idiots

This is what Gen. John P. Abizaid, the senior United States commander in the Middle East, has to say about the "terrorist" (read oil) wars there: More troops will not solve the problem, but only increase it..."I think our structures for 21st-century security challenges need to adapt to this type of an enemy...The 21st century really requires that we figure out how to get economic, diplomatic, political and military elements of power synchronized and coordinated against specific problems wherever they exist.”

The same NY Times front page has Bush once again foaming at the mouth about increasing the number of troops in the U.S. military, and a number of quotes from other high power idiots insisting on sending more American troops over. This list includes "responsible" Democratic leaders. All in the confort of their offices, or some other site where these creeps spend their time talking to "journalists"...meanwhile, the poor, misguided men and woman already over in that hell continue to be killed (or to go on savage killing and/or torture binges that further engulf the image and reputation of the U.S. in deep and lasting disgrace)...

Idiots.

Hay que joderse.

reflections on a grey day

A great chasm, a profound emptiness resides within each one of us. It is an unfathomable void that must be addressed in some way. The one truly universal challenge we all must face – the creation of ourselves. Yet authentically facing up to this fearful task seems to lie beyond our capacities. It produces dread, fear, angst and severe insecurity – all of which must be overcome in some way in order to function in this life.

How we cope with this task is the great determiner of our personality, of who we are. The huge majority among us are led away from our true condition by early childhood socialization and education. We are taught roles; we are shown the molds within which we must operate. The world around us is defined according to the particular social environment we live in. We are offered the relatively easy escape of simply connecting the dots of a life that has been pre-drawn for us. We come to accept simplified codes of behavior, all clearly defined. We identify ourselves within the matrix of these codes. We are a son, a daughter, a student, a high achiever, a hard worker, a boyfriend or girlfriend, a father or mother, an employee, an American or Spaniard or Russian or Chinese…a Christian or Muslim or Jew or Hindu, a citizen, a consumer or person of business. All of these roles fill the chasm, or at least construct an internal edifice that serves to block it out of consciousness.

All of these roles, of course, require a kind of faith, an unquestioned acceptance of the qualities and characteristics of each particular role. Opening them to question not only undermines their psychological and social value, but can also seriously threaten the security of others employing the same roles if such open reflection is externalized.

Thus do the great majority of us avoid authentically confronting our greatest challenge as conscious beings. And thus does the mass of humanity continue blinding itself to our one truly universal condition – thereby creating divisions, clashes, fear and distrust of the other, hatred, war…

broken bread 

Love

I must admit to having become quite uncomfortable with the word "love".

I know...that sounds terrible.

This is not some sort of bitter response to love sickness, rejection or heartache. As in, "I'll never fall in love again", or some such thing.

This is simply a product of experience and reflection.

Romantic love...ahh!...that devious manipulator of the will, so skillful at cloaking the effects of boiling hormones into poetry...

...clearly, this kind of "love" is much closer to hatred than any kind of "friendship".

In fact, "love" does not reside in the same house as friendship...unless we re-define the word into something along the lines of "very close friendship"...which, in the end, is "friendship", not heart-bedecked "love"...

Then we have the purveyors of various faiths equating their respective gods with "love"...or shall we write "Love"...as in "God is Love"...

That certainly sounds innocent enough...unless we commit the phrase to the most rudimentary analysis (omniscient, omnipotent God coexisting with untold evil, suffering, misery, injustice, etc., etc.) = "Love"...yikes!!...someone, save me from such "Love".

I recently had to sit through the oration of an Archbishop. Our gospel choir (a quite secular routine, believe me) was invited to sing during the mass at a seminary, and I foolishly agreed. We were placed up front with the Archbishop and what seemed like an army of priests (my grandfather would be spinning in his grave), so I had to sit there expressionless as we listened to this man - whose hateful politics label anyone who doesn't "love" the way he and his cohorts in the Vatican have currently defined as acceptable as "unnatural" and wrong...even sick - go on about "Love". Lots of incense, lots of low humming harmonies from the priests...and nothing whatsoever showing that this man knows anything about the real life that goes on around him. His kind of "Love", and that of Christians in general, somehow fits with hatred of the other, harsh judgments, perverse visions of hell for all those who do not follow the line (virtually everyone, in their private life), not to mention war, murder, torture, etc. etc.

I'll pass on their kind of "Love", thank you.

As I will on the more secular, but no less socially problematic kind of "love" - that exercise in unabashed selfishness directed at the heart and soul of another person.

Telling the World

People have been getting on me for not writing more entries here.

Evidently, once you set up a blog, you have to keep filling it with some sort of text on a consistent basis, whether or not you actually have something remotely worthy to say.

Hmmm. I have sinned. Not having anything of particular interest to add here, I haven't added a post for many moons. I suppose I could have. I mean, as always, there's plenty to rage about. Yet I prefer to have some kind of particular angle on a subject before setting forth to tap tap tap the keyboard.

So what's today's particular angle? Let's see...

I love today's headlines concerning the Republican party's strong defence of its Halliburton mafia benefactors. I enjoy giggling when I encounter some fool still going on about something called "moral values" that supposedly led minions of blithering idiots to vote for these banally evil shitheads. Moral values. Yep. Support our soldiers as they torture, kidnap, and enter into what are most likely daily exercises in war crimes in their good work as defenders of whateverthefuckit is they are "defending".

This cannot be stressed too strongly, nor repeated too many times: in the name of all Americans, people are TORTURING, KIDNAPPING AND DISAPPEARING PEOPLE, AND COMMITTING MASSACRES OF INNOCENT PEOPLE ON A REGULAR BASIS (this last according to the poor fucker who is currently leading the Iraqi "government"). This has been going on for long enough. There is simply no legitimate way that Americans can claim any kind of moral or ethical superiority over their "foes". And that, my friends, is more important than you think.

On teachers and students

I recently received a letter from an old student of mine. She was in one of my philosophy classes some 16 years ago. Over that time, she has advanced far in her university studies, and is now herself a professor of legal philosophy in Brazil. Heartening news to receive.

Some of her words are well worth repeating here in terms of the degradation of the U.S. as an example for the world. I quote:

“The political situation in Brazil is in fact very interesting but also full of tensions and contradictions. At the same time that democratic forces are taking root and causing many changes, we still have a very strong authoritarian tradition that emerges even among these such called democrats. Fortunately, this is not as frightening as what is
happening in the US today, something that is very bad in many ways for Latin America. Here in Brazil, for example, constitutional law has for a long time looked up to constitutional law in the US, at the US Supreme Court. But now we are like orphans, because all constitutional parameters, even in the Supreme Court, have been shaken. In a different way, though, this is very good because at least some people will understand that we must not look up to any "fathers" but rather try to construct something of our own.”

I am particularly impressed with her last words. Indeed, this is happening all over the world. Those seeking to improve upon democratic structures no longer look to the United States as models…and that’s just fine.

Perhaps, at some point, in a near or far future when decent, thinking North Americans once again assume political power, they will be able to look upon all of this work in order to improve upon their own model. In the end, that’s the way it should be. No country as the “political leader”. No “political heroes.” Just humanity looking to create an ever more just, open, tolerant, mature and thriving world.

Morbid fascination vs. sexual enlightenment

Not long ago I saw a bioflic covering the life of Alfred Kinsey. It’s a well-done, if perhaps romanticized treatment of the life and work of this amazing biologist from the last century. Amazing because he so clearly transcended the dictates of fear and superstition, ignorance and social pathology in attempting to place human sexuality under scientific scrutiny. The film covered the inevitable reactions to Kinsey’s work, his difficulty in obtaining funding, the mad-dog criticisms, the mass-denial. But in the end we are left with hope that objectivity and science can triumph over unquestioned taboo and ignorance.

Hell no. Half a century later, a Google-search of Kinsey turns up a host of sites dedicated to criticizing and disproving his research and conclusions…frenzied, foaming-at-the-mouth denunciations of this supposed “pervert” (that’s always a great word – pervert…one immediately imagines drooling old men lewdly contemplating innocent children). In short, nothing has changed. Human sexuality continues to elude the application of common sense and practicality. The great majority continue to squirm at the mere mention of something sexual. Mass spasms of social unrest are set off because a woman’s breast is mistakenly uncovered during a televised football game. Homophobia wins another election for what is clearly the worst administration in U.S. history. The clearly demented Catholic church hierarchy perform witch-hunts for homosexuals. That same institution continues to demand of its misguided flock that it avoid the use of birth-control (thus directly contributing to the deaths of millions by AIDS). One of the most (supposedly) advanced countries on earth defines sex-education as abstinence-education. Abstinence. HA!

What did Kinsey do to stir up such nervousness? He simply found a way to get hundreds of thousands of people to talk frankly about their actual sexual practices, and compiled the results. You see, what they are ridiculously calling “moral values” strictly prohibits such a thing. It is much more “moral” to simply ignore what is most likely the strongest natural influence on our behavior. This way, reality can have no effect on the notion that all “normal” people are heterosexual individuals who never masturbate and have sex (which is strictly limited to coitus, of course) only for procreative purposes. All of this in line with what the Christionists believe is their god’s stern rejection of sexuality.

Of course, keeping such a liberating force as sexuality under wraps is quite useful for social control (see Foucault). Yet we cannot blame the long-lasting mass hysteria about sexuality on some explicit conspiracy of the elite (an elite, mind you, which throughout the ages has never, in any place followed the horrendous dictates of sexual repression). No, there is something about sex-phobia that sells – the great, quite heavily-tapped market that appeals to morbid fascination. Fact – people like sex, in all its many creative forms. And I would venture to say that this applies to the overwhelming majority. Yet complete sexual freedom tends to remove the morbid fascination from it…leaving only the healthy experience.

I believe that reality-based sexual freedom (meaning an open acknowledgement of what people actually do, along with the acceptance of any non-damaging, consensual sexual practice that is non-manipulative) would in time lead to the disappearance of pornography, prostitution and other such manifestations of the “morbid fascination” market, along with a tremendous reduction in rape and sexual violence in general. It would also greatly reduce the terrible suffering inflicted on so many hundreds of millions today and throughout history, people who have been made to hate themselves because of their natural desires.

BUT OH NO! We can’t have that. Nope. Not with the “moral values” set continuing to impose their pathological squirmishness on the rest of the world. ¡Hay que joderse!

Wake Up?

I see where they are referring to the latest swell in fundamentalist religiosity (read: mass, fear-based fallback into escapist, hypocritical, hatred-of-the-other superstition) since the 70's in the States as the "Third Great Awakening". Huh? Since when does "awaken" apply to self-immolation into irrational, mass hypnosis? The kind of twisted stop-think that has millions of poor souls politically supporting people in power whose policies work directly against the very interests of those millions..."Awakening"...¡Hay que joderse!

Speaking of irrationality and thought systems that work against the very self-interest of those who partake in them..Yesterday, Islamic militants blow up an important Islamic shrine (according to news accounts, anyway). Does this spark any mass protests (apart from those particular Muslims whose shrine was destroyed)? Of course not. Do repeated reports of barbaric treatment of prisoners, mass civilian deaths as the result of wars of aggression, ad nauseum spark such rabid mass protests? Not really. But badly drawn, unfunny cartoons poking fun at yet another sky-god...why, time to scream bloody murder!

Pathetic.

Just pathetic.

Now, whose interests, praytell, do such manifestations serve? Why, the "clash of civilizations" set, that's who. You know, those "intellectuals" enlisted in the newest great crusade, either directly or indirectly serving the arms industry, along with the energy mafia it is really meant to protect, and the financial-shenanigans industry it has likewise spawned.

Clash of civilizations...break out the bullshit dectector, folks! There is a clash, but it's not between the "Muslim" and "Judeo-Christian" worlds. Within all of those parts of the world, there are secularists,atheists, folks with faintly religious leanings, the devout, and fundamentalists. There are those who want more, and those who settle for less. There are the powerful and the not-so-powerful. There are shitheads and good folks. The clash, in the end, is between decent people with their values grounded in experience, history and collective human knowledge. The tolerant. The live-and-let-live. And those who stimulate and stir up tribalism, hatred of the other, infantile patriotism, irrationality and fear in the service of their own ill-gotten power...and those who would allow themselves to be led in such a way. To use older terminology - the fascists versus the anti-fascists...

That's today's real clash...

Hmmm...

So Bush mentions in his "State of the Union" speech that the U.S. must reduce its dependence on Middle Eastern oil...huh? How, praytell? Through the use of alternative fuels, renewable resources, mandating auto manufacturers to produce more fuel-efficient vehicles? Cmon!
No...that's certainly not it.

I've been scanning the press, and no one seems to have made the connection...where get the oil? Why, closer to home, that's where. And where might closer to home be? Well, Canada and Mexico are both major oil exporters to the States...but the real motherlode happens to be in Venezuela...

Right...subtle hints at where the next war is to be fought.

Mark my words.