Part 1 – Amnesia and Radicalism of the Other

 

Can you say the words, “Radical Christian Extremism”? If not, you are either woefully ignorant of the extremists currently at work in Christianity and the Trump-led Republican Party¹ or you are already a part of this violent ideology. If you want to fight an ideology you cannot use lethal weapons to do it. You may as well try to fix your smart phone with a hammer. You fight an ideology with logic, rationality and education. An idea-ology is by definition a system of thought. If you fight ideas with guns you may as well call yourself “Big Brother”, Stalin or Hitler. They are the ones that advocate squelching ideas with death. The implicit reasoning goes something like this: if you kill everyone who believes an idea you disagree with, there will be no one left to think the thought; therefore, the idea will vanish. Aside from pure logical ignorance, history has shown us that if you throw this kind of gas on a thought based fire you will spread the ideology, both pro and con, much faster than it would have spread on its own. Hitler, Mussolini and Emperor Hirohito’s insistence on nationalism and fascist ideology has made fascism the most despicable of terms. Yet Nationalism lives on popularly in the Republican Party². George W. Bush and company made the spread of terrorist thugs and tribal warfare in foreign countries into a global recruitment tool for the Islamic Caliphate and the state enforcement of shari’a law³. In this kind of state, religious education of the Quran and Sunnah is mandatory and relentless. Similarly, the radical Christian extremists in our country would get rid of the separation of Church and State (some of them deny it ever existed in our system of government⁴). They would impose religious training that would deny evolution and climate change. They would not only ban abortions but punish those who get abortions⁵. They would put abortion health providers to death. They would have the state kill homosexuals by law⁶. Currently, they publish the names and addresses abortion health providers, murder them and murder innocent people in abortion clinics calling themselves “warriors for the babies”.

When this violent Christian extremism happens in our country we want to call the perpetrators deranged and crazy. When violent Islamic extremism happens we call it ideological. Notice the hypocritical difference: Christianity is never blamed for its extremists but Islam is blamed for its extremists. Now I know, because my wife tells me this quite often, that logical consistency is not held in high regard by most folks but isn’t there some kind of imperative built into our anatomy, essential to language, for order and consistency? Does each of us make up our own private language? Do we only imagine we can communicate? Are we really fine with having reality comprised of word salad? If words and ideas have any meaning whatsoever, isn’t meaning itself dependent on making sense? Even if we deny logic and rationality, don’t we have to do it based on logic and rationality? How would one make an argument otherwise? Sorry, but if we give up on logic, rationality and consistency and opt for pure ideological narcissism we cannot even claim to be mammalian, animal, plant or mater⁷.

We demand that Muslims publicly denounce and refuse those that call themselves followers of Muhammad and kill in his name. Trump has recently stated that Muslims are intentionally hiding extremists and that he would crack down on them. Yet, when people kill in the name of Jesus, Christianity or “the babies” we want to call them crazy and deranged. We do not allow ourselves to think the thought that Christians should just as publicly and vehemently oppose violent extremism in Christianity as much as Muslims should oppose it in Islam. Do we equally demand that an anti-abortion zealot turn in dangerous Christian extremists? Are we willing to prosecute and deport any or all of them for their silence?

If we completely expunge Christian ideology by making their extremists simply ‘crazy’ and we insist at the same time that Islam is a religion which condones violence aren’t we being just as crazy, from a rational point of view, as the terrorists? Perhaps, the vengeful and jealous God which demands eternal Hell as justice for mortal sin should be rethought from a “warrior for the babies” perspective. Is it possible for the extreme condemnation and judgement of God to be taken as a blessing by God to kill those sinners who ‘murder babies’ and deny the ‘true’ God. If you thought defending God violently would keep you from going to eternal Hell, could it be thought as perhaps the dark side of thinking 70 virgins are waiting for you in Heaven when you kill in the name of God. Have Christians really forgotten the Dark Ages, Crusades and witch burnings? If you make the claim Islam is inherently violent, how could you in the same breath and of a sound mind not make the same claim of Christianity?

Well, it is easy, you simply think that your God is the ‘true’ God and theirs is not. They worship false gods and you know the ‘true’ God. You know this because ‘the Bible tells you so” and the ‘Holy Spirit” confirms it. No shadow of doubt can enter your mind because that would be the devil and you might be seduced into eternal torment with such thinking. Every religion and secular political ideology has its de-legitimizing stepping off points for extremism. We are all responsible for recognizing and reacting to attempts to hide or justify ideological weaknesses in our own backyard first. Sure there are ‘Crazies’ but as Foucault tells us in “Madness and Civilization” there is an uncanny, symbiotic relationship between insanity and rationality. Is it essential to rationality as Foucault claims? It makes for an interesting philosophical question. In any case, the treacherous territory between nut-cases and ideological enticements demand alertness and the most sober reflection if we want to avoid the apparent blindness of one’s own insanity and responsibility for our collective mental health. It is way too easy to make the devil ‘Other’ and ourselves the ‘not-Devil’. This is what is at the basis of Trump’s xenophobia. It is the easy way out to blame the ‘other’ and at the same time justify ourselves. The only problem is this sociological behavior perpetuates and exacerbates our own extremism and will never resolve it. The adamant insistence to turn a blind eye to ourselves is the mechanism that perpetuates radical extremism no matter what side of the ideological spectrum you adhere to.

For too many decades far right Republicans and fundamentalist Christians have been sowing to the worst in human behavior: negativity, condemnation, anger, distrust, suspicion, violence and war. Now they are reaping Trump. Why did they turn a blind eye to their own tactics? Because, in the short term, it got them votes. I would also suggest that the relative increases in human comfort and health sciences, especially in the U.S., kept the old line conservatives more attuned to human tragedy and weakness. They were less able to deny their own fallibility and dependence. They realized complaining and negativity did not change anything and only perpetuated their own misery. In any case, the lack of a positive message for those outside ‘the fold’ ultimately condemned Republicans to a narrow demographic range of the population. They were never able to convince many outside Kansas that aspirations unrealized are worth having. They promised them the ‘free market’ without government interference would give them their hearts desire. When it did not, they told the disenfranchised people they did not try hard enough, it was their fault. For the last several decades, they told them the Federal Government stole their dream and robbed the market of what they could have had. The found a demon, a terrorist to account for their constituents misery. If it was not their fault it must be the Government’s fault, the terrorists fault, the abortion providers fault, the homosexuals fault, the blacks fault, the Mexicans fault, the Muslims fault, on and on. In the end, all they gave their folks were empty promises and negative reasons for their misery.

 

Part 2 – Amnesia and the Magical Disappearance of Power

 

The real reason the Republican dream turned into a nightmare was instead of assigning fault and failing on ‘free market’ promises they fundamentally depended on people’s innate tendency for passivity and fantasy to keep them in office. They became the nanny state for excuses. They promised action but delivered empty and negative rhetoric. Reflection takes work on the part of an individual. Understanding one’s complicity in ones problems is the first step to overcoming one’s problems. The next step is action. When we deny our dependence on others and essential connection to each other we deny the most useful adaptation we have as humans, our intelligence. Intelligence, as is language, is not an individual will-to-power. It is fundamentally different from narcissism and individual mastery. If we help each other we help ourselves. If all of us only help ourselves we all end up in a miry bog.

The government is not antithetical to help, it is the tool for help. As individuals it is our job to make it work for us and not against us. If it is inefficient, it is our job to make it efficient not by killing it but by electing politicians the fix problems. Killing the government will not magically solve our problems, blaming the government will not solve any problems neither will bloating it with corporate politicians. Making the government a scapegoat for our problems will not solve them. Leaving us to manage on our own is really only a way for the vultures of capitalism to pick our bones dry. When we help each other we thrive. When we tear each other down and the organizations we have historically made, to realistically address problems we cannot change as individuals, we are left to the Darwinian marketplace which tells us in advance that we are all on our own against the power grubbers of capitalism (get your degree at Trump University).

I am not suggesting capitalism is inheritably bad, only that it has no external checks and balances to prevent market monopolies and vast over-reaches by its own pools of powerful interests. It must rely solely on its own inner dynamics and self-regulation to allegedly keep the ‘haves’ in check and promote the well-being of the ‘have-nots’. Therefore, the system is completely intrinsic to itself. In contradistinction, our system of government has, if you will, ‘state-planned’ checks and balances in the form of a constitution. Intervention is planned by the foresight of the Founders by three distinct branches of government. External intervention is a necessary and essential structural element of our Constitution. While the Austrian Economists may conveniently ignore the political basis of our own state planning in the U.S. Constitution as non-relevant to their extremist critique of state-planned economies there is an apparent contradiction between our form of government and their admonitions about a ‘free market’. The Founders would not tell us that the structure of our government rests on selfishness. They had a vision they coded into law that rests on a structural fairness for all based on protected divisions of power. They assumed happiness was not left to the wind of the market and vehemently rejected European Mercantilism. To the contrary of the Austrian Economists, they did not see liberalism as the (re-written and revised) historical basis rampant in Mercantilism but as the excesses of Aristocracy and power of the few.

Capitalism as Adam Smith tells us is firmly rooted in selfishness⁸. He does not take selfishness to be negative but a positive incentive for mastery and acquisition. As a note, he did however root out making money on money (interest) as an unacceptable selfishness⁹. The Austrians put no such constraints on the market. There is a bit of a magic trick, now you see it now you don’t, in raising an artificial distinction between “state-planned” control and interests of the powerful “market-planned” economy. Selfishness, left to its own devices, unmediated by anything other than individual will has historically not resulted in a balanced and prosperous state but an autocracy, an oligarchy, a mercantilism; the haves and the have-nots as we currently say. It has never had a history of mediating itself in some sort of stable and efficient distribution of goods and services despite what the Austrian Economists¹⁰ would have us believe.

While the Austrians are quick to criticize state planning as liberalism in which they mean socialism and fascism, they are quite silent when market manipulation, collusion and ‘corporate planning’ are brought to the fore from within the market. Their main basis for dealing with this is telling us that intervention by the state causes these deformities; bubbles and bursts in the market. The trick here is to change the terms from externality, what is plainly and historically visible in the consolation of power, to an internal (shall we dare suggest Hegelian) confluence of hypotheticals. If we can adequately maintain a new and improved history of the world which does not implicate unfettered commerce and economy but always attributes the deformities of power, not to the ones that have the real power in terms of, shall we say, dollars and cents but to the ones they try to keep on their payroll, we implicate the worker bees not the queen bee. The queen disappears in the hive while all the workers are left to fight it out amongst themselves for the crumbs of the existence. This well-financed illusion creates a synthesis for market failures based on a superimposed and critically differentiated other, the government. The result is that the market, unhinged and unaltered by government intervention is whole (hole), complete unto itself. The market can now will itself as self-determined. What gets lost is even the remote possibility that distortions in the market can come about not just from the super-imposed, state-controlled hubris of the government but from any other form of market control and manipulation from within the market.

The next step as the right has continually reminded us is to make the government so small we can drown it in a bathtub. The natural consequence of this is what we would call anarchy. By the term ‘anarchy’, referring specifically to no government, can we assume that the ‘free market’ would also magically take care of or have no need for this type of human organization? Can we then dump the U.S. Constitution so apparently and vehemently revered by the right to make way for the pure internal-ism of the market? When the System is complete by virtue of its own internal dynamics why would we need a government anymore. Why couldn’t the object of such disdain, disorder, and human misery simply be done away with so the beauty of the market could finally have its day? Surely, the market would correct itself and ensure that an equal playing field would be had by all. You can now wake up on the count of three.

 

Part 3- The Consummation of ALL in Trump

 

The narcissism of Trump is a creation of this utopic myth where the lion and the lamb lay down in perfect harmony…albeit, in a members only (white, straight, Mayberry reality but forget the details). This protectionist strategy leaves out some important details about who goes in the ark before the flood but never-mind that. Trump tells us to trust him. Everything will be fine. He will make us great again. He will win. He is very intelligent. The siren song continues, pay no attention to that masked billionaire behind the curtain. He is Trump, the Great and Powerful (swish, swish, boom, boom, fart, fart). Here again we have bumped into a learned tactic from the Austrians…the sleight of hand where the rich and powerful disappear in a puff of smoke and all is well in Pleasantville. Have we all found ourselves in “The Truman Show” where the right has convinced us of the infallibility of the ‘free market’? The rich are not really rich, they do not pull any strings or exercise any power OR if they do it is only because the government is bought and paid for (by the ones the market movers created and require for their own existence in the first place). All our problems are due to the evil other, the immigrant, the homosexual, the blacks, the government, ad nausea. The market is blameless in itself. It can do no wrong. Liberalism is synonymous with totalitarianism. The market is synonymous with freedom and individualism. We have been feed a steady diet for decades of ‘focus on the watch while we pick your pocket and sell you your own watch’. In this cocoon, all aspirations will be met if you only work hard and have faith in The Donald. The word ‘slavery’ has been done away with, we now call it interest on credit…Adam Smith’s vehement exception to the virtue of selfishness. When workers are paid slave wages and credit is offered we blame the worker when the payments are not met. Surely, the market could not be guilty of usury. People like Trump are not the problem, just listen to him, he will tell you who the real problem is. Corporations are people too. They do not squeeze the blood out of people. People do not have to borrow money. Surely they can live on $7.25 an hour. If they can’t, they should get another job but don’t let the undocumented worker take their jobs at an even lower hourly rate.

How many wacky theories about the ‘free market’ will we have to endure before people finally realize that the market will run over people if it is not intelligently regulated by something other than itself? It is possible for humans to govern themselves wisely without giving free reign to survival of the fittest in market economy. Is it possible for external checks and balances to work in government? It is not all or nothing, us or them, good versus evil. The evil is in the excesses that hides between our eyes in the fanciful illusions created by an invisible hand which separate us from one another, from wisdom and intelligence, in our shared languages; desires, logic and reason. When ‘we’ becomes irrelevant and ‘me’ is all that matters these words which we commonly understand fall into an abyss, Alice in Wonderland, where up is down and down is up and sense can be held at the mercy of the highest bidder.

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¹ Trump Selects a White Nationalist Leader as a Delegate in California

Trump retweets another apparent white supremacist

DONALD TRUMP’S SOCIAL MEDIA TIES TO WHITE SUPREMACISTS

² An Exhausted Democracy: Donald Trump and the New American Nationalism

³ The rate of terrorist attacks around the world by jihadist groups and the rate of fatalities in those attacks increased dramatically after the invasion of Iraq. Globally there was a 607 percent rise in the average yearly incidence of attacks (28.3 attacks per year before and 199.8 after) and a 237 percent rise in the average fatality rate (from 501 to 1,689 deaths per year). A large part of this rise occurred in Iraq, which accounts for fully half of the global total of jihadist terrorist attacks in the post-Iraq War period. But even excluding Iraq, the average yearly number of jihadist terrorist attacks and resulting fatalities still rose sharply around the world by 265 percent and 58 percent respectively.

The Iraq Effect: War Has Increased Terrorism Sevenfold Worldwide

Also, if you have not read or seen this website, it is certainly worth reading. It puts the cost of war and the cost of peace in economic terms and the results are quite interesting…

The Economic Cost of Violence Containment

⁴ The Myth of the Separation of Church and State

⁵ Kevin Swanson Agrees With Trump: Abortion ‘Ought To Be A Criminal Action’

Donald Trump’s ‘Punishment’ Talk Exposes Abortion Foes’ True Face

US Domestic Terrorism

GROUP ATTACKING PLANNED PARENTHOOD LINKED TO EXTREMISTS

HATE IN THE MAINSTREAM

Here is a Press Release by Operation Rescue on the execution of an abortionist murderer. Troy Newman is the President of Operation Rescue. He is another “warrior for the babies”.

Operation Rescue West
California Life Coalition
Joint Press Release
For Immediate Release
September 3, 2003
Contact: Troy Newman, Director, Operation Rescue West (316) 841-1700
Cheryl Sullenger, Director, California Life Coalition (619) 277-0725
Execution of Paul Hill Nothing Less than Murder
Paul Jennings Hill is scheduled to die by lethal injection today in the state of Florida for the murder of a Pensacola abortionist and his security guard in 1994. The following is a joint statement released by Operation Rescue West and the California Life Coalition regarding today’s execution:
“Today’s scheduled execution of Paul Hill is not justice, but is another example of the judicial tyranny that is gripping our nation. A Florida judge denied Rev. Hill his right to present a defense that claimed that the killing of the abortionist was necessary to save the lives of the pre-born babies that were scheduled to be killed by abortion that day. Our system of justice is based upon ‘innocent until proven guilty,’ but in Rev. Hill’s case, there was no justice because the court prevented him from presenting the legal defense that his conduct was justifiable defensive action.
“There are many examples where taking the life in defense of innocent human beings is legally justified and permissible under the law. Paul Hill should have been given the opportunity to defend himself with the defense of his choosing in a court of law. Because he was denied this right, the full truth and motivations behind Hill’s actions were kept hidden from the jury. If Paul Hill’s life can be taken by the state without the full advantage of the protections afforded him by due process simply because of the unpopularity of his views, then we have to wonder who is next? No one is safe from being denied a defense by an out-of-control and biased judicial system. Execution under these circumstances is nothing less than murder of a political prisoner.
“We pray for Paul Hill today, for his wife and children, and for our nation that sees no value in the lives of the innocent victims of abortion that Hill endeavored to rescue, but instead protects and defends their killers. Today, it is justice that has been aborted. May God have mercy on us!”

⁶ If you have not seen this clip of Rachel Maddow exposing the Republican candidate’s support of the “kill the gays” pastor, it is well worth watching

⁷ Animals are consistent. They have adaptations and ritualistic behaviors that enable them to survive. They breed, give birth, and in some form or another, biologically and/or behaviorally, help their young adapt to their environment. If they do not, their species will eventually go extinct. Physics is not purely random. Electrons want to satisfy conditions set in motion by protons and neutrons. Sub-atomic particles have flavors: up, down, strange, charm, top, and bottom; color, spins, quarks, quirks, massless, etc. They are not purely chaotic. There is a situational sense of them which is the ‘glue’ of existence. Yet, all of this phenomena has its mal-adaptations and randomness. To the extent that these destructive behaviors are successfully repressed is to the same extent that species and matter can exist. To the extent that they are expressed the consequence of extinction and entropy are introduced. Violence may have short term advantages in nature but it seems that nature prefers avoidance, cooperation, breeding and other more successful tools for conflict resolution.

The early Greeks thought of all this as phusis from which we get our modern word ‘physics’. The point being, rationality, logic, consistency, predictability are all essential conditions of existence. They can certainly be denied but only by affirming them. Nihilism and pure destruction is not an answer to them, only a narcissistic refusal to think or acknowledge the other. Consistency demonstrates order but is not necessarily rationality and logic. It could be argued that rationality and logic recognize order as such; that it is not merely determined by order and the corresponding behavioral response of consistency. However, the appeal to reflection does not result in some sort of freedom from order only an awareness of it. In any case, if language is the determinate factor for rationality and logic it may not be as far as we think from audible, visual and behavioral communication we see in animals and plants and the constraints and interrelations we see in matter. Since we are the only ones that can insist on an essential difference there is always the anthropomorphic exception to the argument for an essential difference in order and consistency and rationality and logic.

⁸ The Free Market: Capitalism and Socialism – Part 1

The Free Market: Capitalism and Socialism – Part 2

⁹ In Adam Smith’s most famous work, “An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations” he devotes over 100 pages to banking regulations. Of those who live “by profit” he states:

His employers constitute the third order, that of those who live by profit. It is the stock that is employed for the sake of profit, which puts into motion the greater part of the useful labour of every society. The plans and projects of the employers of stock regulate and direct all the most important operations of labour, and profit is the end proposed by all those plans and projects. But the rate of profit does not, like rent and wages, rise with the prosperity, and fall with the declension of the society. On the contrary, it is naturally low in rich, and high in poor countries, and it is always highest in the countries which are going fastest to ruin. The interest of this third order, therefore, has not the same connection with the general interest of the society as that of the other two. 1.11.264

¹⁰ Fundamentalism in Market Economy: The Austrian School and Regulation

Fundamentalism in Market Economy: The Austrian School

Fundamentalism in Market Economy: The Austrian School and the Problem of Suffering

Theoria and Austrian Economics [from what I can see]

 

I have been predicting the demise of the Republican Party for a number of years now even as recently as the 2012 presidential election.¹ I have been a little premature in the pace of their predicted implosion but, for me, it has been apparent for quite a while. It is amazing to me that Republicans do not seem to have a clue about themselves. Back when Mitt lost to Obama they huddled together and came out with their reflections on what they did wrong and how to fix it. It all came down to public relations. They needed to put the right spin on things to win national elections without changing any of their basic doctrines or self-righteous instincts. They just knew that the “American People” were on their side and the Democrats were marginal with their obsession about ethnic groups, women’s issues, climate change and massive wars.

Now, we see the Republican Party coming apart at the seams, in total disarray, and they do not have a clue about why it is happening. Their answer for their dilemma has always been their nemesis; the enemy liberals and Democrats, were what mucked up the works for them. If only these Democratic idiots would get out of the way, they would show us how their ideology was the answer to all our woes. If we let the ‘free market’ go unhindered and come down hard on the world stage with military might while letting the original intent of the constitution shape social values, family and culture as what ‘we’ all really know is what God wants, would be the final solution. Even in the Deep South where Republicans have dominated for decades, they still blame the Civil War and Democrats for higher poverty, worse health care and lower educational standards of the deep red states.

Here is the real reason why their party is doomed: they cannot see how what they have done has made a Donald Trump possible. All the years they were spinning conspiracy theories on Fox News, spitting out hatred, whining about the ‘Federal Government’, inciting the right to get further and further right created a base that could only react with negativity, anger, frustration and ultimately, drama. The old right’s insistence on not making excuses, putting your nose to the grindstone and above all stop complaining and whining went out the window. The new right was given the blessing and even a new virtue for complaining, stewing in anger and frustration about their dilemma and lot in life. It was all the fault of the ‘Federal Government’, the Democrats, the godless, the communists, the terrorists, the blacks, the Hispanics, they women’s libbers, the lying climate change advocates, the activist judges, on and on… All the while they were creating a monster. Monsters do not recognize ideologies. In their pure form they simply want utter destruction.

Trump is the embodiment of the monster they have fashioned for themselves. Trump, the archetypal Republican hero of capitalism, who must be smart and above ethical reproach, incorruptible and the embodiment of the truly free god who can speak politically un-correct truths due to his massive wealth and beauty would be the savior of the down-trodden. It mattered nothing to his supporters that their woes may have been the result of capitalists like Trump and not politicians and the ‘Federal Government’. As Karl Marx observed about the heroic ideal of the capitalist long ago, wealth leveled out all differences. Those with money were very, very smart as Trump fashions himself. He must be beautiful, just look at his wife and children. He must be a military genius. He must understand how to make everyone rich like him and get rid of all the riff-raff in Washington. All the while what ran out of control under the veneer of such fantasies was the sanctification of unencumbered ego. While the base could indulge in unabashed negativity, anger, frustration and endless whining, the heroic conqueror of ‘free market’ capitalism was bestowed with all knowledge and virtue. He transcended ideology. Even the most radical right wing dogma, except perhaps pure fascism, met its irrelevance in the drama of the One beyond corruption and political correctness.

The so-called ‘establishment’ of the Republican Party has not yet understood how they created this monster that will eat their party alive. The rot in their roots was all their own doing. Their base ate way too much of the party’s own bitter concoction. They gorged themselves on raw emotion and reactionary drama at the behest of the snake charming elites of the Republican establishment. Then, the un-dead they created tore the establishment apart limb by limb. In effect, the party sanctioned the evil they claimed to disdain. They became self-indulgent narcissists with the continual goading of the establishment they now hate. Hate has no bounds. It stops at nothing. Bitterness eats the soul alive and reaps havoc on everything it touches. The old right would have nothing to do with this kind of indulgent Republicanism.

The bottom line is that the reason the Republican Party is doomed is because they cannot see their own complicity in in the success of Donald Trump. They are dumbfounded by virtue of their own adamant denial. The old right would tell them to stop the whining, take responsibility for their demise and turn it around by their bootstraps not by more creative public relations, more bitter and negative attacks but positive, can-do, problem solving, inclusive not exclusive, minding our own business not solving the world’s problems with wars, moderation and making the government better not the brunt of all complaining. Until the party acknowledges their complicity in the popularity of Trump to their base they will continue on the path to their own destruction. Blaming Trump as a fake and really a liberal is simply drinking more of their own poison. Don’t get me wrong I love the freak show and have no problem watching the new right get what’s coming to them. However, I do think there is a legitimacy in some aspects of conservativism which we are all the lesser for; in not allowing them to work for society and instead, ignorantly against our better angels.

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¹ My Presidential Election Prediction

In this post I have included some important facts and some of my own opinions further down. I think it is important to draw as many opinions as possible from research and not popular hearsay. There are way too many dubious opinions parading around like facts. There is also flawed logic in many of the opinions I hear tossed about these days.

 

In eight years Hillary sponsored or co-sponsored 417 bills in the senate¹.

In 24 years Bernie sponsored or co-sponsored 362 bills in the House and the Senate².

 

With regard to leadership and ideology, here is how govtrack ranks Hillary and Bernie:

 

Hillary³

Clinton sponsored bills primarily in these issue areas:

Government Operations and Politics (23%) Economics and Public Finance (15%) Health (14%) Science, Technology, Communications (11%) Families (10%) Social Welfare (10%) Labor and Employment (9%) Education (8%)

 

Bernie⁴

 

Sanders sponsors bills primarily in these issue areas:

Armed Forces and National Security (27%) Health (18%) Labor and Employment (11%) Energy (10%) Education (9%) Government Operations and Politics (9%) Taxation (8%) Finance and Financial Sector (7%)

 

Here are a few plans for Bernie⁵ and Hillary⁶ and how they plan to pay for them.

 

Hillary Plan:

 

• Boost federal investment by $275 billion over the next five years.
  
• Create a $25 billion infrastructure bank to support critical infrastructure improvements.
  
• Harness public and private capital to fix and build new roads and bridges, expand public transportation, give every American access to broadband internet, and more.
  

 

Hillary How to Pay:

 

On her site Hillary simply states she would pay with “business tax reform” and not much detail. The Atlantic states⁷ that she would probably use the tax holiday proposal which gives large corporations tax breaks to move their profits back to the U.S. to generate tax revenue, to pay for several years of the plan. According to the Atlantic,

 

 

Bernie Plan:

 

Rebuild America Act: Sen. Sanders has proposed a$1 trillion plan to rebuild our crumbling infrastructure
and put 13 million Americans to work.

 

For too many years, we have dramatically underfunded the physical infrastructure that our economy depends on.  That is why I have proposed the Rebuild America Act, to invest $1 trillion over five years to modernize our infrastructure.  It would be paid for by closing loopholes that allow profitable corporations to avoid paying taxes by, among other things, shifting their profits to the Cayman Islands and other offshore tax havens.⁸

 

Bernie How to Pay:

 

Paid for by making corporations pay taxes on all of the “profits” they have shifted to the Cayman Islands and other offshore tax havens, which the Congressional Research Services estimates may currently create losses that approach $100 billion annually, and other loopholes.

 

One thing to note with Bernie’s plan to pay if you check out the study he quotes in the “making corporations pay taxes” link is that the highest estimates for tax evasions (which are legal loopholes) of these offshore tax havens is $100 billion annually. The lowest estimate is $3 billion annually. The rest seem to come in around $60 to $80 billion annually. It is important to note that Bernie’s plan would require $200 billion annually for 5 years to reach 1 trillion dollars.

 

Here are some of my opinions concerning Hillary and Bernie:

 

I think both of them need to be much more specific about how they plan to pay for their plans. However, in light of the last eight years legislative stagnation, it is hard to see how any plan would have a chance of ever seeing the light of day. I do think any chance of success would depend not on a strategy of finger pointing and insults but working behind the scenes to get things done. I think the Democrats are quite different from Republicans in acknowledging that the “American public” is also comprised of Republicans with whom we disagree on many things but believe we can compromise to address pressing issues. The majority of the Republican candidates seem intent on denying that there are Democrats which comprise a large part of the “American public”. They talk in terms of the “American public” as if it were a homogeneous, right-wing group. If they cannot even acknowledge we exist how can any compromise ever happen. There are Republicans that are not so monolithic as Governor Kasich but you can plainly see how popular he is with his electorate.

I have heard both Republicans and Democrats talking about getting more revenue out of business. I think there are dynamics in the world economy that we need to be sensitive to. The bottom line for corporations is not patriotism, it is profit. If a corporation believes it can make a higher profit outside the country they will not hesitate to move their operations and profits wherever they can maximize their profit. When I worked as a manger and engineer in the nineties at U.S. Robotics, we moved our stable, mass marketed product manufacturing to the far east. We found that manufacturing overseas was not all it was cracked up to be. It was cheaper but the quality was harder to control and high tech modems had to work right out of the box. Our more advanced and quickly changing technology stayed in Skokie, Illinois.

As unions have started to form and cost have gone up overseas the natural cycle of cost control and profit have started to level out more and more. Eventually, when the rest of the world starts to catch up with the rampant consumptionism and worker expectations and regulations of the more industrialized countries, the mass exodus of jobs from the U.S. will wane. I do not know how long that will be but I do know that trade deals might be cannon fodder for both parties, but those deals will not expedite or delay the natural consequences of competing worldwide markets and the various cost of living inequalities in underdeveloped countries. This dynamic will not be changed by protectionism not matter what politicians tell us.

In the U.S. we need to learn to stop being so manic about acquiring more and more, latest and greatest commodities. We need to stop the debt-slavery network capitalism has made so easy for us. We will also have to have more large government programs to make up the increasing gap with necessities such as health care, poverty and educational degradation. The market will not provide these basic necessities at a lower cost as decades of believing it will, have amply demonstrated. There will always be the purist that try to make us believe that we simply do not have enough faith and too much government intervention for the ‘free market’ to do its magic. These snake oil salesmen are yet another systemic problem with capitalism where truth is all too often sacrificed for perception.

Additionally, capitalism does not lend itself to long term research and development. By systemic design and necessity it needs to realize maximum profit in the shortest time possible to survive. Capital expenditure is certainly a barrier for market entry in both time and dollars. This is why we need the government to fund science, technology and health care research. We have a proven track record when we let the government and universities take the lead in typically, immediately unprofitable research.

We also need the government to fund education in spite of what the Republicans tell us. We will have to change from a manufacturing economy to an educated and highly skilled market. We cannot compete at the level we need to and the level we have in the past with manufacturing environments where foreign workers are willing to work for pennies on the dollar to our costs. We need to maximize our strengths and minimize our weaknesses. The privatization of education, prisons and retirement and pension plans has repeatedly demonstrated their weaknesses in terms of minimizing standards⁹, maximizing inmates¹⁰ and blowing up working folk’s retirement plans¹¹.

We need to ensure that we maximize private social services as much as possible while realizing that privatization is not a panacea for all social ills. There are many things the government does that no private corporation can compete with cost wise by economies of scale and quality wise by not reducing services to the lowest possible overhead with the maximum amount of marketing hyperbole.

Corporations have to compete and survive. They will not tolerate a high amount of penalties and taxation without pulling stakes and running. We need the positive things that corporations bring us like jobs and competitive pricing without mistaking that for some universal principal that always works in every situation. In short, we need to be smart, measure progress, incorporate end of life standards and requirements for social programs and privatization attempts. We need to understand and learn from history, facts and projections so we do not perpetuate fraud, waste and abuse in public or private ventures. I think that both the government and the private market have about the same batting average in this regard. The Deep South has been dominated for decades by Republicans but they tend to be poorer with less social safety nets and lower quality standards than the rest of the country. This is contrary to the popular rhetoric about Republican economics. I find it highly disingenuous for the party that gave us the Great Recession of 2008 to blame everyone but themselves for the failure and tells us now that the Democrats have screwed everything up under President Obama. The proof is in the pudding and I think most people will make the right call on these shenanigans.

Reportedly, 30% of Bernie Sanders supporters say they would not support Hillary in the general election if she were to win the nomination. How stupid can these folks be. This is tantamount to saying that they much prefer a fascist or religious fanatic to be our next president. Hillary supporters would be more than happy to support Bernie in a general election. We realize that under absolutely no circumstances can we allow the Republicans to jeopardize our country with what even many Republicans are telling us are horrible choices and even telling us that they would vote for Hillary over Trump and Cruz. We should never let our emotions become disengaged from our brain.

As I wrote in my previous article I love Bernie and wish the country were ready for him but the simple fact is that there is no revolution and there are way too may roadblocks in Congress and the real “American public” to make Bernie anything other than a poster child for the left. Folks, the Republicans have been working on Hillary for 25 years and all they have to show are emails and Benghazi, witch hunts at the tax payers expense. They have an extremely well-oiled media machine and have only come up these unfounded allegations to make the ‘Hillary is dishonest’ pitch. Sanders supporters which echo the right wing propaganda are doing favors for fascists and bigots at the expense of their own proposed cause.

Bernie has received a hall pass so far from the right’s voracious media teeth. Ask yourself why. It is because they know the real threat is from Hillary not Bernie with regard to the presidency. I know what the polls say but polls change radically with marketing and media big dollars. The right wing media know that they would make Bernie change from a nice, honest, harmless old guy to a radical communist dictator that would secretly be working with Putin and China to overthrow the United States. They would show no mercy with their rampant and ceaseless tirade of lies and distortion. They have a track record of making it stick with many folks and I would suspect the counter revolution would bring many new voters out on election day.

This bring me to another point. Are we really willing to take the chance against the major dollars of the right and corporations that a home spun and paid for hope for a revolution could match the barrage of big dollars. Folks, we need wake up and smell the coffee. It takes big dollars to win the presidency whether we like it or not. The stakes are too high to acts as if this reality was inconsequential. All of us on the left hate Citizens United and turning the clock back of voter rights but that is a fact and denying it will only lull us into a false sense of security while the war hawk right takes our kids back to war, kill our economy AGAIN and take us back to the good old days of Jim Crow laws. It takes big dollars to win national elections these days like it or not. To think that all politicians are on the take for accepting money is a gross fallacy. Big business prefers the Republicans not only because they get more perks from them than the Democrats but also because they know that Democrats are ideologically opposed to the idea of the rich getting richer while the Republicans say the pledge of allegiance every day to big business and unrestrained capitalism. Think to yourself, who is the more logical choice for receiving favors from big dollar contributions, the Democrats or the Republicans. Any equivocation from the left comes from unenlightened passion at the expense of their own stated ideals and the country. I am not suggesting all Democrats are blameless and all Republicans are on the take. I am simply suggesting that if you want to play the odds the Democrats are your best bet with regard to campaign finance reform, voter rights and social tolerance and diversity. As Democrats, the right depends on certain amount of us in Congress and the public to sabotage our own best interests and play the fools game with them.

This is why I believe we need to play odds and strategy to get where we want to end up. What is the practical choice for moving the country to the left? Think about Hillary and Bernie’s style and ask yourself who has a better chance of getting something done. Don’t buy into the government hater dogma. It is a cop out, a whine fest and only brings you down to a negative, bombastic, hate filled shell of a human being as you age in that psychic pig slop. I believe overall our government is good and has achieved historically great advances in human dignity and providing a more fair economic playing field. We still have a long way to go but bigotry and big money will only take us backwards. The stakes have never been so great for us individually and as a nation. We will only win if we apply an equal amount of idealism, strategy and practicality to our behavior and resist the abyss of cynicism and black and white, emotional judgements¹².

_________________

¹ Hillary results from govtrack.us

 

417 bills matched your search for sponsor: Clinton, Hillary (Sen.) [D-NY, 2001-2009]

 

Referred to Committee (355 bills)

Reported by Committee (24 bills)

Passed Senate (20 bills)

Agreed To (Simple Resolution) (14 bills)

Passed House with Changes (1 bill)

Enacted — Signed by the President (3 bills)

Enacted — Including via Companion Bills (11 bills)

 

² Bernie results from govtrack.us

 

362 bills matched your search for sponsor: Sanders, Bernard “Bernie” (Sen.) [I-VT]

 

Referred to Committee (340 bills)

Reported by Committee (13 bills)

Passed House (1 bill)

Agreed To (Simple Resolution) (2 bills)

Enacted — Signed by the President (3 bills)

Failed Cloture (2 bills)

Failed House (1 bill)

Enacted — Including via Companion Bills (7 bills)

 

³ Hillary – Ideology and Leadership

⁴ Bernie – Ideology and Leadership

⁵ How Bernie pays for his proposals

⁶ Hillary – Strong infrastructure is critical to a strong economy

⁷ Hillary Clinton’s Modest Infrastructure Proposal

⁸ Bernie – Creating Jobs Rebuilding America

⁹ Public Schools in the Crosshairs: Far-Right Propaganda and the Common Core State Standards

¹⁰ The Prison Industry in the United States: Big Business or a New Form of Slavery?

¹¹ Private pension fund levels fall behind

¹² I highly recommend you take a look at the facts and statistics on my site’s reference to this site, Government is Good. You will find many well based sources, facts and evidence for many of the things I have discussed in this post.

Ever since I can remember I have thought of myself as left of liberal. If that puts me in the camp of “Democratic Socialist” I am happy with that label. However, labels are prone to vast over-simplifications. I think real issues are always multifaceted which require weighing pros and cons in a balanced, rational approach. There are no magic ideologies only better and worse ones weighed against benefit and downside. I have lived 59 years with an unapologetic approach to social issues and ethical responsibility. Historically, I have found myself wrong more than I have been right but shame gets you nowhere, learning gets you everywhere. The determinate factor for failure to learn and refusing to mindlessly repeat the past are facts and statistics. There are better and worse facts. Facts may as well be another word for work. Research is work. It is active and not passive. Passivity makes one into a parrot, a mimic of knowledge and wisdom. If you do not do your own research you will absorb opinions around you which can be largely manipulated by technology and unabashed and unrestrained capitalistic production machines.

Democrats lag far behind Republicans when it comes to capital investment and know-how for ideological programming. Republicans are very good at it and have major networks involved in hypnotic appeals to base emotions rooted in the amygdale¹. Don’t get me wrong, leftist make attempts but they pale with regard to the effectively of the right. For one thing, modern leftists generally want to appeal to more positive emotions and facts which, from an evolutionary perspective, do not carry the emotive intensity of fear, hatred, paranoia, etc. For the most part, we must constantly face an uphill battle to viably stake out our positions to others. I have been diligently involved in this battle all my life. Additionally, being from the Deep South, and spending all of my early years around staunch Republicans, I know well how difficult and overwhelming it can be to counter and challenge opinions based on the workings of intense capitalistic media and social productions. The only consolation one can have in the face of arrogant conservatism is facts and statistics, good research and solid sources. If one’s loyalties are based on the feeling of being right or correct, better facts will never have a chance. Better facts are NOT produced or intuited they are worked for and valued apart from whether I like them or not. Personally, I hate being the victim of manipulation and ideological cons on the right so that is why I have decided to work for Hillary and not Bernie.

Don’t get me wrong, I love Bernie and wish this country was ready for a candidate like Bernie. I have the scars to prove that our country is not ready for Democratic Socialism. We have not been around long enough to have explored the political options which bestow wisdom on a culture. We are still too green and reactionary to have lived the trade offs of anti-government extremism and treasuring hard earned communal lessons codified into laws, regulations, and social services. We are too quick to expect to “win” wars and solve international issues with simplistic aphorisms that have been passively handed to us. Bernie is right in intensely bringing out the way we have been victimized, not by an evil government, but by capitalism gone wild and on steroids. Capitalism does not just produce and distribute good and services more efficiently as the Austrian Economists advocate. It also is very effective at consolidating power. Oh sure small business is given lip service as the validation of unrestrained capitalism but historically power and capital have always congealed in symbiotic embrace. Today, at times, we ironically hear the word corporatism batted about by the right as if they just discovered the detestable alliance between big business and corporations. However, historically, we have bumped into this in many other forms most notably, our Founding Fathers.

Spend some time reading about mercantilism and why the early founders of our country like Thomas Jefferson, George Washington and John Adams were motivated to leave Europe and start our democracy. They detested the hermetically sealed, historical alliance of power and wealth while 95% of individuals died early in tragic, inadequate and bare subsistence conditions. History has more than adequately demonstrated that wealth corrupts and successfully feeds on others with a blind and ravenous appetite. Unfettered capitalism produces and shelters power at the expense of production, the work and reward of individuals. Left to its own, without regulation and restraint, capitalism does not encourage individualism and merit but ultimately creates the government it needs to impermeably sustain and enrich itself. This is why the Austrian Economists are naive to the point suspicious and questionable motives. They simplistically create an artificial and absolute chasm between capitalism and government which always results in capital = good and government = bad. I have always stated that if there were no government, unabashed capital and wealth would have to create one. Folks that think we can live some sort of libertarian and anarchistic life with a government “so small we can drown it in a bathtub” are living a well produced lie and myth. The bottom line is we will have government, the only choice is do we make it work for us or delude ourselves into thinking that no government or minimal government is some sort of viable option. It is not. The vacuum created by no government or minimal government will give rise to the worst atrocities and violence of those that rise to the top of the world of Mad Max.

Our government has earned some hard achievements that favor the individual and value fairness but Bernie is totally correct that this is being threatened by power and vast infestations of capital. If we give our government to the likes of Trump and the illusion of small government we will give them everything they want to destroy what is valuable and meaningful in our country. Do anti-government haters really think that Trump and his kind are going to come down on the side of altruism, freedom and protections for the individual? Hell no! What folks are missing is the vast, reality show production of some sort of utopia where the rich and anarchy favor the working individual. This illusion has been repetitively ingrained into an assumed pseudo-reality where the lion and the lamb lay down together in chummy competition irrespective of might and hunger.

This brings me around to why I am working for Hillary. The Republican machine has put multi-millions of dollars into having us believe that Hillary is dishonest. I have even talked to stanch Democrats that have bought into this illusion. Where are the facts? After 8 Benghazi commissions and lots of viscous allegations no arrests have been, no cover up has been proved, no dereliction of duty has been established. Republican leaders have made multiple comments attesting to their woeful political motivations and the taxpayers have spent millions on their reckless political ambitions. We have heard about emails but no arrest has been made. If there were any proof of giving classified information away illegally it would have surfaced long ago. My wife and I have both had secret and top secret clearances and there is no doubt such an allegation, if true, would be a clear violation of the law and bring swift punishment on the violator. Any yet, we hear from regular folks that they think Hillary is dishonest. There is no positive proof that she is dishonest and disproving a negative, as the Republican machine knows, is an impossibility. Sorry folks, but what popular opinion is demonstrating is that Hitler was right; propaganda is the surrogate of truth in its unrequited repetition. Marketing obviously works successfully on this principal where ‘truth in advertising’ is an antiquated and irrelevant superstition of the past. Show me the proof where Hillary is dishonest. After all the money and effort to prove it – nothing. They have nothing but rhetoric to show for this fantastic production of reality. In light of this vacuum, I choose another opinion.

The Republicans are not stupid. They know Hillary is their greatest threat for not getting the presidency and not getting the Supreme Court justices they want. They have known this for years and have actively been targeting and marketing the Hillary-dishonesty-show going back to the nineties. Now it has become increasingly apparent why Hillary is such a threat to them. She obviously is not perceived by them as welcoming big business and wealth interests or they would not have created such an effective propaganda machine. They, themselves, are the proof that she threatens something they hold dear – money. Has anyone heard them say anything negative about Bernie? Very little, if any. Why? Hillary is accused of taking money from Wall Street so why would that bother Republicans. After all, they are the ones that got Citizens United² through the court. They are the ones that talk up free market capitalism. They think “corporations are people too”. They have shown that they will contribute to Democrats or Republicans to further their capital interests. So why would they be threatened by Hillary if she were what they say she is? Why do they talk so little about a “Democratic Socialist” running for president?

It is because they know that Bernie will never make it in the general election. In spite of the freak show circus act they have made with their candidates they know that even a blatant fascist would size up well with a socialist. I have lived through times even in the G.W. Bush years where socialism was synonymous with profanity. President Obama has been accused of everything from socialist to communist to Islamic terrorist. Folks, this is not just loud mouth politicians. There are many, many folks in this country that are scared to death of this radical and created fantasy about the left in our country. Many folks that never vote would probably come out of the woodwork to vote against a “Democratic Socialist” and vote for a thinly veiled fascist. The revolution Bernie talks about can equally come against him for a large segment of the American population. So far, his masses of revolutionary folks have not materialized in the Iowa and New Hampshire caucuses but we have seen a huge increase in the average number of Republican voters in these states. What makes Bernie supporters think the backlash will not be worse than the hope for a revolution? If I vote for Bernie and a Trump or a Cruz gets into office I am responsible for that strategic oversight. Either Trump or Cruz could really be the death or great demise of our country. Do I want to live with that if Bernie’s revolution does not materialize? I think it is probable it will not. The majority of the country does not have the education or background to make a Bernie work.

This brings me to another point. Even if Bernie did make it in – do you think he would be more successful than President Obama? Hell no. If you think President Obama was scapegoated by the right just wait until Bernie becomes president. Bernie will not have the super majority President Obama had and we may as well call off the government for four years to save the taxpayers some money. What would make any sane person think that Bernie would be able to do more than President Obama in our highly tilted and gerrymandered right wing politics? He would get absolutely nothing done, piss off the people that voted for him and allow the right to come back with radical right wing-nut vengeance. Bernie would be the best thing for them long term to rejuvenate their failing party. Why would anyone on the left want to help them accomplish their mission and give credence to their Fox News reality show?

Regrettably, the country is not ready for Bernie but Hillary could actually be more likely to make incremental progress than the polarization that Bernie brings with him. I do not want to go backwards to the days of G.W. Bush. I think we need to show the country that the myths the right popularizes about the left is not real. We have made real progress from the financial meltdown, deregulating banks and traders resulting in 30 to 100 trillion dollar hocus-pocus derivatives worldwide³ and two massive wars we had no business in except to kill thousands of our young men and women and hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians⁴. We need to have ideals, a compass, a direction and Bernie brings that but we also need to think strategically and practically about how to extend our successes and counter the Republican propaganda machine. We should not let our personal desire override the need to bring the majority of the country along with us to make democracy and fairness work better. This is a long term fight. Let’s not sabotage the possibility of winning the war for the sake of a battle. Let’s give the Republican machine its worst fear, Hillary for President. Don’t let them dupe us into buying their mass marketed rhetoric about Hillary. She is our best chance for moving forward. The intelligent right knows it and have put a lot of effort into making us think she is not honest. Let’s be measured, strategic and incremental to show the right how not to be a nut and actually make some progress rather go backwards to the dark ages of recent years.

_________________

¹ The Conservative and Liberal Brain

² Formalism: When a Lie Becomes Truth (really)

³ Latest Observations on the Housing and Economic Crisis

⁴ The Symbiotic Play of War Hawks and Terrorism

I have received another music related patent for MIDI. Many thanks to my wife and my kids for their loving patience with dad‘s hermit-like existence in his office. Also, thanks to Danny Sherwinter and staff at MARSH FISCHMANN & BREYFOGLE LLP in Boulder.

Channel-mapped MIDI learn mode

Here is a link to the previous patent and the videos I made:

Patent Announcement

Mark

Lately I have been thinking about Hegel but only a little so no worry. I asked my wife this question and her first response was simply, “that’s nonsense”. I suppose that was my first impression years ago as well but certainly Hegel was a genius and many bright folks after him have taken him seriously. This question comes in the seminal beginning of Hegel’s Logic. Even now we are facing the neo-to-the-nth post Hegelians at the disruption of post modernism and its critique of metaphysics. The recent Hegelians seem to think whatever has replaced post-modernism is some kind of extreme pluralism. They appear to believe that Hegel can save us from such indeterminacies. It seems to me that they think certain underlying metaphysical assumptions are still at work in the pluralists. Namely, the mind-body metaphysic; a reduction of pure mechanism. Underneath the hood of indeterminate pluralism resides a determinacy of neutrality. They seem to think a profound disassociation lies at the root of this contemporaneous confusion. Following Hegel, their tact is to start with the beginning, Hegel’s Logic.

These Hegelians are very fond of criticizing those who would extract Hegel’s overwrought trope which appeals to thesis-antithesis-synthesis. They spend much time telling us why we should not critique Hegel based on the abstraction of methodology. They go to great explanatory lengths to tell us we should let Hegel’s dialectic speak for itself without bringing in the extraneous arguments for method. They tell us to deal with the text itself not irrelevant arguments about approach and method. They tells us these tactics bring in assumptions which interfere with Hegel’s own highly acclaimed lack of assumptions. Well, it may be an assumption on their part that they have no assumptions and anyone who argues with them, therefore, has assumptions. Anyway, after all the typical and extended Hegelian prelude about what we should and should not do to receive the words of Hegel, we can finally get to the actual recommended approach, the text itself.

Oh but before I can, in Hegelian fashion, let me add that once we start through the text I have heard another commentary arise from the newest Hegelians. We should not inquire too deeply about particular moments of the dialectic but defer any overly-complicated objections until we get to the end of the Logic or until senility and incontinence finally takes its toll, whichever comes first. Any attempt to halt or delay the moments are really only extraneous assumptions trying to sneak back into the assumption-less dialectic.

Be that as it may we should take the recommended approach and look at the text:

Hegel’s Logic begins with the dialectic of being and nothing which are essentially the same but distinctly different. Don’t worry about these minor details. You can read them here if you are confused, Hegel’s Science of Logic Volume One: The Objective Logic Book One: The Doctrine of Being Quality – Quantity – Measure Section One: Determinateness (Quality).

Here is the gist:

Pure Being and pure nothing are, therefore, the same. What is the truth is neither being nor nothing, but that being — does not pass over but has passed over — into nothing, and nothing into being. But it is equally true that they are not undistinguished from each other, that, on the contrary, they are not the same, that they are absolutely distinct, and yet that they are unseparated and inseparable and that each immediately vanishes in its opposite. Their truth is therefore, this movement of the immediate vanishing of the one into the other: becoming, a movement in which both are distinguished, but by a difference which has equally immediately resolved itself.

Got it? Let’s go on to the sublation which is becoming:

Becoming is the unseparatedness of being and nothing, not the unity which abstracts from being and nothing; but as the unity of being and nothing it is this determinate unity in which there is both being and nothing. But in so far as being and nothing, each unseparated from its other, is, each is not. They are therefore in this unity but only as vanishing, sublated moments. They sink from their initially imagined self-subsistence to the status of moments, which are still distinct but at the same time are sublated.

Here, in the interest of having a life I will need to take this one little piece, and in full knowledge of bringing in extraneous assumptions, make one ‘relatively’ small point.

The Hegelians tell us, the moment of becoming cannot remain within itself. The essence of becoming is to become therefore, becoming must become. When becoming becomes, it becomes determinate. Thus, the question I started with, “Can Becoming Become”?

In full knowledge of my sin, I must ‘assumpt’.

If I say A is A I have made what philosophers call a tautology (not to be confused with the Greek word for toilet paper). The history of tautologies is quiet interesting. It proceeds along these lines, either it is absolute proof of the existence of God or it is the most ridiculous, nonsense ever thought in the history of mankind. The gray area is non-existent. A is A is an identity. An identity cannot be other than itself, right? So what if I were to say “Can A’ing A”. You would probably say what my wife said unless you have a career to protect but let’s not get personal (…or,) shall we?

Hegelians tell us “Becoming must Become” otherwise it would not be becoming, right? We can blink and not try to act dumb or we can say, “huh”? Either way we are screwed. If I say, “Can A’ing A” I know that I have brought in an assumption vis-à-vis the ‘ol ‘you-are-making-an-argument-based-on-method’ critique. So, let’s just focus on the notion of becoming.

When I think of becoming, I think of change. Change does not necessarily mean, or lead to, determinacy. In the pure profane, mechanism of reductionary science, there is something called entropy. Entropy leads to less determinateness in many ways. Girls no longer think you exist. Atoms need Viagra. Oh, forget the Freudian slip. There is also something called non-continuous functions. The superposition method of quantum mechanics gives us a way to get around the lack of a continuous function. If we keep adding terms which cancel themselves out if they have little or no effect on observed phenomenon, then we are left with a kind of probability-determinacy. After many empirical observations, we can gain confidence that our superposition formula will mostly be correct. What underlies this is that determinacy is relative. Determinacy and indeterminacy are really two sides of the same coin so to speak. Just because becoming indicates change does not mean the changing has to result in more determinacy. It may just as well result in more indeterminacy.

Well, in Hegelian speak I guess that means we are back to the being-nothing thing. Therefore, for them, we simply have not evolved, sublated, lifted up, Aufhebung‘ed. The terms that give rise to becoming, being and nothing, are themselves indeterminate so if we do not admit becoming must become and thus lift up to determinacy, we can only lift down to indeterminacy. Oh, but not to be haughty to indeterminacy we must follow up with the observation that indeterminacy is a legitimate moment of determinacy. It is just that it is not the, shall we dare say, higher notion of determinacy. So change can go in either direction of determinant or indeterminate but we will carefully privilege determinacy over indeterminacy (can we say apotheosis?…look it up).

What we have here is a movement not to be confused with something bowels do. The movement is something which we must believe is from necessity (maybe it does have to do with bowels). But the movement can go either way, yuk. Also, even then, we do not know for sure that all we are really doing is re-affirming a tautology, that becoming is becoming when it becomes (don’t go there).

Seriously, why should we just accept that becoming must become determinate? Is it because we will feel dumb if we don’t think it necessarily has to go that way? Is it because we must accept that some supposed ‘logic’ of language would make anything else nonsense? It seems to me that there is simpler explanation, “Can becoming become?” is pure non-sense. I am willing to argue with any Hegelian which can stoop to the level of the profane but I have not met one yet. I guess ignorance is bliss, I just do not know who is ignorant me or them. Maybe it is indeterminate from an absolute sense. Just pick your poison and go with it. What I do know is that absolute certainty can be quite the dangerous notion but as the pluralists say if it feels good do it.

I think if you discredit the possibility of making any prior assumptions for the true path of knowledge and understanding, insist on the clear and transparent, non-duality of the unity of ontology and thought in Bergriff (absolute concept), you are either a genius or trying to explain the mind of Donald J. Trump…fine line I guess for the unbeliever.

I will stick with the Muses I discussed at length in my philosophy series:

Tell me all of this, you Muses who have your homes on Olympus, from the beginning [archê, ἀρχῆς], tell who first of them (the gods) came-to-be [genet’, γένετ᾽].

First of all Chaos came-to-be [genet’, γένετ᾽]; but then afterwards…

 

My favorite philosopher, Emmanuel Levinas, has much to say about radical exteriority. Not exteriority as neutral which is firmly engrained in our contemporary ontology (i.e., a pre-cognitive understanding of being based on occidental history) but as a he or a she, the face of the other. To take a step back, growing up or maturing is all about recognizing we are not stuck in an infantile fixation where the only thing that comes to the fore is our emotional need but where an ‘other’, something not-me¹, matters. We should not immediately jump to the notion of God as that ‘other’. God and religion have proven time and again that they can be the most fixated in an infantile regression where all that matters is an inferior mirroring of God which in the end is only a superego (Freud) or fantasy (Lacan…shall we say phantasm?).

At this moment in history in the U.S. we are seeing more and more folks clamoring for war with ISIS, an increasing hatred of Islam and an impatience with President Obama’s strategy for getting rid of the terrorist threat. Republican candidates are talking openly about ‘World War III’ and a ‘clash of civilizations’.² Capitalism and technology fuels the developing crisis as anger sells. Psychologically, anger is always preferred over anxiety and fear as anger holds the illusion of control. Babies learn this early on and find throwing a fit seems to get better, more desirable results…and then they learn the word, “NO”. Control gives boundaries. Even if control is an illusion, it makes one feel better. Anger forces an object, a Great Satan, an assumed reason for anxiety. It is assumed that if the evil object goes away the anxiety will subside. If mommy does not get the bottle fast enough watch out.

Facts matter. Certainly facts can be fantasized and created to suit infantile needs for security. Facts can be neutral or appear to be from an all too human history of infantile ‘ontologizing’. However, beyond these relative moments of facts there is another dynamic at play, reality (Lacan³). Unless you are a narcissist, a sociopath (psychopath), megalomaniac/egomaniac or solipsist you will intuitively recognize that there is a not-me. Facts can be a presentation of the not-me. The not-me is the face of the other. Maturity recognizes exteriority. Here are the facts: gun violence by our own citizenry on average since 2005 are 1,250 times more like to kill you than a terrorist.⁴ A drunk good ‘ol boy with a gun is much more likely to kill you than a terrorist. A recent study concludes:

Data from a US mortality follow-back survey were analyzed to determine whether having a firearm in the home increases the risk of a violent death in the home and whether risk varies by storage practice, type of gun, or number of guns in the home. Those persons with guns in the home were at greater risk than those without guns in the home of dying from a homicide in the home (adjusted odds ratio = 1.9, 95% confidence interval: 1.1, 3.4). They were also at greater risk of dying from a firearm homicide, but risk varied by age and whether the person was living with others at the time of death. The risk of dying from a suicide in the home was greater for males in homes with guns than for males without guns in the home (adjusted odds ratio = 10.4, 95% confidence interval: 5.8, 18.9). Persons with guns in the home were also more likely to have died from suicide committed with a firearm than from one committed by using a different method (adjusted odds ratio = 31.1, 95% confidence interval: 19.5, 49.6). Results show that regardless of storage practice, type of gun, or number of firearms in the home, having a gun in the home was associated with an increased risk of firearm homicide and firearm suicide in the home.⁵

You are more likely to kill yourself or a member of your family if you go out and buy a gun for the terrorist bogie-man. You are more likely to get killed by a drunk driver. To put it in perspective, you are much more likely to get killed by a bolt of lightning. The flu kills an average of 36,000 people a year as opposed to an average of 30,000 a year for domestic gun violence. These are facts not feelings. If you play feelings in the stock market or a poker game, statistically, you are going to lose. Sure, you could be the one that the murderous terrorist gets or the mythical NRA creature that shoots the “bad guy” but reacting from emotion will likely get you into much more problems…this is what ISIS wants. They know you are more like to do something stupid to yourself from anxiety and fear than they are likely to kill you. President Obama understands this and has fashioned a strategy to address the mature complexities of the issue. Yes, we will get the international thugs (less than 50,000 in Syria and Iraq) but we will not create more terrorists in so doing. G.W. Bush gave us the Wild West show in the ruins of the World Trade Center buildings and then went for the mass shoot out in Iraq and Afghanistan. Again, facts not feelings prove that the show down at the O.K. Coral created many more terrorists than it killed⁶.

The fact is that you cannot fight terrorists with a conventional war. Sure, you can kill a lot of people both terrorists, innocent civilians and our own young people but if you create more hatred, you create more terrorists. Islam is the second largest religion in the world, will soon be the largest religion in the world and the fastest growing religion in the world.⁷ If you want to make this about Islam and not a group of thugs, you are setting the stage for a religious, World War catastrophe. If you do and vote for what the Republican candidates are advocating, you are allowing your anxiety, blown way out of proportion, to start a real catastrophe that really may be the end of our country and perhaps civilization. Think about all the wars since World War II. While the 50’s anti-communist rhetoric got Eisenhower to start the Vietnam War and many after to expand it, we still have communism. Come to think of it we still have fascists growing in larger numbers in the world since World War II but we really had no choice facing the axis leaders of Benito Mussolini, Adolf Hitler, and Emperor Hirohito. Even if we kill all the thugs in Iraq and Afghanistan we will still have terrorists. We can go after organized crime all we want but it is here to stay. If we must face a nation or nations down for national survival, the framers of our Constitution gave us a mechanism for declaring war. They were fully aware of the infantile human tendency for knee-jerk reaction and unnecessary and frivolous wars. Over-reacting is just as dangerous, if not more so, than the original provocation. We need to be smart not emotional. If we as a country decide to ramp this up to the level of conventional warfare we will likely do more harm than good as recent history SHOULD have taught us. We will pay a bigger cost for that.

Facts can and should help us wean ourselves from infantile regression, lashing out from fear and anxiety. We need to address the issue in an adult way if we want to solve the problem. We will only perpetuate an endless cycle of immaturity and exacerbate our anxieties further by listening to the war hawks. They have vested interests other than reason and facts for whipping us up a frenzy. We, the common folk, have the option to recognize the other, the facts and make a mature decision based on knowledge. Our system of democracy depends on the ideal of Enlightenment. If we cave to our lesser instincts we become the victims of our fears. As FDR once stated, the only thing we have to fear is fear itself. There can be an ‘other’ in facts and knowledge which call to us to not be purely reactive but reflective of a reality other than our desire, our fear, our phantasms. I do not think we dare think as Jesus would have us, to turn the other check. However worthy, that is a radical ideology which flies in the face of our physicality. However, Aristotle and physics does teach us to act in proportionality, ‘ratio’. If our economic system thrives on reality distortions it is because we created it and allow it but there is still a possibility for acting with reason and not creating an equal, or perhaps far worse, opposite reaction. Externality beckons to us with facts other than ourselves not relative to ourselves. When we respond responsibly we learn about the other and adapt. When the other is the face of the other, as for Levinas, we have an absolute externality which cannot be mediated but lost in the murderous violence of ontology, our world-situated eradication of the other. This is the quintessential terrorist.

Anger is the desire to appease fear and anxiety. It is the desire for control and all too often settles for the illusion of knowledge, pretending to know the cause of our vexations even if the cause is imagined or way out of proportion. This kind of desire eradicates the possibility for knowledge based on something other than ourselves. Levinas thinks of this kind of desire as satisfying needs or wants. I have pointed to the possibility of facts that are external to our fears, anxiety and anger which give us pause from our infantile feelings of necessities and give us perspective, proportionality, circumspect to address real problems and allow maturity, knowledge and growth. Levinas would have us go further than our ‘plastic moulds we make of the face of the other’ to appease our wants and needs. He would have us think of Metaphysical Desire which has always faced us in the epiphany of the face of the other, a trace which murder and war cannot ever erase, essentially different from ‘totalizing’ desire.

I conclude with some rather lengthy and further provoking remarks from Drew Dalton, a scholar from Florida Southern College:

Metaphysical Desire, according to Levinas, is a desire unlike any of our other more quotidian desires. Desire has of course been traditionally defined as: (1) arising out of some determinate lack, (2) proceeding towards some determinate presence or object, and (3) concluding in the satisfaction or restoration of the subject in the absorption of that object. Take hunger for example. Hunger emerges out of a nutritive lack within us, corresponds to some determinate object, say a ham sandwich (which once consumed and absorbed by the body restores us to our normal functional state), and rewards us with pleasure or satisfaction. Note that in such a desire it is the object, as the end of the desire (both its goal and its cessation), which sets its limit, de-fining it as it were. So, a desire which seeks food as an object and is satisfied in that object we call hunger, a desire which seeks drink we call thirst, a desire for sexual gratification we call lust, etc. The object, as the end of desire (both conceived as telos and peras) is what has traditionally been seen as what establishes its parameters as a definite and singular phenomenon. Its object, conceived phenomenologically, appears to be what allows a desire to emerge as it does in a particular form.

Interpreted along these lines, it would seem that what would distinguish a particularly metaphysical desire would be the peculiar nature of its object, that it would lie outside of or beyond (meta) the realm of finite being (physis). And, indeed, many have interpreted Levinas account of metaphysical desire in this way, as what has traditionally been termed a kind of religious desire, a desire which finds its object in the divine. After all, Levinas says himself that metaphysical desire is distinct in as much as it “tends toward something else entirely, toward the absolutely other.”…

Levinas goes to great lengths to distinguish between what he calls desire and what he terms need or hunger which seems to function much more in line with the traditional account of the dialectical progress of desire….

Metaphysical desire, understood as the movement towards this absolute Other who appears with a face, though definitely a religious or spiritual phenomenon, nevertheless remains inexorably bound to the human. Thus, though perhaps a religious phenomenon, metaphysical desire is an experience which is, for Levinas, fundamentally articulated in the realm of the social. It is a phenomenon which speaks in the language of ethics. Or, as Levinas puts it, using a visual metaphor rather than an auditory one, “Ethics is the spiritual optics,” – ethics is the lens or window through which we might perceive the transcendent (God).

Put another way, the finite face of the Other shines with the infinite light of the divine. It is in the face of the concrete other (the human) that we see the absolutely Other (the divine). The movement of metaphysical desire is thus for Levinas simultaneously vertical and horizontal – or to put it strangely, it moves upwards by moving laterally, by reaching out towards the neighbor….

One possible result of such an eclipse of the nature of longing is that we may try to subsume metaphysical desire into the realm of the finite and read it as any other determinate need or hunger as has traditionally been done. That is, we may try to satisfy this phenomenon which is, as we’ve stated, situated beyond satisfaction and non-satisfaction, beyond placation by any determinate object, with an infinite number of finite objects. The problem being, of course, that no amount of finitude can fill out the infinite. The result of a confusion of this sort is, sadly, all too obvious and apparent: a kind of reckless, endless consumerism – in a word, greed. Indeed, this attempt to reduce the infinite to the finite, to, in a word, totalize it, is the source, argues Levinas, of all determinate evil in the world. And don’t we witness precisely a link here, an immediate connection between our seemingly limitlessness consumer desires and evil in the world. What Levinas asks of us is to probe the true nature of our desires and ask whether what we want when we want some-thing is actually no-thing at all, whether what we seek therein is not actually some peace with the suffering Other who calls out to us in our desires? He asks us to see whether when we think we desire some-thing, we’re not really longing for some-one, an ethical relation with the neighbor, orphan, widow or stranger in whom we can perceive the divine and through whom we’re invited, according to Levinas, into the realm of the Good. This is an essential question to ask, especially in the capitalist West, where all sorts of charlatans, salesmen, politicians and priests are quick to convince you that the restlessness you feel is indicative of some lack within us; and, what’s more, that they can satisfy this lack so long as you give them your dollar, vote or faith.⁸

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¹ The not-me is highly suggestive of Hegel’s use of negation. I have written about this more extensively in previous posts but in a sense, the negation can give us a hint of something more than the negative of a term. Likewise, as I have maintained here facts have the possibility for something other than merely mirroring ourselves to ourselves in some kind of ‘relativizing’ haze. In dialectics, the negative of a thesis is the anti-thesis. Any thesis whatsoever will always find in itself its negation and thus open up the possibility of a transformation, a lifting up Hegel termed, Aufhebung. In this way the negative and the thesis return to themselves in their synthesis. For Levinas, exteriority in the face of the other can never return to itself. The other must always exceed and defy a term as terms apply to thought, concept and reason. The radical alterity of the other can never be brought in existence as Being or a being. The other cannot be captured but always transcends me, history and language even though the self, history and language have always been fatally and fatefully about thinking, knowing, understanding the other. Metaphysical Desire is not a need; it can never be fulfilled as other types of needs. Metaphysical Desire cannot be resolved in a term or its negation. Thus, the use of the trope not-me has a legitimate departure point in its inability to be able, its passivity beyond all passivity as Levinas informs us.

² Anti-Abortion, Anti-Immigrants, Republicans and Jesus

³ The notion of the real in Lacan is more nuanced than the allusion above lends itself to. Lacan famously characterized the real as “impossible” vis-à-vis reality. Early on Lacan wrote of the real more like Kant’s thing-in-itself. At this time Lacan portrayed the real as absolute fullness, a pure plenum devoid of the negativities of absences, antagonisms, gaps, lacks, splits, etc. The real in its dumb, idiotic presence is never more and never less than sheer, indifferent plenitude. Later Lacan would think of this in more Hegelian terms involving convergences of opposites as a register of volatile oscillations and unstable reversals between excesses and lacks, surpluses and deficits, flooding presences and draining absences. This is more like Hegel’s notion of pure being. It also has reflection in the Greek notion of apeiron often simply translated as infinite, unlimited or indefinite or perhaps better, the fertile void also reminiscent of sunyata in Buddhism. Many comparisons have been made with Lacan, the psychologist and Levinas the philosopher in the notion of the other. Superficially, they both have the appearance of some kind of radical exteriority which can never be brought into the light of reason, language or symbol for Lacan. For Lacan, language as symbol and fantasy are forever trying futilely to restore that connection to the real. For Levinas, the face of the other can never be brought into my understanding of the other. Understanding as such is only a violence in the form of the history of being (ontology) which can only murder the other in its reduction. However, for Levinas Ethics does give us some sort of proximity to the other. This is the major difference between Lacan and Levinas. The face of the other while infinitely exterior to me can be faced. The other is not a real which lends itself to dialectic as in Hegel. The other is a he or a she and need not echo the fallen history of metaphysics which only ‘ontologizes’ the other as capable of dialectic. For Levinas language and history are tokens of the failure to bridge the gap of the other. Thus Metaphysics while failing historically to come to grips with the face of the other has its legitimacy in its failure. Metaphysics Desires the other but as Sisyphus is eternally condemned to miss the other as the other can never be an object to a subject or an antithesis to a thesis. Hegel’s Aufhebung is impossible for the face of the other. See Jacques Lacan, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy and also The Real

⁴ The Symbiotic Play of War Hawks and Terrorism

…30,000 domestic gun deaths per year / average of 24 terrorist per year in the U.S. since 2005 = 1,250 or 1,250 * 24 = 30,000
⁵ Guns in the Home and Risk of a Violent Death in the Home: Findings from a National Study, American Journal of Epidemiology, Oxford University Press

⁶ The Economic Cost of Violence Containment

⁷ Why Muslims are the world’s fastest-growing religious group

⁸ THE VACCINATION OF THE INFINITE: LEVINAS’ METAPHYSICAL DESIRE AND THE CALL OF THE OTHER

Please folks, DO NOT give them the war they want. Rather, let’s address the issue with reason to squelch the problem rather than create many more new problems.

On Baptist preacher and anti-abortion candidate Mike Huckabee…

“I’ve got a better idea,” Huckabee suggested. “Why doesn’t Saudi Arabia host them, and we will send some assistance through our charitable organizations for some hospitals and schools? We will design the curriculum for those schools. They won’t be madrassas to teach terrorism.”

The conservative Christian politician said the United States had no moral obligation to shelter Syrian refugees, but should instead be more concerned about preserving its sovereignty from Muslim immigrants.

“That’s not a lack of Christian charity,” Huckabee insisted. “It’s the essence of charity, to provide for needs, but not to put your own children at risk, if what you’re importing could be people who have a nefarious purpose for wanting to be here.”¹

On fundamentalist Christian and anti-abortion candidate Ted Cruz…

Cruz plans to introduce legislation in the Senate this week to cut off federal funding for refugee resettlement, allying himself with Ben Carson, perhaps Cruz’s closest competitor in the presidential race. And he also said he supports governors who are closing their borders to the refugees.

“I was one of the very first to stake out this position. Now we’re seeing more and more come over and agree with me,” Cruz told Bash.²

On fundamentalist Christian and anti-abortion candidate Rick Santorum…

“If we take refugees from that area of Syria, what we’re doing is actually helping ISIS with what they want to accomplish, which is to rid that area of moderate Muslims, Christians and ethnic minorities,” Santorum said. “ISIS says they are implanting people in these refugees who are, in fact, ISIS members and will come to countries and cause terrorist activities.”³

On fundamentalist Christian and anti-abortion candidate Ben Carson..

At campaign stops in Alabama, Carson said halting Syrian resettlement in the US doesn’t mean America lacks compassion.

“If there’s a rabid dog running around in your neighborhood, you’re probably not going to assume something good about that dog,” Carson told reporters at one stop.

“It doesn’t mean you hate all dogs, but you’re putting your intellect into motion.”

Carson said that to “protect my children” he would “call the humane society and hopefully they can come take this dog away and create a safe environment once again”.

More anti-abortion folks that have the nerve to call themselves “pro-life”…

“We need to activate the Tennessee National Guard and stop them from coming in to the state by whatever means we can,” said House GOP Caucus Chairman Glen Casada, R-Franklin⁴

“After full consideration of this weekend’s attacks of terror on innocent citizens in Paris, I will oppose any attempt to relocate Syrian refugees to Alabama through the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program. As your governor, I will not stand complicit to a policy that places the citizens of Alabama in harm’s way,” Bentley said.

“I will not place Alabamians at even the slightest, possible risk of an attack on our people,” Bentley continued. “Please continue to join me in praying for those who have suffered loss and for those who will never allow freedom to fade at the hands of terrorists.” [Governor of Alabama]⁵

Twenty-five Republican governors vowed to block the entry of Syrian refugees into their states⁶

5 million Syrian children, inside and outside the country, are in need of humanitarian aid, and millions have borne witness to unrelenting violence from the brutal conflict that began more than four years ago. 2.6 million children are no longer in school and 2 million are living as refugees in neighboring countries or on the run in search of safety, helping to fuel a global migrant crisis. Syria is now the world’s biggest producer of both internally displaced people and refugees.⁷

 

These folks constantly wave the Bible, tells us they love Jesus and call themselves ‘pro-life’ based on their Christian faith. What does the book they bellow about tell us about refugees? Check out the quotes listed below from the Bible. These folks are not only totally disgusting HYPOCRITES, they are exactly the religious folks that Jesus drove out of the temple with whips and that, in political maneuvering with the Romans, eventually crucified him. They have the nerve to indict Islam based on terrorism when they blatantly and overtly make Jesus the face of xenophobia.

Jesus tells us in Mathew 6, 23

But if your eye is evil, your whole body will be full of darkness. Therefore, if the light within you has turned into darkness, how great is that darkness!”

These folks are darkness personified.

Only a pure sophist and narcissist would try to make these folks into anything other than what they are…despicable, dangerous and insane.

Leviticus 19:33-34

“When a stranger sojourns with you in your land, you shall not do him wrong. You shall treat the stranger who sojourns with you as the native among you, and you shall love him as yourself, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt: I am the Lord your God.

Matthew 25:35

For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me,

Exodus 22:21

“You shall not wrong a sojourner or oppress him, for you were sojourners in the land of Egypt.

Malachi 3:5    

“Then I will draw near to you for judgment. I will be a swift witness against the sorcerers, against the adulterers, against those who swear falsely, against those who oppress the hired worker in his wages, the widow and the fatherless, against those who thrust aside the sojourner, and do not fear me, says the Lord of hosts.

Deuteronomy 27:19

“‘Cursed be anyone who perverts the justice due to the sojourner, the fatherless, and the widow.’ And all the people shall say, ‘Amen.’

Hebrews 13:2

Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for thereby some have entertained angels unawares.

Zechariah 7:9-10

“Thus says the Lord of hosts, Render true judgments, show kindness and mercy to one another, do not oppress the widow, the fatherless, the sojourner, or the poor, and let none of you devise evil against another in your heart.”

Ezekiel 47:22

You shall allot it as an inheritance for yourselves and for the sojourners who reside among you and have had children among you. They shall be to you as native-born children of Israel. With you they shall be allotted an inheritance among the tribes of Israel.

Jeremiah 7:5-7

“For if you truly amend your ways and your deeds, if you truly execute justice one with another, if you do not oppress the sojourner, the fatherless, or the widow, or shed innocent blood in this place, and if you do not go after other gods to your own harm, then I will let you dwell in this place, in the land that I gave of old to your fathers forever.

Leviticus 25:35    

“If your brother becomes poor and cannot maintain himself with you, you shall support him as though he were a stranger and a sojourner, and he shall live with you.

Proverbs 31:8-9

Open your mouth for the mute, for the rights of all who are destitute. Open your mouth, judge righteously, defend the rights of the poor and needy.

Deuteronomy 10:18

He executes justice for the fatherless and the widow, and loves the sojourner, giving him food and clothing.

Matthew 5:46-47

For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Do not even the tax collectors do the same? And if you greet only your brothers, what more are you doing than others? Do not even the Gentiles do the same?

Exodus 23:9

“You shall not oppress a sojourner. You know the heart of a sojourner, for you were sojourners in the land of Egypt.

Deuteronomy 10:18-19

He executes justice for the fatherless and the widow, and loves the sojourner, giving him food and clothing. Love the sojourner, therefore, for you were sojourners in the land of Egypt.

Leviticus 19:10

And you shall not strip your vineyard bare, neither shall you gather the fallen grapes of your vineyard. You shall leave them for the poor and for the sojourner: I am the Lord your God.

Leviticus 23:22

“And when you reap the harvest of your land, you shall not reap your field right up to its edge, nor shall you gather the gleanings after your harvest. You shall leave them for the poor and for the sojourner: I am the Lord your God.”

Deuteronomy 10:19

Love the sojourner, therefore, for you were sojourners in the land of Egypt.

Numbers 15:15

For the assembly, there shall be one statute for you and for the stranger who sojourns with you, a statute forever throughout your generations. You and the sojourner shall be alike before the Lord.

James 2:1-4

My brothers, show no partiality as you hold the faith in our Lord Jesus Christ, the Lord of glory. For if a man wearing a gold ring and fine clothing comes into your assembly, and a poor man in shabby clothing also comes in, and if you pay attention to the one who wears the fine clothing and say, “You sit here in a good place,” while you say to the poor man, “You stand over there,” or, “Sit down at my feet,” have you not then made distinctions among yourselves and become judges with evil thoughts?⁸

_________________

¹ Mike Huckabee thinks Syrian refugees aren’t fleeing ‘tyranny’ — they’re just looking for ‘cable TV’

² Ted Cruz: Muslim refugees from Syria should go to other Islamic countries

³ Santorum talks Syrian refugees at Coralville stop

⁴ Tennessee GOP leader: Round up Syrian refugees, remove from state

⁵ Governor Of Alabama Says His State Will Refuse Syrian Refugees

⁶ G.O.P. Governors Vow to Close Doors to Syrian Refugees

⁷ Syria — one of the most dangerous places in the world to be a child — and another bitter winter is on its way

⁸ Immigration

The Republican Presidential candidates so opportunistically decry the Presidents ‘lack of strategy and leadership’. Like a shark feeding frenzy, they smell blood in the water and the black bile of vim and vitriol spew from their drooling jaws. The sheer impact from their gut felt righteous indignation is, for them, proof of their veracity in the cause of ‘shock and awe’ against the evil of terrorism. Yet, when it comes to deaths by gun violence in our own country, the great rhetorical monoliths of truth, justice and the American way shrink to an anemic puff of hot air.

¹

Aristotle, the basis of democracy, would have rational, enlightened voters contemplate upon proportion, magnitude, and ‘ratio’, the basis of the word ‘rationale’. Emotion has the tendency to distort and dramatize. It tends to bring out the strongest and darkest emotions of human experience: hatred, anger, arrogance. While I will admit emotions can be fun and make for great movies, we must, at the end of the day allow rationality to incline our ears to a more sublime and adaptive voice.

In all human endeavors psychology has taught us that in order to understand behavioral motivations we need to look at the emotive payoffs which drive them. A terrorist is an enigma to those of us who have meaning in our lives. We have loved family members, basic security and enjoyment of life. For us, the antithesis of our basic meaning is the irrational and self-destructive terrorist. We set up the stage of the terrorist as the evil genius, the diabolical embodiment of Satan. We justify our own hatred and darkness based on the greater, perceived evil. Our meaning is enhanced by reacting violently to the Great Satan.

Likewise, the terrorist is motivated by violence to the Great Satan. Our Satan’s differ diametrically but each of us has the tendency to feed our meaning with the carcass of the other.

Here is what Republicans, which give themselves completely over to their base instincts, do not understand: A terrorist knows they are not going to win a conventional war against us. However, with the advent of the internet and the virtual, almost innumerable, clamoring for publicity and voice, the promise of meaning is fueled by the instantaneous and highly dramatic act of pure ego, even as the final and resolute ingesting and absolute enveloping of the id. The id in Freud has no other than itself². It incites phantasmal passions infinitely from the imaginary order of Lacan.³

Here is where the fait fatal of Republican rhetoric plays into the symbiotic relationship with the terrorist. The behavioral motivation of the terrorist is publicity. The Republican rhetorical response to terrorism is war, the pinnacle of publicity, as we saw with G.W. Bush. The devout Republican believes the ‘war’ can be won. The devout terrorist has already won, as war is the publicity they crave. Realistically, it is impossible to win the ‘war’ against terrorism. ‘Winning the war against terrorism’ is effectively an admonition that the war has already been lost. Terrorism is not a state you can win a war against, it is a psychology. Terrorism and war are devoted bedfellows. Neither can annihilate the other. They are determined to dance from instinctual necessity into perpetuity. The neocons of the Republic Party are the terrorists dream. The neocons are the primary recruitment mechanism for the terrorists.⁴ However, caught in the cross-fire of their narcissistic hate affair are the innocents the Republicans claim to champion.

The answer to this senseless debacle is not more war. More war is like throwing more fuel on the fire. If Republicans really want to win the war they will have to call off the fight at the O.K. Coral with its Wild West romanticizing and listen to what President Obama is telling them. ‘We’, meaning the most immediately effected first, need to quietly, without the hubris of “shock and awe”, eliminate these publicity craving terrorists. The middle east is, and should be, the on the fore front of a world wide effort to starve these ravenous appetites for publicity. Islam should assert itself against the blasphemous and heretical attempts to justify the murder of innocent people. Likewise, let us not forget that Pope Pius XI made a contract, the Concordant, with Hitler in order to protect Catholics as he justified it. When a major religion becomes the mouth piece for hatred and war, it blasphemes and thus, apostates, itself. When religion is silent in the face of evil it becomes the face of evil.

‘Nation building’, the once politically disposed phrase by the Republicans, is now effectively the defacto politically correct way for Republicans to justify to themselves what is, for all intents and purposes, endless occupation. Our longest wars under G.W. Bush would have no end with the current crop of Republican candidates. Even Rand Paul would ‘evolve’ on the issue of military engagement as evidenced by his more recent statements, “If I were president, I would call a joint session of Congress. I would lay out the reasoning of why ISIS is a threat to our national security and seek congressional authorization to destroy ISIS militarily.”⁵ What the American public need to understand is that gut level reaction is exactly what fuels the fire of terrorism and political rhetoric on the right. No solutions or victories can come out of the wars of G.W. Bush and this is not President Obama’s fault. It was the fault of an ill-conceived strategy. We have more terrorists, more debt, more of our own killed and injured and hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians because we let unabated emotion take over for intelligence and cunning.⁶ As far as I am concerned when I hear war hawks advocating reckless and endless wars they may as well be saying, “Let’s go kill our kids and put trillions more on the national debt to satiate our ignorant rage.” In the end, the solutions they propose are no different than the ones the terrorists propose; senseless violence without end which only exacerbates the problems, all the while feeding their own blood lust for vengeance.

If they really wanted to do something to make a difference for approximately 30,000 deaths as opposed to dozens of deaths a year on average since 2005, they should apply their righteous indignation to the NRA but when did facts ever make a difference to them?

_________________

¹ Fact-checking a comparison of gun deaths and terrorism deaths

² “The ethical rapport with the face is asymmetrical in that it subordinates my existence to the other. This principle recurs in Darwinian biology as the “survival of the fittest” and in psychoanalysis as the natural instinct of the ‘id’ for gratification, possession, and power — the libido dominandi.” Face To Face With Levinas, page 24, isbn= 0791499367, Link

³ Felluga, Dino. “Modules on Lacan: On the Structure of the Psyche.” Introductory Guide to Critical Theory

⁴ “Since the U.S. occupation of Iraq began in 2003, foreign jihadists have flocked to Iraq, making it a new center of jihad – and in the process, they have transformed the nature of the anti-U.S. Iraqi resistance. Iraq’s insurgency is concentrated in the Sunni Arab parts of Iraq, though much of the rest of the country outside the Kurdish regions is convulsed in civil war or confronting the problems of a de facto failed state.

Only a portion of the insurgency consists of jihadists who took up arms in the name of God, but over the years their numbers have grown. A 2006 National Intelligence Estimate found that “The Iraq conflict has become the ’cause celebre’ for jihadists, breeding a deep resentment of US involvement in the Muslim world and cultivating supporters for the global jihadist movement.”[4] Foreign jihadists are capitalizing on, and exacerbating, the strife in Iraq. Between 1,000 and 2,000 foreign fighters are in Iraq, and they carried out most of the suicide bombings. Most are from Arab countries, with Saudi Arabia comprising the lion’s share of those killed. In recent months, however, the number of Iraqi jihadists has swelled. Indeed, this may be one of the most lasting effects of the U.S. invasion and occupation: the growth of a domestic jihadist movement in Iraq, where none existed before.” Iraq and the Global War on Terrorism, Brookings Institute

⁵ Republicans Evolving on ISIS: Rand Paul takes tougher stance on terrorism, FoxNews

⁶ Iraq War – Direct Government Cost

Brown University

Iraq War: 190,000 lives, $2.2 trillion

Harvard University – Total Economic Impact

The Financial Legacy of Iraq and Afghanistan: How Wartime Spending Decisions Will Constrain Future National Security Budgets

“The Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts, taken together, will be the most expensive wars in US history – totaling somewhere between $4 to $6 trillion. This includes long-term medical care and disability compensation for service members, veterans and families, military replenishment and social and economic costs. The largest portion of that bill is yet to be paid. Since 2001, the US has expanded the quality, quantity, availability and eligibility of benefits for military personnel and veterans. This has led to unprecedented growth in the Department of Veterans Affairs and the Department of Defense budgets. These benefits will increase further over the next 40 years. Additional funds are committed to replacing large quantities of basic equipment used in the wars and to support ongoing diplomatic presence and military assistance in the Iraq and Afghanistan region. The large sums borrowed to finance operations in Iraq and Afghanistan will also impose substantial long-term debt servicing costs. As a consequence of these wartime spending choices, the United States will face constraints in funding investments in personnel and diplomacy, research and development and new military initiatives. The legacy of decisions taken during the Iraq and Afghanistan wars will dominate future federal budgets for decades to come.”

Washington Post

After 13 years, 2 wars and trillions in military spending, terrorist attacks are rising sharply

Institute For Economics and Peace

The Economic Cost of Violence Containment

Repeat

Started Two Mass Wars

    6 Trillion For Wars

    190,000 Killed

    70% Civilians

    4,488 US Military Killed

    3,400 US Contractors Killed

    Freedom Handout

    Nation Building

    Occupation

War Hawks

Economic Collapse

    Market Darwinians

    Financial Deregulation

    Bank Bailouts

    Trickle Down

    Help the Rich

    Regressive Taxation

Started The Great Depression

High Unemployment

Against Minimum Wage

Against National Health Care

Climate Change Denial

Gender Bias

    Anti-choice for Women

    Income Inequality Denial

Ethnic Bias

    Build Walls

    Deport All Immigrants

Gay Bias

Voter Suppression

Religious Education and Tax Breaks

Erode Separation of Church and State

Oppose Science

    Evolution

    Climate Change

 

Learn

Withdrawing From Two Mass Wars

    Other Effected Countries Lead

    International Support and Cooperation

    Against Military Occupation

    Peace Talks and Diplomacy

Economic Recovery

    Reduced Deficit From GW Bush

    Reduced Discretionary Spending

    Progressive Taxation

Low Unemployment

For Minimum Wage

Profit Sharing

For National Health Care

Climate Change Realists

Pro-Choice for Women

Income Equality for Women

Path to Citizenship

    2 Trillion Boost to Economy

Marriage Equality

Civil Rights and Voter Friendly

Strengthen Separation of Church and State

Proven Economic Record

Higher Education Free or Low Cost

Fund Science, Technology and Research

Iraq War – Direct Government Cost

Brown University

Iraq War: 190,000 lives, $2.2 trillion

Harvard University – Total Economic Impact

The Financial Legacy of Iraq and Afghanistan: How Wartime Spending Decisions Will Constrain Future National Security Budgets

“The Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts, taken together, will be the most expensive wars in US history – totaling somewhere between $4 to $6 trillion. This includes long-term medical care and disability compensation for service members, veterans and families, military replenishment and social and economic costs. The largest portion of that bill is yet to be paid. Since 2001, the US has expanded the quality, quantity, availability and eligibility of benefits for military personnel and veterans. This has led to unprecedented growth in the Department of Veterans Affairs and the Department of Defense budgets. These benefits will increase further over the next 40 years. Additional funds are committed to replacing large quantities of basic equipment used in the wars and to support ongoing diplomatic presence and military assistance in the Iraq and Afghanistan region. The large sums borrowed to finance operations in Iraq and Afghanistan will also impose substantial long-term debt servicing costs. As a consequence of these wartime spending choices, the United States will face constraints in funding investments in personnel and diplomacy, research and development and new military initiatives. The legacy of decisions taken during the Iraq and Afghanistan wars will dominate future federal budgets for decades to come.”

Washington Post

After 13 years, 2 wars and trillions in military spending, terrorist attacks are rising sharply

Institute For Economics and Peace

The Economic Cost of Violence Containment

American Immigration Council

STRENGTH IN DIVERSITY: The Economic and Political Clout of Immigrants, Latinos, and Asians in the United States

Latinos and Asians (both foreign-born and native-born) wield $2 trillion in consumer purchasing power, and the businesses they owned had sales of $857 billion and employed 4.7 million workers at last count.

The Big Picture: Facts Concerning History, Politics and the Economy

1917 to Present: Political Parties in Congress and Administration with Economic Data and Sources

Latest Observations on the Housing and Economic Crisis

American Enterprise Institute and Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission

The Great Lie: The Great Depression and Recessions of the United States

History of Republican Economic Failures and Democratic Successes

Senator Cory Gardner Prefers War With Iran, his letter to me…

Fallacies from Anti-Abortionists

Fundamentalism in Market Economy: The Austrian School

Treasury Department