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In The Jury Box;

By David Eide

joblog

These are opinions of a free, liberal democratic citizen, not a scholar, not a political scientist. I see things. And report through whatever sensibility I may have; a certain knowledge base and experience base, perhaps a bit of idealism as well as realism thrown in there. I would give them a much more robust sense of self and take them lightly


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IDENTITY

The only "identity" that makes sense is the one that values yourself and values that which allows that to happen. For me, the only geopolitical identity that makes sense is the regional one. That's where life takes place. That is where you physically move around in and know its obscure history and is diverse enough to keep you off balance in a creative way. That allows a person to know a physical place intimately and, by extension, all regions. The regions are held together through the federal system and the relations between the two are significant, so you need to study and know the federal system, how it came about, how it has evolved through time.

Most identities are fabricated from ideas or beliefs and sharpened on ready-make enemies. The more abstract that becomes the bloodier it can be. Whereas a physical identity with a region requires crossing every boundary known and becoming comprehensive to the advantage of the most, if not all, the people in the region. And goes to the progress of the region, allowable to the extent of the limitations of the systems in place.

Americans, especially, have to learn how to leap out of the politicization that occurs, is occurring now on a large canvas, and demeans everything, solves nothing, blocks possible advances and is often enough asinine. The few will opt out and sacrifice reward in the present to try and work through the immersion of politics in the insufficient self.

It is not shocking that an entertainment culture produced a Trump and he is a direct result of that entertainment culture- one that can't stand being bored, one that is looking for magical effects, one that loves the spectacle, one that assuages the entertained self that it is at the furthest edge of history. It itself, over time, has become boring and predictable. It marks the past several generations. It is not credible but it can hardly change itself. It's much more likely it will crash through itself and in the ruins build something different.

Without growth and development liberal democracy is not possible. And now it must be extended past formal education because the world is that sticky and complex. Without growth and development cults or large political masses are produced, who don't have a clue as to a liberal democracy. Mass culture is produced here because the media is that powerful, that consuming of attention, that desirous of being the official narrative of the people. Not thought, not beauty, not truth itself can penetrate that womb.

I always say, "I am superior to the person I found myself to be at age 25. And here are the key components that broke through a stubborn narcissism and reduced that exalted person to a simpering joke. And now here I am as far away as that person yet knowing he is part of me." Ideology, fanaticism, addiction, among the harpies of modern life, capture and stop growth and development.

It is not a money thing at all. Orientate where you are at any given time, find the resources to move on, check up, orientate, move on. I've seen the poor, the rich and all between go through that process. If there isn't infinite happiness at the end, at least there is the understanding of why not.

* * * * * * * *

We are on a beautiful planet yet time and nature devour us all, even the planet at some point, the sun and most absurdly the universe itself. We pass through many folds.

I don't have any answers. There are very serious problems but more questions are raised when answers are proposed. That tells me either the angle of attack on the problems are wrong or one is attacking a problem of humanity that will never be solved.

Pessimism requires a diminished view of the reality. Optimism is a blinded view of reality. What is needed is a fully comprehensive, complex, rich view of reality that includes the shadow. Not to diminish the nature of the shadow but to continually remind us not to go there ever again.

This kind of view is hardly possible to impose on a society. Politics requires a diminished or blinded view. And politics, in itself, never builds or creates anything. It can be an enabler of both good and bad depending on the alertness of the people. But as soon as a source of authority imposes a view, new antagonisms are discovered and set against it. Everything is stained by politics and it is probably for the better. Democracy is about the good fight.

One thing is clear to me. Failure is a part of human life. A person needs the ability to fight through his or her failure, get the structure of character that allows for that, before they get to the next level of being.

Experience finally teaches that it is worthless to fight battles that are impossible, where there is no solution. Where the fights are continued onward by people who need the conflict for some personal gratification but the issue under investigation is utterly impossible to solve; at least to those who are passionately involved in the problem. And many problems have been reduced to an ideological base, secular or religious that requires zero-sum games. It's not worth a citizen's valuable time.

* * * * * * * *

It appears to me that some countries are moving forward and as they move forward they do so with America as a model and the improvement of their people as a goal. Whereas the US is not moving, is stuck fast in an era it helped create. Perhaps that calls for a shoring up of the basic values, basic infrastructure, basic life and a pivot to a new direction. There's hardly a consensus in the political will of the people and it's doubtful one will appear. People are tired of all the fabrications which claim will save them.

Can America sustain itself as a comprehensive whole through the 21st and, even, 22nd century? That's a big question. I have questions whether it can or not. And after reading an article about the nature of "existential threats" to the modern world I don't see it as far-fetched. Another reason why you want your own region to be very strong, as strong as it can be.

It is not "individuality" that threatens the communal values. It is politics that doesn't respect it's opponent and fights to the death. That threatens communal values.

Politics can not be utopian. Politics needs to force the political imaginations of even enemies to find common ground. And it's never from one direction. Whatever runs the thing is checked and critiqued by its opponent. There is no repression. Well, there may be repression but it is a category wholly defined by the American experience and not the experience of the world and the history of its repressions. On the other hand the literary self focused on "purity" of imagination and intellect can be utopian.

Watching something about WWII sparked off some thoughts. It was a monumental event in American and world history for all kinds of reasons, not the least of which it put America at the center of world power. It changed the "identity" of the people who are called on to help define the nature of that status and power. It ended European hegemony as so many ex-colonies won independence. It ushered in the nuclear age, the rocket, the jet engine, new communications technology among others. America quickly transformed from a military state to a consumer state. Blacks and women started to question their roles in the society and wanted more since they had contributed to the war effort. All these things worked out over the next few decades until the Vietnam era. And the central question of that era was, "What is the role of the US in the world? Policeman, giver of order, protector of liberal democracy?" Vietnam challenged that to the root. But then Vietnam met Reagan and that started a new vector, as did the "war on terrorism" a few decades later. But it all started at WWII.

Another social dynamic had to do with the "integration of society" that waxes and wanes through the decades. The society has to learn how to build a solid middle-class. To do that you have to subdue all "identity" to middle-class values and get those values to the center of political culture and social reality. Only then will you be able to rope in wealth and bend it toward the needs of the larger culture.

Difficult problems confront the USA. One is environmental distress, another is income disparity, a third is "identity", or the very ability of the "nation" to conduct itself as a whole without, eventually, breaking down into pieces that war against each other. On the one hand you need "economic growth" that will flatten out the disparity, on the other hand you need to protect the environment and make a conscious choice to start changing up on the fuel system. And you have to start producing leaders who not only articulate these problems and offer some solution but who can reimagine the politics from "either/or" to "win/win". You can't be a completely closed in, self-sufficient nation-state but you need to have wisdom when choosing and dealing with other actors in the world.

Democracy is an experiment and requires, at times, the re-imaging of institutions, such as the justice and education systems, to clean them of old, putrid memories. It has to be done with "due process", in degrees and not during violent episodes. The violent episodes are effective for an issue but tells the majority of people that "they can not govern, they should never have power." Of course most of the violent are young and at some point they renounce the violence and move into the larger society. What the media and commentators always forget, always leave off from their adrenaline driven comments is that the vast majority of people watching the violence are scared witless and that will be reflected a number of ways in politics.

The spectacle, in the eyes of the public, can spoil if displayed too long.

December 24th, 2021

Utopia and the Innocent Citizen

I started out with the utopian vision of a perfect society and held that throughout my student phase. But when I entered "society" I discovered an undiscovered reality full of complexity, full of information and knowledge I didn't know existed, full of motion I didn't understand, full of powers much more than I possessed. That went toward disintegrating the utopian vision. I began to think in terms of the "perfect free, liberal democratic citizen". And liberal democracy was important because I saw it as the only practical solution to a relatively free and functioning society as large as the US. I realized there is no such thing as a free liberal, democratic citizen in the middle of an environment way too large and complex to comprehend. This results in a complete distortion of the citizen where they are always fighting against the complexity or surrendering to it or comprehending it through paranoia and conspiracy theories. The perfect and free citizen would then be one who was equal to the information and knowledge of the powerful institutions. Anything less would result in massive manipulation through mythical qualities of being and its reactions. It would not result in the "growth and development" of the free citizen.

Ultimately one knows what they need to know to do their job and to live a relatively happy life. That's become the norm in all modern societies, democratic or not. I know there are structural problems that need to be addressed in any system. But if there is little understanding of "structures" then how can they be changed? Changed, that is, in the direction that would benefit the whole. I dodn't see those who want to change have any special knowledge of the systems they want to change.

I always hope for the best.

* * * * * * * *

There is a lot of "demonizing" that goes on in the political culture. However, it's quite clear that those who are "demonized" never see themselves as demons and so fight against the demonization until things are stuck fast. Until, that is, liberal democracy steps up and takes control over the center of the political culture and the demons see each other as fallible but earnest human beings.

If change is radical and fast, the resistance becomes radical and strong. You may have a prong or two into the future but that will all be pushed back by the resistance. Whereas if change is slight, resistance is slight. One slight change is added to another and another, not increasing the resistance until at point D you look back at point A and realize much has changed and the resistance is small because the advance and its resistance allowed people to assimilate the change.

Go back to the beginnings and see what the "framers" such as Jefferson, Adams, Madison, Franklin and so on thought of "politics". It was the dirty game all ambitious people were forced to play. At least that small, perhaps disguised part of us that wants to be absolute leader gets whirled into the dirty crap of politics. The check and "savior" of politics are the people who lack the ambition to become absolute leaders. But soon enough, they too, get a hunger that can't be denied. How can religion be that savior if religion, especially, harbors the ambition of absolute leadership? How can media play that role when they harbor ambitions of persuading and leading the people to certain outcomes? Perhaps the poor and marginalized people can play that role. But when you look there you see both resentment and revenge, a certain signal that they harbor ambitions for that power. And no matter how good their basic instincts are when judging political situations, they lack both the experience and specialized knowledge to give them credibility.

Political parties and political leaders were supposed to utterly rationalize and justify their ambition by being honest and truthful about "what they are about." But to get to that point they use very muddled language, stereotypes, rhetorical devices of persuasion, useless passions so it's never clear what the party or the politician is really about. Their opponents often point this out to prove the honesty and fidelity of their own position. But then they are attacked the very same way so it appears the lawless courtroom, the court without careful rules that guide everything.

Politics has a crude vision of itself and is fought every way the free and devious mind is able to come up with. But it is necessary. It is a reflection of the people. If they are dumb, don't expect the politics to be smart. As the people improve, the politics improves. The people will never attain perfection therefore politics will never attain perfection. It can hardly be judged by idealism or ideas of perfection. It is judged by common sense. We can't get rid of all poverty but let's make an effort to get rid of as much as possible and ameliorate the lives of the poor. We can't get rid of all discrimination and bad feelings between people but let us, as a society pledge to improve on those items. And on and on. And the people are not all the same in any way, shape, or form. But as Trump proved it only takes a critical mass, one way or the other to throw a crazy wrench into the works.

I think "politicization" is the fall from innocence, especially for the American citizen. Americans, generally, hate politics just as the founders did. Every era defines its politics in a small space of time, for a generation, as happened back in the 60's. A new politics is emerging from the experience of the younger people. It will divide. It will separate and be irrational. It will move this way, now that way. A few things will improve, may improve in surprising and delightful ways. Other things will not improve. New problems will emerge. A new generation will emerge. And on and on it goes with the same statement Franklin put to the future at the beginning of things, "we have given you a Republic if you can keep it."

You could say that when a person understands what politicization has done to him or her, how it has distorted him or her, how many bad roads it has taken him or her, they begin to grow into being a citizen.

What kind of politics would emerge out of pure ignorance or innocence? One of extreme self-interest no doubt. If a man were organizing to take my tools from me I would do what I could do to protect those tools. I might enlist someone to help me. I might send the antagonist a subtle notice that I have some allies who will spoil his fun. And that there will be negative consequences if he tries to get the tools. Perhaps the antagonist says, "I will give you this beautiful dog in return for the tools." but he protagonist may refuse the trade. So now the parties understand the situation a bit better. The antagonist has declared his desire for the tools and has said what he will give up to get them. This gives the protagonist pause to think about the deal. He weights the exchange, perhaps asks a trusted person for his or her opinion. In the back of his mind he still takes the threats from the antagonist as real and so puts the tools somewhere they can't be found. He keeps his eyes open. Then he spies something that he wants from the antagonist, he desires to have it very badly and contemplates how to get it. The education of the ignorant man!

Everyone will eventually want protection for what they possess. It could be gold. It could be a woman. He will want some way for different people to exchange goods and services without conflict. Conflict occurs when the exchange gets botched and one party suffers. They have to come to some agreement about the rules and a mechanism to enforce the rules.

Fear is the great delimiter. Overcoming fear will produce a stronger and freer people. If the government or institutions are inducing fear, overcome those governments and institutions, at least within your own spirit. The great spirits always try to dissipate the fear of death which is the most powerful fear. Fear of others, fear of your own ambitions, fear of failure or fear of success, fear of humiliation, so many fears to greet the new spirit, the innocent man and woman.

The victim has little to teach but to understand our own pity. It is not the goal. Be a free man and free woman in a culture that has built-in resistance; life itself is resistance. Most "revolutionary" talk is an attempt to politicize unhappiness. When that talk matures there is much more "negotiation" to get some of what you want, to alleviate your suffering or discomfort. Then the natural affection for victims opens much more and progress can be made. To make the "society", the "culture", the "system" your enemy that you want to take down leads to the jungles of South America like the People's Temple or to the SLA kidnapping rich girls and robbing banks to raise funds for their fantasies. They get killed without pity.

Remember this: whatever division and conflict exists today, be they ethnic, racial, gender, religious, regional etc. could be resolved all tomorrow and in the aftermath of the new utopia would come new forms of division and conflict, none of which replicating the old categories. That's not a pessimistic view but it is a sober view that requires the maintenance of liberal democracy, a strong "republic" that ensures conflict does not destroy the whole.

Hatred is the great curse. Hate takes the shape of the ongoing conflict and uses it to fuel itself. The only "answer" is to free people to pursue their own goals and let them alone.

Freedom is the great resolution. Not politics. Politics is necessary at times to ensure freedom but it is not an end into itself. When in history has there not been conflict between groups of people? At least with liberal democratic structures of governance in place you have the ability to "solve" problems, ameliorate conditions, and free people to pursue their goals and aspirations. Governments can collapse on people, they can create their own havoc. Power corrupts. It doesn't matter the intention of power, left to itself it will corrupt. People with power will corrupt. That is a central tenet of political belief in the US, by the founders of the Constitution. The checks and balances, the bill of rights, due process, due diligence, transparency, ambitions competing with ambition to keep the whole with a modicum of honesty, must be living values in the people.

I do see it here and there.

If the greatest theory in the world or the greatest sermon from a secular or religious theology can not inspire mutual respect and trust, it is worse than worthless and useless. At least to that part of the world that wants to live and flourish. The "paper tigers" of the left and right are victims of their own bad natures. "Ah, they just want the power they wish to replace!" Can they replicate all the good and value that exists? No? Then they are worse than bad.

And they can not, no matter how precise they identify the tumor on the body politic, on the way to their will to power.

December 16th, 2021

POLITICS

Politics is not a joyful thing. It is a hard necessity.

The "civilization" is utterly dependent on the well-being of the infrastructure of governance.

Self-rule meets gargantuan temptation in the form of modern materialism. Does democracy survive the conflict?

I always go back to a basic question I addressed years ago: If liberal democracies don't have any more dreams left then what is its fate? And I don't count dreams-in-progress such as environmental husbandry or pure equity as new dreams. What is so outrageously new and needed that it would take a few generations to catch up?

Politics brings out the worst because when it tries to be good it lies. It can not be good. Politics and government are necessary evils that exist because history and the experience of men and women in the past is real.

It brings out the worst because no one likes power. At least most good people don't like power. Most people resent the coercive nature of it from the parent all the way up to the national government. There are plenty of people who love power. The wrong types we might say. Those who see power as enabling an agenda that is best kept secret.

It brings out the worst because one is expected to think in large, grandiose terms without learning one thing about how things work, even at the smallest level imaginable. Things don't run on emotion and rhetoric. Actual transactions take place. Actual consequences are created. All of that gets glossed over by the emotion and rhetoric of modern politics.

After I had studied the environmental and resource problems in Berkeley, in the mid-70's, I came to the conclusion that the only way that a citizen could enable "self-rule" in himself was to stop up the demand side of the beast and take cognizance of what is happening in relation to oil and fossil fuels, along with global warming. It also got me very interested in solar power, renewable energy, "small is beautiful" and other things that are still going on in Berkeley.

To me it was a test of morale; are we real free citizens or are we prisoners who don't know it yet?

It appeared to me that the alternatives to self-rule were mass culture ruled by idiots and celebrities, rule by cults, rule by despots, and rule by strong-armed religious types. Pick your poison.

The demand side of one's desires is the crucial phrase for Americans to learn. So, how does the free American negotiate this? Most people feel the economy and its iniquities have pinned them into a life that forces a downside in demand and they struggle against it. That is understandable. I think it is a question of freeing the mind and imagination from what would coerce it from wise coruscations of truth.

Self-rule would take us on a path of and to wisdom. It would require not only self-criticism, but the discovery of "right living" or "how to live well" in the world. The old philosophical question. That wisdom is accessible through a confrontation with a problematical world makes it difficult to grasp. But the fact of confronting it produces suprising results if not absolute solutions. The absolute is what is shattered in the confrontation.

Well the older I get the less able I am to martyr myself to the gluttony that is the modern world. I have seen wonderful expressions of self-rule. The people have an acute sense of survival.

A young heart responds to the world and either acts in it or becomes a kind of modern monk. The wise have always proposed "wise action" rather than one extreme or another.

It's more than likely America and the world will respond to the environmental dilemma, to take one, with the decline of cheap oil. But it is just as likely it will be a historic event only historians, hundreds of years after the fact, will be able to note and fully depict for those living in the 21st century and beyond.

This is where self-rule means something. One meaning is "taking responsibility." How do I take responsibility for a world that may change drastically in a short period of time? How can I choose well and wisely when nihilism pervades the culture?

It implies choosing the authentic leaders who change more than just laws. He changes what seems to be immutable actions and reactions within the political culture. He throws off assumptions and gives the people the freedom to make new ones based on their needs and experience. He represents generational change as well as political change. He creates the new thesis that rounds up a generation and pours them through narrow gates into the future.

The great and authentic leader enables the citizens to rule themselves in enlightened ways. In a democratic, diverse, divided society like this one it would mean leaders emerging from three or four distinct vectors.

Politics seems subdued because there are so many checks and balances, so many centers of power, so much debate, discussion, and participation it feels it is almost indestructible. That's part of the stability of the democracy, a certain value. But it has to shake itself loose from time to time otherwise it will ride the Titanic and listen to all the talk, "this ship will never sink."

What is not expressed politically is expressed in other ways.

What is not satisfied in the political realm finds its justice in the literary.

The most difficult but best thing about democracy is that it is ever-changing, ever-evolving, each generation providing at least one fold in its culture and history. "This is the way it is" "this is the way it was" "this is how its always been" are all lies in a vital democracy.

Democracy is not a ceiling, it is a leverage for intellect, imagination, creativity, and innovation. If it is reduced by political "ideas" or religious sentiment and fanaticism it is diminished and edges closer to extinction as a credible form of life. It is a combination of vitality and creativity. A mix of the sublime and the rock-ribbed.

December 13th, 2021

HATE

I'm interested in the politics today because I know it is an extraordinary time in America. I don't want it to decline, I don't want it to disintegrate anytime soon. Perhaps in the long future that is its fate but I wouldn't want to be around when it happened. Therefore I have an obligation to look at it closely, give it some energy and express some things. The whole of it is too large of course. So I look at three distinctive things: 1- the quality of the people 2- the quality of leadership and 3- the health of the system of governance.

These are huge areas fraught with impressions and one tries to give those impressions meaning. And with the understanding that all is open-ended in a spirited way.

The silliness of political "ideas" or more likely political feelings is enough to cause the infamous heavy-heart in anyone who believes "self-rule" is a good thing. Hatred, righteous as it may be from time to time, is not "self-rule." In fact, those who hate must cleanse themselves of their hatred before they can even approach the duties of self-rule. And when hatred breaks out, as it does occasionally, it scourges everything in its path. If democracy can not purge this hatred, in any form, from itself it has a greater chance of imploding and becoming a useless thing in a culture full of heat and venom.

Politics is a collective affair. It stretches over everything and is broken up into a variety of ideas and will-to-power units. A wise citizen would allow herself the ability to meditate on some of the things she see's and hears but put it behind her when the time is right.

Hatred begins and ends with the grand stereotype. And we know stereotypes find an uncanny path to the battlefield or some form of conflict.

Isolation wedged into isolation hidden by walls, hills, rivers is the classic way that hatred builds into stereotype and, finally, actual conflict.

The modern world has updated this into "reach of mind," "level of ignorance," "income" and other types of things that isolate people and cause problems between them.

Over the years the citizen will see a multitude of hatreds, some of them parading as truth, some parading as fact but all of them hidden devils of one sort or another.

One reason why you'd want to get rid of the last 40 years of "politics" would be to sweep the toxic boils from the blood and skin of the body politic.

If you want a true self-ruling democracy the bar of knowledge has to rise. It's the last chance as far as I can see. Otherwise you will pound the circular path of elites ruling a dumbed-down population seeped through and through with superstition and ignorance, easily controlled, easily moved out of the political center, and easily subdued when they break out in violence.

Knowledge is one key and the "moralization" of the citizen is the other key. When these are together and vital many things can happen. Moralization refers to the sense that the powerless citizen can engage in his or her role as a political animal at the highest level; that nothing is wasted. That even the scorn one is met with will be converted to a kind of justice down the road.

* * * * * * * *

Beauty, even truth or, at least, wisdom is a joyful thing, a liberator. A culture without it finds itself bound up in its worst self.

I grew up in the poly-diverse SF Bay Area. I'm grateful to be exposed to the variety of races, nationalities, languages, economic classes, religious beliefs and so on. There is a learning curve whites. especially, have to go up on to understand and appreciate the diversity. But so do all people, in their own way, including recent immigrants. The learning curve to live in a liberal democracy in the 21st century will be utterly crucial to the survivability of the society. Democracy will not permit the repression of any group but it will break down and apart under the pressure of tribalism.

Then there is the globe. The globe! There it is unobstructed by our national view of things.I would prefer a strong US than a weak one considering all the surging will to power from every corner. But it has to be smart. It has to acknowledge the changes. When I was a kid the power of the US was immense. My professors used to tell us that America's power was subject to the strength of the World War II participants, especially Germany and Japan. And once they reindustrialized America would have competition in the global market. Which did happen, first with autos, then with electronics. The oil boycotts hurt in the 70's. I think, however, by the mid 90's America was as strong as she ever could be with the demise of the Soviet Union. The terrorist attack in 2001 was the beginning of some very down times. These included a disastrous war in Iraq, a few financial meltdowns, extreme division between income groups, racial strife, Trump, now the pandemic. America's leadership role diminished somewhat but I think it was more a transition to a new global order. This little breakage in continuity allows for some time to think about that new order and the ways the US can strengthen itself. If, that is, it is wanted by the people. Most don't care one way or the other because their brains stop at their own backyard. But there are active ideas that oppose American power, as well as supporters of the old liberal order. Therefore indifference is impossible. America is the unique nation that can nearly destroy itself, survive and get up and along stronger. I saw that from the Vietnam era through the Reagan/Clinton years. Amazing vitality is a key.

The political party I support will have some of the following ingredients. An environmental policy with an underlying goal of transitioning into a new fuel system- a commitment to this for years, deep into the 21st century. Increased taxes on wealth to support middle class jobs and to boost as many poor as possible into the middle-class, encouraging comity between peoples, the value of "making things" over and above the value of "appreciating things." A renewal of infrastructure for a 21st century economy would be implied in all that. A commitment to bring marginalized communities into the mainstream. I would reject any notion of "instant transformation" for a patient working through of ideas.

It does look as though these political parties are realigning, rethinking in the wake of one of the most bankrupt periods of American politics.

History has been in the news. I am one who believes that "history" does not start for the living until the living citizen has been beaten down a bit by the reality outside the classroom. Education provides a few starting kits for those who are interested. But if you are truly interested you will obliterate the generalized, politicized version of "history" and get into the complexity of it. The more you know, the less you know but the more you want to know. It should humble a citizen, not inspire bogus ideas about persons or events in history.

Our views of history are usually off because "we weren't there." History then becomes an endless interpretation of what it was like to be there including all the motives for all the acts of the time. But "history" is a visceral experience that allows us access to what, otherwise, would be outside of our sense of reality. Perhaps the most important thing is to find the continuity in time of all gesture, objects, decisions, events. And what of that continuity teaches and what inspires?

November 21, 2021

POPULISM

Populism is a huge rejection of "the Republic" and indicative of total distrust and disgust of the Republic, which is more a professional man and woman's game, a university educated arena and one reason why the elites get so alarmed by populism. For the people to stay connected to the Republic they have to understand its source, its birth, its struggle to gain life, the precedents, the accretions through time etc etc down to the present monstrosity. Many obviously don't have that appreciation.

It's safe to say if the Republic gets disconnected from the populace and the populace is alienated from the Republic you have one hell of a mess. When does the Republic gain credibility with the people? Perhaps as it solves huge problems like win a war or defeat a pandemic. And of course populism is divided by two major groups, one basically rural and conservative, one basically urban and progressive. After all, the free people can be whomever they wish to be. They can patronize any point of view they want. They can pursue any activity they desire to. We are in a state of contention between those forms of populism because the Republic is failing or, at least, does not have the support of the people. Thus, the politics of the day.

Populism won't work in the long run, as the framers knew. What does populism know of budgets? Or political "horse trading?"

Everything not established by the Constitution is its own "law" of choice and rejection. I am free to choose anything not covered in the Constitution. It doesn't tell me whether baseball is a free activity or not. Or that I must support it. I can support or reject anything. My freedom.

Sometimes the most ardent yearning of populism is its greatest stupidity. That is, it identifies its enemy, its problem and wants it to transform right now, on behalf of the populism. It doesn't want to wait for the Republic. The Republic represents complexity and resistance, due diligence, rationalization, shades of truth and fact, boundary. How damaging are the prevailing generalities that explain everything whether it is racialism or socialism or fundamentalism? One thing an education should teach is: Don't fall for the first deep emotion that seems to perfectly order the world. Or, at least, express it as a literary fiction, even a possibility but not a fact.

The tribalism I saw in Berkeley and Oakland was amplified by the cults and it resulted in disastrous governing of relatively simple cities. The tribe, by definition, assumes that it is the best tribe and all other tribes are after its wealth or women or goods. The tribalism I saw in the Trump White House led to terrible leadership without a doubt.

An elite "multicultural" governing class will have a hard time keeping the tribes at bay. It would be more impressive to have that tribalism dissolve in multi-cultural, middle-class communities. But that's dreaming I suppose.

When tribalism gets into power it ultimately corrupts because it always assumes two things: it's entitled to power and that it is the superior tribe.

The fatal flaw of the radical, when he sees himself as part of the popular movement, is his aversion to opposition. For real power, therefore, he must destroy Constitutional law which guarantees opposition. Many radicals, whether of left and right, who see "capitalism" or "federalism" as the enemy usually ignore the fact that "capitalism" works for millions upon millions of people, yet the call is always to overthrow the system. The only way to overthrow the system is to destroy the whole of the structure and start over with the "right" types in points of power. And to do that the Constitution itself has to go. The Confederacy already tried that route, though their revolt was based on seperating a defined territory and continuing a system that was opposed by the federal system. Whereas the reforms of FDR during the New Deal were always touted as "saving capitalism" even though extreme right wealth hated him for it.

What the elites don't want to admit of is that America is in a transition, a generational change. The baby boomers feel entitled with their assumptions about everything that they embedded in the culture the past 40 years. They will not be able to transmit much of their minds and feelings of the past forty years or so. It's a natural process but very jolting to those it is happening to. It's the difference between observation of the dying and dying yourself. They may take their wrath out on "Trump" or "liberals" but the story will be what political imagination succeeds to build a new establishment through the body of the younger generations. The present is an unworkable mess where craziness zeros out craziness. Where the divides between primal categories of race, gender and class are amplified but also set up to zero each other out so nothing of consequence gets done.

The tribalism I see from the left and right is doomed in the long run because it will fail in its test of governance. If you can't govern, if you can't solve the problems, if you can't strengthen America's place in the world, then you are swept from power. It may take two or three election cycles to begin to see this.

The important requirement I see is the need for learning curves for liberal democracy, for learning to live with other people, and in dealing with the complexity of life today. The only solution I came up with is to extend the life cycle and push "adulthood" back to 40 or so until that younger generation can absorb the complexity, understand it, and not be alienated from it. Then the productive self from 40 through 70, and then retirement, reflection, wisdom from 80 onward. Given the longer life that is lived this seems reasonable.

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What is elitism? Aren't free democratic people suppose to grow and develop? Aren't they suppose to throw off the mythologies that crowd their brains and discover who they are and disgusted with who they are, begin that long process of growth and development that results in a liberal, democratic citizen? If I am a responsible citizen and spend a quarter of my time developing relations to policy, to the idea of leadership, to understanding the infrastructure of governance and so on but thousands and thousands, hundredsg of thousands of people pick their leaders by the way they smile, don't I have a right to be ticked off?

What good is it to be a good, responsible citizen then? And it is amazing how many get sucked down a black hole when they confront this.

The word "elitism" is a form of denial among large numbers of American people that they are not ready to be citizens of a free and powerful nation-state.

In fact, without any positive movement on their part it is quite likely they will remain the simpletons the powerful believe them to be and manipulated through life like puppets with shit on their boots.

November 15, 2021

RACE

First off, you will not solve any social problem on pieces of paper or computer screens. Social problems can't be solved until there is mutual respect and a degree of trust between peoples. The race issue is embedded in an eternal question, a tribal one, of majorities oppressing minorities. A majority population will "oppress" a minority because the majority will have most of the productive energy, make most of the major decisions, celebrate their own creativity and history. So as the majority speeds around with velocity it can create fear, loathing, and resentment among the minority population. The majority makes the signficant assumptions about the way society should be. But nothing says that "race" is what determines "majority" "minority" status. It can be religious, political, geographical, and ethnic identities as well. Race is emphasized in America because skin color is an indicator of "where you come from." And there is a difference between those who bolted here from elsewhere and those who were dragged here by chains and oppressed by some of the ones who bolted. Centuries may have intervened but the effect is still present. Acknowledging this, there has to be a point where the experience of living as a free person in the here and now simply transcends whatever condition brought people to this country.

Thomas Jefferson, a slave owner himself, wrote very haunting words when thinking about slavery and government. He said, in effect, that slavery was going to end but that the blacks and whites would not be able to live under the same government. And this was because "whites will always feel superior to blacks and blacks will always hate whites for slavery." History has shown that to be untrue. If fact, if Jefferson were to suddenly appear in front of us and look around our era he may admit he made a grievous mistake and that a black man, given freedom and resources would prove the equal of a white man. And that generations of struggle and progress do squeeze hatred out of large groups of people. It happens between religions, it happens among races of people. He would come to the same conclusion that the society has come to, "the black person should aspire and have the support and resources for their development as anyone else." The society is very clear about this and only a few argue the point. A problem exists in that color creates political affiliation because of the need to press black grievance. Because of prejudice and distrust the black cohort does not "break apart" and merge into the larger culture as you find with other groups. The attempt to eradicate color was tried. Identity politics has been tried. There has been progress for certain but, as the protest show, there is a lot of dissatisfaction. And there are many types of segregation.

It is very difficult to have a society that keeps many out and uses them as scapegoats. Ultimately, the need is to break down tribal loyalties into middle-class identity and move more and more poor into that middle-class. It's very telling that for all the black dominance in "elite" popular culture you have this spontaneous outbreak of rage and alienation. It's a protest against poverty and lack of upward mobility. People who feel stuck are not happy.

The old Civil Rights movement, which ran strong in my youth and kept requiring a recalibration on the part of young people who weren't black, was a spiritual movement. Its strength was the spiritual without question. But a few things happened that undercut that spirituality. For one, it became much more militant that allowed political parties to play on the fears of whites who had no or little relation to blacks or their problems. Then the society moved on through the late 70's as the economy got worse and worse. That happened just at the time when the young people, who had supported that rights movement and connected it to the middle class, put their youth behind them to pursue their career, marriage, and personal goals. That left the civil rights group holding the bag. I think they were a bit shocked since the changes that took place were not the full, complete changes that they wanted. To survive, the movement had to go back to the university that had wholesale adapted some form of class-bound myth that requires classes move all at once, transformational, with all the members of the class made whole and resourceful. A utopian view in other words. This may work on paper for professors in privileged universities but it's disastrous for a liberal democracy that can't afford the zero-sum game. It requires the wipe out of your opposition, again, something that can and did take place in privileged universities but disastrous out in the so-called real world. The "intellectuals" became hard-wired and rather than question their own assumptions, double-downed on them. This has to be because of a profound lack of confidence and a concomitant resentment for their lack of power in the actual society. Unlike the corporations and, even, government, the university never had rich new streams pouring through it to challenge it so it started to resemble a Soviet province rather than an enlightened one. And I can see this happening: the good will of the movement now moving through the streets, undermined by that ideological angle of attack winnowing out all but the few and fervent.

This is a bourgeous society. To live in it requires compromise. And in a free, liberal democracy you live with many other points of view. Neo-Marxism can never get the absolute hold on the society that it requires for its basic idea to work. It made the fatal mistake of trying to destroy the spiritual core of the human being and replace it with a political one. Humans have revolted against every definition handed down by "power". Why would they persist in defining themselves through obsolete classes? Or is that something power does to people who have no or little power?

And the irrelevance of the neo-Marxists doesn't negate the necessity to take up the persistence of black grievances.

For all the weirdness of the past four years democracy crudely worked the way it is supposed to work. That is, the dominant force, the elites, were pulled down after years of complacency, bad judgements, corruption and so on. To come back to power, they must win back the trust of the people. There are two constituencies most in need: black urban and white rural, tied together to poverty. Therefore, the elites, to win back the trust of the people are going to have to figure out how to instill upward mobility in those groups. In fact, they will have to tax themselves and shift assets from themselves to new structures of distribution.

A society so that the "care of society" and the "rugged individualistic freedom" exist, if not in brotherhood, side by side.

You must get a basic agreement in the society about what people absolutely need to live decently, freely, with dignity in the 21st century. Not simply to survive but to pull themselves up to more expansive opportunities. If "super super wealth" is sacrificed as a result so be it. The society only makes sense as a middle-class culture. It's the only thing that preserves a liberal democracy. Wealth is necessary. But all systems, totalitarian or otherwise, contain wealth. A strong, durable, aware middle class is something particular to a liberal democracy where, by definition, power is distributed widely. And where the opportunites for life can not be hoarded by the elite wealthy.

I am for the racial justice orders Biden signed earlier this year. What needs to be emphasized is that the gain of one is not the loss of the other. The adversarial nature of American politics, democracy itself, makes it appear that way but it's not. The problem is one of continuity and enthusiasm. You will have to continue this beyond the four years of Biden. But what if you have some scandals? What happens if it provides negative results? Then it will be a major issue in 2024 and the policy can be reversed. And while I believe the Biden Administration is honest in its commitment, things change. New imperatives sneak in, the asymmetric event occurs and suddenly no one cares about these things.

Whites have to stop fearing the advance of blacks and worry about their own advance, their own development. I think this will work because the advance of the former slaves has, in fact, been slow and deliberate. Not an ideal sort of progress but a violent, tectonic collision, followed by some basic learning curve, then advance again, wrathful resistance but less than before, a pause and reflection, this last one is much more smooth than the previous one because most people have settled with the reality of existing with different types of people. It does take a learning curve to gain tolerance for others. It's not a given. Tribalism is a given.

It may evolve into racial estates that check and balance each other but ensure that each gets enough to prevent disruption and keep the Constitutional system going. It could be that a new vitality enters the scene that inspires even the old settlers and there's a wonderful leap forward. I don't know. A white man must have enough respect and trust in a black man that he will obey his authority when the occasion arises. And I come back to respect and trust, no advance socially is possible without those qualities. Law will not, in and of itself, create the good society. Neither will money. Neither will programs for health, education, and housing. Those things are great helps but will not advance things unless the society, as a whole, respects and trusts itself. And that is a very difficult task.

The question of race is rooted to the Deep Recession of 08, the semi-recovery and now the Covid-19 crisis that has created chaos in the economy. For all the smoke and fury something will emerge from it all, hopefully solid, intelligent policy that alleviates the suffering of people. That's what I would focus on. The smoke and mirrors, the dramas and media frenzy belong to mass politics and is its own problem.

The labor movement was very effective but at some point lost credibility with the middle-class, even as the middle-class was filled with union members. Perhaps it was the feeling the unions were run by criminals or were becoming a negative influence on the economy. Whatever the case once the middle-class turned against the unions, the diminishment was profound. You could say the same thing about civil rights. "Don't make the middle-class property owners your enemy." That's a good lesson to learn.

A lot of the chaos of today, as I've mentioned before, is the change of power from one generation to another. The destruction of one elite for the establishment of a new one. The younger generation has to decide what its values are, what its experience has taught them, what are the crucial problems to deal with today. That will fill up the establishment as they go forward and will stamp them the rest of their days. I don't know what that is but the process is unrelenting because we don't believe in aristocracies, we don't believe in crippling young people with our problems, and we always want new vital streams to pulse through the thing.

Despite all the anti-Constitution, anti-founder palaver that is spewed out the "winner" in this contest, even in that splintered group that is protesting, are those who adhere the most fastidious to the unique signatures of American culture: due process, due diligence, freedom of press, freedom of association, freedom of assembly, freedom to petition government for a redress of grievance, checks and balances, public education, clear paths to power and professional bureaucracies. Those who demonstrate those qualities become trusted.

Somewhere between "not wanting one group, one political party, to dominate" and "no coherence because of power madness," stands the truth of the matter, at least on a collective scale.

At this point the academics are filled with useless abstractions. The media are circus barkers for their brand and need to foment conflict to keep people tuning in. They are not credible factfinders. The barkers stand on the street and scream out the one and only fact the people are interested in. "Enter here folks, the women are all naked!" The naked women being, in this case, the opposite political party. The politicians are old and stale. The young people are initiating a change in the establishment that is very familiar to anyone who lived through the infamous 60's. It will make some bad mistakes but at the further end good things will be done. They will have to convince the boomers of their loyalty to the idea of America, the liberal democracy. It could get split along political lines but at some point, trust will kick-in and the change will take place. The keys are "who is comprehensive through experience and knowledge?" And, "who tries to make allies out of enemies?"

America cannibalizes itself with happy faces.

Perhaps there will be a vivisection of the culture. It has some sound and fury to it that is reminiscent of the dysfunctional 70's. Eventually, though, the culture feels weakened and rolls over into a new era. The rebellion finds every weakness it can to drive its will to power through. It's very difficult to have a "rational" voice if rationality itself is questioned. So a lot of burning occurs. But eventually, the burners burn themselves out since they are engaged in an impossible either/or. As Kafka advised, "if you are in a race with the world, bet on the world."

The passage of time does wonders as people give up their stubborn hatreds, fears, and useless conflicts against groups of people. Stereotypes become untenable as a person matures.

October 25, 2021

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Woes of Confrontation

As a young guy I struggled with various "confrontations." Technology was one. Mass culture was another. Some of it was the effect of destroying the efficacy of literature and other arts. Another, and connected, was the problem of sensibility. Some of it was due to my exposure to European and global cultures, Europe especially that scorned "masses," even "democracy". Technology, if you are not connected with it, says as it flies and plows by you, "you are nothing without me and all your mind, heart, and soul is worthless unless you serve me." I didn't see it as "liberating" at all but the ultimate prison. Of course, at that time I didn't have any money and owned few items of technology so that had something to do with it. I could not relate to the mass culture and celebritism. "This is it?". A guy finally asks. And, of course, looming over all was the "death of everything" through nuclear war. I did confront that and ended up knowing some geopolitics but with the belief that human nature had to change. For a moment in time I believed that every action, every gesture in human beings led, inevitably to nuclear war. It destroyed my youth. Lol. I can see now that the lack of trust had a lot to do with it. "Don't trust the systems in place to make sure it doesn't happen? Then what is going to stop it from happening?" I saw trust at the center of democracy and, in fact, freedom.

A cut-up America is as much a delusion as a whole America. "Cut-up" as in sliced and diced by a variety of analysis. From a writer's point of view there is simply experience and values. And if your system of experience and expression of value is clear and clean and honest then something gets through. The cutting and sorting out of America is for the convenience of political parties and advertisers and other masters of persuation. It takes no courage to have either a cut-up version or a whole version. It robs the political animal of a prime experience of the sentient self moving through time and space, a "free, liberal, democratic citizen."

Politics resembles a temporary fight club for well-defined polarities. The fighters zero each other out. They are not fighting over the survivability of liberal democracy or "America" itself because to do so would require the giving up of their political fetish. And that would be too much to ask. Something of the "greater good" rises up and decides the matter.

If democracy is not about the care of the people, then what is it? It can't only be about the power of the Republic. It's that but it is the care and decency of the people, toward the people. The well-being of ALL the people, that's what a good society aims at. Any fair minded person says, "Don't squander the power and keep fueling progress from the bottom, up."

Competition invariably catches up with idealism. At that point idealism can get bitter.

October 15, 2021

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INITIATION

I was initiated into my political life by a simple question: why do I feel more alienated from my country and government than Jefferson, Hamilton, Washington, Madison, et al felt about mother England? That is the existential question for an American who is called on to develop his or her individuality, his or her ethical being in the middle of a huge, devouring machine as the world appears to be when young. So you ask, "is it so bad because it is that bad or is that an archetype that goes back to the founding of the country?" Thus the road to my own personal citizenship. I came to several conclusions along the way: that if the system I was so alienated from was destroyed it would not make for a better situation. That the fight between the human and inhuman is a real one and that a liberal democracy is on the side of the human. Alienation is often a lack of both experience and knowledge and as one acquires both the alienation diminishes.

America is a kind of idiot because it does try to comprehend itself as a whole and unless the mind is utterly trained to do so and knows all the resources needed to do so it is an impossible task and what is left but myth; racial myth, generalizations, mass thought, flawed rationality among other obvious signs that there is no "national view?" Political ideas are cooked up out of a variety of themes: Justice, Economy, Environment among others. It is very difficult to take a "national purpose" and make it local and regional where things are comprehended more acutely. The idea of national identity is mostly a negative one, as something that grievance can bounce off of, that both political and commercial interests can exploit. In fact, the only way "national interest" makes sense is when a person is aware of history and the rise and fall of empires or great powers. Then one can say, "I don't want to see decline in my own lifetime, therefore the national scene should do this and not do that." And that is interpreted a variety of ways as well. One thing gives rise to its opposite in a free society. It takes a bit of mental jujitsu to deal with a free society and why it is so easy to simply align behind a strong force and let the opposites be worked out as a natural process. It is extremely difficult to verify truth and facts in a culture like this.

Systems are judged by whether they solve the problems of those who live in those systems or not. That's a large order because some of the problems may be solved while others not solved. Some of the people who live in those systems may view the problems solved while other do not. Thus, politics. And if politics is "successful" all complaints about the system are laid up on the platform. It's at that point where the citizen begins to give his loyalty to one set of complaints or the other.

Of late I haven't been moved by the liberals or conservatives. I tend toward the liberals because things must progress. You can't progress however with the same ideas you've had for forty years. That is the dilemma for the honest, thinking, free liberal, democratic citizen. Empty motion is how I would characterize the left. The conservatives merely react wrongly to things they don't understand. They lose credibility with the honest, thinking, free liberal, democratic citizen. It's at that realization that one leaves off the idea that politics can "save" society. If anything can save society it's the "golden rule" and a sense of "truth and beauty." And not wanting to be disheartened and driven downward by the reality we'll not speculate on the success of those qualities.

There are fascinations in society. But one must develop to the point where no single manifestation, no group manifestations, no national manifestations does anything to you but enrich the quality of intellect or imagination. Be a free man even in the most unfree circumstance and you will understand life.

The question is whether the benefits of the system of governance will survive the current politics that are in the hands of egotists, utopians, inept, and ignorant people of the left and of the right. I don't trust them. I have no affection for them. I don't think the future belongs to them but who knows. It is apparent to me that "freedom" can vanish into "politics" in ways that are astonishing. Politics is the hunger for power rationalized so that the hungry are reduced to little tweeties who are fed, each, parts of the long worm from the mamma's beak.

The generalizations of politics are gross and, sometimes, dangerous. The ideals of politics are illusions that fuel up conflict. Solution: Sharpen the politcal language and political imagination.

In a democracy ideas are fluid. Politics can not fix on anything although several assumptions make their way through time. Or perhaps that is the trick; to make your assumption make its way through time. How can there be politics however, if no foundation, no basic truth, no identity of the citizen has been built? Yet, what if the foundation, the basic truth, and the identity all prevent the progress of politics?

The demise of communism or the old noble orders of the past came down to a central fact: They were not solving the problems. It's not rocket science. And that is the central question you have to address to modern systems. Are you solving the problems? Life is a problem when there is no resource to get things done. If that low level of resource continues over generations one has to come to the conclusion that "it is not solving problems." Does the politics that emerges from that insight solve the problems?

I don't trust "political ideas" because none that I've seen has ever shown me or convinced me that it knows how the world really works, how the systems work, how the systems interact with each other and with citizens and groups of citizens. An opinion may be put forward that I agree with inasmuch as I know the limits of knowing and am willing to get stretched out if a new idea pushes the envelope of that limit. To develop a coterie of assumptions among a group of thinking people fools naive minds until failure after failure convinces the naive mind not to be so naive. To know something you need to respect it. Respect is hardly the first move in developing ideas about politics or society.

My definition of Utopia: Simple, practical politics with a very creative, dynamic culture that is on the same page about problems and celebrates the dynamics of itself.

"National politics," "national identity" have fallen out of favor with me. Toxic is the word I describe them. They appear fragile if not febrile for someone who has seen era's come and go. I stick with the identity with my physical region and all that goes on in it. It is diverse, it is challenging, it is full of the good, bad, and ugly. It is filled with constitutional values and liberal democratic ones. Freedom is a creed, a responsibility. It is connected, not simply to the rest of America but to Latin America and Asia, especially.

The idea of liberal democracy is still the best one to try and define, defend, and make better.

September 22, 2021

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The Bad Century

This century has not been a good one for the US, starting with the foul election of 2000. The terrorist attack, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, Bush ineffective, Obama ineffective, Trump dysfunctional, collapse of financial markets in 08, now this virus and economic problems attached to it. The attack on the capitol in January. The divisions remain stark. China is trying to replace the US at the center, Russia is trying to resurrect the old Soviet union, Europe is devastated, global warming is making itself a reality. All one can ask is, "are the regions ok?" After all, the region is where we live the real life. This particular region I live in is doing just fine but that can change in an instant. In other words, is there creative vitality, some form of happiness, good families producing good kids and so on? You need a critical mass of those qualities plus a commitment to ameliorating the distress in a region. My region is fortunate like much of America. It has wealth, creativity, education, innovation and lives with some purpose. It has many other things as well, bad things like homelessness, rising costs in essentials, bad traffic, among others.

If we panicked now over the virus, we would panic for all time. Things could be worse. One consequence for our current moment is that we must fight for our best, there is no alternative. Better to simply get the best, most credible information, do what the doctors say to do and wait it out. Terrible things can be contemplated but that is more a test than a reality. When my dad was born there was both a pandemic and a war going on. The pandemic ended up killing nearly a million Americans and tens of millions around the world. As that was happening World War I was winding down. It was a fearsome war that had enormous consequences for later generations. I have seen film clips of celebrants of the war's end all wearing medical masks, the type that are controversial today, in front of a decade of capital expansion that ran to the market collapse and Depression of '29 and 30's. Things happen rapidly. This could be a turning, it could be not a turning. We don't know. Neither is it a time of blame and instant analysis of everything wrong with everything. The more blame I hear the less credible the blamer.

Give me a database that is vast and deep. Give me extraordinary experience out of being a free, liberal democratic citizen. Allow me to encompass the whole of what exists.

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Governing in a liberal democracy depends on trust. Not worship, not accepting the unacceptable but trust that the leader has his or her heart in the right place and when pressed for strong, difficult decisions will think of the health and future of the country, all aspects of country before all else. The former President Trump, for instance, was not trusted anywhere but the party that gained in power. He was not trusted in the world. I don't think you can artfully stick the two asymmetric parts of the nation together but I do believe you have to energize the prime directive of a liberal democratic party, "make allies out of enemies."

Can you have "dual national views" that alternate in power? You have had that for decades here. It's very natural to have a thesis and antithesis clashing at the center. I can't think of any historic time or any political entity of any complexity without it. But there was a time when the citizenry was far more experienced and knowledgeable and so knew the sublime truth that sometimes your adversary is your best friend. Sometimes your adversary is a value that strengthens your own view. And the role of freedom in a political sense is to playfully and artfully apply that to the current adversaries. It has to come from within the citizens themselves.

September 5, 2021

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Narratives

The more I know the society, the more complex it gets, the more difficult it is to say, " this will be resolved, this is curable, etc etc." At that point you can only support those who you believe are just and right in their thinking. Somehow we strive to balance ourselves in a very imbalanced society. But its imbalance can be an advantage since it is so huge, with so many moving parts and always teaching something. Politics seems like a rather diminished way to achieve it. It is the complexity, the overwhelmingness of the society that makes me skeptical. In that state the mind gravitates to the easy answer, to the tribal virus, to the ritual destruction of the rational so that we may believe that the problem doesn't exist and move on our desires.

Obviously there are gradients of opportunity the culture has to be aware of. "Diversity" is not a perfect solution but it is far superior to having one dominant class and then subservient classes who can't develop their potentials. There has to be a rededication to the idea that all Americans are born free and are entitled to the privileges of freedom, to the responsibilities of freedom and are always potential coming to fulfillment. To have that sense you have to kick out powerful responses to the world such as resentment, hate, jealousy and so on. Since you can't get rid of those responses you then have to train the free American citizen how to avoid them, how to block their effectiveness in lessening the sense of ourselves. That makes sense to me in an ideal state although a cynical view will say all your potential will be used up fighting off resentment, hate, and jealousy. What then is freedom, potential and fulfillment? Our life tries to answer that question.

It is an advantage to know the various narratives that make up the whole. Some of the narratives are long, some short, some wide, some thin, some full of humor, some full of tears. First is a full and complex narrative one can call his own. Once that is secure he is bold enough to expose himself to other narratives.

And what is society but pent-up demand, released? I don't think you can underestimate how profound was the drive for economic well-being in those who escaped Europe. Europe of Empire, of settled aristocracies, of corrupt politics and church, so that a fairly honest, ambitious person could easily give up. Instead they were able to come here and release that pent up desire for freedom and economic well-being. Underestimate that and you will never understand America and its history. You'll never understand the continual transformation of raw material into economic progress. It was why the trees were cut down and the mountains, hills, streams altered through mining. It was why gold was manna. And so the first impulse of Americans is to pursue economic progress and well-being. It's not creativity, truth and beauty. These belong to the long history of aristocracies. That is hard-wired into the beast so to say. But, as an artist, do you abandon creativity, truth and beauty? That's the dilemma there. I felt America had reached a level of power and complexity that many things, once repressed, could live and flourish.

I believed America could absorb its abuses, its mania's, and out of its cultural experience learn a bit of wisdom, among other excellent attributes.

I think the participation of rich mixtures of people plus the inventions will mark our time. Not only the computer/internet/smart phone but whatever emerges from AI. The time will be severely criticized for its slowness in responding to global warming and the maldistribution of national wealth. Whether it remains at the center of world concern is a different question and very hard to predict. But it will retain many opportunities and "freedom from traditional constraint." Every generation will posit their absurdities and excesses for inspection by the next generation and things will improve. It may be that mass democracy tires of itself but as it does new ideas are put forward to insure a working society that believes in itself. Regions will dominate rather than a sense of "nation".

Wealthy regions will do much to keep decay and decline from setting in. There will be large migrations either way.

August 25, 2021

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Ideas Have to Work for a Living

I see a lot of ideas popping up about "after the virus and economic shock". I support investment in the poor, urban and rural, emphasis on renewable energy, infrastructure improvements among others. You simply have to ask, "what will make America stronger and more productive" and "what will it cost and what changes will have to take place?" One of the first changes is a take down on the reputation of "wealth" and uplifting of service sector. Another is decent leadership that is smart and pragmatic. There still needs to be a lot of vetting of these huge spending bills to see what unintended consequences they may have. The Democrats don't communicate their legislation very well. Few believe that spending at this rate will not have some bad economic effects. This is not "Great Society" type legislation, which came into being during economic expansion and the overwhelming victory of the liberals in the 1964 election. And it should be noted too, all of the task forces LBJ set--up that vetted possible legislation before the public could get a hold of them. It's not that it should be rejected but it needs a lot more study and a lot more explanation to the public that did not elect an overwhelmingly progressive Congress. People want jobs, jobs, jobs. That should have the priority over free services.

And I don't blame capitalism. I blame capitalists and politicians for allowing the system to get bought off. I blame the extremes for destroying a liberal, democratic center. I blame the idealism of the globalists.

It's been said over and over again.

Experience finally teaches that blame is a game for children.

The media depends on the democratic citizen to jumble all the facts and opinions that come streaming into him or her and use his or her experience and knowledge base to come up with something approximately the truth. Don't put media on a pedestal- use it as a raw resource. Journalists shouldn't be scorned for criticizing Biden or the government. The purpose of journalism is to objectify Biden and government to keep them honest. The question is whether that objectifying is freighted with prejudice. It no doubt is, so that is factored in as the citizen goes from CNN to FOX to take a slight but important example.

Most everything else is simply, "I'm fierce to protect my ego against the possibility of being wrong." Factor that in as well. Where else did all those fist and gun fights come from in bygone days?

The challenge getting through this period of time will determine the direction of the future, personally and otherwise.

August 3, 2021

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Into the Far-Flung

Will America be strong into the 22nd century? Two things that Americans have to come to terms with: 1- dealing with the tremendous complexity of government not to mention life itself which alienates people from the get-go. How can a free people do anything, make any decision if they are fully ignorant of the mechanisms that run the machine daily? They do try to judge, assess, and critique bills and policies but the problem is a lot deeper than that. That is, from a democratic point of view. In a tyranny, of course, the people only need to know how to wipe their ass. And 2- how do Americans resolve a democratic conscience with the facts of being a world power? Where does the one break the other? And if one is broken what does that mean we have become or are becoming?

The most difficult relation a democratic citizen has is with power. That relation determines a good deal that follows. A lot depends on where you come into political consciousness. My era, the 60's and 70's were dreadful and exciting all at once. Impossible and cruel, full of empty phrases and obvious corruption and collusion.

A stinking war, a noble civil rights movement, a woeful fall from grace by a president, assassinations of the best of the leaders, tension and conflict outside ones tribe, the airs of crazy men and women at every corner. "God is dead, We are God!" followed by the same whoop rebel soldiers made heading up Cemetery Ridge and Little Round Top.

An era of distortion and amplification. It is no more but it lives in those who experienced it.

Most people fled the very idea of being citizens and wrote politics off to wealthy types in the Boston to New York to DC corridor. A few plunged deeper into politics in desperation and ended up dead or teaching somewhere. It was a wipe out and cleared the way for Reagan.

You either are connected or not. The connected citizen makes up the most powerful part of the plurality of citizens. Connected but not overly awed. Connected but critical.

Things have plunged pretty low. It calls out for some pure idealism that the tough old guys reject but is embraced by the young and initiates a whole new era.

It's easy to dismiss. It's easy to simplify the relation and feel decent about it. But then a good connection connects everywhere. And for a writer that can be propitious.

Everywhere in the US is deep and extensive. It can also be idiotic but that is determined by the quality of the citizen.

July 15, 2021

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Big Old Republics

So we are being determined by huge nation-states rather than city-states or modest kingdoms. Is the mind up to it? Is the human spirit up to it? I've had my doubts.

The state, in this case, does not look downward at the people but rather the people soar above the state and claim ownership. That is one source of its anger and loyalty.

The energy of a free people can produce something approaching ecstasis. It sweeps them up where they don't want to exit much less think.

The grand ideologies I've been familiar with from youth onward have been lit up by those who carried them.

And, obviously, theocracy is about to take its turn on the burning wheel.

"Your politics is simply another conformity regardless of your good intentions."

For one thing, if you eliminated every one of your political enemies the world would not be a better place. No progress would occur. The resource base for the culture would shrivel.

Common Sense: Distrust anyone or any group that wants control of the government. It's necessary that they want it but if they appear entitled to it throw them the worst enemy they could possibly have against them.

Most things disappear in life but the emotionalism created by politics seem to linger on. "They were swallowed whole by the preposterous antics of their youth."

July 5, 2021

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REVOLT

I am not against the popular revolts I see going on today. The elites are not trustworthy and it's time to turn them over.

In a good, honest society revolts are rare but meaningful when they happen.

I think of the tax payer revolt in the late 70's. It didn't mean a lot to me at that time and I viewed it as a reactionary revolt but over time I could see it had a powerful attraction; the need of the people to feel that they own the government. And when they no longer feel that they kill whatever elite is in power; through cultural disgust at the very least.

On the other hand you want a government strong enough not to collapse when the people get nasty about it.

The whole arena of politics and government is a sad thing. It all goes away, swept away and looks easy and quaint from the long distance. After all, if we could glide into the height of kingships and tell people kings are irrelevant to the future what would they think? They would say, "stay out of our time and get back into your time." And they would laugh because they possess a secret that we must find in our own way and it is a painful secret but a strict and truthful one.

It's sad because there are better things to do with the mind then wrestle with these squatting entities.

But you have to tithe a certain time to it if you believe in liberal democracy. I'd rather believe in it than believe in the petty-minded, ignorant, cynical, bitter types that dismiss it all with a wag of the tongue. At the very least it's necessary to know how things work, depressing as it may be sometimes.

June 15, 2021

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It Is Getting Late

The few who leap beyond the gravity of America, the thing, can actually find aspects of its soul. The thing in America is expressed as a dark film of lead and sawdust pouring out of a normal mouth that is attempting to define something or someone in front of them.

The artist has depicted it as either the abandoned object or the object that has fully conquered. There's hardly a middle ground in America.

Complexity is only as good as its enrichment. Once complexity becomes dark and destructive forget it.

A whole complex of things, persons, ideas, say a city is only good if in grasping what we can from it, rich information and an authentic desire to build is returned.

Relationships between men and women suffer because complexity comes automatically without the proper attitude to catch the enrichment and rub it back into the relationship.

I did confront the question of the democratic citizen even though it seemed awfully late in the game to do so. There was no justification for a "democratic Republic" unless you have quality at the democratic level. Quality at that level would then translate into quality of the Republic because the "system" would carry the conscientiousness, the alertness, the care, and the development of the good democratic citizen. Outside of that was mere power and huge effects willing and able to wipe clean democratic consciousness and force the human beings to acquiesce to the effects and their makers.

"Knowledge of the system," stemmed from the full impact of the "system" blowing down on the poor young person who knew very little about power. It was survival then to crawl up to the knowledge of the system. From knowledge of the system would come the "wisdom of governance," since the relation between democratic citizen and power was a contract that required self-criticism and objectivity. In a democracy if power moves against the democratic citizen, eventually the democratic citizen will move against power and, in the end, will win out.

If it's too late for all this then it's too late. I don't want to see the process that is inevitable when democracy no longer matters. When it has become a punishment, a neurosis rather than an enrichment through which a person, a human being can grow and develop not simply as a political animal but as a private person pursuing his or her own goals.

The first confrontation is with that which would demoralize the self and make it an enemy to the person who it is living in.

Demoralization and alienation were two enemies to the development of liberal democratic citizens. This is why the nuclear dilemma was so central when I was younger because nothing said uselessness more than that. Nothing said futility louder than the mushroom cloud.

I don't know any vital youth that doesn't want to be a lawgiver generation but history dictates that it is rare. Madison was gleeful because he lived in a time of new lawgivers.

America will be strong into the 22nd century.

June 3, 2021

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PROOF

When liberal democracy is as empty and useless to the future as the medieval papacy is to us, then I will thank my stars for being born now, here with the greatness of a liberal democracy, argue with it as we do.

And we argue with it because it hasn't fulfilled its potential and threatens to slip down to the old and dirty oceans of history.

The thing is too big and complex for the mind to truly assess it. It is very difficult to trust the ability of the mind to make statements about the society or functions of government without some experience in the impossibility of knowing the vast and complex world. Trust is the crucial word. Do I really trust your abstractions on power and well-being? All it takes is experience to contradict some of the propositions, then what? Then it becomes apparent that what the abstraction is really promoting or defending is fear and/or hate. And when you see large groups of people "trusting" the fear and hate you get very demoralized about how things will progress. But if you look closely you'll see some sound proposals for ideas that will solve actual problems. Can these modest proposals be enacted in chaos or do they need some structure of power that will complete a process through legislation?

As my dad told me when I used to argue with him about "unfairness." He said, "it's a f'n jungle out there. There is no fairness. You will run into people who have more than you and people who have less than you. Don't try to figure it out because you can't. Don't get into conflict over this because if you do you will be in conflict forever. Make meaningful goals and put your head down and move on your goals and aspirations. Do it regardless if there are evil billionaires around or if the whole world is penniless." And to be truthful, there is no other way. Not for a liberal democratic, middle-class, Constitutional republic where for every negative there is a positive. And you can't get rid of the other. If the negative absolutely gets rid of the positive and makes sure the negative prevails and squashes every bit of positive you don't have a liberal democracy. You have communism, fascism, or theocracy. That's ultimately what you are fighting for if you can't understand the necessity of a liberal democracy. And the right and left don't have the best interests of the liberal democracy at heart. So you wait patiently for them to burn themselves out.

I do believe we should expect more freedom for the future and to continually explore the universe for life. I believe we should strive to improve the things around us. I believe we should forgive and forget. I believe life was meant to resolve its most difficult dilemmas.

Whenever I hear someone speak about the American "society" I laugh and ask, "and what exactly do you know of the American society?" And invariably what they know comes from media, comes from an emotional node, a hate or a fear, and is but a lazy statistic. It is one of the primary problems that in a society this complex the people who are putatively "self-rulers" can't possibly know all there is to know, can't possibly wrap their minds around the totality of American society. The vast majority have met some powerful idea in youth that seemed to order the society and explain it and they substituted the idea for actual thinking. Thinking and experience we should add. The fact that extremes on the left and right dominate politics tells me that "thinking about America society" has shrunk down to a frightening level. Perhaps they should shoot it out among themselves in the valleys of Montana to see who is the emperor of stupidity. Or, the nobles of ignorance. CNN and FOX could cover the event.

Political theorists' fall in love with their abstractions too quickly. A world to be known! Indeed, but if you don't know yourself, your knowledge of the world will be skewered.

I would not trust anyone who allowed "politics" to dominate his or her sensibility. Politics belongs to the natural response of people who are either free or not-free, depending on the system they suffer under. To squeeze politics out of any expression is to squeeze the spirit out of it but that is par for the course. Even those politics that we like and share with others is deadly as a clue to the explorations of culture. First, the spirit of expression, later comes the politics as the spirit is wrestled to the ground and fought over by polarities who need each other more than they need the truth and beauty .

Ultimately, expression that is dominated by politics has nothing to teach and is relatively useless.

It's hard to defend American democracy but then if you subvert it or destroy it what would be left? It has accreted much and alienated the natural mind and spirit from knowing it too well. Most importantly though it either works or it doesn't. If it doesn't work, can't recognize the fact, doesn't change what is unworkable then what is the use of having what exists, whatever it may call itself?

Democracy is proven by the exercise of freedom in a variety of ways, including the act of holding power accountable. It's only when a force is capable of disabling freedom that you have not-democracy.

Freedom proves itself when it is tired of itself as an action and imagines something more.

Freedom is always seeking the seed of bigger dreams.

Democracy is the shell around the seed of freedom, necessary to keep it going in a world that would destroy it. Much as a church or religion is the necessary husk around the prime insight and teaching. If the shell or husk kills off the essence then it is corrupt.

The existential moment for a democracy is when the citizen realizes that he must "be as democratic as he can" but that the system rises or falls outside of his or her control. Demand that democracy be lived to its fullest, that human beings can't live any freer or fulfilled as now, take care of the various points of foundation and if it is meant to fail then it is a fantastic failure that will be exemplary to the future of those who make a difference.

Have that courage of the idea and see what happens.

May 24, 2021

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Idea Side of Desire

The "idea" side of America is bankrupt. No intelligence worth its salt is going to let the experiences of 40-50 years ago impose their assumptions on it. The Democrats are bankrupt. I almost feel sorry for them. Their leadership is shapeless gas appealing to cultural assumptions that are way overdue for a breaking. I've written on this in Events, at least 12 years ago. I thought Obama would be the new transformative guy but he got swamped by the errors of his predecessor. Trump is transformative in a very negative sense but an opening is there if "liberals" and "intellectuals" would get their head out of their asses.

I did take on this problem: liberal democracy in America was no longer an effusive, joyful understanding of building something new. It had become a burden. And the question was always when will the critical mass of citizens give up the burden? If all their enthusiasm and joy is cannibalized by people with a thousand times more resources then why would they continue to do it? The burden was 1) the complexity of the world which required a series of systems and expertise to operate, so the sense that I, a single citizen, had no power and was dependent on things I didn't have a clue about and 2) the necessity of maintaining America as a world power and all the compromises that entail.

I don't know any other solution other than for the citizen to work him and herself up to a point where they know enough to understand the necessity and even celebrate the necessity. Perhaps the illiberalism of the past four years is an excellent teacher on the necessity of liberal democracy.

The citizen goes through profound disillusionment and then discovers him or herself one way or the other. There is a delicate balance between "knowing the system" and critiquing it. The chief thing you want to criticize is abuse either to individuals, groups, or the system itself because the goal of the system is to liberate human beings and allow them the widest range of activity as possible without losing connection to the society itself. And the literary imagination always seeks what is not apparent. So there was a need to create something by first writing on the limitations of that growth and development.

May 5, 2021

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ORIENTATION

My "political thoughts" were an attempt to orientate the liberal democratic citizen to what-it-is. I made two main assumptions: (1)that the alternatives to liberal democracy are not desirable and (2)that the core of a liberal democracy is the well-being and the completeness of the free, liberal democratic citizen; a creature that exists in poor and rich, men and women, and among all the multiplicity of persons in the modern world. I also assumed that democracy is a spirit of mind. If it doesn't exist there, it's doubtful but not impossible it will exist in the practical world.

When the citizen gives up on democracy, the clock starts running. Something we recognize will no doubt remain. A system of power will go on. And hugeness, complexity, corruption, and propaganda will still be some of the ways and means to disorientate the people and demoralize him and her. They will have their own dilemma's. Perhaps they will reach back to this time in search of the keys to greater life.

Politics emerges from human beings no matter what system they exist in. Three people in a cave will develop politics because they will have to decide who does what and why and to ensure some form of continuity so it will be done deep into their future. That's a good reason to know other cultures, past and present, who may contain more than three persons. What needs to be discovered in the experience of others are the levels of pressure brought to bear that create the politics emerging out of them.

The Political Era's I have known are exhausted. The Kennedy Era-Reagan Era is over. The Reagan era lingered on through Bush and Obama but has come crashing down because of the main crisis' now confronting the US. The virus, Economy, Geopolitics, and domestic turmoil are rattling around in various degree of chaos. Those era's helped create the polarities we see playing out in national politics but those are doomed as it becomes utterly necessary to rethink and reimagine politics, economy and world. I don't think it's a clear cut, clean proposition. There will be competitive ideas and conflict without a doubt. The newer generations have to formulate their values, connect them with "American virtues" and have a reliable system of critique based on those values.

We ask simple questions about the nation. "Where did it come from?" "How did we get to the megalithic cities, freeways, jet aircraft, TV, computers and so on? Nuclear weapons, bio weapons?" "How did we get here? What happened?" These curiosities take you to any number of beginnings. It could be the colonial days or post-Revolution, post-Constitution and the beginning of the US government. It could be the struggle over slavery from 1619 onward. The more you study, the less you know but the more you want to find out and it just compounds to exhaustion. You'll never know completely. But the facts build into something, call it what you will.

And at this point it's not a question of, "should it have existed in the first place," but "should it survive into the future?" When all the evidence is in, I think it should survive into the future. There would be chaos if the federal system lost its grip, as the Constitution became less credible as a document, as stronger, newer countries, if not empires, desired a break down of the US and an opportunity to grab some territory that couldn't be defended by a diminishing population with less and less resource at hand. If and when that's the case all the energies of the people will be absorbed in the process of disintegration and so nothing positive, nothing robust, nothing vital would emerge. It would be like the death of a star.

I wouldn't want to live through the process even if it is inevitable. I don't want to be around when our own star begins to give up the ghost.

I want the liberal democracy to improve. I don't want to go back. I don't want to sacralize the present. I want to flatten the present and look into the future. And the primary reason for that is that I don't want harm to come to my family. It's not rocket science. Elites survive these massive subductions but families such as mine, don't.

I'm not a nationalist but I like to think from time to time on "being in a nation." It may not be as important as it thinks it is as a nation, but it is important. It may not be as powerful as it brags but it is powerful. It may have a lot of black marks in its history but it does have a full, complex, rich history. To dismiss it or ignore it is not an option. If I dismiss it out of hand or ignore it I must give in to this idea, that idea, that perception, that opinion that, the more I know and experience, become more and more odious.

It's good to own the relation you develop to your own nation. Start with where you pay taxes. Start where you can actually cast a vote for some official. Start where the law is applied and enforced to you, personally. Start where wars are made in your name, a collective name for certain, but one that I take personally. It is one of many relations we have.

My region, which I truly love, is linked absolutely with nation. I will still love it even if it delinks one of these days. I make the assumption that the region is better being connected to all the other regions in the US, but it only works if the regions have enough autonomy to check the federal government and demand collaboration.

America is not an empire but it is not a normal state either. That's my opinion at any rate. One way or the other it presents a dilemma for a liberal democratic citizen because I'm not sure a powerful state and citizen are compatible. A powerful state implies the absorption of national treasury in military adventure and over protection, something a citizen is either awed by or not but little he can do about. And with it is shame, great shame over what has to be countenanced such as bombs that kill innocent people who have nothing to do with whatever animates American hostility. So, being this advanced and knowing "powerful states end" and knowing the beginning, we fit ourselves somewhere between and it is not pleasant.

The question is, "can this country continually remake itself to revitalize its aspirations, visions, works?" Perhaps aspects can. Perhaps that's all that it takes. If it allows the crabbed opinions of ridiculous people or ideologues to squeeze it down to that inevitable end then it is fated. If it shows more vitality and truth than those who would squeeze America off for some reason that's another matter.

I don't want America to start to lose footing in the world, especially to China, and set up some inevitable conflict down the road as the one surpasses the other. I don't want America to be provoked into becoming some rogue state because it declines quickly. On the other hand, I don't want it to over-extend itself as it has in the Middle-East. Its' "thesis" developed out of the victory in World War II, some 75 years ago. The energy from that victory washed for many decades through this culture until it met its "antithesis" in the Vietnam era. It's not the same world. So we ask simple questions: Is it the power it thinks it is? And if so what good is that power? What is the objective of having that power? And if only 15% of the population are enjoying the fruits of this power how "democratic" can it claim to be?

I don't know if there is a credible metric you use to determine these things. It's a feeling based on the major decisions of power and a sense of history.

There is still space and vitality to do magnificent things in this country. I wouldn't let a few abstractions get in the way.

Somewhere deep in itself it has to admit its shortcomings, learn from multiple sources, and then pivot toward the future. The foundations don't have to be spectacular. The spectacular is built on solid foundations.

Sometimes the democratic people are mad, pissed off, resentful and they want to pull everything down to the vulgar, cussing, undisciplined street level. And other times they are aspirational and want uplift, expansiveness, intelligence, spirit and so on. You can't predict what they will be. In my day they were overwhelmingly pissed. But just as assuredly they will become aspirational one of these days.

One thing Americans understand is that time does not stop. That the future will, in some way, be better than the past. The criteria of "what is better" can change but not the unrelenting roll of time. It wants to get to a point where it can look back, learn lessons, but never quit moving forward. When it is pulled back in time something is wrong. When it moves forward without learning lessons, repeating the mistakes over and over, something is wrong.

With a quick overview we can say that the growth of science and technology on the backend of the industrial revolution has determined quite a bit. Added to that new forms of capital, the enlarging of corporation and bureaucracy, with immigration of different peoples from eastern and southern Europe, Asia, Mexico, south America, the freeing of the African American, the entrance of women into the workplace have all made huge marks on American history. Technology includes everything from the airplane to the smart phone. It includes the vast amounts of software feeding all the computing devices. It encompasses the digitizing of America and globe. It includesf the urbanization of America along the coasts. Think of the infinite learning curves to build something like this and get overwhelmed. A new world indeed!

Somewhere between the huge growth of governance and the promiscuous freedoms of the American citizen, something happens. It implies the moralization of being a liberal, democratic citizen and that envariably translates into politics, if not domestic and foreign policy.

April 12, 2021

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PROBLEMS

If we take on all the problems of the world where do we end up, outside of a disgust for what we've become? The immense feeling of impotence drives people all kinds of directions, a few of them beneficial. After all, every man and woman is an ambition of one sort or another. Perhaps it is to be President, perhaps to be the greatest dog trainer in history. Some, however, can hardly breathe with the knowledge of the "existential" problems like nuclear weapons and climate change. Eventually, the raw conscience can't bear up and it closes. Many find it's sufficient to take care of the neighborhood and family and have a half-decent relation to the larger political actors who present themselves as "problem-solvers".

How can one man or woman take on all the problems? It's a dilemma in a democracy where the putative democratic people are responsible for "everything." I remember a journalism professor who had been a bureau chief in Moscow for a national news publication. He could read Russian and would bring in the latest edition of Pravda and read it to the class. "They have a belief in Russia. If you are a farmer all you need to know is the news that will make you a decent farmer. Why would you need to know about foreign policy?"

What do we think when we see the national government pour billions of dollars into a problem but the problem not being solved or, in fact, getting worse? This is a tenuous state for affluent, liberal democracies because then conscience has to come up with reasons why it no longer needs to care for all the problems. "It is all capitalism's fault." "It is the Republicans fault." "It's the male dominated world's fault." "It's overpopulation's fault." "It's the corruption of the poor nation's fault."

And on and on it goes.

All it takes is a few to agree with your reason and a successful block is placed between the democratic citizen and his need to discover his own effectiveness.

The normal citizen is tasked with taking care of his own self-interest first. That has to be established before he gets some added concerns. The culture is aware of that and why so much is invested in young idealism before that same self-interest kicks in. The young are congratulated, touted, celebrated for this fact but soon enough their idealism is resisted. In the end that pure idealism is only conserved in self-conscious communities that agree to the same idealism as in communal or utopian societies. It's a sad fact perhaps but, then again, that small window of idealism opens up to possiblilites that can become an aspect of the future. And if you live long enough you see this.

Idealism or no, I do know the humiliations of having little capital in a capitalist society. That is one of the first resistances to meet the young idealist. I knew that as a young man, even as I struggled with the last throes of my idealism. I remember that as perhaps the most emotional demanding conflict I had in youth because I saw the end of things. I saw the beauty of things. And I saw the destruction of all things.

I did see capitalism as a stamp-press and running from its down-strike on the body and soul, offers nothing but suffering. I tried to escape it to find my true talents, to try and discover the natural self that is joyful and productive and creative. That was one of my struggles. But at this stage I'm not against capitalism because I know its destruction would create such chaos and fury as I wouldn't want to experience, loved ones experience or people generally experience. Still, I'm convinced that capitalism is dependent on ignorance to capture masses of people.

I am much more for liberal democratic values centered in Constitutional law. But there is part of me that remains aloof, loyal only to the creative project and the few who practice it. I could do that anywhere I suppose. Mars even. I am here though.

Here now, in a chaotic time internally, a turbulence for certain, I reiterate my love and belief in the two precepts I took from that impoverished nightmare in youth. "Self-rule" and "God is within you." However anonymous life can be I find Christ a true brother, a true and living spirit with tremendous strength. I found that in my mid 20's, I find that now. He does not lead into the cul de sac as so many ideas do but leads into the center of my truest self and expression. I am frailness compounded on frailness. I found it in all the spiritual teachings, most especially Buddhism and Lao Tze. It doesn't make me more or less politically conservative. It conserves the best in myself though, including what I think or know about "liberal democracy," a system built heavily on secular foundations.

Politically and culturally I look intimately at my experience in the local region. A "national" or "global" view I discovered, is so distorted that every falsehood, every crank opinion, every derangement is projected on the "view". There is very little credibility at that level. The northern half of California and west coast generally is sufficient for me. Equality, environmental husbundry, entrepreunship, "don't work for the man, be the man," and other attributes of the northern half of California help shape my "politics." But there are enough red necks and cranky rural folk around to learn patience and tolerance. Every point of view teaches something.

For Gods sake, America is a vastly privileged place. All the attention is put on its inadequacies but any nation that can support "fantasy football" is outrageously privileged. It reminds me of all the times foreign students told me to my face, "You guys don't know how good you have it here." And they said it with a tinge of disgust for how entitled we appear to be. It proved out one particular truth. "Freedom is real. It is not an abstraction. It must be lived forward, sometimes aggressively." If it wasn't privileged it would not have produced Gates or Jobs or any number of inventors. It wouldn't produce the privileged professors in privileged universities who spout obsolete utopias to seventeen year old coeds. People who condemn the US for being privileged are usually inexperienced neurotics of some sort, fearful of the solid nature of freedom and not aware of how easily it can be lost. Just take a ride around this culture. Make sure you ride a few of the busses in cities. And we discover that those without this privlidge are always in the process of enacting a freedom at whatever level it is available to them. The well-springs of this privilege is expressed through upward mobility. Therefore politics must concentrate and focus on the lack of upward mobility and its new opportunities, without destroying the ongoing privilege that is the United States. That means the creation of a new middle-class out of the populations that are stuck. It means a creative relation to politics.

That's the view from late middle-age. And it's easier said than done. It must be done if the liberal democracy means anything. Perhaps Biden's policies will work, let us hope so.

"Religion" was always a ticklish question for the literati for a variety of reasons, not the least of which they believed a social system could change to better human life, "...if only..." It was a youthful conflict in myself until I faced the existential threats to personhood as I did in my mid to late 20's. Then there is no greater discovery than the fact that the spiritual lives and provides the buoyancy that thought, itself, cannot bring. Christ and spiritual belief are slandered from one end to the other with the odd belief that "spiritual and religious energy" can be converted to secular problem-solving. Problems then, are reduced to "power" rather than "truth". But power itself is a kind of virus that is "forever." How can there be resolution and,g therefore, progress if all energy is directed to "power?"

But pursuing truth in a working democracy can be an excruciating experience. We want resolutions to conflicts, we want peace and tranquillity.And we have our spiritual prejudices. We believe, by the way, that the spiritual is that energy that can truthfully transcend the awful nature we inherit as human animals. A secular structure of power based on ambition and "correction" is adequate up to a certain point. There has to be resolution to the adequate satisfaction of the ambitious parties. If common sense rules that point can be reached. But when that breaks down then what? Angry words, deep frustrations, entrenched positions, a bit of violence, and continuation of the conflict until the combatants are dead or exhausted.

The framers were quite smart to separate the secular concerns from spiritual concerns but as the society has moved through time the "split" has become nearly absolute. I think the idea is to develop both sides; to "be in the world" yet "not of the world." That is the obligation of self-rule since we are conscious of what happens when there is no self-rule. More importantly, the freedom to do so is always there.

From a secular point of view a citizen should study all histories, all peoples in this country. You have to desire a full bodied, free liberal democratic citizen at the end of it that can pour his or her potential out into the larger culture. Full citizenship, full humanity, will come with full history. "History" not as a simple line from point A to point B. It includes all things made and done from all regions and all times.

What the majority can do is make space for the "other" to grow and develop and use his or her freedom in any way the imagination and intelligence dictates. You won't break down a lot of tribalism until that happens.

March 13, 2021

* * * * * * * *

CHALLENGES

A culture that takes on challenging goals survives with health intact. I feel that is the case. I am much more for the goal, for instance, of eliminating fossil fuels, changing up on the energy system that I am convinced damages human society. Not taking on that goal is an admission that our society is beyond hope and will simply run the line out in its run as a successful Republic, living in the Present, and that will be that.

The challenge has been taken up though because the democracy lives in the people. That's where the healthy will of the liberal democratic citizen lives. It's not by burying its head in the sand, pointing its ass in the air and then demanding that everyone kiss that ass.

The first challenge is to know the society itself, especially the systems that run through it. If you are ignorant of the society or dismiss it with contempt your chances of making an impact in a liberal democracy is nil and you will have to leap into a totalitarian cult of some sort to effect the change you want. It is a challenge to understand the society fully and completely both as an experience and as ideas.

The second challenge is to know what makes for an integral human being who can function as a free, liberal democratic citizen without fear and without hate.

January 17, 2021
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