Our young men and women in the military are fighting allies of Russia all over the world and yet, here in this country Trump supporters are voting and supporting, unwittingly, the Russian candidate and now President Donald Trump. Well, it can longer be unwitting. Now they know and they still support the Russian President of our country. Russians have been bailing Trump out financially for years. Trump has not enforced the sanctions against Russia both Republicans and Democrats voted for. He has not said one peep about the Russian interference much less done anything about it. All of his tweets after the indictments are obvious and ignorant attempts to cover his ass from something he does not want to come to light. He cannot act like a President only like a common criminal. Those that support this kind of behavior, even now, are traitors to our country in my opinion. Republicans that still support and defend Trump like Devin Nunes and want to make Fox News the purveyor of truth over and against our FBI, intelligence community and Trump’s OWN appointed Justice Department are fools and traitors as well. However, the buck rests firmly on those that voted for Trump based on lies and Russian deceptions. You failed! You were duped! You were idiots! It is your fault our government has been brought to its knees. From now on, you can either learn and do your voting homework based a good sources (not Fox News) or we can see the best of your intentions pave our way straight to Hell. LOCK HIM UP!!!

Yet once again our country is faced with its absolute impotency when it comes to gun violence in our schools. The NRA’s highly bought politicians on the right are jumping through the same shrill, disingenuous hoops. We can all recite their lame responses:

Our thoughts and prayers…bla, bla, bla

Mental illness…bla, bla, bla

Now is not the time…bla, bla, bla

In this case, law x would not have prevented it…bla, bla, bla

Their faces tense with a well-rehearsed, pretentious crack for the nth time while they are all too happy keep funding their campaigns with NRA money. Have they no shame?

There is no factual doubt that gun control legislation works. We have only to look at the data, per capita gun death rates between Massachusetts, Connecticut and other states with stricter gun control laws and the more gun crazy, shoot-um up, anything goes states show indisputably that these laws make a difference (not to mention the radical difference in England with much more radical gun control laws).

For 2013, the 10 states with the highest firearm age-adjusted death rates were: Alaska (19.8), Louisiana (19.3), Mississippi (17.8), Alabama (17.6), Arkansas (16.8), Wyoming (16.7), Montana (16.7), Oklahoma (16.5), New Mexico (15.5) and Tennessee (15.4).

The 10 states with the lowest firearm age-adjusted death rates were, starting with the lowest: Hawaii (2.6), Massachusetts (3.1), New York (4.2), Connecticut (4.4), Rhode Island (5.3), New Jersey (5.7), New Hampshire (6.4), Minnesota (7.6), California (7.7) and Iowa (8.0). ¹

Only politicians, where facts don’t matter or money matters more, try to distract, defer and change the focus.

For example, the focus on mental health is one of the favorite cards they play with their losing hand. For no-touchy-feely folks they sure get that way about mass shootings. They see the perpetrators as victims themselves. Perhaps they are. However, when we address the issue of murderers we do not focus primarily on their unfortunate past.

Republicans are the first to tell us to build more prisons and lock them up. As a society we have decided that first and foremost murder should be against the law. We embody the deterrent of law and punishment first and foremost for the ‘crime’ of murder. We did not contemplate the psychological pathology of murderers before we made a law against murder. We made murder a crime and social conscience reinforced that law. There are still places in the world where murder does not offend the conscience.

We even have laws which go as far as to impose criminal liability on conspirators to murder. Yes, we can imprison mass gun murderers after the fact but let them buy mass quantities of weapons of war and ammunition without any effective deterrence and checks. Even further, these perpetrators find a positive relief from their woes with their socially sanctioned and blessed sacred AR-15 and massive magazines. So much so they brag about it on social media for years before they commit these atrocities. Conspirators for murder go to jail while braggarts with weapons or war are ignored.

What is more, when it comes to mass murderers with guns we seek to address their woes with mental health solutions to prevent future occurrences. First, this presupposes that enough money could be spent on programs to reorient these future offenders if we could identify them. Second, it is up to the therapists if they want to report a serious threat to law enforcement. As with client-attorney privilege, priests and confessional, patients and medical professionals there is a legal right to privileged protection and it is up to personal discretion whether or not to report a possible perpetrator. And, of course, there is the financial incentive in the case of ongoing psychological treatment. So, this is the right’s answer to prevention-not stricter gun laws which have been shown to reduce NOT eliminate gun violence and mass murder. Effectively, we send the ‘soft’ message in our response to these tragic events that mental health is key, not gun control.

If the Republicans really gave a damn about guns and mental illness, why did Trump sign a bill revoking an Obama regulation that made it harder for people with mental illness to buy a gun? ² Additionally, Trump has proposed cutting 1 trillion dollars from Medicaid.

Trump has proposed cutting Medicaid subsidies by more than $1 trillion. More than 25% of non-elderly adults with severe mental illness received medical coverage through Medicaid in 2015, according to a report from the Kaiser Family Foundation. ³

Why don’t we make the background checks bullet proof including gun shows? Why don’t we fine and imprison those who do not lock up their guns when not in use in legitimate pursuits. We fine people that do not wear seatbelts. Why don’t we have a national registry of gun owners? Why are we so afraid to infringe on gun owner’s unabated rights or make it harder for them in any way to acquire and maintain a militia of weapons until their financial credit runs out?

The answer is twofold: First, we have a whole segment of society that has been brainwashed to distrust the government while they are all too willing to trust Fox News. Second, we have made guns more than simply implements of hunting or target shooting. We have made them into a symbol of power and male virility. We have made them a totem in Freud’s terms not a taboo.

Let’s take the case of MADD-Mothers Against Drunk Driving. I was never crazy about the group that seemed to me to start initially as a right-wing group but I have to admit there was a lackadaisical attitude toward drunk driving before they came along and through a concerted grass root effort they changed laws from the most regional to the national level with much stricter laws, fines, imprisonment for driving drunk. They did not tell us the drunk drivers need detox and therapy. Nor did they ban alcohol. They made it known through law and deterrence that it was not ok to drink and drive. More importantly, they made it a social taboo for people to drink and drive. No one told them that increasing the laws and penalties would not stop all drunk driving so why make the laws. They made something that many folks treated with a caviler conscience into a common sense, conscience violating behavior.

In the case of guns and mass murder we have not taken this tact. We are afraid to offend gun owners and have conjured up a whole bunch of rationalizations (bought and paid for by the gun industry) like historically recent Supreme Court decisions which counter the previous history of the Second Amendment.

The NRA has been around for a long time. It used to be an organization that focused on hunters and on training. In 1977, at the NRA’s annual meeting, activists pushed out the leadership and installed new leaders who were very intense, very dogmatic, and very focused on the Second Amendment as their cause. It was called the “Revolt at Cincinnati.” From there, the NRA and its allies waged a 30-year legal campaign to change the way the courts and the country saw the Second Amendment. And they started with scholarship. They supported a lot of scholars and law professors. They elected politicians. They changed the positions of agencies of government. They got the Justice Department to reverse its position on what the amendment meant. And then and only then did they go to court. So by the time the Supreme Court ruled, it sort felt like a ripe apple from the tree. ⁴

We have made gun ownership into a badge of unabated honor which must be absolutely guarded at any cost. Reason, facts and common sense can have no thread of a chance to succeed against such a sacred truth. In short, we have made drunk driving, with regard to guns, an absolute and constitutionally protected pride of every red blooded American drinker. How dare we impose any restrictions on the free right of every American to drink. If they drink and kill people we get them treatment for abusing their privilege. We ask them politely not to drink and drive even after statistically significant fatal car wrecks caused by too much alcohol consumption. For politicians that are generally trained as lawyers, you would think they would know not to make stupid fallacious arguments. To suggest that making the levels for intoxication lower would not have prevented a particular accident so therefore, we should not make the law is the height of lunacy and deceit. The idea is not to stop every drunk driver but to make an impact on some drunk drivers.

I don’t care if baseball bats were the statistical choice for mass killings, it would be simple sense to make baseball bats harder to use for devious purposes. The point is not to eliminate baseball but to make sure we as a society do not sanction, condone, look the other way when baseball bats are massively abused. I am so sick of hearing the stupid fallacy that since we cannot eliminate all gun deaths by laws and severe deterrence we should simply give up. We have a serious problem and bought and paid for Republicans have no answer. Only when we recognize that and quit electing them will we have a chance to crawl out of this tragic quagmire. Whether they accept responsibility for their indolence or not we as voters must accept the ultimate responsibility for this anemic and inadequate avoidance which kills kids by far more than all the terrorists attacks on American soil have ever done.

 _________________
^{Note 1}
Gun Laws, Deaths and Crimes
^{Note 2}
Trump Signs Bill Revoking Obama-Era Gun Checks for People With Mental Illnesses
^{Note 3}
Donald Trump Blamed the Florida School Shooting on Mental Illness. Here’s What He’s Done on the Issue
^{Note 4}
The Second Amendment Doesn’t Say What You Think It Does
This is an interview with the author of “The History of the Second Amendment: A Biography” by Michael Waldman. This book is a very good read. It is thorough and will give you a real sense of the history of the 2^nd Amendment instead of the Fox News, NRA sponsored cliff notes we have come to assume. At Amazon the hard cover is here:
The Second Amendment: A Biography

Thoughts and Prayers Funded by the NRA…

Targeted Candidates, 2016 Cycle

2014 Election of Corey Gardner

Targeted Candidates, 2014 Cycle

To the dismay of the Hegelians, absolute can never rid itself of the garb of relativity. Relativity can only be a bounded absolute…yet the kiss remains.

In modern physics mass is bounded energy. Temporality is the boundary. Therefore, the temporal constraints of mass is plural. Different temporalities employ different environmental iterations (i.e., in a certain culturally situated vernacular ‘laws of physics’). Some of the earliest particles can only be studied by replicating the earliest conditions where they can exist which is why we have CERN.

Physics is a metaphor which, in its earliest Greek sense, attained a kind of specificity without being bound by a concrete absolute. From early Christianity to Newton we see an absolute form of being and time and space which lost sight of its cultural/linguistic relativity and boundedness of time and space such that a monotheistic God appeared and the boundary was replaced with absolute time and space.

In modern physics, Einsteinian cracks have appeared in classic absolutism. Environmental situated-ness gives place to a Christian God and absolute time and space. Situated-ness is relative frames of reference wherein certain predictions can legitimately find a difference between noise and meaning. Yet the later Greek notion of atoms in Democritus which were the smallest possible particle moving in ‘the void’ were metaphysically taken up later without the ‘void’, the yawning gap of Hesiod, in the historic and temporally bound absolutism of classicism. The classic ‘view’ of history is now only ‘visible’ outside its own frame of reference. However, the absolute as the metaphorically ‘smallest particle’ has remained especially evidenced in Hegelian philosophy, terrorism and classic physics.

The Idea in Hegel can only be bounded by itself. Yet its boundedness is demarcated in terms of dichotomous and contradictory absolutes which can only be resolved in a transformation which gives way to yet another Gordian Knot to be tied and untied. The end result being the classicism of Democritus’ smallest particle which has lost the void, the Idea.

The idea loses the notion of exteriority along the way as yet another idea. Leibniz’ monad has realized itself in the Idea of Hegel. The void of the earliest Greeks, the play of being as temporal form in the physics of endless change (nomos and phusis), has become the self-determination of the Idea without the void, the concrete absolute.

The language employed in Hegelian absolutism can never be divorced from Idea. Absolutism forms the concretization of the Idea which in practice the Idea can never rid itself of. The idea can never conceive of its non-existence except as yet another idea. This reduction wherein the void cannot be except as idea requires externality as merely the face of idea and internality its antithesis. Externality must ‘produce’ internality to negate itself and rise once again to the transformational Idea.

Pain also knows no externality. Pain is itself without an other. Pain, as is the case of the Hegelian Idea, has lost its boundedness and has become the Absolute. Pain is the absolute extinction of otherness. However, pain yearns for an end as Idea yearns for self-determination. Pain, as for Hegel’s Idea, can never rid itself of its yearning, this is the kiss.

Modern physics has done much to dislodge its myopia towards Classicism. Yet its diligent yearning remains. As Christianity becomes more dislodged from its absolute historical roots, it as any religion, can only rise again as fanaticism. Without yearning, the Idea would have no concern for self-determination. Yearning refuses reduction to an absolute. Yearning requires boundary, end, telos. Yearning requires what it is not, what it can never be, it requires the other. The other is not Idea, it is love…the kiss of love. Yearning is the lost lover, the lost child, an ‘un-resolve’ which can never be reduced or supplanted by merely more of its own situatedness. Yearning requires an exterior which has no place, it finds no situatedness. It is the void, the fertile void, which can never end in the whimper of a ‘no’, a negative, an absolute. Yearning even moves in death, the cessation of pain, the moment of release. Death cannot kill yearning only the one that yearns. Hesiod wrote of the yawning gap, might we think of this as the yearning gap?

Yearning makes hopelessness impossible. Hopelessness, Dread in Kierkegaard, can never contain itself. It can never be in and of itself. As long as galaxies move in unimaginable temporal frames and human beings fashion historic and linguistic abodes yearning will kiss us in the lips of the other, remembering a future that we know will never come but yearning for it all the same.

Whining and complaining is digging a grave you will eventually occupy.

It is better to be an indigent with wisdom than a King with proclamations of a fool.

Radical externality is future that beckons us towards becoming who we are not and away from who we think we are. Only the face of the other so completely refuses our dread of being condemned for ever to the absolute emptiness of our being, our illusions, vanities, fears, pride, pretensions to power and control in the face of the certainty of death.

If you want hope allow hopelessness to complete its work in you…locomotion.

Passivity is the elixir of death. Death will come as a thief in the night and rob you of life before you realize you are dead.

Poverty brings the necessity of hope. Wealth brings absolute abandonment to the satiation of hopelessness.

Desire that can be fulfilled is a drug addiction to the next desire.

Ethics cannot come from within else it be the selfishness of Adam Smith. Ethics can only come about from a voluntary and intentional action – the resolve to give way to the absolute sanctity of the face of the Other and a yawning gap no illusion of power or wealth can overcome.

Why is evolution change? Because the physics of the universe requires the direction of time to mark the difference of what is to what will be. No one is the master of what will be, at most, the slave of what could be at the brink of extinction.

The refusal to act is the action of death.

Not to act is to act. The force that cannot be refused called existence is really invitation to what can never exist in my time and my space.

Idea as vision is envision towards nothingness. Nothingness requires oblivion which is the antithesis of existence. Existence, physics, requires movement, change, transformation where all information is forever retained as what can never be conscious of itself but only a trace of necessity which comes from wholly other and absolute requirement, existence rather than nothingness.

We are willed not have will.

Children and parents come under the irresistible necessity to change, mature, respond to the loss of bliss for the sake of uncertainty in face of certain death without the option to lose hope.

Why has physics built hope into our necessity to be? One thing we know is that reason can be found in the autopsy of what is. If entropy did not result in form nothing would have ever existed. A still, small voice resounds in the externality of the other as the arrow of time.

We should learn from what we cannot avoid because we cannot avoid what we MUST learn.

Do you want to buy my house? I will trade you for three rental houses in Broomfield too. I am going to list it next weekend…will go fast. I will also sell you a house on top Sugarloaf, 9 miles west of Boulder or trade you three rental houses in Broomfield.

http://tours.virtuance.com/731746?a=1

I have taken some time to let the shock of a Trump win settle to make sure what I am going to say is not emotion but what I honestly think is fact. As far as I can see we are faced with three scenarios which I will discuss in more detail below:

1. Utter destruction of the earth and humanity
   
2. Worldwide depression which will make the Great Depression which effected the entire world look like a time of affluence.
   
3. The collapse of the United States economy and the rise of rabid fascism across the planet
   

All three of these scenarios are dismal. We are looking at a future where rationality and facts mean nothing. Trump and his Cabinet Goons are so fact challenged, as was the case with his campaign and Hitler propaganda, that contradictions, lies and deceit are strategic:

“The function of propaganda is to attract supporters, the function of organization to win members… Propaganda works on the general public from the standpoint of an idea and makes them ripe for the victory of this idea….” – Adolf Hitler, 1924

Trump makes no pretense to consistency, the hobgoblin of small minds. He is the prototypical ‘Prince’ of Machiavelli:

Trump loves war as he himself stated. The Prince in Machiavelli wants to ‘perfect’ war.

A Prince should have the appearance of being merciful, faithful, humane, frank, and religious, but the most important quality is only to seem to have these qualities. The Prince must play on the aspirational qualities of his subjects. Facts are a hindrance for the Prince.

Generosity is to be avoided for a Prince. Its sets up a presentence which can only result in disappointment and hatred on the part of the subjects. A Prince should have the appearance of a miser so as appear to be efficient and concerned about the taxes of his subjects. However, if the Prince can spend others money without the appearance of generosity he is wise.

Is it better to be loved or hated? Machiavelli states, “The answer is that one would like to be both the one and the other; but because it is difficult to combine them, it is far safer to be feared than loved if you cannot be both.”

Should Trump keep his word? Machiavelli states, “He should appear to be compassionate, faithful to his word, guileless, and devout. And indeed he should be so. But his disposition should be such that, if he needs to be the opposite, he knows how.” The appearance of being truthful is the opiate that his subjects need not the reality.

Lastly, the Prince should not have the appearance of depriving their subjects of property or women. If they want to “grab a woman by the pussy” it is only a little locker room talk, right?¹

The ‘war of all against all’ originally from Locke but taken up in the Prince of Machiavelli is the ideal embodiment of Mr. DJ Trump.

I have previously predicted the end of the Republican Party.² I think that Trump is the fulfillment of this prediction. I have written about this in more detail but the end of the Old Right was with Barry Goldwater.³ The New Right lasted until Trump. Now we have the New Reich. To use astronomical terms, I was wrong about the New Right ending in a Red Giant. Instead, it went Super Nova. The unthinkable downside of a Super Nova is the destruction of everything in its wake. This is what we are faced with now. The real problem is that we have 63 million voters of the 129 million votes cast that are intent on turning the evolutionary clock back. They are reacting from pure anger, bitterness, resentment and entitlement. They were pumped up with Machiavellian aspirations which never materialized except in the credit bubble which ended in the Great Recession. They could no longer afford the life style to which they were artificially accustomed to. When people believe they are in pain they react selfishly and irrationally.

Here is the final vote count for the popular vote according to Business Insider:

Trump     62.97 million votes

Clinton     65.84 million votes⁴

Hillary won by almost 3 million votes but Trump is President due to the Electoral College. I will not get into the pros and cons of the Electoral College in this post. My point is not so much that she won by almost 3 million but that he took almost 49% of the 128.81 million voters that voted in a country of over 350 million people with 218,959,000 eligible voters.⁵ 55% of eligible voters actually voted.

 So, I ask myself if 55% of eligible voters voted and 45% did not why should I care? Additionally, if 49% of the folks that voted want Trump, we as a country are not ready for facts and science. Global warming is a liberal lie right? Evolution is a lie of liberal academics, creationism is God’s truth right? Abortion is filicide, the mass murder of children, right? The ‘free market’ is always more efficient than government, right? Our national intelligence is wrong. Perhaps we should save the tax payers some money and contract out our intelligence to the KGB, right? Why do we have nukes if we do not use them, right? The rate of increase of health care cost would be much less without ObamaCare, right? TrumpCare must be better, right? Health Savings Accounts will benefit the “50 percent of people that do not pay taxes” according to Romney, right? So going back to emergency room care will reduce the rate of increase of all our health care premiums, right?

Honestly, if that many folks think all this is feasible I am not going to fight it. We have much to learn to survive as a country and a world. The stakes are very high now with a narcissistic maniac as President and the Goon Squad of radical neo-cons aching for war. I have much intrepidation about our future as a country and a world. I am sorry for the 51% of folks that voted for Hillary and will be hurt by a Trump presidency. We cannot fight the 49% that will be hurt by the very guy they voted for. Realistically, we are not ready for something better we are, as a country ready, for something far worse. We need to learn. Democracy was made for enlightenment voters, educated and aware of real facts. The realm of propaganda and illusion still mesmerizes far too many of us to effect real change for the better. We still prefer phantasma to our own security. We will suffer greatly and as far as I can remember we have a higher chance of human extinction than we have ever faced. These are facts that I cannot change.

Did I mention that before the Great Recession of the last Republican President and Congress was the previous Republican President and Congress that preceded the Great Depression…now we have nukes in the hand of an imbecile and his Cabinet of Cronies. The last Republican majority we had in the Congress and the Presidency started two mass wars which killed 190,000 people, 70% civilians, 4,488 US military killed, 3,400 US contractors killed, cost 6 trillion dollars.⁶ Financial deregulation went Super Nova in the Bush years costing 30 trillion dollars worldwide due to faulty and deceptive financial derivatives. It is insane to suggest that the US Housing Bubble could cause that level of financial catastrophe.⁷ The result of the Bush years was the Great Recession and mass wars which needlessly exploded the Middle East, created ISIS and recruited massive numbers of terrorists (see references in my History post). A great proverb tells us, fool me once shame on you, fool me twice shame on me. We the American People have become the ‘me’ in this proverb.

Under President Obama we had the longest running private sector job recovery in history and the fastest job growth pace since Clinton⁸, the fastest economic recovery in history ⁹

Since President Barack Obama first took office:

The U.S. trade deficit has shrunk by 24 percent; exports have grown faster than imports.
The number of immigrants in the U.S. illegally has gone down — by 3.4 percent according to one independent estimate and by 9 percent according to another.
The economy has added 9.7 million jobs.
The unemployment rate has dropped below the historical norm.
The buying power of the average worker’s weekly paycheck is up 4.2 percent.
Corporate profits are running 144 percent higher and stock prices have soared.
Federal debt has more than doubled, and annual deficits, after shrinking, are again on the rise.
The number of people lacking health insurance has gone down by nearly 15 million.¹⁰

We can kiss that all goodbye now thanks to millions of our own citizens. 64 million of our own voters, mainly rural voters, just voted against their own best interest.¹¹ I blamed the Bush voters for mass killings of our own and others and economic disaster. The New Reich has a noteworthy chance of destroying the planet with a psychologically ill President. We can certainly count on economic disaster under Trump. If our citizens think they have rights protected by the Constitution, you can forget that. Women’s rights, civil rights, religious freedom, ethnic protections, health care, consumer protections are all a thing of the past thanks to 64 million voters. However, always remember they are us. We are all in this together. We failed as a country to move towards a better future. As much of the world is gathering dark storm clouds of nativism, xenophobia, protectionism, tribalism and fascism reminiscent of the rise of the Third Reich we have yet again forgotten history and the blame is on us all. We are in for long years of wars, millennials – you will discover the draft many of us already knew, massive debt that will make our current debt look like pocket change. All of our self-righteous ideals about democracy will simply fly out the window into the hypocritical whimpering of Nietzsche’s Last Man. All of us will have to own this one way or the other. We all failed.¹²

As far as my wife and I and my kids, in the short term, the irrational exuberance of the ‘Trump’ rally has been good to us although the Obama rally after the last Republican majority was by far better. I know that what I have described is dismal and goes against all of our grain but as a philosopher I find a great deal of resemblance of our dark future to death. We all face the reality of death every day and yet we live as if that day will never come. The same mechanism releases me from living my life in a pit of despair. Life is about quality not quantity. My family is doing very well and we will fare better than most until the day of Mad Max arrives. After that means nothing to me in the present. Others will suffer much more than my family both the 63 million that voted for Trump, 66 million for Clinton, the rest of the 350 million that did not vote and the rest of the world that could not vote. Optimism in the face of death is a great gift of evolution. If Nietzsche is right we will all be here again for another time around…forever. It is not about the absolute judgements and determinations of history, Spirit, Idea (of Hegel). It is about the small place of a human life endowed with optimism, forgetfulness and the will for drama (not the will for power). This is where value, happiness, love, desire and meaning happen in the face to face encounter of a small community and the day to day trivia of an infinitesimally small wisp of an instant we call existence. Be happy, what is our choice?

_________________

¹ See Niccolò Machiavelli
² The End of the Republican Party
³ Conservatism and Liberalism: A Historical Perspective
⁴ The results are now final: Clinton wins popular vote by nearly 3 million, Business Insider
⁵ Voting Turnout Statistics
⁶ History
⁷ Latest Observations on the Housing and Economic Crisis, The Housing Crisis – Research Revisted, The Facts: Deregulation=Republicans=Economic Crisis
⁸ Obama Blows Republicans Out Of The Water With Fastest Job Growth Pace Since Clinton
⁹ Federal Deficit and Debt – President Obama vs President Bush, Unemployment Statistics – President Obama vs President Bush, The Big Picture: Facts Concerning History, Politics and the Economy
¹⁰ Obama’s Numbers April 2016 Update
¹¹ After a Hard Day’s Night…
¹² A Vote for Trump is a Vote for Human Extinction, Trump’s Red Lame Stream Media – Nightmares Work

Here is a new scratch song in memory of an amazing man with an amazing life – Victor.

Distant Interlude

Integrity is hard work. It does not come naturally or easily. Personally, I have endured some hard blows and scars which will endure in me to my last breath in the struggle to be honest. Integrity is built on personal honesty. There are times in life when a lie holds the illusion of a quick an easy way out of an ethical dilemma. However, unless you have no conscience, you find that every lie you tell leaves a bitter pill in your soul that will continually come back to haunt you in the most innocuous and inopportune moments. Every lie builds a hardness around you that entombs the pure and innocent child, full of life and beauty and hope and wonder, in a living stagnation, a resignation and despair which constitute a living death. It bogs the soul down in resentment, negativity, fear, anxiety and anger. Only a sociopath can tell lies without any toll to be paid, at least consciously. I believe Donald Trump is such a person. He is now the President of the free world.

Trump has been caught in lie after lie. Contradiction seems to be no problem for him. He has told many lies to win this election. Those folks that elected him thinking he will increase their personal incomes and make them prosperous are the ones that ultimately will face a harsh punishment from Trump lies. Trump cannot bring jobs back to this country. He has a factual history of taking jobs out of this country. Trade agreements will not hinder or facilitate the creation and restoration of jobs in this country. The bottom line is that when impoverished countries have people that will work for pennies on the dollar to what our citizens can work for to have any sort of a livable wage we will never be able to compete in purely capitalistic, dollars and cents, terms. No political lie or promise will change the economic worldwide shift brought about by technology and global capitalism.

If fact, trying to manipulate trade deals and treaties to “bring jobs back to the US” will only raise prices for the basic necessities of life. The increased cost of groceries, fuel, building materials for shelter, textiles and all the luxuries we have come to enjoy will first and foremost hit the most unfortunate among us. Those folks in rural regions of the country who were hit hard by the credit bubble burst brought on by a rabid financial deregulation pushed those who were living above their means back into the stark reality of vulture capitalism. This ugly bird has devoured the carcasses of many historic societies.

Mercantilism which drove our Founding Fathers into a new world and was most prominent in Thomas Jefferson’s reaction to the consolation of power, resulted in the typical and tragic repeated story of slavery and aristocracy. Left to its own devices pure, Austrian, capitalism has repeatedly shown us that unrestricted wealth is unrestricted power. It has always resulted in one percent basking in the purgatives of the master and ninety-nine percent living in the tragic impoverishment of enslavement to the harsh and dyer realities of suffering, torment and early death. That story will never change left to its own devices.

Adam Smith’s selfishness which gave way to competition and thereby more efficient cost of services and increased value to consumers is now working on a global scale. Very few politicians, especially Republicans can openly state the true case for global competition. As Americans we are on the losing end of the competition wars when it comes to labor and cost of goods produced except in certain very narrow markets where automation can be achieved. Even then, the capital costs are prohibitive to newcomers to free market competition. In effect, the natural barrier to competition in production in the US market is enormous up front capital investment. The double punch of much lower labor costs in foreign markets than we can possibly achieve here and the huge capital outlay for domestic production lines will ensure that the US will likely never see the affluence that the industrial revolution once afforded us.

The dark side of selfishness is the intoxication of power. The human ego attains the illusion of godhood when infused with the aspiration of absolute power. In effect, power and consolidation result in market manipulation of cost and create barriers to the kind of competition Adam Smith envisioned. Monopolies are thereby the antithesis to more efficient and reduced cost of goods and services. If this could be thought in the far right’s anti-government terms it would be called ‘tyranny’. The Machiavellian struggle of monopolies and globalism can only be interrupted with government intervention not with xenophobia.

The ‘government’, our government, is not a harsh vulture capitalist monster which picks the bones of its victims. It is an instrument of the people which takes money from the private sector and redistributes it to the masses. It is an economic device which when working as our Founding Fathers intended resists the tendency for power to simply be reduced to the survival of the fittest. It holds the promise of a Titan strong enough to fight the historic monster of aristocracy, dictators and tyrants. Our government was never meant to be a tyrant. Only when the people are active in making the government work for the people and not getting elected simply to “drown the baby in the bathwater” or “starve the beast” can we hope to form a more perfect union. When regulation works for the people it comes from the demand of the people not the corporatism of the wealthy. Starving the beast will only give the corporate beast free reign to protect its own interests, regulate competition out of existence and allow the vulture of capitalism to eternally eat the liver of Prometheus only to have it devoured again when it grows back.

The only hope for common folks is to have a champion which can match up to the Titans of capitalism and industry. If we make the government small we are also giving free reign to the economic ‘redistribution’ of capital into receptive bastions of power fueled by greed and selfishness. These bastions hold no allegiance to the people only to themselves at the eternal cost of the people (otherwise known as slavery). They do not rest when they deliver essential goods and services for human survival. They must create artificial needs and illusory aspirations which work more like the curse of Sisyphus. The only true allegiance to the people is in the government by and for the people. If we buy the lie that unhindered capitalism will result in affluence for all we have ignored history and accepted our slavery as illusive, aspirational freedom. Trump did not get rich by being an humanitarian. He got rich by coming from wealth and stepping over anyone that got in his way and not paying anyone he owed when he felt financially threatened. He could care less about the average country bumpkin who is counting on him to ease his lot in life. He can never, due to global economic realities and his own illusions of grandeur, do what he promised.

Sure he can spend lots of money on infrastructure which has some economic benefit and ineffective ‘great walls of China’ which will only increase the deficit. He can reduce taxes for corporations and the wealthy which will also increase the deficit with the lack of revenue inflow. He will change the deficit reduction we had in the Obama years after the Great, GW Bush Recession. He will bring us back to the deficit increase under GW Bush reversing the surplus we had in the Clinton years. These are economic facts which cannot be ‘spun’ away by creative marketing on the right.

Trump has brought our country back to ‘nativism’ and isolationism along with rising xenophobia and fascism in Europe, the middle east and Asia. These same historic conditions set the stage for Nazi Germany, Italian and Japanese fascists. When Hitler came to power the first thing he did was consolidate power to himself. The American People have handed Trump the Congress and the Supreme Court. This is the first step towards a Führer. We can only hope that our Constitution will hold and he will fail.

Trump and Putin believe that low and medium yield nukes will give us regional victories without escalating into a major nuclear apocalypse. Trump tells us “we have nukes why don’t we use them”? Can we stop Trump before he is impeached for interning and deporting millions of immigrants? Maybe. Can we stop him from religious and ethnic suppression and ‘cleansing’ with impeachment based on Constitutional grounds? Possibly. However, we have significantly weakened our chance by giving him a running start with the Congress and the Supreme Court. It would be a denial of reality to think these possibilities are lessened considering his remarks and the white nationalist company he likes to keep.

I do not want to be alarmist as that is equally irrational but certain dark forces have been set in motion which history has repeatedly shown us can gain a momentum which culminate in epic human tragedy. With the advent of nuclear weapons we may not have the ability to crawl out of our human weaknesses, fallibilities, insecurities, greediness and fears to find another day. The stakes are high and half of our population has played a bluff in a very dangerous game. Anger does not solve problems. It only creates more problems. We will not find a solution in the dictates of sociologic anger. Storm clouds are gathering over the world which have lead us to the brink before. This time we may be able to come back.

Nevertheless, sinking into dark and foreboding thoughts has never solved a problem. Many of us in Boulder County worked our tails off to stop this national tragedy. We are proud and we think we were the primary reason we were able to keep Colorado blue. We canvassed and phone banked the county and surrounding counties so they could not cease hearing their phone ring and their doors knocked until they voted. We can sleep at night knowing we did not violate our conscience. When problems loom large on the macroscopic scale the only relief can be found in the microscopic scale. Our Constitution is based and founded on this. If we lose our democracy and our liberal ideal of fair marketplace and a hand up not a handout we will have lost any claim to historic uniqueness and exceptionalism. The US will be a fatal failure of history and the crushing ambitions of the few will squash any such fragile notion as ‘we the people’.

Our response to Trump and the future gravity of fascism can only take place in each one of us, in our resolve to keep working with eyes on the prize. We cannot let the dazzling brilliance of frenzied, right-wing lame stream media marketing fear, anxiety, dread and paranoia to lull us into passiveness. The transcendent step into externality and away from moaning, groaning, complaining and self-pity is not ‘out there’ somewhere. It is in simply putting one leg in front of the other to make our democracy live up to its promise. If we try to put more into existence than we took out of it we will free the pure and innocent child, full of life and beauty and hope and wonder. To stand full and free of a haunting conscience is the struggle of adulthood which takes place in locomotion, steps from dawn to dusk, each day. Passivity denies promise. My friends in this dark place we find ourselves in, failure is behind us promise is ahead of us and all we have to do is walk towards the light.

Fox News, Breitbart and all the other lying right wing sources are reporting that anonymous sources are telling them that indictments are coming in the FBI investigation to Hillary Clinton. However, Trump is telling everyone that since the system is rigged the indictments may get buried by the Justice Department. Funny how the red lame stream media has conveniently discovered these anonymous sources days before the election. Actually, only s**t for brains would take these jokers seriously. As any fascist cult leader would do, Hitler was the best, they simultaneously make preposterous claims, discredit any other contradictory source and give themselves a way out, the ‘rigged system’, when their lies inevitably show themselves to be pure propaganda.

Here are some quotes from a Spiegel Online article in 2008 and some of my comments in brackets:

How Hitler Won Over the German People

[Trump will “drain the swamp”]

“Today Hitler Is All of Germany.” The newspaper headline on Aug. 4, 1934 reflected the vital shift in power that had just taken place. Two days earlier, on the death of Reich President Paul von Hindenburg, Hitler had lost no time in abolishing the Reich Presidency and having the army swear a personal oath of unconditional obedience to him as “the Führer of the German Reich and People.” He was now head of state and supreme commander of the armed forces, as well as head of government and of the monopoly party, the NSDAP. Hitler had total power in Germany, unrestricted by any constitutional constraints. The headline implied even more, however, than the major change in the constellation of power. It suggested an identity of Hitler and the country he ruled, signifying a complete bond between the German people and Hitler.

[The vote is “rigged”. Check out current stories on the right wing “Voter Integrity Project” and right wing vote rigging. Also, the Trump campaign’s voter suppression tactics.]

The referendum that followed on 19 August 1934, to legitimize the power-political change that had occurred, aimed at demonstrating this identity. “Hitler for Germany — all of Germany of Hitler” ran the slogan. As the result showed, however, reality lagged behind propaganda. According to the official figures, over a sixth of voters defied the intense pressure to conform and did not vote “yes.” In some big working-class areas of Germany, up to a third had not given Hitler their vote. Even so, there were one or two tantalizing hints that Hitler’s personal appeal outstripped that of the Nazi regime itself, and even more so of the Party [Is Trump outstripping the Republican Party?]. “For Adolf Hitler yes, but a thousand times no to the brown big-wigs” [the ‘establishment’] was scribbled on one ballot-paper in Potsdam. The same sentiment could be heard elsewhere.

[The ‘great’ business achievements of Trump as opposed to the great bankruptcies of Trump.]

The personalized focus of the regime’s “successes” reflected the ceaseless efforts of propaganda, which had been consciously directed to creating and building up the “heroic” image of Hitler as a towering genius, to the extent that Joseph Goebbels could in 1941 with some justification claim the creation of the Führer Myth to have been his greatest propaganda achievement.

The propaganda image was never better summarized than by Hitler himself in his Reichstag speech of 28 April 1939 (which Haffner also cited):

‘By My Own Efforts’

“I overcame chaos in Germany, restored order, enormously raised production in all fields of our national economy…I succeeded in completely resettling in useful production those 7 million unemployed who so touched our hearts…I have not only politically united the German nation but also rearmed it militarily, and I have further tried to liquidate that Treaty sheet by sheet whose 448 Articles contain the vilest rape that nations and human beings have ever been expected to submit to. I have restored to the Reich the provinces grabbed from us in 1919; I have led millions of deeply unhappy Germans, who have been snatched away from us, back into the Fatherland; I have restored the thousand-year-old historical unity of German living space; and I have attempted to accomplish all that without shedding blood and without inflicting the sufferings of war on my people or any other. I have accomplished all this, as one who 21 years ago was still an unknown worker and soldier of my people, by my own efforts…”

The claim that the change in Germany’s fortunes had been achieved single-handedly was, of course, absurd. Fascinating, nevertheless, in this litany of what most ordinary Germans at the time could only have seen as astonishing personal successes of the Führer, is that they represented national “attainments” rather than reflecting central tenets of Hitler’s own Weltanschauung. There was not a word in this passage of the pathological obsession with “removing” the Jews [Trump’s plan for ‘illegal immigrants’], or of the need for war to acquire living space. Restoration of order, rebuilding the economy, removal of the scourge of unemployment, demolition of the restrictions of the hated Versailles Treaty [Trump’s rhetoric on current treaties], and the establishment of national unity all had wide popular resonance, ranging far beyond die-hard Nazis, appealing in fact in different ways to practically every sector of society. Opinion surveys long after the end of the Second World War show that many people, even then, continued to associate these “achievements” positively with Hitler.

The parallels with Trump and Hitler are clear and foreboding. If we have not learned from History, History will repeat itself and we will have no one else to blame but ourselves. Please, save the world, get out and do whatever it takes to vote for Hillary!