Tuesday, September 13, 2016

It's the Village that Counts, not the Pitch





 It's the Village that Counts, not the Pitch



Benito Mussolini




The curse of the Enlightenment on Western values is that there is something called reason, rationality, and logic which govern action.   If an argument is not reasonable, irrational or illogical, it is invalid, and inapplicable.  Its underlying assumption is that everything is reducible into measurable, relevant, consistent and accurate labels for reality, that can be consistently added, subtracted, contrasted, combined, allocated, dispersed, and/or measured to good use.   

Descartes didn’t know ducks. The Irrationality of Reason





It is concentrated into what is called, mental as in conscious, subconscious, and unconscious manipulations in a lump of nerves called the brain (cerebral cortex).  Were that true, decapitation would be an irritation.  Were that true, an erection would be irrelevant, and the flu clueless.  One cannot have a head without a tail.  And that includes the Autonomic Nervous as an example of one of many biological systems networked to keep us alive and kicking.




Or the need for “Stifficade”:

The central function in all life is to survive, day to day, and generation to generation.  Breed and Feed, Dinner and a Date, Laid and Paid, and to ensure that, species develop Roles, Rules and Tools to make that happen.  Failure is starvation or extinction.

And that requires an audience of a critical mass of male and females who breed a critical mass of children to survive to puberty.  And that’s a family, and a village of families who have Roles, Rules and Tools to survive.  From the outside, the village is the audience. 
The Eternal Drama between Victim, Rescuer and Prosecutor

And some villages aren’t listening, some have heard it all, and others soak it up like a Magical Elixir (Beer).  This we have in terrorism, radical polarization, and drug addiction. Depending how the Rules and Tools serve the Roles related to Survival (Village wise).
Rules applicable to all forms of life, coded in culture and DNA.
 The core of the Trump audience is made of the inheritors of the Scot Irish driven from Scotland to Ireland to Appalachia because they didn’t listen to the arrogant, erudite, socially elite, and utterly corrupt.  The more erudite, arrogant, and elitist the arguments are, the more corrupt they must be.

17th Century Version of the MBA


And some villages, like families are dysfunctional and/or broken into competing parts.  The street gang, the drug den, high schools, corporations, and political parties are part family, part village, and a part of something else.  The more arrogant, erudite, and elitist the arguments be, the battered and beaten shoot back at. 



Selling soap to the Unwashed is problematic.  Selling the Oxymoronic eventually reaches Cognitive Dissonance, and every once in a while, Rage.  Selling the notion that some people are more equal than others became normalized about 1984. Orwell is crying.  The village is dying.



The Pitchfork and Torches are marching.  

ISIS

OBTW - Watch the body language which language is far more effective than words.

Mussolini

Trump












Sunday, September 4, 2016

The Nuts & Bolts of the Declaration of Independence.





Drafting the Declaration


Drafting the wording


The Nuts and Bolts of the Declaration of Independence

The usual attention paid to the Declaration of Independence is upon the stirring words declaring tyranny of the King and for Independence.  These, however, are the specific charges listed, and from which the Constitution was carefully written to deal with these.  It is worth the effort to trace these charges to the provisions in the Constitution that were intended to preclude the same:



He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.

He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.

He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.

He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.

He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.

He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the Legislative powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the meantime exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.
If it had all failed, perhapos....


He has endeavored to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.

He has obstructed the Administration of Justice, by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary powers.

He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.

He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people, and eat out their substance.

He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.

He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil power.

He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:

For Quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:
QUARTERING TROOPS IN HOMES

For protecting them, by a mock Trial, from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:


LEXINGTON

For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:

For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:

For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of Trial by Jury:

For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences
THE CONTINENTALS

For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighboring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies:

For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws, and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:

For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.

He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.
He has plundered our seas, ravaged our Coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.
THE HESSIANS


He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to complete the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.

He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.


TORIES AND HESSIANS

He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavored to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.


RECRUITING INDIANS

In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

YORKTOWN