liveonearth: (Default)
 
 
 
If times were ever interesting, these are getting right up there.  In America, the Executive Branch sent an attack mob to the Legislative Branch of our government.  Marched them right down the avenue from the White House and up the Capitol steps.  One week ago.  That mob overwhelmed all barriers and invaded the Capitol through the windows, during a session.  The building was under lockdown for hours, with our representatives hidden in a subterranean chamber.  You can see the patriot invasion on youtube.  According to potus his mob looked "low class".  But then later he pronounced "we love you" to the same crew.

Then today the president is impeached for the second time.  How interesting.  Twice. May that be followed by a Senate trial and prompt Removal.  

The inauguration is planned to be a "hard target" so attacks may divert to state capitols which are considered "soft".  White supremacists have been booted to the backroads of the internet and are developing clandestine communications to sort out their next grand move.  They would enjoy a chance to kick some ass; a race war would do nicely.

The Executive Branch has been subverting the Judicial Branch by filling benches with sympathetic judges, but it is still a very separate Branch of power.  Lawyers and especially judges tend to be smart and willful and develop their own thinking rather than adopting half-baked ideology.  They see the obvious bogusness of the Big Lie.  The election wasn't stolen.  Those Attorney Generals, all 17 of them that signed on to a Texas lawsuit trying to flip the election, they aren't stupid.  They have been corrupted.  They must be getting rich.  Or have their nuts in a vise.  Or both.  Barr is probably still trying to get his nuts out.

Oh yeah and the pandemic.  Isn't that interesting?  What fascinates me the most is how utterly ignorant most people are about how the body works, and how a virus works, and why some people live and some die from the same virus.  The TERRAIN matters, my friends.  If your organs are sick, you can be weakened and susceptible without knowing it.  Science is really cool, too, it explains so much.

Ignorance about our government and institutions is also prevalent.  Broad ignorance is the terrain on which half-baked ideologies grow.  The difference is education.  But our schools have gotten as lazy as our Capitol defenses.  Believing that America truly is the greatest nation on earth has led to complacency and then denial.  What?  No problems here, we say, but the world knows better.  America was a great experiment in government, still is as of this moment. 

There is the possibility that Trump will function like a vaccine.  Just a tiny dose, well four long years.  Maybe that will autocrat-proof America.  Or maybe the booster shot will be worse.  And on top of that there is the possibility that this Republic will fail.  Trump tried to bring down this government and to date has failed.

Interesting, huh.
 
 
 
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On Tuesday this week I attended the opening lecture of a lecture series hosted by the nonprofit organization Portland Literary Arts.  I had little idea what to expect.  The speaker was someone I hadn't heard of, or at least didn't remember, but I will remember him now.  The name is George Packer.  He was a staff writer for the New Yorker for a long time, and now is on staff writing for The Atlantic.  He also has written some books and essays, largely about culture and politics.

I was impressed.  He was there to promote his latest book, Our Man, which is about the controversial diplomate Richard Holbrook and the old America that he symbolizes.  The new America is something different.  Packer understands the changes in our culture better than most and I fully intend to seek out his writing in the future.  I have probably read him in the past but the name did not stick in my head.

Our Man is written in an unusual style for a biography.  Rather than being overfull of dates and details, it is told in narrative style by a fictional narrator who is older than the author.  The narrator was "there" for the whole story, and tells it in a style that the author repeated calls "a yarn".  I'm sure it will be a good read, and I will read it as soon as the demand for it at the library goes down a bit.

The book that he wrote in 2013 is called The Unwinding and it is about the cultural shifts that led to the election of Trump--except that at the time nobody knew it would lead there.  It is on my reading list.  The NY Times says it explains why Trump was elected.  For many of us that bears some thought.

When Packer first took the stage he looked up at the audience in the Schnitzer auditorium and he said that Portland is not the biggest city, but it was the biggest crowd.  The auditorium is huge and a beauty.  It holds 2,500 people, and it was full.  After his talk he took out his phone and photographed the crowd from his view on the stage.

Portland, Oregon is an interesting place, full of many highly educated individuals who dearly want to save the world.  They share Packer's sadness and fear about the changes that have come to our country and our politics in the last 20 years.  The patterns of applause during the Q&A period at the end reveal the overall agreement of this crowd with Packer's assessment of what is happening because of Trump.  His answer to the question about Syria (after the Trump-licensed Turkish bombing of the Kurds) made the situation more clear to me than months of reading in the Times.

Packer recommended three books to read (not his own) at the end of the talk.  I put them all on my library list but the one that really excites me is more current.  It is called Intellectuals and Race, by Thomas Sowell.  Amazon says it is an inclusive critique of the intellectual's destructive role in shaping ideas about race in America.  Other sources talk about how much ruckus this book has raised.  Intellectuals don't like to be criticised but in this day and age, they need to respond to criticism rather than dismissing it.

I would say that the ivory tower has made some missteps in shaping ideas about sexuality and gender, too.  I have been subject to some pretty strong progressive brainwashing in this town and witnessed it being misused to shame and alienate.  We would do well to pay attention to George Packer and other thoughtful people in the future as we try to find a way out of the stalemate we are in culturally and politically.  Our democracy is on its way toward failure and if we care about this experiment enough to continue it, we need to find a way that we can talk across the rather deep divisions.

 
 
 
 
liveonearth: (Default)
 Copied from a friend (on fb).

This is utterly brilliant. I wish I could take credit for writing it, but no.

British wit to help get you through the nightmare:

"Someone on Quora asked "Why do some British people not like Donald Trump?" Nate White, an articulate and witty writer from England wrote this magnificent response.
A few things spring to mind.
Trump lacks certain qualities which the British traditionally esteem.
For instance, he has no class, no charm, no coolness, no credibility, no compassion, no wit, no warmth, no wisdom, no subtlety, no sensitivity, no self-awareness, no humility, no honour and no grace - all qualities, funnily enough, with which his predecessor Mr. Obama was generously blessed.
So for us, the stark contrast does rather throw Trump’s limitations into embarrassingly sharp relief.
Plus, we like a laugh. And while Trump may be laughable, he has never once said anything wry, witty or even faintly amusing - not once, ever.
I don’t say that rhetorically, I mean it quite literally: not once, not ever. And that fact is particularly disturbing to the British sensibility - for us, to lack humour is almost inhuman.
But with Trump, it’s a fact. He doesn’t even seem to understand what a joke is - his idea of a joke is a crass comment, an illiterate insult, a casual act of cruelty.
Trump is a troll. And like all trolls, he is never funny and he never laughs; he only crows or jeers.
And scarily, he doesn’t just talk in crude, witless insults - he actually thinks in them. His mind is a simple bot-like algorithm of petty prejudices and knee-jerk nastiness.
There is never any under-layer of irony, complexity, nuance or depth. It’s all surface.
Some Americans might see this as refreshingly upfront.
Well, we don’t. We see it as having no inner world, no soul.
And in Britain we traditionally side with David, not Goliath. All our heroes are plucky underdogs: Robin Hood, Dick Whittington, Oliver Twist.
Trump is neither plucky, nor an underdog. He is the exact opposite of that.
He’s not even a spoiled rich-boy, or a greedy fat-cat.
He’s more a fat white slug. A Jabba the Hutt of privilege.
And worse, he is that most unforgivable of all things to the British: a bully.
That is, except when he is among bullies; then he suddenly transforms into a snivelling sidekick instead.
There are unspoken rules to this stuff - the Queensberry rules of basic decency - and he breaks them all. He punches downwards - which a gentleman should, would, could never do - and every blow he aims is below the belt. He particularly likes to kick the vulnerable or voiceless - and he kicks them when they are down.
So the fact that a significant minority - perhaps a third - of Americans look at what he does, listen to what he says, and then think 'Yeah, he seems like my kind of guy’ is a matter of some confusion and no little distress to British people, given that:
* Americans are supposed to be nicer than us, and mostly are.
* You don't need a particularly keen eye for detail to spot a few flaws in the man.
This last point is what especially confuses and dismays British people, and many other people too; his faults seem pretty bloody hard to miss.
After all, it’s impossible to read a single tweet, or hear him speak a sentence or two, without staring deep into the abyss. He turns being artless into an art form; he is a Picasso of pettiness; a Shakespeare of shit. His faults are fractal: even his flaws have flaws, and so on ad infinitum.
God knows there have always been stupid people in the world, and plenty of nasty people too. But rarely has stupidity been so nasty, or nastiness so stupid.
He makes Nixon look trustworthy and George W look smart.
In fact, if Frankenstein decided to make a monster assembled entirely from human flaws - he would make a Trump.
And a remorseful Doctor Frankenstein would clutch out big clumpfuls of hair and scream in anguish:
'My God… what… have… I… created?
If being a twat was a TV show, Trump would be the boxed set.

liveonearth: (Default)
When they play to their bases, they miss me entirely.  I am tired of our people and our politicians talking past each other.  Politicians, it is on you to lead the way to civility, to honest negotiation and compromise.  I know Trump won't do it, but he is pushing you to do it.  Stop spouting talking points and get on with the hard work of figuring out how to best secure our borders.  It can be so much more than a wall.   
liveonearth: (Default)
There are lots of theories about what names do to us.  The trends in the naming of babies also say things about what is happening in our culture. 

It was only about a decade ago that "Noah" suddenly took the lead as top boy's name...suggesting to me that a lot of people from a Christian culture were getting worried about some great catastrophe like maybe sea level rise.  Instead of thinking that your kiddos are going to suffer because of global warming, it's much more enjoyable to convince yourself that they will be saviors.

I just read that since 2015 the name "Donald" is down by 11%, whereas "Melania" is up 227% and "Ivanka" is up 362%.  Guess the women in that family are more worthy.
liveonearth: (Default)

If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State.

—Joseph Goebbels

Source: https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/joseph-goebbels-on-the-quot-big-lie-quot

Lamb Stew

Aug. 13th, 2018 04:14 pm
liveonearth: (Default)
A whole Monday at home with nothing on the calendar.  I've been into my beading kit, made a batch of lamb stew, did laundry, read some... lots of things that I haven't gotten to in a long time.  Same as opening up this box and typing in it.  But I had to write about today's lamb stew.  I've made lamb stew many times but never with a recipe.  Then after I make it I write down the recipe.  It's getting simpler, I think.  This time I made it in my biggest cast iron skillet, which I fried bacon in yesterday for a BLT.  I'd poured off most of the bacon grease so I added a little olive oil.  Half of a giant yellow onion warm from the garden and 1.5 lbs of lamb stew meat go in the pan and cook until the lamb is done.  Add a chopped celery heart, cover and simmer.  Look at the canned goods in the cabinet--tomato paste?  No.  Coconut milk?  No.  Chop 2 carrots and add along with some hot water and a beef bouillon cube, cover and leave on medium low.  Next time I check it's getting thick and it's very fatty.  Mix in curry and ginger powder along with enough cayenne to make it warm/hot.  Throw in 7 peeled whole cloves of garlic and three medium garden tomatoes, chopped.  Cover and leave on low for a long time.   Start the rice.  Mix, cover, and leave on lowest heat for a while more, then turn off.  Chop raw bok choy and red pepper.  Serve on a bed of rice, bok choy and red pepper.  Coarse grain salt on top.  Perfect heat.  Glad the rice, bok choy and red peppers are raw.

Will is gone backpacking for the next 4 days, after having been gone boating at the McKenzie for a long weekend.  This is good.  I really need time alone.  Every time I get some I get happy again.  I'm just too crowded living closely with someone who is retired.  I don't want to hear his every thought.  The silence IS golden.  Yesterday I went kayaking with friends.  I had some work last week and another day of work coming up.  Underemployed.  I'm not spending any money, not buying things on the internet or going to the store.  In about a week I'll be packing up to head for the Middle Fork Salmon, a 100 mile 7 day self-support river trip.  

Anyway now I'm in the middle of watching the first episode of the new Netflix series (of 4) about Trump.  It's paused.  The first episode is entitled Manhattan, and it's about New York in the mid-70's as much as it is about Trump.  The city was nearly bankrupted, lays off its cops and garbage guys, and the murder rate climbs.  Trump secures a 40 year tax break from the city so that he can restore a historic hotel.  Trump sounds the same talking about that hotel in the 70's as he sounds now when he speaks.  His words are superlatives--fantastic, terrific, the biggest, the greatest.  He meets a defense lawyer who knows how to bully and bluff.  It becomes clear immediately that this program is setting the stage for us to actually understand him, instead of demonizing or idolizing.  I appreciate that.  A little nuance is due on all sides.  On All Sides.

Tomorrow I may go paddle up to Willamette Falls with Kevin and Sue.  Hoping to hear back from Mindy.  I have a few friends here but seem to see them too rarely.  I mean to fix that.

More later, I'm going back to see the rest about Trump and Manhattan.

liveonearth: (Default)
 ​ "Under the fundamental rule that no one may be a judge in his own case, the president cannot pardon himself," the Department of Justice declared in 1974. The DOJ spelled it out just four days before Nixon resigned, explaining that the president's pardoning power "does not extend to the president himself." 
 
liveonearth: (Default)
Trump is the first antidemocratic president in modern U.S. history.  On too many days, beginning in the early hours, he flaunts his disdain for democratic institutions, the ideals of equality and social justice, civil discourse, civic virtues, and America itself.  If transplanted to a country with fewer democratic safeguards, he would audition for dictator, because that is where his instincts lead.  This frightening fact has consequences.  The herd mentality is powerful in international affairs.  Leaders around the globe observe, learn from, and mimic one another.  They see where their peers are heading, what they can get away with, and how they can augment and perpetuate their power.  The walk in one another's footsteps, as Hitler did with Mussolini--and today the herd is moving in a Fascist direction.
--Madeleine Albright in Fascism: A Warning, page 246 (in what I think is the final chapter).
liveonearth: (Default)

 

"...growing up in church desensitizes you to logical inconsistencies, and that opens up large numbers of people to manipulation tactics employed by individuals and institutions keen on controlling groups of people for their own self-serving purposes."

 

—Neil Carter in How Faith Breaks Your Thinker 

APRIL 10, 2018

SOURCE: http://www.patheos.com/blogs/godlessindixie/2018/04/10/how-faith-breaks-your-thinker/

Excellent resource on logical inconsistencies:
https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/

liveonearth: (Default)
Democracy is based on the belief that people are more good than bad, that we are more curious than controlling, more playful than violent, and more kind than selfish.  I am not so sure anymore.  If the ways of a democratic society are based on the common denominator, and humans at base are horny, greedy and cruel, then society will be the same.  

I have come to suspect that we have not evolved to the point that our cognitive processes consistently overrule our animal instincts.  The idea that we can base our choices on verifiable information appears damned.  Civility is superficial and short-lived.  Democracy fails in the face of the self-righteous greed of our kind.  The solution of course would be a benevolent dictator, but the problem with those is that they are human too and the majority are not benevolent.

Please, America, prove me wrong.
liveonearth: (Default)
 “If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom yet deprecate agitation are men who want crops without plowing up the ground; they want rain without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters. Power concedes nothing without demand. It never did and it never will. Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have found out the exact measure of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them, and these will continue till they are resisted with either words or blows, or with both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress.” 

—Frederick Douglass

liveonearth: (Default)
Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want and deserve to get it good and hard.
--H.L. Mencken

One fifth of the people are against everything all the time.
--Robert Kennedy

Anti-intellectualism has been a constant threat winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that "My ignorance is just as good as your knowledge."
--Isaac Asimov

Democracy if four wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch.
--Ambrose Bierce

The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter.
--Winston S. Churchill 

The main problem in any democracy is that the crowd-pleasers are generally brainless swine who can go out on a stage and whip their supporters into an orgiastic frenzy -- then go back to the office and sell every one of the poor bastards than the tube for a nickel apiece.
--Hunter S. Thompson

Quotes from page 18 of the Funny Times, September 2017
liveonearth: (Default)
To learn who
rules over you,
Simply find out
who you are not
allowed to criticize.
--Voltaire
liveonearth: (Default)
And here I thought BLM was for the Bureau of Livestock and Mining.  There is so much noise today, every day, about racism and rump. I've heard there are apps out there that will filter out all mentions of the name of our president.   Not a bad idea.

People with African noses and brown skin have legitimate grievances from slavery, Jim Crow, policing and harsh inequalities in economic and incarceration statistics. So do many others. Japanese were in carcerated en mass and suffer under rediculous stereotypes.  Hispanics in Arizona were terrorized by Arapaio and he got pardoned today. Jews that live all around me here in Portland are terrified at the resurgence of Nazi-ism. The natives of this continent were actively exterminated by our government and settlers, and they have a right to be mad about it. And in the midst of all this the white skinned middle-aged dudes are committing suicide both actively and passively at astounding rates.

There's plenty wrong, no doubt about that.

When I walk around the park that is in front of my house, I feel racial tension. There are blacks and hispanics walking there, but they are either in the company of a white person, or they are walking as families. Today the Latinas were in conversation and tending to the children, but the men are watching for trouble. When they see me coming, a big white woman moving fast, and they look hard.  They don't nod in return.  I saw a Middle Eastern family too.  The women were similarly dedicated to their kids, and one man swung his keys on the end of a lanyard as if to say fuck with me and I'll take your face off with my keys.

I wish we could all just chill out.  I don't think the tension will reduce until the next changing of the guard, and I hope it comes soon.
liveonearth: (Default)
"Mr. Trump, you appear to be laboring under the delusion that you have the necessary qualifications to be president. The manifest failure of almost everything you have attempted during your first six months, coupled with the anarchic chaos that pervades your White House, should give you pause--or would give pause to any person of normal sensitivity...

Get all your news, not from FOX but from all the sources available to a president, many of them not available to the rest of us. Announce your decisions after due consideration and consultation, not impulsively on Twitter. Cultivate common good manners when dealing with people. Do no be misled by the crowds thatcheer your boorish rudeness: they are a minority of the American people.

Listen to experts better qualified than you are. Especially scientists. Be guided by evidence and reason, not gut feeling. By far the best way to assess evidence is the scientific method. Indeed, it is the only way if we interpret "scientific" broadly. In particular--since the matter is so urgent and it may already be too late--listen to scientists when they tell you about the looming catastophe of climate change."

--Richard Dawkins, when asked by John Horgan in interview, "What would you say to Trump if you had his ear"?
liveonearth: (Default)
As you may know, I am a student of body language, aka nonverbal communication. I've been fascinated by Trump's use of certain gestures, and this video explains their meaning and function. At root, he has hypnotized a great number of people and most likely he did it with these gestures, not with the stunning illogic of his words.

http://www.cnn.com/2017/05/12/opinions/hand-gestures-matter-for-presidents-van-edwards-opinion/index.html

Vitarka mudra
liveonearth: (moon)

Anacoluthon per wikipedia = an unexpected discontinuity in the expression of ideas within a sentence, leading to a form of words in which there is logical incoherence of thought.  It's how Trump talks, and can be useful for putting people in a stream of consciousness mode: less analytical, more suggestible.  Plural = anacolutha.  I've been studying up on hypnosis.  =-]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anacoluthon


**first use of tag: hypnosis

liveonearth: (Homer Simpson "D'oh!")

We are pending a bona fide axis II becoming president. Plus ADHD without question. I've taken my deep breaths, become solid, and am looking forward to messing with the Clown every chance I get. I will be ok for sure; I crossed that line I think. But you may not be ok, nor your beautiful child, nor mine. That's what I worry about. I spent 30 years dealing with criminals, but never a billionaire criminal... however, the tone is unmistakable... and it smacks of the most evil I've seen. This guy has more issues than any 100 random people put together. Exhaling now....
--this quote stolen without permission from facebook, this psychologist spends his days assessing delinquient children's mental health for the courts, he will not be named unless he wants to be named as of 2/6/16

**first use of tag: trump

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