taxes, whore politicians, and contingency

my not going to the court house in the county seat ( "what will happen if this does not happen"...begins to sound like a descartes square ) today would have been contingent on several events occurring which did not...first i would not have gone if i could have paid my property tax on line...unfortunately when i filled out the "payment" page with all the rquisite details such as routing number, account number, address, email, phone number and clicked on continue to go to the confirmation page nothing happened...same with a debit/credit card...technological failure...second...i could have mailed it ( i have eighteen days left to pay in ) if i trusted the post office...however since just yesterday i received mail addressed to someone in a different city i had no faith in their abilities...third...there was a list of banks that would accept my payment on the bill...i did not want to hassle with finding directions to branches of unfamiliar banks and trust issues cropped up here yet again...so i got in my vehicle and drove to the county seat...the treasurer's office is in "building A" in the complex which is fine except there were large signs on the windows stating "entrance sr-1 is closed ( this being the door to "building A" ) the public should use entrance sr-2 " ( why the "sr" designation eludes me ) which was a nuisance but what to do...unfortunately "entrance sr-2" is the entrance to the building with the courtrooms so i had to empty my pockets in a plastic tray and walk through a metal detector which my metal belt buckle and the rivets in my jeans set off so i had to be frisked and scanned again with a hand-held scanner ( " boy you sure got a lot of metal buttons in here"...no they're rivets but that is beside the point )...after that adventure i had to walk down the hallway connecting the buildings...which was festooned with signs saying "detour for entance sr-1" and walk up the stairs ( the deputy at the door said i should "take the elevator" so i defied authority ) to the treasurer's office which was surprisingly empty so that transaction was quick if not painless...coincidentally enough early voting was set up just outside the treasurer's...

so i voted against that orange haired bozo...which won't actually matter in this yahoo state however i voted my opinion of that clown officially...whore politicans ( from the county level grifters on up ) are all whores...some are simply less vile than others

antness

so i am one of doubtlessly a significant number of people to receive this...

email informing me that there are changes coming to the way i log into my social security account and i had best get on with conforming my account with said changes or i won't have access and then there will be extensive paperwork just to prove i am me so we can fix this...they seem unable to leave things be...why did a user name and password on one page need to be shifted to another? one possibility is that one subset of bloated bureaucrats had to find a way to justify their existence and making changes to "streamline the process" into a more "efficient interface" was just the ticket...or...they could simply be intensifying what the dutch writer geert mak calls "antness"...the feeling of being small in the face of institutional archetecture...both physical and in the processes involved in maintaining your identity "inside"...change keeps people off balance and provides them with something to occupy their attention and thoughts...an effort to prevent them from thinking about why we should need to pander to a bureaucracy and their top down imperatives to change the way things are done for instance...either way, my thoughts are this is not likely to improve until the entire edifice collapses from its own weight

political discourse 101 summer session 2024

i saw any number of these flying from pick-up trucks on the fourth of july...not surprising since the next county over in this trupy state is a crypto-fascist enclave of white rural rage...amazon sells them at a reasonable price so even the land poor can pick one up to vent their spleen at everyone in eyeshot...and, given the condition of some pick-ups, earshot...

given that capitalism is consequentialist, amazon sells these as well...it's what old jeff has not how he got it that matters...a system lockean to the bone that focuses on property not ethics...i cannot truthfully say i have seen one of these in the flesh even though there are pockets of anti trump voters dotted around the environs...i also notice that they are three dollars more in price...somewhat unfair pricing as one correspondent to this blog has pointed out...another has pointed out that the pricing may reflect that the socio-economic status of those who might consider flying a "fuck trump" flag would likely be of a higher standing and so could be afforded...both sensible positions...they do, however, leave out the sacred economic principle of supply and demand...the greater the demand the higher the cost because the "good" is in scarcer supply...there may be more "fuck trump" minded people about than white rural rage is taking into consideration...or, conversely, old jeff is trying to discourage purchase by jacking up the price and giving us a glimpse of his political position in 2024...either way, political discourse has sunk to a rather low level in my experience...politics is always emotional and fear based to whip up the mob ( politicians love a rally because of group-think [ think "two minutes hate" ] and the attendant lack of thought that they entail...in the documentary "confessions of a hitler youth" the subject discusses being at a party rally where hitler spoke...at one point the crowed rose to its feet screaming "heil hitler" in which the protagonist joined and then said, after the noise had died down, that he truned to his neighbor and asked "what did he say?" politicans on both sides of the aisle are pure slime...past, present, and future ) so it's no surprise people aren't really thinking...takes too much work...and the incessant drone of political falsehoods alienate anyone who might...fuck these people.

2025

2025 i have listed at least three distinct groups that likely see donny trump as a vehicle to furthering their agendas...these would be people of wealth...religious fundamentalist/theocrats...and white nationalists ( aka racists )… wealth wealth does not want to be taxed...wealth wants more since wealth is never satisfied...wealth wants it all and as a result debt will become more central to the national political agenda than it already is...in an effort to reduce as much of the population to a state of debt penury, unable to do more than survive and service the interest on the debt while never paying down the principle i can see a sharp reduction, if not the outright elimination, of social security benefits ( which are NOT an entitlement...i have paid for them all my working life and continue i pay into the fund while collecting benefits...politicians, of course, see a different reality ) rendering the aged submerged in debt to survive... credit card interest rates are already usurious yet one could see there being no legal limit set on where they may raise to...economic life may become one national payday loan store to a greater extent than it already is… fundamentalist/theocracy oklahoma seem to be leading the way here as the bible is introduced into public schools blurring a constitutional separation of church and state which is the agenda of any number of sects as a start towards some sort of compulsory church membership or, possibly if there is some residual tolerance ( although to be tolerant is to be lukewarm ) a non-attendance tax melded into say the income tax like the wonder of obamacare leading to something akin to Edinburgh in the 1750’s...”the Sabbath was a day in which every moment was under surveillance. Work, the smallest recreation, ‘vaguing’ in the High Street or on the Castle esplanade, all invited punishment from Kirk-session or a fine from the magistrates. ‘Seizers” patrolled the streets during sermon-time to ensure attendance...or patrolled the streets in the evening, pursuing suspicious passers-by down the steep, dark wynds...visitors from England were crushed by the gloom of the Edinburgh Sunday.” (Crowded With Genius: The Scottish Enlightenment. James Buchan p. 60)...something to look forward to and, no doubt, something dreamed of by theocratic wannabes….in my estimation freedom of religion would include freedom from religion...or, at least, organized religion...i do not need some cleric to tell me i am part of cycles larger than myself...all i need to do is look at the sky at night...i can achieve that without allowing someone to remove my existence from the here and now to some imagined eternity...i will live my life in the present, thank you without the benefit of clergy or slimy televangelist impostures. racists Native-n. A person born in a place; a person connected to a place by birth whether subsequently a resident there or not. b. A local resident of a place. c. One of the original or usual inhabitants of a country as distinguished from strangers or foreigners. Adj. Belonging to or connected with one by the fact of one’s having been born there; that was the place or scene of one’s birth; belonging to by right or reason of the place or country of one’s birth or of that nation to which one belongs. The Shorter Oxford English Dictionary i am thinking there will be a redefinition of what it is to “belong” and that it will follow rather a strict nativist adherence to the “by birth” portion of this definition with, however, some added limitations of what it is to be “born” here...not everyone born here is gong to be “native” and donny’s avowal to deport 15 to 20 million people will come with some updated version of the alien and sedition act of 1798 ( we will get to the sedition part soon )...that act stated, “...it shall be lawful for the President of the United States, at any time during the continuance of this act, to order all such aliens as he shall judge dangerous to the peace and safety of the United States, or shall have reasonable grounds to suspect are concerned in any treasonable or secret machinations against the government thereof to depart out of the territory of the United States...and if any alien so removed or sent out of the United States by the President shall voluntarily return thereto, unless by permission of the President of the United States, such alien on conviction thereof shall be imprisoned so long as, in the opinion of the President, the public safety may require.”...someone needs to define “reasonable grounds”...that is considerable judicial power vested in the executive... the argument was and would be now that it is wholly unconstitutional...except the present court would likely turn a blind eye to the constitution much less say habeas corpus… considerable power donny would covet and, likely, acquire...and to borrow one from vonnegut, once the barbed wire at those detention camps along the border goes up when do you suppose it will come down? one can see a subset of the polity that would use them for a wider ethnic cleansing which would also refer back to the above definition of native and what interpretation it might be given...those camps may have an additional use as well, which we will get to in the sedition section below...detention camps have as foul a history a ghettos...there is no justice in them...my thoughts are the republican party, as it is now constituted, has no interest in justice, only power and expanded wealth…and once the maga promise fades ( and it surely will as it becomes kleptocracy ) a police force will become necessary to enforce belief...since there can be nothing at fault about the philosophy of the wonderful new order there must be some of those “secret machinations” going on...internal enemies...good thing that barbed wire is still there sedition i do not believe there is any media source for unfiltered information...from fox news to the new york times editors and news producers keep close watch on information that might offend advertisers...this still does not keep criticism of public officials out of the news, even though that criticism is thoroughly partisan in nature, depending on the media source, and may not reflect reality in any real sense...still i can see that there would, of necessity, need to be a means to make the “news” more supportive of government policy and less able to critically analyze what is going on...confuse the polity with distortions about the raising and lowering of the chocolate ration and leave policy and policy decisions in the dark...section 2 of An Act for the Punishment of Certain Crimes Against the United States...a section of the alien and sedition act mandated, “ that if any persons shall write, print, utter, or publish, or shall cause or procure to be written, printed, uttered, or published..any false, scandalous, and malicious writings against the government of the United States, or either house of the Congress of the United States, or the President of the United States, with intent to defame said government, or either house of the said Congress, or the said President, or to bring them, or either of them into contempt or disrepute...then such person, being thereof convicted before any court of the United States having jurisdiction thereof, shall be punished by a fine not exceeding two thousand dollars, and by imprisonment not exceeding two years.”...an individual was brought to trial for saying he wished a cannonball would strike the president’s posterior...free speech died dead in 1798 and it seems ripe to do so again in 2025...”false”...i could accept that as libelous if proved...scandalous? what if true? and “malicious” seems to be altogether too subjective to be brought as evidence...in 1973 i may have said “fuck nixon”...i would probably not have flown a flag that said so yet I have seen “fuck biden” flags more than once...malicious seems to be the lexicon of political discourse in the maga era...wondering where the “fuck trump” flags are...so...wealth, religion, and racism coming together to attempt to impose viewpoints and rationalize actions through a false pose of populism, and willing to do so with legislation backed up by a biased supreme court...which will do its best to aid a full bore assault on the twenty-second amendment and institute “president for life”...all possible, not yet reality...at least not for a few months...and the maddening thing is i have no particular interest in seeing either of these self proclaimed leaders be elected...there is no positive choice here and i cannot find the lesser of two evils...either way this will not end well.

what has this accomplished?

well? what has it accomplished? does it illustrate donny as venal, corrupt, criminal, and amoral? probably, despite what his faithful say about it being a political exercise and not a legal one...then again, what else would they say? "he's guilty"? perhaps in private they would but he's their amoral felon and a public admission of guilt is imposible in light of the myth...so they will martyr him and use it to harden attitudes...i can see a number of groups that see trump as a vehicle to thier ends... republicans in congress...always rooting around for a fund-raising angle ( not that the whores on the other side of the aisle aren't greedy bastards...a whore is a whore and every politican in the country is a whore for votes an money ) sense an outraged base as an unmilked cash cow...white nationalists ( or racists in the non-cancel culture let's not wound anyone's feelings parlance ) would surely like to use the trumpist avowed intention to deport millions of "illegals" as a smoke screen for broader ethnic cleansing ( or genocide as they used to call it )...donny let them out from under the rock as "useful fools"...theocratic fundmantalists who want to impose thier beliefs on the great sinful multitudes, a multitude who find them a nuisance at best and, more often, self-righteous hypocrites hiding behind a bogus teleology, and take any sort of medical decison out of women's hands and keep us all on a moral path that leaves them in control...something like the authoritarian clavinists of mid-18th century scotland say...and then there's wealth which wants to expand the current national policy of debt creation until as much of the population as possible is reduced to debt penury and only able to service the interest on a principal that can never be paid off...capital is extractive and consequentialist ( i am working on a detailed description of a system i call extractive consequentialism )...it's what you have, not how you got it that matters and the narcissitic, amoral donny trump is a fine illustration of that...he's guilty of all that and more, however that does not matter...a conviction only highlights his convictions...and the campaign grinds on...blaming evryone but the responsible party...welcome to presidential politics...a choice between one dancing on the edge of dementia and an entitled thirteen year old with no self control who should be institutionalized for the greater good...the late empire is seizing up with entropy.

a redefiniton of belonging ( that whole "huddled masses" business was always a lie )

"...that is shall be lawful for the president of the united states at any time during the continuance of this act, to order all such aliens as he shall judge dangerous to the peace and safety of the united states, or shall have reasonable grounds to suspect are concerned in any treasonable or secret machinations against the government thereof to depart out of the territory of the united states...and if any alien so removed out of the united states by the president shall voluntarily return thereto, unless by permission of the president of the united states, such alien on conviction thereof, shall be imprisoned so long as, in the opinion of the president, the public safety may require."the alien and sedition act of 1798 section 1._________________________________an act aimed mostly at french and irish immigrants since they were both usually catholic and likely to support thomas jefferson and the democratic-republicans in the upcoming preisdential election this places the president ( namely john adams ) in a position of arbitrary power over who belonged and who did not ( "he shall judge"..."in the opinion of the president"...and define "reasonable grounds as well as explaining why it nullifies the precept of habeas corpus )...that this violates the constitution is obvious...in the "virginia resolution" james madison ( a "founder" central to the creation of the constitution who, presumably, knew what he meant as he helped to frame it ) said there was a need to "...protest against the palpable and alarming infractions of the constitution, in the two late cases of the 'alien and sedition acts' ( and we will be getting to the "sedition" part in another post )passed at the last session of congress, the first of which exercises a power no where delegated to the federal government, and which by uniting legislative and judicial powers to those of the executive, subverts the general principles of free government..."...one senses, depending on the outcome of the next presidential election...that there is a forthcoming redefinition of "belonging" since don trump maintians he intends to deport between 15 and 20 million "illegal aliens" and that he is prepared to utilize the military ( in his words "the national guard" ) and military bases to do so...some of his acolytes have suggested creating "detention camps" as an alternative and that phraseology is dangerously close to "concentration camp" as well as some of the phraseology don has used to describe the intended deportees as "poisoning the blood of our country" which is a step away from the term "vermin"...this may not be fascism however it is definitely unconstitutional ( at least in madison's vision of the document ) and authoritarian...and, to paraphrase kurt vonnegut, once that barbed wire goes up do you suppose it will ever come down? not while there are "internal enemies " ( and they will materialize...authoritarians need enemies...ask nixon ) who may, in a misguided and soft-hearted fashion, disagree with these measures...legislative sleight of hand has been used to before to rationalize an authoritarian president...everything old could be new again...we will be getting to how this may be construed as "sedition" in another post.

light?

"a light unto the nations" david ben-gurion___________________________ for the most part i try to be tolerant...that i fail in this in regard to politicians and those of wealth ( fungible originators of oppression ) proves the partiality of my tolerance...we all have biases and , like everyone else, i believe mine to be warranted...i may be mistaken...i can question myself and i can change how i view things...stasis is death...and even if i find politicians and those of wealth reprehensible i do not recall ever advocating violence against them...people have a right to live unmolested if they are not molesting others...to be tolerated for what they are and what they believe...only actions should be the basis for accountability...and humans act and react...often violently...and who is acting in self defense and who is spreading belief by the sword is a thorny question to resolve...infinitely regressible with no real first cause in sight...that the proto-israelis were willing to engage in terrorism ( we can start with the king david hotel bombing and go from there ) would likely be disputed ( possibly violently ) by some...again, a thorny question, given the experience of the european jews in the past century...what i am willing to say about the current situation in the middle east is that british imperial thinking is another central issue in the israeli-palestinian conflict and, despite the moral high ground staked out by the israelis and the hegemons here in the late empire, the israelis ( much like the u.s. military viz. viet nam ) would seem to have learned all the worng lessons from the above mentioned experiences of european jewry...there is no moral high ground here for anyone and universities suppressing freedom of speech when that speech ( and those protests ) substantively threaten to undermine the hegemons' worldview here in this country is not much of anything new ( viet nam again )...some light we have shining here

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 )

the stench of yet another presidential year

“…the minority must surrender up their judgement and will to majority…private opinion must give way to public judgement…he must be a vain, conceited individual who can think himself capable as to judge of what is necessary for the support of government s those whom the nation has chosen & entrusted for that very purpose…it is the duty of the citizen to submit to it ( the majority ); and to give up his private sentiments to the public will…the false patriot is the man who willfully misrepresents his government ,and the conduct of its officers, or, without just cause, creates distrust and suspicion of the legislature, or the executive, or of the principle officers of the government, and openly opposes, or secretly foments and encourages opposition to the execution of the laws.” Supreme court justice Samuel Chase in a charge sheet to the grand jury investigating Thomas Cooper, editor of the Sunbury and Northumberland gazette for violation of the alien and sedition act of 1798 on 12 April 1800____________ Of course all this federalist flummery in favor of majority rule turned to abhorrence of mob rule when Jefferson won the 1800 election and set a president for whining political losers that has confused the electoral process since and has surely been in evidence over the last few years…if not since 2000…one can easily question the “public will”…stop and ponder on some of the people you know, and group-think ( politicians love a mass rally ) and in-group bias can easily be manipulated by a cadre of debased and lying political whores…no one is objective so setting an objective benchmark for political behavior has always been a problem…pragmatic naturalism ( have a shufti at pragmatism by William James, my copy is only 134 pages long ) is the quintessential American philosophy and that situational ethic says whatever works is good…so whatever it takes to win is ethical…ends justify means…and in the end Chase’s vaunted “public will” is secondary at best…whomever manipulates it most efficiently is the winner…buckle up people, things are getting more interesting by the minute.