Rebellion Defined

 What if tRump Wins? Cf Judge Michael Luttig on 14th Amendment, Article 3.

Such a win is a totally unacceptable event and so it is good to know the “plans” being made by and promoted by Bannon and other tRump enablers. All the crap about the “deep state” is jargon that rolls off their tongues as if it is real. And this does make me wonder about how Fascism took hold in nazi Germany. There was no social media like what we have today, and yet how easy was it for people to be hoodwinked and led down the garden path to hail the “strong man” they thought would be good for Germany? Wanting a Strong Man is in itself a thing worth discussing, as historians point out. And current actions devaluing democracy and welcoming autocracy should be analyzed every single day, and a deep dive does now seem imperative. Why? Because there is a point of no return. And how can we not see that we are edging closer and closer to the cliff? How delusional must one be to still think an autocratic, deeply damaged, self-obsessed person offers us anything beneficial? Cult leaders and mob bosses are in it for themselves. Others exist only to serve. 

We need to pay attention. And retired federal Judge Michael Luttig and Laurence Tribe clearly tell us how the 14th Amendment, article 3, disqualifies tRump. Just as one cannot be POTUS if one is 12 years old or  foreign born, neither can one be elected who has violated his/her oath to uphold the US Constitution, ie one who is an insurrectionist, one who rebels against  the US Constitution. Precisely, by trying to stay in office beyond the 4 years of his term, ie by trying to overturn the election he lost, tRump rebelled against the Constitution, per Judge Luttig. 

Also, the disqualification is self executing, per Judge Luttig, and the Supreme Court will not have a problem seeing the rebellion against the constitution which disqualifies tRump from ever holding office again. But the lawyers have so far been somewhat confusing the issue of the 14th Amendment, Article 3 with J6 attack on Capital, which was an insurrection against the United States, and violence which tRump invited and incited. Consequently, the lawyers will definitely need to refine the case if brought to SCOTUS and clarify tRump’s rebellion against the Constitution to keep tRump off the ballot. 

There are very good summary clips from msnbc’s Alex Wagner 11.02.23 and Ali Velshi on 11.05.23 as they discuss this with Judge Luttig. 

ITSY.BITSY.SPIDER: SNAGGED

 It is happening in my lifetime. We will finish him. Yes. We will get it done, and celebrate the triumph of Justice. Victory already tastes sweet to us, even as that coup coup cuckoo criminal and his cohorts press on and continually catapult themselves backwards. Ours is no easy challenge, but theirs is imbecilic. So our advantage is large: our yoke is easy, the weight of truth is light. As for the despot wannabe, his bloodless evisceration is a work in progress. Hallelujah. Praise the Lord! We snagged the ammunition!

Testing!

Testing text color. Should be readable white on black, not unreadable grey on black!

Okay. Now I just have to figure out how to correct previous blog post!

Shakespeare, Steinbeck and Me

For a somewhat obtuse (but guessable) reason, my morning mind today conjured up and latched onto this phrase: the summer of our discontent. It seemed suspiciously unoriginal, so I googled it. Voila! Riches previously unknown spilled out and a small mining project began. 

Better educated persons can plumb this mine, but even scratching its glistening surface has happily preoccupied me for awhile, sort of like a really creative three minute commercial. (Sometimes commercials offer needed relief from the intense dark drama of everyday life, no?)

The Winter of Our Discontent. Contemporary Philosophical Discontent. Discontent, Isolation and Hiding Places. Shakespeare, Steinbeck, and Me.

Hmmmmm. So my afternoon mind has plenty to busy itself with, even if a cavernous quasi-eremitical existence appears ludicrous to strangers.

“The evil usurper who reveals his inner thoughts in ‘Richard III’  uses ‘our’ to denote his status as king. Steinbeck’s characters are contemporary Americans, and their thoughts—like ours—are much more about ‘me’ than ‘we.’

The ourof Richard’s discontent in the play Steinbeck quotes is isolated, the political and psychological paranoia of a one-man murder ring. In The Winter of Our Discontent, the attitude of discontent is philosophical—an existential anxiety embodied in the protagonist, his spouse, his best friend, his would-be mistress, and in the personal life of the author as well. Discontent in the play Steinbeck quotes for a reason is individual. In The Winter of Our Discontentit is dramatized as  a condition of existence for everyone involved—including us.”  

( cf: The Philosophy of Our Discontent

SEPTEMBER 13, 2013 BY JAMES CI// About James Ci

James Ci is a visual artist living in North Carolina. He received his BFA degree from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro.)

A Time of Innocence

A young surfer was caught in a riptide and disappeared a few days before Easter. As fog rolled in at Poplar Beach, search and rescue efforts failed. Friends and family kept vigil on the beach for days, and mourned. Today, he may have been found. Or maybe it is someone else? RIP young man from Hayward.

https://twitter.com/SMCSheriff/status/1122601601565380609

We sort of know that our days are somehow numbered. But how, exactly?

No one really knows, not even those good with numbers can figure out how to count the time to the inscrutable end of a human life. That calculation has always been impossible.

Which reminds me of a question that recently came to me. How does a child develop a sense of time?  I imagine there are many good studies about this, so I must do some searching. Right now my questions are rather specific, and prompted by observing little kids in first and third grades. The ones I know are just learning how to tell time. As yet, they do not care much about that. Except in a very utilitarian way, eg to know when their after school tutored reading session will end. And once it is ended, they simply pick up and go on to the next thing. Not even a slightly ceremonial or reluctant or gleeful goodbye! Why is that? When does that change?

At what point does the question change from “Are we there yet?” to something else?

Parents and teachers and child psychologists probably know the answer.  For me, this innocence about time is still a mystery. And so is the beautiful time of innocence I witnessed this morning in the children making their First Communion at my local parish. I hoped they would remember this day far into their futures, as I have.

But my questions remain about time and when, or how, or what happens to develop a sense of future time.  The tabula rasa changes, and that seems like a mysterious process to me.

Innocence of time within a time of innocence. Is it possible to lose neither? Or maybe we can only hope to recapture both if we wipe the slate clean of each piece of evil.

Hallelujah Update

Holy Week Update 04/20/19

Barr’s DOJ even made the link for the Mueller Report obscure and hard to find! (As Seth Meyers pointed out!!!!) 

I looked and looked last night and today on DOJ website and did not find the link, but finally I got the actual DOJ link via replay of Seth Meyers show from other day on my dvr! Go figure! I had also found a printable pdf link from a cbs news link. But for whatever reason, I could not crack the New York Times online version (to get to the original document) which was not in a PDF format for printing the document. So it is, or has been, a saga for me just to be able to print the darn thing! So now I just have to order more ink for my printer and get a new supply of printer paper! (It probably would be cheaper to buy it from Amazon since printer ink ain’t cheap!) However, I think I might use the backside of my already printed New York Times pages because they are just not in the right format! Oh, and it does not escape me that all this time I could have been reading the thing! But I have been listening to some excellent analysis on MSNBC and PBS, so it is probably good that I was wrapped up in the problems of printing for otherwise Mueller’s Report would have been MORE of a distraction this holy week!

Speaking of holy week, all of the cleaning and filing and shredding and laundry that I was going to do this week did not happen! However, this afternoon I intend to tackle some of it because I am almost out of printer ink! 

I do not yet have any plans for travel or for Easter, but I am counting on all the angels and saints, but especially counting on the Lord, in his passion, death and resurrection, to help me reach our ultimate goal via these smaller daily ones (through which I plod)! I feel really blessed in this winter of lies and rampant corruption when I can keep my eyes on the prize, as they say. And to critics who think I am obsessed, I still declare that is not a fair or true claim. Let me explain:

Faith and hope and love do provide a moral compass, especially when tested. And the testing does shine a light on the diabolical nature of evil: chaos, mendacity, greed, cruelty, rage, cowardice, darkness, strife, narcissism, retaliation, demagoguery, despotism. Sadly, unapologetically, and with some theological basis, I do find that Donald J Trump is an apt and public incarnation of diabolical evil, but there are many evils in today’s world: wars in Syria, Yemen, Ukraine; the refugee crisis throughout the world; failed governments; despotic leaders; famine, fires, floods, climate change denial; human trafficking and sexual predators; unjust imprisonment, killing or disappearance of journalists; economic injustices; voter suppression; racism; bigotry; capital punishment; gun violence; endless detention of asylum seeking immigrants; caging babies and children; etcetera.

Solutions? Obviously there are many solutions (preaching to the choir!), but they definitely include: Prayer. Action. Resistance. Voting.  Supporting congressional oversight, the Rule of Law, US Constitution, UN, NATO, RAICES, ACLU, responsible journalism, a living wage, affordable healthcare, quality affordable education, freedom of religion; etcetera.

It looks like there is plenty of work ahead for good people willing to do something.

Happy Pasch! Happy Spring!

Hallelujah

Sent from my iPad

Sunshine, Shadows and Idyacy

All good here. Some glitches now and then. But mainly good.

However, I learned a few days ago (sadly), that a former neighbor voted tRump as the lesser of two evils, and is apparently still unaware that pizzagate was debunked long ago. I find this very depressing. Neighbor urged me to watch two YouTube pizzagate links, and in a spirit of openness, I decided to watch most of one, but disgust took over. What is wrong with the minds that come up with this and other such sick conspiracy theories? How can anyone actually  believe this stuff? 

It’s that kind of mindset that pushes me towards total intellectual snobbery (!_!), or (positively) one who now grasps why the rural male (and female) not-college-educated voter block is so undiscerning. A lie is a lie is a lie after all! People, today especially, absolutely need critical thinking skills and college can help develop that, for sure. 

Oh well, everyday life as we know it will go on for awhile I hope, but the dangers of tRumpian lunacy and amnesia and ignorance of history will keep feeding into and sabotaging our American  democracy. And that is exactly what Putin (and also Bannon) sought: undermine American values and traditions and erode truth and freedom in every possible way. Chaos, division, ignorance, bigotry and tRump are the tools. So sad. And yet the rise of radical right extremist leaders in the world is a fact. If only all that negative energy and bigotry and greed was directed at attacking the largely economic root cause of failed states! The cause of mass migrations seems ignored. The cause of poverty, violence, war seems ignored.  It ain’t rocket science! Greed rules too often, so life is cheap. Wars in Syria and Yemen endlessly support autocratic regimes and greed-is-good political alliances. Freedom is moved off the chessboard. Truth gets in the way, so it has to be dismembered, dissolved and denied. 

Where have all the flowers gone? Can we still find them and some sunshine? At least now and then, here and there? Can we hope for some needed measure of time to salvage a few more warm, peaceful mornings for another cup of coffee on that lovely deck of democracy before some idyat escaping from the icy 9th circle of hell owns us?

Yes, probably, because that promising big wave tells me: “Surf’s Up!”

NB: Apologies, and no offense intended to my good and generous former neighbor, and to my other friends and relatives of similar mind. Though I cannot fathom nor tolerate the plague visited upon us in the last few years, the dangers posed require alertness and resistance. The blatant corruption and constitutional crisis we face are NOT NORMAL. They are actually proving life-threatening.