Is climate change causing hurricanes

I am not a climate change denier. The planet overall gets warmer every year. Wild animals are dying as a result. The Oceans are becoming saturated with carbon dioxide.  It is happening according to science inquiry and proof, but it is still a theory. But like any scientific theory it must be proven to be falsifiable. Statements and theories that are not falsifiable are unscientific.  In other words an outlier can determine that a scientific theory is false. For example, at one time it was believed that all swans are white therefore all swans will always be white. That is until black swans were seen. Hence, this outlier turned that theory on its head and forced some new inquiry and theory. The scientific philosopher Karl Popper claimed that in order for a theory to be scientific there must be limits to theory and that it must be part of the logical cornerstone of scientific inquiry. Otherwise a theory that is considered ironclad and unchanging is pseudo science. 

So to my main point.  It's not as if catastrophic weather events hadn't occurred before in human history. We can go back to some horrid events before climate change had a scientific basis and fostered theories that became part of the public imagination.  Yet these days somehow every miserable death dealing, excessive rebuilding cost weather event is casually attributed to climate change by many. Are these events more frequent?  No they are not. Some years have always been worse or better than others.  For example in 1839 it was estimated that a cyclone killed up to 300,000 people in India. The nine of the ten worst U.S. hurricanes occured before global warming was added to our list of woes.

1900 Great Galveston Hurricane
1928 OkeeChobee Hurricane
2005 Hurricane Katrina
1893 Chenière Caminada Hurricane
1893 Sea Islands Hurricane
1881 Georgia/South Carolina Hurricane
1967 Hurricane Audrey
1935 Great Labor Day Hurricane (Islamorada)
1856 Last Island Hurricane
1926 Great Miami Hurricane)

These disasters these days certainly cost more to fix their destruction.   In terms of hurricanes more people are building and living along coasts than ever before. So naturally it will be awful for them. How much can be attributed to the media and their experts constantly saying "we can't say definitively that it is caused by climate change," thereby leaving the door open to speculation. Yet no hurricane historically has ever exceeded 190 mph, a category 5. Are they getting worse? Consider that a no.  And what of the reporters standing in the blasting wind and pouring rain with ocean breakers behind them ---what is the point? To entertain us? It's bad! But these days you've had ample opportunity to know a hurricane is coming your way. Prepare. Seek shelter. Stay indoors where it is safe.  And for God sake will the media stop giving us second by second reports that don't change second by second. This is why the National Weather Service gives a new report only every three hours and that usually coincides with a hurricane hunter plane flying through the storm. Sure one could change the channel except all your friends are talking about it with the surety that they are just as knowledgeable as climate scientists. 

And then there's the politicians. And the climate deniers and the climate absolutists. So much of it makes an unschooled largely ignorant public go in circles. There will always be sides. Maybe that's human nature. There are people who still believe the earth is flat, that the moon landings were all staged, that some super being created the earth, the solar system, the galaxies and the universe in 7 days, that the Judeo-Christian bible is the only law, that white is the superior race, that taking vitamin supplements will make up for the nutrition we don't get in processed food, that vaccinations cause autism, that might makes right and so on. (Not to mention "the check is in the mail")

We rely on truth to help us through our lives. An interesting quote from a classic 1958 science fiction movie called "The Fly" was uttered by a character played by Vincent Price. He said "The search for truth is our most important endeavor yet it is our most dangerous." I'll take the danger in seeking the truth because that is all I can believe.   

Here's some of the problems as I see it.

According to an essay written by Jacob Levy, McGill professor of Political Theory, Donald Trump's words are doing far more damage to the political institutions of the United States and the institutions outside of government not just in the United States but countries in which the U.S. has a partnership. Further, those countries' governments take those words in and know that they have to set policies based on what is being said as well as the actions taken because Donald Trump is President of the United States. 

https://niskanencenter.org/blog/the-weight-of-the-words/

Consider though that both right and left, the more moderate of those extremes, believe that it is possible that once Trump is gone that everything will go back to where it once was. The attitudes being that Trump's words are merely distractions and that the institutions remain. Checks and balances are working and that the country has survived worse events and periods in the past. But in fact words matter and ideas have consequences. Among conservatives, "Tear down this wall" "Radical Islamic Terrorism"  have had its effects. Go back to the end of WWII and Churchill's "Iron Curtain" speech had an effect on the entire world for decades.  

For example if Trump survives his administration or even if it is aborted, his words have created situations within ICE that would allow more anti-immigrant agents latitude to be abusive towards their captives. Other ICE agents who may not agree with these actions may leave and even worse behaving agents will be hired.  An entire culture will be in place that will take a very long time to be undone. Currently the State department is losing good diplomatic corps individuals and no one is replacing them.  It's the same in the Justice department. Eventually only the worst elements will rise to the top and set in place a culture that can't be undone even in the same time that it took to get them there. 

We expect comedians to lead the way by making fun of Trump.  They pick on his hair. They pick on his marital situations, They make jokes about his family. They make fun that Trump doesn't read, that he watches Fox news, that he walks around in a bathrobe, that maybe he suffers from Alzheimer's, that he tweets ridiculous things and they are called distractions. There is no end to editorial cartoons getting in on the action. And lots of money is being made as well by this form of entertainment.  But leading can't be done by comedy.  By exposing these matters as jokes our sophisticated selves are in on the joke and that the damage that has been done by Trump's words and actions, ridiculous as some might be, has been exposed and has now gone away.  We can not entertain ourselves out of this morass that the country finds itself in. There is real damage that is being done to institutions and the culture is being radically altered by Trump's words. We can not take these things as distractions or as matters to tickle our fancy any more.  His words attack the Justice Department.  His words cause fears of nuclear conflict to be a threat. His words encourage attacks by extreme right wing actors. His words help to legitimize racism.  It is a slippery slope from demagogic expressions to autocracy to dictatorship and the subjugation of almost two and half centuries of law as the governmental institutions roll themselves up and roll over time and time again.  

What has been done since the election campaign, the elections and the year plus that Trump has been in office can not be undone in the same amount of time. We will not go back overnight to the way things were. It could take decades.        

An immigrant's life was no walk in the Park

An immigrant's life is not easy. Everyone believes or so it seems there was some golden time when it was simple, easy and good.  It wasn't.  It certainly was less than easy street for my 4 grandparents. My Father's parents came from Sicily. My grandmother hardly spoke English but was incredibly sweet and caring. She cooked wonderful meals.  Even during WWII she never worked a job outside of raising 5 kids and her first died before he was one. I don't think she was ever a citizen.  My grandfather became a legal citizen almost 50 years after he came to the U.S., spoke 3 maybe 4 languages, Italian, French, Spanish and English and ultimately worked for the IRT (before it was the TA) at a power station. (He framed his citizenship paper and hung it on the wall in their parlor).  When he first came to the U.S. he was a stevedore and worked at different ports along the Mississippi. When he first lived in NYC  he made 75 cents a day shoveling coal for Con Ed. He could speak English quite well except he normally wouldn't unless he had to do business with some anglo. I don't know if either my Father's Father or my Father's Mother ever went to school.  I wasn't very close to either of them so I never found out that much about them. They were both hardworking people as was my entire extended family.  

My Mother's Mother lived with us. She spoke 4 languages too, English, Hungarian, German and Yiddish.  She never finished the Hungarian equivalent of 8th grade but she taught herself to read English as well as speak it.  I remember how she used to read the Daily News with a magnifying glass. In her dotage she wore glasses for nearsightedness but didn't have reading glasses.  She came to the U.S. when she was 13 and worked as a servant for her "aunt" in Pittsburgh. She came from a large family but I think she was sold as an indentured servant. I'll never know for sure. She ran away to NYC when she was 15, got married when she was 16 to a Hungarian who worked as a window washer. They lived in small apartments, on the lower East Side, raised 4 children, actually she raised them by herself because my grandfather left them. And she also worked factory jobs to support her and her children.  I met him once on a street corner when I was with my grandmother and he gave me a dollar. I was only about five then but I remember that.  I think he would give my grandmother money when he could hang on to it and wasn't drinking it away. She wasn't more than five feet tall but she was tough as nails and as mean as a billy goat when she had to be and she wasn't afraid of anything or anyone. But when it came to me I could do no wrong. It was from her that I learned what unconditional love meant.    

When my grandfather died he was already eligible for Social Security so my Grandmother could collect his Social Security when she became eligible except she wasn't a citizen. I don't know if she needed to be one but she wanted to do it.  She filled out the forms or actually I helped her, I was 11 by then, and she had to go to some court in Mineola and I went with her on the train and ultimately she was made a citizen. There was no big ceremony.  She was just sworn in. That was April 12, 1955. Why do I remember that date? She said it was the same day FDR died 10 years earlier and she adored FDR.  That was over 40 years after she arrived in the U.S. She was more my Mother than my actual Mother and she is the one from whom I got all my attitude. 

Comment on Social Media shaming

"If publishers and editors exert themselves to keep certain topics out of print, it is not because they are frightened of prosecution but because they are frightened of public opinion." --George Orwell. "The Freedom of the Press"

My Comment. Yes it is still true for publishers and editors but today with the advent of the internet and of course social media, there are many people who take to social media to rub the noses in the dirt of those speaking or writing what they believe to be the truth or the heart of a matter or to take an unpopular position and it has now become our most savage freedom of speech attack, that not even the first amendment can protect. It becomes a matter of social shaming to the point where individuals lose jobs, lose friends and if they are lucky only ostracized by the "offended" communities and their supporters. The truth whatever it may be is unimportant. We live in a society (the USofA) that is supposedly proud of speaking the truth, even has an amendment to its constitution that guarantees the right to speak, to write, to believe, to protest, but we find that the only important matter is to be on the "right or correct side" of an issue, a cause, and/or a belief. We have become a society of one way streets and at some point the end of a one way street is often a dead end or possibly an unplanned trip into a river, a lake or an ocean.

The Freedom of the Press George Orwell (Original preface to Animal Farm)

THE FREEDOM OF THE PRESS

This book was first thought of, so far as the central idea goes, in 1937, but was not written down until about the end of 1943. By the time when it came to be written it was obvious that there would be great difficulty in getting it published (in spite of the present book shortage which ensures that anything describable as a book will ‘sell’), and in the event it was refused by four publishers. Only one of these had any ideological motive. Two had been publishing anti-Russian books for years, and the other had no noticeable political colour. One publisher actually started by accepting the book, but after making the preliminary arrangements he decided to consult the Ministry of Information, who appear to have warned him, or at any rate strongly advised him, against publishing it. Here is an extract from his letter:

I mentioned the reaction I had had from an important official in the Ministry of Information with regard to Animal Farm. I must confess that this expression of opinion has given me seriously to think … I can see now that it might be regarded as something which it was highly ill-advised to publish at the present time. If the fable were addressed generally to dictators and dictatorships at large then publication would be all right, but the fable does follow, as I see now, so completely the progress of the Russian Soviets and their two dictators, that it can apply only to Russia, to the exclusion of the other dictatorships. Another thing: it would be less offensive if the predominant caste in the fable were not pigs. [It is not quite clear whether this suggested modification is Mr … ‘s own idea, or originated with the Ministry of Information; but it seems to have the official ring about it – Orwell’s Note] I think the choice of pigs as the ruling caste will no doubt give offence to many people, and particularly to anyone who is a bit touchy, as undoubtedly the Russians are.

This kind of thing is not a good symptom. Obviously it is not desirable that a government department should have any power of censorship (except security censorship, which no one objects to in war time) over books which are not officially sponsored. But the chief danger to freedom of thought and speech at this moment is not the direct interference of the MOI or any official body. If publishers and editors exert themselves to keep certain topics out of print, it is not because they are frightened of prosecution but because they are frightened of public opinion. In this country intellectual cowardice is the worst enemy a writer or journalist has to face, and that fact does not seem to me to have had the discussion it deserves.

Any fairminded person with journalistic experience will admit that during this war official censorship has not been particularly irksome. We have not been subjected to the kind of totalitarian ‘co-ordination’ that it might have been reasonable to expect. The press has some justified grievances, but on the whole the Government has behaved well and has been surprisingly tolerant of minority opinions. The sinister fact about literary censorship in England is that it is largely voluntary.

Unpopular ideas can be silenced, and inconvenient facts kept dark, without the need for any official ban. Anyone who has lived long in a foreign country will know of instances of sensational items of news – things which on their own merits would get the big headlines – being kept right out of the British press, not because the Government intervened but because of a general tacit agreement that ‘it wouldn’t do’ to mention that particular fact. So far as the daily newspapers go, this is easy to understand.

The British press is extremely centralized, and most of it is owned by wealthy men who have every motive to be dishonest on certain important topics. But the same kind of veiled censorship also operates in books and periodicals, as well as in plays, films and radio. At any given moment there is an orthodoxy, a body of ideas which it is assumed that all right-thinking people will accept without question. It is not exactly forbidden to say this, that or the other, but it is ‘not done’ to say it, just as in mid-Victorian times it was ‘not done’ to mention trousers in the presence of a lady. Anyone who challenges the prevailing orthodoxy finds himself silenced with surprising effectiveness. A genuinely unfashionable opinion is almost never given a fair hearing, either in the popular press or in the highbrow periodicals.

At this moment what is demanded by the prevailing orthodoxy is an uncritical admiration of Soviet Russia. Every-one knows this, nearly everyone acts on it. Any serious criticism of the Soviet régime, any disclosure of facts which the Soviet government would prefer to keep hidden, is next door to unprintable. And this nation-wide conspiracy to flatter our ally takes place, curiously enough, against a background of genuine intellectual tolerance. For though you are not allowed to criticize the Soviet government, at least you are reasonably free to criticize our own.

Hardly anyone will print an attack on Stalin, but it is quite safe to attack Churchill, at any rate in books and periodicals. And throughout five years of war, during two or three of which we were fighting for national survival, countless books, pamphlets and articles advocating a compromise peace have been published without interference. More, they have been published without exciting much disapproval. So long as the prestige of the USSR is not involved, the principle of free speech has been reasonably well upheld. There are other forbidden topics, and I shall mention some of them presently, but the prevailing attitude towards the USSR is much the most serious symptom. It is, as it were, spontaneous, and is not due to the action of any pressure group.

The servility with which the greater part of the English intelligentsia have swallowed and repeated Russian propaganda from 1941 onwards would be quite astounding if it were not that they have behaved similarly on several earlier occasions. On one controversial issue after another the Russian viewpoint has been accepted without examination and then publicized with complete disregard to historical truth or intellectual decency. To name only one instance, the BBC celebrated the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Red Army without mentioning Trotsky.

This was about as accurate as commemorating the battle of Trafalgar without mentioning Nelson, but it evoked no protest from the English intelligentsia. In the internal struggles in the various occupied countries, the British press has in almost all cases sided with the faction favoured by the Russians and libelled the opposing faction, sometimes suppressing material evidence in order to do so. A particularly glaring case was that of Colonel Mihailovich, the Jugoslav Chetnik leader. The Russians, who had their own Jugoslav protégé in Marshal Tito, accused Mihailovich of collaborating with the Germans.

This accusation was promptly taken up by the British press: Mihailovich’s supporters were given no chance of answering it, and facts contradicting it were simply kept out of print. In July of 1943 the Germans offered a reward of 100,000 gold crowns for the capture of Tito, and a similar reward for the capture of Mihailovich. The British press ‘splashed’ the reward for Tito, but only one paper mentioned (in small print) the reward for Mihailovich: and the charges of collaborating with the Germans continued. Very similar things happened during the Spanish civil war.

Then, too, the factions on the Republican side which the Russians were determined to crush were recklessly libelled in the English leftwing press, and any statement in their defence even in letter form, was refused publication. At present, not only is serious criticism of the USSR considered reprehensible, but even the fact of the existence of such criticism is kept secret in some cases. For example, shortly before his death Trotsky had written a biography of Stalin.

One may assume that it was not an altogether unbiased book, but obviously it was saleable. An American publisher had arranged to issue it and the book was in print – I believe the review copies had been sent out – when the USSR entered the war. The book was immediately withdrawn. Not a word about this has ever appeared in the British press, though clearly the existence of such a book, and its suppression, was a news item worth a few paragraphs.

It is important to distinguish between the kind of censorship that the English literary intelligentsia voluntarily impose upon themselves, and the censorship that can sometimes be enforced by pressure groups. Notoriously, certain topics cannot be discussed because of ‘vested interests’. The best-known case is the patent medicine racket. Again, the Catholic Church has considerable influence in the press and can silence criticism of itself to some extent. A scandal involving a Catholic priest is almost never given publicity, whereas an Anglican priest who gets into trouble (e.g. the Rector of Stiffkey) is headline news.

It is very rare for anything of an anti-Catholic tendency to appear on the stage or in a film. Any actor can tell you that a play or film which attacks or makes fun of the Catholic Church is liable to be boycotted in the press and will probably be a failure. But this kind of thing is harmless, or at least it is understandable. Any large organization will look after its own interests as best it can, and overt propaganda is not a thing to object to. One would no more expect the Daily Worker to publicize unfavourable facts about the USSR than one would expect the Catholic Herald to denounce the Pope. But then every thinking person knows the Daily Worker and the Catholic Heraldfor what they are.

What is disquieting is that where the USSR and its policies are concerned one cannot expect intelligent criticism or even, in many cases, plain honesty from Liberal writers and journalists who are under no direct pressure to falsify their opinions. Stalin is sacrosanct and certain aspects of his policy must not be seriously discussed. This rule has been almost universally observed since 1941, but it had operated, to a greater extent than is sometimes realized, for ten years earlier than that. Throughout that time, criticism of the Soviet régime from the left could only obtain a hearing with difficulty. There was a huge output of anti-Russian literature, but nearly all of it was from the Conservative angle and manifestly dishonest, out of date and actuated by sordid motives.

On the other side there was an equally huge and almost equally dishonest stream of pro-Russian propaganda, and what amounted to a boycott on anyone who tried to discuss all-important questions in a grown-up manner. You could, indeed, publish anti-Russian books, but to do so was to make sure of being ignored or misrepresented by nearly the whole of the highbrow press. Both publicly and privately you were warned that it was ‘not done’. What you said might possibly be true, but it was ‘inopportune’ and ‘played into the hands of’ this or that reactionary interest. This attitude was usually defended on the ground that the international situation, and the urgent need for an Anglo-Russian alliance, demanded it; but it was clear that this was a rationalization.

The English intelligentsia, or a great part of it, had developed a nationalistic loyalty towards the USSR, and in their hearts they felt that to cast any doubt on the wisdom of Stalin was a kind of blasphemy. Events in Russia and events elsewhere were to be judged by different standards. The endless executions in the purges of 1936-8 were applauded by life-long opponents of capital punishment, and it was considered equally proper to publicize famines when they happened in India and to conceal them when they happened in the Ukraine. And if this was true before the war, the intellectual atmosphere is certainly no better now.

But now to come back to this book of mine. The reaction towards it of most English intellectuals will be quite simple: ‘It oughtn’t to have been published’. Naturally, those reviewers who understand the art of denigration will not attack it on political grounds but on literary ones. They will say that it is a dull, silly book and a disgraceful waste of paper. This may well be true, but it is obviously not the whole of the story. One does not say that a book ‘ought not to have been published’ merely because it is a bad book.

After all, acres of rubbish are printed daily and no one bothers. The English intelligentsia, or most of them, will object to this book because it traduces their Leader and (as they see it) does harm to the cause of progress. If it did the opposite they would have nothing to say against it, even if its literary faults were ten times as glaring as they are. The success of, for instance, the Left Book Club over a period of four or five years shows how willing they are to tolerate both scurrility and slipshod writing, provided that it tells them what they want to hear.

The issue involved here is quite a simple one: Is every opinion, however unpopular – however foolish, even – entitled to a hearing? Put it in that form and nearly any English intellectual will feel that he ought to say ‘Yes’. But give it a concrete shape, and ask, ‘How about an attack on Stalin? Is that entitled to a hearing?’, and the answer more often than not will be ‘No’. In that case the current orthodoxy happens to be challenged, and so the principle of free speech lapses. Now, when one demands liberty of speech and of the press, one is not demanding absolute liberty. There always must be, or at any rate there always will be, some degree of censorship, so long as organized societies endure.

But freedom, as Rosa Luxembourg said, is ‘freedom for the other fellow’. The same principle is contained in the famous words of Voltaire: ‘I detest what you say; I will defend to the death your right to say it’. If the intellectual liberty which without a doubt has been one of the distinguishing marks of western civilization means anything at all, it means that everyone shall have the right to say and to print what he believes to be the truth, provided only that it does not harm the rest of the community in some quite unmistakable way.

Both capitalist democracy and the western versions of Socialism have till recently taken that principle for granted. Our Government, as I have already pointed out, still makes some show of respecting it. The ordinary people in the street – partly, perhaps, because they are not sufficiently interested in ideas to be intolerant about them – still vaguely hold that ‘I suppose everyone’s got a right to their own opinion’. It is only, or at any rate it is chiefly, the literary and scientific intelligentsia, the very people who ought to be the guardians of liberty, who are beginning to despise it, in theory as well as in practice.

One of the peculiar phenomena of our time is the renegade Liberal. Over and above the familiar Marxist claim that ‘bourgeois liberty’ is an illusion, there is now a widespread tendency to argue that one can only defend democracy by totalitarian methods. If one loves democracy, the argument runs, one must crush its enemies by no matter what means. And who are its enemies? It always appears that they are not only those who attack it openly and consciously, but those who ‘objectively’ endanger it by spreading mistaken doctrines. In other words, defending democracy involves destroying all independence of thought.

This argument was used, for instance, to justify the Russian purges. The most ardent Russophile hardly believed that all of the victims were guilty of all the things they were accused of. but by holding heretical opinions they ‘objectively’ harmed the régime, and therefore it was quite right not only to massacre them but to discredit them by false accusations. The same argument was used to justify the quite conscious lying that went on in the leftwing press about the Trotskyists and other Republican minorities in the Spanish civil war. And it was used again as a reason for yelping against habeas corpus when Mosley was released in 1943.

These people don’t see that if you encourage totalitarian methods, the time may come when they will be used against you instead of for you. Make a habit of imprisoning Fascists without trial, and perhaps the process won’t stop at Fascists. Soon after the suppressed Daily Worker had been reinstated, I was lecturing to a workingmen’s college in South London. The audience were working-class and lower-middle class intellectuals – the same sort of audience that one used to meet at Left Book Club branches. The lecture had touched on the freedom of the press, and at the end, to my astonishment, several questioners stood up and asked me:

Did I not think that the lifting of the ban on the Daily Worker was a great mistake?

When asked why, they said that it was a paper of doubtful loyalty and ought not to be tolerated in war time. I found myself defending the Daily Worker, which has gone out of its way to libel me more than once. But where had these people learned this essentially totalitarian outlook? Pretty certainly they had learned it from the Communists themselves!

Tolerance and decency are deeply rooted in England, but they are not indestructible, and they have to be kept alive partly by conscious effort. The result of preaching totalitarian doctrines is to weaken the instinct by means of which free peoples know what is or is not dangerous.

The case of Mosley illustrates this. In 1940 it was perfectly right to intern Mosley, whether or not he had committed any technical crime. We were fighting for our lives and could not allow a possible quisling to go free. To keep him shut up, without trial, in 1943 was an outrage. The general failure to see this was a bad symptom, though it is true that the agitation against Mosley’s release was partly factitious and partly a rationalization of other discontents. But how much of the present slide towards Fascist ways of thought is traceable to the ‘anti-Fascism’ of the past ten years and the unscrupulousness it has entailed?

It is important to realize that the current Russomania is only a symptom of the general weakening of the western liberal tradition. Had the MOI chipped in and definitely vetoed the publication of this book, the bulk of the English intelligentsia would have seen nothing disquieting in this. Uncritical loyalty to the USSR happens to be the current orthodoxy, and where the supposed interests of the USSR are involved they are willing to tolerate not only censorship but the deliberate falsification of history. To name one instance. At the death of John Reed, the author of Ten Days that Shook the World – a first-hand account of the early days of the Russian Revolution – the copyright of the book passed into the hands of the British Communist Party, to whom I believe Reed had bequeathed it.

Some years later the British Communists, having destroyed the original edition of the book as completely as they could, issued a garbled version from which they had eliminated mentions of Trotsky and also omitted the introduction written by Lenin. If a radical intelligentsia had still existed in Britain, this act of forgery would have been exposed and denounced in every literary paper in the country. As it was there was little or no protest. To many English intellectuals it seemed quite a natural thing to, do.

And this tolerance or [of?] plain dishonesty means much more than that admiration for Russia happens to be fashionable at this moment. Quite possibly that particular fashion will not last. For all I know, by the time this book is published my view of the Soviet régime may be the generally-accepted one. But what use would that be in itself? To exchange one orthodoxy for another is not necessarily an advance. The enemy is the gramophone mind, whether or not one agrees with the record that is being played at the moment.

I am well acquainted with all the arguments against freedom of thought and speech – the arguments which claim that it cannot exist, and the arguments which claim that it ought not to. I answer simply that they don’t convince me and that our civilization over a period of four hundred years has been founded on the opposite notice. For quite a decade past I have believed that the existing Russian régime is a mainly evil thing, and I claim the right to say so, in spite of the fact that we are allies with the USSR in a war which I want to see won. If I had to choose a text to justify myself, I should choose the line from Milton:

By the known rules of ancient liberty.

The word ancient emphasizes the fact that intellectual freedom is a deep-rooted tradition without which our characteristic western culture could only doubtfully exist. From that tradition many of our intellectuals are visibly turning away. They have accepted the principle that a book should be published or suppressed, praised or damned, not on its merits but according to political expediency. And others who do not actually hold this view assent to it from sheer cowardice. An example of this is the failure of the numerous and vocal English pacifists to raise their voices against the prevalent worship of Russian militarism.

According to those pacifists, all violence is evil and they have urged us at every stage of the war to give in or at least to make a compromise peace. But how many of them have ever suggested that war is also evil when it is waged by the Red Army? Apparently the Russians have a right to defend themselves, whereas for us to do [so] is a deadly sin. One can only explain this contradiction in one way: that is, by a cowardly desire to keep in with the bulk of the intelligentsia, whose patriotism is directed towards the USSR rather than towards Britain.

I know that the English intelligentsia have plenty of reason for their timidity and dishonesty, indeed I know by heart the arguments by which they justify themselves. But at least let us have no more nonsense about defending liberty against Fascism. If liberty means anything at all it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear. The common people still vaguely subscribe to that doctrine and act on it. In our country – it is not the same in all countries: it was not so in republican France,  and it is not so in the USA today [i.e. 1945(!)] – it is the liberals who fear liberty and the intellectuals who want to do dirt on the intellect: it is to draw attention to that fact that I have written this preface.

 

The Dictatorship of the Populists

On this day June 14, 2019, flag day, it has become fully evident that we, the U.S., is ever so moving  towards dictatorship. More than 1/3 of this country supports that, probably prefers it in their heart of hearts. We have the diehard Trumpians, and we have other Republicans who prefer to be loyal to their party and hence the President because Trump has been doing everything they like and want. So they are supporters as well. They believe that if they remain on his side that he will remain on theirs.

Trump's main thrust in these matters is to show that he can be a strong man like Putin, like Duterte, like populists in Europe, The UK (though there is still an EU, it is the plan by these populists to destroy the EU, Brexit being the first break). There is also Kim Jung Un. How Trump loves Kim Jung Un. And then there's China. He may seem to be doing battle with China, but there is no doubt in my mind that he loves what Xi Jinping has achieved in terms of control and is now dictator for life. (oh excuse me, President for life, as there are no more term limits). 

I am by nature a pessimist and in my pessimism I see the 2020 election not occuring. Some manufactured crisis will push Republicans and yes some Democrats will join to suspend these elections. During WWII presidential elections were not suspended nor any other elections were suspended. In fact not in any war the U.S. has been engaged in has an election been suspended. Even during the Civil War the worst it got in terms of executive control was to suspend habeas corpus.

The populist madness has taken hold in the world and its aim is chaos and destruction of whatever government claims to be "democratic" while destroying current rules of law. The laws that will eventually emerge will be in the guise of "military control" after populists will have had enough of the chaos and know they have complete control. In the U.S. the President is the Commander in Chief of military forces. That's the one part of the U.S. Constitution that will remain. There will be no need for a "Seven Days in May" attempt by the generals. The stage has been set, the actors know their lines and the audience awaits. And then where will be? 

Moral and political absolutism is the trap

If any message couldn't be clearer it is that no one of us is perfect. We all have thoughts and beliefs that require cleaning up.  Today so many pretend to have moral and political absolutism, to have been that way all our lives and I think it first originated with the right and now is encroaching and taking over the left political spectrum. Or maybe I'm wrong and it's vice versa. But that especially is true for all the commentators and supporters of particular causes. You do or say what you think is the right thing at the time but end up finding out later that it was just plain wrong.  And especially in the case of politicians can it be excused as opportunism? As if there hasn't ever been an opportunistic politician.  Unless that mistake led to something that could not be undone, death, devastating physical harm, incarceration, banishment maybe it can't be forgiven.  But for all barely non consequential matters how is it that we undo what was clearly wrong at the time? Do we think that it is better to cover up that wrong as so many do? Or to claim that it was a sin of our youth?  How is it that we can be forgiven so that we can all move on to a better outcome for all?  I don't have an answer, but I believe that it is better to remember that we are all complex beings and hardly ever completely rational. Best to look inside yourself and ask the question and listen to your conscience.

Acting shamefully and needing to confess

I don't know why I did this. It has been bothering me ever since, not obsessively I might add, but on occasion when I remind myself of it. Perhaps it's a form of self-flagellation, the need to feel punished by feeling shame. Shame is an ugly feeling, not one we really need for survival even if Catholic doctrine, the one I was raised with, insists that we feel shame for nearly anything that we do that both Jesus and even Hell's fallen angels, Satan and his cohort of devils, would deem shameful and worthy of punishment. Unless of course I confessed. Yet at best this that I did was no worse than a venal sin. It broke no commandments.

So how best to describe and expiate this feeling of shame? It is through the actual indoctrination of confession drummed into me as a small child. Now I've not been to confession nor received any communion much less darkened the door of a church since I was around 13 or 14 except to attend the funerals of my parents who died within three years of each other which would not have looked kindly upon me had I not attended.There would have been an instance of shame which would have required even more expiation. Now not attending mass, confession or communion that has been going on these past 60 years. And I must admit there is a bone in me that feels the occasional twinge while most of me shrugs. We are brainwashed at an early age and it's hard to clear one's brain completely.

To the event. I was in the supermarket, a large supermarket quite popular but at the time I was there sparsely attended by shoppers. I had placed in my basket a few items, I hadn't bothered to count but they seemed so few I passed by the cashier that was finishing up and headed for the 10 or less express line. I placed everything on the conveyor belt and I still wasn't cognizant of how many items I had. I waited while the cashier finished up with the clearly confused woman who wanted to write out a check. She was elderly maybe a bit older than I but clearly she had cognition problems that might border on dementia. She had her son with her (he kept calling her Mom so. . .) who kept trying to urge her along to the customer service counter that the cashier told her she should go to fill out the check and pay for her purchases.

Clearly she had at least three bags of groceries packed already by her son and placed in the shopping basket. And she clearly had way more than 10 items. Still I didn't think of that at all. I didn't want to show my impatience so I looked around. Finally she started to leave and the cashier turned to me when suddenly I hear a voice behind me, "That looks like you have more than 10 items." First I am horrified as I look and sure enough it looks more like 15 items. I feel mortified. I've broken a rule. I have committed an unpardonable crime, the kind of crime i would hold others responsible for though I never have even though I have thought it many times, many many times when I see shoppers in the express line with way more items than they should have in the 10 or less shopping line. I thought it in the past but that is the difference. I have never ever said anything.

I glance over in the direction of the voice and it's a man 10 or 15 years younger than I am who compounds this bit of humiliation by repeating his accusation. The cashier begins ringing up my items. I look at the man, suddenly I am no longer mortified and also I am not angry. So what do I do? I mock him. In a voice that I have no idea suddenly came from my mouth and sounding exactly like the 12 year old Carmelo, my one time step son, (who today is 36 years old and as far as I know behaves like a typical adult) I say:"Oh oh really, I've got more than 10 items well good for you, you noticed." And if that wasn't enough I repeated myself. The man suddenly bolted away from the line and took his things to another line, checked out before I did and disappeared.

And so there we are and this is how I expiate.

History and the Individual

History does not crush individuals. History is separate from individual lives. History is largely irrelevant to individuals and individuals often deem history is irrelevant to them.  Yet it is history that affects the mass of people. How lucky or unlucky we are to avoid or to participate in history is a choice on the part of the individual. The choice that an individual makes is unique to an individual. It's the same kind of uniqueness one might see in the way a tree grows, a snowflake is formed or when comparing individual fingerprints.

However, if the decision is to actively participate in history or to actively avoid history that is a choice. But not the choice that history itself had made for the individual. Sometimes it seems there isn't a choice. And maybe even sometimes there isn't one. The individual gets swept along. How that individual reacts to history is the outcome for the individual even when the outcome can only be in one direction.

Now this last may seem contradictory given the history that we know of wars past, movements past where many participate and many die as a result but even the non participant dies as well, not having made that choice. Ultimately the individual is completely forgotten unless that individual is an extraordinary participant or non-participant.

What is history? History are the events that are recorded but also recorded rarely if ever without the bias of the historian doing the recording. Ignored or forgotten are the individuals unless the individuals are numerous in a particular event where a mass of them are slaughtered or has accomplished something noteworthy. Yet it's only the event that is known where a large group participated. Even at the time of an event if a particular individual is extraordinary may be forgotten or ignored in time by history. But for the non-extraordinary person it's as if that person did not exist.

For example when we think of the Civil Rights movement that lasted at least in the public's eye well over a decade and accomplished much though not enough, a couple of names stand out: M.L. King, Jr. and Rosa Parks. There were certainly many more extraordinary individuals than those two. Today there is a continuance of civil rights but who can name another extraordinary individual? I'm sure there are some who can but generally there are quite a few. Yet the mass of individuals who made up that movement are unknown.  Another example is when a man stepped on the moon for the first time. Generally we remember Neil Armstrong, maybe Buzz Aldrin (the second man to walk on the moon). But Michael Collins who was in charge of the command module? Largely ignored. What about those thousands who got them all to the moon and then brought them back?   

Ultimately the great majority of individuals are irrelevant to the historical process. Consider us as an ant colony. Each ant has its prescribed role through evolution but not one could possibly grasp the whole.  This is who we are. We are incapable of grasping the whole. 

Does that make history irrelevant in the extreme? Absolutely not. History can't be forgotten. It's how we at this moment have gotten where we are. "Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it." --George Santayana. Simple in its dictum. But it's not just large historical events but on an individual level it's an individual's history. What choices were made? What choices were ignored? It is easy to blame history for our failures or to applaud history for our successes. What we need to do is to make the leap from history into humanity. How that ever may happen is beyond my understanding.   

An arc towards justice or is it an oscillating towards the right?

Donald Trump at his worst is cruder, truly less informed than the other Republican presidents that have been pushing this country to the right since Richard Nixon. Getting rid of him, though desirable, won't change directions, does not restore some nostalgic normality, except maybe with a friendlier face and more towards "civility" which will help corral the fence sitters and independents. But if a Democrat wins the White House in 2020 what would it mean to return to "normality"? A return to neoliberal politics? To cold war thinking? To the belief in American Exceptionalism? That we are good but must fight against all evil in the world? We've had all that since the end of WWII.

I question the quote by M.L. King Jr. -- “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.”-- it's a quote that President Obama liked to remind us of. (But an arc rises and falls, it's a section of a circumference where the first and second points of the arc land at the same level). So as metaphor I find that maybe it's not that useful? Lincoln arguably was our greatest President but no President after Lincoln pushed for changes in the country until FDR did to help move the country during the depression and after towards social justice sadly not for all though for many. No other President sought to improve the lot of poor and middle class Americans until he did.

Yes there have been positive social changes though at a snail's pace and the "ancien regime" of racial and sexual abuse and violence continues in hopes that any positive changes can be rolled back to some idyllic age of white male dominance and the myth of self-reliance, guns included. So instead of an arc since FDR our country's changes have been oscillations at best, oscillating toward the right, towards corporate control, towards religious purity, and fulfilling the dreams of Empire.

The Beginning of Story telling

Consider prehistoric beings. Somewhere on the side of a plain the grasses tall, verdant, along where an untrammeled brook ran, these uncivilized but highly gentle creatures lying on their backs, some cavorting, others sniffing the air, others engaged in coitus swatting away their playful offspring, somewhere there in the well-spring of our current collective conscious, they exist. Suspend all disbelief and come with me then, your imagination and mine, and let us explore at least one of the possible kernels of our own age.

A prehistoric being rises then from his activity. It is a he. There are probably many things to do. Fire is in existence and able to be controlled, sometimes. An organization of these beginning human beings had already managed to plan the next hunt. They are gentle creatures, yes, but they have begun to enjoy the meat of other animals, though not yet on a grand scale. They know they are different. They've begun to anticipate certain realities. They know the pain in their stomachs, known to us as hunger, can be regulated.

Out on the hunt, all the beings carry stones, some carry heavy sticks. As they move through the heavy leafed forest, they spread to the right and to the left. Those on the flanks move silently and swiftly ahead of the central movement. In the center, one being threshes at the grasses and underbrush, small lizards and birds are flushed, sometimes a rodent. Suddenly a bird is hit by a stone from the left. It falls, a colorful screech into the underbrush. As the central figure continues threshing away, the bird is gathered and bound; its neck snapped.

Then the prize they've been after bolts, a warthog more than waist high attempts to attack the thresher. He fends him off with his stick, backing up as quickly as he can. Volleys of stones missle in from both sides. The warthog wheels toward his other attackers. This is what they want. It's a dangerous situation, but now the thresher is free. He is at his age, all of eighteen, their senior and the group's expert hunter. He has two large stones and takes up his position. He throws with his right hand. But before he throws, he plants his right foot, takes aim at the warthog's head as he anticipates its velocity and direction. His aim is exact to an imaginary point where he believes the warthog will be by the time the released stone arrives. He hauls back and he fires, a perfect strike which catches the animal in the back of its skull, causing its feet to give way. The animal is down and is struggling to its feet, as stones rain from all sides. The thresher plants his right foot again, aiming his second stone for the animal's head. The creature is confused, blood dripping from its snout, it turns and turns snuffling at the ground. It is trying to charge again, but though it is headed toward the thresher, clearly it is blinded by a warthog's inner rage, and is charging wildly. It aims itself toward a tree trunk, slamming into it, screeching like a scared pig. The thresher aims again and this time the stone crashes into the pained beast's eye. It collapses and shrieks unable to gain footing again. The job is completed by the rest of the group who beat it with their sticks and stones.

The warthog is a heavy creature, heavier than even the largest human being. It is bound with thick grasses to six of the hunting party. These are very young boys who struggle violently to drag the dead creature to their current home. Many a being has been lost as result of this activity since dead animals raise a smell that a larger creature may come and spirit all the boys and their kill away. The thresher meanwhile walks ahead listening carefully and sniffing the air while looking around and hushing the others as they struggle with their burden. He carries his stick and another well-rounded stone for protection. After a time they stop to rest by the brook that runs near their encampment but is still some miles off. As they rest, they chew on berries and nuts and drink from the running brook. Leaning up against their load, they begin to make up stories about the thresher and how he will be hunting in the greatest hunting place someday. They sing how easy it will be for him and how he will have the greatest catch of all, a warthog the size of a mountain. He will have endless stones to cast, and will be remembered as the greatest teacher of all the stone throwers and threshers. The thresher is pleased and smiles at the others, but reminds them of their work ahead and how low the sun falls.

Three

I had a dream of three flames. They were like candles. My first thought was a religious one. Candles seem to bring about religion in my mind as I was raised a Catholic. This dream of three flames that become candles could be representative of three persons in one God. Typically Catholic. But I put this religious thought out of mind and thought deeper. It seemed significant in that it was three. Only three, not two, not one, not four but three. To be one seemed alone, near death. Two had an element of comfort but in the end brought on discomfort as two people together over time will bring on discomfort. Four would seem like a box and something inescapable. But three is an equilateral triangle It is better than two because each one has two others. It is an odd number and odd numbers always overrule even numbers. Why? I couldn’t say because I am not a mathematician.

But three can also mean triangulation which is considered bad in the world of psychology. But that was not the dream. The dream meant balance. And it was an ineluctable give and take balance. Three would find this balance inescapable with no reason to avoid the balance. Two does imply dialectic. Dialectic has been the premise of modern philosophies since the 18^th century. The dialectic provides us with thesis and antithesis. Marxism believes this is the only way toward resolution of all things, the synthesis of reality. However, it can be envisioned as like the arms of a hurricane, like the drawing of ancient Greek Hero’s engine. Or if the image suffices the whirl of a galaxy like the Andromeda galaxy. Ultimately it is on it’s way to calamity.

Three forms a tension. It’s not going anywhere. It does resolve though synthesizes nothing. It remains in balance. Three is the right number for interaction because intimacy can not be private. Three is the right number for any agreement to be made. Three is also the past present and future. It is our continual existence.

Society is weary of itself

Every age/society grows tired and weary of itself. The great changes brought about by individuals that are credited with providing change really occur because society has become sick of itself. Mostly it doesn’t know that it is sick of itself but someone always feels the temperature, the pain in the gut, the inability to get up and walk, the dread in the night. Or maybe the agent of change could have innocently arrived at his or her mode of changing through invention or done unintentionally because the intention was of another matter. But change never arrives out of the blue, so to speak. Not even by those who do not suffer in the sick society and will the idea of change for change sake because they have learned their history. Their conscious belief dictates to them and their ego delivers. But this is pure selfishnness.

Societies throughout all the ages of human history are like living organisms and have a lifespan. Ultimately as the life is coming to an end they reflect back on themselves and destroy from within. The joy is gone. The belief in self is gone. The growth has ended. The offspring have left home and are on their own. There is nothing more to want or to get or to have. It is now sick and dying.

Notes on religious indoctrination and the clinging to childhood beliefs

The Question of the existence of God and our immature beliefs that persist

These notes refer to my own upbringing as a Catholic. My experience is all I can write about and no one else’s.

As I matured my understanding of all things changed and still continues to change with education both formal and self actuated, with development of relationships and with experience in the world.

Can I safely say that most of what I learned as a child got proven wrong or turned topsy-turvy? I’m not sure. I know that many things have changed as a result of my maturation. Sometimes beliefs have grown even deeper and fuller with maturation. Other times fully rejected and replaced by other understanding. In the complete life of a human being, one who is thoughtful, who has imagination to absorb and process information and compare and contrast it to whatever was there before is able to synthesize it into a world view (weltanschauung). Pieces of previous views may fall away while others deepen as I’ve just said. However, the brain can’t maintain thoughts in the manner of say computerized transactional processing, where one can look at one transaction and see it replaced by another transaction and so on. If transaction records are kept properly then you can see transaction A, transaction B etc. And even if combined A & B will = C, you can still examine the first two and see the difference. Given this example the brain doesn’t do that. The brain can only comprehend and process Transaction C. It no longer cares about the two that preceded it.

But what happens if we don’t understand where Transaction C arises and evolves? This is where my critical notes regarding religion and belief of any kind actually comes about. As a child I was taught early about God. Religious training must begin early. I still recall being taught to bless myself by my Mother’s Mother who was Catholic. “In the name of the Father and of the Son (that’s me) and I’m afraid of the Holy Ghost.” I would say, kidding around with Grandmother who was always amused by my antics except when I pissed her off. She’d laugh and tell my Mother who did not think along the same lines.

What was happening to me at the age of three or four was an introduction to God as the Father (all seeing all powerful all knowing being as far as I was concerned in my dealings with my father who was male role model and final authority on everything). I was also being introduced to Jesus Christ, the son, who I identified with immediately because I was the son. And also I learned about the Holy Spirit or Ghost, that mysterious invisible force that I was frightened of especially when it was dark. I had an image of this white spooky presence that would intentionally scare me.

Of course what could be my understanding? Did I know what it meant? I don’t believe so. At the time I only thought I did. I can’t see transaction A. Because I was innocent of any kind of ideology it was clear to my innocent mind. Yet theologians can’t explain the three persons in God that Catholics believe in. They would fall upon the sword of mysticism if forced for an explanation. They would claim these are matters which can not be explained rationally only felt, only seen with the eye of religious fervor. And they would further claim God loves you. He would not trick you into some falsehood. Only Satan would trick you into believing something that wasn’t and manipulate you into a false thing to worship.

If one has a questioning mind, if one likes to take things apart to see how they work, if one only believes what one hears and sees this concept, three persons in God, creates a problem as the brain matures. Say we started out as fully formed adults with all concomitant experiences we would easily dismiss this doctrine as we do advertisement (in most cases). But they get us early. And they make it part of us. And we are frightened. The transactions which process into the final transactions can’t be seen. That early training worms its way in. We say our prayers as a child because we were told to. In that moment we discover comfort at first because God is listening to us (and 7 billion others in hundreds of languages I might add) We believe as children that all will be right. We are comfortable. We confess our sins with the same relief because we were told to. And these little bits like tiny atoms and molecules cling to other thoughts with maturation and we look for relief and comfort in what amounts to not prayer but a form of meditation. Yet this we don’t know unless of course we examine what we are doing. But minds that do not evolve with deeper thoughts still believe in those childhood prayers. It is a superior brainwashing system for children.

And once brainwashed we carry it into our adult way of thinking but that teaching when we were between ages of 3 and 8 doesn’t change. It can’t. It’s comfortable. It’s easy. It’s relief. That’s why we go there. But if we ever doubt we’ll still cling to it because it is part of our bodies . It’s a piece of our brain we can’t cut out because we don’t know where it is in the final transaction. It is an inherent part of our body, our existence our childhood, our love of the people who formed us. That is the life of a Catholic.

If I had been born a Jew this would all be different. Jews have a different kind of connection to religious belief. It is tied in with everything cultural and racial among Jews. It is the DNA of their being. There can be no such thing as a lapsed Jew only a secular Jew, but Jewish all the same. A Christian can lapse because it is not part of the DNA. But because it is not, it is a far more frightening a thing to lose. This sounds contradictory. But that is the crux. The belief in Catholic Orthodoxy is tenuous mainly because it is an intellectual pursuit, a psychological pursuit, a forced belief and if we lose it there is nothing. And “Nothing is greater than God.” (Read that any way you would like.)

Notes on abortion and the insanity of Religion

The religious man or woman, say of the Christian fundamentalist persuasion (Catholics too) is deathly opposed to abortion because he or she believes that permitting or sanctioning such a thing for any human female is detrimental to his or her eternal soul. The soul is eternal according to this Christian belief. It is eternal and can not be destroyed. It immutable, it is the constant in the life and afterlife of all humanity. Belief has nothing to do with its existence because whether there is belief or not the soul exists. Consider this constant the same as physicists since Max Planck have postulated that the speed of light is constant and can not be exceeded.

Christianity teaches, and whether this was put forth by Jesus Christ himself I could not say, perhaps through the teachings of Saul/St. Paul, the Roman police agent who was actually a pharisee responsible for arresting people and placing them in a situation where they could get the death penalty for heresy or apostasy. The world according to Saul/Paul, police agent, is chaotic, mutable (unlike the soul) pitiless and painful but the after life is a place to be counted upon to be the opposite of the world. Death is the gatekeeper to that better world but to fuck up that afterlife by sinning mortally in the earthly world eliminating your chances for a wonderful afterlife you have forfeited for all eternity your soul’s opportunity to be with God.

Murder is such a sin that will send your soul for eternity to a place that is even worse than your life on earth. It has been described as hell. Many authors have described this place. This sin of murder is very simple. It is ending the life of another human prematurely through violence of some kind. Christians believe abortion is a violent ending of a life prematurely.

Thus, anyone sanctioning this violent end, even if not present but declaring that such an end is allowed through legal means is considered the same mortal sin. And anyone assisting in said abortion is considered to having commited this mortal sin. Just voicing ascension of abortion is a mortal sin. Even acquiesing is the same as being guilty. Think accessory to the crime.

This is the insanity of religion.

The democratic slide into Totalitarianism

Democracies are joining all other societies in their slide towards totalitarianism. There are only democratic, authoritarian and dictatorship societies. Monarchical society is a vestigial leftover from the past, bound in some cases by tradition, and can have some form of power within those who are ruled or have complete control. Saudi Arabia is good example of a monarchical society as is the UK. But they are very different. The UK has a parliament that makes laws. Saudi Arabia has an advisory council but is an absolute monarchy. Most of the other societies declare that they are in fact democracies and the people are taught that they are and support their leaders. The United States and North Korea are examples of “democracy” and “dictatorship.” Yet the difference between the two are some variable degree. North Korea calls itself “The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.” Russia today is a good example of an “authoritarian” society though it too calls itself democratic. It claims to be the Russian Federation. The people who are not engaged in the government believe they have “freedom.” Governmental operatives know differently. Freedom is a very difficult word to define in terms of governments.

But what is meant by democracy? Our democratic societies are not ancient Athenian style democracy from which the concept is derived. It is believed that democracies today operate by the rules of law whether those laws are made by decree within representative government or through precedent in courts. The U.S. has laws from both. And in addition it is through the will of the people who are governed that these laws are agreed upon through election of representatives who will make those laws. Democracies are self-supporting and self-governing. Democracies require co-operation of all citizens. So much for the ideal. The reality is something else and the deck is stacked.

The ideal can not face what is reality. We are slowly developing a closed society. A few years back it was discovered that all citizens in the U.S. were being spied upon by it’s own government 24/7 in our technological utopia which it has become. Some rules were instituted to ameliorate this problem but there is no knowing how much of that has changed. It would be best to call the United States a technological utopia instead of a democracy because technology is believed to be the panacea that will move the U.S. forward and make it thrive.

Technology itself is not destructive. But utilized to allow some to have power over the many it destroys. There is a belief that each day brings a new “us’ a new “we the people.” But instead through technology we have become passive, regressive and reactive not proactive. Instead of a community of citizens willing to work together and assist each other where each individual can contribute something, we are becoming fractured, existing in our small ever shrinking withdrawn worlds. We are small groups in this technological utopian world where we only look for like-minded beings. Where we want to be liked for whatever we do. Where we want only agreement. Conflict of any kind is dealt with hostility. Rumors drive our belief system. History ends each night we go to sleep.

Thus fractured we look for the individual who will lead us from this morass we have fallen into. And when found that individual is given the power to tell us what to do, what to believe, what to think, which group is important who is on the outs. Those who are not recognized and are on the outs become scapegoats and are demonized. When they resist they are ostracized, imprisoned or killed. Our weak resistances these days are inspired and run by celebrity. And when the heat comes who do you think will disappear?

Think of the U.S. today. The U.S. has the kind of society where you are not constantly questioned for every move that is made. There are many things wrong with the United States but you still can exist without having to “show your papers” all of the time. (Though that might be limited by the browness of your skin). But for the most part, theoretically, if you decide to get into your car and drive to the store to buy some milk no matter what the hour of the day it is and the store is open no one is interested in knowing why. But U.S. society is becoming more fractured. And a fractured society needs a strong leader to pull the fractures together.

Why is this? We have no unified principle anymore. We used to be defined by class, values, family, religion, skills and strength of character. Class divisions of course are not a great way to exist but class divides could be broached. Today though we are defined by race, gender, celebrity, popularity, technology and perverted interpretations of religious belief and still in many ways, class. And so many of these things could lead to hostile conflict. Shame doesn’t matter anymore. Anger takes precedence over all. Patience is not a virtue. It is thought of being taken advantage of. Every belief is challenged by some opposing belief. This is particularly destructive in the realm of politics where even proven scientific fact seems to have some “alternative fact” that can challenge a fact. And above all it’s wealth not class that defines us specifically. The wealthier we are the more important we are no matter what kind of boorish individual we are. Only the wealthy make the rules that turn into laws that govern us. They control the levers of politics in this country. And those laws get subsumed as the new values that we believe we should have.

Values are usually thought of as family, spiritual and secular beliefs, education, growth, recreation and friends. These are still talked of in today’s technological utopia. Except the definitions of those words have changed to have meanings that support the technological utopia and our drift towards totalitarianism. Is there no way out of the morass we call the United States of America? It remains to be seen.

God and Religion

I am an atheist or at least I believe myself to be. But for certain I ascribe to no religion. And I put no stock in a deity to have anything to do with me. I was baptized a Roman catholic, was an altar boy, thought about becoming a priest and then reached the age of puberty and as George Carlin was known to say, “I was a Catholic until I reached the age of reason.” So that's who I am. Still this short essay is about God, the supreme deity that people of all faiths believe and I suppose I can even as an atheist make a defense for God. John Lennon said, “God is concept by which we measure our pain.” Perhaps. I believe that God is a manifestation of the imagination. But is that wrong? Must we cut away our imagination? Remove God and you stunt a portion of human imagination throughout the world because many people certainly the great majority are believers. You remove God and a whole realm of ideas, beliefs, aspirations and inspirations disappear.

Yes there is the question of morality that is derived within the structures set up within the various forms of God worship. But that is a question to be taken up at another time. What this belief is has to do with self-consciousness, an arisen consciousness an awareness of the self in relation to the other as well as the positing of the human in the universe and the belief that something perfect can exist borne out of imagination, a collective imagination if you will. The rules within religion, starting with the dictates of morality have somehow perverted this perfect entity of our imagination. The perversion is when religious dictums turn God into a voice, a creator, a giver of laws, an eternal justice definer, a damner. After all these matters are from the “imagination” of those who choose to take the power from the imagination of those who are not so devious and only wish to believe in the perfection beyond reality. These are the people who create a religion who demand that we follow their rules, their beliefs and serve in fact their needs while claiming they receive their beliefs from a higher power, God.

Should perfection be worshipped? Perhaps this is where we can find the crux of the problem of religion. One religion can never say the name of God. It is written g-d. Another religion claims three persons (three entities) exist in one God. Another requires a medium not to be worshipped but this medium's visage can never be shown, creating a need for one's imagination like the God he demonstrates he knows though this medium existed as a person. And then there are the laws written down by scribes and interpreted by anyone who aspires to do so, cutting off the head so to speak of each individual's imagination.

Religions are political forces designed to cause fractures in society for the benefit of some as if to prove that humans on their own with no designs of wanting to rule others and wanting to live and survive as nature intended are incapable of anything but destruction, error, falseness and deceit and only by worshiping a certain formula for accessing this imaginitve perfect being can their perceived enemies be defeated while the sins of the worshipper acting to defeat can be forgiven. What the appeal is can only be guessed at. Perhaps it is when engaging in destructive acts against others. Because guilt can be an unbearable force and it can not be expiated by any means other than lying to oneself or the lie in and of itself.