicked off a rapid-fire series of high-level departures at the Pentagon on Tuesday, setting off alarms on Capitol Hill that the White House was installing loyalists to carry out President Donald Trump’s wishes during an already tense transition.
In quick succession, top officials overseeing policy, intelligence and the defense secretary’s staff all had resigned by the end of the day Tuesday, replaced by political operatives who are fiercely loyal to Trump and have trafficked in “deep state” conspiracy theories.
It’s about 10:30 a.m. EST here, and the reading listed immediately below has been prompted by Right Wing Nuts intent on repeating the latest in medieval conservative gossip circles . . . and I’m not sure they’re even doing that or anything other than inserting off-the-hook agitation and propaganda by way of accusations and false claims.
For the record — and this time — and concerning the Pennyslvania vote, no evidence has been brought to bear to prove that the incumbent and now lame duck President Trump and those who voted for him have been treated in the least measure unfairly.
In my opinion, and I know I am not alone in this, the President and his backers and supporters have chosen to delay the Biden Transition and degrade America’s democracy.
For the aggravation and energy involved (and that pesky measurement of cardiovascular health), I’m going to curtail for myself the idea that a human may compete with computers when it comes to assembling focused lists.
We’ve all been through this Man v Machine a few times in the past two centuries or so.
On Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez’s suggestion to create a worked-for-Trump blacklist. My conversational partner suggested that such a list would bring us back to Stalin. So, From the Awesome Conversation –>
It would bring us back to McCarthy.
We should live in a meritocracy with fine American judgment on the part of executives and managers throughout, but I’m certain we don’t.
The tension on which I have at times focused has been that between an incumbent or resurgent feudal absolutism — and all that implies — and a revolutionary democratic modernity.
Lists, nods, and whispers better define the former.
In life’s realpolitik, of course, most respond to the needs of family and friends first, and our friends are often people to whom we may relate, i.e., if enabled, we’ll hire the kind of people with whom we would like to work.
It has been said of whacked out paranoid Stalin that at the end, he felt he could not trust even himself.
On the political censoring of others and the question “Why?”
Narcissism.
For the malign and controlling, the process starts with “Narcissistic Mortification”, moves to covering (the damaged self) and splitting (an heroic new self). Along the way, these guys — “malignant narcissists” — bust through normal boundaries and limits and become deeply controlling manipulative (as with “gaslighting”). The Left-Right axis may be accidental or involve an attractive dogma, but the “grandiose and messianic delusion” that compels the peacock (or, sometimes, the fireman who sets the fire so that he may show up and put it out to public acclaim) always ends in the want of “unlimited narcissistic supply”, i.e., public acclimation, adoration, and validation without end. The cause matters less than the psychology.
The “Great Leader” has primarily his image to defend (so no free press as the stakes rise) plus always the want of astounding approval. Around them, the system becomes controlling, and around them, the seduced pick up the traits.
The professionals — like Jerrold Post — in the democratic west engaged pursue a dispassionate inquiry into political extremism.
A part of my journey has involved Soviet/post-Soviet issues, so I latch a little bit to the Communist legacy in the support of dictatorships. A look at the famous graduate of the Patrice Lumamba school may be revealing as would a look-see at the World Peace Council. While Moscow diminished the Communist Party in Russia, under Putin, it was to take up a hybrid 19th Century view a post-Imperial Era nationalism anchored popularly in a revived (and unfathomably corrupt) Russian Orthodox Church and Russian Army. The “blood and soil” format is recognizable and the stance persistently illiberal.
If possible, we should all choose the flag in the middle, as it were, but with sides, we (at least in America) Left-Far-Left and Right-Far-Right. I regard Left Fringe (who shout down their opposition) as holdovers from the Soviet Era and “The Party” way of doing business; the Right Fringe reminds of other reactionary movements, i.e., fascism in Europe and, perhaps, the “America First Party” in domestic politics in 1943.
In the way of some older men growing gray and tired, my patience for writing longer copy — and responding to endless online arguments — may be growing thin, so above I hope I’ve telegraphed a statement about political bullying, the sometimes ironic destruction of freedom by those who most pretend to represent it, and the related plundering of states by their own leaders. The “by any means” Far Out Left has indeed shouted down its favored targets, time and again, and it has carried forward from Russian anti-Semitic traditions its own brand of Jew-hate (reading recommended from other history: Michael Kellogg’s The Russian Roots of Nazism, Cambridge UP, 2009), but Orwellian Left seems to me far from the moderate liberalism known to the best of America’s Democratic and Republican Parties.
Similarly, one cannot overlook the effects of 9/11 (2001 for kiddies) on both the promotion of necessary state security organizations and (less necessary) reactionary nationalists. On that tack, Erdogan, Orban, and Trump suffice for examples of a want of return to a medieval and frequently ugly political absolutism. All who would become dictators cannot wait to get their mitts on a state’s army and treasury — and then have at it with their perceived competitions — while “the people”, Left or Right leaning, may be seduced by dogma and made ready for plundering and damnation, and much to the delight of breathtakingly enriched family and friends.
I will have to find again historian Richard Pipes’ observations on Russia’s struggle with constitutional monarchy and with the concept of sovereignty. For the most part, Russia’s assertion of sovereignty considered property and persons alike in its dominion, and proof would be the right to destroy either at will and with impunity.
Think of that when you reflect, if ever, on Russia’s behavior across the so far long nine years of the Syrian Tragedy.
Europe chose a different direction in its comprehension and — in the end — consideration of others.
@AOC Know they Civil War history, especially Lincoln's instructions to Grant https://t.co/HT1yexi17x This is to defend the inclusion of Confederate generals in the preservation of America's military history and endowment without revisionism. We have black generals and heroes too.
The “they” should be “thy”. 😦 I don’t know how I missed “typos” and apologize for such errors. Fresh eyes? Proofing? I try.
@EsperDod My father worked for McNamara and wrote for LBJ, Dr. Esper, and I have not been exactly Right of his hero Ronald Reagan 🙂 , but on this matter, I believe in truth, warts and all. We should just say no to revisionism and instead update our inventory of noble statues. https://t.co/T2fdHGVkBe
Advice to Black Lives Matters and others who have taken up the cause of destroying American memory in its totality: let the past remain where it fell and where it has been remembered, but while attending to that preservation of memory, let’s build a better nation now and for the future. Since the Civil Rights Era — and from before it and far after — American political activists have confronted prejudice and sought corrections. Well, we are all still on it.
No truth (clear, complete, accurate, valid, reliable)?
No justice ever!
America’s Civil War ended the institution of slavery in America and affirmed the Federal government as sovereign throughout. It didn’t erase evil; it didn’t fix the more venal of hearts; it didn’t redress wrongs: what it did was set a much, much better course in and through our collective democratic modernity.
Related Online
Trump in June stunned NATO allies and senior DoD leaders when he directed the withdrawal of thousands of troops from Germany. Days later, he blindsided the Pentagon yet again by tweeting his opposition to the removal of Confederate leaders’ names from Army bases, just two days after Esper opened the door to doing so.
For those who have encountered the wild disinformation at times disseminated by The Epoch Times and either swallowed the bait, as with QAnon Conspiracy agitation and propaganda, or confronted and dismissed the same but didn’t fight, here’s a short list of additional reference online –>
Soviet Era Communist Party power gave up the ghost at noon on December 25, 1991 when the Soviet Union officially acknowledged its dissolving in bankruptcy and Party nomenklatura (elites) turned into jackals tearing away the assets of the former state piece by piece. While the Communist Party persists in Russia, it is no longer a power there. President Vladimir Putin has made himself a “Vertical of Power” surrounded by politically enfeebled but immensely wealthy and otherwise powerful oligarchs, quite a few of which have made the sanctions list of the United States government.
Regarding China’s Communist Party: it has proven helpful in the minting of billionaires.
Posted to YouTube September 29, 2019.
Loyalty to Party | Loyalty to Putin | Loyalty to Trump
The most important loyalty of all: the worship of money.
Where are The Communists?
China’s zeitgeist — from predatory international lending to its passion for totalitarian political, religious, and social control — is troubling for the west, and I will have a post out on that soon. In the meantime, true American conservatives would do well to shift their talk away from communists and globalists and a horde of made-up and talked-up bogeys and move toward engagement with more authentic and challenging domestic and global issues and themes.
China produced nearly four in every 10 new billionaires this year, outpacing the number of new faces in the US and allowing Shanghai to leapfrog Hong Kong for the first time in terms of the number of super-rich, Hurun Report Inc said.
The world’s second-largest economy added 182 of 479 new billionaires, taking the tally in China to 799, according to the latest Hurun Global Rich List 2020. The US minted 59 new ones to raise its total to 626.
Klett said that during his stint at the Epoch Times, he had a front-row seat to the epistemic crisis triggered by Trump’s ascendancy, one that has made distinguishing truth from political fiction increasingly difficult. “In that first interview, I was being honest when I said I could be neutral. I really believed that was possible,” Klett admitted, hands shoved deep into his pockets as we walked down a Brooklyn street in search of a quieter bar. “By the time I left, just a few days before the election, I realized what everyone is still coming to terms with.”
“What’s that?” I asked.
“That there’s no difference between the news and propaganda. That objectivity is about who has power.”
Those possessed of clear conscience and integrity may be asked to choose between a wannabee dictator and their oath of office.
WILMINGTON, Del. (AP) — President Donald Trump is facing pressure to cooperate with President-elect Joe Biden’s team to ensure a smooth transfer of power when the new administration takes office in January.
The General Services Administration is tasked with formally recognizing Biden as president-elect, which begins the transition. But the agency’s Trump-appointed administrator, Emily Murphy, has not started the process and has given no guidance on when she will do so.
A fellow said to me last week that he took up law because there was no money or point to having taken a degree in philosophy.
He was wrong.
Are the humanities the “icing on the cake” of civilization — or the yeast that gives rise to civilization?
If you are American — or modern as opposed to feudal or medieval — you are part of a great western experiment and experience that has for its foundation Judeo-Christian and Greco-Roman history, both beautiful in parts and in some horrendous (the signals of the end may be read in the inhumanity of Caligula and Elagabalus).
E Pluribus Unum
However arrived or stanced, we may all agree on our commitment to our Constitutional mission and the reshaping of so many fears and passions in the face of changing demographics and the presence of advancing and revolutionary communication and other technologies.
We have been witness to at least two NATO states marching forward into the past — Hungary and Turkey — and we should wonder why WE should have wanted to do that ourselves.
Well, that was a bit Hyde Park, wasn’t it?
🙂
Here’s a glimpse into how I believe we got here and became so temporarily given to an autocratic/authoritarian and medieval old nutty soul.
It takes a little patience to get the Moscow-in-America story and what it portended — or still portends — for authentic dignity, freedom, and security in America as well as a compassionate and working politics that adds to our national — and natural — political cohesion and coherence.
In consideration of present and future generations, a little intellectual exploration into the greater and more accurate image of our working democracy might be worth it.
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