The Harrowing Of Hell

CATHOLICS TRADITIONALLY say the Apostles' Creed at mass though apparently the choice to say that or the Nicene Creed is a choice left to the celebrant, something I never knew until very recently.   I never remember hearing the Nicene Creed said at mass.   I don't remember ever hearing it set to music in a mass setting by a western composer, either, though I'd have to check if my memory is right about that.  

The thing in the Creed which I never felt very good with saying was the statement that after his death Jesus "descended into hell,"  something I never heard discussed in any Catholic context.  I was in college when I first came across literary mentions of "the harrowing of hell" in which Jesus went there to preach salvation to the souls of those who died before his death so that they could be rescued from what western Christians call "hell" but which must have been to the Apostles, the Jewish version of that, sheol.   I had assumed it was from the extra-canonical writings, maybe those unofficial "gospels and epistles" that are so much peddled by ahistorical "scholars" and other such anti-Christian hucksters these days.  Only I, as well as so many other too casual readers, didn't notice the subtle references to that idea contained in the canonical books of the New Testament.   I won't comment on this passage from Luke Timothy Johnson's book,  The Creed: What Christians believe and why it matters.   It's a good Holy Saturday meditation, better than anything I could offer you. 

The final moment of Jesus' earthly existence noted by the creed is that he was buried.  Once more, we find the tradition of Jesus'  burial both in Paul and in the Gospels.

Writing to the Corinthians around the year 54, Paul provides the summary of the good news that he had himself received and had handed on to them, and "by which you are being saved if you hold firmly to the message: (1 Cor. 15:1-2).  It begins, "that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures, and that he was buried."  Note that Paul reports that in an unadorned fashion.  It is simply one of the facts" about Jesus that he received from the first believers,  therefore within some few years of Jesus' death.   He does not suggest that, like the death for sins and like the resurrection on the third day,  these are matters predicted by the scriptures.

The same matter of factness about the burial is found in the Gospel narratives, which several small variations (see Mark 15:42-47;  Matt 27:55-66; Luke 25:50-55; John 19:38-42).  More striking is the strong agreement on the basic characters and actions, and above all on the fact of the burial itself.  That Jesus was buried and remained in the tomb for some length of time certainly serves to confirm the reality of his death.  Compare Martha's comment concerning her brother Lazarus, "Lord, already there is a stench because he has been dead four days."  (John 11:32), and the resurrection of a body so thoroughly dead must also be regarded as an act of God. 

But another dimension of the burial is equally ancient and important.  The burial symbolizes Jesus' descent into the realm that in ancient cosmology was most removed from "heaven" or the place of God's dwelling.  He goes "under the earth," which in the Psalms is called sheol, and in the Greek translation, hades  In Peter's speech at Pentecost, he quotes Psalm 16 in connection with Jesus' death; "You will not abandon my soul to hades, or let your Holy One see corruption: (Acts 2:27).

This connection may help account for the conviction that Jesus, after his death, entered into the dungeons of the lower depths in order to free those most distant from the divine presence,  a motif that was subsequently termed "the harrowing of hell" or, in the Apostles' Creed, "the descent into hell."  In Ephesians 4:5; Paul asks cryptically,  "when it says 'he ascended,' what does it mean that he had also descended into the lower parts of the earth?"  The conviction is stated more clearly by I Peter 5:18-20:

He was put to death in the flesh,  but made alive in the spirit, in which also he went and made a proclamation to the spirits in prison, who in former times did not obey, when God waited patiently in the days of Noah 

Peter continues, "For this is the reason the gospel was proclaimed even to the dead, so that, even though they had been judged in the flesh as everyone is judged, they might live in the sprit and God does: (1 Pet. 4-6).  

The descent of Jesus into hell is, in this view, an expression of God's universal will for salvation and a part of his cosmic victory, so that every tongue, even those "under the earth," should proclaim that Jesus is Lord (Phil 2:10).  In terms of the movement of the creed, the burial represents the nadir of downward descent,  the ultimate expression of Jesus' sharing the human condition,  even to the depositing of the flesh in the soil like a seed (John 12:24; see 1 Cor 15:35-41). 

The Choice We Will Make Whether We Like It Or Not

The extreme dangers of the presidential system of government which has devolved into dictatorship in so many places who modeled their governments on ours have reached maturity here.    Since the Republican-fascists and the lawyers and law scholars who favor imposing fascism here under the Ivy League invented "unitary executive" theory of the presidency have made this try,   and a lot of those sit on the Roberts Court which made Trump a monarch with impunity for his law breaking (and by extension and with the idiotic blanket pardon power in the badly written Constitution, his henchmen)  we can never, ever have any confidence that our presidential system will not become the dictatorship which Trump has, to date, had a remarkable success in imposing on an unwilling country.  IT IS THAT OUR COURTS HAVE YET TO STOP HIM WHICH IS THE NEWS, NOT THESE TEMPORARY ACTIONS BY LOWER COURTS.     

We will either change our system, at its foundation or we will watch democracy implode into fascism.   That's the choice.

We sat embarassed, listening to the water splash . . . Our hopes of glory gone, we sat in silence

LAST LESSON

(John 13:3-16)

The festive table glowed with candles,
warding off the darkness lurking
in the corners of the upper room.

As soon as we had found a place,
for once not quarreling over who
sat next to Jesus, he removed
his outer robe, wrapped a towel
around himself, poured a basin
full of water, and knelt at Peter's feet!

"Lord," he blurted, "you shall never
wash my feet!" Jesus warned him:
"If you do not let me wash you,
you can have no share with me."
Poor Peter begged, "Then wash my hands
and head as well."  But Jesus answered:

"Those who bathe need only have
their feet washed."  We sat embarrassed,
listening to the water splash.
Still on his knees, the Master looked
at us then.  "You are clean,"
he added, "though not all of you."

And so we let him wash our feet!
Afterwards, he questioned, "Do you
understand what I have done?"

Our hopes of glory gone, we sat
in silence.  He went on: "You call me
Lord and Teacher.  You are right.
Tonight I, your Lord and Teacher,
have set you an example:  Do
for one another as I have done."

The supper table glowed with candles
warding off the crouching darkness
as we - his chosen servant leaders -
listened to our Master Teacher
nailing down his final lesson
on the night before he died. 

Sr Irene Zimmerman OSF

Christianity as Whitewash Over Trump's Antichristianity

"Trump is the perfect vessel to carry the acid that destroys the soft tissue binding democratic governance."

IF YOU DON'T FOLLOW Catholic issues you may not know who one of the more dangerous multi-millionaire  influencers in the United States these days,  Tim Busch.   He is really very dangerous, one of the foremost backers and pushers of the especially wacky but very influential "trad catholic" cult and a major influence in many in what I think is only honestly considered the Antichrist in our time.  

There is an extremely important article by Tom Roberts about him and his influence, his relationship with the Antichrist if anyone is,  Trump and his regime in the National Catholic Reporter.  I'm going to give you a big chunk in case you don't follow the link to read the whole thing.   I would encourage you to do that and while there you might want to read Thomas Reese's Holy Week column about how Trump as well as other manifestations of Antichrist are crucifying The Lord today. 

The recent column penned by Tim Busch and headlined by the National Catholic Register, "The Trump Administration: More Catholic Than You Know," may be stunning as a political endorsement, but it is far more important as a statement that twists Catholic thought into unrecognizable shapes. It is the most recent of Busch's pronouncements that raise serious questions about Catholicism's engagement in the wider culture and who represents the voice of church authority in this era.

Given the prominence of Busch on the Catholic landscape as the founder of the conservative Catholic Napa Institute, two assertions in this piece should be taken seriously. The first, which even he labels "surprising," is his belief that the Trump administration "is the most Christian I've ever seen." The second: "Crucially, from what I've seen, the president's team is earnestly striving to apply the precepts of our faith to the policies that govern America." Let that sink in.

Donald Trump's presidency may be term limited, and politics can shift without warning, but there is no term limit to Busch's influence, and it doesn't appear his resources will run out anytime soon. Apparently, no existing structure, not even hierarchical authority, dares to challenge his public assertions.

Busch has long been an unabashed advocate for a brand of American religion that seeks respectability for the unbounded economic ambitions of its practitioners by wrapping itself in a veneer of piety. In his case, it is Catholic piety placed in service of an extreme libertarian agenda and what is turning out to be a politics of retribution, division and cruelty.

If that seems a harsh assessment, an extensive public record bears it out. Busch's wealth has gained him a significant share of the ecclesial attention economy as well as a name on the business school at the Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C., and a considerable influence over the EWTN publishing and broadcasting empires.

It is critical to both church and state which version of Catholicism shows up now in the public square.

Knowing what led to Busch's ascendency is an unnerving parallel to realizing that how Trump came to sit in the Oval Office is far more instructive in understanding who we are as a people than is the fact that he's president.

Trump is the perfect vessel to carry the acid that destroys the soft tissue binding democratic governance. Devoid of moral compass and oblivious to any purpose beyond himself and other rich and powerful elite, he is able to say and do what would have been political suicide for anyone in the past. His destruction of norms cleared the way for the real libertarian, Elon Musk, an unelected, unconfirmed, antigovernment billionaire whose fortunes depend on billions in government contracts. Musk was given the keys to the kingdom — and permission to destroy it. 

A self-centered individualist in the extreme, Trump was a perfect match for the American ideology of individualism that had been honed, through trial and error, over decades. The ideology is antithetical to the Christian Gospel.

I will break in here to say that this is one of the best assessments of how the corruption of America by turning self-centeredness into a virtue (fiction and the movies carried it so persuasively).   "Individualism" is only a virtue when the individual in question is focused on the common good, the good of the least among us, the others that we are to do unto what we'd have done to us.   As it is practiced by the many who practice it and as it is understood by the likes of Trump and Busch and, I'm sorry to tell you, just about everyone else who practices it,  it turns the individual, the self, into the real god of their worship.   "Individualism" as it is commonly understood and held to be a virtue in 2025 America is the worship of the self and is nothing more than selfishness.  Libertarianism is its political ethics. 

Likewise, the ideas advanced by Busch, who finds not only political commonality but sanctity in the Trump administration, did not materialize overnight or with the founding of his Napa Institute in 2010.

The libertarian/religious ideology he often places on prominent display has been under construction by others for decades. Busch, a successful lawyer who owns luxury resorts, is the perfect vehicle for carrying forward the work of those who have attempted to Catholicize ideas and rationale from the furthest extremes of secular economics and the politics of disruption.

You may also want to hear Ed Trevors on Franklin Graham's tongue bathing of Trump over some Easter message that someone else in the Whitehouse issued as Trump's ideas on Easter.   Coming from someone pretending they're Trump, from inside his Antichrist of a regime,  it's too nauseating for me to go into in depth. 

Open Letter To The White Supremacist Who Trolls Me

I HAVE NEVER commented on the recent case you are obsessed with and have no intention of doing so unless something about it strikes me as going along with the theme of my blog.   The fat little murderer has become a paid celebrity among your fellow fascists, so he's made a killing off of the murders he committed. 

I have commented twice before on the little killer-boy who brought a gun TO A DEMONSTRATION in a state he didn't live in WITH A GROUP OF LIKEWISE OUT OF STATERS WHO WERE ARMED and killed two People.   Then he was let off by a judge who obviously bent over backward for the little murderer and a jury as ready to exonerate him as the ones who customarily let off Klansmen and the like who murdered People of Color and, by the way,  Catholics among others targeted by your kind.   Your brat got off for murder, what are you whining about?    Here's what I had to say about it at the time. 

Wednesday, November 10, 2021

 judge Bruce Schroeder should be removed from the Rittenhouse trial because it's been clear from the start he's trying to let the little murderer off because he thinks his victims deserved to be murdered.  This is a good example of just what a lie it was when John Roberts declared the era of Jim Crow dead and so the Voting Rights Act was overturned.  

The American judiciary is well marbled with white supremacy from bottom to top. 

Posted by The Thought Criminal at 4:26 PM No comments:  

Friday, November 19, 2021

The Pantomime of Justice Let The Maga Murderer Off

MAGA JUDGE WITH MAGA JURY LETS OFF MAGA MURDERER.  

That's what was bound to happen in this trial the way it was allowed to be conducted in Wisconsin with an elected judge who made racist jokes from the bench, bent over backwards to get his boy off for murder and who conducted himself in a way that if he had an Alabama accent and Rittenhouse were accused of the lynch murder of a Black Person would fit right into a black and white movie about the Jim Crow era.  But Bruce Schroeder is an elected judge in one of the states that sent soldiers to fight against the Confederacy, at one time but that was a long, long time ago.  There are many such states in the North where Jim Crow is about as alive as it is in any of the states of the old Confederacy and those are any of the states with large Republican-fascist populations. 

As Elie Mystal said, there isn't any great surprise in this if you're a Person of Color, it's just one of the things that White People who are not Republican-fascists are beginning to understand, those rules have always been in place when it's Black victims of crimes committed by White criminals.  Black defendants who survive a possible summary execution can not count on having a Bruce Schroeder bending everything getting them off even when they are obviously innocent.  

White People, like me, should get used to this because under the Trumpzi Republican-fascist regime which is in place wherever Republican-fascists have power, legislative, executive, judicial, their political identity might serve to put them in the unaccustomed class that Black People and other People of Color are in now.  

As Elie Mystal said, there is no justice, there will be no peace, there will be emboldened and armed fascists killing more and more people.   I'm damned if I'm going to pretend that that fat little fascist is innocent as determined by the jury in this case.  The sanctity of trial by jury is just one of those sacred myths that deserves a thorough laundering because it also stinks like the rest of the "justice" system does.   Especially when it is so obviously rigged as in this case.

The U.S. Constitution Has Failed Catastrophically We Won't Fix It Until We Admit That

IT ISN'T ONLY the Trump regime declaring it will not obey the court order on its illegal abduction and rendition to a notorious torture prison of a man who had the courts' protection against that,  it is the courts' and, especially the Supreme Court setting us up for this to have been an inevitable denouement.   And I believe, at least in the case of the Supreme Court* it was done primarily for baldly partisan purposes by the Republican-fascist appointees to the court.   Though that purpose is to serve the patrons of that party, the billionaires and millionaires,  those who the legal profession serve above and all others because they can pay the best.   It really starts in nothing more complex than that.   That practice, which becomes a habit during the course of a professional life in the law, has thoroughly saturated not only the practice of lawyers but through rulings of courts and Supreme Courts and in the consequent legal thinking of the lawyers who so overwhelmingly have dominated the legislatures and executives of our country.

The fatal flaws of America's 18th century liberal democratic Constitution were baked into it at the start. It is a Constitution which was explicitly, from the start, radically anti-egalitarian in its service to the original corrupt deal between the blackmailing slave-holders and the northern financiers and speculators and because the aristocrats who framed it didn't really want the common People to directly determine the country's government.  They had bamboozled the poor, the landless, the recently freed from slavery into fighting their revolutionary war and when, under the Articles of Confederation, the common People realized they had been bamboozled revolted over the reneged promises that were broken by the Congress.   That is what is behind the Electoral College which the Rehnquist Court used to install the Republican loser of the 2000 election and which installed the loser of he 2016 election, Trump.    It is what is behind the Republican dominated Senate to install the most corrupt Courts in our history, the Rehnquist and Roberts Courts.   The power given to small population states has always, since the founding of the country, given more power to first the slave-states and then even more so the de-facto slave states and those which have had policies of preventing Black People, other People of Color and those who are more likely to vote for Democrats than Republicans all on the basis of "equal representation" of states in both the Senate and, so Electoral College which further enhances the power of those who trend to favor white supremacy and other forms of injustice.

The notorious 3/5ths provision of the original Constitution becomes WORSE BY TWO-FIFTHS when Republican-fascists prevent People from casting a vote and prevent those votes from being counted and so determining the government.   Under America apartheid many of the defects of the original Constitution became worse than it was under slavery.   Under the laws made laws by the Rehnquist and Roberts Courts - another very dangerous and serious defect in the U.S. Constitution - the Court made laws overturning the Voting Rights Act - we are rapidly returning to the status quo of American apartheid, only this time they are extending it well past People of Color to apply it to anyone who isn't in the minority who support Republican-fascism.   They are trying to pass a law that will disenfranchise huge numbers of Americans who have voted for their entire adult lives,  I am hoping that they may shoot themselves in the foot by disenfranchising many Repubican-fascist rural voters who will find it hard or impossible to get the documents they insist Americans present to register to vote or re-register to vote or to, in fact, vote.   Making such People appear at an office to obtain such documents and to document their lives may, in fact, give an advantage to those who live in cities where such offices are.  But I wouldn't count on that.   Such laws are never applied on an equal basis.  

I was glad to hear that finally a prominent lawyer,  Adam Senator Adam Schiff, has finally admitted that we are in that Constitutional Crisis that has, in fact, been going on for a year and, I would argue, has been going on since Bush v. Gore.   Finally, one prominent lawyer was forced by Trump's presser with the dictator of El Salvador to admit that.   I hope it is the opening of the flood gate to the admission that we are well past being on the cusp of dictatorship.   Though I will believe that when I see it.  We have to admit the truth even as we understand how hard it will be to change it.**

Those who are hoping the Roberts Court is going do anything but facilitate the fall into Republican-fascism are living in a fantasy,  they are all-in on it.   Even a Court which was not all-in on it would be impotent to reign in a criminal president, as Trump certainly is, due to our dangerous presidential system.   The fact is that the Republican-fascists in the Congress will block his impeachment and, even when the House voted articles of impeachment, the Republican-fascists in the Senate, either in the majority or the minority will block his conviction under our idiotic Constitution.    Impeachment of a president or a Supreme court "justice" is a dangerous myth that has kept us from doing that one thing that is most essential to establishing and protecting egalitarian democracy - the only legitimate form of government - changing our Constitution from the dangerous presidential system to a dangerous but far less dangerous parliamentary system.  ONE WHICH, UNLIKE THE BRITISH SYSTEM, IS BASED IN REAL, NUMERICALLY DETERMINED EQUALITY,  ONE PERSON ONE VOTE AND EQUAL REPRESENTATION IN THE GOVERNMENT.  

* Other courts such as the ones under Trump's and McConnell's scumbags , Ailene Cannon Matthew Kacsmaryk, are even more overtly Republican-fascist

** Hearing Lawrence O'Donnell talking last night about how the Trump lawyer-liars use terms which carry positive, even virtuous connotative meaning to name the exact opposite of them may lead to a post on that.   The failure of even the college-credentialed Americans to notice that is another specialty of lawyers, judges and "justices."   That practice may have started there but it has become widespread, especially among those with a little learning and lots of media exposure.  

Broken Link?

Apparently something happened to the Youtube I posted here on Saturday,  it's not working on my computer this morning.   I'm not getting a notice that it was taken down but it just isn't working.   I'm sorry about that if I had something to do with it.  It's a good opera and should be heard more.  

Saturday Night Opera - Eric Sawyer and Harley Erdman - The Scarlet Professor

 

Eric Sawyer,  composer,   Harley Erdman, librettist

I am unable to find a list of the performers and conductor for this performance.  I believe it is the premier which was presented by a consortium of five colleges in Western Massachusetts,  at the same Smith College where Newton Arvin taught, where he was arrested for possession of innocuous 1950s era beef-cake magazines and where his career as one of the time's foremost scholars of American literature - his deep Hawthorne scholarship gives a good part of the substance of the opera and the title - and which may have led to his death a few years later.   He isn't exactly a hero - he named names to the prosecutors which led to other men being prosecuted and fired - but he is a kind of tragic hero. 

Here's an interview with the composer, librettist and the author of the book they based their work on. 

For me as someone who is seriously anti-porn, it raises serious questions, though I think the stuff he was arrested for getting in the mail and possessing is kind of tacky and hardly pornographic,  the refusal of lawyers and judges and "justices" to distinguish that from the photographed and filmed rape and abuse and endangerment of Women, Children and Men in the explosion of porn today is no reason to accept the one while acknowledging the injustice of cases like this one.   I find I can hold both positions with no problem but, then,  I'm not in the business of lying while a lawyer. 

It is a very good opera.   One of a number these two have collaborated on.   I'm looking forward to hearing more of their work.    Here's something by Eric Sawyer that's quite different, based on Shaker hymns,  The Humble Heart 

A Week Before Good Friday

 LEGACY

(Matthew 26:26-28)

When he was a child
his mother told him
of how she and Joseph
had been turned away
from their ancestral home --
the House of Bread --
on the night of his birth.
 

The story taught him
that rejection and hunger
gnawed with the same teeth.
 

Grown, he walked through
towns and countryside,
feeding hollow-eyed hundreds
who pursued him by day.
But a bottomless ocean
of hungry mouths  
flooded his dreams.

 
He learned that the memory
of yesterday's bread
could not relieve today's hunger
 
On the eve of his death,
He at last found a way
to keep rejection and hunger
at bay.  He held his life in his hands
and said to his friends,
"Take. Eat. This is my body,
broken for you."

And when they were filled commanded;
"Feed the hungry. do this.
Re-member me."

Sr. Irene Zimmerman; OSF

The White Supremacist Troll Accuses Me Of Being A Sam Seder Fan Boy

I WOULDN'T BOTHER reposting these but one is what, I believe, was the last time I referenced Sam Seder and the older one had one of my better titles and the newer one had one of my best descriptions of the play-left :

Wednesday, December 11, 2024

I Am Asked What I Think Of The Cenk, TYT - Sam Seder Blow Up

HAVEN'T MUCH LISTENED to TYT for years, don't much listen to Sam Seder but I looked into it for about twenty minutes after you asked.  I've seen these battles over largely imaginary lefty turf since the teensy-weensy never elected a single dog-catcher in NYC or Madison, Wis. commie and Marxist parties duked it out with their teensy-weensy hands to their teensy-weensy audiences from the early 1960s onward. 

NONE OF THEM ARE WORTH A TENTH OF A GILL OF PISS  or to bother to have an opinion on.  Their petty wars and limp wristed slapping fights should get them ignored into oblivion. 

I looked in my archive, here's just one of the things I posted five years ago.  Note the prediction of where Cenk was headed even then.

I wouldn't even bother with this if it wasn't typical of that kind of play-lefty idiocy.  I increasingly find I don't bother with them anymore.  I don't think I'll bother listening to Sam Seder or his buddies on this hearing, I certainly won't be listening to Cenk (once and future Republican) on it.  I wouldn't be surprised if by the time he's 60 Duncan is voting Republican.  

I titled that post "Brought Up Like The Dog Ate Trash" which is pretty good for anything to do with the play-left and future Republicans.  

Wednesday, July 24, 2019

Brought Up Like The Dog Ate Trash

Duncan Black is your typical play-lefty who knows that all he has to do to get his stable of play-mates going is to diss Democrats.  I've been listening to the Mueller testimony and I think the Democrats are clearly and obviously very well prepared, their questioning is clearly organized to follow narratives of obstruction of justice in order, both within and among Democratic Representatives AND THEY ARE DEALING MASTERFULLY WITH THE PREDICTABLE HOSTILITY MUELLER HAS TO ANSWER QUESTIONS.   

Given the nature of Eschaton, a rump of remaining whiny crybabies led by a lazy play-lefty who isn't even much interested in going through the motions anymore, for them to be slamming the House Judiciary Committee Democrats in this hearing is laughable.   I wouldn't even bother with this if it wasn't typical of that kind of play-lefty idiocy.  I increasingly find I don't bother with them anymore.  I don't think I'll bother listening to Sam Seder or his buddies on this hearing, I certainly won't be listening to Cenk (once and future Republican) on it.  I wouldn't be surprised if by the time he's 60 Duncan is voting Republican.  

If you like me doing this, go on showing me what  he's posted.  I'm not especially interested.

The Republicans Ended "The American Century" And That Was Always An Absolute Certainty, The Libertarian "Left" Would Eventually Have Done It Too

IN WITNESSING THE CRIMINAL insanity which would seem to have finally been the last straw for not only the free world but the world other than Putin's and some other dictator's domains,   it occurred to me that it is supremely ironic but not in any way unsurprising that it was our own indigenous, imperialist,  fascist party which ended what the putrid and putrefied Henry Luce coined a 'the American Century"  about fifteen years short of a century.   Looking to see if anyone else has expressed that idea,  I found that someone noticed that more than eight years ago,  Michael Pescoe in the Sidney Morning Herald said so on January 20, 2017 as Trump I was starting.   Among the insights was this:

Yes, there was a false start to the American Century. Woodrow Wilson conceived and pushed the founding of the League of Nations, but couldn't carry the nation to actually join the thing. The man who narrowly won the 1916 election with the slogan "He kept us out of the war" only to go to war five months later, had to accept a return to isolationism.

And, yes, for those who have nominated all of the 21st century as Asia's, there is an overlap with the end of the American. As it turns out, there is a neatness about January 2017 - Trump's inauguration follows close on Xi Jinping's Davos speech, the moment China's president claimed global leadership on trade and climate in the vacuum of America's advertised withdrawal. As the China Daily puffed "the one major power with a global outlook":

"Ready or not, China has become the de facto world leader seeking to maintain an open global economy and battle climate change. In effect, President Xi has become the general secretary of globalisation."

In contrast, Trump has promised to shrink America with his mercantilist policies, his "border tax" and weird veneration of a manufacturing-based economy that doesn't really exist anymore.

It is the tragedy of liberal democracy, which I hold was always inevitably bound to fail, that it handed over such leadership to a brutal dictator.   I won't go into why I think an egalitarian democratic United States may have done better if that vision of my country had won out over the Constitutional system as drafted by late 18th century aristocrats.  But I will have a lot more to say about that in the future. 

It is only superficially ironic that it was the jingoistic, once millionaire, billionaire servicing and after c. 1964 the ever more indigenous-fascist, i.e. white supremacist, dominated Republican-fascist party which did it through their Putin asset president, Donald Trump.   The sheer arrogance of Henry Luce's "white man's burden" concept of "the American Century"  (actually, Luce may have believed it was going to work out to be the equivalent of a "thousand year Reich") was bound to trip up American dominance, the world political dominance which was never achieved, though it was impressive right after WWII ended, its far more successful attempt at economic and military domination was bound to be successfully challenged by other countries and continents where white Europeans didn't dominate.   

The biggest of those countries and alliances of smaller ones were almost certain to overtake that racist-imperialist vision dressed up like evangelical missionary work, such as Luce's parents engaged in in the very country which was always bound to resist and, through a mixture of wisdom, patience and rational calculation and a lack of western-male-testosterone driven arrogance, win in the end.   

The inherent corruptions baked into the American Constitutional system by the slave-holding, Indian murdering, land stealing wage-slavers were bound to be an Achilles heel that would kill it off.   The sheerest stupidity that is programmed into the modern American mind by media, advertising and propaganda has put the stupidest possible person in the most powerful position in the country,  given unprecedented dictatorial powers by the Ivy Leaguer-Republican-fascists on the Supreme Court, is a perfect head of a Satyricon level, eutrophic decadent American empire.   One in which every single institution of any size and, so, financial basis is partially or wholly invested in either the Trump regime or the institutions and legal habit that keep him and his kind of indigenous-fascist type in power.    Our legal system, our journalism, our Constitution have all failed, and I don't think the lawyers or journalists are all that bothered about it.   Not enough to admit that this is a consequence of definitive and fatal flaws in our Constitution and the system of government it sets up.  

As I have repeatedly pointed out that's as true for the supposed "left" as represented in the ACLU, the idiotically considered "left" of the New York Times and other media, and the lawyer and journalist peopled "opposition" that will, still, yearn for the return of some imagined status-quo of our past, when the system was not nearly as overtly bad or corrupt - that is only a desire to retreat into the same past that got us here.   Their libertarian conception of freedom, their actual disdain for social and intellectual equality and their weak support of anything in the direction of economic leveling - you can read that "equality" - was bound to enhance their own opponents.  They have proven to be the opposite of a successful opposition to American fascism, they've done far better at being their facilitators, especially the lawyers and journalists -  and I include those on the would be far-left, such as at In These Times, the Progressive, even much of what's printed in The Nation. 

This could go on for a long time but I've had an incredibly busy week in my personal life so I haven't had time to write more.   I'll try to do better. 

I Confess, I Hate White Bros

I HAVEN'T FELT very much like answering the white supremacist who trolls me but I will say that listening to the Rogan type white-bros whining about Trump wiping out their investments is music to my ears.    I loathe them and their world, I loathe their whiny, racist white boy fan boys and hope they're losing enough to slap their privileged faces into reality.   I want to see them leveled like I want to see all privileged assholes leveled and humiliated and humbled.  

The only ones I hope to see fall more are the really super-rich.  

Who Credentials The Criminals - Ed Martin: The Shame Of Catholic Education

This scumbag who is as big a criminal as any that office is supposed to prosecute, the Interim U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia and before, a participant in Trump's attempt to steal the 2020 election is a product of elite Catholic education:

St. Peter's Prep,  College of the Holy Cross, Pontifical Gregorian University and St. Louis University.  He's deep in the cult of Mammon,  the "trad catholic" world and the such, as well as a criminal and thug in Trump II who, if the law wasn't guaranteed to privilege his kind of criminal with delay and the most extended of "due" process would be stripped of his law license even as he holds that office.  

Elite Catholic education is as big a brothel as the Ivys and the Ivy equivalents.   

Saturday Night Radio Drama - The Columbia Workshop

 The Columbia Workshop 333 Episodes

I'm a skeptic of any time being declared a golden age.  Especially when that golden age is in earlier periods of art or music or theater.   I don't think any such period exists.   That term for radio drama isn't any different, referring to the era when radio was the major form of commercial electronic media and radio drama was most produced.  I've given links to recordings of radio dramas that were recorded in that period but I much prefer newer radio and audio plays to most of that.   Though I don't have anything against people who like the older stuff as much or better. 

Here's a large collection of the famous Columbia Workshop program, which featured some of the work of one of the really superior writers of that period,  Norman Corwin,  the often cited 26 by Corwin which are listed in at this site, if you want to look for them.   I'l point out one of them iI sampled today s a short radio opera Esther with music by the movie and TV composer Lyn Murray, to give you some idea of how much they put into one of the plays presented there.   Another one in Soliloquy To Balance The Budget.  

The first episode begins with an announcement of the series then the first play ever written for radio,  A Comedy of Danger by Richard Hughes, which I didn't listen to for long because it takes place in a mine people are trapped in and it set off my extreme claustrophobia.   It wan't especially naturalistic acting by modern standards but it was enough to do that.   I don't know if that's the power of radio, as the announcement would have it,   or my neurosis but I am telling you the truth of that.   The same episode had another short play, The Finger of God by Percival Wilde presented as an experiment in broadcasting a live performance on stage.   Experimenting with new materials and other things is what radio and audio drama are better than most visual presentations because, even with those production values, it's far less expensive. 

Wikipedia has a more detailed listing of the episodes of the original Columbia Workshop, there was a revival after the first series ended but I haven't looked at that. 

Who Credentials The Criminals - A Trump Depression Special - Kuschner and Navarro

FIRST THE LITTLE RICH BOY who discovered the author of the Trump Depression for his daddy in Law

Jared Kuschner,  BA Harvard,  JD/MBA New York University 

And the lying, stupid jerk who turned Trump on to tarrrifs

Peter Navarro,  Tufts University BA,  Harvard, Master of Public Administration (Yep, the goddamned Kennedy School strikes again.)   Also,  allegedly, a Doctorate in economics.  I say allegedly because my source bases that on his own CV.  Considering the revelation that the economic expert he cited to favor tariffs in multiple books "Ron Vara" was Navarro's invented citation based on an anagram of his last name, he's a goddamned liar so I don't trust anything he says.   

I'd like to see what percentage of the criminals and gangsters and liars in the Trump regime and the Republican-fascist caucuses of the Congress and Court got their credentials from Harvard because, like the Heritage Foundation an The Federalist Society, it should probably be classified as a wellspring of anti-democratic sedition. 

We were reminded last night that Trump took on Navarro when he gave his son-in-law the assignment to find him an economic advisor because he didn't have one and the Harvard-NYU product did his research by looking at titles of books allegedly on economics at Amazon.com and found Navarro based on what he thought was a nifty book title.   You'd think he'd have gotten at least a mid-level competent secretary to do it, that's what his type does.  I mean, if Kuschner is too stupid to do what most executives do, he's even stupider than his prep-school teachers thought he is. 

I'll add something I haven't seen anyone speculate, why Trump targeted the best friend the United States has had, Canada.  During Trump I, on April 1, 2018 the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation's  The Sunday Edition program, Michael Enright presented an interview with Peter Navarro, who was an even bigger asshole than he usually was.   I mean he was a real bully and asshole, a total piece of shit.   Only near the very end of it when it went way over the top, I realized that it was April 1st and, yes, it turned out to be an example of "satire" with the actor Ray Landry impersonating Peter Navarro who was Trump's asshole of a Trade Representative at the time.  

I think Navarro probably heard that and, being as thin skinned an asshole as someone who knows, at least on a subconscious level is terrified he will be exposed as a total fraud - the kind of fraud who makes up major "sources" in what are purported to be serious books - and he targeted Canada for attacks when he got his chance.   Trump's racism is sufficient to account for him targeting Mexico, though I wouldn't be surprised if Navarro had a hand in that, too.    I have every reason to believe that that explains it as well as anything.   It's certainly not because Trump has anything else to go on but what someone like Navarro says in the ear attached to his empty head.  

What Happens When The Oligarchs Turn Back To Democrats To Save Their Asses?

TRUMP-MUSK'S TARIFF STUNT of yesterday has put any attempt to restore things by a future Democratic president (or a Republican one, if Republicans give up fascism, which is unlikely) has put the entire world at an advantage because they can unite to extract reparations from the country that has caused this, the United States.   

And I can't say that, if what I suspect will happen, a world-wide economic depression results, that they wouldn't have justice on their side.

This is a result of the stultification of the collective American mind by American media, by Hollywood, by Republican-fascist control of our educational institutions , by the exploitation of America's indigenous mental debility, racism and sexism and bigotry by the oligarchs to divide and lord it over those who have been stultified.  It's not unlike what happened during the original period of such stultification through popular culture and the media created zeitgeist of the stupid and roaring 20s, Republican rule which led to what I think is likely going to be called The First Great Depression.   

I hope that among those things which the rest of the world imposes on the United States is reigning in the traditional, long-embedded mental debilities which have led the United States into a history of disasters, including the Civil War,  the promotion of racism, bigotry, the love of ignorance and lies, though I think they may simply extract economic reparations - I hope not in the style that Britain and France extracted from Germany after WWI, which were a disaster.  

I would love it if they got us to dump the presidential system for a prime ministerial system, though it would have to be thoroughly explained to Americans who have been maintained in ignorance.   Trump clearly is totally ignorant in that way, he is too typical an example of American stupidity.  

We should start thinking of what happens when Trump-Musk-Vance passes, considering the relief of the world after Bush II and Trump I because I think this time the world isn't going to give the Democrat who is handed the ruins to repair a Nobel Peace Prize or the mere praise they gave Joe Biden, this time they are going to have to do something to make sure this doesn't happen again.  They now know they can't count on the American political system,  even more laughably, its legal system to right things.  Now they know that America isn't safely counted on to do that, not after the past fifty years of watching ever more criminal Republicans then Republican-fascists installed by the media and, after 2000 the Republican dominated Supreme Court.   Our Constitution has failed catastrophically  

An Open Message To The White Supremacist Troll With The Neo-Nazi Moniker Whose Pinafore Got In A Twist When I Praised Tabitha

IF CIS-GENDERED, STRAIGHT WHITE MEN were to experience what you want trans-women of color to be subjected to if ONE person who is described that way commits murder, CIS-GENDERED, STRAIGHT WHITE MEN WOULD BE ANSWERABLE FOR THE CENTURIES OF MURDERS OF WOMEN, cis-gendered straight white Women, Lesbian Women, Trans Women, Asexual Women.   They would further be subjugated and deprived of equality for what they have done to Women and Men of Color, People Of Color of every gender in any description.   If even those cis-gendered, straight white men who commit and support such DAILY OCCURRING  violence and oppression, SO COMMON THAT IT SELDOM MAKES NEWS THAT EVEN A BIGOT LIKE YOU CAN FERRET OUT, if your type could could be separated from those who don't practice or support such casual and deadly violence to be subjected TO THE RULE YOU FAVOR,  YOU AND YOUR FELLOW WHITE SUPREMACIST BIGOTS WOULD BE THE ONES WHINING AND CRYING IT LIKE THE FAFO'S OF SOCIAL MEDIA ARE BAWLING OUT THEIR BUYER'S REMORSE NOW THAT THEY ARE THE ONES GETTING WHAT THEY SUPPORTED FOR MILLIONS OF OTHERS, maybe Tabatha would have something to say about that as, in fact, I would.

Cis-gendered, straight, white men, under your rule, would constitute a dangerous criminal class if they were all made to answer for the innumerable crimes committed by them.  As it is, I confine those I place in that class to the subset you are a member of, white supremacists, which include non-cis-gendered, non-straight, white male supremacists, and also the gay men and fewer lesbians, etc. who are white supremacists.  I even include such as Clarence Thomas and other black Republican-fascists in your klan, so how do you like that.  That's you're crowd.   Any CGSWM or others who favor and practice equality and the respect for the rights of all are not part of it and you have no rights to claim to represent them. 

Your type never has to answer in exactly the way you insist Black Women and others are required to answer for such things WHEN IT HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH THEM.   But you'd wail of the terrible injustice if the same rules you want in place were imposed on you.    Maybe you have to be a radical egalitarian like me to notice when you do that, but now you know that I will notice it.  Perhaps if she notices this she will have something to say about it.   I wouldn't presume to speak for her.  She does that so well, herself.  Maybe if she gives me permission to post your comment that led to this, I will. 

That's part of the equality I want.  And the truth telling. 

The Blind Legal Mania Of The Civil Liberties Industry And Those Who They Gull

 . . . the Pinkness talked.  Not only of the machine entities, but of many others.   Of the insect tribes that piled up over endless centuries huge reserves of food for which they had no need , slaving on an endless treadmill of a blind economic mania. 

Clifford D. Simak, Time Is The Simplest Thing

THE ANTI-DEMOCRATIC SPECTACLE of the degenerate, drug addled, apartheid billionaire Elon Musk overtly putting another bid in on another American election,  trying to buy himself and the party which he bought in a friendly takeover,  Republican-fascists, a court,  AND HE'S BEEN DOING THAT, PROBABLY BREAKING THE LAW IN WISCONSIN, FOR MORE THAN A YEAR AND IN ELECTIONS IN MORE THAN ONE STATE.   And the goddamned legal system has yet to do something to stop him.   Fining the fascist won't do anything because at least on paper he's the richest man in the world and fines won't phase him.   He is almost certainly enriching himself through buying the presidency for Donald Trump through funding lies in the mass media - the entire reason that the billionaires and millionaires and their sleazebag lawyers and assets on the courts and on the U.S. Supreme Court don't want to end this corruption of our elections system.   It's entirely understandable why Republicans in the past and Republican-fascists, now, like dirty elections run on paid-for lies, because they have a higher purpose, to enrich the already rich like Elon Musk.   It's no wonder why the incumbent members of the Republican caucus in Congress and the Republican-fascist majority on the U.S. Supreme Court believe in trickle-down economics - BECAUSE THEY ARE ABOUT THE ONLY CLASS OF PEOPLE THAT ENRICHING THE OBSCENELY RICH EVER MORE BENEFITS.   Which is pretty much a pattern that was early set in the Supreme Court as the slave-holding majority on the early Supreme Courts repeatedly ruled in ways that enhanced the slave-power of which they were members.  John Marshall, the idolized John Marshall of Marbury v Madison fame, the man whose Supreme Court decisions make up an outsized part of the curriculum of those who are indoctrinated into the folklore which is what a legal education is,  was a major slave-holder holding hundreds in slavery as he ruled, repeatedly to enhance the institution that benefited him financially.  

That is their motive.  This is asking what the motive of the ACLU and other "civil liberties" lawyers who support Supreme Court rulings such as Sullivan v NYT which created a "right to lie" and Buckley v. Valeo in which the Supreme Court created out of nothing billions of times more "free speech" for those with more money by declaring the millionaires and billionaires money is "speech", with which they finance those lies the Supreme Court privileged by declaring their telling to constitute "a right" and, in the one that is so relevant to why Elon Musk has bought himself the presidency and may well buy himself the Supreme Court of Wisconsin, in order to, among other things ratfuck Wisconsin elections for the party he effectively owns,*  the Ruling of the Roberts Court in which the Republican-fascist majority on that court KNOWINGLY KNEW THEY OPENED UP AMERICAN ELECTIONS TO AN UNPRECEDENTED LEVEL OF CORRUPTION,** Citizens United.   

Since when I do this if someone falls on the fainting couch it's likely over me slamming the ACLU,  here's the excuse of that "civil liberties" group from their website as to why they supported the Citizens United ruling.  I will break in with comments but I will note that the entire things places the most basic factor in making ANY government, ANY LEGAL SYSTEM legitimate, the vote, behind their irrational and fundamentalist reading of the First Amendment. 

The ACLU and Citizens United

In Citizens United, the Supreme Court ruled that independent political expenditures by corporations and unions are protected under the First Amendment and not subject to restriction by the government. The Court therefore struck down a ban on campaign expenditures by corporations and unions that applied to non-profit corporations like Planned Parenthood and the National Rifle Association, as well as for-profit corporations like General Motors and Microsoft.

That decision has sparked a great deal of controversy. Some see corporations as artificial legal constructs that are not entitled to First Amendment rights. Others see corporations and unions as legitimate participants in public debate whose views can help educate voters as they form their opinions on candidates and issues.

You will notice that the ACLU doesn't address the absolute fact that CORPORATION ARE ARTIFICIAL LEGAL CONSTRUCTS,  THEY ARE NOT PEOPLE, THEY ARE NOT NATURAL, LIVING BEINGS,  they were granted no inherent rights by "nature and nature's god"  they and everything else about them are fictitious entities - as fictitious as the entities that Clifford Simak created in the passage at the top of this post.   Nor do they admit that the purpose of a corporation is for those who have created them to exercise greater power than almost any individual, on their own can wield.  

By pretending that those facts aren't important because "others see corporations and unions as legitimate participants in public debate whose views can help educate voters as they form their opinions on candidates and issues," packs a huge amount of dishonesty into a single sentence.  It's to be remembered that the ACLU are a bunch of lawyers, trained and rehearsed in the kind of lawyerly lying that that profession consists of.   Those "others" who say that are, BY AND LARGE THOSE WHO FAVOR THE POWERFUL AND ALMOST ALWAYS RICH AND THEM HAVING THE ENHANCED POWER THAT IGNORING REALITY HAS GIVEN THEM.   

One of the foremost realities of Citizens United, Buckley v Valeo and other such rulings is that those who oppose unions, when they win elections, work to destroy unions and to destroy their effectiveness by changing laws AND BY MAKING APPOINTMENTS TO THE COURT OF LAWYERS HOSTILE TO THE INTERESTS OF WORKING PEOPLE.     Union leaders who were gulled into supporting such rulings as Buckley v. Valeo or Citizens United may have either been suckered by lawyers or they, themselves, are knowingly supporting rulings that will destroy the very unions who would, then, have a merely theoretical "right" to donate to campaigns for candidates who would be swamped by the far, far deeper pockets of the very corporations and financial interests THEY SO OFTEN LOSE TO.  

As for Planned Parenthood, well, look what happened to Womens' rights to the ownership of their own bodies after that ruling. 

To call the majority of what that campaign money buys, time TO LIE on behalf of the rich and so already powerful to put their lackies and servants and, let's call them what they are, assets into office and onto court benches "education" is cynicism of the type that typifies legal blather. 

IN ORDER FOR SPEECH TO COMPRISE "EDUCATION" IT HAS TO BE FACTUAL, IT HAS TO BE HONEST, LIES CAN NEVER COMPRISE "EDUCATION".    But if you're a lawyer, you don't really care about the truth, you're trained not to, you care about the narrative being sustained and the legal lore being upheld.    If you ever have to wonder how the Supreme Court "justices" lie through their teeth or, in the case of "liberals" who vote against what they purport to believe in, that is how they do it.   As I've mentioned here before, it's how the officially anti-slavery "justice" Joseph Story issued what was, before Dred Scott the most infamous pro-slave-power ruling, the Prigg decision, which said that free Black People could be kidnapped into slavery from Free States under the Constitutional order.  That Constitutional order being whatever those thugs in black robes say it is at any given time 

We understand that the amount of money now being spent on political campaigns has created a growing skepticism in the integrity of our election system that raises serious concerns. We firmly believe, however, that the response to those concerns must be consistent with our constitutional commitment to freedom of speech and association. For that reason, the ACLU does not support campaign finance regulation premised on the notion that the answer to money in politics is to ban political speech.

And, since those who win elections and are appointed to courts and, especially the Supreme Court under the "free speech" theory that the ACLU supports HAVE EVERY INCENTIVE TO KEEP THE CORRUPTION IN PLACE, that will never change, despite the bogus alternatives the ACLU purports to support remaining, perpetually as a theoretical way to insure the integrity of our elections, THE ONLY MECHANISM UNDER WHICH ANY ACTION OF ANY PART OF THE GOVERNMENT, INCLUDING THE COURTS HAVE ANY CLAIM TO LEGITIMACY.    Clearly the lawyers of the ACLU don't much care about the foundational integrity or the legitimacy of what their "free speech" produces so long as, a. the form is kept and, b. they can sucker "free speech-press" supporters into keeping their corporation financed.  

At the same time, we recognize that the escalating cost of political campaigns may make it more difficult for some views to be heard, and that access to money often plays a significant role in determining whom runs for office and who is elected.

Well they should as they were part of making money equal speech in legal fiction and, so, giving millionaires millions of times more of it and billionaires billions of times more of it than any natural human being without millions and billions to spare.  

Clearly, they understand THAT THE SYSTEM THEY SUPPORT DETERMINES WHO GETS ELECTED,  THEY JUST SAID SO.   So the fact that it's the opponents of equality, of equal justice, of economic justice, of workers' safety, workers' rights, environmental protection,  LGBTQ+ rights, Women's rights including their very right to them owning their own bodies (Women having bodies which corporations, even unions, don't have),  and literally everything that so many of those who gullibility donate to the ACLU and hold them up as sacrosanct, support WIN OVER AND OVER AGAIN AND APPOINT MEMBERS OF THE SUPREME COURT WHO DETERMINE WHAT THE CONSTITUTION IS means nothing to the lawyer of that corporation. 

In our view, the answer to that problem is to expand, not limit, the resources available for political advocacy. Thus, the ACLU supports a comprehensive and meaningful system of public financing that would help create a level playing field for every qualified candidate. We support carefully drawn disclosure rules. We support reasonable limits on campaign contributions and we support stricter enforcement of existing bans on coordination between candidates and super PACs.

If you think those who win under the ACLU's supported regime of how campaigns really are run, right now and every second since the Supreme Court started overturning the post-Watergate campaign finance reform laws - which were passed with bi-partisan approval in the 1970s - are ever going to allow that kind of reform INCLUDING THE ENTIRELY UNLIKELY TO EVER HAPPEN PUBLIC FINANCING OF CAMPAIGNS THAT WILL EFFECTIVELY COUNTER THE CORPORATIONS, MILLIONAIRES AND BILLIONAIRES COMBINED MONEY AND COORDINATION,  you are as stupid as someone who would believe the lawyers who wrote this bull shit think they really mean it. 

Some argue that campaign finance laws can be surgically drafted to protect legitimate political speech while restricting speech that leads to undue influence by wealthy special interests. Experience over the last 40 years has taught us that money always finds an outlet, and the endless search for loopholes simply creates the next target for new regulation. It also contributes to cynicism about our political process.

Experience over the past fifty years, since Buckely v Valeo shows that America has gone from the high-point of the early Johnson administration passing the Voting Rights Act, the Civil Rights Act, Medicare, Medicaid and the rest of the most significant advancement of equality - INCLUDING THE LAWS THAT FOR THE FIRST TIME MADE THE COUNTRY,  POTENTIALLY A TRUE DEMOCRACY -  to a country in which a Supreme Court has installed a president (Bush v Gore) and turned Trump into a monarch and legalized overt quid-pro-quo buying of politicians and, no doubt "justices" on the Supreme Court.   In fact I date the commencement of that corruption to the ACLU supported creation of the "right to lie" in the Sullivan decision.   EXPERIENCE IS THAT THE ACLU HAS BEEN ALL-IN ON CREATING THE RUIN OF EQUALITY AND DEMOCRACY. 

As to cynicism, have these "officers of the court" not noticed how cynical the large majority of the public are about the legal profession and the legal system? 

Any rule that requires the government to determine what political speech is legitimate and how much political speech is appropriate is difficult to reconcile with the First Amendment. Our system of free expression is built on the premise that the people get to decide what speech they want to hear; it is not the role of the government to make that decision for them.

I'm not, at least in this case, talking about the government determining "what speech is legitimate and how much political speech is appropriate,"*** BUT IN HOW MUCH OF IT CORPORATIONS, BILLIONAIRES AND MILLIONAIRES CAN INJECT INTO THE TIME LIMITS OF AN ELECTION THAT LITERALLY DETERMINES WHAT THE LAW WILL BE.   The blather about "the people" getting to decide holds the tacit and clearly false premise that THE PEOPLE fed on lies created with the help of PR professionals and sold to them through repeated retellings on TV can, by a reliable majority overcome that indoctrination WHEN THE EXPERIENCE OF THE WORLD IS LITERALLY THAT MOST OF THE TIME THEY CAN'T.   This is the lawyerly-liarly equivalent of the economist-liarly pretense that entirely unsophisticated, unsuspecting People who are gulled by corporations AND THEIR LAWYERS into singing agreements are "rational actors" making rational decisions. 

It is also useful to remember that the mixture of money and politics long predates Citizens United and would not disappear even if Citizens United were overruled. The 2008 presidential election, which took place before Citizens United, was the most expensive in U.S. history until that point. The super PACs that have emerged in the 2012 election cycle have been funded with a significant amount of money for individuals, not corporations, and individual spending was not even at issue in Citizens United.

Again, the ACLU should remember that the mixture of money and politics long predates Citizens United BECAUSE THEY PLAYED SUCH A SIGNIFICANT ROLE IN MAKING SURE THE MIXTURE OF MONEY AND POLITICS, WHICH CAME TO SUCH SCANDALOUS LIGHT IN THE NIXON YEARS, CONTINUED WITH SUPREME COURT APPROVAL.   This may be the most cynical paragraph in what is a thoroughly cynical document.   If there had been no such corruption of money on politics before the first campaign finance law was duly adopted, only to be overturned by Court fiat,  no one would have drafted such a law. 

Unfortunately, legitimate concern over the influence of “big money” in politics has led some to propose a constitutional amendment to reverse the decision. The ACLU will firmly oppose any constitutional amendment that would limit the free speech clause of the First Amendment.

And if the goddamed ACLU and the other "civil liberties" lawyers have anything to do say about it, that "legitimate concern" will go unaddressed, certainly unrelieved for the rest of time.    You may ask what the goddamned ACLU lawyers see as the ultimate purpose of this "speech" is if the results will be ever more inequality, ever more corrupt, ever more anti-democratic governance, ever more corrupt Supreme Courts making ever more corrupt and Republican-fascist enabling and empowering rulings?   In fact, I am asking that of them and their supporters.   What is the good of "free speech" when what will result is that any speech which those who hold power will be a. what supports that regime or, b. in the unlikely event that it is even permitted, speech opposing it will be kept impotent and of no danger to them.  

As to them opposing such an amendment to the Constitution, what do they think the First Amendment was?  It was an amendment that was adopted by the Congress and the President, sent out to the legislatures of the various states to accept or reject, and so would any honest elections amendment.   If the First Amendment can be said to have any legitimacy, even any legal legitimacy, it gained it ONLY ON THE PRESUMED VALIDITY OF THE ELECTION PROCESS, BY THE VOTE CAST BY THE PEOPLE.  For the ACLU to oppose measures to ensure that elections are not corrupted by big money is for them to oppose the legitimacy of the entire process, INCLUDING THE VERY CONSTITUTION THEY REST THEIR CLAIMS ON.   There is no reason to believe the First Congress, the legislatures that adopted the First Amendment were of more legitimacy than the electorate or their elected representatives today, when in many places the descendants of those who were enslaved can vote, when Women can vote, when those who don't own property can vote, etc.   

Such "free speech" as the "civil liberties" lawyers gas on about can pile up for centuries and be of absolutely no use to anyone, in case you wonder why this document made me think of that passage from science fiction.   Legal fiction is so much less honest than it is. 

I would like to know exactly how much money the lawyers of the ACLU, especially the "civil libertarians" get from the corporations, the millionaires and billionaires.  Really, I think the lawyers who peddle themselves as idealists under the false banner of the ACLU may be the most cynical of all of them.  At least those who peddle their asses for the most money aren't pretending otherwise. 

* Musk's ability and intention to finance a challenger to any Republican who votes for the welfare of their constituents instead of the way he and his asset,  Trump tell them to, is what is running the Republican-fascist party now.  

** We know that the Republican-fascist majority on the Court knew that because they were presented with the argument that that is what they were doing by legalizing billionaires foreign as well as domestic, buying American elections.    We can know that beyond any shadow of any doubt because last year the Roberts Court also legalized overt quid-pro-quo buying of politicians as long a the payment post-dates delivery of what was being bought.   There is no rational doubt that those two rulings, taken together prove the Roberts Court has knowingly corrupted the elections systems in favor of the party of its majority. 

*** I think in typical lawyer-liar dishonesty they include such stuff in this argument as a means of distraction,  courts, lawyers, INCLUDING THOSE IN THE DAMNED ACLU, are constantly discussing what speech is legitimate.  If they didn't do that then there is not a single thing that could be said by anyone in any court that could be depended on to be factual instead of a lie.   I doubt the lawyers of the ACLU would be reticent to note that testimony they didn't favor was illegitimate if they believed they could show it was false.   Why the speech that is regulated within the confines of a court case is legitimately regulated for its truth or falsity not to mention merely falling within the arbitrary rule of court procedure while political and other speech which can do everything up to and including getting hundreds of thousands, even millions killed is held by the lawyers of the ACLU to be illegitimately regulated is something I'd really like to be able to ask them, though, being experienced in reading what they claim and examining it for honesty,  I wouldn't trust them farther than I could throw the grotesque Supreme Court building. 

Tabitha Points Out The Hypocrisy Of White Republican-fascist Women Who Support Discrimination Against Other People

are whining when YETI doesn't discriminate against them BUT HOLD THEM TO THE SAME POLICY THEY HOLD OTHERS TO.  The same groups that celebrated the Supreme Court reinstitutionalize deial of services to LGBTQ+ People are whining and crying when THEY ARE BEING TREATED LIKE OTHER POLITICAL GROUPS UNDER A COMPANY'S POLICY THEY DON'T SERVICE POLITICAL GROUPS.

I like Tabitha's commentary and style.   There is no group that is whinier and more self-pitying than the privileged. 

The Discouragement of Our Better Intentions And The Cynicism That Fashionably Replaces Those - Part Four

Marilynne Robinson concludes her preface with two questions, one obviously true, the other one true but which needs considerable discussion.

What if good institutions were in fact the product of good intentions?    What if the cynicism that is supposed to be rigor and the acquisitiveness that is supposed to be realism are making us forget the origins of the greatness we lay claim to - power and wealth as secondary consequences of the progress of freedom, or, as Whitman would prefer, Democracy?  After all these things rose together.  The air is thick now with "the people," a phrase that is meant to give authority to the claims and the grievances of those who use it.  That it is often invoked in good faith one may doubt, but the fact that resort is had to it so insistently means that we are still good enough democrats to feel that ultimately authority and reason do and should lie with the people.  Then the old impulse that lay behind the dissemination of information and learning, the will to ensure that the public will be competent to make the weightiest decisions and so conform society to its best sense of the possible should be as powerful as it has ever been,  and more powerful because of the fragility of the contemporary world.  Instead we have slack and underfinanced journalism and the ebbing away of resources from our universities, libraries and schools.  The liberation of the human individual as a social value required optimism which is also amply justified.  This loyalty to democracy is the American value I fear we are gravely in danger of losing.

It is inescapable that when you use the word "democracy" you have to define what you mean by that or you will end up talking about radically different things.  It is absolutely different if you put the emphasis on "freedom" instead of the equality that will make that freedom available to everyone and of value to everyone.  The history of America is tellable in the freedoms which those with money and power have given themselves in reality, perhaps giving the least among us the theoretical possession of those same freedoms but which they will never get to enjoy.   The crucial point isn't "freedom" the rich and always the richest have always enjoyed the lions share of freedom.   

Equality is and has been lacking in American democracy from the beginning of it up till at least 1965 when the most decisive steps taken towards real, meaningful equality were taken in the Johnson administration.  Steps that were immediately attacked by white supremacists and the Republican Party as they sought to benefit from the disaffected racists who had been traditionally members of the Democratic Party leaving because they opposed equality.  They had nearly a hundred seventy years of precedent of life under the Constitution and the Bill of Rights to fuel their resentment.  As that reaction took hold, as the likes of Lewis Powell set out an anti-democratic blueprint to create the oligarchy that the courts he was a member of clearly worked towards and which is reaching its lowest point in the Neronian style decadence of Trump II the target was always equalty, making sure that all the freedom was as concentrated in the same places that the framers placed it, in affluent white men of an acceptable kind.

It is all well and good to talk about democracy but, as my posts on The Trial of Socrates demonstrated, "democracy" as a man-made, artificial thing can be had by a favored, restricted class of those deemed in ancient Athens to be "free men" or "citizens" who hold large numbers in slavery, Women and who exclude even wealthy men who are not part of that traditional group.  Why would anyone not in that group care about such a democracy?   Why would anyone who was excluded from participation care about America's democracy as, in fact, most adult citizens of the country were excluded from even the vote, not to mention the just access to the necessities and, as importantly, the goods of life?  

The times we live in provide, instead of equality and the right to a decent life free from the fear of homelessness, an inability to access healthcare, food, and any number of other things, provids The People with entertainment that is like what was provided in Orwell's 1984 but with better production values, one of the greatest pleasures cultivated by it, hating other People, feeling resentments, and stoking greed after status symbol possessions.  The ersatz religion of the TV style ministires and the variety-show-nightclub churches turn something referred to as "The Bible" into an inversion of the Gospel, the Epistles, The Law, the Prophets hardly mentioned except in their fortune telling games.  

If relgion, if Christianity, especially, among if not the most egalitarian religion if Jesus is to mean anything to it, has to make equality the central moral aspect of it or it will continue to decline.  The United States may well be lost to despotism because it never has been allowed to be pushed to equality despite that struggle having been engaged in since before the Constitution was drafted.  That struggle for equality, NOT THE PURSUIT OF LIBERTARIAN "FREEDOM" is literally the best thing about the United States and it is continually thwarted on the basis of the Constitution or something as illegitimate as the "common law tradition" under the practices of the legal profession, the courts and, especially the Supreme Court.

Marilynne Robinson correctly notes that democracy and prosperity would seem to have something of a direct relationship, as the Biden presidency shows, as the Johnson presidency showed, as the New Deal showed, and the opposite has been demonstrated, as well, in the string of Republican administrations that have thwarted equality all have a record of producing economic hardship going back more than a century Governing of, by and for the millionaries and billionaires produces bad economic results, especially as you go down the economic scale.   Yet our "free press" lies about that because bad times for the many have the possibility of temporarily being good for the rich.  

I think the first question in this last paragraph from Marilynne Robinson's Preface is self evident.  Of course good institutions come from good intentions.  Like religion, like scripture, all of that is a product of human thought, of human intentionality, of pursuing purposes.  If an institution goes from bad to good, it is a product of human intention.  I doubt the change and reform of any bad institution has ever just happened on to the good by accident.  The opposite happening by chance has somewhat better odds, especially if "civil libertarian" lawyers or "institutionalists" are making those choices.  The fact that the common good, the general prosperity, what the familiar preamble to the U.s. Constitution states as its intentions in a way that a non-lawyer would certainly take to be a promise made by those who frame it and would be an integral part of the document, since that is what was promised in the document that they got The Peoples' representatives to sign on to in the beginning.   Here is the lawyerly loophole to that as found at that most august of American institutions, the secular delphic oracle of our idolatry, the United States Courts:

The preamble sets the stage for the Constitution (Archives.gov). It clearly communicates the intentions of the framers and the purpose of the document. The preamble is an introduction to the highest law of the land; it is not the law. It does not define government powers or individual rights.

Establish Justice is the first of five objectives outlined in the 52-word paragraph that the Framers drafted in six weeks during the hot Philadelphia summer of 1787. They found a way to agree on the following basic principles:

"We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America."

Maybe those largely lawyers who framed it put "justice" first because they knew they needed lawyers to get out of the existing contract promising "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness," that The Reverend Martin Luther King jr. so famously noted they had promised in the Declaration of Independence but which they never intended to pay up on.  And they appointed such judges and "justices" as would never intend to make them pay, some things haven't changed much since then.

Of those five things promised under the Constitution, the only one that they can be said to have intended to deliver on was the protection of the country from foreign attacks and whatever domestic attacks as would put the wealth of the wealthy and the order that favored them at risk.  It was the rebellions of those who felt duped by the revolutionary leaders, who, typical of revolutionaries who take control, once in power didn't keep their overtly made promises.  That is what led to the drafting of the Constitution.  But they certainly never did much of anything to quell violence against others under the rule of law, they institutionalized it under the Second Amendment, what the Rehnquist and Roberts Courts have used to arm a Republican Klan in case egalitarian democracy threatens to become real.  And now under Trump, they have failed even to quell the possibility of insurrection against the very government they instituted or, incredibly enough, an insurrectionist gaining the presidency by election. The Roberts Court, with some Democratic support, nullified the relevant section of the 14th Amendment to allow an insurrectionist to become president.   YOU DON'T HAVE TO BE A RADICAL EGALITARIAN DEMOCRAT TO NOTICE THAT THE CONSTITUTION HAS FAILED. Though you appear to need to be one to admit that obvious and terrible truth.

The slave holders and Indian murdering land grabbers in the Constitutional Convention certainly didn't have any intention at all to provide any of the others on an equal basis, certainly not to those they enslaved, the free Black People that the Supreme Court under "due process" said were allowed to be abducted into slavery as Trump's ICESTAPO are abducting People off the streets today, they had no intention of permitting those for most of the People living in the United States during slavery and genocide against the Native population, Women, to those who were denied the vote due to their propertyless state, and, in the beginning, even Catholic males who met all other requirements to vote in some states.  The history of America is tellable with great accuracy, I'd say only told with any possible accuracy,  as the struggle to achieve equality by all of those groups and others, such as those who were in bond to the wage slave system.  It is incredible that those at the top of the "justice" system, the Courts, deny that those contractual promises are not only a contract BUT FORM THE BASIS OF THE CONTRACT THAT GIVES THEM AND ALL OF GOVERNMENT ANY LEGITIMACY with complete and self-granted impunity AND THAT A DUPED AND COWED PUBLIC WILL ALLOW THEM TO GET AWAY WITH IT BECAUSE THEY'RE THE BIGGEST FATTEST LAWYERS IN THE LAND.

Whatever good institutions we have had under the federal government are either being destroyed or have been turned bad and since the federal government is allowing that to happen, it has to be attributed to the Constitutional order it is happening under, John Adams three-branch theory has failed, the presidential system turns out to be as dangerous here as it has in  other countries that have copied it, the First Amendment has been the engine of corruption under its interpretation by the Supreme Court which grabbed extra-Constitutional powers in the first such failure of the Constitution in 1803, the terrible assertions of Marbury v Madison.  

By their fruits you will know them.  Donald Trump is the fruit of the kind of democracy America has.  As were George W. Bush, Ronald Reagan, Bush I and Richard Nixon.  The fruits of the long struggle for equality, The Voting Rights Act, the Civil Rights Act, myriads of other rights, which apart from Roe v Wade, were the product of long and difficult and not infrequently deadly struggle which have been have been swept aside by five or six or nine unelected "justices" And that is because of what the Constitution is and always has been apart for a few brief years in a couple of periods in American history when Courts and Congresses and the majority of voters had better intentions.