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Tag Archives: feudal absolute power

FTAC: Judge Kavanaugh and Red-Blue Self-Righteous Loyalty

08 Monday Oct 2018

Posted by commart in 21st Century Feudal, American Domestic Affairs, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, FTAC - From The Awesome Conversation, Political Psychology, Psychology, United States of America

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

authoritarianism, Blase Ford testimony, feudal absolute power, Kavanaugh confirmation, malignant narcissism, medieval v modern, political identification, political loyalty

The article touted in “conservative” circles: http://thefederalist.com/2018/10/04/left-will-never-apologize-brutalizing-brett-kavanaugh-family/  In Federalist writer Nathaniel Blake’s own words:

This ugly truth about us explains what has happened to Brett Kavanaugh. Initially he was hated for being a Republican nominee for the Supreme Court, but it is still not universally acceptable to abominate someone only for being an originalist judge.

“Originalist judge” may not well explain what the nation saw transpire last week.

Here is this blog’s editor’s take on that.


BackChannels believed Ford, and that he (Kavanaugh) lied because he had the power to deny everything negative about himself. As much may be part of an “ambitious” or malign narcissism, and as much fits with the personality and associates of the man who nominated him.

With Red or Blue Right / Left Flag navigation, political identity may force arguments rather than reason, and that emotion drives the demonizing of the other camp as well as the concept familiar to conflicts worldwide: “accusation in a mirror”. “Witch hunt!

The Left has no need to apologize for defending Blase Ford.

The Right has no need to wonder why professional advisement — all those lawyers! — against the confirmation were ignored and the process will be remembers as forced by the Republicans or blocked by the Democrats: for an answer, the power of identity and loyalty will do.


Related on BackChannels

https://conflict-backchannels.com/coins-and-other-terms/anthropolitical-psychology/

Related on the Web

https://www.hrw.org/reports/1999/rwanda/Geno1-3-10.htm (cited here for “Accusation in a Mirror”, a political science concept well known to scholars — and here in association with genocide — but also fit with what may be observed in relation to “malignant narcissism”: the malignant narcissist is never wrong.  BackChannels offers this post from 2013 as an example of the type: https://conflict-backchannels.com/2013/06/11/remember-its-never-the-narcissist-erdogan-blames-woes-on-vandals-and-terrorist-elements/).

–33–

A Comment on Kavanaugh and How He Has Handled the Accusation

27 Thursday Sep 2018

Posted by commart in 21st Century Feudal, American Domestic Affairs, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Epistemology, Political Psychology, United States of America

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

American Privileged, Blasey Ford, feudal absolute power, integrity, Kavanaugh, medieval v modern, Senate Judiciary Hearing, Trump Administration

Ford claimed that, thirty-six years ago, Kavanaugh held her down on a bed against her will, groped her, and covered her mouth when she tried to scream. Ford made the allegation anonymously in a letter to her congresswoman, Anna Eshoo, and Senator Dianne Feinstein, who originally declined to share the letter and later referred the matter to the F.B.I. for investigation. Ford has since come forward publicly; her lawyer has stated that she and her family have received threats since her name became public. Kavanaugh has responded with a categorical denial, saying in a statement, “I have never done anything like what the accuser describes—to her or to anyone. . . . I had no idea who was making this accusation until she identified herself.”

The New Yorker. “Live Stream: Watch the Senate Judiciary Committee Hearing With Brett Kavanaugh and Christine Blasey Ford.” September 27, 2018.

Loyalty to President Trump and possible-to-probable interference in judicial processes have been thematic from the start of President Trump’s Administration.

While charges remain “alleged”, BackChannels believes Brett Kavanaugh’s accuser Christine Blasey Ford utterly authentic.

IF public and Senate opinion comes to the same conclusion, then what will matter most will not be whether as a 17-year-old boy Kavanaugh had assaulted Ford but how he handled the accusation.  He has by his blanket denial effective removed claim to the defense of juvenile behavior and will have been caught lying — and in a breathtaking abuse of power libeling his accuser — as a fully fledged adult.

What malign narcissism brought these politics to the once ever believing, confident, and idealistic United States of America?


Kavanaugh-SenateHearing-180927-1527

Screen capture from hearing, September 27, 2018.

While Kavanaugh brags about his carefully kept calendars / calendar-journals, his voice breaks.  Of course, had he committed an assault with great ambitions in mind, the calendar or the journal would have been the place to write the incident out of the record by not including it.


Also on the Web

https://www.npr.org/2018/09/26/651941113/read-christine-blasey-fords-opening-statement-for-senate-hearing


In one passage, beginning on Page 92, Judge describes his time working at a grocery store in the context of his drinking problem. Emphasis added.

It was the summer before senior year, and by now, even though I wasn’t drinking every day, I was completely hooked. Going a week without getting drunk was unthinkable. I was spending between four and seven nights with the gang, either at a party or at O’Rourke’s.

Elsewhere in the book, Judge describes one of his acquaintances at the time, someone named “Bart O’Kavanaugh,” who vomited in a car after a party.

Bump, Philip. “Mark Judge’s book validates Christine Blasey Ford’s timeline of the alleged Kavenaugh Assault.” The Washington Post, September 27, 2018. Inset: Judge, Mark Gauvreau. “Wasted: Tales of a Genx Drunk”. Hazelden, May 1, 1997.


Epigram by Maimonides

“Truth does not become more true if the whole world were to accept it; nor does it become less true if the whole world were to reject it.”

“The risk of a wrong decision is preferable to the terror of indecision.”


September 28, 2018 (and live at posting here).


“The basic principles that underscore the Senate’s constitutional duty of advice and consent on federal judicial nominees require nothing less than a careful examination of the accusations and facts by the FBI,” said Robert Carlson, president of the organization, in a Thursday night letter addressed to Senate Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley and ranking Democrat Dianne Feinstein.

“Each appointment to our nation’s Highest Court (as with all others) is simply too important to rush to a vote,” Carlson wrote. “Deciding to proceed without conducting additional investigation would not only have a lasting impact on the Senate’s reputation, but it will also negatively affect the great trust necessary for the American people to have in the Supreme Court.”

Raju, Manu. “American Bar Association: Delay Kavanaugh until FBI investigates assault allegations.” CNN Politics, September 27, 2018.


Kav-Sen-Hearng-Sheldon-Whitehouise.jpg

Dr. Blasey Ford’s stunning testimony today added further credibility to her already credible allegations.

She was precise.
She was sincere.
She was compelling.

I am grateful for her bravery in coming forward. I personally believe her.https://t.co/gSJlX9QmXj

— Sheldon Whitehouse (@SenWhitehouse) September 27, 2018


Kav-Sen-Hearng-Klobuchar.jpg

I got the polygraph test Dr. Ford took showing truthfulness about her account in the record. To quote a judge: “law enforcement agencies use polygraphs to test the credibility of witnesses” & the tests “serve law enforcement purposes.” That judge was Brett Kavanaugh in 2016 case.

— Amy Klobuchar (@amyklobuchar) September 27, 2018


.@SenateGOP: Enough righteous indignation over "the process." If you really want a proper process aimed at learning the truth, support an FBI investigation.#Kavanaugh #DelayTheVote

— Senator Ben Cardin (@SenatorCardin) September 28, 2018



Related Online

Khan, Shamus. “Kavanaugh is lying: His upbringing explains why.” Op-ed. The Washington Post, September 28, 2018.

Liptak, Adam. “A Bitter Nominee, Questions of Neutrality, and a Damaged Supreme Court.” The New York Times, September 28, 2018:

“The Supreme Court,” he said, “must never be viewed as a partisan institution.”

His performance on Thursday, responding to accusations of sexual misconduct at a hearing of the same Senate committee, sent a different message. Judge Kavanaugh was angry and emotional, embracing the language of slashing partisanship. His demeanor raised questions about his neutrality and temperament and whether the already fragile reputation of the Supreme Court as an institution devoted to law rather than politics would be threatened if he is confirmed.

Yourish, Karen and Troy Griggs. “Brett Kavanaugh Testimony: Three Inconsistencies the F.B.I. Investigation Could Address.” The New York Times, September 28, 2018.


Political independence may be America’s greatest prize for free thinkers.  BackChannels’ editor left the Democratic Party about nine years ago and has not registered with the Republican Party since then.

Regarding Shamus Khan’s piece, one may suggest the following, which has been copied from the editor’s portion of The Awesome Conversation online:

What would be tyrannous would be to allow the privileged to mask away crime and impose their will on others without criticism or notice and with impunity. The combination of humanism (all the way back to Cyrus and his cylinder), British empiricism, and American ideals beg for and rely on the thorough examination of criminal acts and, at times, libelous claims.

The FBI has now an additional week to explore the validity of both Kavanaugh’s and Blase Ford’s testimony, and we will see — or hear — how evidence acquired adds up.

It’s not enough to be angry or partisan in such a matter: it’s important to reject assumptions and beliefs in favor of examination taken with the highest integrity.

This morning saw a follow-up:

The survival of a democratic state depends on the confidence of its constituents. Toward that end, the Senate delayed its vote in favor of a one week extension for supplemental FBI investigation.

Finger pointing serves no democratic ends.

Most tyrannies know well “reflection in the mirror”, i.e., accusing targets of harboring the aggressive plans that are the speaker’s own.

Considering the term Supreme Court justices enjoy . . . what’s another week?

I think it’s good to see “checks and balances” in action.

–33–

Putin’s Swipe at NATO Via Erdogan

30 Thursday Jun 2016

Posted by commart in 21st Century Feudal, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, FTAC - From The Awesome Conversation, Russia, Turkey

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

21st Century Neo-Feudalism, despotism, feudal absolute power, foreign affairs, neo-imperial Russia, political manipulation, politics, Russia vs NATO, Turkey

From the Awesome Conversation:

Putin’s clawing into NATO, and he’s going to use Erdogan, a natural authoritarian (with his own White Palace) to further establish “absolutism” around a feudal Russian core.

In the today’s news:

The Kremlin accepted a letter from Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan as an apology this week.

Mr Putin spoke to Mr Erdogan by phone on Wednesday, telling him he planned to lift the travel sanctions.

The lifting of non-travel trade sanctions will depend on the outcome of the trade talks, the Russian leader said in his decree.

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-36676516 – 6/30/2016

In news analysis appearing in The Atlantic about three years ago:

The Turks suffer from a deep-rooted, historic reluctance to confront the Russians. The humming Turkish economy is woefully dependent on Russian energy exports: More than half of Turkey’s natural gas consumption comes from Russia. Consequently, Turkey is unlikely to confront Moscow even when Russia undermines Turkey’s interests, such as in Syria where Russia is supporting the Assad regime, even as Ankara tries to depose it.

Historically, the Turks have always feared the Russians . . . .

http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2013/05/turkey-fears-russia-too-much-to-intervene-in-syria/275571/ – 5/6/2013

Moscow has so far been able to separate itself from such wondrous moves as the incubation of ISIS (through “deselection” for bombing and combat early in the Syrian Tragedy) and the related development of Syrian mass migration, and with Turkey and the latest airport bombing — and where the terrorists come from but Russia, Uzbekistan, and Kyrgyzstan — the same channeling applies and to similar effect: Russia has been channeling its extremists to ISIS, and when they do what they do in the NATO community, it may lay claim to being tough on the same.

If terrorists should wreak havoc on a renewed Russian flight to Turkey, well then: Moscow and Washington may then mutually share sorrows and perhaps move toward rapprochement (on counterterrorism cooperation, say) while Assad the Tyrant and the familiar Soviet / post-Soviet (now neo-feudal) arrangements remain in place.

There’s a greater problem with such a rosey “what-if” or outcome, and that is the modern world’s ceding itself to the sustained “feudal absolute power” that today, as in medieval days, lends itself to despotism, kleptocracy, and the war of all against all without end.  Unfortunately, “Red Brown Green” applies: to have within NATO nationalist or Islamist authoritarians (Hungary’s Orban, Turkey’s Erdogan, for starters) lends itself to Russia’s feudal revanch and its imperial ends.

Fast Related Reference (URL + Date)

https://conflict-backchannels.com/2015/10/02/syria-assad-vs-the-terrorists-how-isis-defends-assad/ – 10/2/2015.

https://conflict-backchannels.com/2016/04/19/turkish-autocrat-erdogan-on-track/ – 4/19/2016.

http://edition.cnn.com/2016/06/30/opinions/russia-soviet-fighters-istanbul-bombing-bergen/ – 7/1/2016

-33-

Video

FTAC – ‘This is Moscow’s Game’

29 Wednesday Jun 2016

Posted by commart in 21st Century Feudal, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, FTAC - From The Awesome Conversation, Political Psychology, Politics, Russia

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

dictatorship, Russia, Putinism, neo-feudalism, neo-imperialism, feudal absolute power, Russian politics, Russian feudalism

This is Moscow’s game.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p03pk9c1*

Today, Putin plays “ends against the middle” by supporting Far Right and Far Left movements and personalities; he indulges in breathtaking political theater — Sochi or Syria, both have been about demonstration of political values; and he’s ruthless (poor Assad), enough so to have engineered through influence the incubating of ISIS (for the production “Assad vs The Terrorists”) and the creation of an EU / NATO stressing immigrant headache, to which the Brits have responded and played directly into his bid to keep restored feudal political absolute power.


Related in the news: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2016/06/29/post-brexit-the-u-k-is-in-its-worst-political-crisis-since-1940-and-the-e-u-may-be-about-to-unravel/ – 6/29/2016.

Most of the public will keep Putin’s feudal revanche in Russia separate from the issues attending the Great Britain – European Union split, but the general weakening of the European Union and NATO would seem fit to his own image of himself as the unassailable primary political force in a state suspended between a secret police organization (FSB) to whom he refers to as the “New Nobility”, himself, and the financial oligarchy that he controls.

*In the above cited and linked video, attend to Moscow’s creation of a conflict that it chooses to manage from both sides.

-33-

FTAC -Islam – A Comment on Sophisticated Interpretation / Reform

28 Tuesday Jun 2016

Posted by commart in 21st Century Feudal, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, FTAC - From The Awesome Conversation, Islamic Small Wars, Religion, Syndicate Red Brown Green

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

cultural updating, despotism, feudal absolute power, Islam, Islamic reform, pluralism, political distribution of power, political power, politics, religion, secular society, secularism

I’ve never doubted Jasser’s sincerity but I have questioned the power of modern sensibility to “re-map” scripture. We’re beyond the age of miracles but not of religious sentiment, and to approach the updating of the legacy in scripture and related literature of Islam involves first overriding Muhammad’s warnings about tampering. On the part of modern and sophisticated people, I’ve seen two channels organizing effort to either interpret the Qur’an as a multilayered exercise in thought — and who is to say it’s not? — or, as Jasser and others have done, question the instructions and have the great conversation, and may both tracks lead away from the barbarism on display in Baghdadi’s emulation (so he believes) with ISIS in Syria-Iraq.

Related

ISIS – BackChannels supports the idea that ISIS was incubated by Damascus with the support of Moscow and Tehran, and that the method used we “de-selection” for combat and bombing early in the process that has become the “Syrian Tragedy”.

Chief in evidence: http://www.newsweek.com/us-accuses-assad-aiding-islamic-state-through-airstrikes-338582

More recent and related to the above as regards Moscow’s predictable style:  http://www.newsweek.com/russia-has-killed-more-syrian-civilians-assad-or-isis-last-month-report-426775

As interpreted by BackChannels: https://conflict-backchannels.com/2015/10/02/syria-assad-vs-the-terrorists-how-isis-defends-assad/

Islam

Mention is not endorsement, but as much may help move the conversation farther away from consideration of Baghdadi’s 7th Century display as immutable.

American Islamic Forum for Democracy

Center for Islamic Pluralism

Ex-Muslims of North America

LibForAll Foundation & International Institute of Qur’anic Studies

Muslim Reform Movement

New Age Islam & Rethinking Islam

Plain Islam & Islamic Society of Britain

Qanta Ahmed – National Review — BackChannels considers conservative American and Muslim physician and writer Qanta Ahmed a force of nature sufficient for mention as a figure representing a modern pluralist stance in Islam without reform and opposite the Muslim Brotherhood as regards leveraging concession from the rest of the world.

Wasatia

I have not subjected the list to scrutiny beyond the declared penchant of each for moderation and good.

Those who obsess on fundamental core tenets and advisements and hadith and sunnah may be expected to continue to condemn an unreformed Islam by way of its reflection from the past — the Religion of Peace web site conveys the tough critic’s perspective.  Whether the religion, which hundreds of millions of Muslims have assumed perfect from the start, has strength to weather genuine moderation and updating remains to be seen.

Political Psychology

“Cults of personality”, “dictatorship”, “fascism”, “feudal political absolutism”, “idolatry”, “malignant narcissism” — such terms revolve around the construction of feudal space and the will and rule of a single overwhelming and ruthless personality that through the carrot and stick of patronage and intimidation creates and manipulates a universe around itself.  On BackChannels, the great struggle with the past has been presented this way:

Feudal Absolute Power vs Modern Democratic Distribution

For Islam and for Muslims to integrate with the cultural complexities of modern, pluralist, and secular democracies, which may then develop stronger capitalist economies with social welfare attachments, may require some reconsideration of Muhammad’s conflation with God, whether generated originally or by clerics or others promoting their own power in supposed emulation.

Addendum

http://www.danielpipes.org/17792/why-islams-reformers-are-vitally-important – 7/18/2017.

-33-

 

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Epigram

Hillel the Elder

"That which is distasteful to thee do not do to another. That is the whole of Torah. The rest is commentary. Now go and study."

"If I am not for myself, who will be for me? If I am not for others, what am I? If not now, when?"

"Whosoever destroys a soul, it is considered as if he destroyed an entire world. And whosoever that saves a life, it is considered as if he saved an entire world."

Oriana Fallaci
"Whether it comes from a despotic sovereign or an elected president, from a murderous general or a beloved leader, I see power as an inhuman and hateful phenomenon...I have always looked on disobedience toward the oppressive as the only way to use the miracle of having been born."

Talmud 7:16 as Quoted by Rishon Rishon in 2004
Qohelet Raba, 7:16

אכזרי סוף שנעשה אכזרי במקום רחמן

Kol mi shena`asa rahaman bimqom akhzari Sof shena`asa akhzari bimqom rahaman

All who are made to be compassionate in the place of the cruel In the end are made to be cruel in the place of the compassionate.

More colloquially translated: "Those who are kind to the cruel, in the end will be cruel to the kind."

Online Source: http://www.rishon-rishon.com/archives/044412.php

Abraham Isaac Kook

"The purely righteous do not complain about evil, rather they add justice.They do not complain about heresy, rather they add faith.They do not complain about ignorance, rather they add wisdom." From the pages of Arpilei Tohar.

Heinrich Heine
"Where books are burned, in the end people will be burned." -- From Almansor: A Tragedy (1823).

Simon Wiesenthal
Remark Made in the Ballroom of the Imperial Hotel, Vienna, Austria on the occasion of His 90th Birthday: "The Nazis are no more, but we are still here, singing and dancing."

Maimonides
"Truth does not become more true if the whole world were to accept it; nor does it become less true if the whole world were to reject it."

"The risk of a wrong decision is preferable to the terror of indecision."

Douglas Adams
"Isn't it enough to see that a garden is beautiful without having to believe that there are fairies at the bottom of it too?" Epigram appearing in the dedication of Richard Dawkins' The GOD Delusion.

Thucydides
"The Nation that makes a great distinction between its scholars and its warriors will have its thinking done by cowards and its fighting done by fools."

Milan Kundera
"The struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting."

Malala Yousafzai
“The terrorists thought that they would change our aims and stop our ambitions but nothing changed in my life except this: weakness, fear and hopelessness died. Strength, power and courage was born.”

Tanit Nima Tinat
"Who could die of love?"

What I Have Said About the Jews

My people, not that I speak for them, I nonetheless describe as a "global ethnic commune with its heart in Jerusalem and soul in the Land of Israel."

We have never given up on God, nor have we ever given up on one another.

Many things we have given up, but no one misses, say, animal sacrifice, and as many things we have kept, so we have still to welcome our Sabbath on Friday at sunset and to rest all of Saturday until three stars appear in the sky.

Most of all, through 5,773 years, wherever life has taken us, through the greatest triumphs and the most awful tragedies, we have preserved our tribal identity and soul, and so shall we continue eternally.

Anti-Semitism / Anti-Zionism = Signal of Fascism

I may suggest that anti-Zionism / anti-Semitism are signal (a little bit) of fascist urges, and the Left -- I'm an old liberal: I know my heart -- has been vulnerable to manipulation by what appears to me as a "Red Brown Green Alliance" driven by a handful of powerful autocrats intent on sustaining a medieval worldview in service to their own glorification. (And there I will stop).
One hopes for knowledge to allay fear; one hopes for love to overmatch hate.

Too often, the security found in the parroting of a loyal lie outweighs the integrity to be earned in confronting and voicing an uncomfortable truth.

Those who make their followers believe absurdities may also make them commit atrocities.

Positively Orwellian: Comment Responding to Claim that the Arab Assault on Israel in 1948 Had Not Intended Annihilation

“Revisionism” is the most contemptible path that power takes to abet theft and hide shame by attempting to alter public perception of past events.

On Press Freedom, Commentary, and Journalism

In the free world, talent -- editors, graphic artists, researchers, writers -- gravitate toward the organizations that suit their interests and values. The result: high integrity and highly reliable reportage and both responsible and thoughtful reasoning.

This is not to suggest that partisan presses don't exist or that propaganda doesn't exist in the west, but any reader possessed of critical thinking ability and genuine independence -- not bought, not programmed -- is certainly free to evaluate the works of earnest reporters and scholars.

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