my eclipse

the sun dimmed and the ambient temperature dropped about four degrees...

my dog barked for about twenty minutes and then she quieted down

a disoriented fly landed on my jeans...

birdlife vanished from my yard...

the house sparrows hunkered down in the gorse...

then the birds came back...so did the sun...

dominoes

"the characteristic idea of philosophical pragmatism is that efficacy in practical application, the issue of 'which works out more effectively', somehow provides a standard for the determiantion of truth in the case of satements, right in the case of actions, and value in the case of appraisals." oxford companion to philosophy______"if those theories work satisfactorily they will be true" "truth happens to an idea, it becomes true, is made true by events" "the true is the name of whatever proves itself to be good." william james"pragmatism.______________bill james and john dewey took pierce's pragmatism and made it an uttterly subjective judgement concluding that whatever helped you to achieve an aim...what dewey called "goals-in-view" was "good"...a situational ethic that could bend with events unbound by any objective standard..the preeminent american philosophy that has infiltrated the economic system and certainly foreign policy..."no permanent friends, no permanent enemies, only permanent interests"...in the post world war II environment george kennan proposed a policy of "containment" of the spread of communism which led to the truman doctrine and harry publicly unveiling the "domino theory" in support of his aim to supply aid to the greek government during its civil war...eisenhower dusted the concept off to support aid for the french in indochina and after the french collapse as grounds for a growing committment from the first of november 1955 to the twenty-ninth of march 1973 at the cost of 58,220 u.s. lives...the south fell in 1975, the communists won...the rest of southeast asia did not ( withh the notable and horrific exception of cambodia )...and now? the "retail giant" where i engage in what passes for work these days gets its nike clothing from...

in cartons manufactured in what would seem to be...

ho chi minh city...american pragmatism in action.

you will be surveilled

we live in a culture ( or, perhaps, a better description would be society...difficult to think of this as a culture ) of surveillance...there is the state...which can be fairly lax in its surveillance ( for now anyway ) depending on who you are, where you live, and what sort of vehicle you drive...and then there is corporate surveillance which is a good deal more thoroughgoing...think of the advertisers that track you on line or through the apps on your phone ( one reason i have a stupid flip phone and a faraday bag ) or the cameras that watch you when you walk into a bank or a store or a restaurant or on the streets…corporations are nearly as greedy for information as they are for cash and they display no scruples about collecting it…i was talking to a co-worker today about their new vehicle and how it is monitoring their driving behavior…they said they had already disabled the mechanism that tells them when they have crossed the center line ( it doesn’t tell them, however, does it forget or still record that? )…and they were deeply unhappy about the fact that when they look down the vehicle tells them to keep their eyes on the road…or tells them they need to take a break from driving…and if the vehicle knows this and is telling them this who else is it informing? the manufacturer? the police? an insurance company…certainly my vehicle is recording how fast I am going at any given time and the police can access that if there is an accident…why not tell the corporate world at large what your driving habits, routes, and destinations are…it might be time to start walking or get my hands on an old shwinn ( no electric bikes please…they seem untrustworthy as well )…might be time to turn this infernal machine off as well.

the junk mail that offended the censors at facebook

i posted this...

on my facebook page with some coomentary concerning the reaction the gibbering baboons in the state legislature might have about a marijuana retailer in a neighboring state ( where private use is legaized ) sending junk mail flyers into a state where it is not, inviting me to order on line and wander across the border to indulge ( while warning me it is illegal to operate a motor vehicle while under the influence of marijuana...right..it is leagl in two bordering states and one percieves motorists from both stoned as could be...as well as the illegally indulgent from this state...one should approach this realistically and ignore the retailer covering their legal ass )...the social engineers at facebook and their assorted minions took offense at this post and promptly removed it which, in turn, elicited a response from me in which i termed them "fascist pigs" who are, perhaps, somewhat trepidatious from a recent pranging by the doctrinaire conspiracy theorists in congress and so overly sensitive to controversy...there are limits to freedom of speech one supposes however i was not yelling "fire" in a crowded theater...i was commenting, admittedly a bit sarcastically/caustically on both the state legislature and on facebook itself...one questions whether this merited censure or if facebook has simply become an arbiter of culture ( or, rather, the consumerism that passes for a culture here )...as it stands they have declared me offensive and told me to shut the fuck up...

in the words of the late doctor, "fuck these people"

"will to affect the distant"

“in the morning when thou risest unwillingly, let this thought be present. 'i am rising to the work of a human being. why then am i dissatified if i am going to do the things for which i exist and for which i was brought into the world? or have i been made for this, to lie in the bedclothes and keep myself warm'. but this is more pleasant, dost thou exist then to take thy pleasure and not all action and exertion? dost thou not see the little plants, the little birds, the ants, the spiders, the bees working together to put in order their several parts of the universe? and art thou willing to do the work of a human being and dost thou not make haste to do that which is according to nature?" marcus aurelius__________________________ “western mankind, without exception, is under the influence of an immense optical illusion. everyone demands something of the rest. we say "thou shalt" in the conviction that so-and-so in fact will, can and must be changed or fashioned or arranged conformably to that order, and our belief both in the efficacy of, and in our title to give, such orders is unshakable...in the ethics of the west everything is direction, claim to power, will to affect the distant. here luther is completely at one with nietzsche, popes with darwininas, socialists with jesuits..." oswald spengler. decline of the west________________________ why would i be “dissatisfied”?...well…first of all no one has ever actually given me a final definition of what the “work of a human being” might be…there seem to be manifold definitions mostly engendered by those who believe that ”the efficacy of” and their “title to give, such orders is unshakable”…belief, like truth, is utterly subjective and entirely capable of being misplaced…from politicians to executives to the clerisy ( whether religious, academic, op-ed pundits, or any of a string of inane youtube “influencers” ) there are any number of the unshaken who believe they know how i should comport myself in the face of “the work of a human being” and i am forced to question exactly who might benefit most if i fall into line with their thinking…ozzie has a valid point about that “immense optical illusion” foisted on almost all of us…old marcus was, aside from a miserable stoic, the emperor of rome and one suspects that his “work of a human being” was to maintain and expand the privilege of himself and his bastions of hangers-on…so who benefitted most from his “work”?...when i clock in who is the winner?...i earn money and so gain access to goods and services…that is fact…and who benefits more from those transactions?...myself or the shareholders and top tier of the corporation?...i have my suspicions…I also have the numbers that confirm my suspicions…you could find an algorithm to do the ceo’s job at considerably less cost…we’re back to ozzie’s “thou shalt” delivered in imperious tones and backed up by a raft of specious reasoning from those theologians of greed called economists ( and let’s not leave out the clerisy )…so i awoke before the alarm went off this morning and as an act of defiance of the “system” and as a posthumous affront to the dead emperor and the entire , miserable stoic project ( an evasion of addressing life on all its levels and a philosophy that smacks of quietism on the best day it ever had…epictitus and that slum-lord seneca can get bent ) i shut it off before it went off and stayed “in the bedclothes to keep myself warm” for another hour…then i got up and took the dog out which was to the sole benefit of the dog and myself…that was reasonable “work of a human being”.

ideology masquerading as principle

ideology-n. a system of ideas or ways of thinking pertaining to a class or individual esp. as a basis for some economic or political theory or system, regarded as justifying actions and esp. to be maintained irrespective of events. the shorter oxford English dictionary

in an interview in the sunday new york times kevin d. roberts…head wonk at the heritage foundation, maintains the aim is to “institutionalize trumpsim”…this brings up a number of points…it would seem mr. Roberts has already elected don trump to a second term as president…and “trumpism” needs a definition…the first point is still moot and we actually have an answer to the second…the heritage foundation is involved in something called “project 2025” which is a conservative group bent on imposing their values despite what anyone else may think…they have produced a book titled “mandate for leadership: the conservative mandate”…a manifesto for the kulturkampf…a sample of the verbiage runs like this…”reducing the number of federal employees seems an obvious way to reduce the overall expense of the civil service, and many prior administrations have attempted to do just this. presidents bill Clinton and barak obama began their terns, as did ronald reagan and donald trump, by mandating a freeze on the hiring of new federal employees but these efforts did not lead to permanent and substantive reductions in the number of nondefense federal employees”…so the military and its enormous expense are inviolate…that is clear…what is not clear is why “prior administrations” failed to reduce the federal payroll…project 2025 does not stop to consider that you cannot administer a de facto empire with a small government…shades of grover nordquist and his desire to “drown” a shrunken federal government in a bathtub…so long as you are policing an empire you will have bureaucrats…my thoughts are they will simply be those infused with trumpist ardor if mr. Roberts has his way…and what does he see as “substantive”?...he ballparked 50,000 lost jobs and added that he wished the losers no harm and hoped they would thrive in the regular economy as old federal buildings were “repurposed” for commercial activities ( how much empty commercial space is there where you live? Good luck there kev )…”mandate for leadership” has fifteen chapters dealing with separate government agencies involved in regulatory activities and an outline for what to do with each…for health and human services for instance, “protecting, life, conscience, and bodily integrity: the secretary should pursue a robust agenda to protect the fundamental right to life, protect conscience rights [ “health and human services prohibits recipients of health and human services funds from discriminating against institutional and individual health care entities for their participation in, abstention from, or objection to certain medical procedures.” church amendments to the public health service act definition of “conscience rights”], and uphold bodily integrity rooted in biological realities, not ideology.”…no more abortions and none of that transgender nonsense in a “trumpist” America…so in an 800 plus page ideological manifesto they dismiss current administration policy as “ideology”…of course they will call it “conservative principles” or “ faith-based beliefs”…that does not diminish it as ideological warfare on a national scale..

i have not finished perusing this and imagine there will be more overt self-deceit or, perhaps, it is simply an attempt to disguise scrapping what’s left of the constitution as some sort of return to morality…small wonder the fundamentalists are on board…and we will ( for now ) leave out the implications of kev’s stated desire to remove power from the bureaucrats and return it to congress…given the sclerotic state of that group of doctrinaire conspiracy theorists and wholly owned grifter criminals ( what was that twain said about congress? ) that cannot possibly bode well for the bulk of the polity…in fact I cannot see much of anything in these pages aimed at the actual wellbeing of the bulk of the population…a framework for government by the elite for the elite…which wouldn’t be much of a change actually…they simply don’t like the veneer of what passes for democracy in this country.

extra-judicial assassinations

all adolescents test boundaries...entitled ones moreso one suspects...someone needs to sit on this one...nixon's lawyers argued in open court in 1974 that the president was immune to prosecution for four years at a time no matter what he might do...of course that was an attempt to beat a conspiracy ( a both flexible and loaded word in today's political lexicon...ask the house of non-representatives ) to commit burglary rap...nixon never tried to kill anyone ( unless, of course, you count vietnamese )...the supreme court of the time rejected that bullshit unanimously...with the bench loaded with today's partisan yahoos who knows...they may just endorse dictatorship ( in the words of chamfort, "it's easier to make something legal than to make it legitimate " )...so navy seals as the hitmen of the executive branch? i am told that military personel swear to uphold the constitution which could be a sticky point for a literalist...unless, of course, you stack military leadership with loyalists and label your political opponents "enemies of the constitution"...then the military becomes the nkvd and absolutely no one is safe from denunciation as a maga heretic...this would lead to not just an expansion of detainment camps ( concentration would be, one imagines, strenuously avoided ) for undocumented immigrants but a general burgeoning of enclosures of barbed and razor wire ( electrified or not )...there is a subset of the polity that lust for an authoritarian government...either so they could be as violent as their nature dictates or stop thinking, take your pick ( or choose both )...and one has to wonder under what circumstances that wire might come down with "president for life" trump and his cadres in charge...it is going to be an interesting year ( or more )