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.