Archive for July, 2006
It appears we will in effect be sending more troops to Iraq. Some newscasts list it as simply a “redeployment” within Iraq to Bagdad. CBS World News (July 27, 2006) said troops who were to be sent home are not going to be but their replacements are still coming so therefore it is a net gain in troop strength. I agree but the point I have been trying to stress in this blog is:
Imagine Germany or Japan three years after WW II coming to an end. Imagine armed resistance to the point where we had to leave some cities then retake them! Nuremberg retaken by the Nazis in 1948! Then we fight the Nazis to retake it but loose Munich! All this THREE YEARS after the surrender of Nazi Germany! Now imagine we set up a “democratic” government in both Japan and Germany which now have autonomous control along with each having an army and police force! Three years after World War II ended these forces STILL battle the Nazis and Imperialist holdovers in Germany and Japan while we start to leave! Our president then says all is going fine and our remaining troops will “stand down” as each is replaced by a native German soldier.
What is left after we leave by this scenario? Well the Nazis would still be fighting in the streets of Germany “THREE YEARS” after the surrender. The point is even if ALL of our forces could be replaced in Germany, under this scenario, Germany would still have Nazis roaming the streets shooting and killing and ready to take over. Is that what you call a victory? Well that is what is happening today in Iraq! We never had enough troops to win the peace! Yes in the “shock and awe” stage we most likely had enough. But not for phase 2 which is the occupation. Bush took the gamble because to have the needed troops it might have required a the return of the draft! Strange isn’t it that when it is your neighbor’s kid having his life on the line some are so pro-hawk. But when it is YOUR SON or your own life on the line then folks start to do some thinking! Imagine the social unrest in this country and the rise of a 21st century hippie movement! Bush did not want to take the chance!
Lets not be hard on George Bush. After all he “Cut and Ran” from his commitment to serve in the National Guard so perhaps he doesn’t understand these more advanced military concepts concerning what is needed to say “Mission Accomplished”! But then again in terms of stepping ahead or in “CUTTING” the line to get into the Nation Guard so he would not have to go to Vietnam then “RUNNING” from his commitment once the National Guard served his purpose George Bush is correct! “MISSION ACCOMPLISHED” – rich kid wins while middle class and poor kid gets screwed!
Israel and Hezbollah – Existential Anxiety Aroused by the Existence of “The Other”!
For over a week now we have been consumed by the news of Hamas and Hezbollah shelling Israel and the counter strikes by Israel. Hamas seems to have been overshadowed now by Hezbollah. Perhaps this is good for Israel in that Hezbollah is Shiite. Many Sunni Arab states, at least on the top, are making some sympathetic statements toward Israel. Islamist terrorism however is nothing new in this region. Israel is an island of democracy in a sea of monarchies and dictatorships.
What is more interesting is that in the Sudan Muslims have been waging a war of genocide against the Christians and no one gives a damn!
Perhaps because the victims are Black! But then again you would expect the liberals to take up the cause. Recently some have but for the most part no one seems to care! Perhaps liberals would have to face their own cognitive dissonance in that they label Islam as a “religion of peace”! Christian Fundamentalists, in their ever zany eschatology of the world’s end, choose to focus on having Israel occupy all of Palestine so as to fulfill end time prophecy! Their reason for supporting of Israel is not based on true friendship. Meanwhile Islamist fundametalists are also killing in Kashmir and the Philippines. Not to mention the attack against the night club in Indonesia some time back. While back home Bush recently called for the turning over of our ports to Dubai!
Some in this country say we should act like Israel. My answer is where have you been the last few years? Remember “shock and awe”? What about Iraq and Afghanistan? Even if there were no Iraqi WMD taking down Hussein may not have been a bad idea. But then again fighting the genocide of the Christians in the Sudan might have been a better usage of our national and moral resources. Israel however is only in the “shock and awe” stage. They have not yet defeated their enemy while we did! The problem is what comes after? If Israel occupies southern Lebanon then several years latter we can compare her strategy to ours. The last time Israel occupied southern Lebanon she had as many problems as we have now in Iraq. I am hearing news reports that our country may play a role in a post war UN force occupying the south of Lebanon.
We must give a loud NO! I applaud Israel for taking a strong stand for defending itself from shelling and the kidnapping of her soldiers. But this is not our war. We have enough global commitments already. The news has been “hijacked” by the Israel vs. Hezbollah conflict. If we are so willing to send our troops what about the defenseless Christians in the Sudan? Who is standing up to fight the genocide?
Recently both a relative and a friend said that all this killing is caused by “religion”! That is a simplistic answer. How do you explain the genocide by Hitler, Stalin and Mao? Should we then label “all” atheists as mass murders? Liberals would then reply that “oh no those guys are just bad atheists and don’t represent all atheists”. Well why not apply the same tolerance to religious believers?
The issue is not religion but “idealism” be it theistic or atheistic. How do we deal with our “EXISTENTIAL ANXIETY”? Does the existence of the “non-believer”, the “infidel”, the “non pc type” arouse such a high level of “EXISTENTIAL ANXIETY” that murder is the only method to lower our cognitive dissonance to their existence? How do we deal with those who are not members of the “in-group”? Gulags and genocide have been humanity’s answer regardless if the “in-group” was religious or communist. Shunning was practiced by the pilgrims of yore and the “politically correct” of today.
What is needed is a heavy dose of “secularization AND democracy”. Islam has generally not yet undergone secularization as has Christianity and Judaism. But we cannot militarily impose secularization as our resources are not up to the task of nation building for the whole Muslim sector of the third world. The issue is not Islam per se. The very existence of the non-believer raises the existential anxiety of the “true believer” today as well as yesterday. The non-believer violates some how the implied “social contract” that says: “I will not raise your existential anxiety concerning how you get “meaning” if Thou willst not raise mine”.
Learning to accept cognitive dissonance without the usage of murder is a new invention of the human race. Observe please:
Deuteronomy 20:16
16 However, in the cities of the nations the LORD your God is giving you as an inheritance, do not leave alive anything that breathes.
Leviticus 24:16
’Moreover, the one who blasphemes the name of the LORD shall surely be put to death; all the congregation shall certainly stone him. The alien as well as the native, when he blasphemes the Name, shall be put to death.
Joshua 6:21
21 They devoted the city to the LORD and destroyed with the sword every living thing in it-men and women, young and old, cattle, sheep and donkeys”
Please note I am not saying that current day Israel wants to commit genocide. Far from it. My point is that murder as a PSYCHOLOGICAL DEFENSE MECHANISM to reduce existential anxiety has been with us forever. When Christians took the self identity of the “new Israel” we had to deal with the issue of the “outsider” also. We merely used the very same passages that were used by the old Israel. Thank God today in the west, both Christian and Jew, have for the most part out grown literalism and learned “transcendence” as our means to deal with the existential anxiety aroused by the existence of “the other”!
Muslims are accused of being terrorists so they can get the 72 virgins by and by in the sky when they die! Hey we are superior! We do not have to wait till death!
Numbers 31:17
17 Now kill all the boys. And kill every woman who has slept with a man, 18 but save for yourselves every girl who has never slept with a man.
You might say that “Holy Writ” teaches a virgin is a terrible, TERRIBLE thing to waste! Why not ravage one for the Lord Today?
Well this Ranting Bald Hippie is just trying to raise the cognitive dissonance of fundamentalists.
If we took the Bible less literally we would be funding stem cell research and trying to make life better for all on this planet. But ah alas that is a topic for another post! Let us allow Israel and the Muslims to create their own solution while we use our national resources to deal with Afghanistan and the fiasco of Iraq! The time has come for Islam to face her existential anxiety, that it is not a
sin if a Muslim converts, nor for one to be a non-believer! Lets demand an end to the genocide on the Sudan.
But then again if the politicians and news media where to focus on the Sudan that might create some moral shock and awe!
Our nation has successfully tested an anti-missile!
http://news.yahoo.com/missile story
This test was of a different missile system than the other successful Anti-Missile test done a few years back.
http://archives.cnn.com/2001/US/07/15/missile.test/
These tests have struck absolute horror into the minds of some liberals. Imagine our nation, the wicked evil gas guzzling USA which as we all know is the source of all the worlds problems, actually being able to defend itself against a nuclear attack! Oh the horror some on the left must be experiencing. Yes I am a liberal democrat but I am pleased as pink (oops) that these tests for our country were successful. Alas I suffer from “bourgeoisie middle class hang ups”! I do not hate America as some of my fellow liberals. I do not want to trust my life, the life of my nation and for that matter the future of our planet to the good will of mad dictators. Nor to the crazy doctrine of M.A.D. (Mutually Assured Destruction)!
We live in a world where dictatorships would have no problem draining us in contests that involved sustainability of high casualties. We lost over 26,000 troops in Iraq. But to a dictatorship that means nothing. We should never have stayed in Iraq after winning the war unless we believed it was in our national interest. If we did believe it was in our interest then far more troops would be needed.
Our nation must fight its battles selectively and remain safe behind a shield. We must be able to use conventional “shock and awe” without fear that China or Russia could come to the aid of a rogue state and “up the ante” by challenging us with nuclear weapons. While I criticize Bush on many of his policies I congratulate him on pushing forward on missile defense! The test in Arizona was a success.
Now that we have demonstrated our ability to increasingly protect our borders from high tech missiles:
- What about protecting our borders from the ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION of three million people per year?
- What about protecting our borders from the outsourcing of American jobs.
- How about protecting our borders from the CUT AND RUN American corporations that change their identity to Multi-national companies and have no loyalty to the nation that gave them existence, succor, protection and profits?
- Mr. President how about protecting our borders from the hemorrhaging of our advanced military technology to nations that could take our expensive R & D then use it against us. The very technology that we just successfully tested!
It is time for the SILENT MAJORITY, America’s great middle class and those who aspire to be, to rise up and be counted!
In this blog I have been attacking the dogmas on both sides of the political spectrum. Years ago I was a college student way back when we had the original Earth Day. For those of you who are to young to remember, that is when we on the left received our Ph D’s in environmental science after listening to a one hour lecture. Then we would go forth to “educate” the poor ignorant masses. Ever striving to release them from their “bourgeoisie middle class hang ups”! Standard reading then was the Club of Rome Report and a book called “The Population Bomb”. The gist of both was that we are doomed. In ten years we would only be able to extract half the gas and oil we have now. Nations were placed on a list. Certain nations alas were beyond redemption, according to this view, and would be ravaged by famine. The rest “might” be helped. Well its over three decades latter and we have not seen the dire doomsday predictions of this crowd.
Concurrently in almost the same time period the nice folks on the Christian Right were predicting the end of the world to take place not far in the future. They predicted around the end of the 1970’s when Christ would return. Strange that BOTH the secular atheists and religious right picked the same time. Hey but we are still here gang! I realized that BOTH groups seemed to absolutely love the idea of the destruction of humanity!
Both groups want us to wallow in self hate and powerlessness! Well gang it is over thirty years latter and we are still here! The issue folks is more then it seems. We live in an age of angst. People want CONNECTION to a Higher Power be it God or Nature. Don’t get me wrong I want the same. But not when the price is either self hate of ourselves as humans via the Christian Right or self hate of America and enjoying a middle class lifestyle as the eco-liberals would have us do.
OH so you don’t feel guilty that America’s middle class is only “x” percent of the population but uses “y” percent of the world’s resources?
Ah actually no I don’t feel guilty. Am I supposed to? I feel bad for folks in the third world. I think it is time we find alternative fuels then raise their level to our level. But I am not going to live my life like the monk in the Da Vinci Code who whips himself or has a sharpened steel chain around his leg to inflict masochistic pain. Working in a hot office with an unneeded suite and tie without air conditioning is not my idea of having “communion” with the Mother Goddess! I will take my “Ester-C” Vitamin capsule and soy tufu when I get home after work to accomplish that!
Well its all Christianity and Judaism’s fault. The Bible says to have “Dominion” over the earth. If Christianity would stop raping the earth life would be better!
ANSWER: Get a life! Ants have “dominion” over their spot on the earth. They “operate” on it. Actually it wasn’t until the birth of secular science that religion pulled that passage out from obscurity to sanction making life better. Beacon wrote a thesis called “The New Order”.
But religious folks thought it was working against God’s will to intervene in nature by fighting famine or latter in putting a lighting rod on your house etc. Even today there are some in the religious sector who do NOT want us to have dominion. Just look at the stem cell research controversy! Many religious people would prefer humans to live in suffering rather than to take “dominion” over nature! Then there is the eco-liberal side! Before we are to enjoy our life should we check in with every third world country and see how everyone else is doing then and only then buy a new car or house? I suppose these eco-liberals would side with Zeus against Prometheus in the ancient Greek legends for starting the usage of fire!
There is a “masochistic” element at work with both the Christian Right and the Eco-left. Sure we have to lower our use of carbon fuels. But conservation is kind of stupid. In my locality we have recycling of garbage. I have to put cans and glass in separate containers. Note I have to use separate PLASTIC colored bags for these. The cans and bottles have to be WASHED using precious water and even Hot Water to clean the items. Imagine state wide how much EXTRA water is being used and gas to heat the water in order that these cans are clean.
These eco-liberals are the same folks who will argue for the development of exotic alternative fuels such as “Orbiting Solar Collectors”. These collectors would be miles wide. Then they would beam the collected energy down to a collection point on earth in a focused laser beam. The calibration required to do this would be great. The eco-liberals argue it can be done! But if we want to use almost the same calibration techniques to shoot down a nuclear missile, as in the Strategic Defense Initiative, then these same folks will say it cannot be done! They just love to HATE AMERICA. Actually I would be for both the Orbiting Solar Collectors and Star Wars.
But don’t worry what ever alternative fuel methodology that we finally get through Congress against the in fighting of the oil companies, the eco-liberals will then sabotage once it seems to finally become a reality. Why? Because they hate America. They believe like the religious right that life is for feeling guilty. They believe in an atheist version of “Original Sin”! Only instead of being guilty for being the descendants of Adam and Eve it is because we are middle class Americans. MEA KULPA!
Lets really get to work and find some alternative energy sources. We are going to have to. India and China have larger middle classes then the entire population of the USA. As they work toward the better life they will be competing with us for the same finite resources. We need ALTERNATIVE FUELS. Yes some conservation is fine. But not at the expense of bringing down the quality of human life. Time to create solutions not guilt trips. But “guilt trips” are the only means that both the Christian Right and the Secular Eco-liberals know to find “meaning” in this age of angst. Lets get our heads straight and together and solve this problem not only for us but the whole earth!
The recent uncovering of a terrorist bomb threat against the commuter PATH Train tunnels from NYC to NJ raises some interesting questions.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/13749418/
The Administration is angered in that the story was leaked to the press and that the methodology of finding this plot was listed publicly. Namely the monitoring of internet chat rooms. It is alleged that a vital methodology was revealed compromising Homeland Security. On CNN one reporter mentioned there were allegations that this could be a “politically” based leak. After all, the fact that we have been monitoring chat rooms has been known for quite some time. The reporter hinted that the purpose of the leak was to demonstrate that Homeland Security was trying to validate their effectiveness.
Interesting that NYC is known by Homeland Security to be the subject of a terrorist plot that could kill thousands and damage our largest city’s economy. You would think they would want to increase NYC’s funding for anti-terrorism?
What is more amazing is that on local channels in NYC some months ago it was reported that a criminal had his picture taken due to surveillance cameras that were funded by the anti-terror campaign from the federal government. He had committed a domestic crime not related to terrorism except to the kind of terrorism that is unique to life in NYC. The issue that was not raised however is that even though these cameras served a good domestic purpose, they were placed not in a terror suspected area but in a HIGH CRIME AREA of NYC! This is just plain old PORK BARREL funding.
Yes the funds were used to for a good domestic local cause but not for the federally mandated purpose they were sent to NYC for! This leads us to the issue that some Homeland Security funds are being used for PORK BARREL purposes! Be they used in Iowa or New York City.
The above makes us wonder whether our government is striving for Homeland Security, pork barrel security, or bureaucratic security? My feeling is that it is a composite of all three!
North Korea has tested several short and long range missiles. Their tests were as pathetic as their country’s leadership. None the less these tests have created a different “Fourth of July” fireworks in the international community. North Korea has proven its word cannot be trusted. Now the issue is the United Nations, following as the successor to the League of Nations, can it be trusted? Both democrats and republicans have to face some “inconvenient truths”.
We live in a world were competition and natural selection are taking place on a cultural and societal level. In this arena of both “cooperation” and “competition” our society must maintain a superior “SUSTAINABILITY INDEX”. This sustainability index is a function of our cooperation and competition on a geo – economical – cultural – military -industrial landscape. If we do not score high on the above sustainability index then dictatorships will force us to score high on a “casualty sustainability index”.
Our sustainability index is being harmed by both liberals and conservatives, both of whom want to live with their heads in the sand like an ostrich. Each pulls its head out of the sand to accuse the other correctly of its own peculiar myopia, while not taking responsibility for their own short comings. First I will deal with the myopia of liberals and next with the conservatives.
Inconvenient truths for democrats.
Carl Jung in writing about his early life tells about how he discovered his doctrine of “The Shadow”. Liberals would be well advised to understand this Jungian concept. Jung mentions that as a child he believed in a perfect ordered world with God on top. He visualized people on earth worshiping God in a crystal cathedral with the Deity on his throne above in the heavens. Being a young boy with a boyish imagination he visualized God on his throne high in the heavens. Day after day people worshiped God in a beautiful crystal cathedral. They worshiped God high above the earth in the sky. Then one day in his boyish imagination the youthful Carl Jung visualized the Deity fidgeting on his throne! God is squirming on his throne being stuck in it for days on end. Jung thinks what he would feel like. God has to go potty! All of a sudden as the folks down below are praying in their nice clean picture perfect crystal cathedral the high and mighty ruler of the universe has to go pooh pooh!
Then it happens! PLLLLUUUUUURRR PLOP! Right down on the startled worshipers below, crashing through their ordered clean picture perfect crystal cathedral! Crashing through the crystal roof right on to the high altar covering it completely with a cosmic TURD! God made a pooh pooh! Jung reminds us of the myth of “The Flying Boy”. He made his wings from wax and feathers because he wanted to live among the Gods in an idealistic world. But when he flew the heat from the sun melted the wax holding his wings and he crashed back to earth.
The morale is that while we must be idealistic the needs of the earth must be taken into consideration. If the needs of the earth are not taken into consideration they will crash through our crystal cathedral. Ultimately this will build a better life! We must embrace both the earth and the sky.
What does this mean and especially to the situation at hand? PLENTY! You see Jung realized as years went by that we live in both an “idealistic” realm and the “earthly” realm. Some times the mundane earthly realm comes crashing through our idealistic orderly idea of what reality is or should be! North Korea and other totalitarian states present a similiar “inconvenient truth” to liberals and democrats. While sipping latté in a nice American internet café, liberals would like to believe:
- That no sane person would start a nuclear war or that no nation wants to send its troops to die in a conventional modern day battle field.
- Well that is except for the nasty energy sucking wicked America. After all we sacrificed over 26,000 of our troops in the quest for oil? – Right?
- The UN if given the chance and can solve this problem with North Korea.
Well let me present some “inconvenient truths” for this simplistic Latté crowd. You are living in the same crystal cathedral as Jung’s worshippers in the story above. There are certain earthly forces at work. You know the same forces that direct competition, natural selection and extinction! Your safe orderly latté sipping environment inside your American internet café is preserved by our armed forces and eternal vigilance! Would you like to trade places with an internet café user in China? It is time to blow off the “FLUFF” and foam from the latté and wake up with the coffee “below” to some inconvenient truths:
These regimes have no problem sending over 26,000 of their youths to die in war for their “dear leader” or “fuhrer”. Even if some of these dictatorships have smaller population bases then us. The sacrifice of hundreds of thousands or even millions is no problem to them. If we do not want to engage in a contest of sustainability of casualties we MUST engage in a contest of sustainability in the superiority of military technology and have the perception of our willingness to use it when (and only if) our national interests are at stake.
These very same liberals who scream and rant about the military term “collateral damage” are the very same who fought against the R & D of smart bomb technology. They used to term smart bombs “capitalist bombs”. Now they demand a Crystal perfect ability of our military to only hit the bad guys and not civilians. But lets not forget our friends on the right. The conservatives and republicans.
Conservative AND REPBULICAN Sophistry
Republicans love to rant and rave about “cutting and running”. They would agree with my attack above on democrats and the need to maintain our military technological superiority. Yet these very same conservatives aid the enemies of America by diminishing our “SUSTAINABILITY INDEX”. They do this by the sanctioning the free flow of trade with the China and others. They sanction the hemorrhaging of American capital and jobs to foreign nations. Nations that frequently are totalitarian.
While loyal American workers keep a separate Labor day from the internationalist socialists, these effete snobs of Corporate America rally around Bush and join in singing the republican party globalization Internationale! These effete snobs of Corporate America want us in the middle class to remain silent while they SELL OUT AMERICA and change their identity from “American companies” to “Multi-National Corporations”!
While American’s sons and daughters give their blood, limbs and lives, these 21st Century sophists invest in China. Their Judas like sophistry to the nation and society that gave them birth, succor, substance and profit is that “business is business”! These effete snobs of corporate America have engaged in diminishing our nation’s SUSTAINABILITY INDEX in the geo – economical – cultural – military – industrial conflict of societies. Oh they preach “the lessons of history” with silver tongue yet line their pockets and their portfolios with the silver of free trade that diminishes America and it’s technological advantage. These silver tongued sophists of the right preach the need for “absolutes”, “family values” and “anchors” in an age of angst. Yet practice licentious permissiveness in a portfolio investment strategy that encourages child labor and even slave like labor in third world nations. These silver tongued sophist orators of the right wing preach “individualism” but would have the American middle class employee subvert his health care and job security to these corporate “collectivists” who no longer label and identify themselves as “American” but “multinational corporations”! They preach individualism as a cover for their “SOCIAL ENGINEERING PROJECT” which is the leveling of the American middle class by turning us into a nation of “temps”!
When China becomes a threat to us because these effete snobs of Corporate America’s ethical relativist revolution, then these same sophists who now label themselves as “multi-national” will then raise the furor of patriotism and change their identity back to “American”! Guess who will profit from “enabling” China as our enemy? These very same people who will then invest and profit in America’s military industrial complex. But then America’s sons and daughters will have to pay with more blood!
Oh they preach the “free market”. Yet when students struggle to learn computer science these same people have no problem with government intervention to lower programmer’s salaries by importing foreign H1b guest workers. Then they whine no one is taking the hard subjects in college! Is it any wonder why Atlas shrugged? Karl Marx has said that communists will use capitalism’s own internal contradictions to overthrow it. If we in the middle class want to save a responsible capitalism we must stop being the silent majority! Go to the polls and vote not only in the election but your party’s primary. While I am a democrat I urge you republican readers of my blog to take an active interest in your party.
The time has come for America’s great middle class, and those who aspire to be, to rise up and end this era of licentious permissiveness where portfolio security is raised above national security!
We need laws to protect our culture. With malice toward no culture and charity to all, as Lincoln said, we must use the same philosophy to defend our borders from the bleeding of capital, employment and military technology to potential rivals. There is nothing wrong with foreign investment. So long as it is in the national interest.
Corporate America must learn responsibility to the nation that gave it birth, succor, substance and profit. These sophists of the right must not be allowed to make the “Republican Globalization Internationale” the anthem of America!
It is time for the “SILENT MAJORITY” – America’s great middle class (and those who aspire to be) to wake up and take back our country from these effete snobs of the left and right!
