Lux et Veritas

The Forseeable Future

January 1, 2013

It is common practice to make resolutions for the coming year. I would like to be a calmer, more open, accepting person. And I would like to live through these next twelve months. But these are not really resolutions, because most of them seem to be the wishful thinking of others, often forgotten on the first of February. To a certain extent, and I have some control over my attitude, I can achieve some part of my goals. But there are outside factors that influence that attitude.

Working against me is the forseeable future. As far as my vision can perceive, we will live in a fractured, faction dominated country and world. And this threat is further dominated by global economic insecurity. And further, progress toward limiting the predominance of factionalism is influenced by the world-wide need for revenge of one sort of another. In the US, there is a continuing revenge on the President for being black, pragmatic, more intelligent than most, not idealistic and aloof and cool. The Tea Party will either wreck or severely limit the achievement of a better, recovered US.

The Arab Spring has not resulted in democracy, but, rather, in the case of Egypt, where change is most obvious, it has led to a constricted freedom that is held in bonds by the Muslim Brotherhood and, at its most extreme, by those who prefer Islamic law to rule. Other places there is dismay at current leadership or outright war in the case of Syria, whose leader may fall to the rule of other equally un-democratic factions that will fight each other in a kind of ongoing civil war.

There will be no peace between Israel and the Palestinians and the Gazans. Bibi wants revenge. The Hamas want revenge. And the Palestinians want relief but in the context of supreme corruption and disagreement between factions. 

Africa seems to be more violent in those places where war between tribes and political factions has been going on for too long. The sliver of positive light is unseen. 

The coverage of events and conditions by the media seems to have turned, at least for a while, to sensationalism, on the one hand. Or, silence about the stories behind the sensational reports about what is going on in those places mentioned previously. That leaves even the most informed with partial information. And for those who seek the truth their stories come out in a report or a book soon to be unread or forgotten. Izzie Stone where are you? Like Cary Grant there is no reporting that is curious beyond the headline and the supporting text like that of IF Stone's weekly. 

We're supposed to look at the New Year through rose-colored glasses. I never like that ruse. But as a 76 year old, I had hoped that I could see more sunlight than clouds and darkness. It is my duty, if not my pledge to myself to remain curious, to know reality, so that the shock of it does not come to me by some form of bludgeon, sending me into a depression when my life otherwise is full of sunlight. 

 

It's Over for Romney

Thursday, September 13, 2012

Romney's remarks about the President apologizing for the Libyan protester's cause and his failure to ameliorate his lie in the face of the American Ambassador's death, still accusing Obama as an apologist, are the nadir of his campaign. They show him to be uniformed about the meaning of the original statement by the embassy, which was to accuse the protesters of attacking all religions, and later this next day reaffirming his original accusations against the President. Many Republicans did not support Romney's attacks, which again exposes the fracturing of the Republican Party and reaffirms his lack of popularity among most Republican voters. These combinations of Romney's lies and lack of empathy for American and Libyan lives lost is a measure of his campaign failures and almost pathological undetected will to lose this election.

The Republicans are saber rattling as are the Israelis. They want a show of force in Libya, Syria, Iran, and, to some lesser extent in Egypt. And, now, China is an enemy in their eyes; as is Russia America's number one enemy according to Romney. Because the President has tried to take a cautious approach to Israeli demands that an attack is to stop the development of an nuclear bomb by Iran, the Republicans have decided Obama has pushed Israel "under the truck". Because the President does not want to intervene in the civil war in Syria or attempt some military rebuttal to the killing of the Libyan protestors and the killers of the American ambassador there, the Republicans have decided Obama is weak on foreign policy and destroying America's reputation as the most powerful country in the world. All of which is without the facts and the subtleties of the Middle East. The Arab Spring is the Arabs'. The Americans want to protect human life that is threatened in these movements, if there is a clear way to do it and still maintain America's interests. 

Romney who leads these lies and repeats them without any information that would modify them is unfit for the role as President of the US. And his recent missteps and his persistent building of THE BIG LIE against Obama, which is racially based, have sunk his campaign forever. 

Confusion Among the Liberals

Monday, September 3, 2012 One of the saddest chapters of American politics is the abandonment of the liberals' support of President Obama. By liberals I mean those who are bound by the liberal catechism, which is that if a public figure doesn't live up to his/her promises, they have been 'deceived'. What escapes their notice is the environment under which the President has had to govern.

The Washington Post, not known for its liberal credentials since the death of Katherine Graham, featured a long article on Obama's Presidency. One of the salient sentences summarized his term, and that was that since day one of his Presidency the Republicans swore to oppose any legislation he proposed or the Democrats put forward and to wage a war of words and lies about his birth and his so-called deceptions. The wall of fantasy the liberals had constructed around his very charismatic rhetoric during his campaign came crumbling down. And now, even the so-called pro-Obama columnists have begun to question his leadership and to even damn it with the standard of weakness.

Tom Friedman, the New York Times standard bearer of liberal politics and a true believer in the Israel is right no matter right movement, lobbed soft criticism again at Obama for his failure to live up to his campaign rhetoric. The only Times columnist to throw light on the reality of Obama's governing is Paul Krugman, a Chicago U. economics nobelist. But no-one can hear him above the din of Romney-Ryan's lies and distortions and the liberals' doubts about his leadership. I would ask anyone how they would deal with the inherited problems Obama faced and the unrelenting lies and criticisms he has had to bear not only regarding his mistakes in Afghanistan and his choice of economic advisers but also his achievements in starting to invoke universal medical care for all Americans and his saving of the millions of jobs in the auto industry.

Just like the capitalists' long history of adventurism and failure, which are regarded by economists as normal ups and downs of our economic history, the political situation in this country is regarded as just one phase in the long history of political antagonism against and later support of full democracy. Its abnormalities are just about the human condition of swings left and right, when the real issue is about how to maintain equity for all Americans.

"You've got to be taught to hate"

Tuesday, August 28, 2012

The title of this morning's blog comes from the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical, South Pacific. The song is "You've got to be taught". It is sung  by nurse Nellie and Emile, an expatriate plantation owner on an island acrosss from the Naval base where Nellie is stationed.  He has brown children from a relationship with a now Polynesian woman. Emile has asked Nellieto marry him. She expesses doubts that have to do with her upbringing in New England. He spots that she is referring to her provincial attitudes toward race, and he initiates this song. The lyrics go something like: " You've got to be taught, you've got to be taught to hate and fear. You've got to be taught from year to year...." South Pacific was staged in 1949 and was an instant Broadway success, with tickets so scarce that scalpers charge unheard of prices to surging crowds.

How prescient these lyrics were. They are particularly resonant in a New York Times report of the beating to unconsciousness of an Palestian high school student by an Orthodox Jewish classmate, with other classmates chearing him on. The only suspect who admitted to the beating on his arrest was quoted as saying: "For my part, he can die. He's an Arab." Though a troubled child with a history of rebellious behavior and hanging out with like-minded teenagers, O, as he is described to protect his status as a minor, nevertheless, had been taught by his parents to hate and fear Arabs/Palestinians. This and other incidents of this kind where hate has been the motivating factor say much about the resistance Israelis have to dropping their hate and fear and making peace with their equally violent neighbors. 

At the same time, some of the same factors of fear and hate, are driving both mainstream conservatives backing Romney-Ryan, and Ron Paul protestors. The purpose of the convention, aside from formally nominating Romney-Ryan is to make over Romney from the cold businessman to a more middle class friendly politician. Fear of rejection by the Tea Party, that still has doubts about Romeny's conservative credentials, has turned the moderate and people caring feelings that Romney once had as governor, into an insensitive right wing politician who believes in denying benefits of any kind to the middle class and the poor, and who, wrongly, believes that the way to economic recovery is belt tightening especially when it comes to helping people, and further tax breaks to the rich. This shift begs the question of what was Romney taught as a child. Was it, "you've got to be taught to hate" when your passion for higher office requires?

"The Razor's Edge"

Sunday, August 26, 2012

Somerset Maughm's, "The Razor's Edge", is a tale of self-discovery by its lead character, Larry, after WW I and the economic boom leading up to the '29 crash. He leaves Chicago and his fiance, Isabel, played by the luminously beautiful Gene Tierney, whom he refuses to marry, because he will not sell bonds and live the life of the rich and comfortable. His chief protagonist is her uncle, Eric Templeton, a rich snob with a heart of gold that is concealed, who thinks Larry is unacceptable as a full fledged member of the society he actively seeks as accepted member of the American and European aristocracies. Larry's childhood friend, Sophie, played in the movie by the strikingly beautiful actress Anne Baxter, is the pivotal character who can neither live the expected comfortable life and falls into alcoholism when her main link to the good life, her husband and child, die in a car crash in post WW I Chicago, or rise above her loss to live a life of decline leading to a violent death. Isabel is also another pivotal character who retains her passion for Larry even when married to Gray, the rich bond trader who suffers a breakdown when he loses everything in the '29 crash. She continually offers her love but rejects Larry, as he does her, because he chooses to live the spiritual life. The book and the movie are prescient of the modern day infatuation with Eastern religious spiritualism, but even more so because Larry is the symbol of the few westerners who want self-awareness more than material well being and offers a sharp contrast to the American culture that seeks acceptance and reputation built on false expectations of the American dream. Larry finally comes to the realization that his identity is defined by him and not by the judgments and standards of the world he has left. 

American Movie Classic's offering last night comes before the opening of the 2012 Republican convention. Whether that is the purpose of this coincidence, it sends a messsage to the Romney-Ryan candidacy. Larry talks about truth revealed by the hard work of introspection and knowledge. Romney-Ryan stand for the lies and mistakes of the ruling class of the American culture, a throw back of sorts to the culture of boom growth after WW I and the recklessness then of risk taking economic adventurism leading up to the 1929 economic depression. Romney-Ryan should have watched this movie, but their lock on their beliefs would not have revealed the underlying themes of the picture. And they proceed with proposing this country to live on the razor's edge. 

Characterizing Reality

Wednesday, August 22, 2012

My remarks today have to do with newspaper reports and opinions of columnists and commentators dealing with the US presidential campaign and potential threats by China, primarily, Iran and "the bomb", and territorial disputes between Japan, South Korea, and China. 

The Presidential Campaign. With the designation of Paul Ryan as Republican VP nominee comes revelations that are factual regarding not just his budget for the 1%, but his positions on abortion and, notably, diminishing women's concerns, and defunding Planned Parenthood. These positions have come into sharp focus wth the statements made by Congressman Tod Akin defining "legitimate rape". Romney has tried to distance himself from his VP nominee's allegiances and Ryan's working together with Akin anti-abortion that include no abortions for rape victims, and anti-women's health bills. Romney, in disagreement with his VP selecction would allow abortions for women that have been raped, that word undefined as has Akin has defined it. All of this added up characterizes the Republican party as for the wealthy and against women, and, therefore, unfit to govern everyone. That's the reality, and, all of the words about Romney's chances by commentators and columnists, as well as media bloviators, have no meaning at all considering that characterization. 

The Obama campaign is mostly negative. To defend himself and his administration from lies and their underlying racist attacks is required, to avoid the "swift boaters" and criticisms that he is a "wimp", not fit to govern as President. A good man, a moral man, a brilliant orator and deft politician, Obama's failures can be summarized as wasting his party's two year dominance by trying to the point of failure to have bi-partisanship with a totally recalcitrant Republican party. The Republicans have moved so far to the right, thanks to the Tea Party, that there is no middle ground for negotiation. In that environment, his achievements largely go unnoticed, and his attempts to regird a failing economy have largely failed because the the recovery from the economic melt-down is threatened by the banks, financial houses, and insurance companies' continued risk taking and failure to invest in the future. Largely unnoticed by the media are the connections between the US financial world and the global meltdown in Europe. Being the President of the US, all of these problems are, thus, Obama's.

Iran. Iran has become a "threat" because largely Israel has defind it as an "existential threat" to its security, by way of Iran's so-called nuclear program. The "fear" is that that program is to build a bomb, not to develop a nuclear-powered electrical grid. The reality of that has yet to be proved and considerable confusion has ensued by way of CIA and other reports that such a development is either years off or imminent. No-one really knows, but because Israel is an iron-clad ally of America and that American Jews are the source of much political funding, the US has thrown in its lot to protect Israel from all threats. This is modified by Obama's constant communications with Israel to back off from an attack. 

In truth Pakistan is an either equally or significantly greater threat: as a nuclear nation with its stockpile of weapons, its unstable economic and political condition, and its continuing support of the Taliban by its secret service. This is a lot more convincing a threat than a meddling Iran that does not yet have a bomb and that does not fuel an ongoing Afghanistan war of ten years. 

That Iran is a Mid-East meddler there is no doubt. Something is going on, whether it's Iran's alleged supply of arms to the Assad Syrian regime, or its skirting of ineffective international sanctions with its oil trading with China, Russia, and other neighbors. That its statements that there was no Holocaust and that Israel should cease to exist translates into an all-out war with Israel that leads to its destruction and the embroiling of neighbors in a ceaseless war has yet to become reality. How much of a threat Iran poses has not been established, except in the agenda of the media who know a juicy story when they see one. 

China. China has become a major economic power with growth statistics that are mind popping. But recently, the economic engine has begun to stall with lower growth statistics and inventories of crucial components of this growth growing. It is viewed as a potential threat by the US and others mostly because it has begun rebuilding its military with one new aircraft carrier and investments in its military; and because its economy threatens to eclipse that of the US. But the reality is that it is still ruled by Old Communists from the Soviet era. Further, the political regime and its economic engine are corrupted by political suppression, lax safety and quality standards, overvaluing of its real estate and its manipulation of its currency's value. These are factors in reassessing how much of a threat it really is. And one measure of an economy's dominance and strength is the gap between the so-called wealthy and the tens of millions of its citizens that live in grinding and abject poverty. Which in China's case is a severe gap. I have posed the form China likes to present against what is really going on that does not fill out that advertised form. 

Israel is a racist state that is a de-stabilizing force in the Middle East. Torn apart politically by multiple political parties, the violent reactions of the ulta-orthodox Jewish community, its attitudes toward immigrant Africans, its unwillingness to allow medical school graduates to take licensing exams, and the behavior of radical settlers on the Golan Heights on former Palestian land, it is impossible not to conclude that racism is alive and well there. There is no doubt that this is standard behavior for most nation-states. But in Israel's case, a comparison between its founding goals and its current state of affairs do not make Jews all over the world any more tolerable than before. Anti-semitism has shown itself again and Israel's less than exceptional behavior fuels it. I am a Jew and I can feel it and I see it daily in the media reports. 

Territorial disputes between China, Japan, and South Korea over islands in the Sea of Japan appear in the media all of a sudden. This in addition to China's investments in Africa fan the size of its "threat". These arguments are never about land so small it is hard to detect even on a large scale map are more about economic and military dominance than anything else. What is always disturbing are the imperialist behaviors of such a large land mass to acquire a little more land. China has provided the cheap labor that sucks at Japan's and South Korea's economy; and why not fight over territory than face their own economic situations?

This concludes my ranting for today. My claim is that I have a somewhat firmer grip on reality than what countries and the media are willing to reveal. I am not a journalist, nor an historian, nor an economist, nor a recognized expert on any of these issues. I merely read the newspapers and first class magazines, and watch and listen to the media. 

Morality is a bore?

I've been screaming "morality" in many different ways over the years. And I do so because at bottom what negative events occur come down to what is right and wrong. I don't mean in the abstract philosophical sense. I mean that questions of right and wrong have a direct affect on individuals' lives and fortunes, not to mention their physical and mental health. We are awash in scandals and the perpetration of lies. Massive denial is behind the explanation of real and later identified wrong-doers statements that they weren't there or they didn't know or it wasn't their responsibility and so on. 

Yesterday's Freeh report on the Penn State Sandusky sexual molestation scandal is no surprise. It is the same as many other matters that embarrass and do harm to an institution's or individual's reputation. It is not much of a stretch to wonder just how much the reverence college sports influences the covering up of sexual and financial wrong-doings. Any large institution is the breeding ground for corruption, because there is always someone or group of persons who really get off on skating or breaking the rules and codes of conduct. Teenagers are specialists in this kind of behavior, and the excuse in our youth was: "Well, boys will be boys". That in the being those boys, lots of hazing and outright abuse was excused by that easy and irresponsible explanation, which is to give the word the most harmful connotations. 

The Barclays rate fixing scandal and the JP Morgan stunning loss of multi-billions of clients' monies fall into the same category of risk taking that either stretches the rules or breaks them, and that the perpetrators take great pride in "leaning over the edge of the tallest bridge in the world and tempting fate they will fall off into the abyss. 

Many will say this has gone on for millenia, a very weak excuse for not comparing stated codes of conduct with actual behavior. I believe, and I have read widely about it and thought a lot about it, that there is a global failure of nerve and moral breakdown of a very different sort. We are not isolated by primitive technology, political borders, and vast oceans. We are connected in both wonderful and terrible ways. There are too many opinions and denials, gossip, fear mongering, and outright lies. But there is also a wealth of information available by current technology that when added up amounts to the best current account of the facts. So, we and others in general can see through the lies and the misreporting and form our own report about reality.

Those of us who are 75 are in a unique position. We are no longer, for the most part, daily participants in world affairs. We are observers and commentators. But I believe strongly that we have a responsibility, if we are privileged by having been so-well educated and, hopefully, become curious, to look at things straight in the eye and ask ourselves just what side of right and wrong world events and individual behaviors are. And if we are also privileged by being articulate and literate we can only pass our knowledge and wisdom to others, irrespective of their political affiliations, biases, and bigotry. Maybe someone will listen and pass it on. Then we have done our jobs as retirees. 

I've been preaching again and I am a bore. But I'm proud of it.

The Washington Post's ombudsman spends its entire text on the reporting of the number of the protestors on the anniversary of Roe v. Wade. This now political/religious issue is overstepping the bounds of both the Constitution and the stare decisis status of Roe v. Wade, i.e. It is the accepted law of the land. No-one is forced to have an abortion, just as no-one is forced to become homosexual or enter into a gay-marriage. To picket abortion clinics, kill doctors, and generally try to put fear and guilt on women who contemplate or have an abortion is an intrusion into their civil rights. America is still managed by the rule of law, not religious doctrine, the pope, the rabbi, or the preacher. Time for the dormant women's movement to step up their public relations regarding the spreading of this clap-trap and emphasize yet again the rights of women.

December 31, 2011 - The Year of Self-Denial

This year is notable for a majority of the media and world citizens practicing wide-spread denial of reality and personal responsibility.

1. The Banking and Investment community refuses to take responsibility for their role in bringing down not only the US economy, as well as world wide, but refusing to recognize that their continued risky practices with their depositors money keeps the economy in decline. Most serious is their refusal to regulate derivatives and to take account of the vast array of priceless commodity swaps that are off their books and by themselves would make the banks too big to fail seem insolvent.
2. The inability or unwillingness of the Obama administration to totally revamp that industry by breaking up the banks too big to fail; accounting for worthless investment instrument; and restructuring the industry forcibly by bringing back the Glass-Steegal Act.
3. The Republican Presidential candidates total unwillingness and ignorance of what is going on in this country that affects their constituents' struggling to make ends meet and their continuing blather about such unimportant and harmful stands on universal health care, the charge of murder regarding abortion, their desire to rewrite the constitution and invest undue powers in the Executive, and strong strain of stupidity, mean-spiriteness, and grasping onto a set of ideologies that are pure fantasy and irrelevant to governance.
3. The media's failure to recognize that they are the carriers of the big lie spread by the media, the right wing Tea Party national legislators, and various talking heads and writing observers. Their irresponsibility in not providing a detailed analysis of both that big lie but the Republican Presidential candidates, who to a person do not have the character or intelligence to even become the party's candidate. That the media fail to pinpoint and underscore their total denial of the basic provisions of the Constitution with regard to social and economic equity provides the fertile soil for the scandalous backgrounds and behaviors of radicals on all sides of the political spectrum and the proliferation of blogs that add to the confusion and build up the pile of lies and deception about the reality of our world-wide moral relapse. Raising false hopes about the potential for a kind of Jeffersonian democracy following the Arab Spring, when in fact the future of these country's political environment will continue to be dominated by religious and political dictatorship.
4. The self-denial of the voting public to understand that racism and religious and ethnic bigotry are thriving and have spawned outrageous disrespect and misrepresentation of President Obama, illegal immigrants, voting rights of minorities and foreign born, and their refusal to recognize that their right wing representatives in Congress are hell-bent on taking away the government's role in social security, medical treatment, and, unemployment benefits. Almost totally unrecognized as some of the root causes of those voters' role in denying their own rights is their twisted belief that they are less worthy than the 1% who believe they are supreme and the 99% lazy and shiftless and not deserving of temporary government relief.
5. The military's failure to recognize that their continued support of troops in Afghanistan will not change anything there and that their words of promised victory of some kind with new tactics is an echo of Vietnam. Like Iraq's decline into a bigoted and corrupt strong man government, Afghanistan is crippled by its wide-spread corruption of all kinds and an unspoken cozy relationship with Pakistan that keeps the Taliban and competing tribes in power and supplied by arms.

There is no '12 Election, December 9, 2011
When House Speaker Boehner and Senate Minority Leader, Mitch McConnell, announced that their primary goal was to make Obama a one term president, the Republican Party started the two year feast to eat themselves. And so they have with their fight over the increase in the US debt ceiling, their opposition to the President's jobs bill, and, now internecine attacks between the leading Republican Presidential nominees. Romney is unfit to be either a candidate or President because he has repeated demonstrated his flip-flopping on his very liberal programs when he was Massachusetts Governor. He is, therefore, an outright liar. Newt Gingrich, the now leader in the Iowa caucuses, is being attacked by Romney for his politically expedient role as former house speaker and his basic character. He is not only an outright liar, he is an unfeeling public figure. He has no understanding of the sufferings of the 99%, when he declared that corporations should buy up the foreclosed properties and rent them to their former owners. (Of course at a great profit to the corporations and investors who can leverage other investments from the bargain buying of distressed properties and the tax breaks they would receive.)

Some will remember the Dole-Clinton Presidential election campaign, when it was clear Dole was tired, too old, but more important, in reality disinterested in becoming President. Dole, for all of his missteps, entered the campaign as a "believable" contender. Neither Romney, who is eating Gingrich( and the Republican Party is eating Romney because he is not conservative enough) nor Gingrich who is playing the ersatz intellectual former history professor are, therefore, fit to even run. neither are tall enough morally to tie Obama's shoes. There is, thus, no real 2012 Presidential election, because the only candidate is Obama.

False Morality

Saturday, April 16, 2011

False morality seems to dictate medical treatment, violence against non-believers, and the Republicans' blind goal to rid the US of all of the remaining beneficial elements of the New Deal and The Great Society. This morning's Washington Post article, "Stem Cells Were God's Will, says the reciptient of treatment.

T.J. Atchison, the recipient of stem cells to reverse chest down paralysis, born baptist, said it was "God's Will" that he should be the first recipient of such treatment. Though the stem cells he received were not from a live fetus, but were about to be thrown away, the reaction of the local Pentacostal Minister warned him of death threats from the community that believe both stem cell research and its connected issue of abortion, from which some stems cells are derived, are immoral. Later, he came around to Atchinson's belief as did the community which responded with concern and aid to the family. Nevertheless, this set off great debate among opponents.

Rayan's budget bill which the House passed yesterday is another example of false morality, in this case that the budget deficit is more important than the public services, in particular Medicare, the elderly and poor need to keep alive. Ryan and his Republican supporters would rather protect the rich than serve the poor, elderly, and indigent. The Tea Party and Republican leaders in the House and Senate have put the social and health program they want to destroy as a moral cause they must win. In this case, morality may very well result in the their defeat in the '12 elections and guarantee the re-election of the President whom both leaders pledged to defeat as their prime governance goal when the the new Congress took over.

In both cases, morality destroys the equity and free speech the Constitution provided. Abortion is "stare decisis", meaning it is the law of the land. No similar ruling by the Supreme Court has been rendered about stem cell research, though medical researchers have found ways to avoid using stem cells from abortions.

What jumps out of these recent explosions of false morality is that personal decision making about terminating a fetus and being restored to health by way of stem cells application is invaded. More to the point this false morality is a burden on society that must bring up unwanted children and find expensive ways to take care of indigent people who might be brought to health by advances in science. The impact of this false and very abstract morality is that it does harm to a wide swath of humanity.

My point of this raging is that few if any take into account the widespread after-effects of applications of "false morality", or that some commonly accepted Judeo-Christian principles have been breached in a very serious way. These breaches are not really political. They are at the center of true morality, which is, in the end, to do no harm.