In Darkest Pennsylvania
It was said behind closed doors to the chablis-and-brie set of San Francisco, in response to a question as to why he was not doing better in that benighted and barbarous land they call Pennsylvania.
Like Dr. Schweitzer, home from Africa to address the Royal Society on the customs of the upper Zambezi, Barack described Pennsylvanians in their native habitats of Atloona, Alquippa, Johnstown and McKeesport.
"You go into these small towns in Pennsylvania and ... the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing's replaced them.
"And it's not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations."
This is the pitch-perfect Hollywood-Harvard stereotype of the white working class, the caricature of the urban ethnic—as seen from the San Francisco point of view.
As Linus clung to his security blanket, Barack is saying, out-state Pennsylvanians, bitter at the world that has passed them by, cling to their Bibles and guns and naturally revert to ancestral bigotries against "people who aren't like them"—blacks, gays and immigrants.
Though he sees himself as a progressive who has risen above prejudice, Barack was reflecting and pandering to the prejudice of the class to which he himself belongs, and which he was then addressing.
A few months back, Michelle Obama revealed her mindset about America with the remark that, "for the first time in my adult lifetime, I'm really proud of my country." Barack has now revealed how he, too, sees the country. The Great Unifier divides the nation into us and them.
The "us" are the privileged cosmopolitan elite of San Francisco and his Ivy League upbringing. The "them" are the folks in the small towns and rural areas of that other America. Toward these folks, Obama's attitude is not one of hostility, but of paternalism. Because time has passed them by, Barack believes, they cannot, in their frustration and bitterness, be held fully accountable for their atavistic beliefs and behavior.
Though neither mocking nor malicious, Barack's remarks are, nonetheless, steeped in condescension. Inherent in his words is that these folks in Middle Pennsylvania are in need of empathy, education, assistance and perhaps therapy.
His remarks are of a piece with his address on civil rights that liberals have compared favorably to Lincoln's Second Inaugural.
Note, from that Philadelphia address, the highlighted words.
"Most working- and middle-class white Americans don't feel that they have been particularly privileged by their race ... as far as they're concerned, no one's handed them anything. ... They ... feel their dreams slipping away ... opportunity comes to be seen as a zero sum game, in which your dreams come at my expense.
"Anger over welfare and affirmative action helped forge the Reagan Coalition. Politicians routinely exploited fears of crime for their own electoral ends. Talk show hosts and conservative commentators built entire careers unmasking bogus claims of racism while dismissing legitimate discussions of racial injustice and inequality as mere political correctness or reverse racism."
In Barack's mind, black anger and resentment at "racial injustice and inequality" are "legitimate." But the anger and resentment of white folks, about affirmative action, crime and forced busing are born of misperceptions—and of "bogus claims of racism" manipulated and exploited by conservative columnists and commentators to keep the racial pot boiling and retain power, so the right can continue to do the bidding of the corporations that are the real enemy.
Barack has stumbled into the eternal failing of the left-wing populist. He cannot concede that the anger of white America—that its right to equal justice has been sacrificed to salve the consciences of guilt-besotted liberals—is a legitimate anger. The truth that Barack dare not speak is that reverse discrimination is pandemic and that the folks in Middle Pennsylvania have a valid grievance that ought to be addressed.
So, Barack sought in Philadelphia to redirect their anger.
"(T)hese white resentments distracted attention from the real culprits of the middle class squeeze—a corporate culture rife with inside dealing, questionable accounting practices and short-term greed; a Washington dominated by lobbyists and special interests; economic policies that favor the few over the many."
Barack is not wrong here. Corporations, out of naked greed, have deserted America. And the Clinton and Bush administrations have been unresponsive to the social impact of deindustrialization. But Barack cannot concede that white Americans are today's victims of state-sanctioned racism.
A gifted candidate, Barack, after stumbling for 48 hours, has regained his footing with his witty ripostes about Hillary being "Annie Oakley" with her "six-shooter," spending her Sunday mornings "out on the duck blind."
Obama's remarks about small-town America told us little about small-town America, but a lot about Barack. He is yet another cookie-cutter liberal who has absorbed and internalized the prejudices of that blinkered breed. He is an African-American John Lindsay, the great liberal hope of the Nixon-Agnew era, of whom Frank Manckiewicz once said: He was the only populist he knew who played squash every day at the Yale Club.
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@45: "The claim that the comparatively low British murder rate is attributable to strict gun control is absolutely baseless, since Britain had an even lower murder rate when Queen Victoria was on the throne, Birmingham dominated the world’s firearms industry, and anyone could buy a cheap shotgun at an ironmonger’s for ten shillings. By the late nineteenth century, violent crime had been ‘hanged out’ in Britain, or else exported to Australia. France has equally stringent gun laws to those in England today, but a far higher rate of criminal violence. No one ever mentions this."
Just a minor point of correction: here in France, firearms which have "no legitimate recreational or sporting use" (so THEY say) are illegal, but from what I understand gun laws are still more stringent in Lib-Lab-Con land, where violent crime has been on the rise for at least a decade AND where, now that lack of gun control can no longer be blamed for violent crimes, neo-temperance Labour politicians are now seeking to tax beer as the new culprit! Also, France's official homicide rate (if one trusts official statistics) is only marginally higher than England's, but taken as a whole Britain definitely has the highest rate of violent crime in Europe (mainly because since Scotland has, last time I checked the second-highest murder rate in Europe).
Still, your analysis is correct, although it is also worth mentioning that these days, Britian (like France) has begun importing crime from former colonies (though generally not Australia).
"I’m a country landowner, and have lived all my 55 years on land that my family owned before I was born. I shoot over my own land and generally don’t let others do so. This is not because I am selfish of the game, but because most people no longer know how to behave themselves around fences or gates. Ignorance and bad manners have closed more land to would-be hunters than has the desire to profit from the sale of hunting privileges."
I envy you for holding on to that tradition; I've dreamt for some time of making a killing, buying some land and row-houses and building thus a dynasty. Luckily my father has agreed to teach me how to hunt when I visit the States this summer.
Brock (#44): I'll take a Yankee of classical liberal principles over a Southern scalawag any day of the week. Keep fighting the good fight.
Game Show: 'Name That Saying'
Show in progress ... "For $50,000 name the saying upon which the essence of language depends. Name the saying upon which the essence of language depends. Now remember essence means the thing itself in toto. You have 30 seconds."
Tick-tock ... sorry out of time.
"The saying upon which the essence of language depends is: 'It doesn't hold water.' ... Err no, I'm kidding. That would be the Devil's answer. The saying upon which the essence of language depends IS: 'Closer than the air we breathe.' ... I'm sorry but you still leave with $25,000. If you'll look into the camera and say: 'I'm not smarter than a 250 year old.'"
"But what about 'Silence.' I didn't reply because silence itself is really the saying of the thing. Because, as a wise man once wrote: 'what unfolds essentially in language is saying as pointing and such showing does not culminate in a system of signs. Rather all signs arise from a showing in whose realm and for whose purpose they can be signs, dog."
"Ok let's ask the JUDGES." Tick-tock ... "Their answer is in. They advise that perhaps when we search for the grounds themselves we pass on the essence of the thing itself. Silence may be its ground but the essence of language is language itself. Thus you did not come up with a saying of language."
"Ahh, ok." Looking into the camera: "I'm leaving here with $25,000 more than I came but I'm not smarter than a 250 year old."
As seen in America in the year A.D. 5000 (optimistically speaking)
I had ancestors among the original settlers of Pennsylvania, so I tend to take BO's remarks about rural and small town Pennsylvanians a little personally. Obama was trying to explain to petty, haughty leftists the feelings of the 'rubes' of this state - and by extension, all of us 'rubes' all over the country - while at the same time denying their very real grievances of all legitimacy, by attributing a false economic cause to them and then presenting the 'rubes' as ignorant people turning to benighted ways in reaction to this supposed cause. It was nothing but dishonest, ridiculous pandering and condescension, and is similar in formula to the liberal line about high crime rates among certain ethnicities being the result of poverty, except in this case he wasn't trying to make excuses for the 'rubes' the way that liberals use the poverty-causes-crime fraud to excuse criminals.
His message, not intended but implicit: he really does have some understanding of why these 'rubes' feel the way they do, but he doesn't care because he couldn't care less about these 'rubes' any more than do the petty pseudo-elitist liberals to whom he was speaking.
@ Brock #43:
"You didn’t answer my question, one which I ask only out of curiosity. What was meant by Obama’s comments to that crowd in San Francisco if not offense?"
It was Obama's dunderheaded attempt to articulate what I also perceive to be a reality -- Small Town America's abject failure to take on the economic royalists in both parties, you know, the folks who blather on about globalisation while factories fall idle and minimum wage jobs proliferate. The very fact that we're having this exchange, Brock, proves my point, as far as I'm concerned. You and others appear to be more concerned by a perceived slight on the cultural level than about addressing the real issue -- what can be done about economic development in Small Town America?
Sheesh ...
Dr Peters @ 35:
Amen! Some New Testament scholars interpret that Jesus's words implied that one ought to get rid of that idolatrous garbage, referring to the coin.
This would make sense given that the Caesars were later worshipped as divine.
I guess one could draw parallels to America, given the Lincoln Cult.
Mike,
I agree with you that bad behavior has ruined things for a lot of good hunters. Better to trust the people you know. And as you point out, it can be pretty lucrative, especially for a struggling farmer or rancher, to sell hunting rights for their land.
Thanks for the kind words Leo. I'm not sure what the Rock's impact is on me suffice to say when i was growing up the perception of it was that it was polluted and dirty. I tried fishing in it once and caught nothing, but then again I'm not much of a fisherman. I lived closer to Turtle Creek than the Rock River.
I've had a sort of love/hate relationship with Beloit College. When I was growing up, my brother and I saw the college as a redoubt of eastern, Ivy League rejects who looked down their noses at the townies. Indeed, Beloit, advertising itself as the "Yale of the Midwest", attracted a lot of its student body from places like Vermont and Massaschucetts. One time, acting like a total yahoo, I was made my opinions about the college known to a girl in a class I was in as a freshman in high school and as it turned out (unbeknowst to me at the time) she was the daughter of the vice-president of the school. Needless to say it took a while for her and I to become friends.
As I have grown up, I've come to realize what a blessing it is to have such a school in a city like Beloit which often is looked down upon by the rest of the state and nearby Rockford. Maybe the students might be snotty, but so what? The fact to have such a world-renowned place of higher learning and that fact the students will attend the college even if it's a hop, skip and a jump away from some of the worst neighborhoods in town, gives a city like Beloit viability in an age of deindustrialization. It gives the the place some class and I wished I had realized this way back when.
Back when I was growing up Beloit was a power in college basketball and I remember the tales of the legendary Dolph Stanley and the 1951 Buccanneers team he took to the NIT. It's too bad the college's administrators never realized the potential gold mine college basketball would become. Instead, they forced Stanley out because his teams would clobber their Midwest Conference competition by scores of 115-55 and the other league schools demanded he resign or they would kick Beloit out of the league. It would have sweet to have a Division 1 team to follow and watching games in old Fieldhouse against DePaul or Notre Dame or Marquette. My old music teacher, Joseph Simmons, was the college's band director back then.
Sean Scallion - Since you are from Wisconsin, as am I, you are aware that it has always been a matter of getting permission from landowners to hunt on their land, unless you were hunting on public lands. Nothing about that has changed. You must also be aware that in Wisconsin, as in Pennsylvania, a significant portion of the rural person's food comes from hunting and fishing. Are you not also aware that hunting in Wisconsin has been deeply affected by the deer variant of mad cow disease, and hunters who come into the woods drunk to shoot up everything in sight are the reason for private landowners becoming more choosey about who hunts on their land?
Reading Pat Buchanan's articles, you'd never know he has a masters degree from Columbia (an Ivy League school) and that he was born inside the Beltway. Rhetoric and identity sometimes do not go together. And yet Buchanan is a good man and a true lover of America. So cheers to Columbia and the Beltway for giving us Mr. Buchanan, quixotic leader of the be-pitch-forked populists!
Mr. Stewart, yes I am aware of everything you mention. It should be pointed out that in the past rural land were largely owned by different farmers. Now a good deal of rural land is own by persons with country homes on them and the idea of the very drunks you mention putting a bullet through their windows has made them reluctant to allow hunters on their lots to say the least. As for CWD, thankfully the disease has large confided itself to an area of south-central Wisconsin and has not spread or hunting in the state would take a major as would the rural economy and livelihoods.
Speaking of the coins, I don't think the passage suggests anything about idolatry. The question put to Our Lord was whether it is right to pay taxes to the Empire. If he said yes, then the zealous anti-Romans could repudiate him, if no, then he could be executed as a rebel. His answer was both brilliant and honest: If you accept Caesar's system and his protection, then you should be a loyal citizen or subject. This must have been His private teaching, since it appears again in Peter and Paul. It was not Augustus and Tiberius, by the way, who wanted to be revered as gods: Both rulers opposed such cults and refused to permit them in Italy except for dead emperors who were treated much as Greeks treated the great men they called heroes. If the degenerate Easterners insisted on worshipping the men who gave them peace and prosperity, then let the fools go ahead and do it. It was only with Caligula and Nero that the cult of living emperors was encouraged in Italy and it was soon repudiated by Vespasian and Titus.
Caper,
"Reading Pat Buchanan’s articles, you’d never know he has a masters degree from Columbia (an Ivy League school) and that he was born inside the Beltway."
No, Caper there was no Beltway when Pat
was born. D.C. was a sleepy little neighborhood back then. When Pat attended Columbia The Grey Lady was still the standard and full of talented writers. Don't read history backwards by assuming it was always just like it is today--degenerate, dishonest, disgraced and with
the sound of death rattles beneath the fear. Once upon a time America really was a great nation.
Time for the reflections of somebody who actually lives in a small Pennsylvania town:
No, small town Pennsylvanians are not communists! Drive through one these days and you will likely see Ron Paul for President signs adorning front lawns all over town.
Most small town Pennsylvanians (at least in my part of the state, Central PA, James Carville's redneck Alabama of the North), don't appear to be too upset about Obama's words. Probably because small town Pennsylvanians tend to be extremely provincial and don't give a damn what outsiders think or even pay much attention to them.
And small towns in PA tend to be populated overwhelmingly by old folks. By attacking small town Pennsylvanians, Obama was in effect running down the elderly. The AARP should be calling on him to drop out of the race, for showing insensitivity to the aged and for practicing "ageism".
@61: Dr. Fleming, thank you for clearing this up. I had never heard of that particular reading of that passage, but not being a Roman scholar, did not think myself even remotely up to the task of rehabilitating Caesar.
It is good to read any modern practice or institution with scepticism, but I would caution that undoubtedly pious and deep-thinking girl not to cross over the line into obsession and scrupulousity, wondering if there is sin where you do not even know it. I know a young man in this town who struggles with scrupulousity and quite probably O.C.D. It is a nightmare for him, it wrecks havoc on his life and it has become considerably worse the last few months. At times I am even tempted to feel sorry for his confessor.
"Don’t read history backwards by assuming it was always just like it is today–degenerate, dishonest, disgraced and with
the sound of death rattles beneath the fear. Once upon a time America really was a great nation."
You have to understand where he's coming from. I was born in 1984. I've seen and lived in older northeastern/midwestern and southern neighbourhoods that hint at better days gone by and monuments that could only have been constructed by a true civilisation--but I have yet to find a true living relic of that civilisation. To read of the U.S.A. as a great nation is like reading of ancient Rome as a great empire: we have to take the word of dead and aging people for it, because we never knew any of it. Only the difference is, 1. Rome was far grander than the U.S. ever was, and 2. when we are told, from our childhood, that we are still living in this "great" civilisation in spite of the pit we see around us, it is hard to believe that anyone ever knew anything greater.
By the way, I think Ivy Leagues have been fishy for some time. I know they still turn out decent folk, butI have never personally met an Ivy League alum whom I did not want to plant.
NGPM @ 63,
I can assure you that the young lady in my little school was not "crossing over the line into obsession and scrupulosity, wondering if there is sin where you do not even know it." She was doing something which far too many students do not do: she was daring to think. Her understanding of the text in Matthew from Church and Sunday school is essentially that which Dr. Fleming outlined; yet, the Old Testament texts which had also been read that day made her think about the text in a different light.
It is my intention to print off this excellent discussion on the matter and give it to her and to the class to read.
Given the context of previous discussions in class - the cult of Lincoln, the cult of JFK and the cult of MLK, I believe that the young lady's thoughts on the matter are closer to the thoughts of Pope Benidict XVI as given in the link infra:
http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig6/ratzinger2.html
@64: No doubt she was daring to think, and she is to be especially applauded for questioning whether the "God" America trusts in is in fact God. The point was (and Dr. Fleming can clear me up about this if I'm wrong) that I'm not entirely sure an image on a coin constitutes in itself a "graven image." (I keep statues and pictures of Saints and of people who have played an important role in forming me; a tribe could reasonably be expected to do the same.) I have known people who spend far too much time worrying about the semantics of handling a particular article which is in and of itself a neutral object, but since you know this young lady, I will take it on your word that she is not troubled by the trivial.
Now, certainly the coin WOULD be idolatrous if our intent is to attribute it divine powers or place hope for eternal salvation or some sort of spiritual "enlightenment" in the ruler it represented. Arguably that is the case if we speak of Abraham Lincoln, MLK or even the antebellum "fathers." (Note also: we speak of American "founding fathers," whereas at one time we spoke of Church fathers!) Does this prohibit a decent person from handling pocket change? I wouldn't say so, but it is certainly food for thought.
On that note, now that the price of copper is spiking and the dollar is becoming increasingly worthless, I'm hearing rumours about new blood in the Abolish-the-Penny movement...
NGPM @ 65
Your points are well taken. Given that I have worked with middle school, high school and college and university students in Europe and in five U.S. states, I am utterly surprised and quite refreshed to find a sixteen-year-old who is (1) concerned about what God might think and (2) will to pose a question of the nature that she did. She is certainly not worried about "handling" coins with pictures of Lincoln on them and "in God we trust" on them. I will ask her Monday, but I believe the ultimate import of her question was as follows: Is it not the tendency of the allegedly secular to lay claim to the sacred and to ultimately usurp the place of God?
She is aware of the dangers of idolatry, as we all should be, and how subtle it is. Even the great virtues, when they replace the Living God, can and do become idols. There are, I would assert, very few teenagers who are even aware of idolatry, of idols and the consequences thereof.
Although I favor Ron Paul or conversely if necessary Ralph Nader - without THEM - I'd vote (which I don't vote anyway - so hypothetcially) for Obama over Hillary or McUndead. But having fun now - regarding Obama: "Changes hews with the chameleon." In San Francisco Obama was merely 'channeling' what he knew his audience wished to hear. It wasn't so much a heart-felt slight against small town AMERICA. (Thus he's OF COURSE par for the course a politician.) ... I get a kick out of Obama (I like him probably.) "whitely wanton with a velvet brow, With two pitch-balls stuck in her face for eyes." Born "to make black fair," and whose "favour turns the fashion of the days." All of that I perceive as being pretty good and not so bad.
Funny. Thank/s God for humor. Thank you.
What is new & strange about our currency is not that it is an idol which displaces our desire for God (so what else is new?), but that it is an idol which displaces our desire for wealth.
Ours is the first age in which a man could be called "rich" without owning a single thing, aside from "owning" some digits in a computer's memory.
Thanks G.S. - I assume you were talking about me? ... Though I carry my riches within, sweetness and light. Study St. Paul, come back down to Earth. Oh yee of the steel mills (and good ol'self-hypnosis?) Are you who I suspect you are. Well, then you are admirable, in my opinion...Don't let that hold you a'back. (Humor.) No I wanted money - money didn't want me.
G.S. regarding mine of the above #71 feel free to converse? Can you do that - or only come out of the pristine sanctuary of your head? Then retrench? ... what now-?-protecting the money-?-or god? And blaming of course 'something' - let's see - what's latest oh, yeah - cyber space is to 'blame'? No? ... Then chat. What'Up bithch? Chat'Ho? Oh wait... if only it were ALL gnostic? if we only did away with St. Paul? ... speak, freak?!? put up your martial dukes, as it were? ... oh, i know it's only 'cyber.' true. lucky you.?
sorry about #71 I'm getting pissthed. good. what a bunch of ho's...up 'there' in the stratosphere. funny. floating ho's. i'm a kite and-anchor...try BOTH... g.s. - on the old sf site [he'd?] always rebuke [me] it's one. sure one coin of course... two sides. TIME is a factor and tells which side to face Up - so that God appreciates it. Under YOU God Almighty, thanks. a heart for any fate within the destiny You've ordained. ... not G.S. has ordained. ... G.S., right?
sorry i'm a chatty Kathy tonight...probably G.S. is like me doesn't visit boards here all the time. sorry G.S.
funny, conversely - have I told you lately that I love you? maybe I'm unsophisticated-?-it's occured to me. No. Just say no, when it's appropriate. And at the end of the day give thanks to the One.
Don't worry G.S. there's always the economic discipline to those of us with a little. Somtimes if you have a little, it's a lot to lose. Peace. Remember that Obama. ... in the misty morning fog - with our hearts a'thumping... funny & not
I went on a G.S. tangent, tonight! I'd hide if I were him too.
Mr. Fellows,
No worries. Compared to the spiteful and idiotically arrogant Wotan-groupies who occasionally intrude upon this website, even the most meandering of your musings are rational breaths of fresh air, along with courtesy and civility.
Admittedly that is setting the bar pretty low, but if you're like me you don't look a gift horse in the mouth.
I was not in fact referring to you in my earlier post. But if the shoe fits, then I'd recommending translating some of those digits into real property, which could --if you are fortunate-- in turn translate into a home, something worth holding on to.
My two cyber-cents, for what they're worth.
Vaya con Dios.
G.S. thanks - you're a gentleman... so am I usually. Regards, (should I blame the tequila?) no... under it all it's still moi - like you (who is sincere to the best of 'our' ability) a Vork in progess. Hope you had a laugh. Maybe one day we'll scuba dive or toss a beer and laugh or get in a fight. Whatever. (you'd probably win.) poor me, licking - even more wounds.
or am I just already claiming the victim Role. There's enormous power in the victim Role; no power in being the Actual victim. ... there's a thought worth sticking like a star in the heavens above. No? Got any? See I beat you there! ... i win ?
Here's another to STICK up there in the heavens...
'A thought is something complete in itself and something we can Do.'
I guess I'll explain it in MY Book - (everyone writes a book these days - not ME yet) - but I guess I should. Funny.
Why a definition of 'a thought' is *simply important is even the Greeks didn't, as a practical matter make a clearing or a place, for it [thinking per se.] And NO ONE since. ... It's not 'holy' it's wholly important. Will jews publish me? Or will it go down the rabbit hole?
Greek philosophy, yet with us today made room for technology - into which technology without realizing it mistakenly 'believes' philosophy will dissolve... Yet, technology is dominated by philosophy since philosophy ain't at its end yet... not yet complete much less perfected. HA-HA-HA. here's the rub - that's why we have apparent problems with how we handle technology... idiots. (Blame the Greeks AND compliment them - both... you ARE them fools, thank God.) Philosophy INCOMPLETE yet dominates how we ALL behave toward and about technology... fools. No the Judaic is WORSE nothing by comparison... schmucks. Keep dreaming... and stealing. Funny. I doubt they'll publish me now. Funny... like I care. see me and i'm gone.
Stand Upright and be strong... and stay forever young... why not? I treat them badly... they're so stupid. Funny. Now they have the BOMB - duck and cover. assholes. what a bunch or retroverts into anachronism which was so 2K years ago. funny. bend like the muslims. suck. swine.
standing on the water -------- HA-HA-HA. I hear you - go to the opposite extreme instead of joing the human race warts and all. swine. sorry... i must be in a bad mood - swine.
Questions? I guess it's been building - better blow it off in cyber than elsewhere. ? ok, i've chilled. i'm cool. bithches. I can't believe the gentiles put up with it? wow. talk about bithches. and whores. maybe you're right - except for their peaks they're worse? hard to believe. Maybe they're just TOO good. swine. that's the reality. they've become too good. lucky you all. what a world.
i wonder if the great G.S. will chime in now? ... he's probably too busy getting rich. right G.S.? Funny, too. Yawn.
My apology for post #76. I can't believe we've been together for so long and are still (apparently) so far apart. It's the Pharisitical (Pharisees - the judaic today) like it always WAS vs. the Essene. ... I.e. the 'law' and religion merely for useage in terms of what it can 'get' one vs. the *possible sincere - at least in that venue or arena. (The former yet disgusts me, it's so completely hypocritical so imbalanced toward accretion.) ... In deference to those Jews i.e. the 'Christists' who had a hand in the creation of Christianity, they at least wanted something workable at the level of the sincere & as a practical matter - both, and to their enormous credit (still today the benefits.) They, along with the Greek scribes & some Romans who were of that ilk - did it at that time, utilizing the Essene writings. (The Essenes as a sect where otherwise chucked down the rabbit hole by the Pharisees their rival sect.) They know that or their leaders do. ... Christianity is the one thing, since the Romans and the GREEKS, whom everyone understandably copied, that "we've" contributed to the existing civilization that was Actually good. It's why we should never abandon our Christianity. That would be like chucking out the baby AND the bathwater. I.e. it would be sheer nihilism (civilizationally) at this point. Nothing is just a feeling if you have it to be faced. (It also makes subsequently a better person.) Nothing doesn't exist otherwise except as a concept like the concept of zero which also has its meaning in mathematics.
It's also why when a former Jew like Marx goes reverse-Platonism it's really an attempt to get in touch with his formerly *sincere Essene roots - but it's a nightmare since he hasn't YET been through the Christian process and so he's really attempting to be a new and improved judaic or Pharisee, only. We all have to go thru the Christian process, in my opinion before we deign to imagine we can improve the world. History indicates this in spades. So for Jews the very next authentic thing that isn't yet just another essentially superficial novelty is to convert like Israel Shamir to either Greek Orthodox Christianity or to Roman Catholicism. The metaphysical construct of Christ appended onto the Essene holy man Jesus's teachings/writings HELPS toward those results. Myth Works (especially with sincerity and substance at its core), and some better than others in making better souls or men & women. It's not just a matter of 'identity'. Rutting and head-butting Rams are fantastically secure in their 'identities.' Mankind can be more.
ALSO although Greek thought and their essentially dialectical philosophical processes paved the way for today's science and technology, it did *not [yet] carve out a space or clearing for thought per se. That's WHY even in the grandeur of Western Civilization, we're all still wandering around like little Cains, metaphorically speaking - highly opinionated though largely uninformed and not rooted in fundamental thought itself; 'as if' perception is all that really mattered - as if perception and 'belief' can be the whole ball of wax.
A thought is something complete in itself and something we can Do. While equally important - ideas, wishes, dreams (all a function of the incredible human capacity for imagination) are open-ended and not doable per se. They compliment one another thought/belief and allow thought to continue to be refined without losing its doability. All the animals 'think' except it is excusively at the *unconscious level. In this regard we ALL are thought as well. ... When we, the human animal took the next step in evolution we slowly thanks to IMAGINATION as the way-station started to become conscious of what we were thinking (anyway) as well. We landed for the first time in history at what I call the conceptual pause or level. Over time we could notice if we liked what we were thinking based on our experience [in TIME], or - perhaps we might refine it and subsequently the refinement might result in better activity with more salutary results for any number of 'reasons'. So we started to ALSO think *consciously rather than exclusively like the other animals unconsciously.
Here's a refined thought - 'don't confuse motion with action.' Something complete (even at the level of refinement) and something we can do. Still though today, we jumble conscious thought up in a mix of ideas wishes dreams (all exclusively open-ended and thus not doable) = perceptions only; & we don't notice where thought is actually distinctive from our human-imaginations. IF we can also consciously differentiate finally between the two as *par for the course (because a clearing for thought has been carved out consciously, without losing sight of the reality & VALUE of both) we can potentially arrive at clarity along the way in each given moment of TIME. The 'idea' that we can do either always alone (without the clearing for thought) is the sterile, thought-Less, and mistaken notion and definition of the 'rational' we yet entertain (i.e. imagine) today. It is human to prefer belief or imagination because it's both easier and it is PRIOR or more original than thought since our huge capacity as human animals for imagination is what made conscious thought also possible in the first place. Imagination was and is and will always be a'priori in humans to thought. So ENJOY it. You see it in your kids most clearly. Or you see it in an impressionistic painting (which is essentially a window into our species' *hominid past.) ENJOY it.
It's why I point out that when we use a word in some falaciously exclusive sense like 'rational' we should know as *thinkers it automatically means we must use the other side of the same coin as well or the irrational...Which is what we are actually doing anyway albeit yet UNCONSCIOUSLY. So for something to be rational & conscious it MUST also include the *appropriate amount of the irrational as well or it's not rational & conscious per se. Then as thinkers we can decide do we want it/something to be more toward the rational or irrational depending on the occasion. It is always about the *occasion [for indebtedness and responsiblity] our lot and not purely for what we would call 'purpose' that we make the 'judgement'. Thus you see or notice that as thinkers the morality which is also the-reality of the juncture or occasion is built into it *already, otherwise it as an abberation or an evil. (I.e. thus the idea that we are all sinners from the git go.) We in other words could conversely 'purpose' the abberation or evil i.e. on purpose - which is what we ALWAYS currently do by *default, since unattentive of the clearing or space for Actual thought unmixed-up with belief or idea, wish, dream, etc. It means the CLEARING has not yet been carved out for thought per se. We're still essentially children.
OF COURSE in having to deal with other groups if we notice that is the current (*purposeful only) level of their ability to Actually think consciously - we must also, haven't a choice - but to take that predicament into consideration. But we *don't even realize this [consciously] yet because due to their own *few mistakes in the imperfect world, the Greeks themselves never got around to carving out that space or clearing for thought, itself. And no one else has Either. So we're ALL yet barbarians. It's all yet knee-jerk and stupid on EVERYONE'S part. {Think tanks...with no one yet at the level of conscious thought in that regard.} Anyone reading this KNOWS that current limitation to be the case and the bane of our present condition, once it's underscored herein.
Of course once people see it they tend to 'believe' they thought of it themselves. So why if I'm not naive about that either am I putting this out here in the public domain? Well I enjoy living by the poetic admonition: Teach us to care and not to care. ... I don't care in that 'good' regard. Why not?! It floats my boat as it were, gets my endorphins going (the brain and body's natural pain-killlers) so I get that immediate benefit. I'm damaged goods due to an abusive childhood (significantly so) so I always need to get those endorphins going since they don't fire usually on their own and I'm in too much immediate pain or awareness of pain. Maybe like in literature a Heathcliff? (Was Heathcliff in the same boat, I forget.)
It's also why people who have suffered together as one poet said also have stronger connections than those who are most content. It's a part of the larger reality in the imperfect world that everything comes at the expense of something else. In the human domain it's a realm of [apparent] opposites that are all a part of the same one coin. So it's both Actually in one, not either/or.
Robert Zimmerman: "Since every pleasure has its edge of pain, pay for your ticket and don't complain," ... to put it poetically.
Does anyone yet recognize this post as luminous in its import and manifestation? Maybe I'll take it farther and write a book about it. But I also do it because every juncture [in time and causality] again is an occasion for indebtedness and responsibility. If we really all, as we do, feed each other - then isn't it also my responsibility to share?! (I once had a hemorrhoid as big as a tail - Oh sorry, I didn't me to go THERE...but I like to share.)
Yes. I owe you and conversely the same. Ouch.
My admonition: 'perfect balance in our world is Not possible; Approximate balance however is requisite.' ... Don't 'kid' yourselves.
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Quote: "…squash every day at the Yale Club"
Our political elites—these supposedly smart “Yale and Harvard and Princeton educated” people—they never cease to amaze me. Their mendacity, greed, ambition, recklessness, and stupidity have now brought a once-great nation to the brink of utter ruin. And Americans are now so desperate that just might be willing to fall for another faux savior, another cozening fake. So BHO might still make it into the White House.
Moonbones, I agree with you in #78. They don't know the facts in post #77 because the Greeks never got around to creating a clearing for actual thought - and no one since ME ever defined what is a thought vs. an open-ended idea, dream, wish etc. I.e. so of course we all now KNOW (thanks to me) 'a thought is something complete in itself and something we can Do.' Then OF COURSE the open-ended can complement and help further refine thought, rather than confuse. ... They're confused, prepsters forever prepping for nada - and worse privileged and thus spoiled. Look at el'Presidente - of yale & harvard ... did you ever see anyone who more resembled in public office bozo the clown? & not even be embarrassed or apparently aware of it?!? You're right though, they're painting the passports brown... well, the circus is in town... and here comes the blind commissioner... his memory in a trunk... trailed obsequiously by his friend a jealous monk. (i'm sorry I can't get bob dylan out of my head... But no one had defined thought prior to me (they don't even know THAT) - and now that we have it, we CAN chop a clearing for it... and start getting some folks educated, no?
What-?- first, postcards of the hangings?
"bring forth eternal numbers to outlive long date" W.S.
But they'll be getting rich off of it all, right?!
First they use their mouths to distract (i.e. tv)
then of course rely on the fact that because of undeniable limb which stands we stand...
and chop us all down. They rely on the masses not 'wishing' to know that, and preferring to remain in dream-land... and if it's a decadent dream - it's weaker and thus better - for the elite without even any straightening Values remaining, or in tow... That's why they always also wanted to get rid of Christianity...or at least St. Paul so that it was a leaf tossed that the prevailing wind can play with.
Are they that smart? Or so stupid that's just what happens because they're stupid and decadent themselves?
I ask you - MOONBONES!?!
Does Moonbones know - or is he still playing squash at the Yale Club? What does 'squash' stand for at the Yale Club - squash the truth? Or - 'watch my line, so I stay svelt and attractive in 'prepdom'?'
Then Sartre came along and really confused them (a while back - remember?) He gave them Christian humanism backasswards. More subjectivity, but at least with Christianity there's St. Paul - rather than Sartre. Sartre was allegedly a great fornicator; and so his it's 'all absurd & subjective as well nonetheless so as to save our dignity' according to him - might have been prompted nonetheless subconsciously - by some pretty objective 'prompts'. I.e. 'No Exit' (for the babes - he knew what attracted them/ power etc.) & his famous 'Hell is Other people' (i.e. other *fellows.) Just another schmuck...albeit without even the claim to higher authority or holiness... who knows which is worse? Alleged divine light or alleged human light into which we are all supposed to collapse and abandon ourselves and our Being. IF enough people do it, and give you credit - the chicks will dig'ya - like Sartre.
Jesus would probably have been standoff'ish ... "stand aback' you broads - do not touch me for I have not yet ascended."
'Where ya' going? Can I go too?'
No - bithches... got to MERIT it. You'll learn that later with women's lib.
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Yawn - that's where we'all still at today, dog. And governed inevitably by the null-set yale & hahrvarhd prepsters be they xian or whoish. ... It's why I always say - "thanks God - there's humor too."
I don't think I'll ever be able to post on the Apostolic board now...barring a Pauline-like Re-conversion (since I'm already a Christian. I just like spanking Church Lady, what can I tell you?) She don't mind either apparently - I kid, I kid - I'll just speak for myself, not her.
Probably just as well, they don't need me on the Apolstolic board. That's fine. Who wants a mutual admiration society. zzzzzzz... i've wokedened myself - i don't want to go back to sleep, do I?
What's the point? The point is Sartre didn't even know when he wasn't thinking... because up until then no one had defined what is a thought as opposed to an open-ended idea, wish, dream = thus a belief. He was no thinker... just another secular monk with a hard-On.
*A thought (conscious or unconcscious) is something complete in itself and something we can do.
*Only humans beings via our capacity for imagination arrived at the conceptual pause or level, wherein we can notice what we are thinking anyway, and so Begin to refine thought consciously in search of more salutary results via our actions or activity.
*Beliefs i.e. open-ended ideas, wishes, dreams are best when we notice consciously they are a'priori to thought, and in tandem with thought allow us further refinement of thought and thus activity.
*A clearing or meadow for thought per se should be carved-out as distinctive from the surrounding forest, even though inevitably in tandem with - the open-ended (and so not doable themselves) ideas, wishes, dreams etc. Only when such a clearing has been made and identified as such can thoughts i.e. the doable be appropriately complemented by the undoable open-ended (a function of imagination), and thus thought CAN be appropriately refined further. Without such a clearing we are fated (not destined) to continue to wander aimlessly hit and miss not knowing forest for trees. E.g. oh golly, where Was my campsite, again? ... (Humor lowers blood pressure.)
*Religion is viatal to all cultures, since based on the passage of time (experience) it at least indicates what has been more rather than less propitious to the vital group, based on our wanderings in this current state of affairs.
*Both thought (misnamed the rational) and belief or perception i.e. open-ended ideas, wishes, dreams (misnamed the irrational) are inextricably bound together in human beings. Since it is how conscious thought evolved in us in the first place and is how conscious thought in our species continues and will always be further refined.
*To us humans it is experientially (and thus the case) a world of opposites when we notice degrees of difference between one thing and another to make them seem opposed. They are really both and the same thing like two sides to one coin. It is a world of inches (as well as miles) and thus of degrees of difference.
*Such experienced opposites when noticed sometimes can be synthesized in a dialactic of thesis, anti-thesis, synthesis...while at other *occasions in time it is a binary choice of one OR the other, in other words which side of the coin ought to be facing Up.
*Causality for human beings in Fact does *not result and thus also conversely does not stem from purpose. But rather is always at a given juncture in time an *occasion for indebtedness and responsibility. This is our lot when we are honest and do not lapse into evil, which does not change our reailty but often makes it worse. (E.g. in the news, Iraq.) Thus morality is built into not apart from causality. Neither is the lack of morality apart from causality whether purposed (evil) or by default.
*Once there is a clearing for thought per se - that which is patently doable, it can be newly considered that for something to be 'rational' it must also contain the *appropriate amount of the irrational since that exists too and is an inextricable part of the human factor, if it is in Fact to be considered 'rational.' Otherwise what we want to call rational is again only imagination or instead highly irrational.
*Inevitably we are always both consciously and unconsciously bound up with our own balance and that of the group. Perfect or absolute blance though is Not possible in our world, albeit Approximate balance is requisite. That is obviously because we and the world are alive (dynamic) and not something dead or static upon a pedestal. (E.g. in the news plastic in the seas could kill the planet.)
*Until philosophy is completed (via a clearing for thought per se) we are subconsciously always acting philosophically without being aware of it and irrationally calling it reason.
*On account of how we evoloved and thus ARE and will always be for as long as we are Human, we are conceptual creatures [i.e. both], in our world & NEVER either.
*A penny saved is a penny earned ... wait no, non-sequitur, how did that get in here? Well, it's an imperfect world and we're all an imperfect part of it.
*As for imperfection it is also a part of the world since it and we are dynamic and thus alive and the most we can say in this very broad regard is that imperfect's perfect.
*If we want to call something 'perfect' thus inevibably it must be within a given context. Usually that would mean complete.
* 'Complete' is what we ought to now realize is what we mean by essence i.e. the thing in question's - totality. Thus essence or totality is very difficult, if not impossible, to KNOW we have ascertained, especially when in a very broad regard.
*As Aristotle pointed out it is possibly the defining meaning of being educated when to ask for proof or evidence of anything as opposed to when not to. That is the difference between apprehending when something is knowable and when something is unknowable. (E.g. in the news the Twin Towers because proof might have been something knowable if the evidence wasn't promply carted away.) That few asked is evidence of a highly uneducated society, sadly; and of a particularly uneducated journalistic class (or frightened/corrupted.)
*Education (even prior to the definition of thought per se as above; and subsequently a clearing made for it) is yet the greatest thing since the wheel, and will always be thus.
*The perfection of philosophy is its inevitable completion, since although that is currently not yet our fate as a group, it is our destiny.
*Matters of faith are always valuable and never disprovable otherwise there would be no *need of the word faith-regardless of evolution and of the how we came about-if all things were in Fact knowable. They are not. We can only know the difference between when we are thinking and when we are choosing to believe and what is the mix involved on any given Occasion (for indebtedness & responsibility.)
*When we think consciously it is more akin to work and less endorphins are released (the brain and body's natural painkillers), than when we believe because the open-ended is more promising always and it is also what we did consciously and almost exclusively prior to being ready for conscious thought.
*The truth is sometimes difficult to find but not impossible if in a knowable context.
*Wisdom is an ability to make fine distinctions that are actual.
*Questions are important (of course) in our process (possibly the most important aspect.) However just because we can ask a question does not automatically mean it is real or actual. We can always move our mouths even when *exclusively motivated by our imagination, and that is good too. Can God make a rock so big he cannot lift it? TIME is a factor. More appropriately pain defines us whether felt or unfelt, since it informs accurately and inaccurately in our imperfect world.
*All things are also vibrations with their own signature frequencies including our thoughts. Thus in our world of degrees of difference, thoughts too only in that regard are things. Don't kick a rock, its vibe and signature frequency may be stronger than your toe. However if at an opera and sneaking in beers in your pockets, make sure they're in cans. The signature frequency of glass is weaker than some very High notes, but not stronger than aluminum, apparently.
*"Peace, out - dog."
P.S. mother Nature is both cruel & kind AND saw fit to make us conscious of what we're thinking (like the rest of her kingdom does unconsciously). What shall we make of her blessing and her curse, under God? Did she want it so, or only God? Sorry, unknowable, here. Faith. But think consciously now - KNOWING the difference. Where was that campsite? Oh, we haven't carved it out yet, ok! I'm down with it.
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