Notes and Quotes 1-From Arendt to Anything Goes

 

Here's one thing wrong with America. I'm listening to Ed of MSNBC rant about what we all need to do in order to progress. The Senate just voted for the Keystone Pipeline.

Recent reports showing improvement in the economy, more jobs, and how we're coming out of the recession (depression) we've been in for six years.

My question is, how can anyone expect any progress when we accept a norm of disaster, war, economic collapse and six, ten, twenty years later we accept their version of progress

Best of all will be those who know only one thing for certain: that whatever else happens, as long as we live we shall have to live together with ourselves.

It's those who actually decide to not participate, even when attempts to force them, who are the ones who would not be able to live with themselves if they were complicit (by even remaining passive) in murder.

Much more reliable are the doubters and skeptics, not because skepticism and doubting is good or wholesome but because it at least entails examining things (called thinking) and making up one's own mind, rather than the more rigid moralists and standard bearers, including liberal minded ones who are relegated to accepting any framework of justice or action decided on by those they support who make decisions for them, whether it be state, religious, or another human authority

Once you commit yourself to accepting some limitations, there still shouldn’t be statutes erected to never return or move beyond what happens today. A loosely framed constitution that few primary principals (based on common and nearly universal, consensual sense) is the only basis for a society founded on the principals of freedom.

Hannah Arendt

 

 

It seems we have one choice between two indistinct prospects. To take off the burdensome yoke provided to us as workers, citizens, and consumers in a fouled system or continue to stand upon the gallows with an ever-present noose, initiated by climate change, government repression, and economic inequality, above our heads. So, it’s stop being cattle or chattel, or die ignobly. I don't think the violent overthrow of any government has been a working demonstration of successful change in the past nor will it be in the future simply because disarmament has to be one of the absolutes of any new government but I do acknowledge that all non-violent movements serious enough to threaten government will be met with violence on a unprecedented scale. This can’t be avoided so many will want to go the route of meeting violence with violence but what history has shown is that the new rulers when they assert their new power which has been gained by arms (with the masses behind them) don’t step aside but will turn their unprincipled guns on the discussion.

Marx and any of the thinkers who used history for their social formulations only had what was behind them, just like we only have what was in front of them and behind us. No more, no less.

 

 

The Ukraine is in shambles and disarray the country is ready to fall apart and probably will turn violent, and as usual, the people will suffer at the hands of an extreme right-wing party and a weak liberal base. This didn't just happen overnight. The leaning of the mob toward the west without regard for the fact that the EU is falling apart economically is a true mystery. While there are demonstrations throughout the EU nations about severe austerity measures it's as if the Ukrainians never heard or they still believe it will be easier to get cellphones with the EU than with Russia.

 

 

 

In any Fatherland, the revolution will only succeed when the people, more than the mob, unite under some common cause in such numbers that when violence does come, the nation will collapse, at great sacrifice to those who struggled, making it more important that the ongoing revolution become a true and permanent change. 

Permanent change as demonstrated by constant rehearsal and experimentation on dismantling the institutions of hate and replacing them with, not other institutions, but with real egalitarian and free ideals, upon which individuals have true choice. Choices that are realistic and not some upheaval of reality by usurping need for some sort of dream.

In communism, the old adage goes, if the country needed plumbers, one could be forced to become a plumber, but in America if the country needs plumbers, one is advised to become an engineer, then become a plumber when the economy is leaking and stopped up with shit. 

 

 

The police in Sacramento who detained a family in what the police believed was a stolen car, ordered them out at gunpoint, made them sit handcuffed in squad cars while they investigated and, then released them unapologetically when they realized it wasn’t the car they were looking for.

The gist of the police response from the enforcements side is that when people have issues with police procedure, such as being handcuffed, having guns drawn on them, and being put in squad cars to wait out a traumatic event, that people have to realize what a tough job law enforcement has, and that freedom isn’t free, and out of the thousands of calls police respond to, only a handful of complaints are registered.

There is no doubt that in this country law enforcement riding the coattails of military and intelligence carte blanc use of force has been accepted as the obedient stepchild in the war against our freedom, contrary to what those in power, call the war on terror, Dick Cheney, Rumsfeld, and Bush war on human nature.

The inherent contradiction we are being forced to abide by is that the police (read ‘the government’) says we must give up some freedom (to be determined by them) in order for law enforcement to provide a sense of total security whereas law enforcement itself doesn’t have to give up a little security in order to maintain freedom. We are all suspects, under all circumstances whereas before the ideal was always innocent until proven guilty. The standard has been put on its head.

 

Those who exact revenge don’t have any advantages over those who forgive, ( the vast majority will opt to take a middle ground, by defying injustice in whatever way they can. although it appears that doing one thing or the other is as natural as apple pie isn’t. Our prisons are based on this same principal as well as all law enforcement and military institutions: everything based on law, rules, and honor. It is the sheep strapping on the gun and becoming temporarily the lion or the lamb standing, baaing at the wolves. It is a remnant in our consciousness that both bodes well for those who foster superiority over intelligence and bodes bad for the future for all of us.

 

In a country where the two main issues are money and security there doesn't seem hope enough for young people. If I look around I think oh, there's a lot to do right here on earth, and I probably don't have time to do it all, but I'll try. However, when I think about the past, and my youth, it all looked pretty boring getting older. I can imagine that in this age where boredom comes fast and furious, about the only thing that gives a rush is violence. I smoked, took mild drugs and tried to have illicit sex, which was sex before marriage. Those were my thrills. And they were enough to take me into adulthood and to a point where I could say, they're no fun anymore. But what do you do when the thing that gives you a thrill is shooting people, either legitimately in the army, or at the bowling alley video game gallery or at the real bowling alley.

Who wants to be a plumber?

Let's face it. We want to believe that the young men who bombed the marathon are different than the ones who went into a classroom and killed children or who shot fellow students at Columbine. Name the atrocity and what you get are non-ideological killers who are more interested in the act than the reason for the act. 

In a land of freedom to discuss differences, the ennui that that particular freedom produces is buried under the fascination of simply acting on an impulse. That's where we are now. Our foreign policy mirrors the individual psychological impulsive nature of a sociopath. Is it any wonder the young will continue the terrorists war, based solely on non- ideological, sociopathological boredom with the world’s fastidiousness and national self- absorption.