Month: October 2017

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What Happened?

What Happened?!?

If you are Vladimir Putin, you are probably always a little surprised how easy it is to screw with democracies.  The formula is straight forward.  Inject a little a little disinformation into the mix,  then sit back and satisfyingly watch the show evolve into more than you could have ever hoped for. Having to stew in the reality that Russia has become a one product economy under great competitive strain from entrepreneurial fracking geniuses  in the United States, and having to find a way to somehow keep pace with the leviathan that is the U.S. military,it must be especially satisfying to realize how the core institutions that once gave the United States its enormous strength, are riddled with manipulable dupes, compromised bureaucracies,  and third rate political hacks.

The nation is waking up to find that the manufactured meme of supposed corrupting Russian intervention in the American election process fatally ensnaring the new President, is proving to be no more than an attempted diverting side show to wholesale self corruption of an entire generation of political elite.For over a year, an incessant drumbeat by operatives inside and outside the government using a grab bag of nefarious leaks and innuendos worked to drive  a compliant press into attempting the destruction of candidate Trump, and when unsuccessful, the  termination of his functional presidency from day one.

The Presidential election of 2016 provided the ultimate expression of the collapse of the traditional party vetting process to obtain candidates of appropriate capability and stature to the potentially take on the most complex and powerful executive responsibilities in the world.  On the Republican side, a neophyte businessman with no thought out plan, a shoot from the hip style, and a spotty at best past, amazingly defeated 16 better turned candidates who had no answer for his peculiar combination of bluster and ability to blast through supposed norms of political correctness.  On the Democrat side, a known political stiff, with a long standing history of difficulties with the truth, unbridled ambition for power and wealth, and a family tradition of playing the victim card while ruthlessly using whoever necessary to advance,plodded her way passed an ancient socialist, who somehow appeared the more energetic and ideas driven candidate.

Hillary Clinton, the supposed anointed one,  had found herself caught in a typical Clintonian mess of her own making.  Having spent the better portion of her years of Secretary of State using the position to influence foreign powers in enriching herself through the Clinton Foundation ,  her sloppy tool of hiding the activity, a private e-mail server containing all the more nefarious requests no doubt, became known.  Clinton then did what Clintons do, she brazenly destroyed access to her emails, and dared anyone to imply a connection.  The grotesquery of her act, a process that would have thrown any other government employee in jail, required a special kind of obsyiquience by a government and compliant media that wanted her to win, and continue the statist revolution.  High brazenness produces high risk, and  therefore, there was work to do to assure the processes of enforcement in a democracy, the cratering but still possible rule of law and the bright light of investigative journalism, did not interfere with her inevitable election, and thereby permit with her election the  permanent burial of the story.

And then, the bountiless wonder of providence sees to the nomination, on the Republican side, of maybe the easiest opponent in a century, a populist simultaneously weak in the most conservative states, and weaker still in the swing states.  The predictions are for a landslide, a republican wipeout. When however, you are empty of principle yourself, the idea of leaving the election up to a notoriously fickle public enthralled with the brash talk of the opponent and still holding fresh in their minds another example, in the email scandal, of your absent personal virtue,  another weapon is needed.

Having participated yourself in the making of millions of dollars by entering the United States into deals with Putin’s oligarchs that divest 25% of the United States uranium reserves into Russian hands, you are comfortable with the thought that a modern businessman like Trump would obviously operate by the same rules of enrichment.  Looking for the political dagger, your political operatives employ a company with known Russian ties for misinformation, and spend millions for a ‘dossier’ that reveals the ‘real Trump’ and alleged Russian influence peddling.  What a wonderful distraction as the thin skinned Trump distracts himself in fighting off attack dogs in the media, while you work on your own leaky vessel.  The FBI, run by a Director long since oblivious to his legal obligation, devises alternatives to prosecution on the email scandal even before he has interviewed you for the facts.  He gives immunity to your team before they request it.  Your husband manages to gain the necessary assurances from the U.S. Attorney General in a preposterous ‘accidental’ airport rendezvous.  The President of the United States stands back, as he sees risks to himself and his legacy in having the unbound bowling ball of Trump anywhere near a victory.  The FBI, so willing to have a distraction to equalize the playing field and take on the appearance of balanced justice warriors, may even have invested in the opposition ‘research’ — provided by a foreign spy from other foreign spies, hand fed by a gleeful dictator enabling Americans to get stuck in their own sanctimonious goo.

The election comes, and the impossible happens.  The anointed one loses, and the bumbling amateur loud mouth pulls off the greatest upset in modern election history.  What does Hillary Clinton do? — she does revenge.  A brilliant Clinton inspired campaign of leaks, innuendos, complicit media and a retiring President protecting his legacy creates a firestorm of lies, fabricated news analysis, and a compromised FBI Director who assures the stage is set for an independent council to go after the President practically day one in office, a prosecutor who just happens to be his mentor and friend, best able to divert any direct tracks to the Director himself.

It’s a tragicomedy on the scale of the greatest  conspiratorial nonsense, and horribly beneath contempt in a country that once prided itself on its civic institutions.  We can now look up and see compromised, the Democrat nominee for President and the Democrat National Committee, The former President of the United States and his Justice Department, the FBI and its Director and its last two Directors,  and the legion of media sycophants that perpetuate the myth of objectivity while promoting a form of propaganda for the state.

Where it will end, typically is not with justice being served to all the miscreants.

President Putin can at least laugh in what he can accomplish with just  a little chaos. No one from this country can any longer raise the standard of objective justice, selfless civil servants, or a fourth estate of a free and unbound character, when pointing the finger at him.  We are stuck, knee deep, in our own goo.

President Trump has innumerable faults, but he is looking like a peach compared to the last crowd.  Hopefully, he really will be able to start to drain the proverbial swamp.

Despite a foundation of a most perfect union, we have become mired in one very deep, deep swamp.

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The Emptiness of Modernity

In the cauldron of what passes for the day’s news is the ongoing pathetic accumulation of stories of  decades of abuse and sexual harassment imposed by the leading figure of Hollywood’s film industry upon untold starlets and aspiring actresses. At the beginning of October, Harvey Weinstein stood like a colossus over the production of cinematic art in the United States.  The industry that had made him a billionaire and positioned him as the “conscience” of Hollywood due to his devotion and monetary support of liberal causes and ever more liberal candidates, suddenly awakened to the raw stories of ruined lives and possibly criminal assaults that had been an “open” secret, but sublimated by payoffs, fear, intimidation, or worse, casual acceptance.  The ‘colossus’ first attempted to deflect the stories, as had worked so many times before, but this time, the sheer volume and profoundly pathetic nature of the actions prevented any coverup from taking root.  For the first time, high priced lawyers with the politically correct belief set were not enough to dissuade the pent up anger and outrage of the many victims from pouring out.  Weinstein, so used to burying such stories, in the briefest of times found himself buried by the avalanche. An attempt to deflect the criminal nature of his acts through the typical liberal weapon of converting himself into a victim needing “treatment for his sickness, sexual addiction” only brought forth more scorn, more stories, and eventually, the wrath of the very entertainment company he had founded and led.

There can be no treatment of Harvey Weinstein for sex addiction, because sex is the last thing  to which this self absorbed power thug could relate.  He is another progressively perverse example of the lack of  human responsiveness in modern society that is poisoning and weakening civilization to the point of collapse.  As outrageous as are the perpetrated violent assaults is the global lack of recognition of his peer community of the anti-human character of such people, empowered by a societal fatigue for the traditional strengths of  human relationships. Weinstein, despite the untold number of sexual assaults predicated on his ability to threaten and intimidate, was revealed to have a sordidly predictable, asexual and profoundly vapid interaction with his victims.  Story after story told of Weinstein entrapping young women into vulnerable environments, only to be asked to passively watch him bathe or pleasure himself, as if they were props in a movie set. Sex, as a human interaction between adults based on mutual attraction, was the furthest thing from this amoral, anti-social character’s psyche.  So self absorbed in the action, he could often not remember, upon later meeting the person, as to whether a positive or negative event had taken place.

Modern society has drawn us into this dark place.  The blurring of genders, the flattening of the importance and responsibilities of masculinity, the outsourcing and perversion of femininity, the relegation of sex into a hormonally discharged act of inwardly directed sensory release has displaced the centerpiece of a healthy society, the mutually projected love of a man and a woman. This core strength of a society to procreate for the purpose of creating its next generation, and linking the act to the positive expression of the human instinct to support and protect towards this purpose, is under massive assault.  The modern culture that has glorified an impersonal sex, directed inward, absolved of  the lack of any meaning beyond physical, celebrates this perversion as an achievement of personal freedom and expression.  The movies that Weinstein specialized in making often promoted such gratuitousness into subsequent expressions of casual violence where pain and loss were whitewashed, societally destructive anti-heroes were celebrated over those with principles, and villains were cartooned on the basis of race or politics to tear down conventions of civility.

We are at one of those tipping points where society has lost its compass to the point that the basics of interactive behavior ultimately defining our humanness are at risk through such casual distain. In Japan, it is estimated a third of the population of procreative age has not had a sexual interaction with the opposite sex, resulting in a population implosion that threatens the very future of a Japanese cultural existence.  In that same society, and in parts of the enlightened west, men look to experience their sexual interactions with idealized robots rather than another human being.  It is all in all a profound loss of understanding for the deeper meanings of existence and the cognitive recognition of the critical role of both the physical and the metaphysical in bringing meaning to life.

Modernity, expressed in such profoundly empty, valueless lives of those who supposedly are the exemplars of our modern societal intellect and self proclaimed projectors of our culture, have ensnared a large proportion of society into their ultimately aspiritual, meaningless vision of existence.  The restorative powers of redemption will not be found in a sex addiction clinic or in paying indulgences.  It can only come from a reinvigorating of our very humanness, and a return, as did the prodigal son, to the healing powers of what is fundamental and good.  We will not find our happiness in the superficial, the dominated, or the passive. We will not find it in amoral equivalences. We will find it, dear Brutus, not in our stars, but in our selves.