CLEANSING

 Seems I’m now the family patriarch. In a dream last night, someone asked me to form a short message of hope for the younger set in these troubled times. In the dream, I said, “What I offer is this: When I was born, one of the wickedest governments ever to sour the earth had turned my ancestral homeland into a cesspool of hate, murder, and carnage. In my lifetime, one lifetime, mind you, Germany transformed itself from a fanatical abscess on the body of humanity to a peaceful and prosperous country worthy of emulation. In our country, we now face primal deterioration. Our America is strong. We can learn from history and cleanse our nest. Let’s do so, and let’s not take an entire lifetime."

DEFEAT FASCSIM

 Journal of a Left-Wing Radical: No confirms yesterday.

That’s a full week in which we added no victims to HC’s imaginary pizza parlor basement. Oh well. We did win the “Battle of the obstinate tractor seat” on B's tractor. The damned thing wouldn't slide up and down and she couldn't push the clutch all the way in.

It was our third day in which to work on it to no avail

In this post-factual age, we could have used the MAGA Technique, named after the president who hates me. That would be simply to say, “It works,” and "voilà." Fox news would have proclaimed that it worked better than any tractor seat had ever worked in history. But we would have had to strap clogs to her feat. She said, “No.”

She didn’t actually say it that way, so we persisted until victory. All it took was a bit of extra profanity, a lot of WD 40, and some muscle power.

I plan to return to the path of treachery today. Gonna create some sawdust making Christmas presents. Look out you decent people. I’m coming for you.

REASON

 Binary arguments plague us these days. These are situations which offer only two opposing sides or choices, often implying that if one is true, the other must be false. A form of "either/or" thinking, it is sometimes considered a logical fallacy because it may ignore the possibility of more nuanced or complex realities.

If I am a MAGA, I can’t say that I don’t believe in abortions, but health care choices should be determined by a woman and her physician, making abortions safe and rare.

If I am a far-left progressive, I can’t say that gender dysphoria is a medical phenomenon affecting less than one percent of the population who should be loved and cared for, but that some gender-selection advocates have pushed the extremes of thought to uncomfortable levels.

If I am a MAGA, I can’t say that regulations stifle the economy, but some are necessary to protect the health, safety, and welfare of the general population.

If I am a far left progressive, I can’t say that protection of the welfare is essential, but that America has become over-regulated when we fine companies for not placing "Do not stand." warnings on the top of stepladders.

We must, as in some Biblical admonition, choose whom we will serve and how we will serve them, never in the lukewarm, or rational, middle, but hot or cold.

 Increasingly, we don’t seek to serve the vast general public.

Increasingly, we avoid reason to guide our thinking.

Increasingly, we approach life from the extremes of thought.

That’s how we have ended up where we are.

DEFEAT FASCISM

When you think about it, the extreme right-wing fundamentalist evangelicals may be headed into a box canyon, a positive sign in the long term. It's like this:

The rise of the MAGA cult has benefited in large part from the support of the fundamentalists. How did this happen?

From the book THE KINGDOM, THE POWER, AND THE GLORY by Tim Alberta, we learn that they blossomed due to first their religion, then from fear, and finally from hatred. It didn’t arrive through study and introspection. The willing derived it by being spoon-fed rations of fear. Evil influencers preyed on minds troubled by primal fears that their lives were not progressing as they had hoped. Their belief cohort might not sustain hegemony. Dread of becoming a minority gnawed at their equilibrium.   A huge crowd of anxious prospects awaited the new alter call.

Giving them the doubt that many feel moved by their religious fervor, how did they move from the Sermon on the Mount to support the attacking of the most cherished citadel in secular America, the United States Capitol building in Washington D.C? How did they come to support a presidential candidate marked chiefly as being totally devoid of decency or morality?

Seems the next step was fear, fear that some dark force was forcing Christians to abandon their most cherished beliefs. Some were not long held. Abortion, for example, did not become a politically charged issue in the United States until the 1970s and 1980s, primarily due to the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision. Someone saw it as wedge issue to be exploited, despite it's not being mentioned in the New Testament and only by enhancement of vague passages in the old, such as Psalm 139:13-16, which describes God's presence in the womb, suggesting to some the sacredness of life from conception.

From there it became a foundational “fear stone” in the movement of fundamentalism from religion to politics.

Gun control formed another support. Although if allowed, some Americans would vote to rescind the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, there has never been a serious suggestion by any politician or person of power. It has become, nonetheless, an issued laced with almost rabid vitriol.

Then came sexual orientation and those who are not avowed heterosexuals.

Next, the “least of those among us,” demeaned as non-producers.

Then came immigrants forced to leave their homes due to warfare among cartels battling for supremacy in meeting the insatiable demand for drugs by Americans.

Then they moved to honest, decent Americans, not excluding Jimmy Carter, Anthony Fauci, Nancy Pelosi, and Barack Obama and family, not to mention Joe Biden.

Then anyone who spoke on behalf of supporting the planet.

Then all Democrats and anyone labelled a "liberal." They don't ascribe the word to a supporter of policies that are socially progressive and promote social welfare. They refer to those who dare provide love and grace to "the least of those among us."

The fear and hate didn’t arise from a study of scripture, it came from pulpits, first for monetary reward and then for political power, usually for both. Far too many ministers found, that for personal reasons, the rewards of fear and hate far outweighed the rewards of love and grace.

Each year demands a new set of monsters bent—according to right-wing evangelist ministers, Fox News, and political operatives—on taking away evangelicals' freedom to practice their religion. Each step moves the group of monster/victims closer to average Americans. This includes our friends and neighbors, particularly mainline Christians who still spread the love of Jesus and don't mix it with politics. All of us are in danger. After all, the hate mongers must have new fuel with which to replenish their demand for fear.

In short, they will run out of sujets de haine, subjects of hatred.

Where can they turn, then, but to themselves? Rember the Nightof the Long Knives?

DEFEAT FASCISM

 It becomes more apparent each day that traditional political efforts won’t work against the MAGA dictatorship. It owns the congress, the courts, the presidency, and is working on the military and the media. There is no way that those in power will permit another election in a form consistent with Democracy. The January 6 thugs have formed a fledgling “brownshirt squad” and are actively recruiting members.

What is left? Perhaps what Karl von Clausewitz called “friction.” In Clausewitz's "On War", friction is defined as “the obstacles and difficulties that arise in war, making it more complex and challenging than a simple plan on paper. It's the force that makes "the apparently easy so difficult".

In other words, slow them down, make each step more difficult than the last, and wear them out.

How?

Let us put our heads together. What has worked so far? The efforts of brave lawyers for one thing. Even though they face a 6-3 negative majority in SCOTUS in significant cases, the efforts of getting cases there must be taking a toll. Also, there is the possibility that one or more of the MAGA judges will have what I call a “Thomas Beckett Moment” and shift to the side of righteousness. Our contributions will help.

Let us think more on this strategy. Comments?

DEFEAT FASCISM

Sometimes fiction is more realistic than reality. Take the current dictatorship in America. Compare it to a fictional work, the 1971 Woody Allen film Bananas. In this spoof of the Cuban revolution, the rebel leader of the fictional country of San Marcos, Esposito, seems admirable when compared with the dictator Vargas.

Then the rebels win and Exposito becomes the new dictator. In a surprise development, power has driven the leader mad. He announces that he is the ruler of San Marcos, and orders that the country's official language will be Swedish and that citizens must now change their underwear every half hour, wearing it outside their clothing so that it can easily be checked.

This wasn’t foreseen and leads to many plot escapades.

Let’s look now at two actual dictatorships during the last century. They announced their plans early, openly, and proudly, the first in Mein Kampf and the second in Project 2025. Each laid out clear plans for the resulting victory to their adherents.

Whereas the change in the film’s protagonist was a complete surprise. The results of the two real cases simply appeared as fulfillment of plans and prophecy. Their actions surprise no discerning citizen.

Can we note differences? Yes. Even the brilliant imagination of Woody Allen couldn’t have utilized the plot line of America’s dictatorship. The actions of our dictator reside far outside the boundaries of what one would imagine the inhabitants of a modern democracy would accept, even an imaginary one.

In other words, the idiocies currently flowing from our current seat of power defy logic to the point that they wouldn’t lend themselves to believable fiction such as the plot of a Woody Allen film.

Also, they just aren’t very funny. Maybe if the president grew a beard.

DEFEAT FASCISM

 The closest analogy I can think of for America's current predicament is my experience in military survival training. In a training exercise in a California desert, we were starved for four days and then sent to a mock prison camp. Enemy forces had "captured" us and held complete power. They owned the prison, the guards, the weapons, and all communication. What could we do?

"Resist," our trainers had told us. Resist and cause them effort in every movement. Wear them out and wait for any opportunity. Tell them nothing. Offer them nothing. Resist every command. Make nothing easy or simple for them.

My first encounter came when a burly guard approached me as I was standing almost naked by a large pile of tree limbs and brush gathered by former prisoners. He barked. I resisted. He knocked me over into the pile of limbs.

Resistance was a bit harder after that, but I tried.

Let us all try now. They own everything: the presidency, the legislature, and the supreme court. They will soon own the military if unchecked. Times will get harder. Things will get worse. It will not end well unless we check them with scarce resources. It will be difficult. They flaunt their power as if they have won. "Look what we can do," they jeer.

Yes. They own everything.

They think so. But they don't own our souls.

DEFEAT FASCISM

 It dawned on me this morning, the 77,302,580 didn’t make a vote, they took an oath. It wasn’t like the oath I took to protect the United States and its Constitution. It was an oath to follow a single man, Donald J. Trump.

How do votes and oaths differ?

A vote is a formal indication of a choice between two or more candidates or courses of action, expressed typically through a ballot or a show of hands or by voice.

An oath is a public pledge that a person will perform some action or duty, generally with the promise of doing so truthfully. An oath can also be used as a way of promising oneself to support a cause or an entity.

It came to me while walking with my dog this morning. We like to listen to audio books as we walk and this day’s fare was “The Last 100 Days” by John Toland, a detailed recounting of the end of WWII in Europe.

I was struck by the number of high-ranking German officers who would not surrender in the face of overwhelming odds, a surrender that would have save thousands of lives and avoided the destruction of many German cities. As their armies collapsed, generals prolonged the carnage with, “I have taken an oath to the Fuhrer never to surrender.”

I was struck by the fact that, even after Himmler told the concentration camp guards to flee and save themselves, many chose, instead, to march their prisoners until they died of fatigue or starvation.

I was struck by the thousands of suicides by those who couldn’t live in a world without Hitler, and the horrific insanity of Josehp Goebbels and his wife Magda who took their six precious children with them into death by poisoning them.

Then while walking through a quiet city park, a cold thread of abject terror ran down my spine.

This isn’t going to end well.

DEFEAT FASCISM

 While I can't say for sure what caused this insanity in other states, in mine it was the election of Barack Obama as president of the United States of America. Twice. It lulled many of us into the false assumption that America had turned a final corner leading to a righteous state.

It made me remember when I had seen witnessed an African American man allowed to sit in a movie theater in my state, in a spot chose by himself, for the first time in my life.

It made me remember when I had seen an African American family served in a restaurant in my state for the first time in my life.

It made me remember when I had seen an African American sit on a city council in my state for the first time in my life.

Now an African American and his family occupied the White House. I thought we had arrived.

Unfortunately, we hadn't. What happened next was reminiscent of the old science fiction films of the 1950s. You know, the ones in which nuclear testing had awakened some prehistoric monster who emerged full-grown from the bowels of the earth to wreak destruction. Only this time it was the monster of bigotry, prejudice, racism, and xenophobia that slithered out quietly then, emboldened, transmogrified into the monster of all monsters.

Worse still, whereas in the old movies brave people fought and destroyed the monster. (Remember: "It just might work?") This time evil people said, "We can train this monster to do our bidding." It was easy. All it took was a reshowing of "Gone With the Wind" and some jokes about watermelon patches on the White House lawn. Americans do love their myths.

So here we are, ruled by a madman and an army of monsters. Of course not all states have joined the horde.

Just enough. 

DEFEAT FASCISM

 The term “chilling effect” refers to the power of evil to influence its aims indirectly, without the need to expend resources. It is much like a dark cloud settling over America now. Honest, conscientious government workers, military leaders, journalists, and even judges are feeling its weight.

A government worker presenting facts that contradict or suggest analysis of a MAGA edict face the loss of their job and employment future.

A person who has chosen a career serving in America’s armed forces must exhibit allegiance not the oath sworn but to the goals of a fascist regime, many goals of which aim toward personal enrichment and not national security.

A journalist presenting facts contrary to party edicts faces being shut out of access to the workings of our country.

Judges making decisions based on the rule of law are seeing their families threatened with public assault through social media and faux-news services.

The long-term result? Resistance can die from lack of will without the use of much direct force, just a chilling cloud that says, “Do the right thing and you are finished.”

 

DEFEAT FASCISM

 Thoughts on tipping points. As it stands now, the orders to hate center on a relatively small cadre of usual suspects: the different, the disabled, people of color, librarians, and teachers. At some point, the hate-field will grow, and continue to grow. The movement will reach a tipping point.

When the tipping point is reached, the impacts of fascism will spread to the hitherto unmolested. Those who voted to install the fascism will begin to feel its wrath. The surprise on a supporter’s face will resemble that of a famous painting.

Will this create resistance? Perhaps.

Will this resistance overcome the worst impulses of those in power?

Not if the experience of Germany in the late 1930s is any guide, and history is sometimes our most reliable guide.

DEFEAT FASCISM: READ REBUKE RESIST

 When I was eleven years old, a beloved English teacher suggested I read “Jane Eyre.” When I said that I didn’t like books written by women, she told me that I was “too smart to be prejudiced.”

I looked up the word and contemplated it. I allowed it to change my path in life, a journey that led me from Brontë to Zora Neale Hurston and Sylvia Plath, among so many others, not to even mention James Baldwin.

I think I wasn’t as prejudiced as I was badly programmed.

Now, I’m afraid that we are losing the ability to see progressions in language, vis-à-vis, the journey from unlearned, to badly influenced, to prejudiced, to ethnocentric, to xenophobic, to bigoted, to paranoid, and, finally, to racist.

The labeling of any nuanced action as the unassailable extremity of racism seems, at least to me, to pass over so many lesser manifestations that might possibly be treatable via gentle teaching, thus halting a journey that is bound to end badly. There should be a hole in the prison wall of distrust through which one could escape ere hatred takes hold.

Failure may doom us as a society if we force the young to choose poorly and permanently, via the placing of labels. We begin life so full of wonder. What happens along way?

DEFEAT FASCISAM: READ REBUKE RESIST

 Isn't it odd that the MAGAs never offer a precise date at which America was so great? You know, the time they want to return to.

Seems that they indicate somewhere in the 1950s. Or was it in 1981 when the last recorded lynching took place in America, an affair in the MAGA state of Alabama.

Nah, I don't think MAGAs, particularly in my state, would connote greatness with the end of lynchings.

Should we eliminate the years from 1955 to 1975. That's when young men were being forced to go to war, many, including me, against their will. But wait, that didn't affect most of them, particularly the leaders. So maybe.

Or 1963 when Lee Harvey Oswald killed President John F. Kennedy? Nah, a step in the right direction, but that brought in LBJ and passage of the Civil Rights Act.

I guess it was the Reagan years when we had a stock market crash, increased deficits, and felonious activities emerging from the White House.

At any rate, do they not realize that whatever date they choose, the very safeguards that they are now bent on destroying were then in place?

Wait. Do they mean the 1850s?

EPIPHANY OF THE DAY

 CITIES

Not everyone is as fortunate as I to have worked with our state’s cities for over a half century. I have loved the hum and vibrance of a city since I can remember. I've lived in cities as famous as San Franscisco, as diverse as Little Rock, and small as our current location that serves as "the front porch of the Arkansas Delta."

I've never lost the wonder at the hard work it takes to make a city function as a place for its residents. A place where we can turn a faucet and receive clean water. A place where we can turn a handle to remove wastewater. A place where we can punch a button and receive police or fire protection. A place where we can move effortlessly from location to location. A place where the best of people work to make this all happen. I'm proud of every moment I've spent trying to help.

 It has been a rollercoaster of a ride. I’ve seen highs such as the opening of a new plant that will provide sanitary drinking water to a community. I’ve felt heartbreak when a governing body had to choose between cutting funds for the police, fire, or animal control. But through it all I’ve seen the finest of those among us strive, without rest, to create miracles of operations that allow us to rest “with a full stomach in a warm room.”

That is why I find a political party’s vicious attack on the city and citizens of Springfield, Ohio so unconscionably vulgar and un-American. This is not politics. It is the planting of the seeds of genocide. Those supporting it may someday have to stand in a line being forced to view the eventual results. Let us all hope it never comes that.

Germans Forced To Visit Camps

c

EPIPHANY OF THE DAY

 MORALITY

After reading Steven Pinker’s The Blank Slate, and related works, I’m coming to the understanding that what we view as moral standards are not based on spirituality or philosophical thought. Rather, they are based on some 200,000 years of reciprocal agreements that help society avoid some of the destructive tendencies created by evolutionary psychology. This includes particularly those tendencies emerging from the instincts to protect the tribe, or group, against other tribes or groups.

This was a hard intellectual pill for me to swallow.

But it explains a lot of things, particularly those concerning how America has become so divided in recent years.

There would seem to be nothing to be gained by such divisiveness as we currently experience other than triggers within our genomes that spark when the tribe is threatened. In the field of mechanics, there are systems that operate contrary to established laws of physics. For example, a current should flow between two identical capacitators. Therefore, when energized the system runs smoothly. In reality, no two capacitators or totally identical, so this anomaly is used to start and stop the system.

Our genomic map has currents that should flow except that primordial triggers can activate when perceived danger occurs.

We don’t regress as much as we revert to systems that meet our archaic mechanisms.

It goes a long way in explaining the Donald Trump syndrome.

EPIPHANY OF THE DAY

 RESEARCH

Sometimes I read Harper’s Index and dream that if I happed to be younger, smarter, and more educated, I would consider my own topics, such as:

The percentage of the terrorists who attacked the United States Capitol on January 6, 2021 who were card-carrying drag queens.

The ratio of women who said, in 2016, that they didn’t like Hillary Clinton but now say they analyze their voting decisions more carefully.

The percentage of evangelicals who affirm reading the Book of Numbers in its entirety and feel concern for the Midianites.

Percentage of affirmed MAGA voters who voted against Bill Clinton only because of his sexual misconduct.

Percentage of voters who feel multiple divorces is not a concern of Christians in selecting a president.

Who believe that the sexual orientation of married couples is.

Number of Trump supporters now in prison who worked as librarians.

Percentage of Americans who believe Lyndon Johnson personally fired the shots that killed John F. Kennedy.

Percentage of American registered voters who can name the U.S. Presidents in order since Herbert Hoover.

Percentage who can name the last ten Grammy winners for female vocalist of the year.

Percentage of mass murderers in the U.S. who were transgender.

Percentage of Americans who believe that the percentage of Americans serving in the military is greater than 25 percent.

EPIPHANY OF THE DAY

 DECISIONS

The most interesting thought this week derives from a post I saw about rational thinking. It dawns on me late in life, that the following is true:

If a person finds themselves in a situation because of decisions based on emotion, not rational thinking, they will not extricate themselves from that situation through decisions based on rational thinking, and not emotion.

EPIPHANY OF THE DAY

 PROBLEMS

From Westmoreland, the General Who Lost Vietnam by Lewis Sorely: In 1967, word came to General Westmoreland that those in Washington had become increasingly concerned that, despite the buildup in troops and equipment in Vietnam, the enemy was increasingly gaining the initiative. Westmoreland responded to the problem by having his staff “develop new definitions, criteria, formats, and procedures relative to the reporting of enemy activity which could be used to assess effectively significant trends in the organized enemy combat initiative.” No worry.

They had redefined the problem right out of existence.

I think that idea caught on. I see people trusting the future of their children and grandchildren to those who gloat victoriously as they apply what they think is the right solution to the wrong problem.

 Lived in San Francisco back in the day. Enjoyed life there, particularly the shows in North Beach put on by the drag queens. The Draft Board interrupted my carefree life. Wound up on a bunker at the edge of the jungle hoping I wouldn’t get shot that night. Did exercises to stay awake. One was to make a mental list of people in my life who had done me wrong and another of those who had done me “solids.”

The drag queens never made the first list, but a lot of politicians and self-proclaimed Christians did. Funny how the people on that list never went away but are still around in the same form with different faces, most of them snarling.

TODAY'S EPIPHANY

 LAWYERS

 I’ve always gotten on well with attorneys. I admire them for their logic and willingness to see that all, not just the favored, receive a fair trial. Do some push the limits? Sure. But some physicians prescribe antibiotics for viruses. Some engineers designed the crematoria at Auschwitz. Heck, some urban planners even promote bike paths when kids are starving in the Mississippi River Delta.

Oh, and part of my feelings for attorneys are mercenary. They always made sure I got paid for expert testimony. Mostly my feelings stem from admiration for their knowledge. I might have followed the law, but I thought all attorneys had to do what Perry Mason did. That image shied me away. The thought of standing and speaking in public was more terrifying to me than thoughts of snakes, vampires, sci-fi monsters, or meeting a Catholic nun in the dark.

One of my best friends is an attorney. We jogged many a morning together and shared thoughts. He is a Harvard Law School grad, so unlike the venom-spewing Ted Cruz or Tom Cotton that they might be from different planets. I learned logic, dedication to the law, and concepts of the advocacy system of jurisprudence from him.

Imagine then, my dismay at the condition of the current United States Supreme Court. I always imagined it as a pinnacle of dedication, Knowledge, fairness, and legal righteousness. Along came the current majority.  Now I feel as I might have, as a youth, to find that Roy Rogers, Gene Autry, Red Ryder, Tex Ritter, Lash Larue, and Hopalong Cassidy, were really Nazi spies.

TODAY'S EPIPHANY

 CHOICES

It’s difficult to choose one side unconditionally these days. I’ve always leaned left, but don’t always subscribe to the silliness. Yes, no offense, but there are some silly things going on ‘die äußerste Linke,” way over yonder. This “pronoun crap” in my opinion, is silly. This “I don’t feel safe hearing an opinion I disagree with” is silly. This stopping traffic while innocent people are trying to get to work, to the hospital, or home to their children is beyond silly.

Every sports coach knows that one never makes a statement that the opposing coach will tack to the locker room walls to motivate players. Think how many votes Donald Trump received just from “defund the police.”

But, to allegorize something Sigmund Freud probably never said but got stuck with, “Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.”

Silliness is just silliness. Unproductive actions are just unproductive actions. Extreme “wokeism” is just extreme wokeism. People don't normally die from them.

Making a 12-year-old girl give birth to a rapist’s sperm residue is more than silliness.

Attacking the police guarding the United State Capitol is more than just silliness.

Defunding programs that feed the poor is more than just silliness.

Persecuting someone because of their genetic wiring for sex is more than just silliness.

Decisions stem from points along a spectrum of reality. At one end are rainbow flags. At the other are crematorium ovens.