FTAC: Political, Racial, Religious Singularity and Purity / Distribution x Equilibrium

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Perhaps by way of the editor’s accidental tourism in poli-sci and poli-psy, BackChannels has from the start been about the distillation of basic concepts and values.  That’s evident down the column of the left sidebar (which hasn’t been updated in some time): there are the universals  —

Compassion

Empathy

Justice

Humility

Inclusion

Integrity

The six are what matter within ourselves if we are to support goodness and grace against the evil of a behavioral and moral vacuum.

They are perhaps the argument against the malign narcissism of politically absolute and inevitably sadistic systems of power.

In relation to a conversation about barbarism, cultural relativism, and civilizational superiority, the following moved mind-to-keyboard and out into a closed Facebook space:

Argument here has essentially to do with the civilizational character of cultural ethics, principles, and values and that is a little complicated by the fewer than 7,000 living languages extant that suspend and replicate thought from one generation to the next — or become muddled or die out.

Not to rapid-shift here, but when Mongol power receded from conquest in Russia, the princes, according to Pipes, had ingested and adopted the idea that the ownership of property and persons was natural and alike, and one test of sovereignty involved possession of the freedom to destroy either at will and with impunity. The modern Greco-Roman Judeo-Christian soul might consider that philosophy of absolute power / absolute ownership just a little bit . . . barbaric.

Whatever it is, it’s on display in Syria and Crimea, and as there seems to be a small cultural pride –how pure and pretty we may be! — theme in this forum, I would suggest this about the preservation of separable but not exclusive cultural, ideological, racial, and religious differences in appearances, ideas, and traditions:

Core X –> | Mixed XYZ –> |Fringe WXYZ x Primary Variable of Interest

No “theme” disappears but each has its core, its mixer, and its fringe and all have the freedom to choose what is most important in the character of their own survival.

There’s an old joke for intellectual youngsters: “Time exists so that everything doesn’t happen all at once; space exists so that everything doesn’t happen to you.”

As a political concept, what is important about ideas, including matters associated with self-concept and self-regard, is their distribution in geopolitical space and the equilibrium established or maintained between them.


So the world offers some small space for everyone who cares to assert that which is most important to himself as regards self-concept or identity.

There’s an old saw — and on the web attributed both to Dorothy Parker and Woody Allen without proof at the source! — “”The Jews are like everyone else, only more so.”

🙂

To answer the mother’s question, “Why can’t you be like everyone else!?” — we are all like everyone else, but we do choose some aspects of ourselves for highlighting, packaging, and presenting, and so may we all continue searching for — or finding — our individual space and time with, one may hope, a few others.


It has often been said that the Jews are like everyone else, only more so. And today, that is more true than it has ever been!

The world of our parents and grandparents was one of exclusion from the wider society. Living apart from the Ukrainians, Russians, and Poles was expected in the old country; when our forebears immigrated to this country many of them maintained their distinct dress, language, foods, songs, and of course religious rituals for a generation or so.

But my grandmother, who was 8 years old when she came to Boston in 1921 from the province of Volhynia in the Ukraine, did not want to be a “greenhorn.” She refused to speak Yiddish. She soon learned that she loved to eat lobster and clams, like so many other Bostonians. She wasn’t so interested in Jewish life. And so she, like many other immigrants, began to shed the ethnic attributes of the old world.

Adelson, Seth. “The Simple Child Sees Only the Past: Kol Nidrei 577.” Sermon.  The Modern RabbiOctober 1 2017.

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Battered, Jaded, Numbed? Here’s An Old Tonic

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As have many days for many years, this one started with a glimpse at conflict and crime news, some searched up, some by way of Facebook forum conversations: Mexico’s national addiction to drugs and money (in that order); a look at human trafficking — it appears China receives from Columbia a steady stream of duped women to be forced into prostitution and then takes little action against the trade.

Web surfers visiting here have probably had their own fill of experience or news — or both — vomited up from the evil and ugly world.  For those so offended but in themselves good and noble and perhaps in need of a refreshed idealism and inspiration, I offer an old memory.

Here’s a trailer.

And here — from another company — the greater quotation.


Related On the Web

https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/lifestyle/1977/08/20/richard-kiley-at-55-the-once-and-present-man-of-la-mancha/30d559ae-bac1-47f6-b7f4-cffc93304468/ – 8/20/1977

https://www.broadwayworld.com/board/readmessage.php?thread=1088321 — 11/21/2015 Message board topic: 50th anniversary of the musical.

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Defective Heroes

ggochin's avatarGrant Arthur Gochin

JRep – December 11 06-07Commentary

Jerusalem Report Article,  publish date:  December 11, 2017.
Volume XXVIII No. 18, pages 6 & 7.

Defective Heroes

Grant Arthur Gochin

Defective heroes abound. Currently, in Lithuania, evil is on display.

Prior to 1915, (for approximately 700 years), Jews lived in Lithuanian territories and enjoyed relative peace. After a Russian expulsion of Jews, independent Lithuania realized their loss of human resources and invited economically active Jews to return to Lithuania, with promises of autonomous communities and full equal rights. This honeymoon period lasted until 1924, when Lithuania abolished their post of “Minister without a Portfolio for Jewish Affairs”.

After a coup in 1926 the Lithuanian Voldemarist movement arose, it conflated Jew hate with Lithuanian patriotism. A subsequent Jew hate movement arose called Verslas, so that, by the 1940s, Jew hate and Lithuanian patriotism were synonymous in many circles. Protectionism was legislated to suppress Jewish businesses…

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Khaliji Qaumi Ittehad Tribesmen Protest Threat of Expulsion, Qetta, Balochistan, Pakistan, November 22, 2017

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In the above slideshow, Khaliji Qaumi Ittehad tribesmen in Quetta, Pakistan protest the threat of expulsion to Afghanistan posed by Pakistan’s government and military, according to BackChannels’ contact in the region.

Source claims that Pashtun tribes have been ordered to produce “proof of locality” before 1976, and toward that end, the state has sent out notices ordering tribesmen to submit national identity cards to the government.  In response, the Khaliji Qaumi Ittehad have undertaken a hunger strike — after four days of that, readers may see that the ambulance had to show up to rescue those who had essentially victimized themselves through that action — and related street protest.

Here follow a few excerpts from correspondence (lightly edited for readability and sense).

Historically all Pakhtoon are Afghans.

There were Indians and Afghans in the region.

Then the so called Durand Line was drawn in1893 that divided the Afghans…After Pakistan csme into being Pakhtoon on their own land were living.  Thus assumed the nationality of Pakistan which they heartedly not accept today.  However with passage of time they merged into Pakistani society.  Now they are seen as alien people .

The Afghan migrated after Soviet invasion is also the factor.

It is hard for Pakistani government to differentiate between immigrants and original Pakistani tribes.

Today, as a whole, they treated like animals

Wars make a mess of cultural and social relationships, and the Durand Line region separating Afghanistan from Pakistan while sitting astride the Pashtun tribal belt has seen more than its fair share of disruption through criminal and martial violence.

Request for National Identity Card Submittal, Quetta, Pakistan,

Above: “This is the form of chic (STET) which requires attestation of two grade 17 govt officers. Which is hard to find two officers.”

Below: “Now despite completing the process they are still denied.”

Rejected Residency Documents, Quetta, Pakistan, November 23, 201

This note comes from earlier in the conversation:

If one marry to lady, the lady also has to prove herself Pakistan and provide the evidence of 1970.

In number of families the male is considered Pakistani but his wife with so many children is declared Afghani.

Most of tribesmen have stopped visiting bazaars or the main cities and remain at hope to avoid the danger of arrest by the state security agencies


A web search for the Khiliji Qaumi Ittehad will show that the tribe has been active in anti-western protests involving drone strikes as well as anger with former General and President Pervez Musharraf, and one may find online images of the same burning American  and British flags.

Source notes the following:

Pakistan still think Taliban is strategic assets for it.  Pakhtoons are so dependent economically that even I can recruit thousands for any ill cause for very less amount.  Most of low rank Taliban fight it as holy war while their high ranks fight for money.

We the local see that war is the most costly exercise.  If they are not supported by state, they would never be able to challenge the mighty NETO — by state supported Taliban I mean those fighting in Afghanistan and those killing the Pakhtoons.

Madrassah is main factor for cheap recruitment. in madrassah they r only taught religious text.  They live in a controlled environment.  I live in the area where Taliban are kept and trained.

BackChannels shared David Satter’s coverage of the false-flag Moscow Apartment Bombings with the source, who responded, “Wow Putin and our rulers are so similar in action.”

BackChannels would question the conclusion; however, here is the bottom line as regards a part of Pashtun tribal attitude toward the State of Pakistan:

Sir I’m hopeless here. How would we survive since we r short of basic needs and education.  I know Russia backing Taliban. But the US role in the region is skeptical too. A country spends 700 billion dollar on defense and not able to defeat Taliban?

Quetta, the capital of Balochistan sees protest on the part of tribals live on their land even before the emergence of Pakistan.

They in all grounds of life were kept backward by state of Pakistan. They are economically poor and less educated.  Since last ten years they are being deprived of national identity.

Now these tribals receive notice from govt of Pakistan to submit back the identity cards that were issued to them. Give says that the state secret agency has declared them aliens.

Now an organization of these tribes under Tribal leader Nawab Salman Khilji (STET) is observing hunger strike till death. It’s 4th day of the strike but no govt official has contacted the hunger camp. They may turn violent if someone dies in this hunger strike.

Their camp is at door of Quetta Press Club but receives no media coverage . . . because media here is state controlled

While BackChannels may relay the above testimony as regards conditions, it may not — or not yet — from its desktop independently verify all of the source’s claims.  Nonetheless, comments on the depth of poverty in the region, presumptions about the character of the Pakistani State as experienced by “tribals”, and related beliefs about State — and American — culpability for terrorism would seem to ring true with other domestic and xenophobic mistrusts.

The Pashtun have been rudely treated in their remote and semi-autonomous areas, and it may be difficult for the earnest to convey a more accurate state of affairs.

With the Soviet / post-Soviet “toolkit” involving criminal activity, anti-western disinformation campaigns, and false-flag operations designed to channel political perception, it may be especially difficult for remote Pashtun to develop reliable conclusions about the political states of affairs that surround them.

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A Little Wisdom: On the Separation of Man from God

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The prompt: an account of a conversation in which Deist prophets were characterized as representing human perfection as provided by God Almighty Himself.


Judaism separates God and His powers from man absolutely. The theme is recurring in the Torah, starting, perhaps, with the masking off of the Tree of Life from Adam and Eve and moves on to Pharaoh in his political hubris and Moses with his stuttering but divinely guided diplomacy, as it were, and on to the “Binding of Isaac” where God sets out to “prove Abraham” but whether for blind obedience or the possession of conscience (should not Abraham have spoken “truth to power”) we are left to argue.

The Roman and Arab uptake of Judaic lore bends content toward the evolving cultural behaviors of each and semi-idolatry, however dressed, becomes part of our bloody medieval merry-go-round (perhaps the idea should be labeled “horror-go-round”) in the conflation of religion with political power.

Whether divinely imparted or wisely composed, the First Commandment would seem most well chosen.


There must be differences between being revered or thought holy and being regarded as God’s perfect expression of humanity.

I think God forbid Jews that option at the very start of the instructions, so as to eliminate too great an idolatry for either any one leader and the leader’s followers.

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“Kompromat”: A Compilation

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Trump-Kompromat-URLs


Updates

The latest to pop up on Facebook:

Trump praised the organization in a speech—“I love WikiLeaks”—on October 10th. He tweeted about WikiLeaks on October 11th. The next day, WikiLeaks, seemingly encouraged by the coördination, sent another private message to Trump, Jr.: “Hey Donald, great to see your dad talking about our publications. Strongly suggest your dad tweet this link if he mentions us.” Fifteen minutes later, Donald Trump tweeted, “Very little pick-up by the dishonest media of incredible information provided by Wikileaks. So dishonest! Rigged system!” Two days later, on October 14th, Trump, Jr., tweeted the link that WikiLeaks had provided. The entire political world wanted to know whether the Trump campaign was actively coördinating with WikiLeaks, an organization that Trump’s own C.I.A. director would later call “a nonstate hostile intelligence service often abetted by state actors like Russia.”

https://www.newyorker.com/news/our-columnists/the-gops-boil-the-frog-strategy-to-save-trump/amp – 11/16/2017

For the public, perhaps, the encounter with so much information buzzing around — rather like electrons around a nucleus — may well be jading or numbing; still, one may wonder about the Trump narrative in relation to Moscow and its still feudal methods of handling and influencing political events in the states it targets.

Have Americas voters by way of weaknesses in election-related processes — including the defense of Party (either) information assets, the defense of the American People against “Active Measures'” disinformation in the American “Information Space”, and, in the end the defense of American principles and values — handed “Washington” to “Moscow”?


Aside | Related

BackChannels will miss Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe, whose dictatorship this morning is on the ropes.

This blog has often cited as rye observation and warning Mugabe’s stay in power as proof that a wily dictator may indeed make a life of it and hope to die contented and peacefully in his sleep.  Alas, continued political life in Zimbabwe is not looking much good today for President-for-Almost-Life Mugabe.  He has been expected to resign, and, as expected, he has so far refused.


Trump and the Company Encountered and Kept

On the home front, the nimble pack of the Fourth Estate has been circling our oafish President Donald J. Trump and producing reports of unwanted connections in the open manner (as opposed to the closed represented by Mueller’s legal hounds).

Herewith, BackChannels own bookmarks, unfiltered, unfixed, but for the “link rot” of disappeared web pages, ever present on the web.

What to make of so much reportage?

Should the BackChannels reader wish to live in a world where gangsters get what they want and hold on to it, where the world is ever at war but one cannot with accuracy comprehend why, where souls repeat themselves endlessly as if on a zoetrope spinning the same moving images against a wall (for as long as it spins), and where Orwell no longer matters, then stop here, for all is spinning as designed, albeit not designed by God (nature, or the universe) but by the same lot that incubated ISIS in fine Totalitarian KGB Theater style.


The Latest from Luke Harding

Nobody does it better . . .

. . . than Luke Harding when it comes to development of intimate knowledge of the Russian “mafia state”.

https://www.theguardian.com/news/2017/nov/15/how-trump-walked-into-putins-web-luke – 11/15/2017

https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/11/19/trump-first-moscow-trip-215842 – 11/19/2017


BackChannels “Trump Kompromat” Bookmarks

The desktop pigeon — that would the blog’s editor — appears to have a bad read-save read-save habit unattached, so far, to being fed, and the saving while surfing has been complicated only by the question, “where should this go?”  The links that follow were shrugged into the “Trump Kompromat” bin, and, in the way of the all-day web surfer, forgotten.  Even without titles and dates, it is something to see even a few on this course listed in one space.

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trump-idUSKBN14V18L | “Trump accuses U.S. spy agencies of Nazi practices over ‘phony’ Russia dossier”.  Related on BackChannels: “Paranoid Delusional Narcissistic Reflection of Motivation“.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/donald-trump-russia-dossier-file-investigation-hacking-christopher-steele-mi6-a7526901.html

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trump-steele-idUSKBN14W0HN

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4115134/NAMED-British-Ambassador-played-key-role-revealing-dirty-dossier-ex-MI6-man-Donald-Trump.html

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/01/13/former-british-ambassador-sir-andrew-wood-warned-us-donald-trump/

http://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/christopher-steele-trump-dossier-author-real-life-james-bond-n706376

The Spy Who Wrote the Trump-Russia Memos: It Was “Hair-Raising” Stuff

http://news.postimees.ee/3977431/estonian-foreign-intelligence-in-the-spotlight“A meeting between a member of US president-elect Donald Trump’s close circle and a pro-Putin member of the Russian State Duma in a Eastern European country was picked up by the Estonian Information Board, Newsweek wrote yesterday, based on information from several people with ties to the agency.”

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2017/01/17/apprentice-contestant-summer-zervos-slaps-donald-trump-with-defamation-lawsuit.html

http://www.voanews.com/a/russia-kompromat-remains-alive-and-well/3677094.html

http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/us-russian-businessman-source-key-trump-dossier-claims/story?id=45019603

http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/01/russia-is-already-winning-214648

http://www.courant.com/nation-world/ct-jeff-sessions-russia-20170301-story.html

http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2017/03/trumps-ties-to-russia-amount-to-treachery-to-the-republic.html

http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/323192-dem-rep-claims-without-evidence-that-some-trump-dossier

http://www.cnn.com/2017/03/01/politics/jeff-sessions-russian-ambassador-meetings/index.html

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/trump-pal-roger-stone-admits-spoke-privately-dnc-hackers-article-1.2994990

http://www.mypalmbeachpost.com/news/national-govt–politics/yachts-trump-financial-backer-russian-oligarch-seen-close-together/gI074W3JLqvEYrQ0hm9zlN/

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/meet-dmitry-rybolovlev-oligarch-believed-tied-trump-article-1.2998754

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2017/03/17/flynn-was-paid-67g-by-russian-interests-documents-say.html

http://nordic.businessinsider.com/mike-flynn-and-russia-2017-3

http://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/what-mike-flynn-did-for-turkey

http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/03/trumps-jekyll-and-hyde-foreign-policy-214903

http://www.newsday.com/opinion/jimmy-breslin-s-columns-on-donald-trump-1.13288319

http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/03/russias-plot-against-the-west-214925

Investigators on the Trump-Russia Beat Should Talk to This Man

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2017/apr/13/british-spies-first-to-spot-trump-team-links-russia

The Curious World of Donald Trump’s Private Russian Connections

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/world/trump-pal-busted-allegedly-running-hooker-ring-yacht-article-1.191136

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/formula-1/2017/01/23/bernie-ecclestone-reaches-end-road-formula-one-chief-executive/

https://wikileaks.org/plusd/cables/08KYIV2414_a.html

https://themoscowtimes.com/articles/us-seeks-arrest-of-reputed-russian-mobster-23337

https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/soc.culture.ukrainian/1mtgIacNtMw

https://www.aol.com/article/news/2017/03/21/trump-aide-paul-manafort-hid-payment-pro-russian-party-ukrainian-lawmaker-says/21904362/

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2017-05-22/paul-manafort-s-lucrative-ukraine-years-are-central-to-the-russia-probe

https://newrepublic.com/article/143586/trumps-russian-laundromat-trump-tower-luxury-high-rises-dirty-money-international-crime-syndicate

High-ranking FBI official leaves Russia probe

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/politics-news/presidential-pardons-might-not-end-russia-prosecutions-n797266

http://www.politico.com/story/2017/09/15/another-prosecutor-joins-trump-russia-investigation-242794

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/why-facebook-warrant-could-signal-a-turning-point-in-muellers-investigation/

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/nation-world/national/article162789803.html

http://verifiedpolitics.com/new-documentary-just-exposed-trump-tower-hotbed-russian-mob-activity-watch/

http://www.thedailybeast.com/trumps-business-partner-tries-to-erase-his-prostitution-bust-from-web

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/nation-world/national/article176003346.html – “Fugitive Kazakh clan has deep ties to Trump associates”:

The Khrapunovs, with the help of a partner of Sater’s, later purchased and quickly flipped three condos in the Trump Soho hotel and condo complex. They are accused in Kazakhstan of embezzlement and money laundering. The Khrapunovs face civil lawsuits in New York and Los Angeles that seek to claw back what the Kazakh government says is stolen money. Some of the cash allegedly washed through U.S. real estate, including the Trump properties.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/robert-mueller-pee-tape-dossier_us_59d6b2e9e4b046f5ad972628

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/oct/07/trump-russia-steele-dossier-moscow?CMP=share_btn_tw

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2017/10/17/ex-trump-adviser-carter-page-subpoenaed-by-senate-committee.html

The Trouble With the Steele Dossier

http://www.mercurynews.com/2017/03/06/ivanka-trump-the-russia-scandal-and-her-billionaires-social-network/

Solving the Mystery of the Maltese Professor


Related to Felix Sater

http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2017/08/felix-sater-donald-trump-russia-investigation.html

http://nypost.com/2015/12/05/donald-trumps-senior-adviser-is-a-stock-fraud-felon-with-mob-past/

https://www.law360.com/articles/688835/secret-prosecutions-and-the-erosion-of-justicehttp://www.miamiherald.com/latest-news/article174494801.html

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/nation-world/national/article174493821.html

https://shootingthemessenger.wordpress.com/2017/09/01/saterized/

https://shootingthemessenger.wordpress.com/tag/tevfik-arif/


Related to Paul Manafort

http://www.politico.com/story/2014/03/paul-manafort-ukraine-104263

http://www.aim.org/aim-column/trump-hires-fixer-with-soviet-connections/

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-campaign-chief-paul-manafort-named-in-ukraine-anti-corruption-probe/2016/08/15/fa180f20-6327-11e6-be4e-23fc4d4d12b4_story.html

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/paul-manafort-resigns-from-donald-trump-campaign-w435333

http://www.politico.com/story/2016/08/paul-manafort-ukraine-kiev-russia-konstantin-kilimnik-227181

https://www.aol.com/article/news/2017/03/21/trump-aide-paul-manafort-hid-payment-pro-russian-party-ukrainian-lawmaker-says/21904362/

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2017-05-22/paul-manafort-s-lucrative-ukraine-years-are-central-to-the-russia-probe

http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/06/2016-donald-trump-paul-manafort-ferinand-marcos-philippines-1980s-213952

https://meduza.io/en/feature/2016/08/19/paul-manafort-s-man-on-the-inside

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Manafort

http://fortune.com/2016/08/15/5-things-you-need-to-know-about-paul-manafort/

http://www.politico.com/story/2017/02/manaforts-ukrainian-blood-money-caused-qualms-hack-suggests-235473

https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2017/10/04/ex-trump-adviser-paul-manafort-conspired-mislead-bankruptcy-court-son-in-law-charges/723689001/

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2017/07/26/feds-call-ex-manafort-associate-dmytro-firtash-top-tier-player-russian-organized-crime/514131001/

http://www.cnn.com/2017/10/30/politics/manafort-gates-indictment-explained/index.html

http://www.cnn.com/2017/10/30/politics/george-papadopolous-trump-guilty/index.html

Lawsuit: Trump Aide Funneled Mob-Linked Ukrainian Oligarch’s Fortune into U.S. Real Estate

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FTAC: Sentiment for the Clintons

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Prompt: scraping up the Clinton scandals one mo’ time.

Response regarding cultures of power and the powerful politician:

There also are and have been multiple political cultures feeding up to but also drawing on the manners of the powerful of state.

Should we dredge all the way back to Henry VIII? Or Louis XIV? Or Thomas Jefferson?

Regarding the Clintons and perhaps others, I would rank accomplishment in authentic community care and concern far above personal peccadilloes and incautious personal stupidity for the purpose of voting. I’d rather have a good civic spirit in office than a seedy authoritarian of the kind too common in the world.


–33–

FTAC: Absent of Boundaries; Absent of Conscience: Dictatorship

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The prompt from my conversational partner: “. . . to solve these problems, we need cooperation, not war. And the main question is why does the government not understand this?”

The response:

Paper, scissors, stone,  and “paper” (money) covers and suffocates all beneath it while “liberating” those who have it and, perhaps (I don’t want to find out!), those who might believe themselves above it – or those of merely modest material ambitions.

My personal approach has been “Money Matters!” but is not everything; however, and this especially with our health care industry, there are forces producing polices I can’t field, and of course that inspires a yet impotent resentment.

Our government should be Christian, good-willed, and muscular (academic term “muscular Christianity” works in this regard), but it’s bending toward the criminals in the great mansions and penthouse suites, and I’ not talking about Bill Gates or most “plutocrats” but rather those who believe there are no boundaries between their perfect embodiment of the “isness” (I will find the word, literally) of their state and themselves. The businesses, the courts, the military and paramilitary elements, and legislatures are all theirs to exploit and manipulate on behalf of their preferred . . . associates. That’s dictatorship.

Let me see if I can find the word for existence as the authentic expression of spirit . . . .

“Esse” and “essence” were not what I was looking for but for an esoteric term having to do with the being of the thing within the thing. Believing in the singularity of person and state (as Ceausescu had; as Erdogan and Putin do) may comprise part of the messianic delusion suffered by dictators but unfortunately visited (with fist in the velvet glove, at best) on their subjected people.

I’m finding my reading of Russian history steeped in punitive control, and that doesn’t come with interest in “the masses” half so much as in the developing and sustaining of wealth beneficial to the image and power of the central figure in power.


Related, Recent, and Singular

On today’s Chinese and Russian totalitarian aggression in Global Information Space:

Walker, Christopher and Jessice Ludwig.  “The Meaning of Sharp Power”.  Foreign Affairs, November 16, 2017.

BackChannels maintains a brief bibliography of accessible and general volumes on Russia’s political history in the “Russian Section” of this blog.  For greater insight into the authoritarian-patrimonial experience of the political culture from the 9th Century forward, I would recommend Richard Pipes’ fine history, Russia Under the Old Regime.

Punitive control: in geopolitical space and in the various ages of the “rule of the strong”, including for Russia and surrounds domination by the Mongols, the power to control space produces arrangements with in to produce wealth.  Pipes’ — in the above cited volume — steps off with economic variance in the productivity of Russian land compared to soil fertility to the south to explain motivation for the social arrangements that would ensue in history and effect Russian political arrangements to this day.  What Pipes appears to find essential — and what most concerns this blog — is the prince’s (or equivalent or greater in power) considering the ownership of property and persons the same thing.  Worse — the test of sovereignty becomes the permit to engage in the wholesale destruction of both!

Now have another look at Assad’s destruction of Syria and incubation of ISIS as a useful foil and political tool (“Reflexive Control’s” little helper) as well as the very emblem of the worst of the worst of destructive forces.

Who has the control of it?

Moscow-Tehran.


Note: keyword tags are related this time but not directly addressed except beneath the category that is “Dictatorship” and its essential and unfailingly malign narcissism.

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