Quoth the Raving

18th Century: Without continual growth and progress, such words as improvement, achievement and success have no meaning.

BenFranklin

21st Century: Without improvement, achievement and success, such words as continual growth and progress have no meaning.

Zero Gravitas

Can a Goy be 'Goldstoned'?

Probably not, but I've received a touch of it .

The treatment Judge Richard Goldstone received since the release of his committee report on possible IDF atrocities during the 2009-2010 "Cast Lead" Gaza operation was to the nth degree harsher than mine, but even a small dose of hateful tribalism is an attention getter .

"The UN commission which appointed him to head the inquiry into the allegations of war crimes committed during the operation was acting on a seemingly logical but actually foolish calculation. Appointing to the job a good Jew, and an avowed Zionist to boot, would disarm, it was thought, any allegation of anti-Israeli bias."...Uri Avnery, Israeli writer and peace activist with Gush Shalom

Anti-Semitism and inhumanity are both evil and despicable regardless of source. As is, to my mind, militant boosterism of any and all actions of a favorite 'cause' no matter how inhumane and biased it may have become. This is particularly so when truth and civility are among it's victims.

Uri Avnery: "The full fury of the Jewish ghetto against traitors from its midst was turned on him. Jews objected to his attending his grandson’s Bar Mitzvah. His friends turned away from him, He was ostracized by all the people he valued."

To be sure, I have not been shunned by my friends nor ostracized as Judge Goldstone was for his efforts. But then I have not recanted, nor confessed I was wrong either. We all must answer for our actions or lack there of; so be it. Goldstone apparently searched his soul and changed his mind. I have not.

For me it was a comment I posted on Slate defending Christopher Hitchens from a vicious attack by Masada 2000 that prompted my banishment. The post in question went up, as all my previous posts had, stayed for several hours...then vanished. Assuming a tech glitch, I reposted...up it went; then soon gone. So it went. Since then nothing I submit ever appears. Alas and alackaday.

As a result of criticism aimed at the Masada 2000 organization, http://www.masada2000.org/list-A.html, the most virulent anti-semitic organization since Herr Doctor Joseph Goebbels went out of business, all of my postings to Slate have subsequently been barred.

If you are not familiar with this, Masada 2000, screed, be warned. Their second lede reads:

'Entering a Toxic Waste Zone'

and so it is. In spades.

The situation all through the Levant will fester and boil, more people will die and the distress will continue indefinitely until...and only until, concerned Americans have the courage to risk all wrath and avow, enough is enough and order it... resolved. Look for yourself. View that wretched Masada 2000 site again, or if you have not already done so, do so now; then declare, finally, that things have gone too far. It must begin in America; the Middle East is certifiably bonkers at this point. Hopefully, a trace of sanity can still be found here. Can it?

"Obama is a Hottie With a Smoking Little Body"

When searching for the earliest incarnation of Barack Obama, Franklin Pierce 14th president of the United States, came closest.

wikipedia

Please note that General Pierce is the hottest U.S. president of yore. Lauren Titus

Beach+Bodies

Obama is "A Hottie with a Smoking Little Body". Luann Haley

However, we shouldn't overlook the competition.

ABC News

That Vladimir Putin is one tough guy. He hunts! He builds fires! He captains his boat through river rapids! He rides his noble steed shirtless! Alexander Marquardt

Vladimir Putin is the most popular leader in the world today. Mike Whitney

Enough wanderings abroad! Back to the homefires. Every incoming president inherits from a predecessor. Franklin Pierce and Barack Obama followed two of the easiest acts in the Presidential pantheon...Milliard Fillmore and George W. Bush!

In Franklin Pierce's case, this didn't seem to help much!

Philip B. Kunhardt and Peter W. Kunhardt ... wrote in The American President that Pierce was "a good man who didn't understand his own shortcomings. ... He was one of the most popular men in New Hampshire, polite and thoughtful, easy and good at the political game, charming and fine and handsome. However, he has been criticized as timid and unable to cope with a changing America."

Nor did it help Barack Obama who mumbled:

Change will not come if we wait for some other person or some other time. We are the ones we've been waiting for. We are the change that we seek.
Barack Obama


Very little in the following account is unique to Franklin Pierce's presidency:

"The policy of my Administration," said the new president, "will not be deterred by any timid forebodings of evil from expansion. Indeed, it is not to be disguised that our attitude as a nation and our position on the globe render the acquisition of certain possessions not within our jurisdiction eminently important for our protection". wikipedia

After 150 years we are still prowling about the planet looking after certain possessions and seeking protection:

"As we consider the road that unfolds before us, we remember with humble gratitude those brave Americans who, at this very hour, patrol far-off deserts and distant mountains." Obama Inaugural address

"Pierce's affable personality and lack of strongly held positions helped him prevail over (Winfield) Scott, (also a popular war hero)... reducing the campaign to a contest between the personalities of the two candidates." wikipedia.

"Barack Obama's popularity over John McCain is due mainly to his congenial personality, Americans saw the 46-year-old senator as likable and inspirational, and believed he could understand and relate to problems faced by the average person." The Jakarta Post

"Having lost public confidence, Pierce failed to receive the nomination by his party for a second term. Pierce's hiring of a full-time bodyguard - the first president to do so -, is testament to his ruined reputation". wikipedia

We'll leave to history the saga of Obama's bid for a second term. At any rate, the Secret Service will do at no cost that which the unfortunate Pierce had to provide himself.

"As has so frequently been the case throughout his presidency, it seems Obama has been torn between an ideological commitment on the one hand and his perceived practical responsibilities on the other".
Kier Willett Faster Times

It has been put about recently, by otherwise astute observers, that apparently when Barack Obama took office he was told in no uncertain terms that :

. the economy was so fragile, so close to self-destruction, that anything drastic he might attempt was sure to bring it all down.

. any action to restrict, hinder or diminish the operation of the Forever War establishment was verboten.

. establishmentarians run the show in a pinch, and not the Executive.

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An incoming US President who does not immediately resign his office after having received eyes-only briefings of what's really going on is hopelessly co-opted or delusional. ibid

Kansas Isn't in Kansas Any More

..."I expect what we're looking at is going to be much more serious than any past crisis, partly because America has already evaporated, like the morning haze on a hot summer's day. You're not in Kansas anymore. Kansas isn't in Kansas any more." Doug Casey

After the morning haze cleared all that remains where America once spread from sea to sea was a lengthy farewell note that ended with a plea to "forward my damage deposit c/o General Delivery/Second World". This could very well be a temporary forwarding address for if the mortgage is ever called in, who knows where the mail will go?

And it's so ironic to think the whole thing started with soap; well actually, the selling of soap. But not just peddling the stuff the old fashioned way, oh no, hawking soap became a new art form! Not exactly fine art but fine enough to conquer the world in a century. I wonder if any of those old 20th century advertising pioneers every dreamed their new offspring had such latent power?

Unlike Professor Oppenheimer in the desert after the first a-blast muttering we were like "Shiva, destroyer of worlds"; surely nobody at Batten, Barton, Durstine and Osborn and the other pioneer ad mavens had an inkling they would really destroy a world. If it had all stopped with pushing soap it would have been OK but the technique was too good. The temptation to sell ideas and ideology in the same way as soap was very compelling to other players. Players with agendas that most often favored a few at the expense of all others. It turned out to be so effective over generations that millions have seemingly been rendered incapable of independent thought or action by this method.

We're nearing the anniversary of the day March 15, 1891 when George Batton launched the George Batten Company in New York. Other pioneering icons contributed their bit, of course. Such stalwarts as Young & Rubicam and Lord &Thomas added to it, the technique, but BBD&O was supreme. Slowly it built up: first, just print, with billboards and later movie screens added to it; the advent of radio caught the wave nationally and softened us up for that killer of independent thought...TV. Now the web?; could go either way. Lots of potential for redressing our zombification but corporate at the core and therefore subject to government whimsy and worse. Alas, no saving grace there.

So two hundred years after the founding, most of the ideas and tenets that made our nation unique in the world have been discarded or co-opted. We thrash about aimlessly and begin to resemble other former republics as they drifted into despotism. We look about frantically for something which doesn't exist anymore and we have no clue as to how it all slid away. There seems to be no one still capable of shouting, STOP!, THINK!, what are we doing and why are we doing what we do? Why do we have sinister things happening all around the world that we don't approve of and that we didn't authorize?

Terrible things are happening by default every day, at home and abroad, and no one is in charge. There is only motion and noise but no focused action to reverse any of it. Every day, in every way it slides away and we appear powerless to retrieve that which has been lost.

You're not in the USA any more. The USA is not in the USA any more.

Becoming Over Being. Becoming Over Being. Om! (repeat)

America's Mantra (with obeisance): Becoming Over Being. Becoming Over Being. Becoming Over Being. Om!

This is the American shibboleth that proscribes the reality of here and now as never sufficient unto itself. Always the future; seldom the present, never ever,right now. And accordingly we invariably equate our becoming to the elixer, the grail, the greener-grass promise of growth. Perpetual growth, as in the state of forever growing but never being quite being grown(up?).

Other cultures, it is true, predicate the future in terms suggestive of our idea of growth but we seem to have a lot more invested in the very essence of growth. Wall Street and it's coterie of talking heads use the word as a verb, a noun, an adjective, almost as benediction. As does official Washington. No president would consider a State of the Union address without growth this, growth that and then more of the same. Nor should we expect any absence of this utterance to go unnoticed. Markets would surely crash, panic and woe would abound; we'd have an unknown future to behold without the soothing balm of growth.

Maybe it's in our genes; our very RNA as Americans. A look at the past reminds one why 'Go West Young Man', Eminent Domain and 'Westward Ho'! are so us. Always a new place to go if the old place grows stale or the soil goes sour or if the sheriff proves troublesome without realizing a pathology, perhaps fugue, is manifesting itself. These frontier behaviors of ours may well be ancestor to our contemporary mania for unlimited growth and our low esteem for present reality.

Other, older, more settled cultures don't exhibit this pathology, but instead have a provincial predisposition to be suspicious of all beyond the shire or county of residence. In fact, in our insistence on modernity and progress we unwittingly reveal our own nature as "provincials" in that we also fail to look beyond the moment. The great bastion of our provincialism is our Mecca, the Big Apple, Gotham,a.k.a. New York City. Its minions regard the five boros as the known world and Manhattan Island from the Nineties to the Battery as the shining City on the Hill. "Beyond this place, there be dragons!".

Unfortunately, our homely provincialism casts a worldwide shadow. Cloistered in their towers monkish growth mongers in finance and academe cobble-together and promulgate a world that is always in the act of becoming and never just is. Sort of ironic that United Nations Headquarters was established in such a village.
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Unlimited growth makes perfect sense if you are a metastasizing cancer cell but not for a viable nation. ibid

Technology: The Last Refuge of Scoundrels

Patriotism, has long been, as Samuel Johnson notably opined, the traditional last refuge of scoundrels. Nowadays, a new refuge for the breed has become extremely popular: Technology.
Having about exhausted the hectoring effect of the old standby, **patriotism**, this new kid has been brought up from the minors and groomed for stardom.

And what a brilliant choice it has turned out to be! Look here, doesn't everybody just love technology; Bigscreen,wideangled,megapixel,supersized,hybrid,jetpropelled,catscanned and defibrillated? Give us more of it! And they will; for a price. And the price may well be dehumanization, not bargained for but hidden in the fine print.

The latest candidate for the Bollix Prize in desperation technology is in itself a clone of a bad idea. This tidbit describes the twisted grandfather of today's horror show. Note:

"...as the war went on the Germans put more and more faith in technology, launching rocket bombs at a time when they could serve no purpose but the creation of a spirit of vengeance, illustrating how blind to total reality one may become...
Ideas Have Consequences by Richard M. Weaver










wikipedia
Nazi Buzz Bomb

Seven decades later another desperate state reaches for a technology fix that will only serve to guarantee undying animosity throughout a strategically sensitive region.













Drone Plane
wikipedia
Much as the Nazis did earlier, we station civilians in remote outposts who attack targets by guess, hunch or rumor and are as likely to kill innocents as not. Monitoring unmanned drone planes by remote control removes the operator from reality and responsibility. Reports come to us from former bomber pilots expressing remorse over the impersonal aspect of their efforts in regard to civilian casualties. At least these airmen were usually in harms way during the sorties they flew. Not so our minions in air-conditioned comfort in Las Vegas, blithely blasting whole families to oblivion, concerned mainly with promotions, chicks and off duty casino play.









Operative Unit

military.com

As the cost of our overseas adventures increases dramatically, pressure also increases to get whatever new technology is available that will give the best return for the (borrowed?) money. As a result our guys begin to resemble Star Wars Troopers and present about as much of the human aspect as their cinematic predecessors.

Alas, the enemy they encounter operates at about as low-tech level as is humanly possible, and is exceedingly hard to detect despite the GeeWhiz gadgets abounding. I mean, a twenty year old local girl jihadist wearing a cummerbund stuffed with C-4 explosive; what chance does a Star Warrior have? They won't fight fair.

And why do they hate us?



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Maybe it's Crazy Glue: Redux

"The great enemy of the truth is very often not the lie, deliberate, contrived and dishonest, but the myth, persistent, persuasive and unrealistic."
John F. Kennedy

We are slowly coming to the realization that the glue that holds it all together is drying up and losing it's grip. For over two hundred anxious years we have told ourselves that we, among nations, are unique. That elsewhere lies the "old-country",the great unwashed, those "lesser breeds without the law", and the hopelessly out-of-date

.This glue helped us to tame a wilderness, destroy one people and enslave another, fight our innumerable wars for property and/or money and made us rich. But it seems to be drying up folks, starting to let go and peel away at the edges...slowly, now faster.

The American Myth is the glue that binds us when all else is failing. But if we no longer believe the stories and legends, the sensed rightness of all that we are and do, does that mean they delaminate and fail? Or will new myths pop up to replace the old? Happened elsewhere, lots of time. Early Japanese Shinto v. Buddhist traditions, Fourth Century Rome, Berlin 1930's, come to mind. Got to keep those stories coming because, alas, No Myth...No Nation.

Now it's been a hundred years of ever improving propaganda from print, to radio, to movies,-TV and lately the web that have provided generations of slick liars and earnest boosters a high podium to dissemble and reinforce the American mythology. All terribly effective; sell soap, and sell the stories of nationhood with the same voice.But they oversold it, folks, big time. Got caught up in their own success and went over the top. And now, finally, people are slowly, ever so slowly, waking up to the Big Lie.

We are not unique, never were. We are not all good and wise and noble. Too many pictures, too many reports have surfaced of too many nasty deeds done in our name all over the place for too, damn long. Too much money sticking to the hands of too few of us and too many lies about why that is. Folks are not as ready as they once were to drink the cool-aid or believe the half-truths and absolute fictions ever so slyly promulgated; about why things need to be this way.

On some level, mostly subconscious at this point in time, Americans know the game is up. That the powers that be are not leveling with us. The information sneaks in stealthily that everything is different from what we are told. That things will not be returning to what we've known in the past... ever. All sorts are wild and bizarre statements and actions will be the new norm for the nonce.

Without information free from spin and slant people will thrash around for guidance and direction. A lot of this will be frightening for many, certainly unpleasant, but not unexpected after several generations of disinformation serving as truth. Anything we are told these days, particularly on the very best authority, best forget it and keep digging around. Somewhere beyond the noise is the truth.

So suck it up, friends, a new day is here and what hope there is will come from our own wise instincts of what's best for us.

" Nothing will see us through the age we're entering but high consciousness, and that comes hard. We don't have a good, modern myth yet, and we need one.
"Robert Johnson