← Autodidact Archive · Original Dissent · SARTRE
Thread ID: 15500 | Posts: 1 | Started: 2004-10-31
2004-10-31 16:12 | User Profile
[URL=http://members.mountain.net/theanalyticpapers/thirdph.htm]The Foundation Party[/URL] by Robert L. Kocher
This analysis is dedicated to the memory of Munro Williams.
Some years ago I read a column by Alexsandr Solzhenitsyn in which he warned Americans that they wrongly believed their carefree lives would continue to be so forever, regardless of what they did.
It has been my observation from reading history that no great nation or empire has ever survived the softness enabled by its successes. It has also become my conclusion that unless there is serious comprehensive change, America is entering its final days in accordance with that principle.
The present American political condition resembles a bizarre TV plot or movie. It is difficult to ascertain whether what we are watching is a comedy, a series about the triumph of an insane subversive ideology, a documentary of the nation's destruction and decline into a turbulent third world swill, or a plot centering upon Elmer Gantry type personalities deceiving or manipulating people in ruthless pursuit of personal ambitions. It is possible that the American people have spent so much time watching such things on TV and in theaters that such has become acceptable in their personal lives as well as in their national leadership. They are no more disturbed by reality than they are by that with which they are surrounded for amusement each evening.
The American nation has not had a president since Reagan. Bush The First dissolved the Reagan momentum into a fog of functionless congenial blandness. For a 20 year period the nation had been imprisoned in an environment of craziness. Reagan gave people confidence the nation was returned to the hands of intelligent sanity. Then Bush acted out the role of a mindless smiling country club social lush who had been stuffed by a taxidermist, resulting in the subsequent turning of the country over to another nutcase. Throughout most of the 1990s America was in the hands of a defiant psychopath such that a high school girl dare not enter the Oval Office without prospect of getting her cloths torn off. Bush The Second is a combination of Inspector Clouseau and Chauncy the Gardner out of Peter Sellers movies. His actions would be a hilarious comedy if this were a movie and if he were not really president. In the nearly six years I have been watching Bush Junior, he has yet to say or do anything intelligent or insightful. Like his father before him, he has conducted a presidency without content or direction.
The problem is, many people are desperate to take Bush seriously and are moving heaven and earth in attempts to conjure up reasons to do so.
George Junior, "W," has seemed to be completely lost and out of place in the presidency and grabbing aimlessly at anything randomly in trial and error to see if anyone responded positively. In the beginning of his presidency he was irrelevant. His polls had deteriorated to the point of hopelessness by the summer of 2001. The Bush presidency was through. Then, jihadists flew airplanes into American buildings, catapulting his support 35% upward in a six to eight hour period, saving Bush's position. He found a big time role that few in a frightened and outraged nation would dispute or examine in serious detail.
As a consequence of the emotional atmosphere created by the events of 9/11, and based upon the fallacy of the undistributed middle we are now in a vague "war on terror" being conducted against vaguely defined boogiemen.
What is the fallacy of the undistributed middle? In basic form the classical fallacy of the categorical syllogism runs:
All A are B.
All C are B.
Therefore: All A are C.
But, unless the All A are B is refined and limited to meeting the condition All A are All B, then All A are C is in classical logical terms doubtful and a fallacious argument.
While the explanation sounds abstract and academic, the fallacy is employed quite often in demagogic debate or propaganda, and is easy for the noncritical mind to fall into.
How does this relate to the war on terror?
The people ramming airplanes into buildings were termed terrorists. As a response, Bush declared a war on terrorism.
Now, in the fallacious broadness of the undistributed middle, that declaration devises license to conduct war against people defined as terrorists of all kinds everywhere. Under that same license, one terrorist or terrorist group can be substituted for another at convenience or to suit appearances. And, very very importantly, when one group or brand of terrorist can be substituted for another, it allows avoidance of examination of the issues of a primary or specific group while still appearing to do something.
The world is spiced with nasty people and terrorists everywhere. Who, specifically, were the terrorists responsible for 9/11 and what did they represent? The "war on terror" is being conducted without an important exact admission as to the enemy is in this war.
Within the vaguely defined purpose of the war on terror, bombing any Eskimos who have nasty attitudes is within the scope of direction. Whether they would qualify as a threat to us, to civilization, or to anyone but themselves becomes irrelevant.
Who were the people flying airplanes into buildings? What did they represent? What were they attempting to accomplish? What constitutes the major threat?
Saddam Hussein was from outward appearance the perfect villain right out of Hollywood central casting playing a nasty script. He was an obnoxious strutting loudmouth shaking his fist in defiance against the world. Such a role is a continuing requirement for leaders in such areas of the world. He'd already been vilified and demonized preparatory to the Gulf War --quite deservingly. He was a ready made perfect target toward which to direct animosity from 9/11 without expenditure of time, effort, or thought.
The Bush machine made exaggerated claims regarding Hussein and Iraq. Or, from another point of view, Bush & Company were quick to accept, uncritically, all arguments asserting Hussein was a culprit in whatever. At the same time serious evidence to the contrary along with serious indications that we were heading toward a military trap were ignored.
It was implied that there were atom bombs being developed or hidden on every street corner in Iraq. We hit Iraq and Saddam Hussein.
Bush and the government have created a simplified narrow enemy of political convenience to devise an image of decisiveness and purpose. But it is an illusion. Saddam Hussein was nothing more than a strutting tin-pot loud-mouth. He had little modern military of serious consequence and little prospect of achieving any. He was an obnoxious and hatable but unimportant and irrelevant personality. The weapons of mass destruction were never found and there are ludicrous attempts to argue that they were moved to other countries. We now find ourselves involved in a guerrilla war with somewhat deliberately vaguely identified people who can't be discerned within the general population, including an apparently endless number of suicide bombers, which the new Iraqi government is unable to control and which serious proportions of the Iraqi people regard as Muslim cousins who they are reluctant to fight. B52 bombers and super tanks are useless against unidentified active guerrillas dispersed throughout a general population while we have lost the lives of more than 1,000 of our soldiers while maiming thousands more. In Islamic nations we are viewed as infidels. Islamic guerrillas are not. Let's run that by again. In Islamic nations we are viewed as infidels. Islamic guerrillas are not.
With whom or what are really at war? The answer is obvious. The answer is Islam, Mohammedism, or whatever it is to be called.
As Munro Williams used to say, "The mind denies what is obvious to the senses." (This has become especially true in the last 40 years as psychotic levels of denial have become interpreted as liberated intellect.) What is uncomfortable, or frightening, or inconvenient, or threatening is denied by the mind regardless of how obvious it is to those not inhibited by such reactions, who are liberated from crowd hysteria, or who are disciplined enough to make rational decisions regardless of such reactions. Behold, the emperor wears no clothes, but to the self-deceived mind he is argued to be in magnificent rainments.
Behold, for fourteen hundred years, Islam has slaughtered or conquered all that has been in its path in its determination to impose itself upon the world while those who remain not Islamic are to be forced to pay a non-believers tax, the Jizrah or Jizyah. It has done so subject to opportunity and capability. It converted one fifth of the world by force of brutality. It is the nature of Islam that leaving Islam is punishable by death, and is so enforced in Muslim countries --as is an insult to Mohammed. Anything less than total worship and subservience is an insult.
In recent years, Islamic jihadists have killed about 70,000, that is 70,000, that is 70,000, non-Muslim people in non-Muslim Kasimir and 10,000 Christians in Indonesia in order to impose Islam. And so forth in about 20 countries throughout the world. On 9/11 America received a small dose of what other nations have been subjected to for centuries. The recent bloodbath in the Breslan school was not about Chechnya, it was about Islam.
To anyone of serious functioning adult mentality, those realities are sufficient to end any further discussion while determining the course of any necessary action.
When such ongoing realities are reported, when they are, they are kept separate from identification with Islam. The people committing the acts are referred to as activists, separatists, terrorists, or something similar, but not as the Islamic jihadists that they are. On occasion it will be admitted that something like five percent of Muslims are radical fundamentalists or some such thing such as to minimize the reality of, and connection to, standard Islam. Islam is protected, and its nature concealed.
It is frequent for Muslim jihadist organizations to issue edicts in non-Muslim areas of India declaring all women in the area will wear Muslim attire and conform to other aspects of Muslim law. Typically, jihadist guerrillas will kill from three to 20 non-Muslim women a night by beheading or shooting as punishment for not conforming to Muslim edicts. Some have acid thrown in their faces. This isn't about something as vague as terrorism, or separatism, or activism. It's about a specific ongoing war with a specific purpose, really a continuing worldwide war, to impose Islam.
One American Muslim group, under serious political and public relations pressure, recently apologized for the actions of (a few radical) Muslims on 9/11. The group didn't acknowledge or apologize for the 70,000 deaths in Kasimer which are continuing on a daily basis, or the deaths in Indonesia, or in the Philippines, or in the UK, or in Africa, or in Scandinavia, or Australia. The apology was an empty ploy to manipulate the non-Muslim public.
It is also prudent to realize, while not all Muslims are active "terrorists," every time we or anyone else gets hit on the chin by jihadists it is, must be, interpreted as fulfillment of Mohammed's prophecy and commandments which is neither to be condemned nor to be seriously opposed as a pillar of the religion. Brutality and killing that is in fulfillment of the prophecy and commandments of the religion's founder can not be sincerely condemned. It's a touchdown for the home team satisfying believers in the stands, even though they are not on the field and in some areas are wise not to openly cheer or applaud. There is massive theological sympathy with the killing. Approval and exhortation are being thundered by leaders in mosques in America and throughout the world.
Anyone who doesn't understand the above paragraph does not understand what we are facing with any competence.
We are in a war against madness. We are in a war against a self-replicating form of aggressive criminal insanity carrying out the commandments of an original madman affected by hallucinatory voices and visions he claimed to be from Allah centuries ago. Under the influence of those voices he personally carried out 28 military/terrorist campaigns as a model to be continued by posterity.
It is a war without national boundaries as we conventionally know them or see them on western maps. Within this conflict there are only two areas to be recognized. There is the nonmuslim world, which may incorporate geographical boundaries as we commonly think of them and which are diverse and autonomous. The boundaries of the Islamic world or world secured to the word of Allah is wherever Islam is. The jihadists who flew airplanes into American buildings were not from Iraq. They were from Arabia, Egypt and other places. The people who blew up the children in Beslan over the conflict in Chechnya were not all from Chechnya --and perhaps none of them were. Some of them were speaking Arabic languages. They were there from the greater nation of Islam in an effort to help impose absolute Islamic entitlement and control of the Chechnya geographical area.
People throughout various nations of the world are fighting for their lives against the forces of Islam.
The idea of a war with Iraq is an exercise in ignorance and stupidity. It incorporated a delusion that we can define the battlefield as Iraq when the nation being fought is in large portions of the world and the war for survival against the aggression by that nation is taking place throughout the world. The Islamic guerrilla movement in India, in the Philippines, in Beslan, in New York on 9/11, in parts of Africa, are all the same thing from the same nation although the guerrillas may have come from different areas on our conventional maps. Iraq was and is irrelevant except we are getting thousands of our military killed or maimed in a shooting gallery visited at convenience by jihadists collecting from throughout the Islamic world.
The present American direction is to fight a mythical limited battle on a mythical and even irrelevant battlefield while denying the reality of the whole.
Our adversaries are getting trained in many places over the world, including by the Koran. Surprisingly, few were getting trained in Iraq. Iraq was dominated as much by Hussein as by Islam. Iraqi structure was primarily Husseinic rather than Jihadic although Hussein was wise to pay respects to Islamic powers in the same way Lyndon Johnson was smart enough to meet with Billy Graham.
The reality is that under the present mode of thinking under the present American leadership Islam is going to be allowed to operate a geographically localized meat grinder which will slowly destroy our military at little cost or threat to Islam's total nation or mission, while a little boy president plays general in his own let's-pretend war and makes ridiculous pronouncements about Islam being a religion of peace. We are in much the same situation as we were in Viet Nam in which we conducted a useless localized military operation convenient to the enemy while the enemy leadership operated in assured safety in Hanoi under no pressure or motivation to quit.
The outcome will be the same as it was in Viet Nam, except worse. Our military will be demoralized and destroyed. We will lose the war. More than that, we will lose the world and end up living in earth-wide imposed taliban iron control as various Islamic controlled areas do now.
In his stupid declarations about Islam being a religion of peace, George Bush immobilized, undermined, and undercut the desperate efforts of millions of people under attack throughout the world to save their own lives. If the sane world is to survive attack by Islam, it needs to be mobilized and coordinated into a collective defense rather than be undercut. Instead, Islam is on a worldwide mobilization in an immobilized Bush-undermined world.
George Bush is a somewhat grotesque peacemaking unifier and inclusionist. He accomplishes this through immobilizing resistance against hostile forces and giving those forces their way.
Neville Chamberlain refused to take the Nazis seriously in the '30s. The consequence was that England was almost destroyed and conquered in World War Two. Islam is a more serious threat to civilization than the Nazis ever thought of being.
Islam operates like a malignant melanoma. It breaks off malignant cells from the continually expanding main malignancy. Those cells take hold at non-resistant sites of opportunity. During initial infection, Islam occasionally carries on religion of peace public relations routines until powerful enough to kill. There is expansion at those new sites which becomes increasingly militant as the sites become powerful enough to express and impose their will. The infected sites expand and merge. The finality is that the entirety is taken over by the disease and all else dies or is killed.
A declared intent of the American leadership in the War on Terror is the establishment of democracy in Iraq. That intention is attempting to impose democracy upon people whose religion and religious leaders view democracy as an absolutely intolerable blasphemy against God, as well as a criminal act against Islam and Mohammed. A basic tenet of Muslim theoretics and theology is that people are imperfect, corruptible, and fallible. The word of Allah as revealed by Mohammed is, and will remain, perfect and not to be subject to vote. Consequently, rule of man by man through democracy is a blasphemous imperfection. Law and rule are to be the perfect word and law as revealed through Mohammed and interpreted through an all-powerful religious leadership. Apart from belief, that leadership has a vested selfish self-interest in such a system. Regardless of hypothetical perfection of a deity, the belief is interpreted by people no less corrupt and self-serving than those who would vote in a democracy. The possibility that existence of Islam, itself, is an expression of man's susceptibility to corruption and corruptibility is not to be considered.
In an internet blurb quoting a forthcoming Time magazine piece on tapes of jihadist training sessions at Attawhid wal Jihad, "...Sheik Abu Anas al-Shami, one of al-Zarqawi's key commanders and a member of the organisation's religious committee, preaches that any nation built on secular principles is "in the light of Islamic law a tyrannical infidel and blasphemous state." "
This theme is recurrent throughout Islam and jihad.
Secular principles means anything other than Mohammed and Islam. There will be only one allowable government and system of law. That will be the law as stated by Mohammed. Mohammed will not be subjected to popular vote to remain in office.
Such a system might work if its founder is not a madman. Unfortunately, when a "religion" such as Islam is founded by an aggressive hallucinating psychotic killer obsessed with sexual maladjustments and fantasies, the system is oppressively crazy. Such a system is intrinsically at war with democracy or with any other system not sharing its beliefs. In the event that the general population has been brainwashed and coerced to the point where it can be certain that population will not contest or deviate from the insanity of the system, a measure of democracy can be permitted.
A religiously based political system might theoretically work if the religion and its founder were perfect, and if the interpreters or administrators of that religion were of perfect noncorruptible nonhuman form. The condition describled after the second 'and' in that sentence does not exist anywhere and is not to be expected. The condition before that 'and' is continually claimed to have been met by a wide variety of adherents to varying religious faiths who believe in their having found the true path.
In most Islamic nations, rule is by Mohammedan law. There were several instances this year, ones in Nigeria and Pakistan became publicized, where raped woman were sentenced to death by stoning in Mohammedan courts. The rationale for the sentence is that any woman who engages in sexual activity outside of marriage is guilty of adultery, period. Whether the activity is forced upon her is not relevant. It is still sex outside of marriage, defined as adultery. She is to be executed.
Islamic law and thought are a compendium of something one finds in the farthest back wards of mental institutions. They are accompanied by massive amounts of conceit as well as indignation when questioned or not followed. Islam is not livable by healthy intelligent human beings. Islam is livable by deficient mentalities and/or mentalities systematically distorted to conform to acceptance and practice of various compulsions and obsessions. Conversely, Islam finds nonpathological environments and societies which do not share, enforce, or endorse its compulsions, obsessions, and thought distortions unlivable. The Islamic frame of reference is that such environments must be compelled by any method to change to conform to the will of allah.
Muslim groups in the UK are demanding certain sections of the nation be subject to Mohammedan law, as are Muslims in Canada. If the demands are not met, the groups will eventually engage in terrorist acts to obtain their way --which has been the pattern elsewhere in the past. In the Philippines there has been an ongoing guerrilla war for years in an attempt to force the Philippines to cede several areas to absolute Mohammedan rule and law. Whether there are nonmuslims living in those areas is not of concern to the movement. The only governance of such movements is the absolute delusional self assurance that they are correct.
It is a constitutional intention in America, and a principle of civilized toleration adopted in some other countries, that people are entitled to their own religious belief, and are to be protected in that belief.
Examination of this begins, or should begin, with what is to be done with a secular system or pattern of behavior which reasonably deserves to be judged insane or aggressively dangerous? From thence, suppose a group of such people claims service to some hypothetical deity or prophet, or mentions the name of such deity or prophet in its actions, what does that change? Is it any less aggressively insane? If a brutal monster claims to in league with a god and his followers take up that claim, is he, is the systemic pattern, any less of a monster, or does such claim license gangersterism while stigmatizing those attempting to defend themselves from it as being religiously intolerant or repressive? When hypothetical deities or prophets are believed in or claimed, then monstrosity and madness become protected actions.
We, in the civilized world, are facing an unresolved conflict --a conflict within law and a conflict of philosophy which we refuse to acknowledge or resolve. On one side the right to various religious, quasi-religious, or other beliefs is to be unrestrained in the name of freedom. On the other hand, what about legitimate need for self defense when such beliefs are monstrosities? And what is to be done when a system of madness is a dangerous infectious disease?
Then, again, the further argument becomes, who is to judge what is crazy or not crazy? Suppose major controlling portions of a society go berserk as happened in Germany under Hitler and in the Soviet Union under the communists. Governmental or social judgments as to what is insane or is insane criminality then become as insane as the criminal insanity of that society while the individual loses all personal rights or protection.
If society and its government is allowed to make and act upon judgments, does it not open the door to abuses? On the other hand, does the failure to make rational intelligent judgments and observations, and to act upon them, not subject society to even worse abuses from insane or psychopathic elements within society, or from throughout the world who become unopposed as a consequence of that failure? The quickest way to become subjected to insanity and judgments imposed by insanity is to cease making sound rational evaluations and judgments as to who or what is sane. The absence of recognition and judgment is as equally damning in imposing corruption and psychosis as is the elevation of that psychosis into power initially.
Thus, there is a complex conflict between potential abuses by governmental and social institutional observations and judgments on one hand, versus the destructive madness licensed by the absence of judgments and observations on the other. One condition is as lethal and oppressive as the other. The same abuse and decay can prevail under either condition.
The answer to the conflict is that it is clear that some form of sane judgment and evaluation must prevail over a society and its government or one or the other of the above destructive conditions will result. Without that, there is disaster in one form or another. Reasonable standards for evaluation and judgment are exactly what is missing in present American society and in the political process. Madness has become a protected entitlement while reason and basic sanity have become not only unprotected, but attacked as a supposed form of intolerant oppression because reason, reality contact, and maturity are rejected by spoiled children and demagogues.
One of the major catastrophes of American culture since the mid '60s is that Americans have lost the strength or capacity to judge when someone or some group is just plain obviously crazy, and dangerously or viciously so. Combined with this, Americans have become far too inhibited as not to be inhibited brings them into direct confrontation with a perverse insane environment. They have surrendered their maturity and mental health as a method of reducing conflict with prevalent immaturity and nuttiness. In so doing, they have compounded the problem and increased pressure upon themselves to surrender their rational minds.
In its absence of rational judgmental capacity the United States is ready to be taken over or conquered by psychopathological internal or external elements. As far as internal elements, the condition known as Political Correctness is eating away the force and rational capacity of the nation. Among external elements, Mohammedism is on the path to defeating America and Mexico is on the path toward practical annexation of several states while obtaining the electoral political power of those states and financing the process with the American social service system. We will end up with extension of a foreign nation with substantial unimpeded powerful access to our political system and which will be able to vote funds for itself.
Since the mid '60s there has been no agreement at all on what constitutes reasonable sanity versus insanity. From thence, no judgment can be made even in what are obvious circumstances. Secondarily, no degree of defense or self-protection is allowable.
One of the principle social and philosophical thrust of the '60s counterculture was that accurate and reasonable judgments were to be immobilized. One, among several purposes was to prohibit reasonable evaluation of behavior and to procure license. An additional result was to procure license for vicious passive-aggressive and/or borderline psychotic personalities which acquired massive social and political leverage during the period. That which is not allowed to be accurately perceived or labeled is not to be defended against.
In succumbing to the social and legal pressures of this social and political thrust, America and Americans rendered themselves defenseless to the point of being masochistic as well as blind to reality in a self-hating and suicidal course.
Americans need to be unchained. It is the business and responsibility of life, and of survival, to make accurate observations and judgments. It is NICE to avoid that responsibility, but life is not nice.
Judge not, and ye shall be enslaved.
As the influence of the ascendancy and power of the counterculture has taken hold, Americans have become timid, repressed, and have lost confidence in their most reasonable and obvious observations and inferences. American have lost the will toward self-preservation and self defense. They have been beaten down to the point of being unable to make competent judgments about anything, including their own survival.
It's become an immobilizing assertion in dealing with Islam to say that it is their religion. That makes any realistic observation of issues untouchable. The answer to religious assertion should be, you had best find yourself another religion because the religion of sanity takes precedence over all else and dictates non-Muslims are not to be subjected to conquest or being killed.
One reason responsible for jihadists flying airplanes into American buildings is Islam has been coddled and uncontested such that it has been allowed to become psychotically spoiled and arrogant. Islam is not, and has not been in recent years, realistically confronted or being made to take responsibility for either its history or its ongoing acts. At the time of 9/11 it was George Bush's adult responsibility, and responsibility as a competent president, to correct that condition. He did not do so. The world will pay dearly for it.
The assertion is made that criticism of Islam would antagonize the Islamic world. It should then be asked what the Islamic world would do if it were antagonized. Would it begin running airplanes into buildings? Would it begin spreading anthrax? Would it behead hostages in Iraq and elsewhere? Would it kill probably 100,000 people in India? Would it kill and riot in Africa? Would it kill 10,000 Christians in Indonesia? Would it terrorize and kill thousands in the Philippines? Would it kill a school full of kids in Beslan? God forbid Islam should become irritated and such things would begin happening.
It doesn't take much to irritate Islam. All that is required to provoke Islam is that it not be given its way. Its way is complete world conquest without the slightest hint of resistance or reluctance to be dominated. The result has been constant temper tantrums and enraged killing for fourteen hundred years.
As a corrective beginning, Islam must not be falsely dignified by being called one of the world's great religions, but must be called the aggressive sadistic group psychosis that it is.
While we are winning irrelevant battles against irrelevant personalities such as Saddam Hussein, or maybe even argued boogie man bin Laden, we are losing a world war.
This analysis is not about Islam. It is about basic competence, responsibility, honesty, acceptance of reality, survival, and a socially reinforced self-hating suicidal bent in America.
Bush's political strength and claim upon the presidency has been nearly exclusively his war on terrorism based upon a misdefined, irrelevant, and self-destructive war. The basis of Kerry's political life has been Viet Nam.
To begin with, Kerry is the accidental and unwanted nominee of the Democratic party. The desired and intended nominee was Hillary Clinton. In the year 2000 Hillary had not held political office and needed experience as a senator to embellish her qualifications. In the 2000 campaign Bush lost the popular vote to Al Gore, an unelectable moron, who was not expected to win by anyone. He was nothing but a sacrificial placeholder for the Democrats until they could win the 2004 election, knowing Bush was also unelectable against even a marginal opponent. Bush turned out to be as unelectable as Gore in a nearly tied election with a negligible voter turnout except for dedicated party supporters. Bush legitimately won the electoral vote and validly took office under the United States Constitution. But, while Bush won office by several hundred votes in Florida, his equal incompetence level with Gore could not sustain a presidency after taking office.
After taking office, Bush's poll numbers drifted downward abysmally while Hillary's inched upward. Zogby showed Bush with a 47-50% approval rating and a 51-48% disapproval rating during July and August of 2001. This correlated well with other polls. The media centered focus upon Hillary while Bill Clinton acted as if he were still president, uncontested, for up to $300,000 a night speaking fees. The name Clinton was everywhere. Bush was the marginally noticed aimless fumbling irrelevant man treading water until the next election would dispense with him.
With those trends, Hillary had the nomination and the presidency locked up after a waiting period during which she would promote herself with books and raise funds. But when 9/11 occurred people were suddenly too busy ducking airplanes to be concerned about Hillary. Bush's support catapulted to 85% in six hours. Hillary suddenly found herself on the outside looking in.
Bush's only possible political strength is desperate support during a crisis. As the excitement and desperation over 9/11 began to wear down, his poll numbers and support evaporated. Kerry, Dean, and Edwards began to position themselves for a run at the presidency. The situation was hilarious. The three of them were goof blabbermouths or showpieces with no support, while Hillary had 85% support in the Democratic party. Hillary was the desired and intended candidate. The three boneheads would need to beat each other's brains out to generate no support or enthusiasm while the leading candidate, Hillary, was beyond opposition, pressure or attack, because she technically wasn't running. She didn't need to run. As things were, she had the nomination and the presidency in the palm of here hand. Kerry was getting nowhere. Not Kerry, Dean, nor Edwards were getting enough votes to win the convention while 85% of Democrats were waiting for Hillary. It was foolproof. All Hillary needed to do was sit it out, watch, and laugh.
Then, an unpredictable thing happened. Dean acted as if he was having a psychotic break on national television. Democrats were driven to Kerry, who they didn't like, in fear of Dean, and Kerry inadvertently obtained enough votes to become the nominee while Hillary was suddenly out of the contest as, technically, a non candidate. The poor girl just plain has no luck --not that she belongs in the presidency, because she doesn't.
That's how Kerry, the loser and blow-dry goof who has no business anywhere, and wasn't wanted anywhere except in Massachusetts and places similar to it, became the nominee.
Kerry has a personality and history out of a movie with a twisted psychological plot. Kerry had a propensity for grandiosity and belief in his own specialness early on. He announced his intention or entitled destiny to become president while a kid junior officer in the navy. Such imperial personalities tend to believe that anything is justified in pursuit of specialness and ambition. Any ordinary rules, integrity, or ethics are eclipsed in importance to the importance of their subjective destiny or entitlement and their insatiable desire for attention and importance. Any eggs can be broken to fulfill the destiny of personal greatness. Ordinary ethics and integrity are trivial, even unjust, impediments to be ignored achievement of grandiose subjective entitlement.
Kerry was in Viet Nam. as he has ceaselessly reminded the world for many years since he formally entered politics. He was in an active position there for four months. During that short period he accumulated more medals than thought possible and came back a certified hero, as he has also ceaselessly reminded the world since leaving.
The difficulty with his Viet Nam service and claimed record of heroism is that there is serious evidence that the record and claims were concocted by himself and were/are fraudulent. Former commanding officers up to the grade of admiral and other people with whom he served are adamant in saying so. The physician who treated what the physician declines to view as wounds and what Kerry demanded to merit a purple heart is enraged. A former commanding officer demanded Kerry leave his office in reply to Kerry's demand for a purple heart. Kerry defied his commanding officer and obtained the medal through other channels. Kerry releases copies of standardized glorious citations for undescribed wounds suffered, but no medical records. Kerry wrote reports of encounters with hostile enemy fire which contributed to fabrication of a combat record for himself but were disputed as never having occurred by other people who were on the missions. In a flourish of personal style which both friend and foe must admit it would be impossible to duplicate, he blew up a rice pile with a grenade in a stupid fashion, then demanded a purple heart for getting pelted on his own behind with the rice propelled by the blast from his own grenade. There was no serious injury. There never was throughout his four-month career.
And so forth.
As one flag grade officer evaluated, Kerry was able to exploit and misuse an honor system. Eventually Kerry would have been caught and harshly corrected for the good of the service, but he ran a quick hit and run operation over part of a four month period. It was a chaotic period that lacked the time to set Kerry straight. Threatening an officer with blocking of future promotion when he obviously has no intention of staying in the service is useless. Fellow officers were just relieved to see him leave. Young President Kerry was the worst primadonna and screw-up in the outfit.
Kerry made many enemies with his antics. The swiftboat veterans and others have mounted a devastating effective attack on him. There is an attempt to dismiss such attacks as being the product of Republican partisans or something similar. BUT, if they are Republicans it is because of Kerry and too many equivalent to him in the Democratic party. People aren't just born Republicans, Democrats, independents, or whatever in perpetuity. They have reasons and motivations for having become what they are, and these reasons should be examined rather than simply dismissing them by sneering and calling them party names. No man of any maturity and integrity will be able to tolerate John Kerry for long. Unfortunately, maturity and integrity anywhere are fading out of vogue in America, with the result Kerry and those like him can prosper. In Massachusetts, they are worshipped.
It is difficult not to believe the swiftboat vets and others. The persistent continuing pattern by Kerry is one of absence of conscience or integrity in pursuit of personal ambition. Without embarrassment, Kerry claimed to have been sent into Cambodia by President Nixon during a certain period. The claim was eagerly accepted and played extremely well with leftists, counterculturalists, and others who hate(d) Richard Nixon, or just plain hated period. The problem is, Nixon wasn't even president during the stated period. Kerry lies at convenience. Those predisposed to support him believe and support anything he says. Those without such predisposition understand that nothing he says should be believed.
As pointed out in the analytic papers, people who employ lies and distortion to manipulate other people without conscience are psychopaths. When they begin to believe their own lies, they become psychotics --often dangerous psychotics without conscience. How much Kerry believes of his own stuff is unknown. One way or another, we have a serious problem in Kerry.
In a dramatic well-publicized act of protest, Kerry threw what were supposedly his combat medals over the White House fence. It was recently exposed that they weren't his medals. In response, Kerry flippantly retorted all military medals are interchangeable. But his remain in his office as part of his schtick and are not to be thrown away. They are not interchangeable. They never were.
Kerry returned from Nam a self-promoting self-certified military hero with political ambition. He found himself leverage to receive attention which could be further developed in the Viet Nam war and allied protest movements.
Kerry had a ready-made constituency in the Viet Nam War protest movement and a stage limelight to grandstand a position supported by the media. His purported combat record gave him a superficial appearance of validity the radical left desperately needed. He vocalized what the countercultural movement wanted to believe and presented its position for it. The counterculture and political left movements, and the media, swarmed around him. Within a few days Kerry, who had announced his intent to become president when a young naval officer, was on a political roll.
Opposition to the Viet Nam war is also a code position which is a vehicle for summarizing an array of countercultural attitudes and patterns. Kerry has been riding the entirety for years. It isn't just a single issue. It's encompasses an attitude, or a mosaic of attitudes which correlate with each other, an attitude toward adults and the adult world, an attitude toward life, morality, ethics, and everything else. Those positions and attitudes are not difficult to express directly, or hint at, in a state that prides itself on reelecting Teddy Kennedy and homosexual lawmakers.
Viet Nam? Kerry seems to know little about Viet Nam. He has made assertions about Viet Nam history that are ridiculous. Were I to ask him for a serious detailed history of the area without prior warning to allow crammed preparation, he would be lost. He may believe he could provide such a a history, but it would be canned superficial countercultural cliches. However, he knew what would sell to the counterculture and the sympathetic media. When one is in the business of psychopathic pursuit of warped ambition, what sells is important. If the truth requires work and study, is unpopular, or doesn't sell, it is unimportant.
Kerry has been riding the Viet Nam issue and what it represents ever since. As a result, the 2004 campaign has spent considerable time dealing with the words Viet Nam.
Kerry is saying the same thing he was saying when he was essentially a protesting high school kid who believed he was special. He has slicked it up a bit, but he hasn't grown or developed at all. This is also characteristic of most of his supporters. Anger at, and reflexive opposition to, the adult world has continued and licensed a peculiar adult-taunting lack of ethics or responsibility. A type of intellectual, intellectualized, corruption is looked upon as beating the system. The Clintons and their crowd evidence the same thing. The positions taken are all a displaced expression of continuing unresolved adolescent anger. This has become one of the most powerful forces in American politics.
To this day deep American Southern politics remains stigmatized and an object of ridicule by the image of Huey Long. "Kingfish" Long was what is referred to as a populist. He espoused an ideology of redistribution of wealth in which individual wealth over $8,000,000 was to be taxed at 100%, confiscated, combined with bible belt theology. He bellowed like San Fernando Red or Senator Foghorn in the old Red Skelton comedy skits. The ignorant Louisiana hicks ate it up. The outside view of Huey Long was that Long was to politics as snake handling is to religion.
Louisiana was the state worst in the grips of a effete Southern oligarchy whose purpose was only to protect, glorify, and promote itself while maintaining an illusion of a condition of inherent impenetrable superiority. There were few roads, little or no education, and in Louisiana the highest illiteracy rate in the nation, 22%. Of those who could be classified as literate, many could not read or write beyond the fourth or fifth grade level. That image persists and still haunts parts of the South today. Economic opportunity was nonexistent without possession of the Superior Caste Identity Card. The oligarchical intent was to maintain an unchallenged position of that condition as well as maintain a self-serving state of pleasant complacency for itself.
The clever man can employ the tactic of using being right about one thing to license his to be wrong about everything else. In fact, the blood of Louisiana was clogged by an oligarchy that felt licensed to do so by right of self-proclaimed nobility. Perceiving this condition gave Long a very legitimate political/moral issue which he could politically utilize with good justification to advance himself and a movement.
Long was not stupid. He was brilliant. He completed law school in an incredible eight months.
I never thought I'd hear myself say it, but Long, however repugnant he was, was more correct than he appeared to be or that those repelled by him would like to admit. There is some indication that he honestly believed in what he was doing. His last words when dying from an assassination attempt were about how much more had to be done. Conditions in Louisiana absolutely had to change. Whether his method of change was wise or reasonable is debatable. His style, if widely adopted, certainly would produce a dangerous irrational unstable unpredictable demagogic politics that might lead in any direction. The danger in producing irrational hysterical mobs is that they are apt to go their own direction. The irrationality and hysteria, the mentality, persist on their own long after their political or social usefulness, including exploitability, has been utilized. Demands need no longer be sane or realistic while necessary economic or behavioral laws need not be followed or impose limitation on irrational demands. The society falls to pieces in a storm of revolutionary madness.
When irrationality becomes encouraged and acceptable, the first things to die are personal maturity and personal discipline. No government can substitute for those. Any government will fail without them in the general population. That is the greatest problem in America at the present.
Was Long corrupt? Top mobster Frank Costello got his real start and made his original money with Governor Hue Long as his business partner. Together, they controlled all the slot machines in Louisiana and made millions. Long did any dirty work while Costello remained an aloof arranger and administrator. As an aside, Costello was an intelligent quiet, somewhat gentle man. People who met and liked him exclaimed, "But you're a gangster!" Costello's quiet serious reply was, "I don't kill people. I buy people." By negotiating a way for Long to make millions, Costello bought Long and much of the workings of the state of Louisiana without employing any heat or muscle himself. Over the years, Costello was regarded as public enemy number one while the public officials who lived high as his business partners cultivated respectability. Long cultivated raucous populism rather than an air of respectability. The business relationship flourished.
Huey Long's sweating manic bible-thumping harangues before massive crowds of hysterical illiterates are both frightening and ludicrous by today's standards --or even yesterday's standards from those people who were distanced from the geographical area and subculture in which Long operated. Certainly we have advanced beyond that and beyond being susceptible to the influence of such people. Haven't we?
Well...the more thing change, the more they remain the same. Huey Longs still exist today. Today's Huey Longs are apt to speak with Ivy League Accents and dress in a more subdued manner --unless they were London Johnson. On good days Johnson was a poor imitation of an old Red Shelton political comedy routine.
America is seeing first order demagogues and ambitious trash. The difference between what is seen today and Huey Long is that what is seen today is more unprincipled. Within the contemporary system the Hue Longs and the effete oligarchy have become one and the same. Today there exists an effete oligarchy of manipulative pseudopopulists. Long had a legitimate criticism and mission given the conditions in Louisiana. The present Longs manufacture and distort issues. More will be said about this later.
Long employed religious bible thumping. The new religious bible thumping is secular politically correct counterculturalism --legitimized for believers by the Clintons with help from Monica Lewinsky et al.
Corruption? It is beyond honest dispute that Jack Kennedy sent mobster Sam Giancanna bags of cash containing $250,000 in small bills to help throw the 1960 election for Kennedy. A federal organized crime task force had phone taps of mobsters discussing it. Kennedy retained respectability and is looked upon as a god to this day while his attorney general brother, Bobby, is still presented as having been tough on organized crime. Well... Bobby didn't carry his inquiries and crusade as far as the Oval Office, where it belonged. It was all grandstanding and showmanship beneath which the Kennedys operated as the most successful crime family in the nation's history.
The group in which George Bush was a part that developed the sports franchise/stadium is now under suit from plaintiff(s) complaining that their property was confiscated for the sports enterprise under eminent domain and they were paid 1/7th the value of their property.
From an internet law site:
"Eminent domain
'Eminent domain is a term in law to describe the power of the state to appropriate private property for public use. In its broadest sense, it is the concept of the right which the state has to perform such activities as taxation, expropriation and condemnation.
'More narrowly, it is used to describe the power of government to confiscate private property for government use. Governments most commonly use the power of eminent domain when the acquisition of real property is necessary for the completion of a public project such as a road, but the owner of the required property is unwilling to negotiate a price for its sale."
And so forth.
The road that was completed led to Bush's bank account.
At the Cato law site there is discussion of the problem that eminent domain is abused and that it is, or can be, employed by the powerful against, or to the disregard of, the powerless.
As a matter of reality, powerful and well connected people can manipulate and stretch the concept and application of eminent domain so as to have government confiscate land in such a way as to enable or enhance their primarily personal interests. It's a variety of the principle RHIP. Rank Has Its Privileges. In a collateral form it can be stated, Well Connected Rank Has Its Special Entitlements At The Expense Of The Rights Of Others.
Was the right of eminent domain originally meant to further George Bush & Company's personal project? I think not. Eminent domain has been expanded such that public use incorporates private enterprises where the public is expected to frequent. If the stadium is to be government owned, then technically the right of eminent domain might be employed to procure land for it. But that purpose is stretching things a bit. Even if the ownership of the stadium, itself, remains in state title, the purpose of its construction was to enable and service the prospects of the Bush adventure. It is easy to become a successful business man under such conditions.
The bottom line is, while other people lost their homes, farms, or businesses under confiscation or threat of confiscation, front man George Bush ended up with a sixteen hundred acre ranch with his own private fish pond to play in from it. He is reported to have scored $18,000,000 at little investment other than the family name.
Does Bush have mob contacts. It's a different mob. Was it legal? That mob has the power and contacts to make it legal. Bush is brought in to contribute an aura respectability.
It is the way the Bushs have always lived. George Junior has never had any reason to question it. It is all he has seen. It is respectable within the frame of reference of Bush and his social class.
Bush is not a determinably evil man. Neither is he a manipulative demagogue. He is corrupt and doesn't know it.
He belongs to a social caste of people that have become increasingly soft in successive generations. Being insulated from rigorous life, they do not develop. They acquire a type of bland social polish and congeniality which has the secondary effect of blunting the truth about anything or everything. They go to the correct schools and make the correct social contacts. Upon graduation, they enter an awaiting pool of accumulated wealth, assumed power, and contacts in a caste of similar families. Opportunities and position are bestowed upon them without need for personal capacity or industry. In the specific case at hand, Bush received $18,000,000 for use of the family name.
What essentially exists is family pools resembling many of the kings or other nobility of Europe during various periods. They are insulated, complacent, soft, pampered, and not too bright or are even half-witted. However, they have secure position resulting from successive generational transfer of social title.
Not all politicians and demagogues hold formal political office. The most powerful politicians are TV news anchors and such. They control public perception, recognition, knowledge, focus, and mobilization through a created virtual reality. The kingmakers determine who the king is, and so are more powerful than the king.
Americans now find ourselves being confronted by two figures running for president in the major parties who are obviously unfit and unqualified for the presidency measured by mature intelligent adult standards.
They engage in a substanceless public ballet danced to the tune of congenial evasiveness. Neither is saying anything that couldn't be voiced by a high school kid. Both are unstudied in political and economic matters beyond what is required to satisfy crowds in 30 second bites and affect polls. Today, Kerry has been chiding Bush over flu vaccine. It is a safe comment by Kerry which nobody will disagree with. As far as addressing the far more serious major issues affecting the long term direction or condition of the nation, people know no more about them or Kerry's position on them than they did at the beginning of the day. Bush will reply in kind. It has been going on for months.
With seriousness I suspect the lack of substance is not only because of sharply honed avoidance, but is also the partial result of neither candidate having the brains that God gave a chicken. Both are incapable of substance. They don't even evidence curiosity regarding what is happening.
Neither ever worked seriously in their life. The Bushs have coasted through life on inherited position and contacts. Kerry held a position as a prosecutor. It wasn't really a serious job. It was an interim cosmetic position, a paying pretentious waiting room, where he queued up to worm his way into politics. Kerry's life has been politics while his conception of an economy is availability of lost, stupid, gullible, or desperate rich women. Fundamentally, none of them are employable in serious concrete productive capacities. "Them" in that sentence refers not only to the Bushs and Kerry, but includes people such as the Kennedys, Clintons, and others. Politics and politicians have become products of, and live in, isolated cultures that have no serious investment in America. Politics has become a prestigious playground to be played in by glib useless people unfit for anything else.
For months Bush and Kerry have argued military service records directly or through surrogates. Any time Kerry takes the stage, he talks about his military service. Bush "served," if one can call it that, in a flying country club for the well connected in Texas. Kerry signed up for a plush tour on small boats, but got stuck when someone up the command chain got the idea of sending the boats up rivers --and Kerry suddenly found himself up the creek. He then wormed his way out of the navy. Months have been spent attempting to dress this up and center on it while the serious issues have been skillfully avoided or are beyond the capacity of either.
We are in trouble.
America is in the grip of politics of grinning congeniality by substanceless social showboaters, by the new version of left wing Huey Longs, and by superannuated self-impressed high school debate team members. To make things worse, they are taking their cues and being run by a pathological media that generates issues and group social hysteria that politicians follow and feed upon.
According to an internet blurb reporting Internal Revenue Service statistics overall American income shrank for two consecutive years for the first time since the modern tax system was introduced during World War II.
The total adjusted gross income on tax returns fell 5.1 percent. Adjusted for inflation, the income of all Americans fell 9.2 percent from 2000 to 2002, according I.R.S. data.
It is also stated that falling incomes, rather than tax cuts, appear to count for the greatest share of the decline in income taxes paid. The leftist babbling machine is claiming tax cuts are responsible for deficient government income and the deficit.
Sitting in front of me is a September 20, 2004 front page from the Washington Post. While I dislike some of the Washington Post's policies and writing, there is information in it which is valuable and beyond dispute.
One subtitle of the front page study is "The percentage of households earning close to the median income has fallen steadily over three decades." There are graphs and numbers supporting the assertion. Another subtitle is, $17 AN HOUR| The Vanishing Middle Class Job.
With increasing frequency I hear a new class of stupid fop presidents and CEOs at places such as Boeing and Hewlett Packard giggling and gloating over proclamations that Americans have no right to a standard of living. The fop Boeing president doesn't concern himself that that standard of living is what is necessary for people to buy tickets to ride on his airplanes. If that standard of living deteriorates, he is out of business.
America is being cursed with a wave of narcissistic corporation presidents and CEOs who think they are cute provocative movie stars or some similar nonsense. Many of them are clowns. I don't know where the hell they came from or why in hell they were chosen for their positions, but they damned well don't belong anywhere in the serious business or industrial world. To the extent they exist or are tolerated within the corporate world, the antibusiness climate in America is justified.
There is smirking when Americans are put out of jobs or moved into downgraded jobs at less pay. Then there is demand to sell that same person an automobile or an appliance six months later, and abstract wonderment as to why there is no way to do it. Lowering taxes on the people thrown out of work or moved into marginal employment won't change the fundamentals. It is fundamental economic law.
Entire necessary industries have been shipped out of this country in droves. The necessity for those industries is not only that of being able to produce critical goods and services, but also to provide employment necessary to the purchase of goods and services in a market economy.
Messing with people's livelihoods produces political instability. This is especially true and justified in the frivolous smirking attitude, even celebration, toward decline of worker employment in the United States. If it continues, it will result in overturning the government and economic system of the United States, through vote or through violent revolution.
(Before continuing. let's mention something about corporate loyalty, or lack of it. During the Jimmy Carter period America had a moron president, who had no idea of what it cost to produce anything, running about delivering angry sermons about excess profits and windfall profits. This was particularly directed at the oil companies. He had a series of studies done by people of his own choosing and various government agencies to investigate the price of gasoline. His own studies showed company profits on a gallon of gasoline to be a mere 3 1/2 cents. Finding himself cornered by the information, he junked the studies, then intensified his criticism of the oil companies. The reality is, if Mobil or Shell makes 31 cents when I drive 100 miles, it is not the end of my, nor anyone else's, world.
Anyone who opens a business or industry to have it held as ransom by the ravings of Jimmy Carter and the political axis, then and at present, aligned with him needs to be crazy.
During the Carter period, corporations, in response to betrayal, were forced to begin looking for a way out, and/or a diversification that would protect them from the demagoguery and madness in America. By electing the people we are electing to office, Americans have earned mistrust and abandonment by the business community. There is more than enough blame to go around for any present economic difficulties.)
Under present trends what is occurring is economic decline and eventual collapse of the United States economy --and destruction of the free enterprise system. The middle class is getting mauled as part of it while a small group of people are finding profits and/or personal or ideological satisfaction in brokering the decline. That personal or ideological satisfaction in the decline is important. The Marxist intention to disassemble the American economy is being accomplished. Paradoxically, it is being supported by people claiming to be radical capitalists.
This leads to discussion of several tangential thrusts in Marxism/paramarxism which I have been confronting for more than 40 years. One of these is that differences in economic condition among nations produce discontent and wars. A second is that terrorism etc. is the result of economic desperation channeled into political acts.
These concepts lead to a belief in several necessary paths to achievement of world peace. One of these is that America's economic condition must be brought down, leveled, to economic equality with other world nations. The second is that America must end the economic difficulties, or economically upgrade other nations. This began as a Marxist view that would destroy capitalism while simultaneously confiscating capitalism's production to build up socialist and other countries. We would give Marxism/socialism the rope with which it would hang us.
This overall view and thrust has been taught independently of direct identity with Marxism or with the wildly shouted angry emphasis on destruction of American capitalism. In its more bland form it has become widely accepted by people with soft minds wanting world peace by any means and by elements in religious denominations. It is taught at universities as economic, psychological, and social truth. It is a frame of reference in a system of bizarre circular reasoning.
Bush apparently believes in this. He has made statements that we must share our wealth with the rest of the world. The 'our' in such declarations deletes the concept of the individual in this while facilitating the assumption of group ownership and, hence, right to group disposal of what is really individual creation. For a man who isn't very bright and who has never held a serious job or who has no personal investment in anything, it is easy for such assumption to flow without question. The same is true of Kerry.
There are several serious problems with the above. The first of these is the immature erroneous assertion that if a person or nation goes about their own business and builds something, or builds an economy, leaving other people as they are to continue living as they always have in their continuing corruption and superstition, there is some psychological or political law that this will produce war, and within the predictability of that law those productive advancing people or nations are guilty of provoking war and terrorism. That is, if someone else sees what their culture or political system or belief system does not produce and wants it, those people who do something with their lives or those nations who advance themselves are the problem. The attitude within cesspools of obstinately held superstition, of corruption, of petty jealousies, of believing life or the world owes them something, is somehow not to be confronted as the sole problem. The reality is that too many people, and too many nations, are too involved in other people's business, and not involved enough in their own. They need to be told that in the strongest most direct terms.
It will also be quickly found that stupid superstition, corruption, petty jealousies, of believing in unconditional entitlements in life, is easily pampered into militant insatiability, the expression of which has become the principle function of the United Nations.
Wars are not only fought for eco