A Word From Patrick And Paul

     Neither one of whom is a saint.  That is, I am not speaking of the estimable St. Patrick, nor am I speaking of the amazing St. Paul.

     I am thinking, rather, of Patrick Henry and Paul Craig Roberts, both of whom are fine men, Americans, and perhaps nothing more.  Nor less.

     In the generation of the American Revolution, two hundred and plenty years ago, the patriot Patrick Henry is quoted as having said:

    "The liberties of a people never were, nor ever will be, secure, when the transactions of their rulers may be concealed from them."

     Quite recently, Paul Craig Roberts -- who is not as well known, nor as well heeded as he should be, but he is very accessible right now -- said this:

     "Washington thinks nuclear war can be won and is planning for a first strike on Russia, and perhaps China, in order to prevent any challenge to Washington's world hegemony."

     Now you and I can do our own due diligence, and see for ourselves -- as well as we can, given the deceptions and obscurings that characterize our national experience (and which Patrick Henry, in the quote above, was considering) -- whether what Mr. Roberts is saying has a large and serious grain of truth to it, or not.  I, personally, think that it is far more than a grain, and this causes me to have a pretty intense degree of concern.  We have been here before, those of us who are older than fifty, in the era of nuclear hubris and irresponsibility that characterized our government during the 50s, 60s, and mid-70s.

    Those members of the Boomer and Buster generations who were attracted to the power, or to the personal license, that is offered to those placed highest in our government -- and yielded to that attraction without the advantage of any clear and honorable moral self-governance, or political intelligence, or common sense -- are a dangerous clan to have governing us, or our destiny.

     Have done with my rambling words.  William Butler Yeats says it better:


     The Second Coming

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

     Sadly, he was talking about the United States of America.  And tragically, we knew it not.  We always thought it was The Other Guys.  Not us.  Not U.S.

     


   

Parsing "You Have Been Lied To"

     There is a recently retired political figure (whom I shall refer to hereafter as the "Old Doctor") who is fast receding from public memory.  He is receding from public memory because who, after all, cares or remembers much about anything before last Monday, in the United States of Amnesia? We are, after all, thinking more about 2016 already.

     Now I happen to think that the Old Doctor said many interesting, truthful, and thought-provoking things;  but among one of his best and most useful statements was this:

     "You have been lied to."

     Before we dismiss that as a quickie-clever political remark, or a mere one-liner or slogan, let us try to parse it for its possible meaning.  It could mean any or all of the following:

     1.  "You have been lied to" by authority figures that you thought you had every right to trust.  You thought that they were (and that they themselves actually felt) honor-bound to tell the truth.  They could have been government officials, school teachers, authors of respected books, statisticians, employers, professionals (like doctors, lawyers and judges), policemen, even pastors and parents.  You were told to respect them and trust them.  And because they seemed upright and full of good will and had your best interests at heart -- you still do trust them.

     2.  "You have been lied to" by people who, to be honest, you had plenty of reason and evidence to doubt.  You had reason to know that they were shallow, or dishonest, or simply mistaken -- but you bought their snake oil anyway.  Or their flimsy answers, or their cheap solutions, or their self-serving viewpoints, or their outright fantasies.  And now you are heavily invested . . . 

     3.  "You have been lied to" by you, yourself.  You told yourself things because you wanted something.  Stuff, perhaps.  Or you developed a fantasy about how things "ought to be," and decided that that wishing it were so, somehow made it so.  Let's pretend.

     We could go on, but you get the idea.

     Now, supposing for a moment that, for any one of the foregoing three reasons, the Old Doctor was right in his diagnosis of the cause of certain, shall we call them, generally, societal or personal problems.  "You have been lied to."

     Should we perform some personal self-examination and see if we might discover which of our current ailments had specific lies as their cause?

     One device might be to take a long look in the mirror and, while looking ourselves in the eyes, ask ourselves:

     Have I been lied to by people whom I trust?  Have I allowed myself to be lied to by untrustworthy people?  Have I lied to myself about myself, my expectations, and the situation around me?

     For those who look to the Holy Scriptures for guidance,  I offer these selections:

Type 1 lies.  The lies of false authorities.

      And many false prophets shall arise, and shall deceive many.

     For false messiahs and false prophets will appear and perform great signs and wonders to deceive, if possible, even the elect.  -- Jesus Christ

Type 2 lies.  The lies of the con artists.

     . . . evil deception to fool those on their way to destruction, because they refuse to love and accept the truth that would save them.

     But evil men and imposters will proceed from bad to worse, deceiving and being deceived.  -- St. Paul

Type 3 lies.  The lies that you tell yourself.

     The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked:  who can know it? -- the prophet Jeremiah

The solution.

     When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth, for he will not speak on his own authority, but whatever he hears he will speak, and he will declare to you the things that are to come.

     You shall know the truth, and the truth shall set you free.  -- Jesus Christ

     A lot more could be said, and should be said.  But this is a good start.

*       *       *

As always, comments pro and con are welcome.

Escapism Of The Better Sort

    Believe it or not, I like to avoid overloading this site with political commentary (I prefer larger perspectives), and when I read this a few minutes ago, I saw my chance.

     Call it a guest post, if you like.  Aurini has written a brief item at this link.

     Brief?  Well, it is longer than the Gettysburg Address.  And it is more relevant, in my opinion, in that it is less political.  That is to say, more honest, and more fully human.

     I think that Ed Abbey, Henry David Thoreau, and John Muir would find something to like in this piece, so that is a good enough reason to post the link.

     Enjoy.

When The Dollar Rules The Pulpit

     Here's a link to a song by the Dixie Hummingbirds.  Says it all, I don't need to add a single thing.  Except that -- it hasn't gone viral, for some reason.

     If that link should be broken for some reason, try this second one.


*       *       *

Thanks to Doc Future for this link.

The Emperor's New Clothes

     You remember the old fairy tale about the Emperor and his New Clothes.  The one where some con-men, posing as tailors, take advantage of the Emperor's wealth, vanity, and gullibility, selling him on the idea that the magical fabric that they are using is visible when worn by the worthy, and only invisible to the unworthy.  Through an elaborate bit of play-acting, they manufacture the purportedly visible clothing, and persuade him to parade himself, wearing only his magical garments, through the streets of the imperial city.  Not only the emperor, but all his courtiers, and the population as well, must buy into the pretense, for fear of revealing himself, or themselves, to be "unworthy."  The parade commences.  An untutored boy in the crowd, observing only the plain facts of the matter, blurts out that the Emperor is naked, and the universal pretense is exposed.  In this short story the only hero, if we may use that word, is the truth-telling child.

     In my opinion, this fairy-tale is more than a fairly tale, and even more than a morality tale.  It has, quite deservedly, attained the status of a myth.  If not quite on a par with the metaphysical insights of some other old myths, it is at least an historical or worldly-wise myth.  Adapted and re-figured from a story that dates back about seven hundred years to medieval Spain, the Hans Christian Andersen version  from Denmark has been translated into many languages, and has been well understood by many cultures.

     If the fairy-tale were to be retold today, we should have to change its ending.  The child would be immediately seized by uniformed and armed special agents, promptly charged with domestic terrorism, further accused (upon mature reflection) of hate speech, called out as a truther, and dismissed by the public as another conspiracy theorist.

     Credentialed spokespersons of the purportedly Free-Speech-Loving-Left and the Defend-Our-Freedoms-Right would argue lengthily and vigorously about whose patsy he was, but would nevertheless be mutually glad that he had been sent to Gitmo prison to live out his days with Julian Assange, Bradley Manning, and Edward Snowden.  After a few weeks of head-shaking and head-nodding, and milking the story for media-advertising revenue, it could be forgotten in favor of some newer and better manufactured "outrage."

     Fortunately, we do not have Emperors today.  Especially we do not have naked ones.

     We only have fairy tales.

Sarah Palin Beyond The Pale

     If this linked video could be shown to be some sort of Saturday-Night-Live parody, I would want to laugh at it for being completely over the top.  Then, as things developed, I'd want to put in a good word for the lady if she pointed out that they had defamed her character (though satire of a public figure is, properly, defensible as free speech, which I support).

     That is, IF it were a parody.  Apparently it is not.  Apparently she actually said these things, as reported here, here, and here.

     That makes it the very opposite of "funny."

     The woman is quoted as saying (in the context of throwing red meat to be eagerly devoured by an approving public audience, and anticipating wide reportage), "If I were in charge, they would know that waterboarding is how we baptize terrorists."

     I was going to say that this is a blasphemy against the Mind of Christ, but I will not:  the Lord of All Worlds can speak for Himself, and needs no impulsive help from me.   (Besides, He has assured us in the Gospels that even some blasphemies are forgiven).  But I will say, for myself, that these words are a direct and substantial affront to the Mind of Christ as I understand Him.

     What is beyond doubt is that she has insulted the best teachings and best practices of historical Christianity.  She has converted the sacrament of Baptism, which introduces the believer into Eternal Life, into a mocking taunt, justifying torturous death and punishment upon our supposed "enemies" which, if they are indeed enemies, Christ has most firmly commanded us to love.  She has given doubters, skeptics, unbelievers, and participants in other religious traditions plenty of mental ammunition and excuse to revile the Christian gospel.  They are justified in questioning the sincerity of Christian evangelists around the world, at least if their Christian witness is tied to anything American.  This is terribly consequential.

     After that, her insult and betrayal of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights is quite secondary in my mind, but that does not make it of no importance.  The Preamble declares that to "establish justice" is one of the primary intentions of the Constitution and the Framers; and Congress and the People added the first Ten Amendments with the purpose of elaborating the essentials of justice, as they conceived it, and secured this in writing (so far as writing can secure anything).  The Bill of Rights, both in spirit and in letter, absolutely precludes such an attitude as she exhibited, and such behavior as she recommended.  You know this already, and don't even need to look it up.

     I absolutely believe in free speech -- for myself, for you, and for Mrs. Palin.  But having exercised our free speech, we must expect to stand by our words; and may be called out for our words; and of course may, so far as is possible, retract our words and apologize for them.

     I hope that Christian people, leaders and otherwise, will call her out on this, and help her to apologize and make amends.

     I hope that people who are truly committed to the Constitution, or to the Natural Law, or to the Golden Rule, will do likewise.

     This was absolutely beyond the pale.

   

Google and Blog Stats

     I hate to descend into mere technicalities, especially in public.  Especially, when I must confess that I do not understand those technicalities -- it leads directly to uncertainty, and this is an uncertain post.  But here goes.

     I have had, and have enjoyed using, the platform of this blog for a little more than three years.  It has been totally free, both to me and to those who happen by here, and for that I am grateful.  Grateful to Google, I guess, and to the larger world of the Internet, of which the former Vice President, Mr. Albert Gore, is reputed to be the founding father.  So, special thanks to Google and Gore.

     However, I would like to mention a concern, or several concerns, that I, and presumably other independent bloggers, continually face. The first concern is the fact that I -- we -- are at the mercy of the common software and "infrastructure." A second concern is that we are at the (very arbitrary) mercy of the controllers of that infrastructure.

     Now it is certainly true that a system as valuable, effective, and global as the Internet, and even the small subset of that system that is familiarly called "the blogosphere," exists only because it was carefully developed, and is carefully maintained, by an army of dedicated specialists -- and this implies, indeed rquires, some degree of control.  I fully recognize that, and I salute them here: Technicians and communications visionaries, I salute you.

     But a problem arises when, and because, that system, both ideal and practical, is -- simply by virtue of being a sort of "communications commons" -- subject to the vagaries and troubles that any "commons" faces.  Such public commons (as happened in the case of the the old common grounds that were popular in the planning of early American towns and cities) may be more or less ruined by such simple human inevitabilities as ignorance, disregard, overuse, and continual carelessness.  Or that ruin may be hastened by the more intentional (and not, therefore, "inevitable") factors of greed, grabbing for attention, or exercise of obscured power -- psychological, financial, or legal -- "whether sought or unsought," to use the famous phrase of President Eisenhower in his farewell address of January, 1961, in which he warned the American people of the dangerous rise of what he called a "military-industrial complex."

     The sober fact is, that the Internet is older than the existence of Google or the influence of Mr. Gore.    Despite its free and free-wheeling appearance (which I appreciate), with its popularity and sense of democracy, it was developed by an entity called "DARPA" (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency). This "Agency" has always been as much a part of the military-industrial complex as the supposedly "civilian" National Aeronautics and Space Administration (whose acronym, NASA, was said by some of its appointed overseers in Congress, in the 1960s, to stand for "Never A Straight Answer"), or the also "civilian" National Defense Interstate Highway System, which can be legally converted to strict military use by the drop of an Executive Order upon the "finding" of a national emergency.

     What, you may fairly ask, does this have to do with the technicalities of "blog stats" that were mentioned in my title?  (Meaning simply my blog stats, since they are the only ones I know.)

     This:  the numbers don't add up, and never have.  Also this:  they are un-natural, and getting worse.

     First of all, the numbers don't add up.  On an average day, my blog receives a very modest 30 or so "hits," from several countries around the world.  I know this because my blog-statistics page tells me so. Of these 30 or so hits, only a part -- a fraction, maybe 10 to 20 -- are identified as to where they come from, and to what post or page they linked.  What about the other hits?  How am I to know what posts are popular, and where?  I don't know; and as far as I know, I can't know; and furthermore, I don't know why I don't know.

     Some of the numbers are credible.  Throughout the history of this blog, monthly totals have consistently ranged from as high as 1500 or more on three or four occasions,to as low as 500 on two others, and this seems to me natural, meaning pleasantly random and to be expected.  (It is a separate matter, which I find odd, that Google thinks that I started my blog in 2007, when I actually started it in 2010.  It makes up for this by "skipping years" on its graph displaying my reported monthly activity.  Okay, just a glitch.)

     But is this natural?  Three years ago, back in January of 2011, I wrote a forgettable little post called, "You've Got To Check Out This Site."  (Don't bother to check it out.)  In the following three years, Google reported about 500 hits to this post, which would average less than 20 per month.  Suddenly, in the present month of April, 2014, Google has registered over 3200 hits to this post in one month.

     Oh, really.  Random folks from around the world suddenly found my site and are profoundly interested (about 160 times as interested as before) in this one old very-difficult-to-randomly-find post, while not particularly caring about any of the 200 others.  Amazing.  But hey, what's not to like?  My hit-count is up, from the usual thousand or less, to a marvellous over 4,000!!  I'm so excited!  I'm popular now!  I'm having an impact!

     I have no idea what is causing the appearance of these bogus statistics.  Do you?  Maybe this is only what Benjamin Disraeli, or Mark Twain, or whoever it was, was referring to when he talked about the three kinds of lies -- "lies, damned lies, and statistics."  Maybe it's just another Google glitch. (A very persistent and patterned glitch.)  Maybe Google wants to ramp up my numbers to encourage me to keep blogging. (Clumsy effort at encouragement: I don't believe it.)  Maybe they want to tell me that now that my bandwidth is up because I'm so popular, they need to start charging me for it. ($$$. Nice angle.)  Or maybe it isn't Google.

     The one thing I know is that I don't know, and this bothers me.  As far as I can tell about my abillity to control the other end of the software, I could wake up tomorrow, check out my blog, and find out that "I" had written a post that advocated violence and revolution, or that "I" had "hacked" some secret website, or that "I" had posted links to kiddie porn.  Or, more benignly, my site could simply be closed down.

     As I have watched developments on the internet concerning you-tube, porn-sites, investigative reporters, and security sites, this is a real possibility.  What with backdoors, trapdoors, hackers, false identities, NSA cyber-war, comment-moderation complaints, hate-crime accusations, intellectual-property claims, copyright "infringements," planted evidence, and the rest of the discrediting techniques perfected by our beloved media and our "national security interests," better people than I am have landed in prison.

     This is a risk which any blogger takes, so be advised, whether you are a blogger, a reader, or a commenter.

     Oh, and by the way, you might watch out what is happening on Facebook and Twitter.  Just friendly advice.