Malcolm Nance Has Some Suggestions About What To Do

 

I'll look for his Substack but I'm kind of exhausted now.

Get a gun? That's your advice?

WELL, if you do, stop drinking get in shape and keep your head clear despite all the temptations to bury your sorrows in intoxication or fantasies.   It was make believe, "reality TV" that gave us Trump to start with.   I'd immediately stop buying anything from Amazon or subscribing to the goddamned New York Times.  If you do buy a gun, get a competent shooter to show you how to shoot it and practice.  If you're going to take a shot you'd better be accurate.  

I was serious when I said that American democracy won't come back in any form until a majority of Americans really believe that they are to do to others what they would have done to them,  that they are to do for the least among us what they would for The Lord, herself.  

I wouldn't give a cent to the ACLU, I was dismayed when that was the reaction of so many at the start of Trump I.   They had an enormous role in this, mostly in getting the media the right to lie with impunity.  They have not learned a thing from the past fifty years as they've had a hand in creating just about every tool the fascists have used to get us here.  All in the name of the goddamned First Amendment.  I was dead serious about its serious faults and shortcomings.   Any money given to them is wasted, the courts will not protect us, they were among the biggest enablers of Trump.   Who will get away with sedition, insurrection, certainly of selling the United States to Putin and, I have no doubt, will now funnel every secret held by our military and domestic security establishments to the dictator-billionaires.   The Supreme Court and many lower courts have given him a green light to do that.   Harvard, Yale,  Princeton law,  etc. where so much of that ACLU crap comes from have been cultivating this since Joseph Story issued the Prigg decision - which is as fine an example of any of how the law isn't only an ass, it's an amoral asshole more times than not. 

Read the Psalms, especially the Psalms of grief and complaint.   You'll find more to go on there  then you will from the pundits and the on-screen lawyers, much as you might want to believe them.   Look at Jeremiah who is as relevant as anyone.   Democracy is in exile, democrats are in survival mode, those of Color and minority status most of all.  As I said, we should learn from them. 

American Fascism Gets Another Bite At The Apple And Will Eat It All This Time - Thanks To The "Free Press"

I CAN'T SAY it's the first time I have been glad that my parents, both of them WWII veterans, my father having been permanently disabled in battle against fascism and Nazism, are dead and are not here to see what has happened to the United States.  Trump I made me feel that way.   

With this we can see beyond any doubt that America's liberal democracy,  our 18th century system has broken or been destroyed or died.   This is proof, positive that the compact that was warned about by some of the original anti-federalists during the manipulated and dodgy and, let's face the history of it, anti-democratic adoption of the Constitution needs to be looked at very seriously.   I'd especially recommend the radical abolitionist Wendell Phillips' The Constitution A Pro-Slavery Compact (download it from the Library of Congress before it's suppressed) in which he detailed the many ways in which white supremacy,  slavery in his day, was inserted into the very mechanisms of the government.   It's those mechanisms, up and running, the Electoral College, the anti-democratically staffed Senate, and many others that have been the cliff up which those who wanted a real democracy, an egalitarian democracy, have had to push boulders up again and again,  including the Civil War and the great Civil Rights struggle of the 19th and 20th centuries, only to see them pushed back by the Supreme Court, by the states securely to  marginally controlled by white supremacists and anti-egalitarians.  

If you think what I just said is radical,  I will guarantee you that something like that is going to be what scholars around the world will be analyzing this disaster as, the utter failure of America's democracy due to its inability to do what Lincoln tried to do, appeal to the better angels of our nature.   He did that in his first Inaugural Address, as the white supremacists, always our indigenous form of fascism, were breaking out of the Constitutional system because they sensed the privileges that slave-power had been granted by the fabled idols,  the framers of the Constitution, were in danger.   Clearly the worst of them ruled over an enormous part of the country then,  ruled by pretty much the same mechanisms that their descendants, the actual losers of the Civil War and their more modern forms in what turned into American apartheid used, which the Republican-fascists have been trying to bring back from about the second the best laws ever passed into law, the Voting Rights Act and the Civil Rights Act were signed into law.   The best hopes of the Civil War, a long and effective Reconstruction of the Confederate states was ended by the corrupt bargain made to bring Rutherford Hayes to office under the goddamned Electoral College.  Whatever civic piety you've been fed about the better angels winning that one,  in the scope of the century and a half after that,  no, no they didn't win, at all.

As I have never stopped pointing out, the American "free press" and the ACLU and the short-sighted and rather stupid Warren Court all played their part,  the latter two by getting the mass media the "right to lie" from the Court and the "free press" by using that to lie in a series of progressively worse Republican presidents and congresses who appointed progressively worse Supreme Courts.   The stupidity started with the vague, b-grade 18th century poetry of the Bill of Rights,  especially the First and Second of those.   The idolization of James Madison, as dedicated a white supremacist as we've had in the presidency or in the Congress, is one of the proofs of the failure of American history, both the study and teaching of it.   The fake historical song and dance of Hamilton, promoted to death by the New York Times and Disney is proof of that. 

America's corporate media has been the engine that brought us to the death of America's democracy.   They have been all-in on that since the Sullivan Decision was handed down, starting with the 1968 election - it was the foreign policy and military disaster of the Republican encouraged Vietnam war that they used then, we will see the extent to which President Biden backing the Israeli government's Gaza invasion has played in killing it off right now.   I think it's well past time that Americans have given unconditional support for that experiment.   I think history will prove the anti-zionist Jews were right about it all along.  

What do we do now?  I don't know.  I am tempted to do what Wendell Phillips proposed to do, leave the failed compact and try for a regional democracy.   I'd suggest joining Canada, a country with a somewhat better Constitution - they learned something from our mistakes, but I don't expect its democracy will not be destroyed even if they manage to avoid an actual invasion and takeover by American fascism.   Having said that,  I don't think we will get out of this without major violence, the kind of violence that, under America's Constitution has been carried out against Native Americans, Black People,  Latinos, other minority groups and, let's not forget WOMEN not only with impunity but holding the very mechanisms of power.    I don't think we are going to get out of this without serious, very serious violence and oppression.  The billionaires, who I am entirely convinced are all in on the evolutionary psychological belief in the "selfish gene" are going to be ruthless.  When you read some of the most insane ideas feeding those like Peter Thiele (the co-owner with Elon Musk of the immunized presidency) they will be all in on death camps.   I have every reason to believe that Trump will be a temporary thing, he will be pushed aside by Vance and his gang, who will have the billionaires resources behind him.  

America's liberalism has failed, I am entirely certain that failure is tied to the failure of mainstream Protestantism and liberal Catholicism under the regime of materialism, secularism and the fascist heresy of "Christian nationalism".   As you, no doubt, know I include the current members of the U.S. Catholic Conference of Bishops among those most culpable, along with the multi-millionaire-billionaire Catholics who have funded some of the most unhinged theorists of their movement, some of them sitting professors at the likes of Harvard.   The goddamned Ivys and their equivalents have been all in on this too, under the slogan of "intellectual freedom."   You can't allow the enemies of equality, of justice, of democracy to flourish and expect that those will survive.  America has never had more robust promotion of equality, justice, democracy, etc. in our history and the fascists have won.  1960S-70S STYLE FREE SPEECH ABSOLUTISM HAS FAILED AND BROUGHT DEMOCRACY DOWN WITH IT. 

Anyone who favors justice over injustice, the least among us over the billionaires, the truth over lies, reality over Hollywood created fantasy,  democracy over fascism is not only in for a long, long dark and sleepless night, we are now at a kind of risk we have never before been in.   I think the best thing to do is look to those who have survived and progressed under American fascism in the past,  Black People and other People of Color,  Women, members of other targeted minorities.   One thing we must never, ever be suckers for again it is the laissez-faire, libertarian concept of "freedom" "liberty" that provided America's fascists the "right to lie" their thriving.  All of those legal niceties that the liberal pundit lawyers have voiced, endlessly, on TV, MSNBC, NPR, are moot.   The institutions that operated under them have failed us,  most of all the American legal system and the elite lawyers of the Department of Justice have failed us.  The Supreme Court has certainly failed us because the majority of them never intended equality to survive and never intended for anything like a real democracy, the egalitarian democracy that the only good part of American history has struggled for, to succeed.   The elite, Harvard, Yale and other Ivy League lawyers on the Supreme Court have done this to us, including all of those who nullified the disqualification of an insurrectionist to run for office.   

American democracy is dead, the survivors have to face that squarely.  Right now.  The surviving democracies had better face that fact and I'm sure they will,  they shouldn't smugly figure this is an example of the stupidity of Americans because not one of them has all that good a record, either.  Learn from our mistakes or you will find the very vulnerabilities embedded by a written Constitution in your systems will be hacked by the axis of billionaires, domestic and foreign (XI, Putin, etc.) that have done America's democracy in. 

I intend to keep this up as long as possible, I can't say that I'm not seriously considering buying a gun and learning to shoot it.   I may take Ida Wells Barnett's advice to Black People in the face of lynch law to heart,

“A Winchester rifle should have a place of honor in every black home, and it should be used for that protection which the law refuses to give.” 

The law won't protect us, the time of the lawyers and courts as a protector is gone.   They have failed us and were never a reliable source of security. 

But I may not,  I will believe what the Psalms, what the Gospel and the Prophets said over and over again,  God is the only source of protection,  more secure than life, itself.   America's democracy won't be revived until the bases of it in the economic justice of the Law of Moses and the Gospel of Jesus are believed in by an effective majority of Americans.   As Jurgen Habermas did actually say, those are the only sources of nourishment for what we took to be decent governance. 

Maybe I Should Stop Looking At The Comments Waiting For Moderation

I STOPPED caring about what the Geritol and Ex Lax set at Eschaton said quite a while ago,  about the time Phila and NTodd left.   I encountered a few people I liked there, some of who I keep up with,  I have no interest in any who I know still frequent there.   If I cared to I'd look for the first time I compared it to Harry Hope's bar - which was quite apt - but I don't even care enough to look in my archive for that.   It's a sheltered day-care for geezers, like those talking-face videos they have to keep dementia sufferers sitting in one place,  nothing more.

Pundit Stupid Inputs And Poll Slop

MEDIA MATTERS FOR AMERICA has a summary of the total and complete negligence of the broadcast networks to cover policy during this election.  That's not a shock, they've pretty much stopped covering policy in favor of Republican-fascist talking points, polls and pundits all obviously in service to helping Republican-fascists in this most dangerous election in our modern history.   The idolized and lauded "free press" has entirely reversed the only reason for ever including it in the First Amendment,  that it serve to accurately and honestly inform Americans on what we need to vote responsibly and to live better, safer lives as citizens in a viable democracy.

It's going to have to happen sometime, either now or after a total disaster, the media is going to have to be a. kept from spreading lies, b. to really give accurate, timely and important information and c. stop aiding white supremacists, billionaire and millionaire enemies of democracy (their owners and advertisers and in many cases its "journalists", in short).   If they don't serve those purposes they don't deserve any kind of special privileges which the drafters of the First Amendment so naively phrased in the language of rights.   Rights inhere only to human beings and other living creatures,  they do not inhere to artificial entities,  everything from the "press" and organizations and corporations right up to and including nation states and other national entities.  

While I'm sure this will be put off many times as the enemies of democracy try again and again,  we have got to start breaking the idols of Constitutional and First Amendment conventional piety.   It's pretty clear many of the online "journatlists" of the right and the play-left (Greenwald, is a perfect example) are in league with the international fascist movement which Rachel Maddow sensibly called The New Axis,  Putin, XI, the Kim regime in North Korea and the Iranian clergy-gangsters.  And others.    They are joined by many if not most of the big media companies,  the NYT, WaPo, etc.  As I mentioned recently the supposed alternative of PBS, NPR and C-SPAN sold out lots earlier.  

They should be made liable for lies told about politicians and politics, sued into non-existence.   If Hillary Clinton had been able to sue for the lies that even the most august of them told about her she could have bankrupted them and we'd never have had Trump.   If Trump had been able to be sued for all of the lies he told about  he would have been eddling knock off junk on sidewalks decades ago. 

This election should be the death of the myth of the New York Times as a great institution of American democracy and American culture.   It is the property of a wealthy family out for another big slug of Trump giveaway.   I think it's what an insightful Latin journalist said it was, a gaming platform with a bit of journalism attached to it.   If A. G. Sulzberger is still in control of it in 2028, he will be doing his best to get Republican-fascists elected.   He has done something I wouldn't have thought was possible, being more of a piece of slime than Pinch was.  

Off With Their Wealth - Let Them Keep Their Heads, Put Their Asses In Prison

THE RECENT New York magazine revelations of the lavish travel junket that America's most openly MAGA "justic" Alito and his fascist flag flying wife took at the invitation of the putrid Princess Gloria von Turn und Taxis (Gloria von Tut) is the latest reason that we need drastic and far reaching court reform but it's only one facet of the part of the connections between America's Republican-fascists and the still very rich and decadent and very dangerous detritus of European royalty.  You should read the linked to article if, like me, you let this reporting go during the last weeks of the campaign that has had us all sitting under a razor sharp sword.  The revelations of that link to one of the three "justices" I said should be under immediate investigation for possible tax fraud and other law breaking if Kamala Harris wins tonight is just the beginning.  

Here's an older must-read article from open Democracy about how the still dangerous royals and nobles of Europe are tied in with the neo-fascist wave that we are pushing against here.  

Just as a sample.

While far-right leaders from Italy to Hungary position themselves as siding with the ‘grassroots’ against liberal elites, this is also a VIP-studded network: Princess Gloria – a friend of Steve Bannon, who plans to use her palace in Germany as a summer school for European populists – is not the only aristocrat involved.

openDemocracy reviewed the programmes for each of these events since 2004, and found about 100 politicians among the 700 people listed as speakers over the 15 years – along with an archduchess from Austria, a French prince, and a Portuguese duke.

 “On both sides of the Atlantic”, noted Hillary Margolis, a researcher for the NGO Human Rights Watch, increasingly “politicians and lobbying groups misrepresent efforts to improve gender equality – including access to reproductive health and rights – as dangerous to children, families and so-called “traditional values”.

“There is now a real transatlantic movement on these issues”, added Heidi Beirich, director of the Intelligence Project at the Southern Poverty Law Center, which has designated the WCF an anti-LGBT ‘hate group’ for “pushing for restrictions to LGBT rights under the guise of the defense of the ‘natural family’”.

 The WCF is key to this cross-border ultra-conservative organising, Beirich said, “bringing together organisations from predominantly Europe and North America, but also other regions, to strategise and push for their agenda”.

Joseph Grabowski, a WCF spokesperson, told openDemocracy this week that it disputes the SPLC’s ‘hate group’ designation and called it “an unfortunate slight for the countless Americans and the people around the world who hold the same views as we do on marriage, the nature of family and the right to life”.

No doubt there is far, far more to this than these two articles have documented.  One could ask why an American "justice" is allowed to receive lavish gifts from these fascists and be knighted into any kind of foreign "knighthood" as Alito was.   That a lot of this involves Catholics and Catholic institutions should be troubling for Catholics,  Pope Francis has done more than any other pope to clean up at least some of the most well known of these "orders" but the question has to be asked why should they be allowed to exist as official Catholic entities.   I wrote years and years ago about how John Paul II made the Aussie smut king and tabloid liar and world wide fascism promoter Rupert Murdoch just such a "papal knight" when he wasn't even Catholic.   As someone who is still considered a Catholic the whole thing stinks.   Such big name Catholics as the putrid Cardinal Raymond Burke is all in on it (I wonder if he and the princess share fashion secrets when they get together).  

This is more of what I was talking about with white Catholics' fascism problem, considering the resources for financing neo-fascism these tiara and coronet headed thugs hold,  it is something that should concern American and other democracies national security agencies,  including those in Germany, France, Italy, etc. where those thugs operate from.   Royalty and other such aristocratic designations should be ended, including stripping them of their property.    While I might not agree with cutting their heads off on moral grounds,  I can say that any American official who is in league with it should be impeached and investigated for possible crimes.  Alito should be first on that list.  

Timothy Cardinal Dolan Should Resign Over His Pastoral Negligence Alone

INSTEAD OF writing a response objecting to what I said about the white Catholic fascism problem after the Al Smith Dinner and Trump's Nazi Rally in Madison Square Garden I'll go with this report about how the almost exclusively white, male, elite US Catholic Conference of Bishop's almost entirely non-condemnation of what was said in either case.   Especially note what it says about the smarmy, ever-smiling Tim Cardinal Dolan.  

Among the first to speak on behalf of the Catholic Church was San Juan Archbishop Roberto González Nieves, who issued a statement on behalf of his Puerto Rican brother bishops: "Puerto Rico is not a floating island of garbage. Puerto Rico is a beautiful country inhabited by a beautiful and noble people." The "joke," he said, not only provoked "sinister laughter, but hatred."

Only a few Catholic leaders have joined Gonzalez in condemning Hinchcliffe's disparaging remarks. The Diocese of Youngstown, Ohio, issued a statement saying, "There is no room in the Church of Christ, nor the world, for hatred of ones' brothers and sisters, or for any malice to be held in one's heart against them." San Antonio's Archbishop Gustavo García-Siller described Hinchcliffe's remarks as demonstrating "a lack of maturity."

But the silence among many Catholic leaders is reminiscent of the decades of cover-ups and excuses when tens of thousands of children suffered from the sexual abuses perpetrated upon them by Catholic priests and other religious leaders.

The silence of New York's Cardinal Timothy Dolan is especially noteworthy. New York City has the highest proportion of Puerto Ricans in the United States, the majority of them Catholics and faithful church attendees. Yet, even now, days after Trump's rally, not a word from Dolan.

In the past, Dolan has boasted of his close relationship with Trump, calling him "a great gentleman" and a "great friend of mine," telling Trump in 2020 that he calls him more often than his 90-year-old mother in Missouri. Those comments stand juxtaposed to Trump's crude references to women, boasting in 2016 that he likes "grabbing them" and "forcibly kissing them."

During the COVID-19 pandemic, Dolan pleaded for funding to keep the diocese's Catholic schools open. In return, he received $1.4 billion in federal aid at Trump’'s direction. Maybe he has $1.4 billion reasons for keeping quiet now.

Dolan is not alone in keeping mum. Jack Jenkins, a Religion News Service reporter, tweeted that all the bishops in the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops he contacted to respond to Hinchcliffe's remarks either refused to answer or did not respond.

The US Catholic Conference of Bishops is mostly staffed by those appointed by John Paul II and Benedict XVI and they are mostly a moral and pastoral disaster.   I hope Dolan is retired soon.  He always reminded me a lot of the criminal Bernard Law, the one who took it on the lam when he knew he was facing a subpoena as the clergy sex abuse scandal broke and who was given a plum assignment by the morally problematic JPII.  He clearly has no problem with Trump's history of sexual abuse and rape and I'm sure he's not stupid enough to be unaware of Trump having wanted his mistress who became his second wife to have an abortion, since that's the excuse a lot of them use for supporting Republican-fascists.   The Catholic right has always had a strong double-standard on even the issues that they allegedly care about most.  

On The Cusp Of Democracy Or Facism - What The Supreme Court And The ACLU Have Wrought

LISTENING TO THE video The False White Gospel: Rejecting Christian Nationalism,  hearing Jim Wallis talking about how Trumpists, Republican-fascists encouraged by Steve Bannon and others to park trucks with America's swastika, the Confederate Flag full or guns next to polling places, near predominantly Black Schools, etc.  Hearing him talk about how officials managing polling sites have to be concerned about armed attacks ON OUR POLLING PLACES, it occurred to me that the very real, very violent, terrorism conducted by almost exclusively white, Republican-fascists is of absolutely no concern to our elites, certainly not the legacy and corporate media, certainly not the goddamned Supreme Court which has aided in arming these terrorists with full knowledge that that was what they were doing. 

America's elites, white, wealthy, owners of most everything have been setting us up to be terrorized by their white-supremacist gangs for the past fifty years and the goddamned free press have been largely all-in on the effort.

It is insane that we are putting up with the courts and, especially the Supreme Court doing this in full view for as long as they have been striking down laws to reign in the weapons that are an intrinsic part of this terror.   If the goddamned Supreme Court members and their staff had to experience WHAT THEY PERMIT SCHOOL CHILDREN AND POLL WORKERS TO EXPERIENCE it might make some difference.  Short of that, the Congress, if it is not in the hands of the goddamned Republican-fascists have to remove the protections that shield the "justices" from the results of their decisions and those they allow to stand through the shadow docket.   

It is, in some ways, just an extension of the terrorism that has been used to suppress Black People, other People of Color and others for our entire history,  that has been the legalized practice under slavery then Jim Crow and under the Roberts Court revival of Jim Crow in which white supremacists steal the representation of People of Color just as was embedded into the Constitution under the infamous 3/5ths rule that the end of legal slavery enhanced into a theft of 5/5ths of the representation enumerated but stolen from those they prevent from voting and having representation.   

If Kamala Harris becomes president, if she gets a Democratic Congress she has her work cut out for her.   One is getting several Amendments overturning the outrageous decisions of the Roberts Court,  overturning Women's ownership of their bodies,  making a Republican-fascist president a dictator (you can be certain if Biden or Harris exercised the power they gave Trump, that would be different), outrageously legalizing the post-facto payment of bribes - something that you'd expect the most corrupt of banana republic Courts to do - but one of the most important ones is to disarm the legions of white-supremacist thugs and fanatics before they become the invisible army of white supremacy that I have ever reason to believe that everyone from the perfumed, manicured John Roberts down to the most white supremacist "justice" in modern history,  Clarence Thomas, fantasizes preventing equality and democracy from coming into effect.  

If they are not under criminal investigation right now,  Roberts, Alito and Thomas should be, as should the spouses of Roberts and Thomas.  If Democrats have control of both or either house they should subpoena the tax records of all five of them to make sure they have not been cheating on their taxes and if they have they should be prosecuted.   Including the "justices".  Kavanaugh's past and whether he lied under oath before the Senate Judiciary Committee should also be investigated and if he did he should be prosecuted.   I don't think anyone should worry about discrediting the Court, it's done that job already.   

I will mention the ACLU because they have played as big a role as any outside group in creating this situation through their "free speech" and other positions which have brought us to where we are.   I've gone into that at length here.   I could mention other lawyers groups and the lawyering-liaring profession in general.   I have some reservations about Kamala Harris because she was educated into the culture of the law and might have a hard time imagining something as unconventional as a president who, like Abraham Lincoln, rejected the Supreme Courts usurpation of power under Marbury v. Madison,  the basis of the Dred Scott decision and a whole volume of other judicial outrages.   I think it's well past time that the Presidency and Congress declared that Court usurpation null and void and they cut the Court down to the size they have in more secure democracies.   I heard that the wonderful Fran Lebowitz suggested that President Biden dissolve the Court with the imperial powers that the Roberts Court invented for the most criminal of modern American presidents.   I don't think he'd need to go that far but declaring Marbury v Madison illegal would do the same thing, along with those criminal investigations and prosecutions mentioned above.   The Supreme Court being cut down to size is one of the things that is essential because the fascist Roberts Court will nullify any attempt to clean up our country as the goddamned Court did with the campaign fiance reform laws passed after the Nixon crime spree became public.   I think if Kamala Harris becomes president she should demand those Constitutional Amendments ending Roberts' legalized corruption,  their nationalization of Women's bodies, turning the president into a dictator be adopted or she will exercise the powers that the Court gave Trump.   It will be the only way she'd get it past enough Republican-fascist controlled state legislatures to overcome the goddamned Roberts Court white supremacist fascists.   Short of that, court packing will be necessary as will be imposing term limits - send them back to riding the circuit after a reasonable term.   Something has to be done and with the out of control Court it will have to be drastic.   We can't allow the Courts to have the kind of power they have assumed on their own.

Someone Shut Up Bill Clinton

BILL CLINTON has a history of causing disaster for Democratic presidential candidates,  most clearly for Hillary Clinton when he irresponsibly, stupidly and recklessly met with Loretta Lynch as Hillary Clinton was under the American media inquisition over her e-mails.   That and what the Republicans and the American media and, lest be it  forgotten the sanctimonious partisan hack  James Comey did with is is as much of why we got Trump I as anything. 

Now the asshole has done it again with an anti-Palestinian speech in Wisconsin which the play-left, the legitimate pro-Palestinians and others are using to try to sandbag Kamala Harris in a close election in a critical state. 

BILL CLINTON SHOULD NEVER, EVER AGAIN BE PUT OUT THERE TO CAMPAIGN FOR A DEMOCRAT BECAUSE OF THIS RECORD AND DUE TO HIS EPIC IRRESPONSIBILITY WHILE HE WAS PRESIDENT.   He was a mediocre Democratic president, at best, about the best thing you can say for him is that he kept Republicans out of the White House for eight years.   He is on the same list as Trump as someone who I could happily hear nothing from or of or about the rest of my life and it would suit me just fine.   If Kamala Harris is elected I hope she listens to Hillary Clinton,  I hope she listens to Jimmy Carter (the greatest ex-president in the history of ex-presidents),  I even hope she listens to Barack Obama but Bill Clinton is one person she really doesn't need advice from.  Like those guys who ran his campaign who should have been retired from being involved with Democratic campaigns, he should do a quick fade starting right now. 

Sr. Mildred Barker - I Looked And Lo A Lamb

 

MICHAEL MOORE has my permission to go soak his head and keep it under water.   Other than little Bobby Kennedy, he is the most useless figure of the play left who always gets attention for himself by trashing Democrats at crucial times.    To quote Tim Walz, what a jerkwad. 

"Comedians" As The Only Sacred Thing - American Comedy c. 2024 Is Not Funny

WHEN I HEARD that the rapidly curdling Jon Stewart came out in defense of the racist, sexist, Trumpian-fascist bit done at Trump's Nazi rally I went to look where it was written up.   If the top hits on google are any indication it was mostly written up in the Republican-fascist and "entertainment" rags and sites.   I'd had about  enough of Stewart earlier in the year when I read and heard him on first the best president we've had since LBJ,  Joe Biden was being sandbagged and then later,  I mean I remember with fondness his over the top take-down of Glenn Beck when he was still doing The Daily Show, which I laughed at but I would guess that's more the writers than him.  I'm wondering if in ten years he's going to be a sour old man like Jerry Seinfeld is, whining that People of Color,  Latinos, Women, others are calling out the holy, sacrosanct "comedians" when they peddle hate against them defending those poor, unjustly persecuted white male comedians against the onslaught of People who are tired of the kind of shtick that was one of the most effective means of keeping "those" People in their place.   Of course the People who endured that and overcame that are mostly white,  the Irish, the Italians, white Jews,  as enough of them rose in wealth and, so, prominence and influence and mostly white men, at that.  

If that Hinchcliffe asshole had used the "c" word in his shtick as he wanted to,  I have no problem imagining that Stewart would have defended him.   Given how degenerate American "comedy" is these days,  I can imagine him defending him if he'd done a Roseanne Barr style Holocaust "joke".    I'd like to know if he's ever addressed that recent innovation in edgy "comedy."  

Why would Stewart think that the very jerks who are making everyone else into a target should be immune from commentary, mockery, rejection?   Why shouldn't the population at large have the opportunity to do what any stand-up audience has the right to do when someone like him bombs and objects to it?   That's pretty much what America has been doing since Sunday.   

Apparently for Stewart "comedians" are the only thing not allowed to be booed.   What a self-serving stand to take.   Especially as he rejects far more important and serious ones.   He has forfeited any right to be taken seriously, from now on.   It is less than a week till we find out if American Hitler 2024 is going to take power, afterall.

White Catholicism Has A Serious Facism Problem - People's Exhibit #n=infinity But Not Nearly As Serious A Problem as Current "Comedy" Does

THE SCUMBAG RACIST "comedian" Tony Hinchcliffe who is now infamous is a product of Ursuline High School in Youngstown, Ohio.   Also, too, he was a member of the wrestling team.   There's something deeply creepy about wrestling, perhaps especially the kulcha of wrestling in mid-western states.  See also:  Denny Hastert and Jim Jordan.

More to the point and probably far more relevant to anything he's a product of thorough conventional American "comedy."   Not caring to dip too far into the sewer that is Hinchcliffe,  I looked him up on his, no doubt, self-typed Wikipedia page:  

In 2007, Hinchcliffe moved to Los Angeles in order to pursue a career in comedy.[2][4] He started performing stand-up at open mics at The Comedy Store in West Hollywood, California.[2][9][3] He was hired to work the phones and the cover booth, eventually becoming a paid regular at the venue.[2][5] He also started opening for comedians Joe Rogan and Jeff Ross on tour.[10][9][5]

Hinchcliffe became known at The Comedy Store for insulting other comics and audience members during shows.[3][11] He is also known for broaching uncomfortable and sensitive topics during his stand-up sets.[9][3][11][12] Hinchcliffe's style of roasting[13][3][10] and dark sense of humor appealed to fellow comedian Jeff Ross, also known as the "Roastmaster General" of the television series Comedy Central Roast.[3][5][11] Hinchcliffe refers to Ross as his "mentor" and he helped get Hinchcliffe his first writing jobs.[3][5][11]

Hinchcliffe has written for the Comedy Central Roast episodes featuring James Franco, Justin Bieber and Rob Lowe.[2][9][14][10][15] Hinchcliffe's contributions to the series include writing Martha Stewart's set for the Justin Bieber roast and Ann Coulter's set for the Rob Lowe roast.[10][15] Hinchcliffe has also written for the comedy panel show The Burn with Jeff Ross and appeared as a contestant on the first season of Jeff Ross Presents Roast Battle.[5][16]

He also appeared as a roaster on the All Def Digital Roast of Snoop Dogg in 2016[9][14] and The Roast of Tom Brady in 2024.[17]

Since 2013, Hinchcliffe has produced and hosted a podcast called Kill Tony, a weekly live show recorded at The Comedy Store.[14][13][18] During the show, Hinchcliffe and co-host Brian Redban (of The Joe Rogan Experience and the Deathsquad Network), along with a changing panel of comedians and other celebrities, act as judges for amateur comedians.[18][19] The contestants enter their names into a bucket and are selected at random throughout the show.[18][19] Each selected contestant gets to perform a one-minute comedy set,[2][14][13] followed by a discussion and critique by the panel of judges.[19] The show aims to give young comedians a chance to showcase their talent and build their professional reputation. It sets no limits on topics the contestants can present, allowing for potentially offensive or politically incorrect performances.[20][21]

Hinchcliffe's first one-hour stand-up special titled One Shot premiered on Netflix in 2016.[2][13][14] His special was so named because it was shot in one camera take with no edits.[2][14] In 2017, he headlined the Monster Energy Outbreak Tour where he toured 20 American cities in 22 days.[2][13][10]

In September 2020, Hinchcliffe announced that he would be relocating to Austin, Texas, to join Joe Rogan and Brian Redban.[22] The Kill Tony podcast, previously filmed at The Comedy Store, relocated to Antone's Nightclub in downtown Austin, Texas. The show relocated to Vulcan Gas Company on 6th Street in May 2021. Due to an incident that month, his agency WME released him as a client and Antone's announced that it would no longer work with Hinchcliffe or Kill Tony.[23][24][25] As of 2023, the show is hosted at Joe Rogan's Austin based comedy club, Comedy Mothership.

On New Year's Eve 2023, Kill Tony hosted its first live arena show at the H-E-B Center at Cedar Park.[26] 

American "comedy" has no sense of morals, no sense of anything being sacred, no sense of anything being wrong and also isn't at all funny.  "Comedy" is entirely compatable with Republican-fascist Trumpian Nazism. 

See Also: Last Friday's Post and the comments.  

 BOYCOTT AMAZON

Saturday Night Radio Drama - Katie Hims - Come Closer Now

 Come Closer Now 

Katie Hims’s love letter to radio drama as the form celebrates its centenary.

Annie is writing a radio play about a hundred years of radio plays, and it’s also, curiously, the story of her own family. As she writes she unearths the myths, half-truths and lies that have been woven into her family’s fabric for generations. Stories that are written to cope with uncomfortable facts. Stories that warp and twist reality. Stories stowed in the studio walls. Stories that crackle with electricity. Stories that move across space and time, and end up right in your ear, right in your head. Stories a bit like this one.

From gathering around the wireless to listening on-demand on headphones, the listener, and the medium, has transformed over the century. And across this sweep of time, radio drama has remained an innovative, yet deeply intimate art form, with infinite possibilities. It’s often called the most visual medium there is.

CAST

Annie ….. Rebekah Staton

Farley ….. Joseph Kloska

Connie and Jane ….. Rhiannon Neads

Older Jane ….. Jessica Turner

Younger Jane ….. Maisie Avis

Dan ….. Don Gilet

Joe ….. Tyler Cameron

Michael ….. Josh Bryant-Jones

Nora ….. Kitty O’Sullivan

The Boy ….. Milton Dighton

Written by Katie Hims

Directed by Anne Isger

Sound by Ali Craig and Andy Garrett

Production Co-ordination by Jenny Mendez

A BBC Audio Production for BBC Radio 3

Katie Hims wrote her first play for radio in 1996, and has been writing extensively in the genre ever since, to great acclaim. Katie’s play Waterloo Station was the winner of Best Radio Drama at the 2023 Writers Guild Awards. Her other original audio work includes Black Eyed Girls (winner of the BBC Audio Drama Award for Best Original Drama), Lost Property (winner of the BBC Audio Drama Award for Best Original Drama), The Gunshot Wedding (winner of The Writer’s Guild Best Original Radio Drama). Katie was lead writer on BBC's Home Front and has written multiple leading adaptations for BBC Radio 4: Thomas Hardy's Tess of the D'ubervilles, George Eliot's Middlemarch, Edna O'Brien's The Country Girls and The Martin Beck Killings by Maj Sjowall and Per Wahloo.

In theatre, Katie is currently on attachment at the National Theatre. Her recent stage work includes a contemporary retelling of Kafka's The Trial which ran at The Unicorn Theatre in 2023 and received 4 and 5 star reviews.

I'm Reduced To Posting My Comment Thread Comments

A COMMENT posted on Stephanie Miller's Youtube. 

Hollywood, show biz, TV, "comedy" has normalized the basis of Republican-fascism, increasingly since the 1970s.   The glorification of gangsters, dirty Harry,  Clint Eastwood characters, etc.  The ridicule and mockery of all of the moral bases of egalitarian democracy.  They produced Trump, they produced Reagan before that.  The pseudo-journalism that followed on after the entertainment divisions of broadcasting, the editorials and reporting that followed on the entertainment features that led the ink on paper rags.   Until you address what created the basis of amorality that led to Trump,  you're wasting your time.

I won't feel better until I know Kamala Harris both won the election and will be inaugurated.  That the situation we are in right now is possible under the goddamned Constitution and the law as defined by the corrupt Supreme Court is an indictment of both of them.  A Constitution and legal system that were legitimate would have kept Trump from being a candidate,  he would have been in prison by now.   The gutting of the sections of the 14th Amendment that would have kept him from running, by not only the Republican-fascist majority but, also, non-fascists on the Court proves that the rot in our system is in no small part due to the festering, infectious rot in our judiciary and the legal profession, as well.

We Don't Have The Luxury Of Getting Lost In The Complexities Over Israel And Palestine Anymore - The United States Must Stop "Israel Right Or Wrong" Now

ONE OF THE most intelligent, moral People in their twenties who I know has told me she isn't going to vote this year, even though she knows how dangerous Trump getting another chance is.   It is a result of the Israeli genocide and the Biden administration's policy supporting it.   She, like may other People of good will has been entirely taken up by the Israeli genocide against the People of Gaza for the entire time since the Israeli military started it.  Before that she was horrified by the attack on Israel which initiated the campaign of murder, destruction and occupation that the Israeli government used that to justify.

You will notice I haven't used the euphemisms "The Israeli Defense Forces" and "The Netanyahu government" because what the Israeli military has done isn't defensive, no more than the Israeli government ignoring the warnings it was given that an attack from Gaza was imminent before the initiating attack.  Nor can Israel as a nation be let off the hook by blaming what not only has happened this year but has repeatedly happened in Gaza, in Lebanon over the decades the Israeli fascists of Likud and their political allies have governed Israel WITH THE CONSENT OF A MAJORITY OF ISRAELI VOTERS.   Unlike the People of Gaza who got the all too typical first and last free election which brought Hamas to power, the People of Israel have had innumerable occasions over the past fifty years to reject the fascist face of Zionism and they chose, in the majority, in favor of fascism, of apartheid, of genocide.   The extent to which that is understandable due to the fact that Israel has been under more or less continuous attack by the Palestinians who were displaced and expelled from the lands Israel claimed for itself is undeniable.   The predictions of such a situation arising from the Zionist project go back to almost the origins of Zionist ideology,  many of those most opposed to the idea were the very People who Zionists claimed to speak on behalf of, Jews.  

I prefer to take my information about situations in other places among other peoples from the People who are most involved with the risks and consequences instead of those who have nothing to do with it.  Perhaps that is related to the rejection of abstractions that the excerpt I posted from Gabriel Marcel mentioned but it is mostly from the fact that those who are most involved.   I listen to Israelis in opposition to fascism and genocide - I know the Israeli fascists, like all fascists are flagrant liars so I don't bother with what they say - and Gazans and other Palestinians who are victims of Hamas and other terrorist fascists though far less so than they are of Israeli fascists.  

One of the things I've been doing that is related to and only supplemental to reading those directly in danger from both Israeli and Palestinian fascism is reading is the Jewish anti-Zionists because more than seventy years after its self-declaration of existence as a nation,  I have no faith that the Israeli state will ever be more than an increasingly apartheid state both attacking and murdering Palestinians but also being under attack and in danger of murder from a non-ending opposition to its existence.   I have mentioned a number of times that my belief that that is the case was sparked by the Argentinian journalist and victim of the Argentinian fascists dirty war, Jacobo Timmerman who relocated temporarily to Israel under the "right of return" and, revolted by the 1982 Lebanon war (I wonder how many Americans even remember there was one) in which the Israeli military and government acted in concert with Lebanon's "Christian" fascists, wrote a book and became an Israeli critic of the government and a live-long Zionist who seemed to become skeptical of the claimed goals of Zionism.   He noted that much of the antisemitism in the post-WWII period was a direct result of the existence of the Israeli state and, admitted what was obvious, that the modern state of Israel had certainly not made Jews there or around the world safer.  

One of the things that any outsider dipping into the extremely complex and long and infinitely detailed and drastically varied thinking and history around Zionism and the establishment and history of the Israeli government has to contend with is that extreme complexity and the extremely strongly held devotion to nuances in even seemingly related, sometimes only apparently similar positions held.  Jacobo Timerman retained his Israeli citizenship even after he moved back to Argentina, making any resumption of his Argentinian citizenship contingent on him retaining the citizenship of Israel, a country he had been far more critical of than almost any American has been, even as he seems to have become critical of the Zionist ideology he'd once held with.  I have to say that Timerman is someone who I respected because he was the kind of journalist who tried to truthfully tell the bad about any place he lived in honestly, even after he'd been kidnapped, tortured and had to face the fact that he might have been murdered as a consequence of his truth telling.   There aren't many if any American "journalists" who have that history of journalism and they aren't really worthy of being wearing the same label.

I have no idea how Rabbi Yakkov Shapiro thinks or would think of Jacobo Timerman but I have to say that from what I can check of what he says about the ideology of Zionism, both in claims and in practice, seems to me to be honest and make sense.  I say that even as I can say that after listening to many hours of his talks and interviews the past two weeks, I have no idea of the extent to which we would agree on much of anything in politics.   I am, of course not a Jew so I am considering what he says about the antisemitism that is intrinsic to Zionism from the view of an outsider, though I was aware of the atheism and hostility to both the Jewish religion and Jewish identity that was rampant among the founders of Zionism and, especially, the "Reformed Zionism" of Jabotinsky which formed the basis of the fascist gangsters who Jewish intellectuals warned against in 1948 and who have, either personally or in their next generation, have ruled Israel for much of its history, now.  I'm including the offshoots of Likud in that. 

I would recommend listening to Rabbi Shapiro though there are others who share his opposition to Zionism as being opposed to Judaism. Before listening to him I was ignorant of the nature of the irreligious character of Modern Hebrew, which, I he is correct, would seem to have intentionally baked in ridicule and disdain for the Jewish religion.  

I have no great hope that if Kamala Harris wins the election that she will change American policy in a way that would force the Israeli fascist government* to end its genocidal policies or its whipping up wars to both steal land and manipulate domestic politics to keep itself in power.  But I know if Trump rules,  his son-in-law and, probably, he will be bidding on land seized by Israel on which to build luxury properties over the blood and bones of Palestinians.  I've tried to reason with young woman I mentioned above but I really don't have any arguments that will talk her into choosing the far, far, far, lesser of "evils."    I agree with her that AIPAC has to have its influence broken because it and other, similar agents of the Israeli government have far too much influence in American politics.  It's far from the only one but it's one of the most dangerous.  

I have warned her that a lot of the supposedly pro-Gazan and anti-Israeli stuff she gets sent to her on her phone is probably as dishonest as the pro-Israeli-pro-genocide stuff is, quoting Howard Zinn's vitally important point that every government and side lies.  Though I can't fault her for what she says about the genocidal war that the Israeli government is waging against the People of Gaza,  Muslim, Christian (some of what I read says they're obviously targeting Palestinian Christians, though how you can make that distinction in the general Lebensraum that is happening is hardly an important question).   I wouldn't be surprised if there are many more opponents of Hamas who have been murdered as supporters of Hamas in the Israeli genocide.   A lot of the problem of trying to distinguish lies from the truth is in the attacks on reporters, journalists, aid-workers, medical practitioners, etc. who seem to, as well, be the object of targeting, though, again, in the general murder it's hard to tell if that's the case.  It's clear they haven't been following international law against the killing of such People. 

One of the things that needs to change is the rote accusation of "antisemitism" made against those who insist that a nation, such as Israel, can't be allowed to escape either criticism or opposition in the way that every single other country is held to be liable to by any rational, moral Person in the world.   Rabbi Shapiro has made a conclusive case that that is based in the insistence of Zionists that they represent all Jews and that Zionism is the same thing as Jewishness.   I've criticized the recent campaign to legally define "antisemitism"  in such a way as to legally exempt Israel and its governments, even the fascist governments that have ruled it for most of the past fifty years from having the truth told about it.   I think Rabbi Shapiro has made the best case against that I've yet heard. .

*  A fascist government that can count on the majority of voters supporting it has no need to suppress elections, especially when they can manipulate things to foment violence and military actions that will enhance that support among voters.  I don't hold that such elections are a reliable distinction between fascism and real democracy because real democracy as any modern person of any morality should use the term is based on equality.   Elections, by themselves, are a necessary part of democracy but in a country such as Israel, they certainly don't guarantee either democracy nor are they a means of exempting fascist rule from being honestly identified as fascism.  Especially in a situation of apartheid practiced by a majority over a minority. 

Bela Bartok - Piano Concerto no. 3

 
 

Zoltan Kocsis playing Bartok's PC 3 with the NHK under Hans Drewanz, live on 12 June 1985.

Free Press Absolutism Is A Guarantee Of Media That Kneecaps and Sandbags Democracy Not For Profit Media Sold Us Out First And Fastest

READING YET ANOTHER journalist complaining that Kamala Harris's "closing message" has "fallen short" which, if you think about it in the context of Donald Trump and J. D. Vance means absolutely nothing,  I remembered the very first blog post I wrote on a Saturday, May 13, 2006 and the thing that finally got me to write something like that and post it,  listening to NPR's Saturday Edition hack Scott Simon holding up liberals to a standard that required the highest standards of accuracy, veracity, and adherence to some absurd standard of imaginary purity that he, the rest of the hacks at NPR and, in fact, just about the entirety of the media never, once held a conservative or a Republican-fascist to once in the history of American mass media or narrow media.  

So here almost twenty years later if anything that's gotten worse.  I'll repost that very first blog piece I wrote only for "liberal" you should understand it to mean Democrat, Democrats and Democratic in the context of late October 2024.

To start with, there are two things about the Code of Liberal Ethics that bother me. One, that we are supposed to be entirely fair to everyone and especially in instances when that would put us at a disadvantage, will be dealt with later. The one I will deal with first is the assumption that liberals must get it right every time, not only right but correct. That liberals and leftists, such as myself, must be purer than pure or relegated to the tip, is something I'd better address right now in this first post.

I have no intention of getting it right every time. I begin with no expectation of getting it entirely right a plurality of the time. No guarantee of such is given or offered. I will not allow considerations of the possibility of failure from keeping me from action. On occasion I'll plow straight ahead if conditions seem to warrant it. I, friends, am the thoroughly bad sort and claim as mine, as the sacred possession of every liberal and leftist, the absolute right enjoyed by the rest of humanity to get it wrong. And not only this but I claim as the birthright of leftists to present our side of things to the advantage of our side. I have absolutely no intention to be fair to fascists either, but that's for another day and I hope that Nat Hentoff doesn't die before I get to it.

The Code of Liberal Ethics is a standard operating setting required in every organ of the media. It is applied without consideration, without thought, as a matter of habit. It is a solid state component of the minds of far too many liberals. It is a weapon used exclusively against liberals and leftists and is applied to no other segment of the political spectrum. Everyone, from mushy moderate to rabid fascist is allowed their failings and their biases. But not liberals. Certainly not leftists.

No more. Here, today, I issue our own manumission, my fellow leftists. We have shaken off the chains of perfection, we are free of the lash of faultlessness. We claim our right to consider our own opinions superior and worthy of dominance. Never again will we present the arguments of conservatives as if they merit equal treatment. We will scorn their folly and expose their lies and their entertaining hypocrisies without apology. We will get off our knees and kick every fascist where it counts. In all seriousness, our lives, the lives of our loved ones, the life of the biosphere absolutely depend on it. We must crush out of ourselves and our kind the remains of these mind forged manacles and wipe their residue from every voice and their assumed existence from every ban. Friends, we have nothing to fear. We are free.

Disclaimer: I make no pretense of being a journalist. At best, if someone wanted to insult me, they might claim me as a columnist, an unskilled occupation of which I do not claim to be a part. I would never want anyone to assume that I pretend to be a real journalist, a reporter.

If Kamala Harris and Tim  Walz win the election, especially if they win big I hope one of the results is that it vindicates a decision to bypass the legacy,  hack, Republican-literally-fascist enabling corporate media, which I hope will be the beginning of the end of it.  We need a media but it is not that media, what we need is real journalism which you can hardly find in the legacy media, starting with that Sulzberger run house of presstitution,  the New York Times but including virtually all of the big media.  I think I mentioned a month or so back listening to a journalist from a small Latino newspaper who said the NYT today was a gaming company that had something that passed as a news operation still going.  For example, there's today's third worst person in the world, according to Keith Olbermann,  the NYTwit Jeremy Peters as aided by MSNBC's Katy Tur.  

There is a massive study waiting to happen on the topic of the complicity of America's freest press in the history of the "free press" in the age of impunity for lying, rejecting community service, rejecting any kind of even the pathetic excuse for "fairness" that was the Fairness Doctrine.  Not only its complicity of such a media in the age of free speech absolutism but what I think is a near certainty that such a media serve the enemies of everything from electoral government to even abolishing the identity of the truth as opposed to lies of the most transparent kind.  Such a media, such a "press" is the opposite to what the dolts who drafted the dangerously inspecific First Amendment imagined would be such a media left entirely to its own devices, as exempted from even the libel and slander penalties that kept such media from doing its worst even in its entirely inglorious past and into its infamous present. 

I fucking hate NPR.   I wish I'd never sent it a penny back when I still stupidly supported it.   I have learned not to trust alleged "not for profit" media because they were among the first and worst sell outs, bought out by Koch money, the fascist Heritage Association and which pushed shit like Politico and The Hill even before I'd read them and realized they were even worse in full than before.   Just like I used to watch Brian Lamb on C-Span pushing the worst of the worst,  helping make Matt Druge's career,  pushing Judicial Watch and countless other sewage. 

On First Opening Marcel's Man Against Mass Society

I AM BOTH ticked off and ashamed to find that this late in life I wished that back when I was reading a lot of the then still fashionable existentialism that I never came by or bothered to find out about Gabriel Marcel, a French philosopher, playwright, critic, etc. who I now find out is sometimes identified as one of the first existential philosophers.  I will speculate that my early disgust for the approved, canonized (literally in the literary sense of the word) atheist-existentialists I read (and read of) probably had something to do with me not finding out about him earlier, though some of that might have had to do with which ones were placed more prominently on book store shelves and mentioned in journals and magazines.  I think it was sometime after I read Sartre in the original and realized his plays were stupid and his philosophy maybe even more so, his girlfriend Simone de Beauvoir and found her as worthless a writer that I pretty much said adieu to existentialism.  

Apparently what became of the word "existentialist" was not what Gabriel Marcel would have chosen himself to be identified with later in his life because he wanted to distance himself from the more famously promoted existentialists such as a student of his work, Jean Paul Sartre and others in that camp.  

I'm not far past the first chapters of his post-WWII work translated into English as Man Against Mass Society and I want to start discussing it and encouraging People to read it.  Translated in the language of seventy years after he wrote it, it's as fresh as any of the more informed of current writing on our current troubles. In fact, it's a lot fresher than even most of that, mired as so much of it is in the kind of academic-journalistic abstraction he railed against.  

Most interesting to me in terms of what I post here is the section that starts here:

. . . On the other hand, this hostility of mine towards the spirit of abstraction is quite certainly also at the roots of the feeling of distrust aroused in me, not exactly by democracy itself, but by the sort of ideology which claims to justify democracy on philosophical grounds.  At no time in my life, for instance, has the French Revolution inspired in me anything at al akin to admiration or even attachment; one reason may be that, when I was still very young, I became aware of the ravages in French social life that are due to a sort of egalitarian bigotry.  But another feeling had its effect.  It was also when I was still very young that my parents - for what reason, I am still not too clear - compelled me to read Mignet's very dry history of that great event;  and the other feeling, which that reading aroused, was my innate horror of violence, disorder, cruelty.  

At that time, the glaring abuses in French social and political life which had dragged on until 1789 struck less feelingly hom3 to me than the crimes of the Terror.  Naturally, as time went on, I arrived at a more just or at least a more balanced estimate of the French Revolution.  But the feelings of indignation which the September Massacres and the other mass crimes of the Revolutionary period aroused in me in adolescence, were not, in the end, essentially very different from those much more recently aroused by the horrors of Stalinism or Nazism, or even by the shameful aspects of a purge nearer home.

Can there be any doubt, then, that a bent of mind so deeply rooted is the point of departure of my whole philosophical development?  But my readers, very naturally, will want to ask me if there is any connection that can be grasped between my horror of abstraction and my horror of mass violence.  My answer is that such a connection does certainly exist.  Even for myself, however, it existed for a long time below the level of conscious understanding.  It is, certainly, only at a fairly recent date that it has become explicit to me; since, as I hope to show in detail in the present volume, the spirit of abstraction is essentially of the order of the passions, and since conversely, on the other hand, it is passion, not intelligence, which forget the most dangerous abstractions. Now I can say without hesitation that my own thought has always been directed by a passionate love (but passionate at another level) for music, harmony, peace.  And when I was still very young I grasped the truth that it is impossible to build true peace on abstractions;  though I grasped it, of course, in a form that had not yet reached the stage of conceptual elaboration, (In passing, the fact that it is impossible to build true peace on abstractions is the deepest reason for the failure of the League of Nations, and of other pretentious organizations which resemble it.)  Perhaps also the sort of prejudice which I have always had in favor of Christianity, even during the very long period in which I could not envisage the possibility of becoming a practicing and confessing Christian, may be explained by the unconquerable conviction that I had that, so long as Christianity remained true to itself, Christianity could be the only authentic peacemaker.  

A reader may ask, 'But so far as that goes.  Christians of the Left think as you do;  and it is not perfectly permissible to suppose that Christianity of the Right will always remain conformist in spirit,  that its essence is to try to appease and to manage by tact those who hold power in the world, or even to lean on them for support?'  To that my answer would be that in fact I have always been extremely suspicious of a Christianity of the Right!  I have always thought that such a Christianity runs the risk of distorting in the most sinister fashion the true message of Christ.  (I have even been tempted to adopt as my own certain phrases of Pascal Laumiere's from the final act of my play.  Rome n'est plus dans Rome. [Rome isn't in Rome, anymore].)  Only I should like to add immediately that the men of the Right are very far from having a monopoly on the spirit of conformity and appeasement;  there is a conformism of the Left,  there are men of the Left who hold power in the world, there are 'right-thinking people' (in the conformist sense of the phrase) on the Left as well as the Right;  I remember one day before the war saying something of this sort at the Ambassadeurs,  thus greatly shocking Jacques and Raissa Martian.

One must add that conformism of the Left, not only because it has, if I may put it so, the wind behind its sails these days, but because it is in such glaring contradiction with the principles that the Left claims to be defending, must be denounced just as ruthlessly as conformism of the Right.  Not, of course - this hardly needs saying - that there is any excuse for allowing conformism of the Right, with all it to often implies of blindness and unconscious cruelty, to cash in on that weight of reprobation with which, on this count, one must load the shoulders of the Left.  One must recognize the fact that, in certainly countries of Europe and the Americas, the spirit of clericalism, with the hateful political connivances that it implies, is tending to take on a character that, for a truly Christian conscience, becomes more and more offensive.  The note of a truly honest mode of thinking in these matters, as in book-keeping, is to have a system of double entry, and to prohibit oneself from marking down-by an intellectually fraudulent operation - to the credit of the Right what one has to mark down to the debit of the Left.  I am thinking now of people who, because of their horror of the Soviet world, are today tending to regard Nazism with a certain retrospective tolerance.  That is an aberration - end a criminal aberration.  In any case, who could fail to see at once the simple mechanism of the mental conjuring trick by which we belittle a danger that is past, simply because it is past, or because we believe it past?  Is it really past?  Or may it not in fact appear again, and in a form not radically altered?  In this realm of discourse we must learn once more to express ourselves categorically and to denounce the errors of amoral relativism which is, as may be easily shown, radically self-centered.  Human nature being what it is, the movement which I condemn morally is too often the movement which hurts me personally;  and I am likely to go on condemning it for as long as (and just so long as) it is really able to hurt me.  

I hadn't expected to type out so much of Marcel's introduction but I felt compelled to go on once I started.  I will continue this in the coming days but I want to make several comments on the above.

One of the ways in which the Left and certainly the Right that Marcel wrote about in the late 1940s and early 1950s used to refuse to address what someone like him said was to dishonestly associate him with Nazism or Marxism or some other disfavored ism of the time.  I'm not aware enough to know what his detractors in France and in the English speaking world may have done in that regard to Marcel Gabriel's thought but I know it was the typical way of such discourse.  Something like that, today, is rampant in the attribution of "antisemitism" to any critic of Israel and its many crimes against humanity and in the almost comic clowning of the American Neo-Stalinist fanboys and gals (now uniformly Trumpian Republican-fascists!) calling the most conventional of moderate, democracy loving Democrats "communists" and "Marxists."  

There is fodder of that kind in some of what he says, such as his criticism of Jean Genet.

. . . the novels and characters of Jean Genet are a striking case in point.  From such a novelist's point of view, a middle-class hero practicing the dreary virtues of his retrograde social group is a much less brilliant character than a thief and pervert who has the courage to put into action those desires which, for the plodding bourgeois, never get beyond the stage of unadmitted day dreams.

I am sure that someone old enough to still have the rote-reaction against any criticism of Jean Genet - a hero of the mid-brow "left" who knew the name and that he was "homosexual" and risque and allegedly some kind of persecuted artiste.  I may have held that view of him myself until I did what so few of them bothered to do, read some of his work and I have to say, my reaction to what I read there was akin to my reaction to the crimes against humanity during the French Revolution.  Maybe it's because by that time I had been the victim of a violent crime, ironically, one committed on the basis of my sexual orientation.*

I'm sure many if they read him would be inclined to view Gabriel Marcel through the phony, stupid, left-right "which side are you on" pantomime of political identity which I rejected about fifteen years ago.  Or, more typically, those who might skim him to find the kind of dishonest grounds for launching such a leftist (or rightist) fatwa against him such as is mentioned above.

In regard to Genet and his then fashionable elevation of the gutter level of the demimonde of "perversion" and criminality, pretty much the only reason he ever became a championed figure of the fashionable "left" in France and beyond, I'd seen enough of that even in the pre-Stonewall gay milieu to realize it was a vestige of political and legal oppression and violence which was not sustainable or even desireable.  Ironically, thinking about this since reading the above on Monday, I think one of the most striking "artistic" portrayals of that is in the decidedly non-intellectual, decidedly of that genre John Waters movie Female Trouble in which a rich, thrill seeking couple go trawling through the demimonde of Baltimore, Maryland to thrill at the trashy criminality of the character played by Divine and her two cat thieving, probably prostituting "cheap girl" sidekicks, filming the perversity and violence they encourage, including her character murdering her daughter and (in her first star turn, members of the audience).  I mean, if the John Waters of that period saw through that kind of thing, how much more obvious could it get?  

Of course one of the things that will be grasped onto in that way by the several mid-brows who troll me is his mild semi-criticism of democracy and the phrase "egalitarian bigotry."  I will note that the "democracy" he almost certainly meant was the liberal democracy of post-WWII France, probably that of the United States (which had a long, long list of crimes committed by a government democratically chosen), which I have, as well, come to see as something to be overcome, not maintained.  His phrase "egalitarian bigotry" as well has to be seen in the context of the society and times in which he wrote it.  A society in which morality and virtue, even highest levels of those unattached to self-gain or even self-esteem, were disdained.  The popular literature of the 20th century, especially the most fashionable of it, reveled in violence and moral depravity and the virtue of the mentally and morally lazy, cynicism.  The value placed on spectacle, in line with what was in popular literature, and so depravity and violence, is the predominant strain in even what passed and passes even more, today, as high-art.  The kind of equality which I say is the actual foundation on which a genuine egalitarian democracy has to be founded is an equality of human beings, of natural living beings not an equality that covers their ideas or, really, their preferences generally based on their desires and self-gain.  That ties in with Marcel's condemnation of abstraction but it also figures highly into his skepticism of any democracy, any equality which values those things more highly than it does the lives of People and other living beings.  

My reading of the promoted, and so, in a way, approved atheist existentialists, Sartre, Camus. I suppose de Beauvoir, . .  had, by 1975 filled me with a disgust for the word that I'd pretty much stopped paying attention to it.  I don't see Gabriel Marcel as being anything like that, from the little I've read of him and I feel a kindred feeling with him, I could translate a lot of what he said into my own biography.  Even during my long, stupid and cowardly agnostic period I held to the morality of the Gospel and the Prophets and even much of the radical egalitarian economics of The Law.  I could never acquiesce to the elevation of abstractions over the lives and pain of any others, those who looked and spoke like me or those who I only read about in newspaper estimates of the victims of individual or mass slaughter and maiming.  Clearly the ersatz atheist saints of that time, such as Sartre could blithely support Mao as his regime was murdering millions of Chinese People, just as the Left talked about above could the millions already credibly reported on being murdered by Stalin and Lenin before him, just as D. M. Mackinnon in his Foreword to the English edition points out:

There is a deep, albeit unrecognized kinship between the man who in 1937 was denying Guernica, and the man who in 1947 is justifying, or denying Stalinist deportations and slave camps; ('progress' and 'tradition' are excellent examples of the sort of abstraction from whose tyranny M. Marcel would free us).  

The same kinship finds its banality right now in the American free press which recapitulates that in its "journalistic ethics" that excuse and normalize even the neo-Nazi ravings of Donald Trump and his camp with a monumentally lop-sided "even handedness."  But that will get me on to the dangers of viewing even freedom in the abstract as removed from the inconvenience of morality and the concreteness of reality.

I will try to continue this.