I like these sampler sites, you get to listen to lots of things by writers you'd never hear otherwise and if it's not great, it's over in less than twenty minutes. None of it commercials.
"It seems to me that to organize on the basis of feeding people or righting social injustice and all that is very valuable. But to rally people around the idea of modernism, modernity, or something is simply silly. I mean, I don't know what kind of a cause that is, to be up to date. I think it ultimately leads to fashion and snobbery and I'm against it." Jack Levine: January 3, 1915 – November 8, 2010 LEVEL BILLIONAIRES OUT OF EXISTENCE
Saturday, July 27, 2019
Saturday Night Radio Drama - New Shorts from Radio New Zealand
Another week where I'm posting a link to a series of short plays instead of a single drama. Been too much weeding for me to look for a full length play.
Someone just accused me of being a
Philistine
nounDefinition of Philistine
(Entry 1 of 2)
2
often not capitalized
a
: a person who is guided by materialism and is usually disdainful of intellectual or artistic values
b
: one uninformed in a special area of knowledge
It's Mirriam Webster online. The word doesn't mean what the putz thinks it means, which is no surprise be cause he is guided by materialism and is always disdainful of intellectual and artistic values and is uninformed in EVERY area of knowledge.
I wish I had a dollar for every time someone with a kolleg edukation uses a two-dollar word wrong.
It's Mirriam Webster online. The word doesn't mean what the putz thinks it means, which is no surprise be cause he is guided by materialism and is always disdainful of intellectual and artistic values and is uninformed in EVERY area of knowledge.
I wish I had a dollar for every time someone with a kolleg edukation uses a two-dollar word wrong.
Hate Mail
Darwin famously, or perhaps not famously enough said
With me, the horrid doubt always arises whether the convictions of man's mind, which has been developed from the mind of the lower animals, are of any value or at all trustworthy. Would any one trust in the convictions of a monkey's mind, if there are any convictions in such a mind?*
Which debunking would apply to all areas of human thought, science, mathematics, even logic. While I don't buy all of his conclusions or even all of his methods,** Alvin Plantinga has made a good argument in this area giving the atheist-materialist-"naturalist" a choice, either they can believe in natural selection, with all of the usefulness that theory has been for the promotion of atheism or they can have the very mental faculties they constructed natural selection with and including LITERALLY EVERY OTHER PART OF HUMAN CULTURE, what they like as well as what they don't like, which natural selection, like all materialist-atheist theory seems, rather quickly, to undercut and erode.
Atheism is, at its core, a destructive ideological preference, it is based in denying possibilities, denying the capacity of people who believe what they don't like to possibly be right. It is not constructive. Materialism can only be true if it is false. A culture of materialism cannot but erode the felt necessity to tell the truth, it is destructive of the founding truths of traditional American democracy, even the truncated list given by Jefferson in the Declaration of Independence.
* I have a far higher view of animal minds than Darwin did or is typical of conventional Darwinists. I don't, though, believe such minds are a product of natural selection, I think natural selection is a class-based delusion which will, eventually, be set aside as not very helpful for the understanding of evolution. It has certainly had disastrous consequences for the human species through eugenics and an enhanced form of scientific racism, sexism and class inequality.
** One thing I've heard Plantinga say that I don't agree with is that a theorized belief that could "succeed" in producing more offspring, which is the only thing that natural selection deals with, has a 50-50 chance of being true or false. I think it has a far higher chance of being false than true because truth has a far narrower scope of possible form than those many ways in which an idea can be false. Somewhere I read someone point out that Mormonism in all of its bizarre, ahistorical, con-man created nonsense encourages Mormons to reproduce at a far higher than average rate. In terms of natural selection their false beliefs are wildly successful, no matter how false they are.
With me, the horrid doubt always arises whether the convictions of man's mind, which has been developed from the mind of the lower animals, are of any value or at all trustworthy. Would any one trust in the convictions of a monkey's mind, if there are any convictions in such a mind?*
Which debunking would apply to all areas of human thought, science, mathematics, even logic. While I don't buy all of his conclusions or even all of his methods,** Alvin Plantinga has made a good argument in this area giving the atheist-materialist-"naturalist" a choice, either they can believe in natural selection, with all of the usefulness that theory has been for the promotion of atheism or they can have the very mental faculties they constructed natural selection with and including LITERALLY EVERY OTHER PART OF HUMAN CULTURE, what they like as well as what they don't like, which natural selection, like all materialist-atheist theory seems, rather quickly, to undercut and erode.
Atheism is, at its core, a destructive ideological preference, it is based in denying possibilities, denying the capacity of people who believe what they don't like to possibly be right. It is not constructive. Materialism can only be true if it is false. A culture of materialism cannot but erode the felt necessity to tell the truth, it is destructive of the founding truths of traditional American democracy, even the truncated list given by Jefferson in the Declaration of Independence.
* I have a far higher view of animal minds than Darwin did or is typical of conventional Darwinists. I don't, though, believe such minds are a product of natural selection, I think natural selection is a class-based delusion which will, eventually, be set aside as not very helpful for the understanding of evolution. It has certainly had disastrous consequences for the human species through eugenics and an enhanced form of scientific racism, sexism and class inequality.
** One thing I've heard Plantinga say that I don't agree with is that a theorized belief that could "succeed" in producing more offspring, which is the only thing that natural selection deals with, has a 50-50 chance of being true or false. I think it has a far higher chance of being false than true because truth has a far narrower scope of possible form than those many ways in which an idea can be false. Somewhere I read someone point out that Mormonism in all of its bizarre, ahistorical, con-man created nonsense encourages Mormons to reproduce at a far higher than average rate. In terms of natural selection their false beliefs are wildly successful, no matter how false they are.
Friday, July 26, 2019
On Being Asked To Comment About Gw P
I couldn't pick her out of a lineup of one but from what I'm reading about her, not having ever seen Gwynneth Paltrow may be one of the benefits of having stopped watching movies in the 1980s, give or take a few I've seen while visiting people who were watching them. Those, for the most part have made me glad I don't much bother with them, either. They suck.
It would shock some people how much I don't miss the movies.
It would shock some people how much I don't miss the movies.
Robin Eubanks and EB3 - Pentacourse
Kenwood Dennard, Drums bass keyboard
Robin Eubanks, Trombone, bass keyboard
Keyboards, Orrin Evans, bass keyboard
This is one of my favorite groups who produced one of my favorite albums, this is one of my favorite pieces from them. Fascinating rhythm way beyond anything Gershwin thought of. It's been going through my head all day.
You Won't Fix The United States Without Overhauling The Constitution, We Aren't Even Discussing How We Really Got Ratfucked
Well, I'm not of
high enough character that I won't crow about predicting how the
Mueller hearings would go, that Mueller like a good boy-scout would
follow the rules set up by his good buddy William Barr, rules made to
impede his testimony before the House Judiciary and Intelligence
Committees from holding Trump's treason, the treason of his corrupt
regime accountable, to prevent the prevention of the repetition of those crimes
committed with billionaire criminals foreign and domestic. The
myth of Mueller rang hollower than the thud of a broken bell, even
with the excellent preparation and questioning of the House Democrats
in those hearings. In the habits of superficiality cultivated by too
many hours of being entertained - the practical formation of the
minds and character of all too many of even liberal Americans - his
studied dullness of presentation is what seems to have made the
biggest impression, not the masterful questioning by the Democratic
members of the two committees.
Anyone who wasn't
favorably impressed with the questioning of them, the discipline and
organization of the questioning, especially by the Judiciary
Committee members, who Mueller obviously was less cooperate with, is
either too stupid to have an opinion worth listening to or they're
corrupt, themselves. That would constitute a majority of the
official "left" which is to say the secular-"left"
so bereft of seriousness or moral purpose as the secular left seems
to inevitably devolve into. In the absence of moral purpose instant
gratification and entertainment are substituted for keeping your eyes
on the necessary end of things. That "left" works best as
a tool for the right because they inevitably promote giving up and
cynical stalling at the start and aren't really good for much else.
I've decided to go
back to the project I started last year but which stalled out of
typing out and commenting on the great abolitionist Wendell Phillips'
book detailing the slave-holder corruptions built into the United
States Constitution, The Constitution A Pro-Slavery Compact: or
Extracts From the Madison Papers, etc. Selected By Wendell Phillips
The things discovered by Phillips in the then newly published papers
of James Madison and others, some of them explicitly stating their
motives in setting things up favoring inequality, slavery, the
protection of slavery even against the will of the majority of voters
in the United States are as relevant today as they were then. The
mechanisms of corruption by the Supreme Court today and over the past
two centuries, the corruptions of the Electoral College which has
given us two losers of elections as president since the start of this
century, alone, every mechanism of corruption up to and including the
Senate refusing to protect the 2020 election from the manipulations
of the gangster-dictator of Russia! are included in the Constitution,
put their by slave holders with the overt intent of furthering
inequality which benefited them and their heirs, of thwarting
equality and rule by the majority of Americans. There are later
corruptions introduced by the Supreme Court which are as relevant,
the Sullivan Decision, Buckley v. Valeo, Citizens United, etc. but
they found their excuses to enable lying and the financial corruption
of our elections system in the language of that original Constitution
set up to thwart democracy and self-government by an adequately
informed people of good will.
I have come to see
that a lot of our assumptions and habits of thought about such things
are destructive of even our nobler aspirations. The criticism I've
made of free speech absolutism has scandalized many liberals even as
they decry the lies empowered by their faith in empowering liars to
lie. It clearly takes a lot to overcome even such self-contradictory
habits of belief, slogans that hamper observation or even drawing
logical conclusions such as when FOX is able to sell lies constructed
for easy sale with impunity, their audience will act on those lies
and give us a series of the worst administrations and Congresses in
our history. That is a direct consequence of the Warren Court
started chain of "free speech" rulings that permitted the
media to lie in their own interest with impunity. That, of course,
would have not been nearly as developed in Wendell Phillips time,
even mass distribution newspapers and magazines being a future
development. Still, I think until we take what he discovered
seriously for today, until we start to develop habits of deep
self-questioning and critical thinking about our assumptions and most
cherished slogans, things will only get worse. What we can do about
the daddy-issues reliance on saviors as unlikely as the romanticized
Robert Mueller, as sold in the MSNBC liberal ghetto hours of our
media, I'd suggest repeating the mantra "movies aren't real"
might help a bit with that. "Aaron Sorkin is a putz,"
might help, too.
Goddamned Blogger's Acting Up
I don't know what the hell is up with the html of my morning post, I'll type the whole damned thing out again later. Until then, here's the introduction to Wendell Phillip's book discussed in it.
Thursday, July 25, 2019
Quick, Almost Random Thoughts On The Mueller Show.
The expectations that Robert Mueller was going to put the case for impeachment over the top, or even that he was just going to kick-start it was ridiculously unrealistic. The common as dirt movie plot gimmick of the savior daddy figure has made even educated people extremely unrealistic, that unrealism is ubiquitous, apparently.
The very things that made Mueller's reputation, of being a well-functioning cog in the machine of the legal establishment is what makes him unwilling to go beyond the specifications of his functioning to keep it from driving off a cliff. For crying out loud, he was OK enough with the oozing sleaze and manipulation of the law of his friend William Barr whose known history has been as an engine of Republican-fascist corruption and criminality, no doubt if pressed to give an answer Mueller would come up with some legalistic - bureaucratic babble to excuse Barr's conduct.
Well, I've been warning you for a time about that kind of annoyingly respectable boy-scouting based on following rules to the letter, it's been obvious for a long, long time that the rules as written, and as corruptly interpreted by courts and lawyers who figure their job is to find ways to do as much bad as you can while not technically breaking the law as written are what brought us here. All human made systems are imperfect, even with the best of intentions, such legal types are trained in finding out how to not only break but to smash the clear moral intent of the law in order to allow those able to do what they want to. Or who have the money to hire those who will do it for them. There's a reason that Trump's lawyer Michael Cohen is in prison for doing things that Trump ended up in the White House, ordering him to do them.
The system as it is got us to this, the law as interpreted down the centuries by that engine of such legalistic loophole finding and expanding and cutting through to allow worse, the Supreme Court, other courts, is not what's going to save us. A master of it - which I don't think Robert Muller is, though he is a student of the masters - is not going to admit that the system, itself, is inadequate to protect egalitarian democracy.
---------------------------
My biggest annoyance in this is that the media, from top to twitter level, is putting the blame for Trump still being in office IN EXACTLY THE WRONG PLACE. It isn't House Democrat's fault that Trump was put there, it isn't their fault that it is next to impossible for them, in their position in the Constitutional system UNDER REAL LIFE CONDITIONS, to get him out of there no matter how obvious his criminality, no matter how obvious his dangerous unfitness for the position that Republican voters put him into.
The carping at Democrats in the House when it is Republicans in the House and the Senate and in the media and who vote in elections who gave us Trump is symptomatic of the even bigger defect in American democracy, the corrupted electorate. Since it is the media that has lied and corrupted the morals of enough Americans to produce presidencies by a series of corrupt, criminal Republican administration and two completely illegitimate regimes put into office by minority vote, for them to blame Democrats is just them continuing their practices that got us here.
In the end Trump is in office, placed there, maintained there by the electorate, by the effectively managed parts of the electorate that produced Republican majorities in the Senate, large enough margins of Republicans who will never vote to impeach and remove Trump from office - we have never had a Republican minority large enough to remove a Republican criminal from the presidency, the one chance that might have happened, Nixon, is unknown because it was not tested. It is just possible there were enough semi-honest Republicans in 1974 to have removed him from office, though it is just as possible that that would have failed. We like to imagine it would have happened, then, it is sheer delusion for anyone to think it would have happened in any of the forty-five years after that AND TODAY'S REPUBLICAN PARTY IS THE MOST CORRUPT IT HAS BEEN AT ANY TIME IN THE COUNTRIES EXISTENCE, EVEN THE MOST CORRUPT CONGRESSES AND SENATES OF THE 19TH CENTURY CAN'T SURPASS IT IN CORRUPTION.
The demand that the Democrats in the House do what can't be done because of Republicans is, itself, a demonstration of unreality, exactly the kind of unreality that got us here. It is a product of most peoples' civics education coming from Hollywood, from entertainment that isn't required to give us an image of reality. The late night comedians*, even those who do a good job, aren't likely to tell you the truth about that, they're as part of their system as Robert Mueller is. That they are frequently the foremost truth tellers in 2019, Trump ridden America is a demonstration of the problems we have gotten into.
The Hebrew prophets describing the corruption of ancient Israel have a lot to teach us about what got us here. Their descriptions of corrupted People and the governments that inevitably arise when People are led astray and the wide ranging consequences are going to tell you more than even Stephen Colbert and Samantha Bee will, and Colbert and Bee will tell you more than anyone in the journalistic side of things. Much as I like her work most times, Rachel Maddow, one of if not the smartest of them was holding the torch for Mueller so long that I think she must have felt it burn her hand yesterday.
We are in a mess that the habits and traditional mechanisms of American democracy won't get us out of, it is what was manipulated to get us here. The media that lied to us and corrupted us by selling us what we most wanted instead of what we most needed, scientifically taking advantage of our strongest weakenesses was how we were corrupted. TV, other media are the vehicles that drove us over the cliff, the fantasy cop-daddy figure of Robert Mueller isn't going to save us. I don't think he would be willing to break the rules to do it. He will not be blamed for the systematic inadequacies that created this catastrophe.
The very things that made Mueller's reputation, of being a well-functioning cog in the machine of the legal establishment is what makes him unwilling to go beyond the specifications of his functioning to keep it from driving off a cliff. For crying out loud, he was OK enough with the oozing sleaze and manipulation of the law of his friend William Barr whose known history has been as an engine of Republican-fascist corruption and criminality, no doubt if pressed to give an answer Mueller would come up with some legalistic - bureaucratic babble to excuse Barr's conduct.
Well, I've been warning you for a time about that kind of annoyingly respectable boy-scouting based on following rules to the letter, it's been obvious for a long, long time that the rules as written, and as corruptly interpreted by courts and lawyers who figure their job is to find ways to do as much bad as you can while not technically breaking the law as written are what brought us here. All human made systems are imperfect, even with the best of intentions, such legal types are trained in finding out how to not only break but to smash the clear moral intent of the law in order to allow those able to do what they want to. Or who have the money to hire those who will do it for them. There's a reason that Trump's lawyer Michael Cohen is in prison for doing things that Trump ended up in the White House, ordering him to do them.
The system as it is got us to this, the law as interpreted down the centuries by that engine of such legalistic loophole finding and expanding and cutting through to allow worse, the Supreme Court, other courts, is not what's going to save us. A master of it - which I don't think Robert Muller is, though he is a student of the masters - is not going to admit that the system, itself, is inadequate to protect egalitarian democracy.
---------------------------
My biggest annoyance in this is that the media, from top to twitter level, is putting the blame for Trump still being in office IN EXACTLY THE WRONG PLACE. It isn't House Democrat's fault that Trump was put there, it isn't their fault that it is next to impossible for them, in their position in the Constitutional system UNDER REAL LIFE CONDITIONS, to get him out of there no matter how obvious his criminality, no matter how obvious his dangerous unfitness for the position that Republican voters put him into.
The carping at Democrats in the House when it is Republicans in the House and the Senate and in the media and who vote in elections who gave us Trump is symptomatic of the even bigger defect in American democracy, the corrupted electorate. Since it is the media that has lied and corrupted the morals of enough Americans to produce presidencies by a series of corrupt, criminal Republican administration and two completely illegitimate regimes put into office by minority vote, for them to blame Democrats is just them continuing their practices that got us here.
In the end Trump is in office, placed there, maintained there by the electorate, by the effectively managed parts of the electorate that produced Republican majorities in the Senate, large enough margins of Republicans who will never vote to impeach and remove Trump from office - we have never had a Republican minority large enough to remove a Republican criminal from the presidency, the one chance that might have happened, Nixon, is unknown because it was not tested. It is just possible there were enough semi-honest Republicans in 1974 to have removed him from office, though it is just as possible that that would have failed. We like to imagine it would have happened, then, it is sheer delusion for anyone to think it would have happened in any of the forty-five years after that AND TODAY'S REPUBLICAN PARTY IS THE MOST CORRUPT IT HAS BEEN AT ANY TIME IN THE COUNTRIES EXISTENCE, EVEN THE MOST CORRUPT CONGRESSES AND SENATES OF THE 19TH CENTURY CAN'T SURPASS IT IN CORRUPTION.
The demand that the Democrats in the House do what can't be done because of Republicans is, itself, a demonstration of unreality, exactly the kind of unreality that got us here. It is a product of most peoples' civics education coming from Hollywood, from entertainment that isn't required to give us an image of reality. The late night comedians*, even those who do a good job, aren't likely to tell you the truth about that, they're as part of their system as Robert Mueller is. That they are frequently the foremost truth tellers in 2019, Trump ridden America is a demonstration of the problems we have gotten into.
The Hebrew prophets describing the corruption of ancient Israel have a lot to teach us about what got us here. Their descriptions of corrupted People and the governments that inevitably arise when People are led astray and the wide ranging consequences are going to tell you more than even Stephen Colbert and Samantha Bee will, and Colbert and Bee will tell you more than anyone in the journalistic side of things. Much as I like her work most times, Rachel Maddow, one of if not the smartest of them was holding the torch for Mueller so long that I think she must have felt it burn her hand yesterday.
We are in a mess that the habits and traditional mechanisms of American democracy won't get us out of, it is what was manipulated to get us here. The media that lied to us and corrupted us by selling us what we most wanted instead of what we most needed, scientifically taking advantage of our strongest weakenesses was how we were corrupted. TV, other media are the vehicles that drove us over the cliff, the fantasy cop-daddy figure of Robert Mueller isn't going to save us. I don't think he would be willing to break the rules to do it. He will not be blamed for the systematic inadequacies that created this catastrophe.
Wednesday, July 24, 2019
Brought Up Like The Dog Ate Trash
Duncan Black is your typical play-lefty who knows that all he has to do to get his stable of play-mates going is to diss Democrats. I've been listening to the Mueller testimony and I think the Democrats are clearly and obviously very well prepared, their questioning is clearly organized to follow narratives of obstruction of justice in order, both within and among Democratic Representatives AND THEY ARE DEALING MASTERFULLY WITH THE PREDICTABLE HOSTILITY MUELLER HAS TO ANSWER QUESTIONS.
Given the nature of Eschaton, a rump of remaining whiny crybabies led by a lazy play-lefty who isn't even much interested in going through the motions anymore, for them to be slamming the House Judiciary Committee Democrats in this hearing is laughable. I wouldn't even bother with this if it wasn't typical of that kind of play-lefty idiocy. I increasingly find I don't bother with them anymore. I don't think I'll bother listening to Sam Seder or his buddies on this hearing, I certainly won't be listening to Cenk (once and future Republican) on it. I wouldn't be surprised if by the time he's 60 Duncan is voting Republican.
If you like me doing this, go on showing me what he's posted. I'm not especially interested.
Given the nature of Eschaton, a rump of remaining whiny crybabies led by a lazy play-lefty who isn't even much interested in going through the motions anymore, for them to be slamming the House Judiciary Committee Democrats in this hearing is laughable. I wouldn't even bother with this if it wasn't typical of that kind of play-lefty idiocy. I increasingly find I don't bother with them anymore. I don't think I'll bother listening to Sam Seder or his buddies on this hearing, I certainly won't be listening to Cenk (once and future Republican) on it. I wouldn't be surprised if by the time he's 60 Duncan is voting Republican.
If you like me doing this, go on showing me what he's posted. I'm not especially interested.
As Muller Talks
I think Robert Mueller just announced he's going to be part of his buddy William Barr's obstruction. He's a Republican hack, he's not going to do anything to help the House investigation.
Update: If he stands behind his report, why isn't he willing to say what it says in his report? I think the Democrats have prepared for the expected refusal of Mueller to say much of anything other than "what it says in the report". I don't think he's going to provide much useful to them. So far it doesn't even seem as if he's going to admit that while he didn't find enough evidence of Trump-Putin cooperation to bring an indictment that for an American president OR PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE ANY INVOLVEMENT WITH FOREIGN DICTATORS IS UNACCEPTABLE. Though, clearly, from the Republicans' behavior, they're not much bothered by there being some level of collusion between a Republican-fascist and the dictator of Russia. Why should they? They've managed the sale of the country to domestic gangsters for decades, both in the elected branches and on the Court. That's the party Mueller was a part of for decades into that sell out.
Update 2: What the hell? He won't even say that if McGahn lied to him that it was a crime? Rep. Cedric Robertson's quick comeback on that shows that the Democrats got the Mueller form of non-answering just right and they prepared for it. I don't know what the definition of a hostile witness was but it's clear Mueller is hostile to backing up his investigation in any way that he doesn't have Barr's permission for.
Update: If he stands behind his report, why isn't he willing to say what it says in his report? I think the Democrats have prepared for the expected refusal of Mueller to say much of anything other than "what it says in the report". I don't think he's going to provide much useful to them. So far it doesn't even seem as if he's going to admit that while he didn't find enough evidence of Trump-Putin cooperation to bring an indictment that for an American president OR PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE ANY INVOLVEMENT WITH FOREIGN DICTATORS IS UNACCEPTABLE. Though, clearly, from the Republicans' behavior, they're not much bothered by there being some level of collusion between a Republican-fascist and the dictator of Russia. Why should they? They've managed the sale of the country to domestic gangsters for decades, both in the elected branches and on the Court. That's the party Mueller was a part of for decades into that sell out.
Update 2: What the hell? He won't even say that if McGahn lied to him that it was a crime? Rep. Cedric Robertson's quick comeback on that shows that the Democrats got the Mueller form of non-answering just right and they prepared for it. I don't know what the definition of a hostile witness was but it's clear Mueller is hostile to backing up his investigation in any way that he doesn't have Barr's permission for.
Tuesday, July 23, 2019
Answer To A Callowly Made Complaint
There is all the difference in the world in making claims of probability and random chance when those are made in an imaginary, theoretical infinity of time and a practical and still imaginary infinity of purported numbers and taking seriously the meaning of theorized improbabilities and random chances working their way out in the very limited time and very limited numbers of reality.
The phenomena of the real universe and, far more so, life on the one and only planet we know it arose and evolved on forces the numbers of theorized probability and random chance into a very limited time frame and number of entities in which those have a chance to be expressed in reality. I would need to have an explanation of how that difference isn't important before I could take the ideological use of them by scientistic, atheist, materialists any more seriously than I would any other ideological use of them.
I'm not convinced that when you take those most real of humanly experienced realities into account that they could do what the atheist cosmologists and Darwinian biologists want them to do for their ideological campaign. I think that the presence of that ideological campaign, firmly set in not only the culture but the literature of science is as much of a scandal if someone were to insert religious belief into them. Only no one bats an eyelash when it's atheist ideology so inserted.
As things stand, everything said about "other universes" is ideologically motivated make-believe, not a product of knowledge or evidence as there is none to inform it. Everything said about "other life" on planets in the one universe which has the decided but not presently useful advantage of us knowing those planets exist is make believe of almost the same level of ignorance and lack of evidence. Until "other life" is known and available for us to look at in depth - don't wait up nights or hold your breath - it's best seen as science fiction, also inserted directly into science where it has no real business being.
Update: Yeah, I'm saying that when an atheist, materialist says "probability" or "random chance" my bull shit detector is tripped because unless they can make a good case that those are more than just slogans in the context they spout them in, it's bull shit designed to cover up their inability to make a good argument. I'm extremely skeptical of it in those two cases I cited, multi-universe cosmological fiction and the claim that evolution happens through a combination of random chance and probability. When those seem to work at such incredible improbabilities at even a theoretical infinity of time and discrete entities but only have been able to work within the very much shorter time that 14 billion years are and the number of discrete objects in the universe are, they deserve to be considered with proportionate skepticism as an answer to why things are as we can observe they are.
The phenomena of the real universe and, far more so, life on the one and only planet we know it arose and evolved on forces the numbers of theorized probability and random chance into a very limited time frame and number of entities in which those have a chance to be expressed in reality. I would need to have an explanation of how that difference isn't important before I could take the ideological use of them by scientistic, atheist, materialists any more seriously than I would any other ideological use of them.
I'm not convinced that when you take those most real of humanly experienced realities into account that they could do what the atheist cosmologists and Darwinian biologists want them to do for their ideological campaign. I think that the presence of that ideological campaign, firmly set in not only the culture but the literature of science is as much of a scandal if someone were to insert religious belief into them. Only no one bats an eyelash when it's atheist ideology so inserted.
As things stand, everything said about "other universes" is ideologically motivated make-believe, not a product of knowledge or evidence as there is none to inform it. Everything said about "other life" on planets in the one universe which has the decided but not presently useful advantage of us knowing those planets exist is make believe of almost the same level of ignorance and lack of evidence. Until "other life" is known and available for us to look at in depth - don't wait up nights or hold your breath - it's best seen as science fiction, also inserted directly into science where it has no real business being.
Update: Yeah, I'm saying that when an atheist, materialist says "probability" or "random chance" my bull shit detector is tripped because unless they can make a good case that those are more than just slogans in the context they spout them in, it's bull shit designed to cover up their inability to make a good argument. I'm extremely skeptical of it in those two cases I cited, multi-universe cosmological fiction and the claim that evolution happens through a combination of random chance and probability. When those seem to work at such incredible improbabilities at even a theoretical infinity of time and discrete entities but only have been able to work within the very much shorter time that 14 billion years are and the number of discrete objects in the universe are, they deserve to be considered with proportionate skepticism as an answer to why things are as we can observe they are.
Prelude To The Pavane Of Prevarication By Propriety
I strongly suspect that in a little over 24 hours we are going to find that Robert Mueller is at least as much a Republican Party man as he is an "institutionalist" which I think will be seen most realistically as a word that means "ass coverer". Remember Rod Rosenstein was also touted as an "institutionalist" when he was enough of an ass coverer that James Comey noted that. Only he said he was worried about him because he was a "survivor".
I think Robert Mueller was looking for an excuse to not answer questions when he sought Department of William Barr guidance on his upcoming testimony, testimony he was on record as being reluctant to give and which, at this point, the House Judicial and Intelligence committees should compel if he stonewalls as I expect him to. I think Mueller's testimony is what must be the last straw before they go after Barr and the rest of his crew of Trump lawyers on the public dime. They should go after their pay and other personal benefits, including their retirement, money being the one and only value that such gangsters have. They should lay a good case for the disbarment of Barr and others who are involved with obstruction of justice. If it means anything to him, they should be ready and willing to take down Mueller if he does anything more to obstruct justice.
I suspect we are less than 48 hours from finding that the faith placed in Robert Mueller was unwise wishful thinking, daddy issues fantasy, that like the sterling character so many of his colleagues were willing to give James Comey and Rod Rosenstein, it wasn't worth the air it was declared in. I've mentioned before that Republicans have been repeatedly had such claims made about them, when was the last time you really saw one of those live up to the hype?
Robert Mueller should never have needed to be subpoenaed to testify to the House on these matters, he should never have needed to be negotiated with or have needed the members of the House to do the courtly little pavane pantomime of propriety with him. At this point, if he turns out to be anything like the man of honor he's sold as instead of the Republican hack I am expecting him to continue to prove himself to be, I'll buy a hat and eat it.
I think Robert Mueller was looking for an excuse to not answer questions when he sought Department of William Barr guidance on his upcoming testimony, testimony he was on record as being reluctant to give and which, at this point, the House Judicial and Intelligence committees should compel if he stonewalls as I expect him to. I think Mueller's testimony is what must be the last straw before they go after Barr and the rest of his crew of Trump lawyers on the public dime. They should go after their pay and other personal benefits, including their retirement, money being the one and only value that such gangsters have. They should lay a good case for the disbarment of Barr and others who are involved with obstruction of justice. If it means anything to him, they should be ready and willing to take down Mueller if he does anything more to obstruct justice.
I suspect we are less than 48 hours from finding that the faith placed in Robert Mueller was unwise wishful thinking, daddy issues fantasy, that like the sterling character so many of his colleagues were willing to give James Comey and Rod Rosenstein, it wasn't worth the air it was declared in. I've mentioned before that Republicans have been repeatedly had such claims made about them, when was the last time you really saw one of those live up to the hype?
Robert Mueller should never have needed to be subpoenaed to testify to the House on these matters, he should never have needed to be negotiated with or have needed the members of the House to do the courtly little pavane pantomime of propriety with him. At this point, if he turns out to be anything like the man of honor he's sold as instead of the Republican hack I am expecting him to continue to prove himself to be, I'll buy a hat and eat it.
Monday, July 22, 2019
The Sacrifice of Everything At The Altar of no-God
And there, there overhead, there, there hung over
Those thousands of white faces, those dazed eyes,
There in the starless dark, the poise, the hover,
There with vast wings across the cancelled skies,
There in the sudden blackness the black pall
Of nothing, nothing, nothing -- nothing at all.
Archibald MacLeish: The End of The World
I think the difference between atheism and belief in God, by whom I mean the God of monotheism is most often a difference between people who, at their core, either are willing to accept that they have moral responsibilities and obligations to other People, other living beings and those who would rather not accept that and are willing to give up things in order to deny their moral obligations. That wasn't my discovery, though I came to something like that independently through observation, Nietzsche's demented philosophy of amorality is one of the most explicit articulations of the atheist side of that and long before him Bernard Mandeville and others had gone a long way to that end. Nietzsche had the intellectual integrity or the amoral degeneracy to admit that materialism, scientism, atheism meant people were relieved of the obligation to act morally, though such relief comes with a steep price in that such an intellectual stand cannot be consistent with any kind of meaning or means of valuation of any meaning. To be consistent such an atheist cannot logically claim that their life, the life of their nearest and dearest (if such they retain) of their family, of their university department ( the only two spheres of moral obligations that the popular expert in such good and evil among atheists today, Steven Weinberg, claims for himself) or anything else has any place in a reckoning of good and evil, importance or triviality, meaning and meainglessness. In short, to deny moral obligations that impinge on them, such atheism inevitably reduces the moral obligations that such atheists can claim are owed them by other people who are as freed from moral obligations - or rather any sense of them - that impinge on the libertarian atheist.
Nietzsche did note that there were such atheists who maintained an ever weakening, ever looser sense of moral obligation out of habit and cultural habit but he correctly noted that with such atheism such a sense of moral obligation would, with time, vanish leaving only ruthless power and strength in its place, the very things that moral obligation exists to restrain or overcome.
I don't find most atheists have Nietzsche's honesty about that some who will spout that nihilism as even a scientific claim such as Richard Dawkins or Bertrand Russell will, at the same time and at complete odds with their science, claim some kind of contradictory morality. That is certainly related to their equally irrational and inconsistent claims made for science which, itself, cannot survive the materialist program of degradation of all human aspirations, including to the quest to obtain knowledge and find meaning. Trump's amoral nihilism is a mild form of what is the consequence of the most popular ideological stand among atheists, vulgar materialism will be more durable than intellectual materialism because all materialism inevitably leads to the reduction of meaning into meaninglessness, even the valuation put on human posterity has proven to be sacrificed on the altar of immorality dedicated to the no-God of atheism. The hardest form of predestination is the atheist nihilist assignment of us all to an oblivion which their belief begins at our conception, at our birth, before we were born, at the Big Bang when everything that happened is, ultimately, held to have been determined, none of it having any meaning, at all.
I see this in a thousand different ways, every week in Trumpian-Putinian-Xiist 2019.
Those thousands of white faces, those dazed eyes,
There in the starless dark, the poise, the hover,
There with vast wings across the cancelled skies,
There in the sudden blackness the black pall
Of nothing, nothing, nothing -- nothing at all.
Archibald MacLeish: The End of The World
I think the difference between atheism and belief in God, by whom I mean the God of monotheism is most often a difference between people who, at their core, either are willing to accept that they have moral responsibilities and obligations to other People, other living beings and those who would rather not accept that and are willing to give up things in order to deny their moral obligations. That wasn't my discovery, though I came to something like that independently through observation, Nietzsche's demented philosophy of amorality is one of the most explicit articulations of the atheist side of that and long before him Bernard Mandeville and others had gone a long way to that end. Nietzsche had the intellectual integrity or the amoral degeneracy to admit that materialism, scientism, atheism meant people were relieved of the obligation to act morally, though such relief comes with a steep price in that such an intellectual stand cannot be consistent with any kind of meaning or means of valuation of any meaning. To be consistent such an atheist cannot logically claim that their life, the life of their nearest and dearest (if such they retain) of their family, of their university department ( the only two spheres of moral obligations that the popular expert in such good and evil among atheists today, Steven Weinberg, claims for himself) or anything else has any place in a reckoning of good and evil, importance or triviality, meaning and meainglessness. In short, to deny moral obligations that impinge on them, such atheism inevitably reduces the moral obligations that such atheists can claim are owed them by other people who are as freed from moral obligations - or rather any sense of them - that impinge on the libertarian atheist.
Nietzsche did note that there were such atheists who maintained an ever weakening, ever looser sense of moral obligation out of habit and cultural habit but he correctly noted that with such atheism such a sense of moral obligation would, with time, vanish leaving only ruthless power and strength in its place, the very things that moral obligation exists to restrain or overcome.
I don't find most atheists have Nietzsche's honesty about that some who will spout that nihilism as even a scientific claim such as Richard Dawkins or Bertrand Russell will, at the same time and at complete odds with their science, claim some kind of contradictory morality. That is certainly related to their equally irrational and inconsistent claims made for science which, itself, cannot survive the materialist program of degradation of all human aspirations, including to the quest to obtain knowledge and find meaning. Trump's amoral nihilism is a mild form of what is the consequence of the most popular ideological stand among atheists, vulgar materialism will be more durable than intellectual materialism because all materialism inevitably leads to the reduction of meaning into meaninglessness, even the valuation put on human posterity has proven to be sacrificed on the altar of immorality dedicated to the no-God of atheism. The hardest form of predestination is the atheist nihilist assignment of us all to an oblivion which their belief begins at our conception, at our birth, before we were born, at the Big Bang when everything that happened is, ultimately, held to have been determined, none of it having any meaning, at all.
I see this in a thousand different ways, every week in Trumpian-Putinian-Xiist 2019.