Charades: Why I don't know what 'love' is

All "corporal punishment" does is normalize violence, brutalize children and satisfy adults' needs for compliance.

Recently, I found myself in a Facebook thread among folks bemoaning the lack of "discipline" among children and young folks, and fantasizing about the good old days when you could beat one's children howsoever one desired, extolling the virtues of corporal punishment, and bewailing the lack of more of it--you know: "Kids these days need to be beaten, but the snowflakes object"--and it awoke deep feelings in me...as it always does. I reproached them, of course, and as politely as possible.

"When did you stop beating your children," I asked.

" Beating children with switches and sticks isn't discipline, it's felony child abuse.

"People say, "well I turned out okay."

"I say, really? Then why are you beating your children into obedience, silence and submission?

"That's pretty fucked up, actually; criminal, even. "You're NOT "Okay." Get help before you hurt somebody.

But it just made me feel hollow, my gut clenched as if in anticipation of another blow.....

CONTEXT:

When I appeared right after WW II, my folks didn't have ANY IDEA about raising kids, being both privileged children of distant/detached parents themselves.  BOTH my parents were horribly ill-suited for the task of being parents, having both been the spoiled and cosseted offspring of successful Men of Business BEFORE the Depression and who survived it with their most of their wealth and possessions. They met in college in 1940, at a fencing tournament. 

My mother bore four live births, but she despised being a "mother." I truly think she considered it beneath her considerable talents, because she thought (and was often right) that she was the smartest one in the room. Like MANY women of her generation, she felt 'captured' by a role she didn't want or particularly like to play.  Eventually, captive of serious medical conditions, she took her (often prescription drug amplified) frustrations out on me. 

 She slapped me around just about every day from age 10 until I left home for the military right out of High School. She'd just stand me before her and start slapping me, and slapping me. As I got older, and became more stoic, the beating increased, too. I couldn't tell my father since I suspected he secretly approved.

As I think now, I was probably indelibly scarred by my mother's incessant violence upon me and my father's casual acceptance of it.

 I got through it, but leaving a trail strewn with broken relationships and emotional damage (three failed marriages, and countless "serious" affairs) throughout the whole of my entire 'romantic' career. I was (am) broken, inside, I now know, and didn't really notice until about 15 years ago, by which time I had pretty much permanently removed myself from the lists.

 As, now, alone with my dog--also a grizzled veteran--a grumpy, slowly shrinking "Senior" of 75, I've hope I've done all the damage I'm gonna do, either to myself or others, in one lifetime. 

I don't think about MY "future" much. But I've actually managed to learn to meet one day at a time, without desperation or enthusiasm or regret.

 

Moar Memez

 

Veterant

As a veteran, I wish people would stop glorifying the military. It's the Imperial armament. It defends the borders of OUR Empire, which may be collapsing but is still mighty and deadly, to anyone presumptuous enough to test it. 

But our oceanic moats PROTECT our borders as well as or better. Any foreseeable invasion threat would have to either cross a vast ocean or come through inhabited regions which would resist them, along with any USer response deemed appropriate.

The USofA has only, truly, ever been militarily threatened twice since 1776: 1812, and 1861-65, despite the hundreds of conflicts "we" have engaged in. Neither the Axis in WW 1, nor the fascists of WW 2 posed any actual threat to the borders or the or the political integrity of the country.

 

What ya gonna believe.....

 

 

Standing awash in the misrepresentations, prevarications, and falsehoods that flood our consciousnesses, we must acknowledge the contribution of Edward Bernays,

Freud's favorite nephew, and amanuensis when the old man was in the Colonies.

Bernays' "genius" was to recognize the inherent, social power of insights into human behavior to be gathered from Pavlov's e.g. "Behaviorialism," Taylor's Scientific Management, and Unca Sig's "Love/Death" aporia, and to operationalize/weaponize them under the rubric of "Public Relations," which is now humanity's pre-eminent epistemological resource.

Propaganda is nothing but the "other side of the coin" of PR. Indeed, ya can't spill one without the other.

I don't know whether Bernays ever contemplated the inherent totalitarianism of his system.

He worked with Raymond Loewy (who designed the pack) to sell Lucky Strikes. His book, Propaganda, was published in 1928. He taught women to smoke cigarets in the Teens. And he assisted Wilson dragging the US into WW 1.

You don't have to tell people how to think if you can tell them what they experience in words and images that, subtley or not, privilege any one viewpoint.

Ninety-nine percent of people experience the world outside their immediate local through media, and not from a "disinterested" perspective. Mediation of reality is occurring faster and more comprehensively than our Pleistocene brains can process. We are in WAAAAY over our heads.

Foamer Special:

 

An outstanding photo of Loewy's Pennsylvania Railroad S1 and one of the Dreyfuss Hudson’s. They were the epitome of railroad design at the time.

I'm informed that this 'race' HAD to have occurred on the mainline leaving Chicago, because that was the only place their tracks ran parallel long enough to really roll.
However these two appear to be at rest, from the nearly vertical plume of smoke from the S1.

 

 

Dr. Woody'z Meemz:

 Not even CLOSE.

Woke, an Haiku

Amid the tumult,

Being a conscious being
Is a needful thing. 

"This Is The End, My Friend"

This was "IT."

With Joe Manchin's vote Sunday NOT to suspend filibustyer rules for HR1, the Biden agenda is a dead letter. It's over. Finito. Ende. Kaput. Their wad is shot, in just under 5 months.

The Dems should now use such time as they have between now and next Fall's election (when they very well may lose BOTH houses) to scrutinize every slimy GOPhuq motherfukkker in DC, and punish them. BENGHGAZI these traitors! That can be done by a mere majority.

Far from a "moderate," Mancfhin is 'radical' DINO, a visible, smelly turd in the Democratic punch-bowl who voted WITH the GOPhux/Twittler just OVER 50% of the time; until yesterday, he'd supported Biden on 100% of votes. He failed when it mattered.

So, of course, the fukkker choked on the money-ball. With that vote, he guaranteed that Moscow Mitch and his cronies would be able to do to Biden what they'd done to Obama after 2010--castrate him--WITHOUT changing a single seat. The GOPhux will deny Biden ANY further legislative record of accomplishment, and their appeal to White Grievance will attract MANY who have not, hitherto, been active.

These are the maneuvers of a declining, dominant group with residual power and most of the money, endeavoring to preserve their illicit, unearned and anti-democratic privileges.

And, apart from increasingly unlikely event of HOLDING the Congress, there is NO WAY to thwart them. With no record to run on, that will be a daunting, well-nigh impossible task.

A Gallery Of Mr. Piggums

Enjoying his new, personalized blankee,  courtesy of  "Wrapped In Love" and NMDOG!

THANK YOU!!!!!

CRITICAL (RACE) THEORY--Intro

Cartoon: Clay Bennett, Chattanooga Times/Free Press

Critical Race Theory (CRT) is suddenly the term on the thin, pinched lips of  all the racust, xenophobic, misogynistic GOPhux "White People" and Trumpanzees. It occupies space in the "Critical Theory" spectrum ithat includes "Critical Gender Theory" and "Critical Class Theory." There are also "Critters" in law, history, economics and social theory.

Like Critical Theory, generally, CRT involves the active, multi-sourced, wide-ranging interrogation of common-place institutional phenomena--actions, ideologies, and discursive practices of civic entities--to reveal what is concealed in the quotidian discourses on any subject, and especially the kinds of elisions that are suppressed or ignored in issues of oppression on the bases of race, class, and/or gender at which USer culture has bewcome punishingly adept over the first 400 years. 

The implication of these investigations is that "Critical Theory," generally, and praxis based in and upon it, can begin to unravel the knots that hold people--in Ed, of course, especially kids--back.

In a nut-shell, CRT reveals that just about everything of which "minorities" have been complaining about how they are and have been systematically and systemically abused, oppressed, and demeaned by dominant WHITE culture for the past 400 years is basically true, both in general and in the details. 

For instance, one need only examine "lynchings," in their proper, historical situations.

There is a rich literature.

To begin the odyessy, start with Souls of Black Folk, by DuBois; especially, recommend trying to get into the "spirit" of "double consciousness," for a look at the historicity of the phenomenon and the humanity of its victims. 

The Sky Really IS Fucking Falling

 

Nevada Republican Party Chairman Michael McDonald leads a protest against the passage of a mail-in voting bill in Las Vegas last August. (Ethan Miller/Getty Images)

You think discussions and warnings about the end of American Democracy is hype, exaggeration and fear-mongering, going all "the sky is falling! the sky is falling!"

You re NOT paying attention.

Fearfully, White People are busily and efficiently martialling all their power, influence, and money to build a legislative fortress from within which they can withstand the changes portended by the demographic revolution that will engulf them in the middle of the 2040s, preserve their skin privilege and restrict the franchise.

Of course, one cannot be unaware of all the voter suppression legislation being shoved through State legislatures by the GOPHUX this year. See Max Boot's summary below to get a real sense of just how pernicious and impactful these are, and how the tacit intent those laws is to create a situation such that, in 2024, any semi-tight election, as in 2020, will 100% not end up as a Dem victory even if the dems legitimately won -- instead, the GOPhux will "win" the election by stealing it in one of many ways, or a combination of ways. 

*Why would one NOT steal an election to determine the fate of the Earth if one COULD steal it?

| They "win" as they HAVE won, hitherto: by suppressing the vote in key swing states; and/or they will "win" by using powers under their new laws to toss out elected election officials and replace them with partisan Trump-loving hacks who will not certify or otherwise jimmy the system; or they will "win" by refusing to certify election results for key states which will result in no electoral majority which means the election gets sent to the house, where each state, regardless of size, gets one vote, and where GOPhux have the "majority" when you do it that way, with California and Wyoming each getting one vote.

This is it, amigos.

The absolute fundamental precondition of democracy is that the voters believe that their vote counts, that elections are real, and winners win and losers lose. Right now you have the whole GOPhux/Trump/White People portion of America believing the 2020 election was fraudulent. After 2022, already, we could likely find conditions that could convince all the rest of us no longer believing elections are fair or real. Attack that understanding, that trust, and you destroy 'democracy.'

Plus you will STILL have ruthless, "we don't give a s--t about democracy" Trump/White People/GOPhux in power, wholly unprincipled and unscrupulous about continuing to game the system to their advantage in such a way that going forward they can hold on to power, by "hook or by crook", and they are just fine with the "crook" part of that because holding power, not upholding democracy, is what matters to them.

Let me say that again: POWER is all that matters.

What can be done to stop this? 

Really, not very much, sadly. The recent spate of neo-JimCrow legislation won't be overturned any time soon, especially by the Roberts Court, which disemboweled the Voting Rights Act back in 2013, in a ruling that could fairly be (but never was) characterized as gratuitously defiling that landmark law, and not incidentally as spitting in then-President Obama's Cheerios. Passing HR 1 would do a lot, but there is, as they say, "NO FUCKING CHANCE" of that. NAGAHAPIN!!!!

As Boot says: "Senate Democrats have to choose between saving the filibuster and saving democracy. They can’t do both." 

But, being the Dems, they'll try.

(Parenthetically, while thanking Herr Boot for the summary, we should recall how much HE, personally, contributed to the fall with his yeoman service in behalf of the greater Conservative causes in the '90s and into the new Century. He now describes himself as "a man without a party." He's a fucking fascist, with good manners. Fuck him.)

***********************************

Opinion: The Republican plot to steal the 2024 election

Max Boot

Columnist

June 1, 2021 at 11:25 a.m. PDT

Republicans have spent nearly seven months making bogus charges of fraud in the 2020 election under the banner of “stop the steal.” Now they have segued into a “start the steal” offensive to ensure that they will win the 2022 and 2024 elections — even if most voters once again support the Democratic Party.

The Brennan Center for Justice reports that “between January 1 and May 14, 2021, at least 14 states enacted 22 new laws that restrict access to the vote” and “at least 61 bills with restrictive provisions are moving through 18 state legislatures.” Those bills are designed not to avert nonexistent voter fraud but to avert another election defeat for Republicans — and they are drawing perilously close to that goal.

In Georgia, for example, a new law stipulates that mobile voting stations “shall only be used in emergencies declared by the Governor,” who is a Republican. That will put out of business two “mobile voting units” — a.k.a. buses — that collected 11,200 ballots in Atlanta’s Fulton County in November. Also, under the new law, provisional ballots will no longer be accepted from voters who go to the wrong polling place; 11,120 provisional ballots were counted in November. “Combined,” writes my Post colleague David Weigel, “the ballots cast by both methods are nearly double the margin by which [Joe] Biden won Georgia.”

A new election law in Texas, which has been temporarily blocked by a walkout of Democrats from the state House, would outlaw many of the methods used to increase minority turnout, such as drive-through voting and early voting before 1 p.m. on Sundays (crimping “souls to the polls” events after church services). But the most alarming element of the bill is that it makes it easier to overturn election results even if there is no evidence that fraud affected the outcome.

The Georgia law, for its part, includes a pernicious provision giving the Republican-controlled state legislature the right to suspend county election officials and to name the chair of the State Election Board. Previously, Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger had chaired the board, but he incurred Republican wrath by certifying Biden’s victory. Raffensperger is being challenged next year by a Donald Trump-endorsed opponent, Rep. Jody Hice (R-Ga.), who insists that Trump would have won in Georgia if the election had been “fair.”

Meanwhile, in Arizona — another state Trump narrowly lost — Republicans are trying to strip Secretary of State Katie Hobbs (D) of her power to defend election lawsuits. They want to vest that authority in the Republican attorney general. If she runs again, Hobbs, like Raffensperger, will face an election challenge from an advocate of the “big lie.” Trump die-hards are also running for the secretary of state posts in Nevada and Michigan.If the challengers win, pro-Trump conspiracy theorists will be supervising elections in key swing states.

While GOP efforts are ultimately aimed at the 2024 election, they will first make their impact felt in 2022. Off-year elections are always tough for the party in power. This one will be tougher still because of Republican-driven voter suppression, reapportionment and gerrymandering. Dave Wasserman of the Cook Political Report writes that Republicans will have full authority to redraw 187 congressional districts, while Democrats will control just 75. He estimates that redistricting in just four states — Texas, Florida, Georgia, North Carolina — could be enough to deliver the House to Republican control.

This brings us to a nightmare scenario: a Republican-controlled Congress overturning the 2024 presidential election results to install Trump or a Trump mini-me in the White House. In January, 139 House Republicans and eight Senate Republicans voted not to certify electoral college results in at least one state. Since then, the most prominent GOP opponent of the “big lie," Rep. Liz Cheney (Wyo.), has been purged from the House leadership. Willingness to lie about election fraud has become a litmus test for Republicans, with the implicit threat of mob violence if they don’t go along. Republicans are so scared of Trump and his fanatical followers that most of them just voted against a bipartisan investigation of the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol.

Many congressional Republicans will refuse to certify a 2024 Democratic win in swing states. If Republicans control Congress, they could deny the Democrats an electoral college majority and throw the election to the House — where each state delegation, regardless of population, would cast one ballot. Given that Republicans already control a majority of state delegations, they could override the election outcome. If that happens, it would spell the end of American democracy.

I hope I am being overly alarmist. I really do. But after the storming of the Capitol — and the Republican failure to hold the instigators to account — we have crossed a Rubicon. The best way to protect our electoral system is to pass the For the People Act, which would curb partisan gerrymandering and protect voting rights. Senate Democrats have to choose between saving the filibuster and saving democracy. They can’t do both.

Two Wolves

 

Keynesian economics vs the Chicago school.
Hayek lied about socialism being the road to serfdom; his prescription for the economy as taken up by and since Raygun (remember "Voodoo rcon0omics?), via that Randian real estate grifter Milton Friedman, has led to serfdom in everything but name for scores of millions of Americans (and others around the world), because his (Hayek) theories authorized and encouraged the handing over of more and more wealth to the already wealthy and stretching inequality to impossible limits, while screwing over the rest.