Well, it seems that we have experimental confirmation that cataclysmic changes in gravity ripple across space at the speed of light, just as Einstein predicted. This will cause many to feel elated but to most, it's meaningless, their universes being more circumscribed than the one cosmologists and physicists live in. Everyman's concerns for the way science can confirm or deny opinion and common sense don't run deep..
Our four dimensions are expanded or shrunk a very tiny bit as a gravitational wave passes through. A very tiny bit, a fraction of the width of a proton, which is far too small for the average person to get involved it, or to attach any importance to. But it's just one small step away from the kind of consciousness Americans want to retreat into, and I'm not only talking only about the Evangelicals with their young and small universe run by miracle and designed by a consciousness. Americans are searching for, longing for a world without harsh and rigorous scrutiny -- a world trending back to "nature" and away from technology which is somehow safer and healthier, and where things have meaning on a human scale.
The parts of our brain that run on superstition, snap judgement and frighteningly huge oversimplifications really are in charge and nearly all the time. Like "outer space" the views of reality put together piece by piece by scientific method is far away, and abstract and a little silly to most people. If the LIGO experimental confirmation of the spreading ripples in space-time from a collision between black holes billions of light years away and billions of years ago ever makes it into the public consciousness it will be to sell us gravitational wave receivers, tuned to natural frequencies which will improve your sex life and help you shed unwanted pounds. People will claim to be getting signals from the universe through gravitational waves and will help you do the same for a fee.
It's certainly been several lifetimes since we proved that Tetanus is not caused by rust and rhinoviruses not caused by drafts of air. It's been enough time for the proof that milk doesn't promote phlegm or that gluten has no negative effects on 95% of the population or that Dr. Oz's weekly miracle discoveries are worthless. But we know our inherited weaknesses never completely go away. Prayers and curses, personal rituals and lucky socks still matter to us. We still talk of mysterious toxins and desire to have our intestines flushed and something or other done with our Chi or our Chakras. Hardly one in a million will bother to question that the culture of marketing and entertainment is anything but an exploitation, using lies and deception and distraction.
So gravity is associated with a particle and particles have a wavelength and propagate at a finite speed across an infinite void and so we don't care, except possibly to cause us to ask the universe to help us with our love life and to choose a more ritually pure, vegan, paleo, gluten free diet free of "chemicals.". Science doesn't really mean shit to us and as the men who wrote Ecclesiastes told us, our entire culture and view of ourselves and the universe are just vanity.
Thursday, February 11, 2016
Sunday, February 7, 2016
Cunning Linguistics (Michigan Style)
Michigan Senate Passes Bill Making Sodomy a Felony Punishable by 15 Years in Prison:
Dirty pictures versus dirty water is the latest iteration of an old GOP tactic: Change the the subject and turn the focus of attention. Waste time on utterly stupid legislation to distract you from the REALLY BIG ISSUE. Like criminalizing insect pornography so we don’t have to think about poisoned children in a dying city. Nothing like a water crisis to sneak a peek into your bedroom and do something kinky with handcuffs!
Here is a rhetorical question: Which of the two is more obscene!
Postscript:
"Some states' sodomy laws specifically target gay relations, but Michigan's is among those that make oral and anal sex crimes illegal regardless of whether they're same-sex or different-sex. Michigan is also one of several states with a sodomy ban that's intertwined with a prohibition on bestiality – effectively equating the two. The law makes it a felony for anyone to commit "the abominable and detestable crime against nature with mankind or with any animal." If the person is already a sex offender, violations are punishable by life in prison."Since we have turned the focus of attention away from the water crisis in Flint, Michigan, here is a special diversion for you ... unabridged, uncensored insect pornography. This pair of lurid lubbers making love is an example of beastiality at its best.
Dirty pictures versus dirty water is the latest iteration of an old GOP tactic: Change the the subject and turn the focus of attention. Waste time on utterly stupid legislation to distract you from the REALLY BIG ISSUE. Like criminalizing insect pornography so we don’t have to think about poisoned children in a dying city. Nothing like a water crisis to sneak a peek into your bedroom and do something kinky with handcuffs!
Here is a rhetorical question: Which of the two is more obscene!
Postscript:
 |
| Cunning linguistics -- cephalopod style. |
Friday, February 5, 2016
It's Always High Noon in Tallahassee
The Florida House has now passed a bill allowing Floridians with concealed carry permits to openly carry firearms, even on college campuses. Good guys with guns, doncha know. It's what made Deadwood such a peaceful place in the 1870's and Gene Autry rich in the 1950's. Hey come on, didn't you dream about being a Wild West cowboy when you were a kid?
Many people will of course react in horror and fear and panic and they, like most Americans, don't know that 45 states already allow it and many without any kind of permit needed. 13 states at least require some sort of license and at least Floridians who want to flaunt firearms would need to be fingerprinted and investigated and to have passed a course of instruction. Even Hoppalong Cassidy and the Lone Ranger didn't have to do that back when America was great, but I can't wait for Governor Scott to sign this one. Hi Ho Silver!
Is it going to cause a bloodbath? I certainly doubt it, and in my 70 odd years I have only seen anyone carry openly while hunting or walking about their farms or in very remote areas -- except for cops, of course. That still makes me nervous. It feels a bit odd, I admit, but those who do carry concealed weapons legally can stop worrying that if the wind blows their shirt open and reveals a gun or knife they won't go to jail as the law now provides. It's not all bad.
It certainly provides a further degree of polarization however and reduces the likelihood of the vociferous phobics ever agreeing on anything, and that's not a good thing, but what after all is getting better in our culture of fear and outrage? I'm to the point where I really accept the madness and embrace the horror - or the humor - as an outside observer.
Any mention of the American Gun Problem simply accelerates gun sales. Every rampage shooting lengthens lines at the gun store and every proposal or suggestion or casual mention that something might be done does the same thing. I might do well to sell guns and buy Stock in Smith and Wesson.
No, I don't think much will actually change, except perhaps in the Florida Legislature where another bill passed will allow Florida's Senators and Representatives to bring their guns to work. As long as we can watch it on TV, I'm all for it. Legislative showdown? You ain't seen nothin' yet!
Many people will of course react in horror and fear and panic and they, like most Americans, don't know that 45 states already allow it and many without any kind of permit needed. 13 states at least require some sort of license and at least Floridians who want to flaunt firearms would need to be fingerprinted and investigated and to have passed a course of instruction. Even Hoppalong Cassidy and the Lone Ranger didn't have to do that back when America was great, but I can't wait for Governor Scott to sign this one. Hi Ho Silver!
Is it going to cause a bloodbath? I certainly doubt it, and in my 70 odd years I have only seen anyone carry openly while hunting or walking about their farms or in very remote areas -- except for cops, of course. That still makes me nervous. It feels a bit odd, I admit, but those who do carry concealed weapons legally can stop worrying that if the wind blows their shirt open and reveals a gun or knife they won't go to jail as the law now provides. It's not all bad.
It certainly provides a further degree of polarization however and reduces the likelihood of the vociferous phobics ever agreeing on anything, and that's not a good thing, but what after all is getting better in our culture of fear and outrage? I'm to the point where I really accept the madness and embrace the horror - or the humor - as an outside observer.
Any mention of the American Gun Problem simply accelerates gun sales. Every rampage shooting lengthens lines at the gun store and every proposal or suggestion or casual mention that something might be done does the same thing. I might do well to sell guns and buy Stock in Smith and Wesson.
No, I don't think much will actually change, except perhaps in the Florida Legislature where another bill passed will allow Florida's Senators and Representatives to bring their guns to work. As long as we can watch it on TV, I'm all for it. Legislative showdown? You ain't seen nothin' yet!
Tuesday, February 2, 2016
Moon over Iowa
Rafael "Ted" Cruz wins in Iowa. China releases startlingly clear pictures from their moon rover and Facebook erupts with comments like "where are the stars" and "why do we see tracks where there's no air or water" and "what if China pushes the moon out of it's orbit and it kills us all." We're reminded that our moon landings were all faked. And then of course comes the prizewinner: "How come they can do this and not us?"
People are stupid. People are barely more informed than chimpanzees and the United States Economy and Leadership thrive on making these people unaware of the magnitude of their ignorance and cognitive disability. These are the people who choose our leaders and legislators. These are the people who demand to force their demented, mean and superstitious beliefs on all of us. These are the people who wield a huge influence on the most powerful military the Earth has ever known.
The medium that lets you read these words serves more to place the ideas of idiots, madmen and deceivers in the same shop window as enlightened and informed truth than it does to educate us. I spent my formative years with the idea that nuclear and military technology was going to kill us all. Now I'm not so sure that we even need it as we find a way to destroy civilization and make Mankind great again - as we were when we spent our days wandering the rift valley, eating carrion and picking lice.
We were never great. We've always been a mean, cruel,larcenous and murderous lot of apes and our greatest ability is to ignore our idiocy while it's killing us.
People are stupid. People are barely more informed than chimpanzees and the United States Economy and Leadership thrive on making these people unaware of the magnitude of their ignorance and cognitive disability. These are the people who choose our leaders and legislators. These are the people who demand to force their demented, mean and superstitious beliefs on all of us. These are the people who wield a huge influence on the most powerful military the Earth has ever known.
The medium that lets you read these words serves more to place the ideas of idiots, madmen and deceivers in the same shop window as enlightened and informed truth than it does to educate us. I spent my formative years with the idea that nuclear and military technology was going to kill us all. Now I'm not so sure that we even need it as we find a way to destroy civilization and make Mankind great again - as we were when we spent our days wandering the rift valley, eating carrion and picking lice.
We were never great. We've always been a mean, cruel,larcenous and murderous lot of apes and our greatest ability is to ignore our idiocy while it's killing us.
Monday, February 1, 2016
The Caucasus ...
Do I really give a rat's ass about the caucuses in Iowa, or the regional boundary between Europe and Asia? Hell, no! Instead, I'll entertain you with this poem:
Rembrandt, the tenebrous
In the etching's third state
Light slanting down
Is taken for granted.
At the foot of the cross
Soldiers on horseback jostle
A party of burghers
Along with the faithful
(As the Good Book affirms).
In the fourth state,
Figures on the left
Have been smudged
Or burnished out.
Darkness is pulled in
Like a curtain of sacking.
The bad thief is lost.
A wholly different lot soldiers
Hoards the remainder of light.
Wednesday, January 27, 2016
The Sagebrush Rebellion
Every way of a man is right in his own eyes: but YHWH pondereth the hearts.
Proverbs 21:2
It seems a bit pretentious to call it a rebellion or to call the participants patriots for participating in an armed sit-in as we used to call it back in the day. "Highfalutin' " you might call it: rhapsodizing about sleeping under the stars and saddlin' up your horse, since one is still quite welcome to do that. Indeed I've done that myself although the horse was iron and didn't need saddling. The event that precipitated the Malheur occupation had more to do with arson of Federal Property than a camping trip or the right to enjoy the great outdoors. It has more to do with the perceived right to exploit common resources for individual profit.
LaVoy Finicum, said by his family to be a gentle and kind man was killed yesterday in an armed confrontation with FBI agents. Although I don't know the details, I'm rather certain he died in vain, defending a nostalgic idea of freedom drawn from romantic fiction but also drawn from a relic of the days of anti-Communist hysteria. Strutting around with firearms on Federal property is more like something extracted from a Zane Fray novel that a political statement. Fiction, romance, free-range nostalgia and maybe a bit of the Bible thrown it to remind us of a time before government and "every man did that which was right in his own eyes."
You might see it as paranoia, the assertion that our government must by nature abridge our freedom continuously if not wantonly, and that there is no process for addressing grievances except in the old way, the frontier way, the fantasy way of the gun and by pretending that the legitimacy of government is an individual choice and not that of the voting population. The sovereign citizen is not part of our law and never was. The idea of continuous revolution that "speaks from the muzzle of a gun" is an argument found in the little red books the Red Guard used to carry, not in our Constitution, but I'm used to seeing the words of Marx and Mao supported by people who think they're opposing Communism and seeing it everywhere.
Proverbs 21:2
It seems a bit pretentious to call it a rebellion or to call the participants patriots for participating in an armed sit-in as we used to call it back in the day. "Highfalutin' " you might call it: rhapsodizing about sleeping under the stars and saddlin' up your horse, since one is still quite welcome to do that. Indeed I've done that myself although the horse was iron and didn't need saddling. The event that precipitated the Malheur occupation had more to do with arson of Federal Property than a camping trip or the right to enjoy the great outdoors. It has more to do with the perceived right to exploit common resources for individual profit.
LaVoy Finicum, said by his family to be a gentle and kind man was killed yesterday in an armed confrontation with FBI agents. Although I don't know the details, I'm rather certain he died in vain, defending a nostalgic idea of freedom drawn from romantic fiction but also drawn from a relic of the days of anti-Communist hysteria. Strutting around with firearms on Federal property is more like something extracted from a Zane Fray novel that a political statement. Fiction, romance, free-range nostalgia and maybe a bit of the Bible thrown it to remind us of a time before government and "every man did that which was right in his own eyes."
You might see it as paranoia, the assertion that our government must by nature abridge our freedom continuously if not wantonly, and that there is no process for addressing grievances except in the old way, the frontier way, the fantasy way of the gun and by pretending that the legitimacy of government is an individual choice and not that of the voting population. The sovereign citizen is not part of our law and never was. The idea of continuous revolution that "speaks from the muzzle of a gun" is an argument found in the little red books the Red Guard used to carry, not in our Constitution, but I'm used to seeing the words of Marx and Mao supported by people who think they're opposing Communism and seeing it everywhere.
But attaching noble purpose to the banal and even to the ridiculous is the stuff of religion and politics, from terrorists "protecting' their almighty God to the claim of immunity to the law conveyed by "belief." That noble purpose behind the Oregon occupation seems to be supported by a strange edition of the US constitution annotated by one W. Cleon Skousen, an anti-Communist crusader supported it seems by Glenn Beck which makes all kinds of claims about whom the law pertains to and what the constitution allows and doesn't. You may be old enough to remember that Cleon was one of those loonies claiming Dwight Eisenhower was a Communist agent. It's a book that's been distributed through Mormon sources and printed by the millions. It's a book carried by Cliven Bundy and others of his ilk
This madness lives on, lures people into a Quixotic epic including heroes with tin-pot helmets making suicidal attacks on the entire concept of Government. That the United states was never intended to be for anyone but Christians who live as they please and do no more than what is right in his own eyes is at the heart of this "rebellion" and I would sooner call it a fugue, a fantasy and a fraud. At heart though it's also religion and supported by a religion with separatism as it's legacy and hostility toward "gentiles" as it's heritage.
Perhaps YHWH will weigh some hearts here, perhaps not, but the law will certainly weigh actions
Sunday, January 24, 2016
Friday, January 22, 2016
Sarah's Choice
Responding to a domestic violence report last week, police officers arrested a 26-year old suspect for punching his girlfriend in the face and brandishing a firearm while intoxicated. Is this your typical crime blotter from Any Town USA? Not this time! The alleged offender was Track Palin, oldest son of Sarah Palin.
Whether Son of Sarah ends up in lockup, or receives a slap on his affluenza, is beside the point. Where was Mamma Pit Bull with Lipstick one day later? Was she arranging bail to spring her son from jail? Retaining legal counsel or family counsel?
On Tuesday, the former half-term governor of Alaska had flown to Ames, Iowa, to stump for Trump. Her signature voice screeching of chalk on blackboard, the family values mom betrayed no hint of the family mess back home.
Not until Wednesday, during a campaign stop in Tulsa, Oklahoma, did she finally speak of the elephant in the room:
“That starts from the top. It’s a shame that our military personnel even have to wonder, if they have to question, if they’re respected anymore. It starts from the top,” she insisted.
Indeed! Accountability starts from the top, but was the POTUS deserving her spite? Did PTSD derail her hapless Track, or perhaps some other pre-existing condition long ignored? Let’s take a Tripp (no pun intended) down Memory Lane:
December 6, 2005 — Four teens stopped at a liquor store and stole a bottle of vodka before vandalizing 44 school buses. Although courts do not release the names of juvenile offenders, one of the four teens is believed to be Track Palin.
September 11, 2007 — Son of Sarah enlists in the U.S. Army (presumably to ‘straighten up and fly right’). In the year Track Palin deployed to Iraq, his CIC was President George W. Bush.
September 2, 2008 — On the same day John McCain named Sarah Palin as his VP running mate, tabloids broke this news: Teenage daughter Bristol was pregnant.
September 6, 2014 — Let us recall the infamous Palin Family Brawl starring Papa Todd, Mama Grizzly, bristling Bristol, and punch-drunk Track.
June 27, 2015 — After earning $262,500 as teen pregnancy ambassador for the Candie Foundation (an abstinence awareness charity), Bristol announced her second pregnancy — again out of wedlock.
No doubt, tabloid journalism opens windows on the private lives of famous people but rarely delves into more meaningful clues. Are Palin family values behind closed doors the same as they appear in public?
Ask any mental health professional. Patterns of underage drinking, teen pregnancy, and trouble with the law are signs and symptoms of disconsolate teens — and of absentee parents who are inattentive to their needs. Here is the portrait of a distressed family repeatedly mired in controversy and drama.
Of course, Mamma Grizzly does what grizzlies do best: Shift blame. Accuse. Denounce. Ridicule. Play the victim card. And avoid mirrors. Blame the POTUS for the elephant in the room, but never admit responsibility. Perhaps the public scold has revealed the caustic side of her parenting style.
If Sarah Palin has achieved anything in life, she has raised denial and self-affirming victimhood to a fine art, and her firebrand populism appeals to millions of like-minded followers. At least there is this point of agreement between lawyers and mental health professionals: Negligent parents are good for business.
Tuesday, January 19, 2016
HEADLINES
In Principio et Nunc. . .
Now as in the beginning, the End has always been nigh. At least for Obama and Hillary. Ever since Nixon slithered out of office, some scandal "bigger than Watergate" has been waiting in the wings to upstage any Democratic President. Always just about to appear like Jesus and the Hidden Imam or Maitraya, the Buddha yet to come. We're still waiting or at least they are
Obama and Hillary. Those are the names the rebels have chosen for the current and would-be presidents and I'm seeing them treated in their propaganda as an entity of some sorts. In the deranged minds of the microcephalic right these are but just two faces of the apocalyptic beast featured in the continuing Republican Revelation played out every day on the web.
New Obama Scandal May Cost Hillary the White House!
That title appears in my mailbox almost every morning and has for months. Similarly dire warnings have been appearing for years under similar titles about some Obama Scandal about to break that just going to run him out of Washington on a rail, covered with tar and feathers. Somehow this time the long awaited Obama Scandal "may just" transfer to candidate Clinton by some magic process. From experience I'm assuming that "may just"
really means " in our dreams" because there is no scandal of that sort and it's never going to happen and lest you think it's exclusively about Democrats, no, I'm still waiting for Dwight Eisenhower to turn the Army over to the Communists and the Zionist conspiracy and for Kennedy to relinquish power to the Pope as well as to the Kremlin. Faith abides and the bullshit never stops.
I'm not going to click on the link of course, as it leads to a long tedious tirade on some web site I'm just not going to visit, but of course these scandals never appear. They're just tuned up from time to time and the perpetrators know the lust for scandal is so great the intended audience will never dare question the warnings lest they have to return to the grim reality of a Democrat in the White House.
Navy SEAL Ben Smith Drops Massive Bombshell. . . Says Obama is Ready to Impose MARTIAL LAW
This appeared while my morning coffee was warm. I'm still waiting for any of the warnings that flooded the Web years ago about Bill Clinton declaring martial law and turning the armed forces and our nuclear arsenal over to UN control, But the psychotic Right has adjustable memory so that it's now Obama who is about to do this. According to America's Freedom Fighters's blog a Navy Seal
has revealed Obama's plan to -- you guessed it -- declare martial law. It's not going to happen, nor does he have any reason to do so, but paranoids, or Republicans as they're sometimes called will believe anything that feeds the fear and they'll go out and buy more fake military weapons to protect themselves against "jack booted" Obamatroopers. That's what it's really about: gun sales and revolution.
Former Seal Ben Smith appeared in a film a few years ago claiming Obama gave away information that could get Americans killed while taking sole credit for the operation that killed bin Laden, but of course the corroborating film clip was edited into the opposite of what was really said. You can look it up if you like, but I'm not going to provide a link to traitors and that's what they are.
So you can wait for that Obama scandal that will blow up Clinton's candidacy and you can read fiction designed to undermine the democratic process and destabilize a duly elected government, and in the process you'll doubtless uncover a veritable hell of lies, distortions, bogus accusations and predictions made by traitors and haters of civilization and decency.
Now as in the beginning, the End has always been nigh. At least for Obama and Hillary. Ever since Nixon slithered out of office, some scandal "bigger than Watergate" has been waiting in the wings to upstage any Democratic President. Always just about to appear like Jesus and the Hidden Imam or Maitraya, the Buddha yet to come. We're still waiting or at least they are
Obama and Hillary. Those are the names the rebels have chosen for the current and would-be presidents and I'm seeing them treated in their propaganda as an entity of some sorts. In the deranged minds of the microcephalic right these are but just two faces of the apocalyptic beast featured in the continuing Republican Revelation played out every day on the web.New Obama Scandal May Cost Hillary the White House!
That title appears in my mailbox almost every morning and has for months. Similarly dire warnings have been appearing for years under similar titles about some Obama Scandal about to break that just going to run him out of Washington on a rail, covered with tar and feathers. Somehow this time the long awaited Obama Scandal "may just" transfer to candidate Clinton by some magic process. From experience I'm assuming that "may just"
I'm not going to click on the link of course, as it leads to a long tedious tirade on some web site I'm just not going to visit, but of course these scandals never appear. They're just tuned up from time to time and the perpetrators know the lust for scandal is so great the intended audience will never dare question the warnings lest they have to return to the grim reality of a Democrat in the White House.
Navy SEAL Ben Smith Drops Massive Bombshell. . . Says Obama is Ready to Impose MARTIAL LAW
This appeared while my morning coffee was warm. I'm still waiting for any of the warnings that flooded the Web years ago about Bill Clinton declaring martial law and turning the armed forces and our nuclear arsenal over to UN control, But the psychotic Right has adjustable memory so that it's now Obama who is about to do this. According to America's Freedom Fighters's blog a Navy Seal
Former Seal Ben Smith appeared in a film a few years ago claiming Obama gave away information that could get Americans killed while taking sole credit for the operation that killed bin Laden, but of course the corroborating film clip was edited into the opposite of what was really said. You can look it up if you like, but I'm not going to provide a link to traitors and that's what they are.
So you can wait for that Obama scandal that will blow up Clinton's candidacy and you can read fiction designed to undermine the democratic process and destabilize a duly elected government, and in the process you'll doubtless uncover a veritable hell of lies, distortions, bogus accusations and predictions made by traitors and haters of civilization and decency.
Monday, January 18, 2016
Some Conversation on Dr. King's Socialist Vision
One feels compelled to make note of the day and of the man himself, but the risk these days is less about the ire of the people who loathe him than about the ire of those whose "conversation" demands submission. Reading this morning that 62 people own half the wealth of the world, I'm prompted to remember some of King's comments, and that like Jesus of Nazareth, he was a bit of a socialist and an economist.
I read this morning that according to an OXFAM report today, the wealthiest one percent of the world now owns more than the remaining 99% and that 62 individuals own more than the poorest half of the world's population. That number was 388 only five years ago. Unless you think that's a good thing, you might want to reconsider the blind worship of laissz faire Capitalism which seems intertwined with the kind of Patriotism we dare not question.
Of course it can be argued that if the poorest half is somehow sufficiently well-off to free us of concern, there really is no problem in this best of all Pareto efficient Capitalist worlds, but money is power and great wealth is great power. In our kind of Republic, economic power must take political power away from the less wealthy and depart ever more from Democratic principle. There certainly are those who recognize that great wealth and power confer -- indeed demand great responsibility, but fewer are those who want that responsibility to be legally required, so that great power is so often used primarily to protect itself and the way of life it feels entitled to. Can there be anyone who does not recognize the connection between wealth and political, moral and military power? Certainly Jesus did, and as a Christian, so did Doctor King.
Indeed we do. Do we understand the need of power to terrify and brutalize minorities as racism or do we recognize the need to keep them out of participation and away from political power? Keeping poor whites afraid of poor blacks diverts attention from the rich whites who want to get richer. I'm just asking. Is racism just the legacy of slavery or does it serve some purpose in a greater scheme?
Sure Black Lives Matter, but recognizing that or shouting it in the street does not deal with the causes or offer hope for improvement. In a way, racism makes economic sense if preservation of wealth and power is the goal, and we don't fight it without recognizing that.
Capitalism alone will not create or maintain a society in which political power is not dominated by the rich, nor will more than an enlightened few philanthropic individuals be motivated to want a society where they can allow more than a minimum of political power and control to the 99%. Racism, I think King would agree is not a temporary thing or reserved for one race only, it's an economic requirement needed to limit political/economic power . When it's successful in doing so, it proliferates. Perhaps that's where King and I vary from the scripted conversation. If the need and ability to maintain the weakness of the public is thwarted, so is racism and of course, even if most of the wealth is at the very top, those many rungs down on the ladder want equally as much to preserve their standing and keep the lower ranks down.
How we do that is the question. King was no friend of Communism, but in today's America fear of Marxism is always with us and almost always irrational. We fear reform of any kind and we fear having to pay for it even if it benefits us and repays our cost with a profit. To that one percent, it's tempting, if not inevitable to think of the lower orders as the enemy. I can offer no magic solution and certainly those who have done so have led us into one disaster or another. I see no solution in the most vocal and demanding zealots today. I'm staying away from that "conversation" as being narrow and naive and divisive. I'm only trying to call attention to what I think King believed: that racism, tribalism, greed and lust for power are as intertwined and inextricable from each other as Mass and energy and all these things must be considered as part of the equation if we want a better, kinder gentler world.
______________________
*–Speech to Southern Christian Leadership Conference Atlanta, Georgia, August 16, 1967.
**- Report to SCLC Staff, May 1967.
I read this morning that according to an OXFAM report today, the wealthiest one percent of the world now owns more than the remaining 99% and that 62 individuals own more than the poorest half of the world's population. That number was 388 only five years ago. Unless you think that's a good thing, you might want to reconsider the blind worship of laissz faire Capitalism which seems intertwined with the kind of Patriotism we dare not question.
Of course it can be argued that if the poorest half is somehow sufficiently well-off to free us of concern, there really is no problem in this best of all Pareto efficient Capitalist worlds, but money is power and great wealth is great power. In our kind of Republic, economic power must take political power away from the less wealthy and depart ever more from Democratic principle. There certainly are those who recognize that great wealth and power confer -- indeed demand great responsibility, but fewer are those who want that responsibility to be legally required, so that great power is so often used primarily to protect itself and the way of life it feels entitled to. Can there be anyone who does not recognize the connection between wealth and political, moral and military power? Certainly Jesus did, and as a Christian, so did Doctor King.
“And one day we must ask the question, ‘Why are there forty million poor people in America? And when you begin to ask that question, you are raising questions about the economic system, about a broader distribution of wealth.’ When you ask that question, you begin to question the capitalistic economy. And I’m simply saying that more and more, we’ve got to begin to ask questions about the whole society…” *
Indeed we do. Do we understand the need of power to terrify and brutalize minorities as racism or do we recognize the need to keep them out of participation and away from political power? Keeping poor whites afraid of poor blacks diverts attention from the rich whites who want to get richer. I'm just asking. Is racism just the legacy of slavery or does it serve some purpose in a greater scheme?
Sure Black Lives Matter, but recognizing that or shouting it in the street does not deal with the causes or offer hope for improvement. In a way, racism makes economic sense if preservation of wealth and power is the goal, and we don't fight it without recognizing that.
Capitalism alone will not create or maintain a society in which political power is not dominated by the rich, nor will more than an enlightened few philanthropic individuals be motivated to want a society where they can allow more than a minimum of political power and control to the 99%. Racism, I think King would agree is not a temporary thing or reserved for one race only, it's an economic requirement needed to limit political/economic power . When it's successful in doing so, it proliferates. Perhaps that's where King and I vary from the scripted conversation. If the need and ability to maintain the weakness of the public is thwarted, so is racism and of course, even if most of the wealth is at the very top, those many rungs down on the ladder want equally as much to preserve their standing and keep the lower ranks down.
“We must recognize that we can’t solve our problem now until there is a radical redistribution of economic and political power… this means a revolution of values and other things. We must see now that the evils of racism, economic exploitation and militarism are all tied together… you can’t really get rid of one without getting rid of the others… the whole structure of American life must be changed. America is a hypocritical nation and [we] must put [our] own house in order.”**
How we do that is the question. King was no friend of Communism, but in today's America fear of Marxism is always with us and almost always irrational. We fear reform of any kind and we fear having to pay for it even if it benefits us and repays our cost with a profit. To that one percent, it's tempting, if not inevitable to think of the lower orders as the enemy. I can offer no magic solution and certainly those who have done so have led us into one disaster or another. I see no solution in the most vocal and demanding zealots today. I'm staying away from that "conversation" as being narrow and naive and divisive. I'm only trying to call attention to what I think King believed: that racism, tribalism, greed and lust for power are as intertwined and inextricable from each other as Mass and energy and all these things must be considered as part of the equation if we want a better, kinder gentler world.
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*–Speech to Southern Christian Leadership Conference Atlanta, Georgia, August 16, 1967.
**- Report to SCLC Staff, May 1967.
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