Monday, November 04, 2024

Balanced perspectives for our time - JUST in time?

Just before the consequential US election (I am optimistic we can prevail over Putinism), my previous posting offered a compiled packet of jpegs and quick bullets to use if you still have a marginally approachable, residually sane neighbor or relative who is 'sanity curious.' A truly comprehensive compendium! From the under-appreciated superb economy to proved dangers of pollution. From Ukraine to proof of Trump's religion-fakery. From saving science to ...

... the biggest single sentence of them all... "Almost every single honest adult who served under Trump now denounces him." Now numbering hundreds. 

And Harrison Ford emphasizing that point with eloquence.

Anyone able to ignore that central fact... that grownups who get to know Trump all despise him... truly is already a Kremlin boy.


== More sober reflections == 

Fareed Zakaria is by far the best pundit of our time - sharp, incisive, with well-balanced big-perspective. And yet, even he is myopic about what's going on.

On this occasion, he starts with The Economist's cover story that the U.S. economy is the "Envy of the World." 

Booming manufacturing and wages, record-low unemployment, the lowest inflation among industrial nations (now down to 2%), with democratic policies finally transferring money to the middle class, after 40 years of Supply Side ripoffs for the rich. 

The Wall Street Journal - of all capitalist and traditionally Republican outfits - calls the present economy 'superb at all levels' and 'remarkable,' with real growth in middle class wages and prosperity.

 And yet, many in the working classes now despise the Rooseveltean coalition that gave them everything, and even many black & hispanic males flock to Trump's macho ravings.

Zakaria is spot-on saying it's no longer about economics - not when good times can be taken for granted. Rather, it's social and cultural, propelled by visceral loathing of urban, college educated 'elites' by those who remain blue-collar, rural and macho. 

One result - amplified in media-masturbatory echo chambers and online Nuremberg Rallies - has been all-out war vs all fact using professions, from science and teaching, medicine and law and civil service to the heroes of the FBI/Intel/Military officer corps who won the Cold War and the War on terror.

Where Fareed gets it all wrong is in claiming this is something new!  

Elsewhere I point out the same cultural divide has erupted across all EIGHT different phases of the American civil/cultural war, since 1778. Moreover, farmers and blue collar workers, etc. have been traumatized for a century, in one crucial way! As their brightest sons and daughters rushed off from high school graduation to city/university lights...

... and then came back (if they ever come back at all) changed. 
It's been going on for 140 years. And the GI Bill after WWII accelerated it prodigiously.

I won't apologize for that... but I admit it's gotta hurt.

While sympathy is called-for, we need to recall that the recurring confederate fever is always puppetted by aristocrats - by King George, by slaver plantation lords, by gilded-age moguls, by inheritance brats and today's murder sheiks & Kremlin "ex"-commissars... and whenever the confederacy wins (as in 1830s, 1870s and 1920s in the United States and 1933 Germany) the results are stagnation and horror. And every "Union" victory (as in the 1770s, 1860s, 1940s, 1960s) is followed by both moral and palpable progress.

See also Fareed Zakaria's perspectives in his recently released book, Age of Revolutions: Progress and Backlash from 1600 to the Present.


== For this last week ==

Trump has learned a lesson from his time in office. Never trust any adults or women and men of accomplishment and stature. He has said clearly he will never have another Kelly, Mattis, Mullen, Milley... or even partisan hacks with some pride, like Barr, Pence, etc... allowed anywhere near the Oval Office. 

In fact, he wants many people in his potential administration who have criminal records and cannot get security clearances under present rules. He wants to have a private firm do background checks instead of the government and military security clearance process. 

This should give a bunch of corrupt or blackmail-vulnerable criminals access to and control over our most critical and sensitive secrets.

And anyone can doubt any longer that he is a Kremlin agent?


== A final note of wisdom ==

Only one method has ever been found that can often (not always) discover, interrogate and refute lies and liars or hallucinators.**

That method has been accountability via free-speech-empowered adversarial rivalry.  Almost all of our enlightenment institutions and accomplishments and freedoms rely upon it... Pericles and Adam Smith spoke of it and the U.S. Founders enshrined it...

...and the method is almost-never even remotely discussed in regards today's tsunamis of lies.

And even if things go super well in the Tuesday election, this basic truth must also shine light into the whole new problem/opportunity of Artificial Intelligence. (And I go into that elsewhere.) 

 It must... or we're still screwed.

---
** I openly invite adversarial refutation of this assertion.

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Okay okay. You want prediction? I'll offer four scenarios:

1.     Harris and dems win big. They must, for the “steal” yammer-lies to fade to nothing, except for maybe a few McVeigh eruptions. (God bless the FBI undercover guys!) In this scenario, everyone but Putin soon realizes things are already pretty good in the US and West and getting better... and the many of our Republican neighbors – waking up from this insane trance – shake off confederatism and get back to loyally standing up for both America and enterprise. 


And perhaps the GOP will also shake away the heavily blackmail compromised portion of their upper castes and return to the pre-Hastert mission of negotiating sane conservative needs into a growing consensus.


2.     Harris squeaks in. We face 6 months of frantic Trumpian shrieks and Project 2025 ploys and desperate Kremlin plots and a tsunami of McVeighs.  (Again: God bless the FBI undercover guys!)  In this case, I will have a dozen ideas to present next week, to staunch the vile schemes of the Project 2025ers.


    In this case there will be confederate cries of "Secession!" over nothing real, as they had no real cause in 1861. We must answer "Okay fine this time. Off you go! Only we keep all military bases and especially we keep all of your blue cities (linking them with high speed rail), cities who get to secede from YOU!  Sell us beef and oil, till we make both obsolete! And you beg to be let back in.  Meanwhile, your brighter sons and daughters will still come over - with scholarships. So go in peace and God bless."


3.    Trump squeaks in and begins his reign of terror. We brace ourselves for the purge of all fact using professions, from science and teaching, medicine and law and civil service to the heroes of the FBI/Intel/Military officer corps who won the Cold War and the War on terror.  And within 6 months you will hear two words that I am speaking here for the 1st time: 


                    GENERAL STRIKE. 


    A legal and mammoth job action by those who actually know stuff and how to do stuff.  At which point then watch how redders realize how much they daily rely on our competence. And how quickly the oligarchs act to remove Trump, either through accelerating senility, or bribed retirement or... the Howard Beale scenario. At which point then Peter Thiel (briefly) owns America. It's Putin's dream outcome as the USA betrays Ukraine and Europe and the future... and tears itself apart. But no matter how painful, remember, we've recovered before. And we'll remember that you did this, Vlad and Peter. And those who empowered them.


    Oh, yes and this. Idiot believers in THE FOURTH TURNING will get their transformative 'crisis' that never had to happen and that they artificially caused (and we'll remember.) Above all, the Gen-Z 'hero generation' will know this. And you cultists will not like them, when they're mad.


    4. Trump landslide. Ain’t gonna happen. For one thing because Putin knows he won’t benefit if Trump is so empowered that he's freed from all puppet strings and blackmail threats. At which point Putin will suddenly realize he’s lost control - the way the German Junkers caste lords lost control in 1933, as portrayed at the end of CABARET. 

Still confused why Putin wouldn't want this? Watch Angela Lansbury’s chilling soliloquy near the end of THE MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE. This outcome is the one Putin should most fear. 

By comparison, Kamala would likely let Vlad live. But a fully empowered Trump will erase Putin,-- along with every other oligarch who ever commanded or extorted or humiliated him - like those depicted below. And the grease stains will smolder.


Again... here's your compiled ompendium of final ammo. To help us veer this back to victory for America, the planet, and the Union side in our recurring civil war... 

...followed by malice toward none and charity for all and a return to fraternal joy in being a light unto the world. 





19 comments:

Tony Fisk said...

A message from the future ('cos it's already Tuesday in Melbourne and we're having a holiday for a horse race, which seems... apt?)

Anyway, as a little something to do with your fingertips, other than chew them, you can tell Tor/Reactor what you consider to be the most iconic SFF tales of the 21st century (or its first quarter, at least)

Larry Hart said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Larry Hart said...

Trying again without screwed-up italics...

Dr Brin in the main post:

GENERAL STRIKE.

A legal and mammoth job action by those who actually know stuff and how to do stuff. At which point then watch how redders realize how much they daily rely on our competence.


That was a plot element of Jack London's 1907 novel The Iron Heel, which someone on this list once pointed out to me. It predates 1984 and Brave New World, but anticipates those later novels in the same way that Forbidden Planet anticipated Star Trek.

In the pre-WWI novel, when the various national rulers try to initiate a war, the fact professions do exactly as you say and shut down power, transportation, and communications for a week. The war doesn't happen and the strikers are victorious. But unfortunately, it doesn't end there. The oligarchs get smart and start bribing the professionals who they really need with things like gated communities with wonderful parks and schools. Soon, these folks leave solidarity with the common man behind, and become part of the problem.

So the resistance plan depends a lot on how clever the oligarchs can really be about this sort of thing.

locumranch said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
locumranch said...

Dr. Brin triples down on " the heroes of the FBI/Intel/Military officer corps who won the Cold War and the War on Terror" malarky, even though Snowden, Manning and Assange released copious documentary proofs that the US intelligence services have gone rogue, violated their charters and have engaged in numerous domestic intelligence operations that have illegally targeted US citizens on US soil.

This is the official position of the ACLU, too. Look it up.

From Operation Mockingbird to the Pentagon Papers to Iran Contra to the Iraqi WMDs & the Syrian Nerve Gas frauds, the perfidy of the US intelligence agencies has been well-documented by numerous independent news services.

As for the 'War on Terror', did the US finally win this? If so, huzzah!!

But, if not, can we finally admit that our 'War on Terror' was largely created by US short-sighted incompetence, as the US literally founded, funded & created Manuel Noriega (Panama) and Saddam Hussain (Iraq), up to & including the Taliban, Bin Laden & ISIS (Afghanistan), years before we decided that we had to destroy them??

Be that as it may, tomorrow is the US Election, so we will soon see if Dr. Brin's worldview actually represents 'Consensus Reality' or not.

May God have mercy on our souls.

Best

David Brin said...

Made up jibber-jabber doesn't explain how 20,000 FBI folks, 100, 000 military officers, and 2 million science workers - a majority of the 1st two lifelong republicans - suddenly and UNIFORMLY, without a single actual leak - joined forces in a grand plot agains the country & civilization they swore to serve. What a scenario!

Or else... the jibber jabber is part of the Kremlin's PROVED ownership of the US right...

... and the FbI guys and officers and prosecutors and Grand Juries and juries across America (the latter mostly white retirees in red states who indicted >FORTY TIMES as many GOPpers as dems) see clearly what a festering mass of treason has taken over the US right.

Um, comparing plausibilities.... Nah... it's simple. Poor locum is a raving loony member of a treason cult. That'll do as a baseline till we see him present ANY evidence why even ONE of those heroes would become a cartoon Bond villain. Till then, you aren't fit to shine their shoes.

Unknown said...

The boat, it is for staying in.

It's 11/5/24 on the East Coast. Haven't been able to write a damn thing. Voted 2 weeks ago by mail in WA. If any citizen of the US here is waiting for Der Tag, get it done - even Loc can write in the Leopards Eating People's Faces Party ticket. Tomorrow I'm having dinner with my family - a two birthdays/wedding anniversary thing. Might even have a glass of something mildly alcoholic (rare for me).

Kamala Harris is apparently the Socialist, Extremely Left danger to America.
(eyeroll)
I wish.

Pappenheimer

Tony Fisk said...

A 50 year old message from Rod Serling (via Dick van Dyke)

locumranch said...

The key phrase in Dr Brin's above repudiation of US governmental & intelligence agency malfeasance is *** WITHOUT A SINGLE LEAK*** which denies the Wikileaks-mediated leakage of almost 10 million incriminating documents (not to mention the hundreds of other well-documented cases of official criminality reported by the MSM), proving only that none are so blind as those men of faith who refuse to see that which is contrary to their faith.

Such 'faith' springs from a lifetime of Operant Conditioning, a Huxleyan process wherein "62400 repetitions make one truth", made ever more effective by our host's fine memory & intellect, as detailed by David Ryback's 1967 work on "Responsivity to Verbal Operant Conditioning" which concludes that High IQ individuals are much more susceptible to mental conditioning (with far fewer repetitions) than those Low IQ individuals who may require incessant & unending reinforcement.

Lying (in general) is an extremely common human practice, as many resort to self-deception as an Ego Defence --- to protect one's fragile self-image and avoid feelings of shame, guilt & inadequacy -- plus many rationalize lying to others as a moral good, assuming that those whoopers are intended to help others by maximizing benefit, minimizing harm or protecting the mentally fragile from all sorts of unpleasant truths.

Faced with the irresolvable dilemma of choosing between a pleasing lie or unpleasant truth, Dr Brin chooses to double-down on his current mostly pleasant narrative which allows him to protect his ego, while simultaneously allowing him to rationalize his generally deceptive practices as moral.

And this, my children, is exactly how "how 20,000 FBI folks, 100, 000 military officers, and 2 million science workers (along with 8.5 million WW2 German Nazi party members) joined forces in a grand plot against the country & civilization they swore to serve":

They lie to protect themselves AND the country & civilisation they swore to serve because they believe that it's the right thing to do.

Any questions??


Best

Der Oger said...

Fingers Crossed, both for a defeat of Trumpism at the ballot box and a non- violent aftermath.

I wish you luck and that sanity, decency and democracy may prevail.

Larry Hart said...

"Remember, remember the fifth of November."

One way or another, we certainly will this year.

Larry Hart said...

Danke.

Darrell E said...

An excellent essay by Sam Harris. Unlike many he has not become detached from reality.

Literally and Seriously
Why I Support Kamala Harris for President

Larry Hart said...

And kudos to the Chicago Tribune for listing on their "This Day in History" section, "In 1605, the gunpower plot was foiled when Guy Fawkes was apprehended before he could blow up Parliament."

Larry Hart said...

From an e-mail newsletter from former Chicago Tribune columnist Eric Zorn:

The only predictions I will make is that it Trump loses, he will never, ever concede no matter how resounding his defeat. And if Trump wins, the prissy protest voters who didn’t vote or voted for a third party candidate because Harris wasn’t good enough for them on one particular issue or another will come to regret it good and hard. Either way, I will never forgive or excuse history’s fools who used the term “Trump Derangement Syndrome” to suggest it’s irrational catastrophizing to point out the threat his wicked, sadistic, rash narcissist poses/posed to our democracy.

C-plus said...

Somehow the first stanza of "The Boxer" seems so apt.

Alan Brooks said...

Yes, questions:

•How did a retired physician come to possess 20/20 hindsight?
• Was he born that way?
• Does he know many in government? If so, how many, and in what roles are they?
•If the retired physician were employed in government—perhaps in a foreign service—would the world situation be better or worse due to his efforts?

Flypusher said...

Thank you. I have more hope for the first wish than the 2nd though. I'll be dealing today with my election anxiety by driving people who need a ride to the polls.

One thing I'll be watching in the event of a Harris win- whether the cease fire talks in the Israel-Gaza conflict get some new life. It's obvious that Bibi wants Trump back (and disgraceful that the protest voters are seemingly dismissing that), and if that doesn't happen, will he stop stalling?

Larry Hart said...

Also:

Tomorrow we'll discover what our God in Heaven has in store.
One more dawn.
One more day.
One day more!