Tell me more about how you hate government. If you hate government, the consistent next step is to be done with political solutions, which involve peaceful negotiations and voting and, at the extremes, complaining and urging others to vote your way and petition government for peaceful, lawful solutions. Yet, you will still hate government, you will deny the existence of authority and any limit on your absolute "freedom" will be viewed as "illegitimate."
So, how will you settle your outrage at these limitations being consistent? If not by peaceful means, if not by law and by the vote and negotiation... how? Either by saying terrible things and agitating behind the scenes to spur others to action -- because you are a coward or living in the refusal to own up to what you've become -- or you will pick up a weapon and resort to violence.
In fact, against law, you believe power comes from nowhere except your weapons and the threat of death they represent. Law -- you have no faith in that, else you would believe in government; legitimate authority -- you have no faith in that else you'd believe in social institutions. Bullets and death -- that you have faith in. You fear those, those give you the feeling of power and righteousness and your "rights."
We are at one of those points in the life of a nation in which values are up for discussion: What is it we value, what are the stars that we will choose to navigate by? Some will lead towards one destination, others toward... something else.
Something less.
Something terrible.
Saturday, November 2, 2013
Tuesday, October 15, 2013
The Letter I wrote Ted Cruz as He is One of My Senators
Senator Cruz,
You have dishonored the office with which we've entrusted you. Your grandstanding, your utterly childish speech in the middle of the night a couple of weeks ago, using veterans to complain about a government shutdown YOU HELPED CAUSE AND SUPPORTED, failing to denounce the waving of the bloody, racist Bars and Stars -- all that and more is nothing but what we call the behavior of pure white trash where I come from.
I could care less you graduated from Princeton and Harvard and memorized the Constitution as a child. You have no understanding of the spirit of the law even if you can parrot every line perfectly. I have a tape recorder that can do as much.
As for your much vaunted education, all I see you came away with was a belief your professors -- your betters -- were "communists." You may as well have attended community college for what your education has amounted to, sir. Or forged a diploma. Sir, I am a philosopher: I taught the subject at university -- a fine, modest American public ROTC university, thank you. I taught ethics to nurses and future soldiers who were sent off to fight in these never-ending wars and I taught my classes for little compensation, if by "compensation" we mean money. But I taught my students to be honorable men and women, to have a sense of duty to higher values, to be people concerned with virtue, people who question themselves, their motives, people capable of changing their minds and not assume they are always right or that what is good and who they should be is a matter to be overly comfortable about.
I taught them to care: Care for themselves, their families, their communities, their nation, their world, and for the future. We are each individually and collectively responsible for all of these, Mr. Cruz, in whatever our calling.
I did not learn these things out of a book, though the multitude of things I have read were useful in clarifying my judgment. No, Mr. Cruz, I learned these things by living and making my life an experiment in the very things I eventually wanted to teach.
My diplomas didn't help much in that regard.
That weighty hunk of metal on your finger that is a class ring won't help you either. It will not hide your true face from me, from your fellow citizens. No, your true face lies in your actions, your choices, how they affect others -- it lies in how many of us you are willing to sacrifice in the course of manipulating your way to what you perceive as "the top."
Mr. Cruz, I know you. I know you well. History is always plagued with your sort. I don't fear you -- I am sorrowful that you are so filled with pride and hatred you intend to wreck this country, or risk it, in the belief you are the "anointed of God" sent to reconstruct America.
Such a person has no capacity to ask the only questions that will cause him to act morally: "Am I wrong?" and "Who should I be?"
God save us from the "anointed" ones.
Sir, you are what Ortega y Gasset called a "learned ignoramus." You believe your specialized knowledge in one area grants you the magical capacity to exercise judgment that requires general knowledge -- and you have proceeded to set yourself up as a ruler on that basis. As such, you are part of the vertical invasion of the barbarians our age has witnessed since the 19th c.
In fact, you are no more competent to rule or hold that office you talked your way into than the average ditch digger: your political and philosophical opinions and the ditch digger's are, in fact, no different most of the time, and they were arrived at with an equal lack of effort. You live by a lack of care, a desire to avoid bearing burdens, and the absence of creativity in your solutions to problems. Oh, yes, there is a certain level of cleverness, but there are animals that are clever; and these never experience a moment of wonder or doubt or make of reality a problem.
This is all I wish to say to you. I do not believe you have a conscience to which one might appeal, no sense of mercy to beg. Go right ahead on your way:
But, sir, I know you.
You have dishonored the office with which we've entrusted you. Your grandstanding, your utterly childish speech in the middle of the night a couple of weeks ago, using veterans to complain about a government shutdown YOU HELPED CAUSE AND SUPPORTED, failing to denounce the waving of the bloody, racist Bars and Stars -- all that and more is nothing but what we call the behavior of pure white trash where I come from.
I could care less you graduated from Princeton and Harvard and memorized the Constitution as a child. You have no understanding of the spirit of the law even if you can parrot every line perfectly. I have a tape recorder that can do as much.
As for your much vaunted education, all I see you came away with was a belief your professors -- your betters -- were "communists." You may as well have attended community college for what your education has amounted to, sir. Or forged a diploma. Sir, I am a philosopher: I taught the subject at university -- a fine, modest American public ROTC university, thank you. I taught ethics to nurses and future soldiers who were sent off to fight in these never-ending wars and I taught my classes for little compensation, if by "compensation" we mean money. But I taught my students to be honorable men and women, to have a sense of duty to higher values, to be people concerned with virtue, people who question themselves, their motives, people capable of changing their minds and not assume they are always right or that what is good and who they should be is a matter to be overly comfortable about.
I taught them to care: Care for themselves, their families, their communities, their nation, their world, and for the future. We are each individually and collectively responsible for all of these, Mr. Cruz, in whatever our calling.
I did not learn these things out of a book, though the multitude of things I have read were useful in clarifying my judgment. No, Mr. Cruz, I learned these things by living and making my life an experiment in the very things I eventually wanted to teach.
My diplomas didn't help much in that regard.
That weighty hunk of metal on your finger that is a class ring won't help you either. It will not hide your true face from me, from your fellow citizens. No, your true face lies in your actions, your choices, how they affect others -- it lies in how many of us you are willing to sacrifice in the course of manipulating your way to what you perceive as "the top."
Mr. Cruz, I know you. I know you well. History is always plagued with your sort. I don't fear you -- I am sorrowful that you are so filled with pride and hatred you intend to wreck this country, or risk it, in the belief you are the "anointed of God" sent to reconstruct America.
Such a person has no capacity to ask the only questions that will cause him to act morally: "Am I wrong?" and "Who should I be?"
God save us from the "anointed" ones.
Sir, you are what Ortega y Gasset called a "learned ignoramus." You believe your specialized knowledge in one area grants you the magical capacity to exercise judgment that requires general knowledge -- and you have proceeded to set yourself up as a ruler on that basis. As such, you are part of the vertical invasion of the barbarians our age has witnessed since the 19th c.
In fact, you are no more competent to rule or hold that office you talked your way into than the average ditch digger: your political and philosophical opinions and the ditch digger's are, in fact, no different most of the time, and they were arrived at with an equal lack of effort. You live by a lack of care, a desire to avoid bearing burdens, and the absence of creativity in your solutions to problems. Oh, yes, there is a certain level of cleverness, but there are animals that are clever; and these never experience a moment of wonder or doubt or make of reality a problem.
This is all I wish to say to you. I do not believe you have a conscience to which one might appeal, no sense of mercy to beg. Go right ahead on your way:
But, sir, I know you.
Sunday, October 13, 2013
What is "Christian Dominionism" and Why Should You Care?
"Christian dominionism": Is this the central ideology behind Rafael Edward "Ted" Cruz and the shutdown for which he became a self-appointed (annointed?) spokesman? This "theology" gets a lot of air play and support in Texas. Many accept some form of it as a part of their right-wing political ideology; and one could see how it easily could influence or be used by others in the Republican/libertarian/Tea Party camp to offer a religious framework to their Social Darwinism and Ayn Rand-ian theories of societal domination by specially born and bred rulers who are not to be defined and therefore limited by burdensome virtues such as justice or mercy or creativity or generosity or magnanimity.
The basic idea is this: America is a Christian nation; the rulers of the nation are Christans whom God has anointed to be "kings and priests." Just like in the good old Middle Ages -- the secular arm of power governed by "kings" who are Defenders of the Faith and of a royal bloodline and a religious arm of "priests" to administer and enforce the Holy Law. In other words, a thoroughly Westernized and sublimated version of exactly the same motives and beliefs things such as the Taliban appeal to in their cultural milieu. They -- our would-be rulers -- don't have to deal with us unwashed, unclean folk the way they deal with one another. Their rules come from Heaven, not some scrap of paper like the man-made Constitution: when the Constitution is useful for them, it is spoken of in awed tones of reverence; but when it holds them down to Earth, like everyone else, and merely human values, they will twist and by-pass it to get their way. Because theirs IS the Will of God on this planet and they can do no wrong.
Read the article and get this writer's perspective. It's worth the time.
Some wonder why, every time our people here in America become overly enamored or fascinated by the goings on in the British Royal Family, I become agitated. Part of it is, in spite of the royals romantic air in the eyes of Americans, they're just people like anyone with odd job titles and ridiculous pedigrees like AKC registered dogs. And that pedigree did not at any time involve being picked out for a special mission by God to run the lives of other people just like themselves. People who, in fact, work harder and give more to their communities and some of whom are truly creative.
The other part of it is this: the founding of our nation; the Declaration of Independence; the Revolution and blood spilled on behalf of a new idea -- that people are free from the monstrosity of rule by people of aristocratic or noble birth and that we can rule ourselves through an informed citizenry voting for its own representatives from among our own number; the arguments about the Constitution and union of states; the ratification of the Constitution; the pamphlets and books of Tom Paine; all of that and more was about one thing: The end, once and for all of the miserable fantasy of the Divine Right of Kings and Priests to terrorize us, to command us, to control us, to punish us, to silence us.
We abolished royalty and aristocracy -- it is against the Constitution to establish noble or aristocratic titles in our country; We abolished the idea that our secular state belongs to, is run by, supports, or is the province of priests of any sort when the First Amendment clearly and for all time abolished the establishment of a State religion.
That was the spelling out of the idea we were done with the "kings and priests" anointed by God, gods, nature, whatever, folks. Done with it -- we'd passed beyond it; our first and highest office is enfranchised citizen, regardless of the personal beliefs of that citizen, beliefs that can and may influence law if and only if reasonable arguments with evidence available to all from any or no background of belief can be mustered. Or if the people quit paying attention to the nature of the Revolution and begin believing in some hoary myth that gets trotted out every time some bunch of low-down would-be tyrants decide to redefine or monkey wrench our perfectly good system of government.
You need to think on this one at length if you're able and willing.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/morgan-guyton/the-theology-of-governmen_b_4020537.html
The basic idea is this: America is a Christian nation; the rulers of the nation are Christans whom God has anointed to be "kings and priests." Just like in the good old Middle Ages -- the secular arm of power governed by "kings" who are Defenders of the Faith and of a royal bloodline and a religious arm of "priests" to administer and enforce the Holy Law. In other words, a thoroughly Westernized and sublimated version of exactly the same motives and beliefs things such as the Taliban appeal to in their cultural milieu. They -- our would-be rulers -- don't have to deal with us unwashed, unclean folk the way they deal with one another. Their rules come from Heaven, not some scrap of paper like the man-made Constitution: when the Constitution is useful for them, it is spoken of in awed tones of reverence; but when it holds them down to Earth, like everyone else, and merely human values, they will twist and by-pass it to get their way. Because theirs IS the Will of God on this planet and they can do no wrong.
Read the article and get this writer's perspective. It's worth the time.
Some wonder why, every time our people here in America become overly enamored or fascinated by the goings on in the British Royal Family, I become agitated. Part of it is, in spite of the royals romantic air in the eyes of Americans, they're just people like anyone with odd job titles and ridiculous pedigrees like AKC registered dogs. And that pedigree did not at any time involve being picked out for a special mission by God to run the lives of other people just like themselves. People who, in fact, work harder and give more to their communities and some of whom are truly creative.
The other part of it is this: the founding of our nation; the Declaration of Independence; the Revolution and blood spilled on behalf of a new idea -- that people are free from the monstrosity of rule by people of aristocratic or noble birth and that we can rule ourselves through an informed citizenry voting for its own representatives from among our own number; the arguments about the Constitution and union of states; the ratification of the Constitution; the pamphlets and books of Tom Paine; all of that and more was about one thing: The end, once and for all of the miserable fantasy of the Divine Right of Kings and Priests to terrorize us, to command us, to control us, to punish us, to silence us.
We abolished royalty and aristocracy -- it is against the Constitution to establish noble or aristocratic titles in our country; We abolished the idea that our secular state belongs to, is run by, supports, or is the province of priests of any sort when the First Amendment clearly and for all time abolished the establishment of a State religion.
That was the spelling out of the idea we were done with the "kings and priests" anointed by God, gods, nature, whatever, folks. Done with it -- we'd passed beyond it; our first and highest office is enfranchised citizen, regardless of the personal beliefs of that citizen, beliefs that can and may influence law if and only if reasonable arguments with evidence available to all from any or no background of belief can be mustered. Or if the people quit paying attention to the nature of the Revolution and begin believing in some hoary myth that gets trotted out every time some bunch of low-down would-be tyrants decide to redefine or monkey wrench our perfectly good system of government.
You need to think on this one at length if you're able and willing.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/morgan-guyton/the-theology-of-governmen_b_4020537.html
Friday, October 4, 2013
The Republican Shutdown of the Federal Government -- The Real Nature of the Game
The Republican Congress has no plan to re-open the government. They will keep it shut down as long as possible because they hate government. The Tea Party ran on shutting down government for its own sake. The clips of them saying so publicly for 3 years or more are easily found. The Tea Party runs the House -- because the non-Tea Partiers are terrified of getting thrown out in a primary if they oppose them, and elections are next year.
There is no debt crisis. None. That's nonsense. Just something to go on and on about to distract you from reality. And the reality is, if we had absolutely no debt at all, the GOP would still want to shut down the Federal Government in order to allow state governments to do whatever they damn well please with no oversight.
The ACA -- "Obamacare," the health care law -- is not socialism or communism; there is nothing vaguely socialistic about it. You buy healthcare from private, capitalistic insurance companies, the same ones that have always been selling you insurance. If you already have insurance, it changes nothing for you except it will make insurance cheaper as more people participate in the system. If you don't have insurance, it reminds you that you have a responsibility as a citizen to have it so you are not putting your health care costs in the lap of society by depending on the emergency room every time you get sick or have an accident. Or you wind up in a disaster or dead and leave a mess behind for everyone else to clean up with no help from you.
No, it wasn't the best solution. The best solution would actually have been the socialistic one -- the single payer system, like the rest of planet Earth where you get excellent care and the costs are much lower than the USA's. But we are terrified of that thanks to the AMA lobby and the nutty right-wing that sees any form of social cooperation as an encroachment on "liberty." Liberty in this context means your freedom to get sick and lose your job and maybe die while no one cares, really, but America is weird that way.
But none of this is really about the AMA or debt. Those are just leverage and things to motivate people who don't pay attention to anything but the last episode of Breaking Bad and Miley Cyrus acting like a damn fool to sell bad music. All that's entertaining and everything, but goddamn it, there's important things to keep up with, too, and you have to do more than listen to rumors, gossip, and horseshit spread by FOX News and right-wing propaganda think tanks that are in business to do nothing except get you to put people in office who will vote to keep their rich owners and donors rich and powerful. And you do that by either being too disgusted to vote ("Both parties are the same thing!", "They're all a bunch of assholes!") or voting against your own interests ("The Republicans support small business, low taxes, personal freedom, no gun laws, they are the party of traditional values, are religious, etc.", "I'll vote for a third party and show those son of a bitches who's boss! And they'll legalize pot!").
The Tea Party is after absolutely nothing except the destruction of Federal Government -- to achieve the Confederate Dream of the States becoming independent entities, little fiefdoms with their own laws run by small cliques with strange ideologies, some of them weirdly religious, overtly or covertly racist, and some of them nigh completely anarchistic. Read and listen -- pay attention to what they say, who funds them, what sorts of groups are in favor of them. Democracy is a filthy word for them, equivalent to tyranny. Which it can be in the hands of ill-educated, prejudiced thugs who do not recognize human and individual civil liberties. But they hate democracy mainly because they know better than you how things ought to be run and by whom -- and don't need your input on the subject. They just need your initial support or inaction and distraction, and then they need your underpaid slave labor and silence. Democracy is OK just long enough for them to get their way -- then all bets are off.
They will crash the economy this go 'round. They will de-value the dollar. Why? They want a return to the gold standard, for one thing, and it will cripple the Federal Government in ways a civil war never could. Am I paranoid? Well, hell yes, but it's kept me alive for a good long while and it has helped me analyze political reality fairly accurately for years. I assume the worst most of the time from politicians with little oversight and too much power and actual existence, once it comes to light, usually turns out to be even more messy and worse than what I imagine.
So they're just dragging this out a piece at a time. It's a delaying maneuver, that's all. They know they won't get what they want. But it will eventually turn public opinion with enough propagandizing. And you'll buy it, too. Because you are not suspicious enough, not angry enough, not careful enough, too bored, too distracted, too disillusioned.
There is no debt crisis. None. That's nonsense. Just something to go on and on about to distract you from reality. And the reality is, if we had absolutely no debt at all, the GOP would still want to shut down the Federal Government in order to allow state governments to do whatever they damn well please with no oversight.
The ACA -- "Obamacare," the health care law -- is not socialism or communism; there is nothing vaguely socialistic about it. You buy healthcare from private, capitalistic insurance companies, the same ones that have always been selling you insurance. If you already have insurance, it changes nothing for you except it will make insurance cheaper as more people participate in the system. If you don't have insurance, it reminds you that you have a responsibility as a citizen to have it so you are not putting your health care costs in the lap of society by depending on the emergency room every time you get sick or have an accident. Or you wind up in a disaster or dead and leave a mess behind for everyone else to clean up with no help from you.
No, it wasn't the best solution. The best solution would actually have been the socialistic one -- the single payer system, like the rest of planet Earth where you get excellent care and the costs are much lower than the USA's. But we are terrified of that thanks to the AMA lobby and the nutty right-wing that sees any form of social cooperation as an encroachment on "liberty." Liberty in this context means your freedom to get sick and lose your job and maybe die while no one cares, really, but America is weird that way.
But none of this is really about the AMA or debt. Those are just leverage and things to motivate people who don't pay attention to anything but the last episode of Breaking Bad and Miley Cyrus acting like a damn fool to sell bad music. All that's entertaining and everything, but goddamn it, there's important things to keep up with, too, and you have to do more than listen to rumors, gossip, and horseshit spread by FOX News and right-wing propaganda think tanks that are in business to do nothing except get you to put people in office who will vote to keep their rich owners and donors rich and powerful. And you do that by either being too disgusted to vote ("Both parties are the same thing!", "They're all a bunch of assholes!") or voting against your own interests ("The Republicans support small business, low taxes, personal freedom, no gun laws, they are the party of traditional values, are religious, etc.", "I'll vote for a third party and show those son of a bitches who's boss! And they'll legalize pot!").
The Tea Party is after absolutely nothing except the destruction of Federal Government -- to achieve the Confederate Dream of the States becoming independent entities, little fiefdoms with their own laws run by small cliques with strange ideologies, some of them weirdly religious, overtly or covertly racist, and some of them nigh completely anarchistic. Read and listen -- pay attention to what they say, who funds them, what sorts of groups are in favor of them. Democracy is a filthy word for them, equivalent to tyranny. Which it can be in the hands of ill-educated, prejudiced thugs who do not recognize human and individual civil liberties. But they hate democracy mainly because they know better than you how things ought to be run and by whom -- and don't need your input on the subject. They just need your initial support or inaction and distraction, and then they need your underpaid slave labor and silence. Democracy is OK just long enough for them to get their way -- then all bets are off.
They will crash the economy this go 'round. They will de-value the dollar. Why? They want a return to the gold standard, for one thing, and it will cripple the Federal Government in ways a civil war never could. Am I paranoid? Well, hell yes, but it's kept me alive for a good long while and it has helped me analyze political reality fairly accurately for years. I assume the worst most of the time from politicians with little oversight and too much power and actual existence, once it comes to light, usually turns out to be even more messy and worse than what I imagine.
So they're just dragging this out a piece at a time. It's a delaying maneuver, that's all. They know they won't get what they want. But it will eventually turn public opinion with enough propagandizing. And you'll buy it, too. Because you are not suspicious enough, not angry enough, not careful enough, too bored, too distracted, too disillusioned.
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