With Their Lips …1

(OR Why it is PAST TIME to abandon the Republican/conservative “read my lips” allegiance)

Note: This is not a back-hand endorsement of liberals or Democrats. They have their own endangering (and often similar) failures. Rather, this is a voice of warning concerning those who present themselves as the last-gasp “saviors” and “guardians” of liberty and the American Constitution. Their rhetoric is full of “freedoms” and “values,” but by their actions, they repeatedly violate those very freedoms and values. Consider:

With their lips—they claim grounding in rational economic and Constitutional truths, but manifest a reflexive, emotional devotion to words over realities, seemingly unable to acknowledge the colossal inconsistencies between their words and their deeds.²

With their lips—they espouse the virtues of small government and fiscal conservatism, yet preside over massive government growth and ballooning debts and deficits.³

With their lips—they claim the moral high ground and divine endorsement, yet espouse and implement policies that foster and sustain economic darwinism (survival/enrichment of the richest and most powerful).⁴

With their lips—they ennoble the sacrifices of the military, yet denigrate the service and opinion of soldiers, veterans, or family members who oppose war or criticize the conduct of war.⁵

With their lips—they denounce central, planned economies, yet cater to the centralized, planned economies of multinationals and bow to the “invisible [deterministic] hand” of (fictitious) free-markets and -trade;⁶

With their lips—they venerate justice and equity, but preside over egregious injustices in pursuit of American and business hegemony.⁷

With their lips—they scorn the follies and corruptions of their opponents, yet turn a blind eye to their own.”⁸

With their lips—they advocate the rule of law, yet justify “executive” powers that enshrine the “opinioned” rule of presidents.⁹

With their lips—they claim to be defenders and promulgators of freedom, human dignity, and the Constitution, yet foment uprisings against democratically elected governments in foreign countries that do not bow to the Washington Consensus; sanction torture and assassination; suspend habeas corpus; deliberately deceive citizens and “uncooperative” officials; turn a blind eye to human rights violations in favored nations; foster the aggregation of power and wealth to the detriment of individual citizens, etc.¹⁰

With their lips—they denounce extremists, yet wildly applaud Barry Goldwater’s infamous “Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice”; and champion the bombing of enemies to manifest toughness.¹¹

With their lips—they advocate free-markets, yet subsidize big-business; bailout corporations; award no-bid contracts; cater to lobbyists; legislate private agendas; sell off public assets; etc.¹²

With their lips—they claim to speak truth, yet continually neglect/refuse to fact-check or correct themselves.¹³

With their lips—they advocate individualism, yet favor private corporate collectives and reward compliance to authoritarianism.¹⁴

With their lips—they denigrate government, yet spend their private fortunes in pursuit of its power, privileges, employment, and (where politically possible) earmarks.¹⁵

With their lips—they speak of moral and family values, yet pursue pro-war agendas that tear families apart, exacerbate moral decay, and shatter minds, hearts, and bodies.¹⁶

With their lips—they claim to honor free speech and democratic values, yet vilify voices that question their ideology, “facts,” opinions, worldview, etc., especially attacking journalists, professors, researchers, historians, dissenters, anti-war advocates, scientists, philosophers; in fine, anyone who does not “see” as they do.¹⁷

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Note 1: This is a post from Deja Vu ~ Times II blog of Thursday, March 18, 2010.
Note 2: I do not concur with all that is claimed in the recommended reviews (RR) below, but there is much to consider, reconsider, and research in going beyond the “speed-of-knee-jerk” rejection characteristic of too many right and left ideologues. Both right and left have positives, but both have become enmeshed in the negatives of money, power, and ideology. Thus, we are increasingly presented with two unacceptable alternatives. But, the reason I find the right even more dangerous than the left, is their increasing abandonment of honor and justice as they pursue and justify the extremes of “individualism,” nationalism, and the primacy of the market-place.

1. “With their lips do honor democratic principles, but their actions are far from it.” Variation on a theme: Old Testament: Isaiah 29:13; New Testament: Matt. 15:8; Mark 7:6; Book of Mormon: 2 Nephi 27:25
2. RR: Conservatives Without Conscience by John W. Dean; The Limits of Power: The End of American Exceptionalism by Andrew J. Bacevich; hyprocrisy segments on The Rachel Maddow Show (MSNBC)
3. RR: http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=3750 ; http://thepoliticsofdebt.com/?p=177 ; http://mises.org/daily/895 ; http://zfacts.com/p/480.html ; The Predator State: How Conservatives Abandoned the Free Market and Why Liberals Should Too by James K. Galbraith; Tear Down This Myth: The Right-Wing Distortion of the Reagan Legacy by Will Bunch; government statistics of relevant periods
4. RR: Free Lunch: How the Wealthiest Americans Enrich Themselves at Government Expense (and Stick You with the Bill) by David Cay Johnston
5. Remember: John McCain 2000; Max Clelland 2002, John Kerry 2004, “Swiftboating” tactics; Pay attention to how they profile veterans or family members who oppose war
6. RR: The Corporation: The Pathological Pursuit of Profit and Power by Joel Bakan; One World, Ready or Not: The Manic Logic of Global Capitalism by William Greider; The Soul of Capitalism: Opening Paths to a Moral Economy by William Greider
7. RR: Overthrow: America's Century of Regime Change from Hawaii to Iraq by Stephen Kinzer; Failed States: The Abuse of Power and the Assault on Democracy by Noam Chomsky; Nemesis: The Last Days of the American Republic by Chalmers Johnson; Confessions of an Economic Hit Man by John Perkins
8. That is, all liberals are evil, but errant conservatives are an infrequent aberration—“a ‘few bad apples’ in a gigantic barrel of goodness.” Observe political discourse; review http://www.factcheck.org/ ; check in on occasion with The Rachel Maddow Show (MSNBC)—hyprocisy watch; suspend emotion in order to assess facts
9. Aka: government by legal memo; Also read John Yoo, et al.
10. RR: The Wrecking Crew: How Conservatives Ruined Government, Enriched Themselves, and Beggared the Nation by Thomas Frank; Torture Team: Uncovering War Crimes in the Land of the Free by Philippe Sands; see also RR at #7
11. 1964 speech: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E9buEI8SgwU ; other Republican Conventions: 1984, http://www2.scholastic.com/browse/article.jsp?id=4690 ; 2000 or 2004
12. RR: see RR at # 4 & 6
13. Listen to both conservative and liberal newscasts. Reference http://www.factcheck.org/
14. RR: see Johnston at #4; and Dean at #2
15. Listen to faux-rogue candidates from McCain/Palin past Romney to Reagan; observe the realities of politicians in power
16. See Republican Convention 2004, 2008; observe the “tough on terrorists/extremists” talk by GOPs such as Sarah Palin ( http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=MTI5NzBmYThkM2M5MDI4NThiMDQwNGU1NmRkMzMxMDE= ) and the repeated accusations of liberal softness—of liberal wimps. Do they forget that republican Reagan actually talked to Gorbachev of the “evil empire”? Do they forget that Democrats have taken America into more wars than Republicans? Not an accolade for either side! The tendency to romanticize war is a national shame. We can be grateful for the sacrifices of service men and women and their families, but do not pretend that war is not attended by moral degeneracy and terrible, lifelong consequences. Also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_history_of_the_United_States
17. Observe political discourse; pundits commentators, etc.

Get Thee to a Nunnery!

Why do so many resolute “defenders” of democracy and freedom seem convinced that freedom is a one-way street? Three examples from my own small community in recent years:

• People should be able to say or display “whatever” in public places without restraint or complaint and if some don’t want to see or hear such expressions of freedom then they are free to go elsewhere or free to practice virtual blindness/deafness or perhaps free to not even go out in public, if their values are so sensitive.
• People should be free to shop on Sunday if they wish and if others would like to be free from having to work on Sunday, the brief and simple answer is “Feel free to get a different job.”
• Freedom of speech is sacred until the freedom lover has heard enough of the other-side’s opinion. Then the cry is, “ENOUGH, ALREADY!!!” (Forgetting their own advice, that they are free to stop reading, seeing, or hearing at any time.)

Whenever there is the least hint of “values-based” constraint, these emotional, local defenders decry the death or denial of their rights and freedoms. They rage against the tyranny of imposed standards and against the sanctimonious supporters of such standards. Or as one man extrapolated, mothers complaining about lewd magazines at the grocery store checkout were dishonoring the sacrifice of soldiers fighting for freedom in Afghanistan. And almost always, the advice of these freedom enthusiasts to their opponents seems to devolve into a version of “Get thee to a nunnery!” As in, “If you don’t like what’s in public, then don’t go there!”

Accommodating democracy and differing views is not easy, but why are we so prone to extremes; so prone to discounting others’ views and opinions; so dogmatic; so emotional; so often irrational? Perhaps science has the answer. In Sharon Begley’s Newsweek column of August 16, 2010, p. 24, entitled “The Limits of Reason: Why evolution may favor irrationality,” she outlines some findings that help explain our propensity to emotional irrationality. In short, we like to win arguments—and so “effective argumentation” becomes the goal, not truth or justice. We abandon “reason” for persuasion and self-validation. The tools/ploys we cultivate in this endeavor are:

1) confirmation bias: that is “seeing and recalling only evidence that supports [our] beliefs …”;
2) “not [testing] our beliefs against empirical data” (that is, being “blind to counterexamples”);
3) “not [subjecting] beliefs to the plausibility test”; and
4) “[being guided] by emotion.”

Thus we “mislead [ourselves] about what’s true and real, by letting examples that support our view monopolize our memory and perception ... .” We ignore flaws in our position, but actively seek flaws in evidence that “undermines our point of view.”

Perhaps this helps explain the dismal state of politics and the proliferation of endlessly reiterated, fallacious talking points! Is anyone looking for truth anymore or is it all about persuasion (rhetoric), winning arguments, and pursuing hegemony?

Woe is us. We seem to have forsaken reason, rationality, fairness, balance, justice, and truth for the mere sake of appearing “right”! And for all those who are wrong? Well, if you ask the winners, these losers should just go cloister themselves so the “right ones” can be free of irritating counterexamples, parallels, and plausibilities!

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See also related post: http://dejavu-times.blogspot.ca/2010/08/contraries-of-freedom.html

The contraries of freedom

In a nearby rural community, there has been a vigourous, ongoing discussion in the local paper about the headlines and pictures that "grace" the "Magazines at the Checkout Counter." The initial complainant (a young mother with several young children frequently in tow) has been immensely relieved and gratified that the grocery store chose to heed her concerns and to initiate a cover-up of the worst offenders at the checkout. Others soon become outraged, claiming that their fundamental freedoms and rights have been infringed; that mothers and other supporters of the cover-up were mis-educating children to be ashamed of semi-nudity and of sex; and how dared these complainants impose their rigid values on others!

This same "freedom" controversy has raged in more towns and cities than we can count. (“Déjà vu all over again!”as Yogi Berra would say.)

These are my thoughts, entered into the fray.

Letter to the Editor:

The contraries of freedom: Some people want the freedom to say and display in public anything they wish. Others want the freedom to use and enjoy public spaces without being subjected to anything they view as offensive. Most take a position somewhere between these opposites.

Some say “If you don’t like (… … …), then don’t read, watch, go there,” etc. Others say “I should be free to navigate in public without my values being affronted.”

Some object to any constraints, seemingly unaware that such a position imposes its own form of constraint on others who do not see as they do.

In light of these contraries, has not Extra Foods taken (like other stores in various locales) the most reasonable and respectful course to accommodate opposing views?

Isn’t EVERY customer STILL FREE to examine or purchase ANY magazine offered for sale? STILL FREE to walk to the magazine aisle (where most magazines cover each other—without anyone’s complaint!)? And now, additionally FREE to proceed through checkout without the blizzard of sensational displays?

If everyone is STILL FREE to look at any magazine they wish, perhaps the present controversy is NOT really about freedom, but about inconvenience and misunderstanding. Perhaps we should consider the contrary of Mr. Hendericks’ view (TCS, 5 August 2010, p. 8)—and regard the “cover-up of covers” as an extension of freedom, not a restriction—a type of community ClearPlay where MORE people are free to avoid things they find distasteful—without altering IN ANY WAY magazine content or the purchasing choice of others.

For those who lament the slippery slope of censorship, there are others who equally lament the slippery slope where private (as well as profane) matters have become so public and so universal that many are forced by this “freedom” to see and hear things they would prefer to “see not” and “hear not.” Do their preferences and values not merit respectful consideration on the continuum of freedom?

Extra Foods’ action seems the fairest win-win possible in this controversy. Magazines are freely available with only minor inconvenience to overt/covert scrutiny at checkout (easily remedied with a little wrist action)—thus leaving ALL customers FREE to exit with fewer visual intrusions (and who doesn’t wish for a little more calm in the midst of our troubled world!?)

SMSmith

PS: In the spirit of opposites and equity—If the cover-up of “checkout” magazines is so offensive, would those offended consider taking their own advice recently given to others, namely: “to shop in places where they do not feel offended or inconvenienced”? Surely we can see! there is no cause or need for the exclusion of anyone. Thank you Extra Foods for fairly considering the freedoms of all complainants.

“More popular than you! So there!”

Recently, a popular news/entertainment commentator¹ sought to disparage/discount a competitor’s criticism of his network by touting its/his ratings and mocking the ratings of his critic's network—somewhat in déjà vu replay of grade-school standoffs. Oh, the “fame” of it all!

When have popularity/ratings/celebrity ever been the paradigm? Does this host really think his network’s ratings serve as some special “mass value” lending greater credence, weight, and truth to broadcasts? Perhaps he should consider the long (and short) history of preference.

Who/what has proven generally more popular?

• At the party (even family) table: vegetables or cream puffs?
• At the thought of exercise: racetrack or recliner?
• In the face of peer pressure: square-ness or hip-ness?
• At the mall: cash or credit?
• At the political rally: conscience or charisma?
• In the assurance of anonymity: integrity or avarice?
• At the ratings game: thoughtful/honest or sensational/hype?
• Before the cross: Jesus or Barabbas?
• Etc., etc., etc.

Considering the history of popular choice, our host might be wise to rethink his parade of superior ratings. The déjà vu of “more popular than you” is rife with surprising twists and downturns. Just ask the rich man.²

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1. O’Reilly Factor, FNC, Wednesday, July 21, 2010.

2. New Testament Luke 16:19-31

The Mentality of Merchants

(From Esoterism & Symbol, written in 1947 by R.A. Schwaller de Lubicz¹)

When one beholds the emotional reactions of the animal—envy, hate, fidelity, love, joy, sadness, devotion to his master to the point of self-denial—one says that an animal sometimes seems human. This is a mistake: it is man who is still an animal. All emotional reactions are based on egoism, the first cerebral consciousness of oneself, a mirror of the object, a freed slave. From a moral point of view, these emotional reactions are natural. But only man has in him that gift allowing him to free himself from all these reactions; to attain aristocratic liberty by fusing with the Whole—love without cause, without aim, without reward, and therefore without deception. // This gift is Reason, which makes Man out of the animal; … Reason affirms in us what the brain cannot understand—a priori knowledge; Reason shows us the nobility of the useless which is beauty, pardon, faith, sacrifice: the sacred act. … (p. 48-9)

But we have prostituted this Reason and made it into a utilitarian rationalism, the mentality of merchants for whom the scales are the working tool, for whom everything has its countervalue, its counterweight, leading to equational logic, the erudite decimal system, algebra. (p. 49, emphasis added)

To base existence on work is as stupid as to found society on economic principles. Love of the task makes work joyful, and a good economic order is a secondary result. Mechanicalness, the emanation of a warped consciousness, as well as valueless money, these have been the cause and means of action for ambitious leaders to drag our world into the depths of misery. (p. 76)

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1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R._A._Schwaller_de_Lubicz

Yes, We Get It!

(Lessons from the “GULF”¹ between theory and practice; between words-then and words-now; between seeing and not seeing; between astute and stupid; between talking sense and talking points; between …; between …; between … . Oh! Déjà vu!)

Yes, we get it.² Oh! how WE GET IT!

WE GET that deregulation exacerbates greed, corruption, cutting corners, oppression, collusion, cover-up, irresponsibility, finger-pointing, hypocrisy, asininity, ETC., ad infinitum.

WE GET that laissez-faire is a false and pernicious theory that has mugged reality LONG ENOUGH.

WE GET that the absence of appropriate business law and regulation leaves exploiters free to do their worst damage.

WE GET that government is not the enemy; the enemy is the voracious, unregulated profit-seeker.

WE GET that government can become an “enemy of the people” when it sells itself to unregulated profit-seekers (thus, presenting a “state” of GUI: Governing Under the Influence).

WE GET that profiteers seek to have government defined as “people’s enemy #1.”

WE GET that those who denounce government intervention are amongst the first to denounce its failure to intervene (in the right amounts and ways, of course) in order to save us from the worst of the profiteers. (Such denouncers constituting “fair-weather” laissez-faires.)

WE GET that it’s time to account the social (etc.) costs of business against their profits.

WE GET that the extreme right is as dangerous and anti-democratic as the extreme left—perhaps even more so.

WE GET that hubris and hypocrisy eventually trip themselves up.

WE GET that common, ordinary people eventually do and pay for most of the cleanup of our many and various “GULF” disasters.

WE GET that it’s time to be accountable and to demand accountability of our legal fictions (business entities), beguiling investment portfolios, and our, WE THE PEOPLE, (distracted) government.

WE GET that it’s time to forge a balance between individualism and the common good.

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1. April 20, 2010: British Petroleum (aka BP) and their drilling agents suffer a deep-water oil rig explosion in the Gulf of Mexico that kills 11, sinks the blazing rig, and begins an oil spill disaster that goes beyond damage control.
2. At least those who have not become so loyal to or romanced by theories (stiff-necked syndrome) that they cannot/will not brook questions or criticism.

Free Agents, One and All !

Corporations—those bastions of hierarchy, planned economy, command-and-control, short-term rationalizing, meritorious disparity, creative accounting, externalized costs/internalized profits, and enforced consensus—ARE emphatically (you will be pleased to know) none of the above. They have changed. Transformed completely. They now believe in transparency, in democracy, and in YOU, the free consumer. YOU dictate what they produce (via China, et al.). YOU (and YOUR capital) choose what and how they market; how much mark-up is tolerable; how green is their logo.

They listen to YOU—the freely choosing, fully informed, free agents of expanding markets. YOU are the amazing, active rebels against the previous status quo, against the domineering elitism of old-style corporatism, now discredited in epiphanies of power in the people. But as they say (though who they “is” is often difficult to trace beyond the initial “sayer,” but nonetheless, THEY say) that the vacuum created by their mass exodus into democracy (from domination) is now crammed with a menagerie of “bad progressives,” and other like-minded domineering elitists, as in (liberal) journalists, academics, professionals, and critics/skeptics of any stripe who question the new, improved economy and enhanced democracy.

But YOU, the real people, are not deceived. Astutes (even juristic, fictional ones) can see the light (at the end of the train tunnel) and change (directions). Corporations have. They now believe in diversity, not conformity. Every culture, every life choice and voice, fashion and flutter, idea and incentive has equal validity¹ (and market potential!). All because of you.

That’s why supermalls are each unique; or, in the alternative—not so much—but only because YOU (WE, the people) want access to sameness.

That’s why McDonald’s, Starbucks, Yum! Brands, Nike, Tom Cruise, Haliburton, Exxon, GE, Xe,² et al. are found in nigh every nation (for your convenience, pleasure, comfort, and safety).

That’s why MS Windows^™OS is the preferred (though frequently the ONLY) choice of savvy (or not), satisfied (or not) new and old customers.

That’s why the New Corporations rush to acquire fresh (and competing) technologies, innovations, and broadcast/media licenses—to ensure YOU have the best of their choices.

That’s why they study and research YOU (your babies, tweens, and teens) (covertly of course, so as not to infringe upon your freedoms, agency, and privacy) in order to brand and deliver what YOU (and your loved ones) want—synchronized precisely with your awareness of want.

That’s why your favorite ______ (you name it) has suddenly vanished into the marketplace ether because THEY have sensed coming trends and efficiently synchronized their future with yours.

That’s why there are infinite versions of “new and improved” and why tech-support for the past becomes so rapidly passé.

That’s why escalating fees for service, support, early cancellation, late payment, refinancing, and risk are so ubiquitous and justified, because YOU have chosen to be held accountable for the costs you exacerbate for beneficent market collectives.

That’s why radio stations give local news and weather at the bottom of every hour, bi-monthly (unless pre-empted by commercial), and why it is so easy to be well-informed about local issues, elections, and politicians.

That’s why Hollywood, at the far edge of a nation of believers, keeps the name of God alive in its stimulating, cathartic movies and upon the lips of its stars and CEOs, for truly, the star-crossed maxim is, “Even profane press is better than no press!”

That’s why YOU wisely despise government—that defunct people’s collective—because it has repeatedly violated the checks-and-balances of its sacred Constitution and taxed YOU beyond endurance in changing its mission from “sheriff of the contract” to “sheriff of the common good” which is the sacred prerogative of the market’s invisible hand that was born to be free of external: checks and balances, criticism, oversight, accountability, and profit-taxing taxation.

That’s why labor has conceded the social and democratic injustices of collective bargaining, employee benefits, health insurance, job security, etc. because WE THE PEOPLE understand and support what is most advantageous to our well-being.

That’s why CEOs switch jobs (and presumably salaries and bank accounts) for trial periods with common-folk receptionists, clerks, chauffeurs, janitors, etc. to foster democratic empathy in the new democracy.

That’s why, as free agents, THE (astute) PEOPLE can be trusted to detect the smoke screens of insincerity, pretence, propaganda, hypocrisy, elitism, finger-pointing, power-plays/-grabs, and global agendas of the “bad progressives.” WE (with the ample aid of their "fair & balanced" research/reporting) can be vigilant critics and castigators of faux flips and real rip-offs.

SO, be comforted. The old-style, multinationals and behemoths—those unwieldy, inflexible, insensitive, obsessive, compulsive, conformist, inefficient, egoistic, domineering, distracted, and RAVENOUS creatures of the past—are gone. Replaced now by humble, amenable, serving, greener, slimmer global giants! [And since YOU asked, the golden scepter/cudgel has been retained only for amusing, museum display!]

[Giants, they say??!! Hhmmm! maybe, just maybe! there are more options than just meek belief/surrender!]

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1. Except of course for propagandized, duped dissenters, OR where “creative destruction,” of necessity, creates an improved, more just culture.
2. Formerly known as Blackwater

Who ate my cheese?!

Several years ago, my sister asked if I remembered the book, Who Ate My Cheese? Well, we had a good laugh for the book by Spencer Johnson was named, Who Moved My Cheese?¹ Now, in light of our (cyclical) economic times, my sister’s mistake seems not so mistaken—that the real (déjà vu) story in this real (déjà vu) world is, indeed, “Who ate my cheese?”²

Thomas Frank in One Market Under God is less than complimentary—judging this Cheese book “to both call for childlike innocence before the gods of the market and openly advance a scheme for gulling, silencing, and firing workers who are critical of management—”; a book “proceeding to boast of its own powers as a tool of labor pacification.”³

All of this got me to thinking that if I were a cheese BALL (Business And Lobby Lawyer), I would recommend ramping up all the positives to counter these increasing negatives against corps, big-business, and management. I would proceed plan by over-lapping plan.

Plan A: Keep touting that the people’s cheese has merely been moved to a better place because unregulated global markets know (and do) what is best; that (management-driven) change is manifestly inspired to nurture and bless in the long-run; and that the root of all our problems is government attempts to regulate cheese, especially cheese-making and cheese distribution.

Plan B: Assure the people that CEOs (Cheese Endowed Officials) deserve all the cheese in their lives; that cheese cannot be mis-distributed in any way (except downward to the masses); that any suggestion of mis-distribution upwards is tantamount to market treason; and that anyone with a modicum of effort can become a CEO.

Plan C: Proselyte that regulating cheese—its movement and/or consumption—is anathema to democracy and is a Marxist/socialist plot to control cheese and cheese-eaters; provided however, that those who work in cheese factories must not be allowed to organize or bargain for more cheese as that would be manifestly undemocratic for CEOs and potential CEOs.

Plan D: Reassure the people that possession of cheese proves the competitive market is working fairly; that God rewards laissez-faire; and that “merit is as merit does.”

Plan E: Cannot be revealed at this time (patent, trademark, and copyright pending).

Plan F: Promote the “philosophy” that thinking cheesy thoughts will, without the least doubt, manifest an abundance of cheese in people’s lives; and if not (i.e., if the cheese is all Swiss), the transparent manifestation is that thoughts are not cheesed enough (i.e., are riddled with doubts) because in the New Economy there is no limit to cheese or how much cheese can be profitably consumed. In this profit-inspired, effluent- ^[sic?]4prone universe, everyone can “Just say cheese”!

This is manifestly true, according to ahistorical derivatives.⁵

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1. Who Moved My Cheese? An Amazing Way to Deal with Change in Your Work and in Your Life, by Spencer Johnson, first published in 1998; rated as the #1 book on Change. See also http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Who_Moved_My_Cheese%3F
2. I just discovered today at Amazon.com that there ARE books entitled Who Ate My Cheese? © 2008 by John Nichols and Who Stole My Cheese? by Ilene Hochberg © 2003. These might be worth the read.
3. One Market Under God: Extreme Capitalism, Market Populism, and the End of Economic Democracy by Thomas Frank; Anchor Books, New York © 2000, pp. 248-250
4. Perhaps I should have said affluent! I don't know. Sometimes I get confused with all the rhetoric.
5. For thoughts on historical derivatives see http://dejavu-times.blogspot.com/2009/08/how-long-till-we-get-it.html , especially the footnote*. Also: http://dejavu-times.blogspot.com/2009/12/beyond-mark_14.html

Beware the Optimates!

After nearly four centuries of Republican government, Rome began its century-long descent toward tyranny¹ beginning about 133 BC with the murder of the Gracchus brothers.² Perhaps the chief facilitator of that descent was the conservative/traditionalist group of elites in the Roman Senate—a group that came to be dubbed the optimates (“the best”).³ They claimed to be defending and preserving the “old values,” yet their tactics were chiefly to preserve their own interests and the status quo of wealth and power. Is there any equivalency in our day to these optimates and their tactics? Any déjà vu?

The optimates:

▪ supported the aristocracy of wealth and power
▪ blocked the wishes of others groups
▪ labeled their opponents “demagogues”
▪ resorted to violence on an increasing scale
▪ used the backing of the aristocracy and the senate to achieve personal goals (via rampant corruption)
▪ opposed the extension of Roman citizenship,
▪ sought (or claimed to) the preservation of the mos maiorum, the ways of their forefathers.
▪ called themselves “liberators”
▪ published lists of those they considered enemies of the state and legislated “open season” on them⁴

Their opponents, the populares, had their own hypocrisies and in the end, the struggle between the optimates and the populares was “more about power than the public good” because, despite seductive words, no one was seeking the true interests of the Republic or of the people. The ploy, by both factions, was to gain support and votes while holding onto (or gaining new) wealth and power.⁵

“What happened to the Roman Republic?” is summarized by a Great Courses scholar⁶ and set forth, in part, as follows:

▪ Power, influence, and unimaginable wealth [often from vast plunder] could be won in the empire and deployed in Rome with no checks by the traditional system.
▪ People became inured to violence and quite willing to use it against fellow citizens.
▪ Disruptions in the countryside led to countless numbers of landless, rootless people who felt no sense of commitment to any old-fashioned values.⁷

Why can we not see how little has changed in 2000 years?—how we have our own collectivized aristocracy (corporatocracy) intent on preserving their own interests with the support and rhetoric of our optimates; how corrupted our politics has become by wealth and power; how insular and prone to violence our optimates are in their speech and imagery; how suckered we are by words?

Will we ever learn?

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References:
1. Tyranny can sometimes be benevolent, and Rome experienced several benevolent emperors, but many of the gains of the Republic were lost in the descent from the “rule of law” to “rule by emperor.”
2. See “The Foundations of Western Civilization,” Lecture 20, Rome—From Republic to Empire, taught by Professor Thomas F.X. Noble, The Great Courses: The Teaching Company © 2002. See pp. 83-86 of the accompanying Course Guidebook.
3. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optimates
4. During Sulla’s reign “Any man whose name appeared on the list was ipso facto stripped of his citizenship and excluded from all protection under law; reward money was given to any informer who gave information leading to the death of a proscribed man and any person who killed a proscribed man was entitled to keep part of his estate (the remainder went to the state). No person could inherit money or property from the proscribed men, nor could any woman married to a proscribed man remarry after his death. Many victims of proscription were decapitated and their heads were displayed on spears in the Forum.” See “Proscription of 82 BC” and “Proscription of 43 BC” at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proscription
5. http://www.roman-empire.net/society/society.html
6. See footnote 2 above.
7. Like “Do unto others …”, honesty, integrity, generosity, compassion, etc.

AC 180

(va: The Ann Coulter Conversion)
Sondra’s telephone call came before I was ready to face the day. My clock read 5:21 AM.

“I’m not here,” I mumbled into the receiver.

“You will not believe what just happened to me!” she exclaimed. (The enthusiasm in her voice seemed unhealthy for such an early hour.) “Oh, I know you’re only half-awake, but you know, some people say half-awake is the best time for breakthrough insights. And I think I just had one!”

“Could you not spare me till at least 7?” I groaned.

“No,” she said. “This is too bizarre.” [Dramatic pause.] “I dreamt about ANN COULTER.”

“Oh, dear,” I said coming slightly more alert for I had heard Sondra bemoaning Ann, not more than one day ago. “I mean, she just seems so caustic and parallel-challenged,” Sondra had said. “Honestly, I think I share some of her conservative values, but if she ever met me, she’d probably shred me like a liberal, because I happen to believe that “We, the people” means more than, “Me, the Right & True Republican.”

“You don’t sound as if you’re bleeding profusely,” I said.

Sondra laughed. “No, actually Ann began reading to me, quite animated, from one of her books. I started to follow along with this fantastic scrolling reader-thing—you know how dreams are. Anyway she was reading along and I was following with this scrolly thing, when suddenly there was this bizarre disconnect. You pretty much had to be there to get the full effect, but suddenly my scroller began highlighting words at the same moment Ann would read other words in place of them. She was inverting liberal and conservative references! After several “mistakes,” I decided it must be intentional, so I looked up, all shocked-like, but she just smiled sweetly and read on, making these crazy substitutions! Isn’t that bizarre?!”

“Confusing is the word,” I said staring wide-eyed into the dark, “for there is no chance to infinity that Ann Coulter is a closet liberal.”

“Oh, no,” Sondra laughed. “She didn’t always substitute—but always in those places dealing with strategy—you know, the despised liberal/Democrat attack/bias/liar methodology stuff. So it ended up like, everything she accused them of, she’d re-attribute to herself or like-minded conservatives; even changing whole paragraphs. Was still reading when I fell asleep in the dream, which is when I woke up to see the spine of her very book—the “Talking to a Liberal” one—propped against my lamp. That was startling strange, till I remembered I had stashed it there—courtesy of my pastor’s wife—wants to know what I think! Confused me though for a moment. Wasn’t sure I was waking from a dream or into one.

“So maybe you should tell me your breakthrough insight, so I can go back to sleep,” I sighed.

“Wait a minute!” Sondra said. “You’re not getting the feel for this. I can hear it in your voice. You just should have been there—here—wherever. The gist of the whole thing was like—well you know those hidden paragraph codes in word processing. Well, this was like The Ann Coulter Code. Actually even way beyond her—like The Authoritarian Conservative Code. Like whatever they condemn in liberal strategy, and you’re right—I can hear it in your breathing— there is plenty to condemn on all sides—but the dream-Ann was telling me—with a smile, to boot—that she was foreshadowing and perfectly nonchalant about making extreme use of every nasty strategy she so vehemently condemned. In fact, seemed quite exhilarated to do so.”

“Well, it’s probably historical precedent—déjà vu.” I said.

“Exactly, exactly,” Sondra said, “but shouldn’t we have learned by now too see through these finger-pointing deflections. Anyway, Ann got me so interested, I might start her book where she left off reading, and do the dream reversal. And from now on, that’s how I’m going to interpret all those hostile opinion books of both persuasions—with my little mental scroller highlighting AC conversion in the background.

“Maybe you should rewrite her book,” I suggested. “You could acknowledge her as the ghost writer.”

“Wouldn’t that be the height!” she exclaimed with a laugh. “I could label it satire or parody or something. I could republish, reversing all the liberal/Democrat stuff with conservative/Republican stuff. It would be bang on from what I have been seeing, and I could call it … AC 180.”

“Sounds like the perfect title,” I agreed.

“Oh, yeah, that reminds me!” Sondra exclaimed. “For a split second, AFTER I awoke, I saw this big “ME” plastered over part of her title. You know, so it read, How to Talk to ME (if you must).”

“Oh dear,” I said, “she’ll swear your vision-giver is a cloistered liberal.”

“Honestly,” Sondra moaned, “one gets so tired of this uncivil discourse and strategy blame-game. I mean both sides seem to be in full spin-cycle most of the time—like it's an equality contest of grenade lobbing, which isn't what I signed on for. And worse than that, so many "rightists" are so busy cursing liberal craters, we don't seem to notice the bottomless pit we’re digging ourselves into by our own follies and self-deceptions.”

“I doubt Ann will be—” I began, but Sondra was not finished.

“So you see what my breakthrough is? What this dream-Ann has awakened me to?—to the decision that I’m totally tired of all this beam-in-the-eye stuff we’re pretending isn’t there. I just seems we're doing as much—if not more—damage to America as any so-called liberal, so if I have to poke the eye of my grand-old-party just to get them to look into their own contorted, parallel reflection, then so be it.”

“Well from what I see, some of them don’t just poke back, they try to decapitate,” I cautioned.

“Oh, I know,” she said, “but too many of us seem to be asleep or else so enraged by the other guy’s sins we lose our own focus. So maybe it’s time more of us started flinging facts into our own fan.”

“So, does this mean you have an answer for your pastor’s wife?” I asked.

“I guess so,” she laughed. “This vision/dream thing should be the clincher. I’ll tell her too, it’s like crossing the street. If you don’t look both ways, with eyes wide open, you ain’t as safe (or as smart) as you think. Anyway, gotta go, but I’ll send you a little sample of the dreamy rendition.”

And that was that (except for the email).

▪ ▪ ▪ ▪ [Sondra’s Email] ▪ ▪ ▪ ▪

As I promised, here’s a little sample of Ann’s very own dream-revisions—truly an “AC 180,” don’t you think? She was a tad erratic, skipping about, but this gives you a taste. (I've italicized her changes from the book.)

p. 1: We, conservatives, traffic in shouting and demagogy. In a public setting, we will work ourselves into a dervish-like trance and start incanting inanities: “Obama lies.” “Baby killer.” “Racist!” “Fascist!” “Socialist!” “Conspiracy!” “No, No, No, Hell No.” ... We, conservatives, as opposed to sentient creatures, have a finite number of memorized talking points, which we periodically try to shoehorn into unrelated events, such as 9/11 and Iraq; but our favorite is to deny parallels like enhanced interrogations in Guantánamo and “bad apples” in Abu Ghraib, or like shoe and underwear bombers, or like OUR use of House reconciliation, OUR numerous flip-flops, OUR earmarks, OUR moral lapses, … [She had quite a list.]
p. 2: Our idea of a battle of wits is to say, “Socialism” in front of adoring conventioneers and be wildly applauded for our brilliance and courage. …, we have a number of stratagems to prevent liberals from talking. We shout liberals down, cut the microphones of interviewees, threaten liberal politicians, and heckle liberal speakers. We target them.

Sorry, this will take too long to scribe all AC’s inversions and changes. In the dream, it all seemed to just roll off her lips. And she was SOOO well-versed in conservative/liberal parallels—even things I hadn’t heard yet. (Could there be astonishing things YET to break in the news!?!)

Wonder if we could get someone to do a “fair and balanced” AC 180 of her book. Then maybe, between her book and the inverted one, we’d really have AC 360 (Astute Citizens!?! even). Anyway here are two other inversions, she seemed quite pleased about.

p. 7: “Our other new hobby is to call people “liars.”
p. 15: “Even if you’ve led a blameless life, we invent absurd stories about you.

(PS: You get the gist! I wonder if a daily reading from Matthew 7 in Congress and before every pundit-cast would be of any help! I’ll save you the trouble of looking it up.)

Matthew 7:3-5: And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother's eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye? Or how wilt thou say to thy brother, Let me pull out the mote out of thine eye; and, behold, a beam is in thine own eye? Thou hypocrite, first cast out the beam out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother's eye. (Also see Luke 6:41-2)

Is there any hope to save us from ourselves?! Till next time, Sondra

The Speed of Emotion

“In The Making of the President, 1960,^[1] Teddy White lamented that TV might spell the death of serious politics: to give a thoughtful response to serious questions, a politician needed a good thirty seconds to ponder, but television allowed only five seconds of silence at best. DDB [the ad agency of Doyle Dane Bernbach^[2]] found nothing to lament in the fact. They were convinced you could learn everything you needed to know about a product, which in this case happened to be a human being, in half a minute—the speed not of thought but of emotion” (Before the Storm: Barry Goldwater and the Unmaking of the American Consensus by Rick Perlstein, © 2001).

It seems Theodore H. White was right—about both left and right. Much of our political news, views, tweets, trailers, and posts proceed at the speed of emotion. No need for thought, memory, fact checking, sourcing, courtesy, caution, truth, or déjà vu. Ads, images, sound bites, talking points, “spontaneous” stagings, and so forth—often market-tested for trigger-efficiency and -effect—all set on “speed” and ad nauseam recycle. “Truth” verified by repetition. Enhanced by selective, romantic myth-making!

And though both left and right get caught up in the speed of emotion, there seems no crowd more addicted to “speed”³ than the fractured far-right—particularly Tea Partiers and libertarians. These far-rightists, despite their professed devotion to “individualism,” freedom, and “free markets” have a remarkable predisposition to flock to authoritarian, charismatic leaders; to conform to group-speak without personal examination of issues; to repeat emotive phrases as end-all answers; to denigrate the individualism and freedom of everyone to the left of them; to disregard ideological contradictions⁴; and to advocate violence when “democracy” does not favor their worldview.

Since many to the right claim an affinity to the Christian faith and to an “end-of-times” scenario, perhaps a look backward to the “beginning” and forward to the “end” might prove enlightening.

What powerful groups in the “beginning” of Christianity was so convinced they were right, so devoted to preserving their faith/ideology, and so alarmed at the “devilish” doctrines of a popular itinerant preacher that they devoted themselves to his destruction? Could there be any parallels in our day? Are we so convinced we are saving freedom and the American Constitution that we kill the very (“devilish”) reforms that might preserve a MORE perfect union? Remember Peter and the dream that opened him to the inclusion of Gentiles in his gospel—a complete reversal of prior belief?⁵

And what about the “end-of-times”? What does John the Revelator identify as the great opposition?⁶ Have we been caught in a masterful diversion and deception exacerbated by the speed of emotion? So obsessed with socialism, we miss the Trojan horse cavorting in our midst. The Trojan horse we unfetter and feed to excess as if it were a living thing!

Perhaps we should ask ourselves if we can be enlightened by higher truths IF we are not open to new perspectives.

Perhaps it is time we took the time to temper emotion with thought, memory, research, and honesty about ourselves, our ideologies, our hypocrisies, and the possibility of “being partly right and partly wrong.”

There are options to the speed of emotion. Yes, TV and the internet may overwhelm us with emotive pitches, BUT the internet also gives us the speed of access to fact checking, verifiable history, reputable research, sworn testimony, rational observation, diverse opinion, and communities of thoughtful discourse. Surely, the present speed of emotion, untempered and unbalanced, as we have seen in recent months, cannot continue, if we are to survive as a nation. Emotions are ONLY A PART of who we are. Reason, research, and balanced thought must also precede action. In paraphrase of Mark Twain: “The person who does not think⁷ has no advantage over the one who cannot think⁷.”

-------/
1. Published 1961; best-seller and 1962 Pulitzer Prize winner for general nonfiction
2. The ad agency of Democrats JFK and later LBJ. Republicans became quick imitators.
3. Speed can manifest both as reactionary, knee-jerk explosions or frantic running in place at the speed of “NO,” “NO,” “NO.”
4. One of their main ones is the redistribution of wealth mantra. See http://dejavu-times.blogspot.com/2009/12/beyond-mark_14.html
5. See New Testament Acts 10 for Peter’s enlightenment. Also, could Paul’s words have any parallels? “… they have a zeal of God [or freedom or free markets], but not according to knowledge. For they being ignorant of God's righteousness [or point of view], and going about to establish their own righteousness [or point of view], have not submitted themselves unto the righteousness [point of view] of God. (New Testament Romans 10:2-3). How does God view the rich and the poor? Are free-markets free or just facades to justify power and elitism? See also http://dejavu-timestwo.blogspot.com/search/label/EconomicsOfJesus
6. New Testament Revelation 17 & 18
7. and study, research, ponder, fact check, remember

Judgment at …

(All indented paragraphs are partial quotes from, or are based on portions of, the Judgment at Nuremberg film script, screen play by Abby Mann.)

Sixty-three years ago (1947), the United States conducted a trial examining the issue of individual complicity of justice officials in crimes committed while in the service of the German state. This trial was memorialized in a fictionalized film (1961), entitled, “Judgment at Nuremberg.” Considering recent statements made by former DOJ lawyer John Yoo and several others¹ justifying (redefining) torture and the reach of executive power, it is disturbingly déjà vu to revisit the film. If we were to remake it today and title it “Judgment at Guantánamo” (or Abu Ghraib, or Washington, or [redacted] Secret CIA Prison), the script would have disquieting parallels—not in the degree of the crimes, but in the authoritarian, nationalistic mentality that leads one to justify uncivilized behaviors.

How far and deep, in the coming years, will these legal and constitutional factures run? Will we, in time, have our own “Ernst Jannings” confess:

My counsel would have you believe, we were not aware of torture. Of secret prisions. Of kidnappings, renditions, assassinations. Not aware?! Where were we?

Where were we when torture advocates began justifying it in the press—even in our very own Congress? Where were we when our newscasts and magazines published damning photographs? Where were we when torture logs were published? When witnesses testified before Congress or in publications? Where were we when advocates of justice and humanity cried out in warning? Were we deaf? Dumb? Blind?

My counsel says we were not aware of the extent of torture used. Not aware of deaths. Of secret prisions. Of kidnappings, renditions, assassinations. He would give you the excuse we were only aware of one or two unfortunate cases. Does that make us any the less guilty? Maybe we didn’t know the details. But if we didn’t know, it was because we didn’t want to know. Didn’t want to admit that many of our so-called enemy combatants were entirely innocent. Or even worse, discounted—justified—our own crimes because others’ crimes were so incomparably worse! Because our “good” intentions justified every means!

And will we, in time, have another Judge Haywood say:

The charge is that of conscious participation in a government-sanctioned system of cruelty and injustice in violation of every moral and legal principle known to all civilized nations. The tribunal has carefully studied the record and found therein abundant evidence to support beyond a reasonable doubt the charges against these defendants.

Defense Counsel, in their very skillful defense, have asserted that there are others who must share the ultimate responsibility for what happened. There is truth in this. The real complaining party at the bar in this courtroom is civilization. But this tribunal finds that the accused in the dock are responsible for their actions. Men and women who took part in the enactment of laws and decrees the purpose of which was the torture of human beings. Men and women who, in executive positions, actively participated in the enforcement of these “laws,” illegal under both U.S. and international law. The principle of criminal law in every civilized society has this in common: Any person who sways another to commit torture or murder—any person who furnishes the order for the purpose of the crime—any person who is an accessory to the crime is guilty.

Defense counsel further asserts that the defendants were exceptional lawyers and officials and acted in what they thought was the best interest of their country. There is truth in this also. But this trial has shown that under a national crisis ordinary, even able and extraordinary men and women, can delude themselves into the commission of crimes so heinous that they beggar the imagination. No one who has sat through this trial can ever forget them. How easily it can happen.

There are those in our own country too, who today speak of the protection of country—of survival. A decision must be made in the life of every nation at the very moment when the grasp of the enemy is at its throat. Then it seems that the only way to survive is to use the means of the enemy—to rest survival upon what is expedient—to look the other way. The answer to that is: Survival as what? A country isn’t a rock. It’s not an extension of one’s self. It’s what it stands for. It’s what it stands for when standing for something is the most difficult. Before the people of the world, let it now be noted that here, in our decision, this is what we stand for: Justice, truth, and the value of a single human being.

And will we, as a people, eventually come to say:

Judge Haywood, we wanted to tell you, we never knew it would come to what it did. You must believe it.

Only to hear our Judge reply:

It came to that the first time you justified the torture of another human being.

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1. Including former VP, Dick Cheney and former senior adviser and deputy chief of staff, Karl Rove. See also, References section at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Yoo for various writings and opinions.

What …? If …? How …?

(“Private” reflections for Miltonites*)

What does one do when captured by a phrase? The phrase, “Our minds tell us, and history confirms …” comes from page 2 of Milton Friedman’s Capitalism and Freedom. He uses it to protest excessive government, and he is probably (mostly) right, BUT somehow, he seems entirely unconscious of the “private” side of what “Our minds tell us, and history confirms ….” With each of his critiques of the public sector, a private sector parallel rears its substantial, unacknowledged head. Consider:

If we must keep government “from becoming a [public] Frankenstein that will destroy the very freedom we establish it to protect,”¹ what of private Frankensteins? What of private sector employment contracts that limit speech, that require work on Holy Days, that deny freedom of association, that create master/servant relationships, that subsume “common traditions” and loyalties to employer demands, that command and control and centralize in pursuit of efficiency and profit; etc., etc.?

If “[o]ur minds tell us, and history confirms, that the great threat to freedom is the concentration of power,”¹ why should we blindly, passively trust the self-regulating free-market that inexorably concentrates both wealth and power?

If two broad Constitutional principles have preserved our freedom despite repeated “violations in practice,”² might not the same principles to preserve freedom apply to the private sector and its violations: namely, limiting the size of market players and dispersing their power (but not their responsibility)?

How can we “insure that the private sector is a check on the powers of the governmental sector”³ when private sector money pursues and buys power and influence for self-interested agendas and curtails with impunity many of the fundamental freedoms as noted above?

If “[t]he preservation of freedom is the protective reason for limiting and decentralizing governmental power,”³ what about protecting freedom by limiting and decentralizing private economic power?

If “[t]he great advances of civilization … have never come from centralized government … or … in response to governmental directives”⁴ are those advances attributable to competitive capitalism or in spite of competitive capitalism? Were any of Friedman’s named achievers⁴ motivated by competition, efficiency, and profit, or were they impassioned by gifts, inspirations, and altruism?

If “[g]overnment can never duplicate the variety and diversity of individual action,”⁴ can competitive, corporate capitalism do so? Are not uniformity, standardization, conformity, stagnation, and mediocrity⁴also characteristic of most oversized “competitive” corporations? Where does most innovation come from—born from the head of a Zeus-corp or born in some obscure garage by real individuals?

If “freedom [is] the ultimate goal and the individual [is] the ultimate entity in society,”⁵ why is competitive capitalism chiefly built on the collective model with command and control centralized in top-down dictatorships of master/servant relationships? And does the legal-fiction that calls a corporate collective, an “individual with individual rights” really convince us that competitive capitalism based on such a fiction is the defending champion of freedom and individualism?

If “[a]ny system [i.e., Federal Reserve System] which gives so much power and so much discretion to a few men that mistakes—excusable or not—can have such far-reaching effects is a bad system … because it gives a few men such power without any effective check by the body politic,” what about the private and financial sector’s deregulation passion begun in the 1980s that “disperse[d] responsibility yet [gave] a few men great power,” without effective check?⁶

If the U.S. government’s “abrogation of the gold clauses [in the 1930s] was a measure destructive of the basic principles of free enterprise” by declaring contracts “invalid for the benefit of one of the parties!” what of private sector corporate restructuring which does the same?⁷

How are we going to get beyond entrenched fallacious theories, one-eyed analyses, justifications, and myths and manias of the “free-market” until we honestly consider what “our minds tell us, and history confirms …” about BOTH the public and private (corporate dominated) sectors? If collectivism is really masquerading in capitalistic, individualist clothing, do we have a free-market or just the pretence of one?

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*All page references below refer to Milton Friedman’s Capitalism and Freedom (Fortieth Anniversary Edition) The University of Chicago Press, Chicago, © 1962, 1982, 2002
1. p. 2
2. pp. 2-3
3. p. 3
4. pp. 3-4
5. p. 5
6. p. 50
7. p. 60

“Free”-fall?

▪ Free of civility so anyone can say anything in passionate defense of one-sidedness.¹
▪ Free to demand that the American eagle fly as a one-winged bird.²
▪ Free of laws and regulations so every business and financial institution can be a profiteer and scrutineer unto itself.³
▪ Free of memory so the re-cycling of “boom and bust” can keep booming the few and busting the many.⁴
▪ Free of moral and ethical restraints when castigating moral and ethical lapses in others.⁵
▪ Free of consequence so OLC lawyers, military & CIA interrogators, and their directing/consenting superiors can violate human rights and dignity without accountability.⁶
▪ Free to go to extremes in finding and punishing (alleged⁷) extremists.
▪ Free of constitutional restraints; checks and balances; Accords, Conventions, and Treaties by re-categorizing.⁸
▪ Free of facts so strengths can be distorted into weakness and follies recast as strength.⁹
▪ Free of self-reflection so “rightists” (of both wings) can spin innocence, sincerity, the reality of things present, and the amnesia of things past.¹⁰
▪ Free to avoid taxes via off-shore shells.¹¹
▪ Free to privatize gains and socialize losses.¹²
▪ Free to say one thing and do another with impunity (yea, even with enhanced legacies).¹³
▪ Free of self-awareness so one can sling mud from one’s own flawed actions onto “enemies” in diversionary ploy.¹⁴
▪ Free of rational analysis so any challenge to one’s worldview (from right, center, or left) can be SUMMARILY DISMISSED as socialist agenda OR hypocritical propaganda.¹⁵
▪ Free of the maturity and/or courage required to reconcile differences or acknowledge other points of view.¹⁶
▪ Free of memory so “déjà vu” does not disturb trajectory and repetitious folly.¹⁷

And the list goes on.

Have we forgotten that America was established as a free nation by virtue of a constitution of laws with check and balances, with a Bill of Rights, and with accountability? Can we be free as individuals or corporate collectives without similar parallels?

Perhaps it’s time we remembered that life, society, progress, harmony, fairness, justice, equity, and an eagle’s flight come in a balance of right AND left; individualism AND collectivism; updraft AND downdraft; listening AND talking; giving AND receiving; freedom AND responsibility; transcending AND including, AND synergizing. Remember, NOBODY is so right they can’t be wrong about something?! Ask the Pharisees.

----------------/
1. Coulterites, Frankenites, et al. [i.e., fans or mimics of Ann Coulter (R) or Al Franken (D)]
2. Listen to the KRovites of all persuasions [pronounced Crow-vites, in acknowledgment of Karl Rove and his masters and mimics, whether R or L, and meaning: a) half-circle, 180°, one-wing purists; and b) spinners of assets into liabilities and vice versa]
3. Ayn Rand, Milton Friedman, et al.
4. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boom_and_bust
5. See 1. above; also “... he [Satan] saith unto them: Deceive and lie in wait to catch, that ye may destroy; behold, this is no harm. And thus he flattereth them, and telleth them that it is no sin to lie that they may catch a man in a lie, that they may destroy him. … Verily, verily, I say unto you, wo be unto him that lieth to deceive because he supposeth that another lieth to deceive, for such are not exempt from the justice of God.” (Scriptural text from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints Doctrine and Covenants Section 10:25, 28.)
6. http://judiciary.house.gov/issues/issues_OPRReport.html (OLC=Office of Legal Counsel, U.S. Department of Justice)
7. See 6. above and scripture at 5. above. See slso http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2009/03/19/ex-bush-official-guantanamo-bay-innocent/
8. See 6. above; and POWs become Enemy Combatants in "1984 newspeak"
9. DDB innovators for LBJ (1960s); Lee Atwater disciples; Swiftboaters; , KRovites, et al.; If facts are important to you, check out http://www.factcheck.org/
10. Pundits, politicians, etc. E.g., see the KRovite Sarah-spin (in my view) in: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=62zufrMneFw&feature=player_embedded [Was apparently removed by the user on or before March 6, 2010]
11. http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/tax/
12. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Privatizing_profits_and_socializing_losses
13. Remember election promises? Classic case: small government & fiscal conservatism in the Reagan years: see HarryBrowne.org article “The Quintessenstial Politician”; and beyond.
14. Listen to Convention speeches. Watch for KRovite tactics on both the left and the right. Also, classic case: compare handling & criticisms of shoe bomber 2001 and underwear bomber 2009: http://factcheck.org/2010/02/dick-cheney-vs-joe-biden/
15. Pundits, blogs, postings, news comments, etc.
16. Present U.S. Congress; ideologues; extreme party loyalists
17. E.g., Are we not déjà vu the ’50s/’60s Republican crisis profiled in Before the Storm: Barry Goldwater and the Unmaking of the American Consensus by Rick Perlstein © 2001?

Technology: Servant or Master?

Technology as servant can and does bless the world in numerous ways. Technology as master is another story. Consider:

▪ reams of paper that computer printers spew into scrap bins in endless pursuit of the perfect document;
▪ WALL•E¹ landscapes of electronic scrap trashed in pursuit of the latest, greatest;
▪ electronic-sitters that are too overwhelmingly convenient for the health and wellbeing of rising generations;
▪ escalating production of surplus goods worldwide (and far beyond global demand) "because we can";²
▪ connections to worlds that disconnect us from time, place, values, and the company of others. Witness:

▫ surreptitious texting during sermons, lectures, entertainments, conversations, work, driving, etc.;
▫ abrupt interruptions to conversations, meetings, work, life, leisure, the pursuit of happiness, etc. to answer the personalized jangle of omnipresent cell-mates and me-phones;
▫ escapism in “pleasant pictures” or “sham battles” from the realities of life and “The Habits of Highly Effective People”;³
▫ surfing into a surfeit of conflicting information/opinion;⁴
▫ hours of gaming where spouses, children, time and God take a backseat to the labyrinth;
▫ electronic love-affairs disaffecting the family affection;
▫ porno-plagues and incivility exploding within anonymity;
▫ proliferation of “precision Predators” and discounting of “collateral damage”;
▫ micro-manipulations of timing and insider information to capture macro-profits;
▫ dining, driving, deliberating, and dying (and doing it all) while distracted;
▫ and so forth.

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1. Pixar’s 2008 movie
2.One of the under-acknowledged crises of the global economy
3. Reference Stephen R. Covey’s “Seven Habits” and “Eighth Habit”
4. “Ever learning, and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth.” (New Testament 2 Timothy 3:7)

A Proliferation of Masters

No man can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon. (New Testament Matthew 6:24; Luke 16:13, “No servant …”)

These words were spoken nigh 2,000 years ago, and perhaps never before in history, till our day, have more people been attempting to do this very thing—to serve two (or more) masters. I do not speak in main of the ageless dilemmas that have burdened servants and employees,* such as:

▪ Do I say or do things on behalf of my employer that violate my personal integrity and moral values?
▪ Do I have to work on my Holy Day to keep (or get) my job, or to avoid being an inconvenience to my fellow employees or bosses?
▪ Do my employer’s business practices to which I contribute through my time and energies violate my sense of fairness and justice?
▪ Do I turn a blind eye to right and wrong because I need/want that pay-cheque?
▪ Do I tolerate personal injustices and abuses for the sake of employment?
▪ Have I taken employment that offends my spirit and purpose in life for the compensation and amenities because I fear, “What will become of me?” if I don’t or for the mere fact that the pay and benefits were better than an alternative that would have nourished by soul?
▪ Etc., etc.

Employees have always been at risk for such conflicts of interest. But, in today’s world, at least four other masters have become so pervasive, there is scarce a living soul that is not juggling at least two—not to mention comparable pressures on companies and even nations!

Consider—
Master Two as mammon through debt.

What does debt impel us to do? Have any of the Ten Commandments or other moral imperatives given way to the stresses of debt? What can debt cause us to put at risk or lose? Home, family, friends, integrity, compassion, security, peace of mind, trust in God? What would our answers be to the bulleted questions above were we to substitute “debt” for “employer”?

As well, how many companies have succumbed to debt? How many nations have compromised their sovereignty on account of it? Bartered away the wellbeing of their citizens?

Consider—
Master Three as mammon through the desire for power or fame.

What do government officials or private business leaders do, refrain from doing, consent to, deny, and so forth, for the sake of gifts, donations, assurances, alliances, perks, privileges, re-election, reappointment, etc.? What do the powerful and famous do to retain power and fame? Has the achievement of them ever been a personal temptation? Have we become so inured to the status quo of mammon in our politics, business, entertainment, sports, and even religion, that we discount the servitude and consequent devastations to our democratic, creative, spiritual, and moral values?

Consider—
Master Four as the mammon of investment pursuits.

In this day of increasingly unregulated finance capital, how many persons or fund managers buy shares, stocks, bonds, financial instruments, etc. without the slightest regard for anything but maximized returns? This Master is perhaps the most subversive of all, because as owner of the investment, we appear to be the master, when in reality, the “pursuit of profit” becomes the Master. We take the “three monkey” stance of refusing to see, hear, or speak evil of how our money is employed to build upon itself. We profess to be good Christians, Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus, Sikhs, Confucians, or other moralists, yet do we “innocently” invest our surplus or leveraged capital in plans and programs that violate our beliefs?

How much public good have we sacrificed for private gain? How many public and private costs have our investment strategies shunted to public accounts to increase the bottom line? How informed are we about the ways and means of our investment portfolios? Do we prefer not to know?

Consider—
Master Five as the mammon of ideology.

How many of us are so fixated on some idea, person, or thing that perceived “good” ends claim to justify foul means? So convinced or zealous we won’t consider further facts or contradicting witnesses? How many of our politicians bow to the party line knowing they are harming their constituents and their country? Must others obey law, use common sense, be reasonable and conciliatory, while we can be excused through rightness or rank? Do our wills and insights supersede all other wills and insights? Do we discard moral strictures to promote or protect our ideology?

Consider—
Who and what are the masters in your life?

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*(including, maybe especially, latter-day CEOs, CFOs, CAOs, etc.)

The Looming Great Divorce

(or When are we going to open our eyes and ears that we might SEE and HEAR?!!)

“Almost thou persuadest me [NOT] to be a Christian!”¹

That was my first reaction upon reading an email forward sent by a good Christian lady. So here is my latest “whoa, woe, whoa!!!” This church sister introduced her “forward” thus:

THIS LADY NOT ONLY HAS A GRASP OF 'THE SITUATION' BUT AN INCREDIBLE COMMAND OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE!
[“THIS LADY” is allegedly Cyndy Miller, writer of a letter to AARP.²]

Cyndy’s letter followed and set forth her reasons for declining to renew AARP membership because AARP’s “Divided We Fail” and other “Socialistic politics” are viewed by Cyndy as “threatening our way of life [and] offending our sensibilities.” Cyndy declares that “when the opinions and long term goals are diametrically opposed, the divorce is imminent.” And so she divorces AARP and decries “This Presidential Administration [that] scares the living daylights out of us.” [Did the prior presidential administration scare her? She does not say!]

Then Cyndy gets to the apparent “meat” of her regrettable divorce from AARP; a part that appears to “raise the blood pressure [her] medical insurance strives to contain.” She writes:

“Your [AARP] website generously offers us the opportunity to receive all communication in Spanish.. ARE YOU KIDDING??? Someone has broken into our 'house', invaded our home without our invitation or consent. The President has insisted we keep the perpetrator in comfort and learn the perp language so we can communicate our reluctant welcome to them.
I DON'T choose to welcome them.
I DON'T choose to support them.
I DON'T choose to educate them.
I DON'T choose to medicate them, pay for their food or clothing. …”
[etc., etc. Emphasis all hers.]

Now, of course, I’m not going to jettison my faith because a Christian “forwarder” thinks there is “grasp and command” in this divorce decree.³ But it set me to thinking about the coming Great Divorce—the one many of my church and/or fellow-Americans don’t seem to realize is increasingly imperative. It is the divorce looming between their professed Christian⁴ allegiance and the current STATE of their politics. How the incompatibility has endured so long is already beyond comprehension!

So, for just a moment, I ask my Christian friends—many of whom are conservative Republicans: Will you honestly look at the STATE of YOUR politics? NOT your enemy’s politics, but YOURS.

What is the state of things when radio/TV pundits become more quotable, reliable, and fundamental than the Sermon on the Mount?! When ends claim to justify means? When deception and spin are strategized? When finance capital dictates governance? When extremism in the defense of “liberty” is deemed patriotic? Where sound bites substitute for informed research? When your GOP says one thing with its mouth and does another with its power?

How long can you pretend YOUR political “spouse” is being faithful to founding principles and values? Look at your record! Your documented history! Your investigations! Your subterfuges! Hear the eye-witnesses! The whistleblowers! The sworn testimonies!⁵

Why do you castigate only the infidelities of your enemy’s “spouse”? Is THAT helping your own degraded house? Open your eyes! Open your ears!

How long can you ignore the egregious incompatibilities between GOP words and practices? Between values and actions? Why do you dismiss with alacrity and scorn all criticisms as if they were but false and hostile smears upon a pristine conscience?

Do we imagine a professedly “chosen” people (or party, religion, nation, ideology, constitution, etc.) is immune to folly, error, deception, corruption? Perhaps a brief tour of the gifted and chosen ones of history would be instructive. Count how many were swept away in whirlpools of stiffneckedness, excess, and folly. How few died in the harness of integrity, humility, purpose, and honor.

We are not going to clean up the mess of our universal corruption and partisanship by focusing solely on the crimes and corruptions of “enemies.” We must first look to our own ways and affiliations. What did Biblical Micah caution? “… a man's enemies are the men of his own house.”⁶ And please, instead of knee-jerking to accuse and fault your perceived enemies in the national house, look first to the threats and offenses from within your own GOP house.

In this current state of politics, surely it is time to reject the blindness of partisanship and unthinking loyalties. It is time to demand more of ourselves than we do of our “enemies.” It is time to reject rampant, internal hypocrisies; to refuse the propaganda of PACs and the persuasions of mammon.⁷ It is time to seek out and support honest, wise, good, and courageous candidates free of compromising ties and dictates. It is time for self- and party-awareness. It is time to take a new moral way. It is way beyond time.

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(For those who wish to know my views on the Democrats, capitalism, socialism, free-market myths, the dire state of America's democratic values and republican form of government, etc. you may peruse other Déjà Vu posts.)

1 New Testament Acts 26:28
2 AARP: American Association of Retired Persons
3 Of course, Cyndy has every right to reject the philosophies and practices of the AARP, if they conflict with hers, but the tragic thing is, too many partisans utterly fail to comprehend the present chasm between professed values and opposing actions. Their focus remains unwaveringly on their enemy to the exclusion of self-awareness—a classic diverting strategy promoted by C.S. Lewis’ astute senior demon, Screwtape (from The Screwtape Letters, 1942).
4 Applicable to other religious faiths and ethical adherents because most acknowledge a common set of human and moral values.
5 There are hundreds of meticulously, documented studies, books, and articles that are dismissed or ignored because: 1) they do not sustain the myths of rightness, justification, and ideology; 2) they are strategized as aiding and abetting the “enemy”; and 3) it takes so much precious time to sift truth from half-truths and error when lives are already so time-and info-stressed. Perhaps one approach is to prefer confirmed and documented information over passionate denials or justifications.
6 Old Testament Micah 7:6
7 No man can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon (New Testament Matthew 6:24).

Voices of Warning

(This is not a déjà vu aimed solely at the incumbent Democrats, though in my view there is cause for alarm, but these warning voices also indict their prower-driven opponents whose presumptions, tactics, priorities, and propaganda present, in my view, an even greater danger.)

Warning voices about ways, means, and follies are seldom welcomed by those who wield power (or advocates/supporters of that power, ideology, or point of view). Here are a few of those voices, from past to present—all with a déjà vu ring.

300s BC – Solon

Athenians are “trusting in shifty speeches rather than examining closely men’s deeds.” (The First Poets: Lives of the Ancient Greek Poets, M. Schmidt, p. 201)

AD:1400s—Pope Alexander VI

The most grievous danger of any Pope [or power figure] lies in the fact that encompassed as he is by flatterers, he never hears the truth about his own person and ends by not wishing to hear it.” (Pope Alexander VI, 1492-1503 to a consistory of cardinals during a brief period of remorse in a reign of depravity. Quoted by B.W. Tuchman, The March of Folly, p. 85)

circa 1603-07—Shakespeare

But ‘tis strange
And ofttimes to win us to our harm
The instruments of darkness tell us truths;
Win us with honest trifles, to betray us
In deepest consequence.
Macbeth (Act I: Scene III)

1798—John Adams

We have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion. Avarice, ambition, revenge, or gallantry, would break the strongest cords of our Constitution as a whale goes through a net. Our Constitution was made only for a religious and moral people. It is wholly inadequate for the government of any other. [Letter to the Officers of the First Brigade of the Third Division of the Militia of Massachusetts (1798-10-11) (ref: Wikiquote.org)]

1814—John Adams

Remember, democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide. [Letter to John Taylor (1814-04-15); Ref: Wikiquote.org]

1816—John Adams

Power always thinks it has great soul and vast views beyond the comprehension of the weak, and that it is doing God’s service when it is violating all his laws. [Letter to Thomas Jefferson (1816-02-02) : Ref: Wikiquote.org]

1816—Thomas Jefferson

I sincerely believe, with you, that banking establishments are more dangerous than standing armies; and that the principle of spending money to be paid by posterity, under the name of funding, is but swindling futurity on a large scale. [Letter to John Taylor (28 May 1816) ME 15:23 (Ref. Wikiquote.org)]

1928—Justice Louis Brandeis:

Experience should teach us to be most on our guard to protect liberty when the Government's purposes are beneficent. Men born to freedom are naturally alert to repel invasion of their liberty by evil-minded rulers. The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well meaning but without understanding. ... Decency, security and liberty alike demand that government officials shall be subjected to the same rules of conduct that are commands to the citizen. In a government of laws, existence of the government will be imperiled if it fails to observe the law scrupulously. Our Government is the potent, the omnipresent teacher. For good or for ill, it teaches the whole people by its example. Crime is contagious. If the Government becomes a lawbreaker, it breeds contempt for law; it invites every man to become a law unto himself; it invites anarchy. To declare that, in the administration of the criminal law, the end justifies the means -- to declare that the Government may commit crimes in order to secure the conviction of a private criminal -- would bring terrible retribution. (Dissenting Opinion, Olmstead v. United States, 277 U.S. 438)

1900s - Mahatma Gandhi

Non-cooperation with evil is as much a duty as is cooperation with good. (Quoted in Brussats’ Spiritual Literacy, p. 324)

1976—A Senate Select Committee

The United States must not adopt the tactics of the enemy. Means are as important as ends. [Final Report of the U.S. Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities, (aka, the Church Committee)].

1987— Christopher L. Blakesley*

Today, there appear to be few more pressing problems than terrorism. Because combating terrorism is so important, there is a tendency for the executive branch to eschew the Constitution and constitutional procedures when they get in the way of policy objectives. … But we must ask whether, in the name of antiterrorism, we have become terrorists; whether, in the name of anticommunism and antitotalitarianism, we have allowed erosion of antitotalitarian protections in our Constitution and constitutional order. (p. 198.) ... But a dangerous world is not rendered less dangerous if we adopt totalitarian practices in order to fight totalitarianism, or when we use terrorist means to fight terrorism. Indeed, the constitutional checks and balances provide the wherewithal to ensure that we do not violate international law or destroy our constitutional republic through precipitous executive action (p. 211). The greatest danger posed by terrorism to our democracy and constitutional republic may be our executive branch's overreaction to it and use of terrorism as an excuse to erode the constitutionally mandated sharing of powers in the realm of foreign affairs, war powers, and combating international crime. If we are to avoid manifest hypocrisy, the destruction of the rule of law, and erosion of our primary democratic and constitutional values, we must be vigilant and avoid participating in criminal conduct, either directly or as aiders and abettors. We must not allow hysteria to cause us to accept an arrogation of power by the executive branch at the expense of the other two branches. Although Congress is sometimes cumbersome and the judiciary may make mistakes, these institutions are set in the Constitution as checks and balances for our domestic protection against autocracy. Whether combating terrorism is accomplished by means of extradition and prosecution of alleged perpetrators or by a decision to initiate acts of war, the constitutional order must be preserved. (p. 212) [* Professor of law at the Paul M. Hebert Law Center, Louisiana State University. This article (Terrorism and the Constitution by Christopher L. Blakesley, BYU Studies, vol. 27 (1987), Number 3 - Summer 1987 212) is adapted from and expanded beyond three other articles by the author: "Jurisdiction as Protection against Terrorism," University of Connecticut Law Review 19 (Summer 1987): 895-943; "The Evisceration of the Political Offense Exception to Extradition," Denver Journal of International Law and Policy 15 (Summer 1986): 109-24; and "A Study of the Executive Branch's Attempt to Eviscerate the Separation of Powers--Thoughts Prompted by Francis D. Wormuth and Edwin B. Firmage, To Chain the Dog of War: The War Power of Congress in History and Law," Utah Law Review, no. 2 (1987): 451-66].

But again, as in ages past, warning voices are anathema to the intrigues of wealth and power that have plagued humanity since the days of Cain. We hear it in the cries against the prophet Jeremiah circa 626-586 B.C. “Therefore the princes said unto the king, We beseech thee, let this man [Jeremiah] be put to death: for thus he weakeneth the hands of the men of war that remain in this city, and the hands of all the people, in speaking such words unto them: for this man seeketh not the welfare of this people, but the hurt” (Jeremiah 38:4). In modern parlance, his voice was declared to be not just unpatriotic, but TREASONOUS.

As I see and hear it—whether we are staunch conservatives or die-hard liberals—we seem too often, blind and deaf—where seeing, we see not and hearing, we hear not.* Or like the proverbial monkeys, we see no evil, hear no evil, and speak no evil* about our own follies, but spend our faculties seeing, hearing, and speaking evil of our opponents—and thus presiding, each in our own fashion, over the hemorrhage of democratic and republican values.

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* A recurring theme in what I write about and witness; and in my view, perhaps first amongst the most tragic, endless déjà vus of history.

va: Beware the Spokesman!

“Talk about déjà vu!!!!!” my friend Sondra headlined in her email reporting her belated research on the state of healthcare debates.* She continued: “It was the tobacco boys all over again. Painful! Painful! Our best ’n brightest industry spokesmen—lined up like errant school chums—all prepped by their corporate-ness to the identical party-line. The new chant?—Recission. Recission. Recission. (Unanimous!) And you know what? I actually felt sorry for them—these free-market devotees touting policy and ‘apple-pie’ American business—for I never saw a sadder display of conformism and lackey-loo in all my life (except, of course, for those tobacco boys**). And it set me to thinking. Right there in that hearing-room was the raison d’étre (’scuse the French) of stratospheric compensation pacts. They buy soul.

“And the sweet hush-hush is that for many of our chiefs and semi-chiefs, it’s only half the story. They spend their days eating, drinking, flying, and perking at company expense. So, I ask you: Like who would give up that kind of privilege—that kind of “security” to speak one’s mind; to question the status quo; to question the ethics?

“So what do you think? Can anyone EVER agree to be a spokesman for pay without risking a fracture of soul? And considering the trade-off, how cheap it seems to go—whatever the perks! Sad, sad, SAD!”

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* July 27, 2009 hearing at Indiana University Southeast, United States House of Representatives Committee on Energy and Commerce, Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations New Albany, IN Field Hearing led by Rep. Bart Stupak, D-Mich., chairman of the said Subcommittee. Spokesmen: Don Hamm President and CEO of Assurant Health, Indianapolis, Indiana; Richard A. Collins, CEO of Golden Rule Insurance Company, a UnitedHealth Group business, Milwaukee, Wisconsin; Brian A. Sassi, President and C.E.O., Consumer Business, WellPoint, Inc., Indianapolis, Indiana.
http://energycommerce.house.gov/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=1718:terminations-of-health-policies-by-insurance-companies-state-perspectives-and-legislative-solutions&catid=133:subcommittee-on-oversight-and-investigations&Itemid=73&layout=default&date=2009-07-01

**Tobacco boys: http://www.jeffreywigand.com/7ceos.php