One of the most annoying and condescending and sheer lazy-assed things they do in America's alleged journalism is replacing "man on the street" type interviews with ignorant people for more difficult, more risky and more expensive reporting of fact. It is condescending and the inevitable assumption is that the ignoramuses they choose are representatives of the great, ignorant, always assumed to be conservative, common consensus. Of course, if they stuck to reporting fact instead of this kind of crap, the American People would be far less ignorant and bigoted than the journalist-class of folk would ever want to believe us to be able to be.
I don't know how National Public Radio ever got away with this but what they do on Morning Edition by way of that reached a new low with the dopey woman Steve Inskeep consulted on her ignorant, ill informed and obviously stupid support of Donald Trump and her clear hostility to Hillary Clinton. NPR has already distinguished itself as being among the worst venues covering the presidential election this year but this interview and, I'll bet you anything, the promised post-VP "debate" interview to see if she changed her mind listening to it (yeah, right) is even stupider.
If I met Steve Inskeep right now, I don't think I could keep myself from socking him in the mush.
Tuesday, October 4, 2016
Second Hand Knows
You don't know how much I'd like to research and investigate the blog atheist attempt to either debunk the central role that Copernicus had in the Gregorian calendar reform or to, otherwise, turn the Catholic priest whose heliocentric model of the universe was, in fact, supported by Catholic bishops, cardinals and popes before Galileo got into trouble with the last humanist pope over it to use in atheist invective. I would turn it into a post about how atheists have twisted, made-up and lied about history to dupe superficial people who will buy their tripe - many of them having all levels of academic degrees as well as those without them. But, as I said yesterday, I'm busy.
I am even too pressed to make fun of Stultified Steve and the stupid statement he posted here yesterday.
One thing I've been thinking about a lot lately is the seldom mentioned though ubiquitous anger of atheists about religion. I mean the fact that an enormous amount of academic and even so-called scientific life revolves around the hostility of atheists towards people who believe in God and the idea of God. The longer I've looked into the phenomenon of atheism, the clearer it has become that a real, primitive and all consuming hatred of God is central to so much of what gets scribbled and babbled as serious academic discourse. And, as important as the hatred of God is, there is also the certainly known but unarticulated knowledge among others who either want to advance in respectable academia or, at least, be unbullied by the atheists in academia and popular media, who just go along with it, creating the popular pseudo-history and pseudo-erudition that the popular levels of "knowledge" most often heard consist of. A lot of that might also be sheer laziness, not bothering to look at the primary material and thinking about it - it's not always as clear cut in the primary literature as the same material digested (and often distorted)* in the secondary literature and tertiary and more remote junk - much of which also enters into the intro and jurno levels of discourse. Of course most of what gets into the brainy side of Hollywood production relies mostly on the third and fourth hand junk.
But, that will have to wait.
* It's so much easier to read what Max Weber said than to read the primary material, but it's even easier to just repeat what someone said about what Max Weber said. And for Max Weber you can substitute hundreds of other creators of the secondary level, official erudition.
Instant Update: I have got to remember not to use this browser to write posts, I can't figure out how it screws up the font that gets produced.
Update: Stupy thinks that "Marvel movies" amount to academic discourse. See what I mean about him not even trying. Not that his good buddies at Duncan's, um. "Brain trust" care. Maybe someday I'll point out how among our most conceited class of college grads a stupid, content free wise guy piece of snark passes as wisdom. Though, come to think of it, Dorothy Parker already said something like that. That stuff gets old, if you're lucky. If not, you stay in perpetual jr. high.
I am even too pressed to make fun of Stultified Steve and the stupid statement he posted here yesterday.
One thing I've been thinking about a lot lately is the seldom mentioned though ubiquitous anger of atheists about religion. I mean the fact that an enormous amount of academic and even so-called scientific life revolves around the hostility of atheists towards people who believe in God and the idea of God. The longer I've looked into the phenomenon of atheism, the clearer it has become that a real, primitive and all consuming hatred of God is central to so much of what gets scribbled and babbled as serious academic discourse. And, as important as the hatred of God is, there is also the certainly known but unarticulated knowledge among others who either want to advance in respectable academia or, at least, be unbullied by the atheists in academia and popular media, who just go along with it, creating the popular pseudo-history and pseudo-erudition that the popular levels of "knowledge" most often heard consist of. A lot of that might also be sheer laziness, not bothering to look at the primary material and thinking about it - it's not always as clear cut in the primary literature as the same material digested (and often distorted)* in the secondary literature and tertiary and more remote junk - much of which also enters into the intro and jurno levels of discourse. Of course most of what gets into the brainy side of Hollywood production relies mostly on the third and fourth hand junk.
But, that will have to wait.
* It's so much easier to read what Max Weber said than to read the primary material, but it's even easier to just repeat what someone said about what Max Weber said. And for Max Weber you can substitute hundreds of other creators of the secondary level, official erudition.
Instant Update: I have got to remember not to use this browser to write posts, I can't figure out how it screws up the font that gets produced.
Update: Stupy thinks that "Marvel movies" amount to academic discourse. See what I mean about him not even trying. Not that his good buddies at Duncan's, um. "Brain trust" care. Maybe someday I'll point out how among our most conceited class of college grads a stupid, content free wise guy piece of snark passes as wisdom. Though, come to think of it, Dorothy Parker already said something like that. That stuff gets old, if you're lucky. If not, you stay in perpetual jr. high.
Monday, October 3, 2016
Gone Working
I've gotten some paid work that has to be completed on a deadline. Actual musical work. I know, people actually paying for music. Go figure. I hope to be done in a few days. I will try to write something later today. Until then:
Revealing The Atheists' Theology For What It Really Is An Alternative Religion
The evolutionary psychologists and others have turned natural selection into the magical creative force in biology and, in some hard cases such as Daniel Dennett, into a universal force to explain everything. That is beyond dispute. At least it is if you think out the real meaning of what they're saying to its conclusion.
Since they inevitably depend on the major modification of Darwin's major idea by gluing it to Mendelian genetics, done in the 1930s, and with DNA being identified in the 50s of the last century, and especially since H. D. Hamilton, E. O. Wilson and Richard Dawkins published their ideas, when they talk about "natural selection" they're really talking about DNA. The same, when they say "evolution".
And I think it is with Hamilton and Dawkins that it's necessary to begin to talk about their turning the object, "DNA", into a creator god. as they attributed to it far vaster magical, creative potency than more careful geneticists I'm aware of ever did. Today, when you hear or read the words "DNA" "genetics" "natural selection" or even, and most damaging of all to science, "evolution" most of the time it is to the magical creator god to which is attributed the most enormous powers of creation. In the claims that all of our behavior is, ultimately, the creation of this deified "DNA", is literally the claim that we are made in its image, that it is the origin of our entire being.
And, as I've noted, in the hands of Daniel Dennett, its creative powers are claimed to extend far outside of mere biology but to all of nature, which is why he entitled what is certainly his most famous book, Darwin's Dangerous Idea: Evolution and the Meanings of Life. In that title, he merely restates the claims made for Darwinism by Ernst Haeckel, who was more honest about his motives, when he said that in Darwinism was the final triumph of materialist monism. When I talk about materialist monism, I am merely using the right term for what they're talking about, without the typical slippery avoidance of it. And in that I think lies the real motive of the entire effort of the entirely slippery and, I think quite naive and wrongheaded effort.
Think about what their apotheosized version of "DNA" is claimed to do by them and its powers rival those of the creator gods of classical paganism. In their presentation it creates us, quite literally, it imbues us with all of our capabilities and faults, it determines our fate, it even controls our thoughts and actions. It causes our crimes, it is the source of our virtues and even, in that line of thought, is the real and quite selfish motive that is the real explanation of our most noble acts of self-sacrifice, transforming that into a service for that, their most selfish of all gods which only cares about its own survival. If you think that is a grotesque exaggeration, consider that the major proponent of the idea, Richard Dawkins, famously said:
“Was there to be any end to the gradual improvement in the techniques and artifices used by the replicators to ensure their own continuation in the world? There would be plenty of time for improvement. What weird engines of self-preservation would the millennia bring forth? Four thousand million years on, what was to be the fate of the ancient replicators?
They did not die out, for they are past masters of the survival arts. But do not look for them floating loose in the sea; they gave up that cavalier freedom long ago. Now they swarm in huge colonies, safe inside gigantic lumbering robots, sealed off from the outside world, communicating with it by tortuous indirect routes, manipulating it by remote control.
They are in you and in me; they created us, body and mind; and their preservation is the ultimate rationale for our existence. They have come a long way, those replicators. Now they go by the name of genes, and we are their survival machines.”
― Richard Dawkins, The Selfish Gene
What I have said, which is held to be outlandish and ridiculous is merely to restate the claims of these people, letting the cat out of the bag, revealing what it is that they're doing. They're inventing a fantasy version of DNA as a god* substitute, providing Haeckel's magical force, the thing that led to claims of God being dead, with a physical form. Since their religion is a materialist one, of course their god would have to have a physical form. As I've already mentioned before, when Dennett tried to remove the force, natural selection, from its physical form he unwittingly made it logically impossible, natural selection requiring the inheritance of discrete entities to avoid everything being turned into a chaotic and homogeneous soup, perhaps what would happen if some of those famous finely tuned constants were slightly different and the basic physical structures that gave rise to our bodies and our putative intelligence were made impossible in the universe. Though I think there really is no way to know all of the ramifications of such universes or even if they are an actual possibility in reality, our only knowledge of something we use that term for comes from this actual universe we inhabit and know.
What I wrote in the past few days was misidentified as a claim of a proof for the existence of God, which it wasn't. I have never been in the business of trying to provide a proof of the existence of God, I don't think such a "proof" is available to us, the impossibility of defining, of delimiting the meaning of the immaterial God I believe in would definitively make such a proof impossible. You can only prove things which are defined and delimited. To ask to prove of the God I believe in would make even less sense than a quest to prove that reality is real, since you would have to do so within the reality you are trying to prove. The attempt of materialists to debunk the reality of consciousness in service to their material gods runs into a quite similar problem as their attempts rather convincingly demonstrate the reality of the thing they are using to enforce their will on reality. Their effort disproves the case they are making by debunking the reality of what they are using to make their arguments. Now THAT is something worth pointing out, which is what I have been doing.
* Dawkins is sophisticated enough, though most of his fellow neo-atheists are not, in that he realizes that the creation of one godly "DNA" is insufficient as there is on one molecule that is DNA. But he does create the largest of all pantheons in his attribution of powers to DNA, warring gods which are engaged in competing and killing each other off, using us and our macroscopic scale to determine the winners. Though I think even he can't turn such entities into more than limited deities in that they are dependent on the physical environment. As I indicated their gods are henotheistic, with potency within a certain locus of influence, other gods having sway in other regions. I've mentioned other gods of those efforts, "quantum gravity" "quantum vacuum" and, in an earlier post, what might be the current and reigning and likely all-time(s) champion creator god, "probability" with which these atheists have made, not only immaterial, enormous brains, but a stupendous number of imaginary universes, created out of nothing else. As they really do talk about such imaginary, unevidenced things, and use them in argument - something they mock religious folk for doing I think it's only fair that we be allowed to take them as serious about it and to make logical observations about just what they're doing. Atheists have their own theology in which they talk about such stuff, only they're touchy about admitting that's what it is. I'm more interested in the logical consequences and the proper identification of what they're doing than in the anger caused by pointing those out. As the widespread and naive belief in such things as evolutionary psychology is a major danger to liberalism and democracy, I think it's important for a political blogger to address it. The claims of evolutionary psychologists are used to attack everything from gender and ethnic equality to economic justice. David Brooks and Andrew Sullivan love such things for a reason, after all.
Since they inevitably depend on the major modification of Darwin's major idea by gluing it to Mendelian genetics, done in the 1930s, and with DNA being identified in the 50s of the last century, and especially since H. D. Hamilton, E. O. Wilson and Richard Dawkins published their ideas, when they talk about "natural selection" they're really talking about DNA. The same, when they say "evolution".
And I think it is with Hamilton and Dawkins that it's necessary to begin to talk about their turning the object, "DNA", into a creator god. as they attributed to it far vaster magical, creative potency than more careful geneticists I'm aware of ever did. Today, when you hear or read the words "DNA" "genetics" "natural selection" or even, and most damaging of all to science, "evolution" most of the time it is to the magical creator god to which is attributed the most enormous powers of creation. In the claims that all of our behavior is, ultimately, the creation of this deified "DNA", is literally the claim that we are made in its image, that it is the origin of our entire being.
And, as I've noted, in the hands of Daniel Dennett, its creative powers are claimed to extend far outside of mere biology but to all of nature, which is why he entitled what is certainly his most famous book, Darwin's Dangerous Idea: Evolution and the Meanings of Life. In that title, he merely restates the claims made for Darwinism by Ernst Haeckel, who was more honest about his motives, when he said that in Darwinism was the final triumph of materialist monism. When I talk about materialist monism, I am merely using the right term for what they're talking about, without the typical slippery avoidance of it. And in that I think lies the real motive of the entire effort of the entirely slippery and, I think quite naive and wrongheaded effort.
Think about what their apotheosized version of "DNA" is claimed to do by them and its powers rival those of the creator gods of classical paganism. In their presentation it creates us, quite literally, it imbues us with all of our capabilities and faults, it determines our fate, it even controls our thoughts and actions. It causes our crimes, it is the source of our virtues and even, in that line of thought, is the real and quite selfish motive that is the real explanation of our most noble acts of self-sacrifice, transforming that into a service for that, their most selfish of all gods which only cares about its own survival. If you think that is a grotesque exaggeration, consider that the major proponent of the idea, Richard Dawkins, famously said:
“Was there to be any end to the gradual improvement in the techniques and artifices used by the replicators to ensure their own continuation in the world? There would be plenty of time for improvement. What weird engines of self-preservation would the millennia bring forth? Four thousand million years on, what was to be the fate of the ancient replicators?
They did not die out, for they are past masters of the survival arts. But do not look for them floating loose in the sea; they gave up that cavalier freedom long ago. Now they swarm in huge colonies, safe inside gigantic lumbering robots, sealed off from the outside world, communicating with it by tortuous indirect routes, manipulating it by remote control.
They are in you and in me; they created us, body and mind; and their preservation is the ultimate rationale for our existence. They have come a long way, those replicators. Now they go by the name of genes, and we are their survival machines.”
― Richard Dawkins, The Selfish Gene
What I have said, which is held to be outlandish and ridiculous is merely to restate the claims of these people, letting the cat out of the bag, revealing what it is that they're doing. They're inventing a fantasy version of DNA as a god* substitute, providing Haeckel's magical force, the thing that led to claims of God being dead, with a physical form. Since their religion is a materialist one, of course their god would have to have a physical form. As I've already mentioned before, when Dennett tried to remove the force, natural selection, from its physical form he unwittingly made it logically impossible, natural selection requiring the inheritance of discrete entities to avoid everything being turned into a chaotic and homogeneous soup, perhaps what would happen if some of those famous finely tuned constants were slightly different and the basic physical structures that gave rise to our bodies and our putative intelligence were made impossible in the universe. Though I think there really is no way to know all of the ramifications of such universes or even if they are an actual possibility in reality, our only knowledge of something we use that term for comes from this actual universe we inhabit and know.
What I wrote in the past few days was misidentified as a claim of a proof for the existence of God, which it wasn't. I have never been in the business of trying to provide a proof of the existence of God, I don't think such a "proof" is available to us, the impossibility of defining, of delimiting the meaning of the immaterial God I believe in would definitively make such a proof impossible. You can only prove things which are defined and delimited. To ask to prove of the God I believe in would make even less sense than a quest to prove that reality is real, since you would have to do so within the reality you are trying to prove. The attempt of materialists to debunk the reality of consciousness in service to their material gods runs into a quite similar problem as their attempts rather convincingly demonstrate the reality of the thing they are using to enforce their will on reality. Their effort disproves the case they are making by debunking the reality of what they are using to make their arguments. Now THAT is something worth pointing out, which is what I have been doing.
* Dawkins is sophisticated enough, though most of his fellow neo-atheists are not, in that he realizes that the creation of one godly "DNA" is insufficient as there is on one molecule that is DNA. But he does create the largest of all pantheons in his attribution of powers to DNA, warring gods which are engaged in competing and killing each other off, using us and our macroscopic scale to determine the winners. Though I think even he can't turn such entities into more than limited deities in that they are dependent on the physical environment. As I indicated their gods are henotheistic, with potency within a certain locus of influence, other gods having sway in other regions. I've mentioned other gods of those efforts, "quantum gravity" "quantum vacuum" and, in an earlier post, what might be the current and reigning and likely all-time(s) champion creator god, "probability" with which these atheists have made, not only immaterial, enormous brains, but a stupendous number of imaginary universes, created out of nothing else. As they really do talk about such imaginary, unevidenced things, and use them in argument - something they mock religious folk for doing I think it's only fair that we be allowed to take them as serious about it and to make logical observations about just what they're doing. Atheists have their own theology in which they talk about such stuff, only they're touchy about admitting that's what it is. I'm more interested in the logical consequences and the proper identification of what they're doing than in the anger caused by pointing those out. As the widespread and naive belief in such things as evolutionary psychology is a major danger to liberalism and democracy, I think it's important for a political blogger to address it. The claims of evolutionary psychologists are used to attack everything from gender and ethnic equality to economic justice. David Brooks and Andrew Sullivan love such things for a reason, after all.
Sunday, October 2, 2016
Dusan Bogdanovic - Unconscious in Brazil
Unfortunately, the guitarist isn't listed so I don't know who they are.
This reminds me a lot of Conlon Nancarrow's player piano studies, especially some of the early ones. Reading the score while listening, it's even clearer how innovative Bogdanovic's music is for the instrument. Looking at a video of someone playing an excerpt can be a little disorienting as it sounds like more than one person should be playing the music, the two lines, the ostinato and the melody above it, are so independent, and that's just a simple description, there are implications of two upper voices at times.
Hate Mail - More On Lies From Duncan's Blog
According to Steve Simels, I've said things I've never said and never would say. You wonder how he got through years of playing journalist without having learned the first thing about accurate reporting. Only if you have to wonder about that you haven't noticed that American journalism has been a cesspool for the entire period he was supposedly a journalist.
Update: If I'd never witnessed the phenomenon of reductionist stupidity I'd certainly be familiar with it it after years of seeing it practiced by Simps and the reduced rump of the Eschatonians. If they were a band they'd be The Discontinued Models.
Update 2: Simps is just throwing out any old thing, basically the same strategy as Trump making wild accusations. It's no fun when he won't even try and I won't do this unless I'm having fun.
Update: If I'd never witnessed the phenomenon of reductionist stupidity I'd certainly be familiar with it it after years of seeing it practiced by Simps and the reduced rump of the Eschatonians. If they were a band they'd be The Discontinued Models.
Update 2: Simps is just throwing out any old thing, basically the same strategy as Trump making wild accusations. It's no fun when he won't even try and I won't do this unless I'm having fun.
Arthur Berger - Trio for Guitar, Violin and Piano
David Starobin, guitar
Gilbert Kalish, piano
Joel Smirnoff, violin
OK, I'll Explain
I was extremely busy most of yesterday so I didn't have time to write anything, then, right before my bedtime someone informed me that Simps and Freki were at it, as ususal, at Duncan Black's blog, lying about me.
The thing started with one of the dreary, cooky cutter atheists at Duncan's, when "tacitus voltare" posted snark about some insane nuttery about changes in DNA caused by being born again, or something. Steve Simels started by speculating that I'd believe something like that.
Which proves one thing, he has, literally, not understood anything I've ever said about biology and especially my skepticism about the mania for making up stories centered on genes to explain stuff, what a group of prominent evolutionary biologists and geneticists, many of them atheists, ridicule as "Just-so stories". I started being skeptical of that nonsense as soon as I first read about it, back in the early 1970s, having noticed that there was no observational support for such story telling. The wacky stuff that TV snarked about is far closer to the make-it-up as science that E.O. Wilson, Richard Dawkins and Daniel Dennett do than to anything I'd call science. So, it's clear that the person who trolls me the most hasn't got a clue as to what I have said in numerous posts, many of which he has ignorantly snarked about, himself.
The thing started with one of the dreary, cooky cutter atheists at Duncan's, when "tacitus voltare" posted snark about some insane nuttery about changes in DNA caused by being born again, or something. Steve Simels started by speculating that I'd believe something like that.
Which proves one thing, he has, literally, not understood anything I've ever said about biology and especially my skepticism about the mania for making up stories centered on genes to explain stuff, what a group of prominent evolutionary biologists and geneticists, many of them atheists, ridicule as "Just-so stories". I started being skeptical of that nonsense as soon as I first read about it, back in the early 1970s, having noticed that there was no observational support for such story telling. The wacky stuff that TV snarked about is far closer to the make-it-up as science that E.O. Wilson, Richard Dawkins and Daniel Dennett do than to anything I'd call science. So, it's clear that the person who trolls me the most hasn't got a clue as to what I have said in numerous posts, many of which he has ignorantly snarked about, himself.
Then, after a gal who I had heard Duncan had banned, chicago dyke, said something typically clueless and, typically centered on herself and rather simple mindedly anti-religious. It was then that Simels said,
Nah, it's much simpler. He has appalling musical taste and he's an anti-semite shithead.
Considering this all began with an Eschaton regular who has taken the name of one of the most vicious of classical antisemites, one who I have quoted from, at length, to demonstrate his antisemitism and whose utility to Nazi antisemitism and Germanic supremacy I have also posted about, in response to previous idiocy from the Eschatonians, Simels' accusation of antisemitism in this context is just more evidence that he is a post-literate idiot whose functional reading capabilities would probably get him assigned to a remedial reading class in the fifth grade. As I said, last night, I will depend on those who actually can read and do read what I write to judge whether or not I'm an antisemite, not someone who brings out that accusation on the many occasions he's got nutthin'.
What is really funny about that is that the entire content of the post where Simps said it consists of Duncan Black saying,
I got nothin'
Duncan Black long ago gave up trying to say something. I'll have to take him at his word that his blog is about him having "nothin'". And neither do a significant part of his regulars. There are hardly any others who comment there, these days. The regulars are as suspicious of outsiders as the regulars at Harry Hope's Bar (see the link in last night's post on this topic).
As to my taste in music, well, Simps spent his working life championing the white-boy copy-cats of music and musical styles originating in superior Black American artists and what developed out of various white guys who graduated from bubble gum to psychogenic drugs and alcohol. His career in repeating the common received commercial POV as provided by publicists and regurgitated from the spewing of pop music scribblers from bigger venues doesn't provide him with the authority to make me worry about his dislike for more demanding music which surpasses his attention span.
I suppose since it bridges Simels libelous statement and "Freki's" accusation that I'm a misogynist that I should mention someone who I've never noticed before, "Big Buck" agreed with Simels. As to whether or not "Big Buck" has ever read a word I have ever written, I doubt it.
Considering that it is "Big Buck" who supports Simps, it is rather funny that his rival for champion liar at Eschaton, "Freki" aka "JR" accused me of being a misogynist. I would like to point out that for a few years I wrote at the feminist blog of one of Duncan Black's regulars who certainly knows I'm not a misogynist. In the last few days I made a comment on her blog which was "liked" by another of Duncan's regulars.
Again, I will rely on those who actually read what I write to decide if I'm a misogynist, which leaves out most of the Eschatonians who don't even read what Duncan Black used to, occasionally, write for his blog. I will say, again, that it was at his blog that I developed an insight into the debilitating effects of atheism on honesty, how when someone doesn't believe in sin their inhibitions to lie can't be expected to be enhanced. I'm sure there are atheists who have a highly developed distaste for lying but they don't seem to have remained at his blog where telling the truth is a sometimes thing.
You know, there is one thing Duncan Black should hope for, that I never win a big lottery because I might just want to test a Supreme Court ruling if I had the money to finance a challenge to it. I'd love to get rid of some of their stupider permissions to lie granted by the out of touch Olympians on the Supreme Court. Those are a proven danger to democracy.
Update: I should add, considering Simps and Freki's taste in music, praising some of the foremost of misogynists in pop music and styles which have proven useful to today's most vicious antismites, the irony abounds. But only if you have a clue which means they're safe from the irony they generate.
Update: Stupy has made a comment that is so stupid, so simplistic, so idiotic and clueless about Wagner, a composer whose music I a. loathe and b. which I've written about loathing that I'd be tempted to go into it, again but which I doubt he could a. understand or b. read, so I'm not tempted to get an easy post at his further expense.
Eschatonians love to believe they are a "Brain Trust" when they're more like a symptom of personality disorder.
For the record, to ignore the role that Wagner played in late 19th century German antisemitism and glorification of Germanic paganism, all of which was useful in bringing about the intellectual milieu in which Nazism developed, is idiotic and clueless. So I'm not surprised he went there.
Update: I should add, considering Simps and Freki's taste in music, praising some of the foremost of misogynists in pop music and styles which have proven useful to today's most vicious antismites, the irony abounds. But only if you have a clue which means they're safe from the irony they generate.
Update: Stupy has made a comment that is so stupid, so simplistic, so idiotic and clueless about Wagner, a composer whose music I a. loathe and b. which I've written about loathing that I'd be tempted to go into it, again but which I doubt he could a. understand or b. read, so I'm not tempted to get an easy post at his further expense.
Eschatonians love to believe they are a "Brain Trust" when they're more like a symptom of personality disorder.
For the record, to ignore the role that Wagner played in late 19th century German antisemitism and glorification of Germanic paganism, all of which was useful in bringing about the intellectual milieu in which Nazism developed, is idiotic and clueless. So I'm not surprised he went there.
Saturday, October 1, 2016
Hate Mail
I'll rely on the people who read what I write to judge if what Simps and Freki say about me is true. They're the two biggest liars at Duncan's dying blog, though hardly the only ones.
I don't know what's more hilarious, for Simps to accuse me of having horrible taste in music or Freki to say I'm a misogynist. I guess there's no lie too big for Duncan to let it stand, as long as it's one of the compulsive clickers who keep his income up who posts it. Eschaton is the Harry Hope's Bar of blogs.
I don't know what's more hilarious, for Simps to accuse me of having horrible taste in music or Freki to say I'm a misogynist. I guess there's no lie too big for Duncan to let it stand, as long as it's one of the compulsive clickers who keep his income up who posts it. Eschaton is the Harry Hope's Bar of blogs.
Friday, September 30, 2016
Dusan Bogdanovic - 7 Little Secrets #1 Played on a Glass Harp
Brian Engel, glass harp
I said that Dusan Bogdanovic was more than just a guitarist composer, that he was one of the best of living composers in any medium. I would guess that much of his music could stand up when transcribed for other instruments, though I have to admit that glass harp wasn't one I'd have put on a list. I love hearing people try things, taking a chance on things.
I will warn you that if you're like me and the volume is up it might make your teeth hurt. That's something that a concert harp does to my teeth as well. Headphones would be deadly. I'm always divided between the ethereal potentially beautiful sound of glass harp music and that it makes my teeth hurt.
My musical complaint about it in the past other than that was that, like a theremin, it lacks crisp, varied articulation but Mr. Engel provides that.
It makes me wonder if you could put together one of these if you went to enough yard sales and thrift stores. Though I would imagine the quality of the glass makes a big difference, that's just a guess. With a precise enough tuner or ear you could make it in equal temper or any other tuning, your possibilities limited by the number of glasses you've got.
Did The Freedom Riders, Those Who Tried To Cross The Bridge Sacrifice Their Lives And Blood So People Could Turn In A Blank Ballot?
I have no respect for any academic or others who advocate that people on the left not vote. Non-voters have opted to exercise no responsibility in what reality can be as opposed to their make-believe future which is apparently supposed to just happen without the necessary reality that could produce it being put into place. Whenever, wherever, I hear encouragement for people to not vote in even a flawed democratic election which has the possibility to really produce a better result than a bad one, I know that someone wants something for themselves, not the common good.
Mostly, those allegedly principled non-voters will present their choice in the most annoying of ways, as something of great moral import that deserves the attentions of other people. And not only the attention, not only the respect but the admiration of other people. And in that lies the delusion of the principled non-voter, their non-action is a refusal to act to change reality for the better and, at its worst, an encouragement to others to make the same self-aggrandizing, self-deluding and selfish non-action.
I recall hearing the prominent Black journalist Callie Crossley engaged in a TV show in Boston where they were talking about journalists who don't vote because they want to strike a pose of being impartial. She said that with all of the struggle, pain toil and blood shed to allow her as a Black Woman to vote, she would never choose to dishonor those who made the sacrifice by failing to vote. Which is, I think, the best way to think about the responsibility to vote, to do what can be done in the way of politics, that I've ever heard. That idea informed everything I've thought about the issue ever since.
In Time magazine, two Ivy league academics, Eddie S. Glaude, jr. and Fredrick C. Harris advocated a symbolic act of non-voting, asserting that it will gain respect for Black people by politicians who they assert "take them for granted".
As both pressure voters and pivotal voters, African Americans can simultaneously deliver a victory for the Democratic nominee in swing states and keep the Democrats’ feet to the fire. Casting ballots as pressure voters would not merely be a symbolic act. Depending on the Blank-Out campaign’s success, it could have consequences for Democratic Party leaders down the line. Lower vote totals for the party’s standard bearer in red states could reduce representation of delegates at the 2020 convention, under formulas the party uses to estimate the number of delegates for each state. How well the party’s presidential nominees performed in the preceding two elections is one factor used to calculate the number of delegates for each state. We think the threat of losing delegate representation should incentivize red-state Democrats—and other Democratic leaders—to prioritize issues that directly affect black communities on the state and federal levels.
The idea that punishing the the Democratic Party, the party of, by an enormous percent, the largest number of Black People and people of color who hold political office - many from "red states" - by withholding votes from Democratic candidates has certainly been proposed by others in the past and today. I would challenge the two writers to point out a single instance in which it has produced the results promised by those calling for the punishment of Democrats by not voting for them. It is one of the most illogical of all political strategies, as seen in in the disastrous Nader campaign in 2000 and repeated in 2004, it is a strategy capable of helping to produce a horrific Republican administration that produces a disaster for whatever progressive, liberal, leftist or even centrist progress has already been achieved. It does nothing to improve anything except getting those who propose it time on talk shows and in magazines. Anyone who doesn't think that the world would be a better place if Al Gore had not been cheated out of the presidency in 2000 is either too stupid to take seriously to or too much of a liar to listen to.
Politicians depend on votes, if they can't get them from one group, they are forced to look for them elsewhere. A group which can make itself essential to the political election of a politician without costing them more votes than they bring is guaranteed to have the ear of that politician. The same is true for supporters of political issues. There are far better strategies than the simple-minded, irresponsible one of refusing to exercise the right to cast a vote which has a chance of producing what you need. That is especially true this year when failing to get a President Hillary Clinton is guaranteed to put into office someone who will have done so with the support of white supremacists, racists and outright fascists and neo-Nazis. For two academics to have made that proposal this year got them attention in Time magazine, it could get the rest of us the worst candidate who has run since the worst days of the 19th century. The history recited in the article is not relevant, no, it is far more than just irrelevant, it is a smoke screen. Comparing Hillary Clinton to Woodrow Wilson a century ago is not only vilely dishonest, it is insulting to the many Black politicians who have endorsed her, having worked with her for the past quarter of a century.
Young people are especially vulnerable to these perennial come-ons to either vote for never-will-wins and getting conned out of their right to vote for the best candidate who could win because they are the group with the least experience of life and with the least context in which to think about political issues. Though older people are hardly invulnerable to being swayed by bad ideas. The declarations of such voices of the alleged or presumed left, full of sound and fury can fork lightening. Unfortunately, it's a better future which is inevitably what gets burned to the ground when they strike.
Mostly, those allegedly principled non-voters will present their choice in the most annoying of ways, as something of great moral import that deserves the attentions of other people. And not only the attention, not only the respect but the admiration of other people. And in that lies the delusion of the principled non-voter, their non-action is a refusal to act to change reality for the better and, at its worst, an encouragement to others to make the same self-aggrandizing, self-deluding and selfish non-action.
I recall hearing the prominent Black journalist Callie Crossley engaged in a TV show in Boston where they were talking about journalists who don't vote because they want to strike a pose of being impartial. She said that with all of the struggle, pain toil and blood shed to allow her as a Black Woman to vote, she would never choose to dishonor those who made the sacrifice by failing to vote. Which is, I think, the best way to think about the responsibility to vote, to do what can be done in the way of politics, that I've ever heard. That idea informed everything I've thought about the issue ever since.
In Time magazine, two Ivy league academics, Eddie S. Glaude, jr. and Fredrick C. Harris advocated a symbolic act of non-voting, asserting that it will gain respect for Black people by politicians who they assert "take them for granted".
As both pressure voters and pivotal voters, African Americans can simultaneously deliver a victory for the Democratic nominee in swing states and keep the Democrats’ feet to the fire. Casting ballots as pressure voters would not merely be a symbolic act. Depending on the Blank-Out campaign’s success, it could have consequences for Democratic Party leaders down the line. Lower vote totals for the party’s standard bearer in red states could reduce representation of delegates at the 2020 convention, under formulas the party uses to estimate the number of delegates for each state. How well the party’s presidential nominees performed in the preceding two elections is one factor used to calculate the number of delegates for each state. We think the threat of losing delegate representation should incentivize red-state Democrats—and other Democratic leaders—to prioritize issues that directly affect black communities on the state and federal levels.
The idea that punishing the the Democratic Party, the party of, by an enormous percent, the largest number of Black People and people of color who hold political office - many from "red states" - by withholding votes from Democratic candidates has certainly been proposed by others in the past and today. I would challenge the two writers to point out a single instance in which it has produced the results promised by those calling for the punishment of Democrats by not voting for them. It is one of the most illogical of all political strategies, as seen in in the disastrous Nader campaign in 2000 and repeated in 2004, it is a strategy capable of helping to produce a horrific Republican administration that produces a disaster for whatever progressive, liberal, leftist or even centrist progress has already been achieved. It does nothing to improve anything except getting those who propose it time on talk shows and in magazines. Anyone who doesn't think that the world would be a better place if Al Gore had not been cheated out of the presidency in 2000 is either too stupid to take seriously to or too much of a liar to listen to.
Politicians depend on votes, if they can't get them from one group, they are forced to look for them elsewhere. A group which can make itself essential to the political election of a politician without costing them more votes than they bring is guaranteed to have the ear of that politician. The same is true for supporters of political issues. There are far better strategies than the simple-minded, irresponsible one of refusing to exercise the right to cast a vote which has a chance of producing what you need. That is especially true this year when failing to get a President Hillary Clinton is guaranteed to put into office someone who will have done so with the support of white supremacists, racists and outright fascists and neo-Nazis. For two academics to have made that proposal this year got them attention in Time magazine, it could get the rest of us the worst candidate who has run since the worst days of the 19th century. The history recited in the article is not relevant, no, it is far more than just irrelevant, it is a smoke screen. Comparing Hillary Clinton to Woodrow Wilson a century ago is not only vilely dishonest, it is insulting to the many Black politicians who have endorsed her, having worked with her for the past quarter of a century.
Young people are especially vulnerable to these perennial come-ons to either vote for never-will-wins and getting conned out of their right to vote for the best candidate who could win because they are the group with the least experience of life and with the least context in which to think about political issues. Though older people are hardly invulnerable to being swayed by bad ideas. The declarations of such voices of the alleged or presumed left, full of sound and fury can fork lightening. Unfortunately, it's a better future which is inevitably what gets burned to the ground when they strike.
Thursday, September 29, 2016
When Obese Men Tell Normal Weight Women That They're Too Fat And Expect Them To Vote For Them
It should be, of course, hilariously ironic for the never exactly lean Donald Trump to have called a young woman fat, it's even more hilarious for a bunch of his male surrogates, the porcine Alex Jones, and the quintessential big fat liar, Rush Limbaugh, and many other men with varying degrees of serious tubbiness to be parroting what their increasingly trollish and tubby Trump has said about her. But there really isn't anything funny about the underlying conditions that make the fat men figure doing that is well within their realm of privilege.
I knew nothing of Alicia Machado until Monday. I looked at photos of her from all during the period under discussion and she doesn't look obese in any of them. I've never seen a picture of Donald Trump where it wasn't obvious he could stand to loose more than a few stone of fat.
I do have to wonder how this could go over among women who must be sick and tired of being told they're fat, no matter how normal their weight is but, also, when they are fat. This demonstration has shown that women are penalized for being fat whereas men can not only get away with it but can pretend that they aren't fat when they are even monstrously fat. The sexual objectification involved is the very definition of womens' oppression. Women are never good enough to serve as the ideal, straight, male sex object, there is no woman too good for even the most repulsive man, in the minds of the Trumps of the world and other men who have to use a mirror to see their own phallus. To have someone like Limbaugh who, at times could have played the part of Baron Vladimir Harkonnen to say that about a young woman of reasonably average weight should certainly piss off many. I do wonder if the women in the media might not have an especially keen sense of that. The women at FOX who have had to maintain the appearance of call-girls under the rule of the repulsive Roger Ailes and Rupert Murdoch must have some ideas about this. It would certainly be nice to hear them honestly expound on it.
I knew nothing of Alicia Machado until Monday. I looked at photos of her from all during the period under discussion and she doesn't look obese in any of them. I've never seen a picture of Donald Trump where it wasn't obvious he could stand to loose more than a few stone of fat.
I do have to wonder how this could go over among women who must be sick and tired of being told they're fat, no matter how normal their weight is but, also, when they are fat. This demonstration has shown that women are penalized for being fat whereas men can not only get away with it but can pretend that they aren't fat when they are even monstrously fat. The sexual objectification involved is the very definition of womens' oppression. Women are never good enough to serve as the ideal, straight, male sex object, there is no woman too good for even the most repulsive man, in the minds of the Trumps of the world and other men who have to use a mirror to see their own phallus. To have someone like Limbaugh who, at times could have played the part of Baron Vladimir Harkonnen to say that about a young woman of reasonably average weight should certainly piss off many. I do wonder if the women in the media might not have an especially keen sense of that. The women at FOX who have had to maintain the appearance of call-girls under the rule of the repulsive Roger Ailes and Rupert Murdoch must have some ideas about this. It would certainly be nice to hear them honestly expound on it.
As Those Great Minds Michael Moore and Ted Rall Declare Trump The Winner Of The Debate
Samantha Bee noticed this
If Hillary Clinton wins this election she will have done it while battling against more than a quarter of a century of the most overtly sexist campaign of character assassination in the history of American politics. No, make that the longest and most no-holds barred vicious campaign of character assassination in the history of politics. They have lied up stuff about Hillary Clinton they never did against Ted Kennedy, the target before Bill and, especially, Hillary Clinton drew the same fire. The cabloids, the broadcast venues, coast to coast hate-talk radio, if Hillary Clinton defeats their decades of attacks aimed at embedding a content-free, hateful feeling against her, she will have performed a political miracle. She will also have smashed more than the presidential glass ceiling, she'll have done a lot to put a clay cap over the stinking, leaking cholera and typhus ridden shit lagoon that our media has become in the era of all lies allowed, no standard is too low to stop with American journalism.
And, yeah, Ted Rall did declare Trump the winner as did Michael Moore. Even when she wins she loses. But, then, Michael Moore is the same one who said that Romney was going to win on 2012. I suspect there was always a lot less there than met the eye. The camera adds ten times the gravitas, but almost only to men.
Should The Nuclear Codes Be In The Hands Of A Pot Head? Shouldn't That Be A Question Gary Johnson is Asked?
Having slammed the Greens, I suppose I should note that the other third party candidate, the one who might actually have some effect in driving down Republican votes, Gary Johnson, had what he called "an Aleppo moment" yesterday, though "Sarah Palin moment" would have been more appropriate. When asked to name a foreign leader he respected, he not only couldn't do that, he couldn't name any foreign leader. Which is, you know, kind of remarkable considering the state he was governor of shares a border with an actual foreign country, Mexico. And this is someone who is seriously presented in the media as an actual candidate for president of the United States. Well, after his sniffing and waffling through a presidential debate, they're still presenting Donald Trump as a viable candidate, aren't they?
Third parties in the U.S. are a joke only they're no laughing matter. I'd like to know what Jill Stein's answer would be. Her answer, apparently, might be Vladimir Putin, something she shares in common with Donald Trump.
This is also the year, seeing how so many heroes of the alleged left have a thing for Putin, Stein, Julian Assange, Glenn Greenwald, obviously Edward Snowden, and that they share that with Donald Trump and some of his overtly neo-fascist supporters, I've got to wonder how they could figure he's some admirable world figure while thinking the Clinton Foundation - which does things like fight AIDS in Africa - is the very font of evil. I would love to have some journalist pin down Jill Stein or Julian Assange on a series of questions about that. I'd also love to know what financial ties there might be between such figures and the oligarchic government of Putin.
Consider how frequently the alleged left has held a preference for even the worst of foreign despots and dictators, all time champion mass murderers such as Stalin and Mao, over the most liberal presidents and politicians American democracy produces. That's something that has happened ever since Franklin Roosevelt was slammed by various Marxists and radicals, even as many of them were signing onto letters praising Stalin and defending his show trials and executions of his political rivals. In this years Greens' and Jill Stein's choice of the total crackpot and nutcase Ajamu Baraka to be her one heartbeat away from the presidency, an off kilter free-lance lefty huckster who knows he can get attention and who knows what else by hating on even such people as Bernie Sanders.
Apparently getting elected by Americans is what it takes to earn you the enmity of these guys. Apparently they feel little to no such hostility for the choices of voters in Russia or other places with less than open elections or governments.
Apparently any politician who actually wins an American election, even the most liberal of them, will face the hostility of the Green type of left. Though Jill Stein is in no danger of that happening to her - her pristine, purity will never have to face the oxidants of actually having to govern or legislate - I would imagine if she won she would come under the knee-jerk attention of the likes of her own vice presidential choice.
That's another advantage of play-politics, you never have to actually do anything, all you have to do is babble and tell stories that chill and thrill and gratify the prejudices of your audience, you never have to pay any price or face any difficult decision, you never have to do anything but blab what the tiny, fringe audience who might support you will want to hear and bask in their silly adulation. That's what American third-party politics boils down to. It is a play-time activity indulged in by people who don't really care about anything except striking a pose, maintaining a posture, asserting their own purity and brilliance. And in such circles, they don't really care about the reality of life under Putin or even under a Mao or Stalin. The list of present day heroes of such purity politicos who have almost as a reflex supported or endorsed some of the worst dictators of recent times is a long one. The same are as ready to slam even the most liberal American politicians over wrongs far less and even when they do something admirable. And yet they wonder why they can't gain more support among the voters.
I would bet that most of the Gary Johnson supporters wouldn't see it as disqualifying if he actually didn't know the names of any foreign leaders. I mean, you did see what the Libertarian convention is like. Yes, that is the party that the American media actually presents as something other than a surreal joke. You wonder if Johnson knows who Vladimir Putin is. Or maybe it just slipped his mind while stoned. It leads me to think that it might not be the best thing in the world for the man who travels with the nuclear codes to be a pot-head. Or perhaps under the influence of other drugs. But this is about third parties and their candidates.
Third parties in the U.S. are a joke only they're no laughing matter. I'd like to know what Jill Stein's answer would be. Her answer, apparently, might be Vladimir Putin, something she shares in common with Donald Trump.
This is also the year, seeing how so many heroes of the alleged left have a thing for Putin, Stein, Julian Assange, Glenn Greenwald, obviously Edward Snowden, and that they share that with Donald Trump and some of his overtly neo-fascist supporters, I've got to wonder how they could figure he's some admirable world figure while thinking the Clinton Foundation - which does things like fight AIDS in Africa - is the very font of evil. I would love to have some journalist pin down Jill Stein or Julian Assange on a series of questions about that. I'd also love to know what financial ties there might be between such figures and the oligarchic government of Putin.
Consider how frequently the alleged left has held a preference for even the worst of foreign despots and dictators, all time champion mass murderers such as Stalin and Mao, over the most liberal presidents and politicians American democracy produces. That's something that has happened ever since Franklin Roosevelt was slammed by various Marxists and radicals, even as many of them were signing onto letters praising Stalin and defending his show trials and executions of his political rivals. In this years Greens' and Jill Stein's choice of the total crackpot and nutcase Ajamu Baraka to be her one heartbeat away from the presidency, an off kilter free-lance lefty huckster who knows he can get attention and who knows what else by hating on even such people as Bernie Sanders.
Apparently getting elected by Americans is what it takes to earn you the enmity of these guys. Apparently they feel little to no such hostility for the choices of voters in Russia or other places with less than open elections or governments.
Apparently any politician who actually wins an American election, even the most liberal of them, will face the hostility of the Green type of left. Though Jill Stein is in no danger of that happening to her - her pristine, purity will never have to face the oxidants of actually having to govern or legislate - I would imagine if she won she would come under the knee-jerk attention of the likes of her own vice presidential choice.
That's another advantage of play-politics, you never have to actually do anything, all you have to do is babble and tell stories that chill and thrill and gratify the prejudices of your audience, you never have to pay any price or face any difficult decision, you never have to do anything but blab what the tiny, fringe audience who might support you will want to hear and bask in their silly adulation. That's what American third-party politics boils down to. It is a play-time activity indulged in by people who don't really care about anything except striking a pose, maintaining a posture, asserting their own purity and brilliance. And in such circles, they don't really care about the reality of life under Putin or even under a Mao or Stalin. The list of present day heroes of such purity politicos who have almost as a reflex supported or endorsed some of the worst dictators of recent times is a long one. The same are as ready to slam even the most liberal American politicians over wrongs far less and even when they do something admirable. And yet they wonder why they can't gain more support among the voters.
I would bet that most of the Gary Johnson supporters wouldn't see it as disqualifying if he actually didn't know the names of any foreign leaders. I mean, you did see what the Libertarian convention is like. Yes, that is the party that the American media actually presents as something other than a surreal joke. You wonder if Johnson knows who Vladimir Putin is. Or maybe it just slipped his mind while stoned. It leads me to think that it might not be the best thing in the world for the man who travels with the nuclear codes to be a pot-head. Or perhaps under the influence of other drugs. But this is about third parties and their candidates.
Wednesday, September 28, 2016
Lefty Magazine Still Fiddling As Caesar Is Piling Up The Kindling
The basic problems of the American "left" come into sharpest relief in presidential election years, years when their biggest impact, politically, is in the question as to whether or not they will vote realistically for what can be instead of either not voting or voting for some never-could-win Green spoiler or other. I've been having an argument about that at the, I now, in the past several weeks for the first time hope, fading venue of that kind of left, In These Times.
With just over a month to go in which American democracy, if not the human species, could receive the body blow of a Trump presidency, In These Times is running articles by the paid Green Party hack, David Cobb their 2004 "presidential candidate" and the current campaign manager for Jill Stein, encouraging people to vote for her. Seeing it led me to ask the question of how many paid staffers and others the Greens support as opposed to the number of office holders it can lay any honest claim to. In an competing article in which the meat-headed Kate Aronoff says that "The Left Deserves Better Than Jill Stein" she claims their current figure is 137, though when I looked at the list at a Green website, I couldn't get past 80, though I didn't count people who held appointed office. I'd like to know who gets the money that people are suckered into donating to them. I assume Cobb gets a good chunk of it for what might, actually, be a full-time position.
Aronoff, as noted over the weekened, isn't going to suggest to readers of In These Times that they vote for the one and only candidate who stands between us and having the addled, perhaps coked up Donald Trump in the White House. I have a feeling that she wouldn't think doing that would be good for her burgeoning career in lefty journalism, she might get accused of wanting to be another Sidney Blumenthal by the publisher and editor.
While I will say that In These times is among the most delusional of the lefty mags, it isn't alone. To one extent or other all of them and their electronic equivalents such as The Young Turks and the .... well, I'm not sure they'd like being called "venerable" Democracy Now have been as riddled with non-reality. Which forces the question of why these folks, all of them convinced of and ready to announced or at least imply their intellectual brilliance, insist on remaining in the political wilderness that their left has been in for its entire existence?
I noted in one of my comments there this morning that their "left" has been and to a stunning extent remains wedded to the delusion that Americans, able for the past 99 years to see what happens when Marxists take control of a government - violent, brutal, dictatorship - would ever tolerate the possibility of that happening here. Marxists have sealed the coffin on their ideology shut, sealed the vault around it and dumped yards of reinforced concrete over it. No one in their right mind, seeing that history repeated over and over again through the 20th and into the 21st century would give up even the most imperfect democracy for it. Anyone on the left who maintains any residual claims of that as possible or, most delusional and discrediting of all, desirable, has sealed their fate as a crackpot. Yet that "left" is present in most if not all of the media venues of the secular left.
I think it's time someone said that they should be seen as having the same status for the left that overt neo-Nazis should for the right. Counted in numbers killed by Marxist regimes, many of which had the support of western European and North American lefties who, though, seldom chose to live in their imaginary paradises, themselves. Such folks as Alexander Cockburn and Christopher Hitchens, in his Trotskyite days, chose to come here, to the right-wing hell hole that so many a lefty claimed the United States was. Hitchens, of course, took that baby step from Trotskyite fascism to neo-con fascism, Cockburn didn't, even as he wrote some of the most offensive tripe about the virtues of the Soviet Union when even no one there still believed that kind of stuff.
Marxist and other "third parties" of some other fringe ideology and their perennial popularity among lefty romantics are a symptom of why that left never has and never will gain much more than marginal influence in American politics. Those with control of lefty media, even when they're not frothing ideologues or megalomaniacal crack pots (Lyndon Larouche also started out on that"left"), are wedded to those insane ideas. They are not going to ever be more than a problem for the real left, the left that is interested in doing what is possible to really take office, to really make and implement laws to really make life really better or even possible.
For In These Times, Democracy Now or anyone else on the left to be giving the Greens a soapbox from which to delude people into not stopping Trump is definitively discrediting and we should all look forward to their demise. Their behavior in the face of a possible Trump or Cruz presidency, so soon after the disaster of the Green aided Bush II regime has certainly earned them the distrust if not hostility of the real left.
I hope that this is the year that finally shuts down the Greens, I'd start by asking for their books to be open so we can see how much money they've duped people into giving them and who got it. I suspect there are a few tales to be told by those figures.
With just over a month to go in which American democracy, if not the human species, could receive the body blow of a Trump presidency, In These Times is running articles by the paid Green Party hack, David Cobb their 2004 "presidential candidate" and the current campaign manager for Jill Stein, encouraging people to vote for her. Seeing it led me to ask the question of how many paid staffers and others the Greens support as opposed to the number of office holders it can lay any honest claim to. In an competing article in which the meat-headed Kate Aronoff says that "The Left Deserves Better Than Jill Stein" she claims their current figure is 137, though when I looked at the list at a Green website, I couldn't get past 80, though I didn't count people who held appointed office. I'd like to know who gets the money that people are suckered into donating to them. I assume Cobb gets a good chunk of it for what might, actually, be a full-time position.
Aronoff, as noted over the weekened, isn't going to suggest to readers of In These Times that they vote for the one and only candidate who stands between us and having the addled, perhaps coked up Donald Trump in the White House. I have a feeling that she wouldn't think doing that would be good for her burgeoning career in lefty journalism, she might get accused of wanting to be another Sidney Blumenthal by the publisher and editor.
While I will say that In These times is among the most delusional of the lefty mags, it isn't alone. To one extent or other all of them and their electronic equivalents such as The Young Turks and the .... well, I'm not sure they'd like being called "venerable" Democracy Now have been as riddled with non-reality. Which forces the question of why these folks, all of them convinced of and ready to announced or at least imply their intellectual brilliance, insist on remaining in the political wilderness that their left has been in for its entire existence?
I noted in one of my comments there this morning that their "left" has been and to a stunning extent remains wedded to the delusion that Americans, able for the past 99 years to see what happens when Marxists take control of a government - violent, brutal, dictatorship - would ever tolerate the possibility of that happening here. Marxists have sealed the coffin on their ideology shut, sealed the vault around it and dumped yards of reinforced concrete over it. No one in their right mind, seeing that history repeated over and over again through the 20th and into the 21st century would give up even the most imperfect democracy for it. Anyone on the left who maintains any residual claims of that as possible or, most delusional and discrediting of all, desirable, has sealed their fate as a crackpot. Yet that "left" is present in most if not all of the media venues of the secular left.
I think it's time someone said that they should be seen as having the same status for the left that overt neo-Nazis should for the right. Counted in numbers killed by Marxist regimes, many of which had the support of western European and North American lefties who, though, seldom chose to live in their imaginary paradises, themselves. Such folks as Alexander Cockburn and Christopher Hitchens, in his Trotskyite days, chose to come here, to the right-wing hell hole that so many a lefty claimed the United States was. Hitchens, of course, took that baby step from Trotskyite fascism to neo-con fascism, Cockburn didn't, even as he wrote some of the most offensive tripe about the virtues of the Soviet Union when even no one there still believed that kind of stuff.
Marxist and other "third parties" of some other fringe ideology and their perennial popularity among lefty romantics are a symptom of why that left never has and never will gain much more than marginal influence in American politics. Those with control of lefty media, even when they're not frothing ideologues or megalomaniacal crack pots (Lyndon Larouche also started out on that"left"), are wedded to those insane ideas. They are not going to ever be more than a problem for the real left, the left that is interested in doing what is possible to really take office, to really make and implement laws to really make life really better or even possible.
For In These Times, Democracy Now or anyone else on the left to be giving the Greens a soapbox from which to delude people into not stopping Trump is definitively discrediting and we should all look forward to their demise. Their behavior in the face of a possible Trump or Cruz presidency, so soon after the disaster of the Green aided Bush II regime has certainly earned them the distrust if not hostility of the real left.
I hope that this is the year that finally shuts down the Greens, I'd start by asking for their books to be open so we can see how much money they've duped people into giving them and who got it. I suspect there are a few tales to be told by those figures.
Monday, September 26, 2016
On Listening To The Psalms
Well, a while back I went through the exercise of down loading the audio collections of individual Psalms, I divided them into 30 separate computer files of five each day - to make a full cycle of all 150. I didn't do so thematically, I merely started with 1-30 for each day of the month and then the four 30, 60, 90 and 120 more than the date. So the first of the month I've listened to Psalms 1, 31, 61, 91 and 121. There are loads of plans for reading through the Psalms, some of them are thematic or with some higher plan in mind, the one I chose is kind of simple-minded but it is a way to go through all of them 12 times in a year without having to flip around in a book. A less lazy person might read them but I'm having more eye-trouble than usual just now. I, for the first time, can imagine that I might have to resort to signing up for Talking Books, eventually. Though I imagine they do it a lot differently now than they did when my father used them.
The randomness of it can be beneficial, interesting, listening to highly contrasting Psalms, one after another can be jarring, in a good way.
Someone in response to one of the videos I posted of Walter Brueggemann talking about Psalm 73 came up with one of the stupider lines from Brit TV comedy about how tiresome the Psalms are, I don't know how anyone who really paid attention to them could think they were tiresome. Going through them can be like a exercise in emotional and intellectual stretching, as Brueggemann suggested in one lecture or interview, trying to imagine what would bring someone to say what is said in them, it can be an exercise in both empathic imagination and self-reflection. I suspect doing that would be both a lot more useful and a lot cheaper than going to see a shrink, though, since they don't charge you three figures an hour to convince you that someone else is the reason you're unhappy, it wouldn't be as superficially gratifying. I can imagine many of the texts of the Bible and other scriptures could do the same. I can well imagine going through Suras of the Koran or scriptures from another religion in a similar way, given similar depth and contrast.
This short excerpt in which Brueggemann talks about the Psalms of Vengeance and how they could be used is a good way to deal with some of the most troubling of the texts.
One of my posts last week contained an excerpt that discussed the genocidal General Trotha accusing the Christian missionaries of whipping up the Herero people he was murdering with bloodthirsty passages from the Jewish scriptures, which is a pretty telling thing for a man responsible for scores of thousands of murders to accuse someone else of, as if people under an oppressive colonial regime which is enslaving and killing them couldn't get those ideas all on their own. It certainly isn't how most people, even oppressed people have reacted to those texts. They have a far deeper, far more serious use than the anti-religious bigots, either murderous colonial generals from the 19th century or tedious Brit-atheist comedians of the 1970s would like them to have. I'm finding that they are a far deeper mental workout than the alternatives. They're certainly a far deeper spiritual tool than a very partial, very superficial reading of them could find.
The randomness of it can be beneficial, interesting, listening to highly contrasting Psalms, one after another can be jarring, in a good way.
Someone in response to one of the videos I posted of Walter Brueggemann talking about Psalm 73 came up with one of the stupider lines from Brit TV comedy about how tiresome the Psalms are, I don't know how anyone who really paid attention to them could think they were tiresome. Going through them can be like a exercise in emotional and intellectual stretching, as Brueggemann suggested in one lecture or interview, trying to imagine what would bring someone to say what is said in them, it can be an exercise in both empathic imagination and self-reflection. I suspect doing that would be both a lot more useful and a lot cheaper than going to see a shrink, though, since they don't charge you three figures an hour to convince you that someone else is the reason you're unhappy, it wouldn't be as superficially gratifying. I can imagine many of the texts of the Bible and other scriptures could do the same. I can well imagine going through Suras of the Koran or scriptures from another religion in a similar way, given similar depth and contrast.
This short excerpt in which Brueggemann talks about the Psalms of Vengeance and how they could be used is a good way to deal with some of the most troubling of the texts.
One of my posts last week contained an excerpt that discussed the genocidal General Trotha accusing the Christian missionaries of whipping up the Herero people he was murdering with bloodthirsty passages from the Jewish scriptures, which is a pretty telling thing for a man responsible for scores of thousands of murders to accuse someone else of, as if people under an oppressive colonial regime which is enslaving and killing them couldn't get those ideas all on their own. It certainly isn't how most people, even oppressed people have reacted to those texts. They have a far deeper, far more serious use than the anti-religious bigots, either murderous colonial generals from the 19th century or tedious Brit-atheist comedians of the 1970s would like them to have. I'm finding that they are a far deeper mental workout than the alternatives. They're certainly a far deeper spiritual tool than a very partial, very superficial reading of them could find.
It's Official The "Journalists" Given A Star Turn AT the Debates Are To Allow Trump To Lie
I will not be listening to the alleged presidential debate tonight, I've known who I was going to vote for ever since the Democratic nominee was obvious, back in about March so there isn't any reason to put myself through the grief of listening to Trump lie, to the "moderator" and the alleged journalists asking the questions which will almost certainly be slanted to his benefit and her loss. In the little I've seen of the set-up for them, the American media that matters, the TV and radio outlets, are declaring all he has to do is avoid killing a baby or eating a live chicken for him to win. This is the year that the complete irresponsibility and corruption of the American media has reached a low, you wonder what the next new low will be, there doesn't seem to be any lowest level they can't find a lower one to sink to.
These presidential "debates" are and have been a load of crap since the first one in 1960 and they've gotten steadily worse. To show what a fraud they are Janet Brown the, now, long time head of the Presidential Debate Commission has already agreed with Donald Trump that when he lies the questioners and "moderator" shouldn't point out that he has lied.
Since the reason for having them in those positions are their status as alleged journalists, any of them who agreed to such a rule on such a potentially important occasion, to sit politely as someone who might be the president lies through his teeth, as they know they are lying is an outrageous rule. The entire exercise, if not to compel truth-telling among the candidates, is turned into an empty fraud by Janet Brown's fiat. Any alleged journalist who would abide by such a rule has no business getting the publicity of being a questioner or retaining the status as a journalist. Any who agree to such a rule should stand as being discredited by their disservice to the truth and the right of The People to the truth.
I have looked to find out who Janet Brown is and why she has the position she does and I haven't been able to find out much. Her connections have, tellingly, been through Republican politicians and officials. This four-year-old blog post contains more information about her than I've been able to find elsewhere in the time I've got this morning.
Who is Janet H. Brown?
Very few people seem to know. Which would be fine, if she weren’t one of the most powerful people in politics. At least on paper. Ms. Brown has, for the past quarter century, been the head of the Commission on Presidential Debates, the bipartisan entity that controls every aspect of the three nationally televised debate-like events held every election cycle. With each cycle, they become a more important part of the electoral process — although they haven’t historically had as much impact on voters as most people think, that very misconception has become a self-fulfilling prophecy, causing them to become more and more popular. Pundits in the 24-hour news cycle obsess endlessly over them as a bellwether of each campaign’s momentum.
Just the two campaigns, that is. Janet H. Brown, year in and year out, makes sure of that.
Janet H. Brown, year in and year out, makes sure of that. A member of President Reagan’s budget staff, as well as a staffer for Sen. John C. Danforth (R-Missouri) and British Ambassador and former Nixon Defense Secretary Elliot L. Richardson, her identity is otherwise murky. The New York Times ran a Dewar’s Profile-style puff piece on her recently, a bit of fluff which revealed nothing deeper than her TV watching habits.
With her declaration that journalists who know that a presidential candidate is lying are to pretend they don't know it, she has certainly discredited herself and the entire show.
And it is a show, these aren't and haven't been debates. A real debate doesn't have celebrity TV "journalists" asking fluff or tough questions based on who they obviously like, they have two sides taking opposite positions arguing the merits and faults of the positions on the question. Though those are also a show, an entertainment, they actually could carry substantial information instead of the statements, gaffs and mistakes which will become the sum total of the "debate" in the entirely predictable instant analyses on the broadcast and cabloid venues and the morning radio and TV "news". And, this year, in particular, those will slant against Hillary Clinton no matter how well she does. They will not admit that she is probably the most qualified candidate for the American presidency in modern history whose opponent is certainly one of the two least qualified since Warren Harding, though that is a simple and hard fact which, suppressed, could lead the country into complete disaster next year. Such is the result when journalism turns into a moutpiece of oligarchy and "debates" turn into TV reality shows. TV "reality" made Donald Trump what he is today. It has turned the profession of journalism into something that considers Lester Holt a wise and eminent journalist. As an example of what a huge liar Trump is, he's already said Holt is a Democrat, he isn't, he's a registered Republican. Another of the "journalists" tapped for the star turn is Chris Wallace, son of Mike, who says he doesn't see his role as making sure the candidates don't lie. Since he's worked most of his career at FOX, that's no surprise. His place of business is all about lying and has played a vital role in creating the Trump presidency through giving him a national soap box from which to lie for the past several years.
So I won't bother watching it. I don't trust much of anything that gets on American TV or radio.
These presidential "debates" are and have been a load of crap since the first one in 1960 and they've gotten steadily worse. To show what a fraud they are Janet Brown the, now, long time head of the Presidential Debate Commission has already agreed with Donald Trump that when he lies the questioners and "moderator" shouldn't point out that he has lied.
Since the reason for having them in those positions are their status as alleged journalists, any of them who agreed to such a rule on such a potentially important occasion, to sit politely as someone who might be the president lies through his teeth, as they know they are lying is an outrageous rule. The entire exercise, if not to compel truth-telling among the candidates, is turned into an empty fraud by Janet Brown's fiat. Any alleged journalist who would abide by such a rule has no business getting the publicity of being a questioner or retaining the status as a journalist. Any who agree to such a rule should stand as being discredited by their disservice to the truth and the right of The People to the truth.
I have looked to find out who Janet Brown is and why she has the position she does and I haven't been able to find out much. Her connections have, tellingly, been through Republican politicians and officials. This four-year-old blog post contains more information about her than I've been able to find elsewhere in the time I've got this morning.
Who is Janet H. Brown?
Very few people seem to know. Which would be fine, if she weren’t one of the most powerful people in politics. At least on paper. Ms. Brown has, for the past quarter century, been the head of the Commission on Presidential Debates, the bipartisan entity that controls every aspect of the three nationally televised debate-like events held every election cycle. With each cycle, they become a more important part of the electoral process — although they haven’t historically had as much impact on voters as most people think, that very misconception has become a self-fulfilling prophecy, causing them to become more and more popular. Pundits in the 24-hour news cycle obsess endlessly over them as a bellwether of each campaign’s momentum.
Just the two campaigns, that is. Janet H. Brown, year in and year out, makes sure of that.
Janet H. Brown, year in and year out, makes sure of that. A member of President Reagan’s budget staff, as well as a staffer for Sen. John C. Danforth (R-Missouri) and British Ambassador and former Nixon Defense Secretary Elliot L. Richardson, her identity is otherwise murky. The New York Times ran a Dewar’s Profile-style puff piece on her recently, a bit of fluff which revealed nothing deeper than her TV watching habits.
With her declaration that journalists who know that a presidential candidate is lying are to pretend they don't know it, she has certainly discredited herself and the entire show.
And it is a show, these aren't and haven't been debates. A real debate doesn't have celebrity TV "journalists" asking fluff or tough questions based on who they obviously like, they have two sides taking opposite positions arguing the merits and faults of the positions on the question. Though those are also a show, an entertainment, they actually could carry substantial information instead of the statements, gaffs and mistakes which will become the sum total of the "debate" in the entirely predictable instant analyses on the broadcast and cabloid venues and the morning radio and TV "news". And, this year, in particular, those will slant against Hillary Clinton no matter how well she does. They will not admit that she is probably the most qualified candidate for the American presidency in modern history whose opponent is certainly one of the two least qualified since Warren Harding, though that is a simple and hard fact which, suppressed, could lead the country into complete disaster next year. Such is the result when journalism turns into a moutpiece of oligarchy and "debates" turn into TV reality shows. TV "reality" made Donald Trump what he is today. It has turned the profession of journalism into something that considers Lester Holt a wise and eminent journalist. As an example of what a huge liar Trump is, he's already said Holt is a Democrat, he isn't, he's a registered Republican. Another of the "journalists" tapped for the star turn is Chris Wallace, son of Mike, who says he doesn't see his role as making sure the candidates don't lie. Since he's worked most of his career at FOX, that's no surprise. His place of business is all about lying and has played a vital role in creating the Trump presidency through giving him a national soap box from which to lie for the past several years.
So I won't bother watching it. I don't trust much of anything that gets on American TV or radio.
Sunday, September 25, 2016
Brahms Variations Op.21/1
Sviatoslav Richter, piano
This piece has to be about the least overtly virtuosic virtuoso piece in the piano repertoire, though it is extremely difficult to play due to its unrelenting subtlety and depth. Richter played it about as well as it could be imagined being possible.
The guitarist Paul Galbraith transcribed the piece for guitar and, in the process, designed a new eight string guitar with eight strings, a high string tuned to "a" above the high "e" string and a bass string below the low E tuned to the "A" below that. The luthier he worked with to design and build this new guitar used an idea from the late Renaissance instrument, the opharion of having an expanding string length with fanned frets. The instrument is held more like a cello and has a large resonator that the end-pin rests on. It's really something to see and you can see pictures of it and a read a description at Galbraith's website.
I think the transcription is, generally, a real success though the use of tremolo in one of the variations isn't something I'd choose to do if it were me.
Brahms Intermezzo op.117 no.2 in B flat minor
Wilhelm Kempff, piano
Don't know if Brahms meant this piece to be associated with a day in early fall but I think of it this time of year. Wilhelm Kempff's recording of it is outstandingly beautiful.
The Secular Left Is What Has Failed, It Always Will Eventually
I can't find the text that this Guardian Long Read podcast says is there, which would be useful to addressing some of John Harris says in detail. His question is Does The Left Have a Future? He tells about how, all over the West, Britain, The United States, France, Germany, Spain,... that "the left" is floundering, unable to win elections and mount governments that can make laws and implement policies. While a lot of what he says is worth thinking about, I do see one really big problem he leaves out, the systematic discrediting of the left by corporate and commercial media which serve the interests of the right. That is true just about everywhere and the problem has gotten steadily worse as electronic, broadcast, cable, etc. media take over the majority of the attention of populations. Unless such media is forced to a. not lie or distort reality, b. to carry information which is not favorable to the interest of their owners and control voters can't know the truth and their choices won't make them free or produce justice and egalitarian democracy.
Beyond that, being a typical Brit leftist, Harris's focus takes in the failing unions and other things the left has relied on - the failures of which vary from place to place - he doesn't seem to take into account that people have to have some sense of morality which makes them think past their own interests and that sense of morality outside of the context of religious belief in moral obligations doesn't seem to be very strong or at all durable.
I think the decline of the real left, the left that can produce egalitarian democracy, not the Marxist or quasi-Marxist pseudo-left, is a predictable result of the decline of firm belief in the traditional religions that have produced egalitarian democracy. To go back to the observation of the Marxist-atheist philosopher, Jurgen Habermas, all of those things which comprise the substance of that real left are a product of the Jewish principle of JUSTICE as expressed in the Christian commandment of LOVE. His declaration is that all of real modernism, the dignity and autonomy of the individual, the moral obligation to respect equal rights, etc. have no other source and, even today, they are fed by nothing else as secularism has not produced anything that succeeds in producing and sustaining them. Harris touches on one of the proposed replacements, the true but insufficiently strong or binding observation that the personal is political but that doesn't work to replace the firm belief that our Creator wants us to do to others what we would have them do to us, that what we do to the least among us we do to God, that we are to love each other with the love that Jesus's apostles felt he had for them and that we are to love our enemies and pray for those who persecute us.
Since January I've been studying the Old Testament guided by the observations of the great Old Testament scholar Walter Brueggemann and I am stunned how virtually everything we see as a crisis of the left, everything even down to the parched landscapes that come with global warming are not only mentioned in those old texts but they are extensively analyzed in terms of people failing to follow the practices of equal justice, love, treating the least among us with love and dignity, of abusing people, animals and the environments by those with power in a quest for endless acquisition. That is also something which America's greatest living writer, Marilynne Robinson has also addressed in powerful essays.
I read that and see far more for the left to benefit from than virtually any secular centered vision. That isn't to say that there isn't some valuable content in some secularists' thinking. Many secularists are quite smart. But it has, increasingly, failed politically, it has failed to produce results. Such thinking can't be imposed by the fiat of the wise, it must be the result of the vote. Without the firm belief in the moral obligations that produce a willingness to look past our own, narrow interest towards universal and equal justice in a sufficient number of people all of their secular analyses will be insufficient. It's not as if the secular left isn't smart, it's that its areligious and, in too many cases, anti-religious motivation and content is guaranteed to defeat what is necessary to produce egalitarian democracy.
Lacking the substance to produce egalitarian democracy in their very foundations, the detour that so many even very clever lefties took in everything from Marxism to Fabianism and various other, futile, often anti-religious and, ultimately, anti-democratic isms proves that cleverness is hardly enough. I would wonder if any such past success that left has had, politically, wasn't a product of Christians and others with a sense of religious obligation voting for candidates who promised to produce policies enabling that. I wonder if it isn't a decline in that basic religious belief as a firm obligation under a barrage of secular media which isn't the real cause of the failure of the Harris left. And it does take a real belief that no one less than God requires us to not be selfish, narrowly concerned with ourselves and our tight circle of loved ones. If voting isn't directed from the motivation of justice and love and moral obligation of a kind which will only be found with a belief that those are the will of God any vote will fail to produce the result of that moral obligation, an equal and just society governed by democratic rule.
If The People are corrupted to the extent that an effective majority don't believe that God wants them to do unto others what they would have done unto them, you will never achieve the end result, the goal of genuine liberalism. I think a diet of mockery of Christianity and Judaism in Britian probably has a lot to do with why people don't vote for candidates who promise to produce the kind of society Jesus and the other Jewish prophets envisioned would result from equal justice powered by love. Without the firm belief in a moral obligation to do what produces egalitarian democracy, asking people to not be selfish, self-centered, ego-centric, ethnocentric, units of economic acquisition and utility makes no sense at all to them. A secular left will always, eventually, fail as the Western left has in so many places.
Beyond that, being a typical Brit leftist, Harris's focus takes in the failing unions and other things the left has relied on - the failures of which vary from place to place - he doesn't seem to take into account that people have to have some sense of morality which makes them think past their own interests and that sense of morality outside of the context of religious belief in moral obligations doesn't seem to be very strong or at all durable.
I think the decline of the real left, the left that can produce egalitarian democracy, not the Marxist or quasi-Marxist pseudo-left, is a predictable result of the decline of firm belief in the traditional religions that have produced egalitarian democracy. To go back to the observation of the Marxist-atheist philosopher, Jurgen Habermas, all of those things which comprise the substance of that real left are a product of the Jewish principle of JUSTICE as expressed in the Christian commandment of LOVE. His declaration is that all of real modernism, the dignity and autonomy of the individual, the moral obligation to respect equal rights, etc. have no other source and, even today, they are fed by nothing else as secularism has not produced anything that succeeds in producing and sustaining them. Harris touches on one of the proposed replacements, the true but insufficiently strong or binding observation that the personal is political but that doesn't work to replace the firm belief that our Creator wants us to do to others what we would have them do to us, that what we do to the least among us we do to God, that we are to love each other with the love that Jesus's apostles felt he had for them and that we are to love our enemies and pray for those who persecute us.
Since January I've been studying the Old Testament guided by the observations of the great Old Testament scholar Walter Brueggemann and I am stunned how virtually everything we see as a crisis of the left, everything even down to the parched landscapes that come with global warming are not only mentioned in those old texts but they are extensively analyzed in terms of people failing to follow the practices of equal justice, love, treating the least among us with love and dignity, of abusing people, animals and the environments by those with power in a quest for endless acquisition. That is also something which America's greatest living writer, Marilynne Robinson has also addressed in powerful essays.
I read that and see far more for the left to benefit from than virtually any secular centered vision. That isn't to say that there isn't some valuable content in some secularists' thinking. Many secularists are quite smart. But it has, increasingly, failed politically, it has failed to produce results. Such thinking can't be imposed by the fiat of the wise, it must be the result of the vote. Without the firm belief in the moral obligations that produce a willingness to look past our own, narrow interest towards universal and equal justice in a sufficient number of people all of their secular analyses will be insufficient. It's not as if the secular left isn't smart, it's that its areligious and, in too many cases, anti-religious motivation and content is guaranteed to defeat what is necessary to produce egalitarian democracy.
Lacking the substance to produce egalitarian democracy in their very foundations, the detour that so many even very clever lefties took in everything from Marxism to Fabianism and various other, futile, often anti-religious and, ultimately, anti-democratic isms proves that cleverness is hardly enough. I would wonder if any such past success that left has had, politically, wasn't a product of Christians and others with a sense of religious obligation voting for candidates who promised to produce policies enabling that. I wonder if it isn't a decline in that basic religious belief as a firm obligation under a barrage of secular media which isn't the real cause of the failure of the Harris left. And it does take a real belief that no one less than God requires us to not be selfish, narrowly concerned with ourselves and our tight circle of loved ones. If voting isn't directed from the motivation of justice and love and moral obligation of a kind which will only be found with a belief that those are the will of God any vote will fail to produce the result of that moral obligation, an equal and just society governed by democratic rule.
If The People are corrupted to the extent that an effective majority don't believe that God wants them to do unto others what they would have done unto them, you will never achieve the end result, the goal of genuine liberalism. I think a diet of mockery of Christianity and Judaism in Britian probably has a lot to do with why people don't vote for candidates who promise to produce the kind of society Jesus and the other Jewish prophets envisioned would result from equal justice powered by love. Without the firm belief in a moral obligation to do what produces egalitarian democracy, asking people to not be selfish, self-centered, ego-centric, ethnocentric, units of economic acquisition and utility makes no sense at all to them. A secular left will always, eventually, fail as the Western left has in so many places.
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