Fear Itself

I was thinking about the moral quandary of "Dancing with the Devil" while reading a review of a book titled "Fear Itself; The New Deal and the Dark Origins of our Time" by Ira Katznelson and reviewed by Robert G. Kaiser. That book delves into the uneasy relationship that the people pursuing the new Deal had with Southern Racists, Fascists, and the Communist Joseph Stalin. I'm not suspicious about the book because it is well researched, but it also is part of an effort to rewrite history, and is funded by people whose purpose is to defame and degrade the memory of the New Deal. It chronicles just how much liberal efforts were distorted by and clouded by racism, and the need to accommodate Southern racists such as Senator Theadore Bilbo of Mississippi, who was a particularly virulent racist. It also highlights the USA flirtation with Mussolini, and the flight of Italo Balbo across the USA in 1933. All interesting and worth reading to fill in gaps in one's general knowledge; if one also reads other sources.

The book is worth reading, but it is important to note that the alliance between liberals and populists who included deeply socially conservative Southerners, dates to Woodrow Wilson, who came to office by adopting the plank of the progressives, but also when he came to office fired black postal workers and instituted Jim Crow in the Government. The fear also dates back to before 1933, way back, and is why anti-immigration laws were enacted in 1922.

For example, our involvement in World War I didn't play on our fears of Europeans, but of Mexicans; British spies and the Anglo-American press played up hamm handed efforts by the Prussians to instigate the Mexicans to wage a third Front in the American Southwest. Our involvement in Europe was directly related to our response to Pancho Villa and his terrorist raids on the USA side of the border. And that in turn reflected "Missionary Diplomacy" and the US effort to turn the rest of the Americas into a neo-colonial zone of influence dating back to McKinley [a republican]. And probably back to our first war with Mexico in 1848. Fear has always been a bi-partisan and profitable enterprise.

Interestingly the relatively progressive reviewer thinks that Katznelson is a liberal because of some comments he made about the Taft Hartley act. This doesn't really show that Katznelson is a liberal, but it does show how dominating the debate can shift the argument. Katznelson seems liberal because we don't know our history. So this book should be read critically, but it should also be read.

Dancing with the Devil under the pale moonlight

In the earlier version of the batman movie, the one where Jack Nicholson plays a convincing psycho "Joker"; Before he kills his victims the Joker would recite sometimes "have you ever danced with the Devil under the pale blue moon." This became a theme of the movie that was illustrated later in the movie when he forces Batman's love interest to dance with him while he is going postal on a Galla type party. I still see that metaphor as the moral quandary we all face. Whether we want to or not we are all dancing with the devil in our moral lives.

Morality is wrestling with choices. It is easy to pick morality out of a book, but even there the choices are stark. Is it really ethical to skewer a couple having sex for "worshipping Ba'al?" Did God really say to the Mormons that they were justified in attacking settlers passing through their territory on the way to California, because those settlers were "Amalek?" We can throw metaphysical Ink Pots at the devil, but that doesn't defeat evil. Evil manifests as delusion, illusion, and moral blinders on even great people. Those who give into their evil natures are often less evil in effect than the vegetarian new age Hitlers of the world, but are still evil. We all have to dance with the devil, at least until we see through our partners and recognize what we are dancing with -- and then we have choices that aren't always easy.

Delicious Cherries that Glow in the Dark

Delicious cherries that glow in the dark.
Eat them and you'll feel sickly, but maybe you won't die.
The poison will eat at you, make your muscles ache,
and if it's enough, you'll get nauseous and your hair will fall out.
But more likely, you'll just be entered in a sweepstakes;
for who will die of cancer in a few years.

I see them laughing and I shed some tears,
the cherries are delicious, but they don't know what they are doing.
It seems so easy, to take the money and run.
But the tears don't flow, until the consequences come.
It seems theoretical, statistical disease,
Until it is you on chemotherapy. 

By

Christopher H. Holte, 2/22/2013

Referring to:

http://enenews.com/american-students-featured-fukushima-propaganda-film-cherries-delicious-nuclear-power-plant-brought-together-fukushima-unchanged-day-video

Whale Song

Whale song

The world remembers,
and it sings it's song,
cries it's cries,
rising and falling; the whale song.
They hear it in space, they hear it in the sea.
Slow down the songs of mice,
and they hear it in the hay.
The whale song, and the chirping of birds,
speaks across universes, and makes a grand chorus.

Only humans are deaf.
They might hear, but they don't listen.
They hunt the whales across the seas.
and poison the birds falling off the trees.
Oh the deafness of this race.
that dreams of crossing outer space.
But if we don't learn to listen soon.
Will silently fall into evolutionary doom.

But the song of a content planet will be restored.
and nature will come back with singing adored.
The angels sing on high.
and as it is in heaven it is on earth.
and when I rest in my dusty home.
my bones turning to ashes,
and my life at an end.
I only hope I hear the whale sound at last.
No longer deaf, but merged with Universe.

Christopher H. Holte

Selfish Optimization and Tyranny

There is a relationship between corruption and tyranny. And what it is is "selfish optimization". Selfish optimization is when a system is optimized for the owners or the governors. This usually results in dysfunction, stove pipes, mis-allocation of resources, and both legal corruption and illegal corruption. It is also a manifestation of Tyranny as defined by John Locke who referred to the use of power for "private, separate advantage." Many of our problems come from selfishly optimized systems that are constituted with poor quality governments.

I've seen a lot of this in my IT work, but it is also a problem in the world around us at every level. Requirements gathering is essentially about setting the boundaries of a system. It's goals (finish line), and the capabilities needed to reach those goals. Bad requirements result in bad systems, but bad systems are usually the result of requirements that are poorly optimized, resulting in poorly functioning systems.

Selfish optimization is enabled by; excessive hierarchy -- giving those at the top of a totem pole too much power; Misallocation of ownership (or power over) resources which leads to excessive power over those resources and feeds back into even more misallocation and dysfunction as those with power deal with the consequences of their earlier misallocations and folks are pushed out of the system or oppressed by it.

Learning to Play together

Many conservatives argue that the principle that the best government is the least government. They rightly argue that direct democracy is only practical in small communities where the form of government is ad-hoc and people have no conflicts with neighbors. However, making government small enough to drown in a bathtub requires first creating a dictator who can be drowned there. Simple, abstract arguments are like a sheet of paper covered with vertical or horizontal lines. If the world were so simple all one would need to have integrity (to be integral) would be to color in the lines provided by the Ineffable, eternal, author. One color, one author, one sheet of paper, and the result not exactly exciting unless one pins a million dollar price tag to it and cons folks into thinking of it as abstract art.

The real world requires more creativity and vision. The ineffable one has provided a coloring book where sometimes we have to sometimes, collectively, draw our own lines and hope everyone agrees. But the difficulty is, we are all sharing the same coloring book, so no one person gets all the credit, and all authority is contingent on agreement, in the short run with the other humans present, and in the long run with that collective agreement we label with the term "God." The lines we draw on our four dimensional paper have to be drawn in coordination with others. Oppression is taking so much space on the paper that others can't draw anything. Tyranny is not letting others draw, or forcing them to draw ugly things using violence. We have to learn to play together. Success in this society requires both individual initiative, and the willingness and ability to play together.

This is because the lines that separate and join our destiny often intersect. If most of us would prefer a race track to getting to our goals, real life is more like a demolition derby -- the tracks intersect in ways that are inconvenient to everyone. Half a second divides success from failure because people often are in conflict over the crayons we need to draw our lives. "Competition" is our efforts to put a dress on Ares and call him Athena. We inherit from the Greeks a certain sophisticated hypocrisy. If we want a better world we have to work together.

In this world everyone needs the opportunity to be his or her best self. The world is like a mural, where we can find our own space if we are willing to give space to others. The wisdom of the right to property is about when to protect that right. and when a person must relinquish that right.

Property rights are like a highway. We all have them. We are supposed to stay 1-7 car lengths behind the cars ahead of us, and avoid crashing into others. When the world turns into a mish mash of crossing lines we have to respect the stop signs and know when to stop. Libertarianism errs when it becomes a mouthpiece for children who want to own all the crayons and force people to draw their arbitrary ideas -- or when they reject the teachers. Without communitarianism and mutual respect the world becomes a demolition derby. Without individual rights it becomes a mob and the mural becomes something dark and ugly, while the highway piles up with crashed and broken cars.

The Child of Spring

The child of spring,

bounces over pastures

dances with the birds,

smiles with the sun

The child of spring,

cries with the rain,

shivers in the morning dew,

and changes his diapers from brown to green.

The child of spring,

has hair of green grasses

Festooned with dew drops,

shimmering in the morning sun.

The Child of spring,

has shining blue eyes,

Where little birds dance and sing.

and one can enter into their dream.

I love the child of spring,

Fat with birth and rain,

Reborn from winters cold and ice

Green spring grows out of him.

Warmth out of pain.

Christopher H. Holte, written in 80's.