Sometimes I can barely stand it. It’s exasperating, and it’s tragic. It’s the worst tragedy in the history of the human race. And since I don’t have a time machine, there’s nothing I can do to fix the mistakes of the past. I can only work on the present.
As best as I can figure, the human race is about 1500 years behind where it should be. We should be as advanced, right now in the year 2001, as we will be in 3501. And that might be an understatement. Maybe we should be as advanced as the year 5000.
Why aren’t we there? What has held us back? It’s not true government – not if government would stay minimal and unobtrusive and do its real job, protecting, as John Locke wrote, "life, liberty and property." Then there would be peace and prosperity, advancement and achievement. It’s when government goes beyond its proper boundaries and turns into what Albert Jay Nock called, "Our Enemy, the State." The freedom-crushing, society-destroying, empire-building, rights-violating, war-starting, poverty-creating State. The State that always destroys, because that is its unalterable nature.
With the State opposed to Civilization (as it is always opposed to Civilization), it’s not just two steps forward, one step back – it’s 500 years forward, a thousand years back, then 500 years forward again. If the State is anything, it’s Sisyphus, the greedy king condemned forever to Hades, where he rolls a rock up a hill so it can roll right back down again.
Richard Maybury, in his book, Ancient Rome, notes there is a Roman grist mill near Arles, France that has 16 water wheels operating in tandem and a system of gears and grinders so complex it could produce enough flour for 80,000 people.
"This kind of engineering sophistication leads me to believe Roman civilization was on the brink of the Industrial Revolution 15 centuries before this revolution finally happened," he writes.
It wasn’t just that one flour mill that lends credibility to his beliefs. Roman buildings had central heating, plumbing, baths, glass windows, mosiac tile floors, and plastered and painted walls. Roman civilization had advanced engineering, mathematics, literature and philosophy.
A lot of what we have today, the Romans had thousands of years ago.
If the Romans really were on the verge of the Industrial Revolution – but failed – then the loss to us is incalculable.
What produced their advanced society? The only things that can create a properous, peaceful society – political liberty and economic freedom. What destroyed them? Giving up that liberty, and expanding the State. Giving up personal freedom for an always-false security. Going from a Republic to an Empire, with its crushing taxes, inflation, regulation and wars. Citizens going from being adults to being children. Just as is happening in the U.S. today.
After the Roman Empire collapsed (as all empires collapse) Europe entered the Dark Ages for 500 years. It went backwards a thousand years. The majority of the population didn’t live any better in 500 A.D. than they did in 500 B.C.
This is a catastrophe that is still with us today.
The last time a culture succeeded in establishing economic and political freedom was in 1776. If you look around you, you’ll find that almost everything that has been invented, has been invented in the last 200 years, because of that freedom.
Planes, trains and automobiles. Surgery with anesthesia. Computers and video games. Dentistry where you don’t have to get drunk and have your friends hold you down. TV, movies, CDs. Cheap, plentiful food and clean, free water. An 8-hour workday with weekends off, instead of break-breaking labor 12 hours a day six days a week, so you could live in a too-hot or too-cold hovel, barely have enough to eat, and die in your early 40’s. Vacations. RVs. Air-conditioning. Retirement. Dentures. The list unrolls and unrolls.
And what has the State given us? War, inflation, deficits, recessions, depressions, conscription, slavery, genocide. Widows and orphans. Fathers burying their sons instead of the other way around. The few times the State has done something right, it’s the same reason a stopped clock is occasionally right. If the State was a private business, it would always be fired.
And now the U.S. is following in the footsteps of Rome. History repeats. "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it," wrote Santayana. Scary, but true. As the empire grows, political and economic liberty is diminished at home. It’s as much a law of the universe as gravity. The end result if we stay on this road? It’s obvious. The only unknown is when. And if America – the "last, best hope" – falls, where in the world can political and economic freedom arise again? China, India, Russia? A Europe that is now rushing to embrace socialism and possibly fascism?
Where would we be now if early attempts at freedom and capitalism had succeeded permanently? If wars hadn’t slaughtered hundreds of millions of people and delayed the inventions they would have created? If 100 million to 200 million hadn’t died in the 20th-century in the rabid attempts of States to found Empires? We can only imagine.
Modern humans go back a long way. What if we had entered the Industrial Revolution in 2000 B.C.? There’s no logical reason we couldn’t have. People then were as smart as we are now. That’s what I mean by 3501 possibly being an understatement. Maybe we should be in the year 5000.
Even if we still should be in 3501, what would it be like? I’d bet we’d have cures for all diseases. We’d be growing body parts in tanks. Lose an eye or an arm? Okay, here’s another. The blind would see, the crippled would walk, and the deaf could again annoy listeners on AM radio.
We’d have space stations. Colonies on the Moon and Mars. Maybe we’d be out among the stars. Star Trek wouldn’t just be a TV program (I’d like the phasers, but I’d pass on the transporters, thank you). Maybe we would have developed unlimited sources of power, straight from the fabric of the universe. Maybe we’d have personal force-fields to protect us, powered by something the size of a walnut. The only limits are our imagination and creativity.
And we should have all of this right now.
Personally, I’m a bit more modest. I just wish I had a flying car. One of the first stories I ever read was Robert A. Heinlein’s "Waldo." One of the characters gets in his car, starts it...and flies to the Moon. I looked at my parents’ VW Bug, looked at the full Moon, looked at the car again, and thought, "Darn." I was maybe 12.
Today, every time I look at the Moon, I wonder what it would be like to hop in my car, travel there for the weekend and hit golfballs.
As I said, sometimes I can barely stand it.
Sunday, March 30, 2008
Sunday, March 23, 2008
The Childishness of Political Adulation
The human race has a tendency to idolize and defend its leaders no matter how bad they are. This adulation of its political leaders is childish, not adult. Since it is childish, it is dangerous. It reminds me of when children claim, "My dad can beat up your dad!" (The best retort I ever read to that was, "Yeah, so what? So can my mom!")
When Clinton was in office, Republicans could see clearly what he was, and what he is: lying, thieving, adulterous trailer trash. A psychopathic serial sexual predator who sold nuclear secrets to the Chinese. Yet Democrats praised him as almost the Second Coming of Christ. And still do.
But now that Bush in is office, Republicans can't see what he is: a brain-damaged ex-drunk (which is why he can't speak coherently) who never had a legitimate job in his life. He has in my opinion a completely worthless degree (an MBA), but couldn't get it in less than nine years, even though his way through college was paid for and he didn't have to work a day. He went AWOL from the military. He was taken in for drunken driving. His expansion of the government is worthy of the worst of Democrats, yet Republicans defend him. He has incompetent advisors, like Cheney, Rumsfeld, Perle and Wolfowitz, but is apparently too dense to see them for what they are. He is stumbling into World War III, but doesn't have a clue as to what he is doing. Yet Republicans praise Dubya as a great leader. He is better than Clinton, who may be evil, but Dubya is mediocre at best.
This adulation has happened throughout history. People defended Hitler, Stalin, and Mao Tse-Tung, even though they were some of history's worst mass murderers. And I'm sure that every horrible leader in the past has had many people defend him. Then the populace follows him like sheep into war, famine, death and pestilence.
What gives here? Why this adulation, this idealization, this idolization? My best guess is that since all people are imperfect, this is something in them that is eternally childish. It wants to give up self-responsibility and let Daddy and Mommy take care of them. This makes sense, since the traditional Right is Daddy and the traditional Left is Mommy. Much of politics and "government" is about people giving up responsibility for themselves to other people. And children, unfortunately, often idealize their parents. Hence, "My dad can beat up your dad!"
The problem with this adulation of leaders and the attempt to give up self-responsibility is that it never works. All you have to do is look at history of the State, to see why war, famine, death and pestilence are called the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. If the State is anything, it's Satanic. And most politicians, drunk with their demonic lust for power, and utterly secure in their belief in their moral and intellectual superiority over the benighted masses, are the people we let rule us?
When people start idolizing their leaders and trying to trade their liberty for a fake security from Mommy and Daddy, the results will always be destructive. If the masses of people were truly adult, there would hardly be any government at all. It would be a minimal government that would defend what it's supposed to defend – life, liberty and property.
Liberty is apparently a scary thing, and many people try to give it up as fast as they can, even if they don't know they're doing it. But, as Benjamin Franklin commented, "They that give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty or safety." Not only don't deserve it, but will never have it, not when the children are idolizing a Daddy and Mommy that work for the Devil.
Dostoevsky understood this desire of the human race to give up its liberty and self-responsibility very well. In the famous "Grand Inquisitor" scene in The Brothers Karamazov he has the Inquisitor say, "For centuries...we have been wrestling with...freedom, but now it is ended and over for good." He was commenting on the fact that many people want to give up their freedom to "authority," an authority that they often idealize and defend even if it kills them. The Inquisitor goes so far as to claim, "they have brought their freedom to us and laid it humbly at our feet."
We've been trying to get back in, to give up our liberty, our maturity, and our self-responsibility. And we've been trying to do it through that Evil Thing known as the State, a thing run not by some idealized Mommy and Daddy, but by people who are just as imperfect – maybe more imperfect – as everyone else.
When Clinton was in office, Republicans could see clearly what he was, and what he is: lying, thieving, adulterous trailer trash. A psychopathic serial sexual predator who sold nuclear secrets to the Chinese. Yet Democrats praised him as almost the Second Coming of Christ. And still do.
But now that Bush in is office, Republicans can't see what he is: a brain-damaged ex-drunk (which is why he can't speak coherently) who never had a legitimate job in his life. He has in my opinion a completely worthless degree (an MBA), but couldn't get it in less than nine years, even though his way through college was paid for and he didn't have to work a day. He went AWOL from the military. He was taken in for drunken driving. His expansion of the government is worthy of the worst of Democrats, yet Republicans defend him. He has incompetent advisors, like Cheney, Rumsfeld, Perle and Wolfowitz, but is apparently too dense to see them for what they are. He is stumbling into World War III, but doesn't have a clue as to what he is doing. Yet Republicans praise Dubya as a great leader. He is better than Clinton, who may be evil, but Dubya is mediocre at best.
This adulation has happened throughout history. People defended Hitler, Stalin, and Mao Tse-Tung, even though they were some of history's worst mass murderers. And I'm sure that every horrible leader in the past has had many people defend him. Then the populace follows him like sheep into war, famine, death and pestilence.
What gives here? Why this adulation, this idealization, this idolization? My best guess is that since all people are imperfect, this is something in them that is eternally childish. It wants to give up self-responsibility and let Daddy and Mommy take care of them. This makes sense, since the traditional Right is Daddy and the traditional Left is Mommy. Much of politics and "government" is about people giving up responsibility for themselves to other people. And children, unfortunately, often idealize their parents. Hence, "My dad can beat up your dad!"
The problem with this adulation of leaders and the attempt to give up self-responsibility is that it never works. All you have to do is look at history of the State, to see why war, famine, death and pestilence are called the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. If the State is anything, it's Satanic. And most politicians, drunk with their demonic lust for power, and utterly secure in their belief in their moral and intellectual superiority over the benighted masses, are the people we let rule us?
When people start idolizing their leaders and trying to trade their liberty for a fake security from Mommy and Daddy, the results will always be destructive. If the masses of people were truly adult, there would hardly be any government at all. It would be a minimal government that would defend what it's supposed to defend – life, liberty and property.
Liberty is apparently a scary thing, and many people try to give it up as fast as they can, even if they don't know they're doing it. But, as Benjamin Franklin commented, "They that give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty or safety." Not only don't deserve it, but will never have it, not when the children are idolizing a Daddy and Mommy that work for the Devil.
Dostoevsky understood this desire of the human race to give up its liberty and self-responsibility very well. In the famous "Grand Inquisitor" scene in The Brothers Karamazov he has the Inquisitor say, "For centuries...we have been wrestling with...freedom, but now it is ended and over for good." He was commenting on the fact that many people want to give up their freedom to "authority," an authority that they often idealize and defend even if it kills them. The Inquisitor goes so far as to claim, "they have brought their freedom to us and laid it humbly at our feet."
We've been trying to get back in, to give up our liberty, our maturity, and our self-responsibility. And we've been trying to do it through that Evil Thing known as the State, a thing run not by some idealized Mommy and Daddy, but by people who are just as imperfect – maybe more imperfect – as everyone else.
The Most Powerful and Awful Spell of All
Psst. C'mere. I'm going to let you in on a little secret. Want to know the most powerful and awful spell of all, one that can be used to send millions of people to war like sheep going over a cliff? Oh, you do? Okay, here it is:
"All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism, and exposing the country to greater danger."
What? you ask. That's it? That's all there is to it? Yep, that's it. Those 27 words, that short spell is really all you need to know to know to start paroxyms of war.
That spell is from Herman Goering, Nazi Minister of Propaganda. If you want to know that whole quote, here's what he said:
"Of course the people don't want war. But after all, it's the leaders of the country who determine the policy, and it's always a simple matter to drag the people along whether it's a democracy, a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism, and exposing the country to greater danger."
Why do I call what he said a spell? That word, "spell," literally means "to talk," or "tale." I certainly don't believe in toe of dog, wing of bat, or Love Potion Number Nine for that matter, but it's not even debatable that spells exist. People can be enchanted, or better yet, ensorcelled, if they are susceptible to it, by mere words. The point is moot.
If you don't believe me, all you have to do is watch Triumph of the Will, and you'll see how Hitler, one of the most hypnotic speakers ever, walked through a crowd of hundreds of thousands of people who parted before him like the Red Sea when Charleton Heston waved his staff. He had literally ensorcelled those poor, deluded and willing fools. He had cast a spell on them, and this was in the 20th Century.
You want to know how to make people susceptible to falling for the Goering spell? You tell them they are the Good Guys, ones being attacked by slavering evil homicidal maniacs who, like the Terminator, will not stop in their attempts to wipe the Good Guys off the face of the earth. Those defined as the enemy also must always be defined as evil. That's worth repeating: they must be defined as evil. Not mistaken, not deluded, but mad-dog drooling crazy evil.
If you want to see something illuminating, just look at any fairy tale in which the village is under attack by a fire-breathing dragon. What always happens? The villagers band together to fight the dragon. If anyone was to say, "Hey, it's not a real dragon, just a paper mache' one," he'd be attacked as deluded, crazy, or traitorous. "Hey, what's wrong with you? Are you on the side of the dragon? If you don't like it here, why don't you leave the village, huh?"
People's response to this particular spell is so predictable I consider it a law of human nature. In some ways the whole thing is just too darn funny. It's also a heart-wrenching tragedy, but then, that which is a tragedy in real life is quite often funny in your imagination. Chang and Eng, that's the relationship between humor and horror. The Three Stooges are funny on the screen, but who would want to deal with their catastrophes in life? Not me.
Call me afflicted with a terminal case of daffiness, but I see no evidence the people on this big round world of ours are any different than those of, say, 10,000 BC, pace our SUVS and cellphones. We do all of the same Sodom-and-Gomorrah badness, only intensified through the Cooper's Law of high technology, and not an iota more of the same goodness in spite of the Sermon on the Mount. The latter of which we mostly give lip service, anyway.
We even believe in Hoodoo Men, only now we call them "intellectuals." They try to cast a spell on the susceptible, telling them they are under attack by dragons, ones who will eat everything in the village, men, women, old folks, children, dogs, cats, goats. And the villagers can only be saved if they listen to the Hoodoo Men and put their spells into effect with missiles and machine guns.
I can tell you the names of some modern-day Hoodoo Men: Max Boot, William Kristol, Norman Podhoretz, David Frum, William Bennett, Richard Perle, Paul Wolfowitz, Victor Davis Hanson. All are trying to convince us we are under attack not by people, but by horror-story monsters.
It's the old story of absolute good and absolute evil. In reality it's a continuum, but reality's no good for conning people and starting wars. The first thing Hoodoo Men have to do is say good is right here, with us, and bad is over there, with them, with those defined as the enemy.
That's how you can recognize Hoodoo Men. Whether wittingly or unwittingly, they always use the concepts of an absolute good and an absolute evil, with nothing in-between. Otherwise, it wouldn't be possible to create dragons.
It's what Hoodoo Men Richard Perle and David Frum did in their book, An End to Evil, when they claimed the United States is good, and those who pose a threat, current or future, are evil and must be neutralized or destroyed. See what they're doing? They're the ones defining what is good and evil, and what is a threat. It's because they're smarter, more aware, and probably more moral than everyone else. In their minds, at least.
Easy, isn't it? If those two nitwits really believe what they wrote, then they obviously believe the whole world is a children's fairy tale, one populated by heroic wizards and people-eating monsters. And if there aren't any monsters out there, then let's create one. Or if there's anything out there sleeping that might pass for a monster, let's kick it over and over until it wakes up. Clowns like them aren't even good Hoodoo Men; it's way too easy to see through them. If they were magicians, the cards would fly out of their hands in front of the audience.
There's one other thing that Hoodoo Men believe in besides absolute good and evil: murder. They exult in it, they exalt it. In their minds, since they dealing with monsters it's okay to rub them out. They ignore the fact monsters only exist in horror stories.
Of course, they never want to get their hands bloody; that's the job of the spell-bound sheeple as they fall off the cliff into piles that get larger and larger.
The problem with people ultimately is not that they are stupid or evil. They're asleep, and don't even know it. They think they're awake. As Rousseau, for all of his insanity, once wisely said: "One is misled not by what he does not know but by what he believes he knows."
Sometimes I just can't believe it. It's the year 2005 and we still fall for spells, cast by incompetents? And monsters, too, apparently, even if we have to make them up.
"All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism, and exposing the country to greater danger."
What? you ask. That's it? That's all there is to it? Yep, that's it. Those 27 words, that short spell is really all you need to know to know to start paroxyms of war.
That spell is from Herman Goering, Nazi Minister of Propaganda. If you want to know that whole quote, here's what he said:
"Of course the people don't want war. But after all, it's the leaders of the country who determine the policy, and it's always a simple matter to drag the people along whether it's a democracy, a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism, and exposing the country to greater danger."
Why do I call what he said a spell? That word, "spell," literally means "to talk," or "tale." I certainly don't believe in toe of dog, wing of bat, or Love Potion Number Nine for that matter, but it's not even debatable that spells exist. People can be enchanted, or better yet, ensorcelled, if they are susceptible to it, by mere words. The point is moot.
If you don't believe me, all you have to do is watch Triumph of the Will, and you'll see how Hitler, one of the most hypnotic speakers ever, walked through a crowd of hundreds of thousands of people who parted before him like the Red Sea when Charleton Heston waved his staff. He had literally ensorcelled those poor, deluded and willing fools. He had cast a spell on them, and this was in the 20th Century.
You want to know how to make people susceptible to falling for the Goering spell? You tell them they are the Good Guys, ones being attacked by slavering evil homicidal maniacs who, like the Terminator, will not stop in their attempts to wipe the Good Guys off the face of the earth. Those defined as the enemy also must always be defined as evil. That's worth repeating: they must be defined as evil. Not mistaken, not deluded, but mad-dog drooling crazy evil.
If you want to see something illuminating, just look at any fairy tale in which the village is under attack by a fire-breathing dragon. What always happens? The villagers band together to fight the dragon. If anyone was to say, "Hey, it's not a real dragon, just a paper mache' one," he'd be attacked as deluded, crazy, or traitorous. "Hey, what's wrong with you? Are you on the side of the dragon? If you don't like it here, why don't you leave the village, huh?"
People's response to this particular spell is so predictable I consider it a law of human nature. In some ways the whole thing is just too darn funny. It's also a heart-wrenching tragedy, but then, that which is a tragedy in real life is quite often funny in your imagination. Chang and Eng, that's the relationship between humor and horror. The Three Stooges are funny on the screen, but who would want to deal with their catastrophes in life? Not me.
Call me afflicted with a terminal case of daffiness, but I see no evidence the people on this big round world of ours are any different than those of, say, 10,000 BC, pace our SUVS and cellphones. We do all of the same Sodom-and-Gomorrah badness, only intensified through the Cooper's Law of high technology, and not an iota more of the same goodness in spite of the Sermon on the Mount. The latter of which we mostly give lip service, anyway.
We even believe in Hoodoo Men, only now we call them "intellectuals." They try to cast a spell on the susceptible, telling them they are under attack by dragons, ones who will eat everything in the village, men, women, old folks, children, dogs, cats, goats. And the villagers can only be saved if they listen to the Hoodoo Men and put their spells into effect with missiles and machine guns.
I can tell you the names of some modern-day Hoodoo Men: Max Boot, William Kristol, Norman Podhoretz, David Frum, William Bennett, Richard Perle, Paul Wolfowitz, Victor Davis Hanson. All are trying to convince us we are under attack not by people, but by horror-story monsters.
It's the old story of absolute good and absolute evil. In reality it's a continuum, but reality's no good for conning people and starting wars. The first thing Hoodoo Men have to do is say good is right here, with us, and bad is over there, with them, with those defined as the enemy.
That's how you can recognize Hoodoo Men. Whether wittingly or unwittingly, they always use the concepts of an absolute good and an absolute evil, with nothing in-between. Otherwise, it wouldn't be possible to create dragons.
It's what Hoodoo Men Richard Perle and David Frum did in their book, An End to Evil, when they claimed the United States is good, and those who pose a threat, current or future, are evil and must be neutralized or destroyed. See what they're doing? They're the ones defining what is good and evil, and what is a threat. It's because they're smarter, more aware, and probably more moral than everyone else. In their minds, at least.
Easy, isn't it? If those two nitwits really believe what they wrote, then they obviously believe the whole world is a children's fairy tale, one populated by heroic wizards and people-eating monsters. And if there aren't any monsters out there, then let's create one. Or if there's anything out there sleeping that might pass for a monster, let's kick it over and over until it wakes up. Clowns like them aren't even good Hoodoo Men; it's way too easy to see through them. If they were magicians, the cards would fly out of their hands in front of the audience.
There's one other thing that Hoodoo Men believe in besides absolute good and evil: murder. They exult in it, they exalt it. In their minds, since they dealing with monsters it's okay to rub them out. They ignore the fact monsters only exist in horror stories.
Of course, they never want to get their hands bloody; that's the job of the spell-bound sheeple as they fall off the cliff into piles that get larger and larger.
The problem with people ultimately is not that they are stupid or evil. They're asleep, and don't even know it. They think they're awake. As Rousseau, for all of his insanity, once wisely said: "One is misled not by what he does not know but by what he believes he knows."
Sometimes I just can't believe it. It's the year 2005 and we still fall for spells, cast by incompetents? And monsters, too, apparently, even if we have to make them up.
Modern-Day Hoodoo Men
"A nation can survive its fools, and even the ambitious.
But it cannot survive treason from within....
the traitor moves amongst those within the gate freely, his sly whispers rustling through all the alleys,
heard in the very halls of government itself."
-- Cicero
Call me afflicted with a terminal case of daffiness, but I see no evidence the people on this big round world of ours are any different than those of, say, 1,000,000 BC, except we've got SUVS and cell phones instead of Raquel Welch in a fur bikini. We do all of the same Sodom-and-Gomorrah badness, only intensified through the Cooper's Law of high technology, and not an iota more of the same goodness in spite of the Sermon on the Mount. The latter of which we mostly give lip service, anyway.
We believe in the same things our ancestors did, though we give those things different names. We snicker at Babylonian sooth-sayers who examined the livers of animals for clues to the future, but just how different are they from the nitwits churning thousands of pages of fantasies from the hallucinatory Book of Revelation, desperately looking for clues when Jesus is going to return so He can convert Jews and rub out Muslims? What an achievement. I'm impressed in advance of His return.
In the past certain people were called witchdoctors; today the foolish call them intellectuals. I call them Hoodoo Men. And like all Hoodoo Men they know, to use a quote from Oscar Wilde, "the price of everything and the value of nothing."
In some ways the whole thing is just too damn funny. It's also a heart-wrenching tragedy, but then, that which is a tragedy in real life is quite often funny in your imagination. Chang and Eng, that's the relationship between humor and horror. The Three Stooges are funny on the screen, but who would want to deal with their FUBAR catastrophes in life? Not me.
People keep repeating the same mistakes over and over, and they just never learn. You know why? It's not because they're stupid or evil. They're asleep, just like all those Buddhists and Hindus and Christian mystics have been complaining for hundreds if not thousands of years. "Hey wake up! Maybe then you'll be able to tell the difference between God and the devil, because you sure can't do it now!"
You can take the same dangerous goofiness from thousands of years ago and map it on today and it'll fit perfectly. Not only can we take all those Hoodoo Men and witchdoctors from the past and call them the intellectuals of today, we can also take charms and talismans and amulets and and mojo bags and find the same exact things today. So we don't really have much business laughing at "primitives." We're them.
That name, "Hoodoo Man," has stuck with me since I first heard it years ago. It's a Southern/country term, apparently only vaguely related to the similar word, "voodoo." Voodoo is an established religion; hoodoo can have religious overtones, but must not necessarily have them.
A Hoodoo Man is one who uses spells to try to enchant people to get them to do what he wants. You may laugh at someone who tries to cast spells to Win Friends and Influence People, but if you do, you're making a great big mistake.
The word "spell" literally means "to talk," or "tale." A Hoodoo Man is one who attempts to cast a spell through words directed at other people, in order to enchant them so they'll do what the Hoodoo Man wants. Simple, huh?
I certainly don't believe in toe of dog or wing of bat, or Love Potion Number Nine for that matter, but I do believe it's not even a matter for debate that words can be used to enchant people. Spells do exist. The point is not moot. All you have to do is watch Triumph of the Will, and you'll see how Hitler, one of the most hypnotic speakers ever, walked through a crowd of hundreds of thousands of people, who parted before him like Charleton Heston waving his staff at the Red Sea. He had literally ensorcelled these poor, deluded, frightened and willing fools, had cast a spell on them. And this was in the 20th Century.
And we all know what happened to Germany after it fell under Hitler's spell.
You may not consider Hitler to have been an "intellectual," but he was no dummy. I've heard him described as "half genius, half insane," a definition that is the best I've ever encountered. And as Mein Kampf makes clear, he had a way with words, whether written or spoken. He was one of the premier Hoodoo Men of the 20th Century.
It wasn't just Hitler. There was Stalin, and Mao Tse-Tung, and Pol Pot. They just didn't grab hold of the machinery of the State and start rubbing people out with it. I guarantee you there was a huge mass of people who supported them, who had fallen under their spells. That's why they're called sheeple. Because they are, the pitiful sleep-walking ninnies.
Hoodoo Men exist on a smaller scale, too. David Koresh, anyone? And with Koresh -- and the other aforementioned monsters for that matter -- we find another truth: Hoodoo Men not only seek power over the lives of others, they quite often use religion to justify it.
So what do we have so far? Hoodoo Men often drape their power-seeking over others with religious trappings. They try to cast spells by the use of words, to ensorcel the susceptible masses, to get them to do what the Hoodoo Men want.
There are some other things involved, too. Whether modern-day Hoodoo Men believe in it or not, they use the concepts of an absolute good and an absolute evil, with nothing in-between. In reality good and evil are a continuum, but reality is no good for conning the sheeple into willingly toppling over a cliff. The sheeple have to believe there is good over here and bad over there, with nothing in-between.
Why? Because when Hoodoo Men use that particular spell, the sheeple always believe they are the Good Guys and those defined as the enemy are the Bad Guys, Bad Guys completely bereft of good as any of Lovecraft's Elder Gods. Being bad, indeed positively evil, they have to be rubbed out, otherwise, being the slavering homicidal maniacs that they are portrayed as, they, like the Terminator, will not stop in their attempts to wipe the Good Guys off the face of the earth.
That spell will always work on the susceptible, of which there are way too many. That spell has been cast so many times in the past I consider it a law of human nature as to how people will respond to it. It's one of the most powerful and awful spells that exist, perhaps the most awful one of all, one that led to the deaths of up to 200 million people during the 20th Century.
Herman Goering understood that spell. At the Nuremberg trials he said, "Of course the people don't want war. But after all, it's the leaders of the country who determine the policy, and it's always a simple matter to drag the people along whether it's a democracy, a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism, and exposing the country to greater danger."
Tell the sheeple they are the Good Guys being attacked by the Bad Guys, and every time away they will go straight over the cliff, sometimes by the millions. It's just simply astonishing how easy it is.
An example of this false division into pure good and pure evil is the book, An End to Evil, by Hoodoo Men Richard Perle and David Frum. It's a purely nitwitted book, one worthy only as a doorstop and one anyone with an dollop of sense can see straight through. But since the rubes can't see through it, well then, they're another story.
See how the con works? It's the words, "an end to evil." It sounds so utopian, doesn't it? But it's a red flag. It's always a red flag. If the evil isn't destroyed, they tell us, otherwise it will destroy the good.
Maybe evil can't be destroyed, though. It never has been in the past, that's for sure. If it exists, the only place it exists in is every human heart, in every person How are you going to destroy something like that, unless you kill everyone?
Perhaps evil doesn't even exist. If it's defined as the absence of good, how do you destroy something that isn't there? Instead, I'd say the closest definition of evil is that it is hubris, arrogance, blindness. What the Bible calls "pride," as in the misquotation, "Pride goes before a fall." The Greeks noticed the same thing: hubris is followed by nemesis. I'd say the idea you can get rid of evil, however defined, is not only one of the finest examples of hubris there is, I'd say it's a type of insanity, too.
The fact that evil can't be destroyed, if indeed it really exists, doesn't matter. What matters is that the enemy always has to be defined as evil. Not mistaken, not deluded, but out-and-out dead crazy drooling murdering evil. It's a sure bet they will always be portrayed as monstrous as the Martians in The War of the Worlds, vaporizing everything in their path with those cobra-headed Death Machines of theirs.
Monsters, as we all know, are not-humans, so it's okay to bump them off by the basketful. That's the first thing all militaries do to soldiers: tell them the enemy isn't human, instead are monsters. It's the basis of all propaganda, too. The Germans spit babies on bayonets in WWI! The Iraqis dumped babies out of incubators during Desert Storm! Only none of it happened, not a bit of it; all of it was propaganda, to the last drop. But the sheeple will fall for it every time.
Monsters, contrary to the beliefs of the Hoodoo Man and the sheeple, exist only in horror stories. But that doesn't matter, not when it comes to the con. People might as well believe that vampires or zombies or werewolves really exist. For all practical purpose, they already do. Only the names have changed. Those guys who went from being husbands and students and cab drivers to spitting those non-existent babies? What were they portrayed as, if not werewolves?
All horror stories have the same structure, or if you want to be a bit more academic about it, the same archetype: good attacked by evil, order attacked by chaos, wholeness attacked by unwholeness. Of course, horror stories wouldn't exist unless they first existed in reality. Art imitates life, as it always does. Sometimes, life imitates art.
It's not for nothing that fictional Hoodoo Men only exist in horror stories. Even so, real Hoodoo Men use that horror archetype to terrify the sheeple. The monsters are coming! Bar the gates! Get the boiling oil! They've evil! They want to eat us! We must fight them! We must, just like the Daleks, exterminate! exterminate! exterminate!
So let's recap a little bit. Hoodoo Men, whether wittingly or unwittingly, use the archetype of the horror story to frighten the susceptible sheeple: we're the good guys and the evil monsters want to devour us. We must drive a stake through their hearts. It's straight out of a fairy tale: the Hoodoo Men are the heroic wizards, casting spells, to rouse the inhabitants to save their village from the fire-breathing dragons. At least they consider themselves heroes. And apparently wizards, too. And if they're good enough with their spells, they delude the sheeple into believing them.
I mentioned talismans, charms, amulets, mojo bags. A talisman, an amulet and a charm are the same thing: objects that are supposed to protect you. Today, they are often books. Follow the instructions in the book, and you will be protected. I've already mentioned An End to Evil. I could mention the Bible, too. There are people, and apparently a lot of them, who think the instructions in it will protect them from the purely evil monsters in the horror story they have projected onto reality. If they recite the spells in it (which they call "prayers"), they will be protected from evil.
Just as bad, and perhaps even worse, these people use the Bible as a sooth-sayer. That's what I meant by using the Book of Revelation to predict the future. I seriously doubt that Christians are supposed to use the Bible as a charm and a fortune-telling device. Doesn't that book tell them that's some of the things they're not supposed to do?
A mojo bag, contrary to Austin Powers, is not something inside us that can be sucked out by Fat Bastard and his power drill. It's a small bag made to be hidden and carried around. It's the same thing as a charm. I like the term because it is, like Hoodoo, particularly American. A Hoodoo Man carrying a mojo bag is the same thing as a modern-day intellectual (okay, psuedo-intellectual) armed with his book. His spell-book. The whole concept just cracks me up. We think we're so smart.
You see what I mean by all this? The Hoodoo Men of today, the Victor Davis Hansons, the David Frums, the Max Boots, the Richard Perles and Paul Wolfowitzs, consider themselves intellectuals, ones more awake, smarter and probably more moral than we are, but in reality they're nothing but Hoodoo Men, telling people they're stuck in a horror story where their goodness is under attack by completely insane monsters that wish to annihilate them. And if we listen to them, these self-appointed heroes and messiahs, and recite the charms from their books and put them into effect with missiles and machine guns, we will defeat the monsters. But what we're really going to end up with is unending war, tens of thousands dead, even more wounded, missing arms, legs, faces, parts of their brains.
What modern-day Hoodoo Men are, are traitors, ones inside the gate.
We really are no different than tribal people thousands of years ago, ones that believed in goblins and ghosties and things that go bump in the night. That's the rub. Please remember that the next time you run across Hoodoo Men like William Kristol or Norman Podhoretz, telling us that Americans (but not them) should die for Israel.
I really do consider people like the aforementioned to be Hoodoo Men, ones who either truly believe what they are saying, or else are con men. It's a shame so many people cannot see through them. Maybe Tolstoy understood the why of the first, that they truly believe what they are saying: "Most men can seldom accept even the simplest and most obvious truth if it would oblige them to admit the falsity of conclusions which they have delighted in explaining to colleagues, have proudly taught to others, and have woven thread by thread into the fabric of their lives."
Jean Jacques Rousseau, for all of his insanity, got a few things right. One of them was this: "One is misled not by what he does not know but by what he believes he knows." It's the sheeple who are mislead by not what they do not know, but what they, in their delusions, believe they know. It's their false beliefs that time after time, send them to their deaths. But not the Hoodoo Men. No, not them. They just cast the spells and then hide as the ensorcelled sheeple march out to die.
When it comes right down to it, modern-day Hoodoo Men are very easily identified: they believe in murder. In fact, they exult in it, they exalt it. And it's a tribute to their spells, and the foolishness of the sheeple, that they can always con the sheeple into thinking it's self-defense.
But it cannot survive treason from within....
the traitor moves amongst those within the gate freely, his sly whispers rustling through all the alleys,
heard in the very halls of government itself."
-- Cicero
Call me afflicted with a terminal case of daffiness, but I see no evidence the people on this big round world of ours are any different than those of, say, 1,000,000 BC, except we've got SUVS and cell phones instead of Raquel Welch in a fur bikini. We do all of the same Sodom-and-Gomorrah badness, only intensified through the Cooper's Law of high technology, and not an iota more of the same goodness in spite of the Sermon on the Mount. The latter of which we mostly give lip service, anyway.
We believe in the same things our ancestors did, though we give those things different names. We snicker at Babylonian sooth-sayers who examined the livers of animals for clues to the future, but just how different are they from the nitwits churning thousands of pages of fantasies from the hallucinatory Book of Revelation, desperately looking for clues when Jesus is going to return so He can convert Jews and rub out Muslims? What an achievement. I'm impressed in advance of His return.
In the past certain people were called witchdoctors; today the foolish call them intellectuals. I call them Hoodoo Men. And like all Hoodoo Men they know, to use a quote from Oscar Wilde, "the price of everything and the value of nothing."
In some ways the whole thing is just too damn funny. It's also a heart-wrenching tragedy, but then, that which is a tragedy in real life is quite often funny in your imagination. Chang and Eng, that's the relationship between humor and horror. The Three Stooges are funny on the screen, but who would want to deal with their FUBAR catastrophes in life? Not me.
People keep repeating the same mistakes over and over, and they just never learn. You know why? It's not because they're stupid or evil. They're asleep, just like all those Buddhists and Hindus and Christian mystics have been complaining for hundreds if not thousands of years. "Hey wake up! Maybe then you'll be able to tell the difference between God and the devil, because you sure can't do it now!"
You can take the same dangerous goofiness from thousands of years ago and map it on today and it'll fit perfectly. Not only can we take all those Hoodoo Men and witchdoctors from the past and call them the intellectuals of today, we can also take charms and talismans and amulets and and mojo bags and find the same exact things today. So we don't really have much business laughing at "primitives." We're them.
That name, "Hoodoo Man," has stuck with me since I first heard it years ago. It's a Southern/country term, apparently only vaguely related to the similar word, "voodoo." Voodoo is an established religion; hoodoo can have religious overtones, but must not necessarily have them.
A Hoodoo Man is one who uses spells to try to enchant people to get them to do what he wants. You may laugh at someone who tries to cast spells to Win Friends and Influence People, but if you do, you're making a great big mistake.
The word "spell" literally means "to talk," or "tale." A Hoodoo Man is one who attempts to cast a spell through words directed at other people, in order to enchant them so they'll do what the Hoodoo Man wants. Simple, huh?
I certainly don't believe in toe of dog or wing of bat, or Love Potion Number Nine for that matter, but I do believe it's not even a matter for debate that words can be used to enchant people. Spells do exist. The point is not moot. All you have to do is watch Triumph of the Will, and you'll see how Hitler, one of the most hypnotic speakers ever, walked through a crowd of hundreds of thousands of people, who parted before him like Charleton Heston waving his staff at the Red Sea. He had literally ensorcelled these poor, deluded, frightened and willing fools, had cast a spell on them. And this was in the 20th Century.
And we all know what happened to Germany after it fell under Hitler's spell.
You may not consider Hitler to have been an "intellectual," but he was no dummy. I've heard him described as "half genius, half insane," a definition that is the best I've ever encountered. And as Mein Kampf makes clear, he had a way with words, whether written or spoken. He was one of the premier Hoodoo Men of the 20th Century.
It wasn't just Hitler. There was Stalin, and Mao Tse-Tung, and Pol Pot. They just didn't grab hold of the machinery of the State and start rubbing people out with it. I guarantee you there was a huge mass of people who supported them, who had fallen under their spells. That's why they're called sheeple. Because they are, the pitiful sleep-walking ninnies.
Hoodoo Men exist on a smaller scale, too. David Koresh, anyone? And with Koresh -- and the other aforementioned monsters for that matter -- we find another truth: Hoodoo Men not only seek power over the lives of others, they quite often use religion to justify it.
So what do we have so far? Hoodoo Men often drape their power-seeking over others with religious trappings. They try to cast spells by the use of words, to ensorcel the susceptible masses, to get them to do what the Hoodoo Men want.
There are some other things involved, too. Whether modern-day Hoodoo Men believe in it or not, they use the concepts of an absolute good and an absolute evil, with nothing in-between. In reality good and evil are a continuum, but reality is no good for conning the sheeple into willingly toppling over a cliff. The sheeple have to believe there is good over here and bad over there, with nothing in-between.
Why? Because when Hoodoo Men use that particular spell, the sheeple always believe they are the Good Guys and those defined as the enemy are the Bad Guys, Bad Guys completely bereft of good as any of Lovecraft's Elder Gods. Being bad, indeed positively evil, they have to be rubbed out, otherwise, being the slavering homicidal maniacs that they are portrayed as, they, like the Terminator, will not stop in their attempts to wipe the Good Guys off the face of the earth.
That spell will always work on the susceptible, of which there are way too many. That spell has been cast so many times in the past I consider it a law of human nature as to how people will respond to it. It's one of the most powerful and awful spells that exist, perhaps the most awful one of all, one that led to the deaths of up to 200 million people during the 20th Century.
Herman Goering understood that spell. At the Nuremberg trials he said, "Of course the people don't want war. But after all, it's the leaders of the country who determine the policy, and it's always a simple matter to drag the people along whether it's a democracy, a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism, and exposing the country to greater danger."
Tell the sheeple they are the Good Guys being attacked by the Bad Guys, and every time away they will go straight over the cliff, sometimes by the millions. It's just simply astonishing how easy it is.
An example of this false division into pure good and pure evil is the book, An End to Evil, by Hoodoo Men Richard Perle and David Frum. It's a purely nitwitted book, one worthy only as a doorstop and one anyone with an dollop of sense can see straight through. But since the rubes can't see through it, well then, they're another story.
See how the con works? It's the words, "an end to evil." It sounds so utopian, doesn't it? But it's a red flag. It's always a red flag. If the evil isn't destroyed, they tell us, otherwise it will destroy the good.
Maybe evil can't be destroyed, though. It never has been in the past, that's for sure. If it exists, the only place it exists in is every human heart, in every person How are you going to destroy something like that, unless you kill everyone?
Perhaps evil doesn't even exist. If it's defined as the absence of good, how do you destroy something that isn't there? Instead, I'd say the closest definition of evil is that it is hubris, arrogance, blindness. What the Bible calls "pride," as in the misquotation, "Pride goes before a fall." The Greeks noticed the same thing: hubris is followed by nemesis. I'd say the idea you can get rid of evil, however defined, is not only one of the finest examples of hubris there is, I'd say it's a type of insanity, too.
The fact that evil can't be destroyed, if indeed it really exists, doesn't matter. What matters is that the enemy always has to be defined as evil. Not mistaken, not deluded, but out-and-out dead crazy drooling murdering evil. It's a sure bet they will always be portrayed as monstrous as the Martians in The War of the Worlds, vaporizing everything in their path with those cobra-headed Death Machines of theirs.
Monsters, as we all know, are not-humans, so it's okay to bump them off by the basketful. That's the first thing all militaries do to soldiers: tell them the enemy isn't human, instead are monsters. It's the basis of all propaganda, too. The Germans spit babies on bayonets in WWI! The Iraqis dumped babies out of incubators during Desert Storm! Only none of it happened, not a bit of it; all of it was propaganda, to the last drop. But the sheeple will fall for it every time.
Monsters, contrary to the beliefs of the Hoodoo Man and the sheeple, exist only in horror stories. But that doesn't matter, not when it comes to the con. People might as well believe that vampires or zombies or werewolves really exist. For all practical purpose, they already do. Only the names have changed. Those guys who went from being husbands and students and cab drivers to spitting those non-existent babies? What were they portrayed as, if not werewolves?
All horror stories have the same structure, or if you want to be a bit more academic about it, the same archetype: good attacked by evil, order attacked by chaos, wholeness attacked by unwholeness. Of course, horror stories wouldn't exist unless they first existed in reality. Art imitates life, as it always does. Sometimes, life imitates art.
It's not for nothing that fictional Hoodoo Men only exist in horror stories. Even so, real Hoodoo Men use that horror archetype to terrify the sheeple. The monsters are coming! Bar the gates! Get the boiling oil! They've evil! They want to eat us! We must fight them! We must, just like the Daleks, exterminate! exterminate! exterminate!
So let's recap a little bit. Hoodoo Men, whether wittingly or unwittingly, use the archetype of the horror story to frighten the susceptible sheeple: we're the good guys and the evil monsters want to devour us. We must drive a stake through their hearts. It's straight out of a fairy tale: the Hoodoo Men are the heroic wizards, casting spells, to rouse the inhabitants to save their village from the fire-breathing dragons. At least they consider themselves heroes. And apparently wizards, too. And if they're good enough with their spells, they delude the sheeple into believing them.
I mentioned talismans, charms, amulets, mojo bags. A talisman, an amulet and a charm are the same thing: objects that are supposed to protect you. Today, they are often books. Follow the instructions in the book, and you will be protected. I've already mentioned An End to Evil. I could mention the Bible, too. There are people, and apparently a lot of them, who think the instructions in it will protect them from the purely evil monsters in the horror story they have projected onto reality. If they recite the spells in it (which they call "prayers"), they will be protected from evil.
Just as bad, and perhaps even worse, these people use the Bible as a sooth-sayer. That's what I meant by using the Book of Revelation to predict the future. I seriously doubt that Christians are supposed to use the Bible as a charm and a fortune-telling device. Doesn't that book tell them that's some of the things they're not supposed to do?
A mojo bag, contrary to Austin Powers, is not something inside us that can be sucked out by Fat Bastard and his power drill. It's a small bag made to be hidden and carried around. It's the same thing as a charm. I like the term because it is, like Hoodoo, particularly American. A Hoodoo Man carrying a mojo bag is the same thing as a modern-day intellectual (okay, psuedo-intellectual) armed with his book. His spell-book. The whole concept just cracks me up. We think we're so smart.
You see what I mean by all this? The Hoodoo Men of today, the Victor Davis Hansons, the David Frums, the Max Boots, the Richard Perles and Paul Wolfowitzs, consider themselves intellectuals, ones more awake, smarter and probably more moral than we are, but in reality they're nothing but Hoodoo Men, telling people they're stuck in a horror story where their goodness is under attack by completely insane monsters that wish to annihilate them. And if we listen to them, these self-appointed heroes and messiahs, and recite the charms from their books and put them into effect with missiles and machine guns, we will defeat the monsters. But what we're really going to end up with is unending war, tens of thousands dead, even more wounded, missing arms, legs, faces, parts of their brains.
What modern-day Hoodoo Men are, are traitors, ones inside the gate.
We really are no different than tribal people thousands of years ago, ones that believed in goblins and ghosties and things that go bump in the night. That's the rub. Please remember that the next time you run across Hoodoo Men like William Kristol or Norman Podhoretz, telling us that Americans (but not them) should die for Israel.
I really do consider people like the aforementioned to be Hoodoo Men, ones who either truly believe what they are saying, or else are con men. It's a shame so many people cannot see through them. Maybe Tolstoy understood the why of the first, that they truly believe what they are saying: "Most men can seldom accept even the simplest and most obvious truth if it would oblige them to admit the falsity of conclusions which they have delighted in explaining to colleagues, have proudly taught to others, and have woven thread by thread into the fabric of their lives."
Jean Jacques Rousseau, for all of his insanity, got a few things right. One of them was this: "One is misled not by what he does not know but by what he believes he knows." It's the sheeple who are mislead by not what they do not know, but what they, in their delusions, believe they know. It's their false beliefs that time after time, send them to their deaths. But not the Hoodoo Men. No, not them. They just cast the spells and then hide as the ensorcelled sheeple march out to die.
When it comes right down to it, modern-day Hoodoo Men are very easily identified: they believe in murder. In fact, they exult in it, they exalt it. And it's a tribute to their spells, and the foolishness of the sheeple, that they can always con the sheeple into thinking it's self-defense.
Those Who Are Deceived, Are Enchanted
In Plato's Republic, Socrates and Glacon, in conversation, decide that "to be deceived to be enchanted." They didn't mean it in the good, J.R.R. Tolkien/C.S. Lewis sense of wonder and awe, but in the bad H.P. Lovecraft sense of monsters out to get you.
The little-used word, "ensorcelled" springs to mind. It means "to cast a spell." And "spell" means "by the use of words." To ensorcel someone, to cast a spell on them, to deceive them, is always done by the use of words.
The problem, as always, is how is decided if you've been ensorcelled or not. Socrates had something to say about that: "this ignorance in the soul of him who is deceived may be called the true lie." It means that no one can deceive you unless you first deceive yourself. It's also why Socrates spoke of his "enchantment" being done by fraud.
I have given this a lot of thought, and have come to several conclusions about how to cast a spell upon people, and how to tell if you've been deceived.
The first thing you do is speak of Good and Evil, and only Good and Evil. It doesn't matter what you use it for: it can be politics or religion. But to ensorcel people you must always say you are the Good Guys and your opponents are the Bad Guys. You have to say you are "the greatest force for good in the world today" and those you define as your opponents are "the axis of evil." You must claim God is on your side and the Other Guy is on the your opponent's.
I do not believe the idea of people being Pure Good and Pure Evil can be considered Christian, considering the horrendous problems that flow from the concepts. I am reminded of the answer Jesus gave to a woman who called him "Good Rabbi": "Why do you call me good? There is no one truly good except—that is, God." But people as purely good or bad? No.
The second thing you do is say the Bad Guys, being bad, are insane, homicidal maniacs looking to do the Good Guys in. As Orwell wrote, "Every war when it comes, or before it comes, is represented not as a war but as an act of self-defense against a homicidal maniac."
Herman Goering, at the Nuremberg trials, spoke of Orwell's point, although not by name: "Of course the people don't want war. But after all, it's the leaders of the country who determine the policy, and it's always a simple matter to drag the people along whether it's a democracy, a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism, and exposing the country to greater danger."
The third thing you do is exaggerate the threat, something that leads straight to paranoia. You talk about "drones of death" being flown across the Atlantic by a country with a GNP less than that of North Carolina (actually, about one percent of the U.S.), as an example that would be funny if it wasn't so tragic. About this, Socrates said, "the enchanted are those who change their minds. . .under. . .the influence of fear."
That's an important word: fear. How clearly can we perceive a threat when our minds are under the influence of fear and paranoia? Not too clearly, I'd say. It reminds me of a quote from Frank Herbert's wonderful novel, Dune: "Fear is the mind-killer."
It's actually pretty simple to ensorcel people: speak in simple-minded terms of Good and Evil, scare people by claiming the Evil is going to gobble them up like the Blob, grossly exaggerate the threat, and denounce those who may question the whole thing, claiming they're the ones who are deluded. That one sentence is the essence of propaganda. It'll work every time.
So, then, people who are not ensorcelled do not divide people into neat and mutally exclusive groups of Good and Evil; they never believe the State when it speaks of homicidal maniacs lusting to conquer the world, and they certainly do not believe in exaggerated threats about teacup Chihuahuas taking on a pack of Rottweilers. And they are not afraid. Neither do they hate or lust after war.
The most powerful forces in the world are not nuclear weapons, or earthquakes, or volcanic eruptions. They are words, which can be used for great good or great evil. As Richard Weaver wrote in his book of the same title, Ideas Have Consequences.
One of those ideas that has had terrible consequences is that of all-good heroes fighting the all-bad monsters who wish to devour the kingdom. It's the stuff of children's fairy tales and pop horror stories. In fiction, it's a pleasant diversion. In reality, though, the idea really is a horror, one of the worst that exists.
The little-used word, "ensorcelled" springs to mind. It means "to cast a spell." And "spell" means "by the use of words." To ensorcel someone, to cast a spell on them, to deceive them, is always done by the use of words.
The problem, as always, is how is decided if you've been ensorcelled or not. Socrates had something to say about that: "this ignorance in the soul of him who is deceived may be called the true lie." It means that no one can deceive you unless you first deceive yourself. It's also why Socrates spoke of his "enchantment" being done by fraud.
I have given this a lot of thought, and have come to several conclusions about how to cast a spell upon people, and how to tell if you've been deceived.
The first thing you do is speak of Good and Evil, and only Good and Evil. It doesn't matter what you use it for: it can be politics or religion. But to ensorcel people you must always say you are the Good Guys and your opponents are the Bad Guys. You have to say you are "the greatest force for good in the world today" and those you define as your opponents are "the axis of evil." You must claim God is on your side and the Other Guy is on the your opponent's.
I do not believe the idea of people being Pure Good and Pure Evil can be considered Christian, considering the horrendous problems that flow from the concepts. I am reminded of the answer Jesus gave to a woman who called him "Good Rabbi": "Why do you call me good? There is no one truly good except—that is, God." But people as purely good or bad? No.
The second thing you do is say the Bad Guys, being bad, are insane, homicidal maniacs looking to do the Good Guys in. As Orwell wrote, "Every war when it comes, or before it comes, is represented not as a war but as an act of self-defense against a homicidal maniac."
Herman Goering, at the Nuremberg trials, spoke of Orwell's point, although not by name: "Of course the people don't want war. But after all, it's the leaders of the country who determine the policy, and it's always a simple matter to drag the people along whether it's a democracy, a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism, and exposing the country to greater danger."
The third thing you do is exaggerate the threat, something that leads straight to paranoia. You talk about "drones of death" being flown across the Atlantic by a country with a GNP less than that of North Carolina (actually, about one percent of the U.S.), as an example that would be funny if it wasn't so tragic. About this, Socrates said, "the enchanted are those who change their minds. . .under. . .the influence of fear."
That's an important word: fear. How clearly can we perceive a threat when our minds are under the influence of fear and paranoia? Not too clearly, I'd say. It reminds me of a quote from Frank Herbert's wonderful novel, Dune: "Fear is the mind-killer."
It's actually pretty simple to ensorcel people: speak in simple-minded terms of Good and Evil, scare people by claiming the Evil is going to gobble them up like the Blob, grossly exaggerate the threat, and denounce those who may question the whole thing, claiming they're the ones who are deluded. That one sentence is the essence of propaganda. It'll work every time.
So, then, people who are not ensorcelled do not divide people into neat and mutally exclusive groups of Good and Evil; they never believe the State when it speaks of homicidal maniacs lusting to conquer the world, and they certainly do not believe in exaggerated threats about teacup Chihuahuas taking on a pack of Rottweilers. And they are not afraid. Neither do they hate or lust after war.
The most powerful forces in the world are not nuclear weapons, or earthquakes, or volcanic eruptions. They are words, which can be used for great good or great evil. As Richard Weaver wrote in his book of the same title, Ideas Have Consequences.
One of those ideas that has had terrible consequences is that of all-good heroes fighting the all-bad monsters who wish to devour the kingdom. It's the stuff of children's fairy tales and pop horror stories. In fiction, it's a pleasant diversion. In reality, though, the idea really is a horror, one of the worst that exists.
In the Year 3501
Sometimes I can barely stand it. It’s exasperating, and it’s tragic. It’s the worst tragedy in the history of the human race. And since I don’t have a time machine, there’s nothing I can do to fix the mistakes of the past. I can only work on the present.
As best as I can figure, the human race is about 1500 years behind where it should be. We should be as advanced, right now in the year 2001, as we will be in 3501. And that might be an understatement. Maybe we should be as advanced as the year 5000.
Why aren’t we there? What has held us back? It’s not true government – not if government would stay minimal and unobtrusive and do its real job, protecting, as John Locke wrote, "life, liberty and property." Then there would be peace and prosperity, advancement and achievement. It’s when government goes beyond its proper boundaries and turns into what Albert Jay Nock called, "Our Enemy, the State." The freedom-crushing, society-destroying, empire-building, rights-violating, war-starting, poverty-creating State. The State that always destroys, because that is its unalterable nature.
With the State opposed to Civilization (as it is always opposed to Civilization), it’s not just two steps forward, one step back – it’s 500 years forward, a thousand years back, then 500 years forward again. If the State is anything, it’s Sisyphus, the greedy king condemned forever to Hades, where he rolls a rock up a hill so it can roll right back down again.
Richard Maybury, in his book, Ancient Rome, notes there is a Roman grist mill near Arles, France that has 16 water wheels operating in tandem and a system of gears and grinders so complex it could produce enough flour for 80,000 people.
"This kind of engineering sophistication leads me to believe Roman civilization was on the brink of the Industrial Revolution 15 centuries before this revolution finally happened," he writes.
It wasn’t just that one flour mill that lends credibility to his beliefs. Roman buildings had central heating, plumbing, baths, glass windows, mosiac tile floors, and plastered and painted walls. Roman civilization had advanced engineering, mathematics, literature and philosophy.
A lot of what we have today, the Romans had thousands of years ago.
If the Romans really were on the verge of the Industrial Revolution – but failed – then the loss to us is incalculable.
What produced their advanced society? The only things that can create a properous, peaceful society – political liberty and economic freedom. What destroyed them? Giving up that liberty, and expanding the State. Giving up personal freedom for an always-false security. Going from a Republic to an Empire, with its crushing taxes, inflation, regulation and wars. Citizens going from being adults to being children. Just as is happening in the U.S. today.
After the Roman Empire collapsed (as all empires collapse) Europe entered the Dark Ages for 500 years. It went backwards a thousand years. The majority of the population didn’t live any better in 500 A.D. than they did in 500 B.C.
This is a catastrophe that is still with us today.
The last time a culture succeeded in establishing economic and political freedom was in 1776. If you look around you, you’ll find that almost everything that has been invented, has been invented in the last 200 years, because of that freedom.
Planes, trains and automobiles. Surgery with anesthesia. Computers and video games. Dentistry where you don’t have to get drunk and have your friends hold you down. TV, movies, CDs. Cheap, plentiful food and clean, free water. An 8-hour workday with weekends off, instead of break-breaking labor 12 hours a day six days a week, so you could live in a too-hot or too-cold hovel, barely have enough to eat, and die in your early 40’s. Vacations. RVs. Air-conditioning. Retirement. Dentures. The list unrolls and unrolls.
And what has the State given us? War, inflation, deficits, recessions, depressions, conscription, slavery, genocide. Widows and orphans. Fathers burying their sons instead of the other way around. The few times the State has done something right, it’s the same reason a stopped clock is occasionally right. If the State was a private business, it would always be fired.
And now the U.S. is following in the footsteps of Rome. History repeats. "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it," wrote Santayana. Scary, but true. As the empire grows, political and economic liberty is diminished at home. It’s as much a law of the universe as gravity. The end result if we stay on this road? It’s obvious. The only unknown is when. And if America – the "last, best hope" – falls, where in the world can political and economic freedom arise again? China, India, Russia? A Europe that is now rushing to embrace socialism and possibly fascism?
Where would we be now if early attempts at freedom and capitalism had succeeded permanently? If wars hadn’t slaughtered hundreds of millions of people and delayed the inventions they would have created? If 100 million to 200 million hadn’t died in the 20th-century in the rabid attempts of States to found Empires? We can only imagine.
Modern humans go back a long way. What if we had entered the Industrial Revolution in 2000 B.C.? There’s no logical reason we couldn’t have. People then were as smart as we are now. That’s what I mean by 3501 possibly being an understatement. Maybe we should be in the year 5000.
Even if we still should be in 3501, what would it be like? I’d bet we’d have cures for all diseases. We’d be growing body parts in tanks. Lose an eye or an arm? Okay, here’s another. The blind would see, the crippled would walk, and the deaf could again annoy listeners on AM radio.
We’d have space stations. Colonies on the Moon and Mars. Maybe we’d be out among the stars. Star Trek wouldn’t just be a TV program (I’d like the phasers, but I’d pass on the transporters, thank you). Maybe we would have developed unlimited sources of power, straight from the fabric of the universe. Maybe we’d have personal force-fields to protect us, powered by something the size of a walnut. The only limits are our imagination and creativity.
And we should have all of this right now.
Personally, I’m a bit more modest. I just wish I had a flying car. One of the first stories I ever read was Robert A. Heinlein’s "Waldo." One of the characters gets in his car, starts it...and flies to the Moon. I looked at my parents’ VW Bug, looked at the full Moon, looked at the car again, and thought, "Darn." I was maybe 12.
Today, every time I look at the Moon, I wonder what it would be like to hop in my car, travel there for the weekend and hit golfballs.
As I said, sometimes I can barely stand it.
As best as I can figure, the human race is about 1500 years behind where it should be. We should be as advanced, right now in the year 2001, as we will be in 3501. And that might be an understatement. Maybe we should be as advanced as the year 5000.
Why aren’t we there? What has held us back? It’s not true government – not if government would stay minimal and unobtrusive and do its real job, protecting, as John Locke wrote, "life, liberty and property." Then there would be peace and prosperity, advancement and achievement. It’s when government goes beyond its proper boundaries and turns into what Albert Jay Nock called, "Our Enemy, the State." The freedom-crushing, society-destroying, empire-building, rights-violating, war-starting, poverty-creating State. The State that always destroys, because that is its unalterable nature.
With the State opposed to Civilization (as it is always opposed to Civilization), it’s not just two steps forward, one step back – it’s 500 years forward, a thousand years back, then 500 years forward again. If the State is anything, it’s Sisyphus, the greedy king condemned forever to Hades, where he rolls a rock up a hill so it can roll right back down again.
Richard Maybury, in his book, Ancient Rome, notes there is a Roman grist mill near Arles, France that has 16 water wheels operating in tandem and a system of gears and grinders so complex it could produce enough flour for 80,000 people.
"This kind of engineering sophistication leads me to believe Roman civilization was on the brink of the Industrial Revolution 15 centuries before this revolution finally happened," he writes.
It wasn’t just that one flour mill that lends credibility to his beliefs. Roman buildings had central heating, plumbing, baths, glass windows, mosiac tile floors, and plastered and painted walls. Roman civilization had advanced engineering, mathematics, literature and philosophy.
A lot of what we have today, the Romans had thousands of years ago.
If the Romans really were on the verge of the Industrial Revolution – but failed – then the loss to us is incalculable.
What produced their advanced society? The only things that can create a properous, peaceful society – political liberty and economic freedom. What destroyed them? Giving up that liberty, and expanding the State. Giving up personal freedom for an always-false security. Going from a Republic to an Empire, with its crushing taxes, inflation, regulation and wars. Citizens going from being adults to being children. Just as is happening in the U.S. today.
After the Roman Empire collapsed (as all empires collapse) Europe entered the Dark Ages for 500 years. It went backwards a thousand years. The majority of the population didn’t live any better in 500 A.D. than they did in 500 B.C.
This is a catastrophe that is still with us today.
The last time a culture succeeded in establishing economic and political freedom was in 1776. If you look around you, you’ll find that almost everything that has been invented, has been invented in the last 200 years, because of that freedom.
Planes, trains and automobiles. Surgery with anesthesia. Computers and video games. Dentistry where you don’t have to get drunk and have your friends hold you down. TV, movies, CDs. Cheap, plentiful food and clean, free water. An 8-hour workday with weekends off, instead of break-breaking labor 12 hours a day six days a week, so you could live in a too-hot or too-cold hovel, barely have enough to eat, and die in your early 40’s. Vacations. RVs. Air-conditioning. Retirement. Dentures. The list unrolls and unrolls.
And what has the State given us? War, inflation, deficits, recessions, depressions, conscription, slavery, genocide. Widows and orphans. Fathers burying their sons instead of the other way around. The few times the State has done something right, it’s the same reason a stopped clock is occasionally right. If the State was a private business, it would always be fired.
And now the U.S. is following in the footsteps of Rome. History repeats. "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it," wrote Santayana. Scary, but true. As the empire grows, political and economic liberty is diminished at home. It’s as much a law of the universe as gravity. The end result if we stay on this road? It’s obvious. The only unknown is when. And if America – the "last, best hope" – falls, where in the world can political and economic freedom arise again? China, India, Russia? A Europe that is now rushing to embrace socialism and possibly fascism?
Where would we be now if early attempts at freedom and capitalism had succeeded permanently? If wars hadn’t slaughtered hundreds of millions of people and delayed the inventions they would have created? If 100 million to 200 million hadn’t died in the 20th-century in the rabid attempts of States to found Empires? We can only imagine.
Modern humans go back a long way. What if we had entered the Industrial Revolution in 2000 B.C.? There’s no logical reason we couldn’t have. People then were as smart as we are now. That’s what I mean by 3501 possibly being an understatement. Maybe we should be in the year 5000.
Even if we still should be in 3501, what would it be like? I’d bet we’d have cures for all diseases. We’d be growing body parts in tanks. Lose an eye or an arm? Okay, here’s another. The blind would see, the crippled would walk, and the deaf could again annoy listeners on AM radio.
We’d have space stations. Colonies on the Moon and Mars. Maybe we’d be out among the stars. Star Trek wouldn’t just be a TV program (I’d like the phasers, but I’d pass on the transporters, thank you). Maybe we would have developed unlimited sources of power, straight from the fabric of the universe. Maybe we’d have personal force-fields to protect us, powered by something the size of a walnut. The only limits are our imagination and creativity.
And we should have all of this right now.
Personally, I’m a bit more modest. I just wish I had a flying car. One of the first stories I ever read was Robert A. Heinlein’s "Waldo." One of the characters gets in his car, starts it...and flies to the Moon. I looked at my parents’ VW Bug, looked at the full Moon, looked at the car again, and thought, "Darn." I was maybe 12.
Today, every time I look at the Moon, I wonder what it would be like to hop in my car, travel there for the weekend and hit golfballs.
As I said, sometimes I can barely stand it.
The Cliche' Robot
I have a copy of the rousing if goofy '50s SF classic, Robot Monster. There are arguments as to whether it or the equally rousing and goofy Plan 9 from Outer Space is the worst movie ever made. I can't decide.
I watch Robot Monster about once every two months. I find it oddly comforting. It took me a while to figure out why. The movie is nothing but one cliché after the other, from the beginning all the way to the end!
It requires no thought whatsoever to figure out the movie. That guy in the gorilla suit, wearing a diving helmet with the antenna on top? That must be the alien invader (named Ro-Man, of course). The cave he's in? That's his Alien Base of Operations to Wreak Havoc and Destruction on Earth. The Lawrence Welk bubble-machine? His communications, obviously. The couple making out in the field as Ro-Man comes shambling by? What do you think's going to happen to them? The same thing that happens to stupid teenagers in horror films who open closet doors when they know perfectly well there is a guy with a butcher knife and a hockey mask somewhere in the house!
Just as watching a movie full of clichés means you don't have to think about the movie, so does having a head full of clichés means you don't have to question anything. Here is an example, disguised as a letter I received.
"Dear Mr. Wallace,
"I read about this website in The Washington Times. There was an article I was looking for regarding school administrators. Instead, I am reading diatribes about our leadership. Let me guess. This is an online libertarian publication."
He got that one right. Ro-Man would be impressed...although I ain't.
"Isn't it comforting to live in a country where you are allowed to be so brave as to stand up for your point of view while gratuitously deriding your elected leaders?"
Whoa, let's wait just a minute here. Who allows me to "stand up" for my point of view? I wouldn't have the freedom if "someone" didn't give me permission? Who is that someone to which he is referring? The people in the government? They "allow" me? They give me the right? He doesn't exactly say, but to whom else could he be referring?
My elected leaders? Did I or anyone else vote for Richard Perle or Paul Wolfowitz? Or those faceless dweebs infesting all the bureacracies? And why does he use the word "your"? They're not my leaders. The people in the government are supposed to lead us? To where are they supposed to lead us? Over a cliff? To hell in a handbasket? I'm not supposed to control my own life? I'm supposed to play follow the leader? Even if they're wrong and don't know what they're doing?
"Calling them names, and looking into what motivates them could make you a modern day Sigmund Freud."
Maybe Freud did call people names. I really don't know. I doubt this writer does, either. Yes, I do look into what motivates people. Everyone does, including this writer. That's one of the reasons he wrote this letter to me.
"What is remarkable about living in America is that we have a constitution that allows us the right to plumb the depths of a politician's soul, call him a coward and say he is a middle-schooler who needs to spread chicken blood on himself, while the writer not fear any retribution, as opposed to Iraq under Saddam and his sons."
Here we go again! The Constitution "allows" us? The Constitution does not "allow" anything. The Constitution is an enumeration of our God-given rights. To say the Constitution "allows" this or that is suggesting that our rights are dependent only on what is written in it.
Considering the Constitution is interpreted by the State, it means only what the State wants it to mean. This is why every part of it has been violated. These days, for all practical purposes, the Constitution is dead. My correspondent does not know that.
And yes, my God-given rights do allow me to plumb the depths of politicians' souls (if they have one), call them cowards, and say they are middle-schoolers who need to spread chicken blood on themselves. And like all God-given rights, it's fun! It's even more fun to make fun of brainless sea squirts who write retarded letters!
As for Saddam & Sons, they were originally placed in power by the US. At first Hussein was the US's ally, which is why we armed him in his war with Iran. The US did not give a damn how many Iraqis or Iranians were killed. In fact, the administration encouraged the deaths of both. The booger-eating Henry Kissinger commented, "Too bad they both can't lose."
Why did the US wait 25 years to take out Hussein? Why hasn't the administration taken out worse people, like Robert "Let's See How Many I Can Murder Today" Mugabe? Why hasn't it taken out the Saudi "royal" family, backers of the Wahabis who flew planes into the WTC and the Pentagon?
Questions, questions...and no answers.
"Maybe you are proud of what you have written regarding our elected officials."
I'm not proud of being disgusted by them. Interesting: first he says "your" elected leaders, then he says "our." Does he think "your" and "our" (meaning "him") are equivalent? This guy doesn't have a clue as to what he's suggesting. It's fascism. A nation of sheeple, blinding following their "leaders," even if they go hurling over a cliff, hands clapped over their eyes?
Norman Mailer, who is now 80 years old and finally growing a brain, recently suggested the natural condition of humankind is fascism. He has a point. Freedom, liberty, are recent conditions – the last two hundred years out of several thousand. And if freedom can be defined in one sentence, it's being free from the State. It means not following our "leaders" when they're wrong, and yes, it means criticizing and making fun of them.
"Great! As Yakov Smirnoff would say, 'What a country.' By the way, he knows about not confronting your 'elected' leaders. They call it a gulag."
This guy couldn't tell you where Smirnoff does most of his entertaining if his life depended on it. So I will: Branson, Missouri. And as for the Soviet Union, the reason it was the Soviet Union, and Nazi Germany, Nazi Germany, and Red China, Red China, is because they were all fascist. The State everything, the individual just a cog. The nature of the State is always the same, whether over there...or over here.
"I'm certain that you can appreciate how fortunate you are."
I plan on staying that way, by opposing fascism everywhere I see it. Unlike some, who write letters supporting it when they are deluded into thinking they're supporting freedom.
"We have the best-trained, best-equipped armed forces to guarantee that you will have the right to disagree."
And that's why our soldiers in Iraq are buying their own armor, because they are so well-equipped!
The military protects my right to disagree? How does he figure that? The Founding Fathers were utterly opposed to standing armies, for the reason shown today: Empire. Does this writer know that the US has some 750 military bases in 140-odd countries – three-quarters of the world? If the US didn't have troops in Portugal, the Portuguese would prevent me from speaking?
When was the last time our "best-trained, best-equipped armed forces" actually defended this country? World War I? The U.S. administration purposely loaded the passenger liner Lusitania with munitions. That's why it went down so fast when the Germans torpedoed it. And by the way, the German government ran full-page ads in the Eastern newspapers telling people to stay off of passenger ships. There was no reason whatsoever for the US to get involved in that European -- not American -- war.
World War II? WWII was a direct result of WWI. World War II would have never happened if the U.S. hadn't gone along with the crushing reparations against Germany, allowing Hitler to rise to power. And the Great Depression – caused by State interference in the economy, not "capitalism" – also helped Hitler's rise. The Japanese wouldn't have attacked Pearl Harbor if the U.S. hadn't cut off their oil and other imports, and sent the Flying Tigers against them in China, egging them into a pre-emptive strike against us. And the evidence is overwhelming that FDR knew the Japanese were going to attack, and let it happen so Russia wouldn't have to fight a two-front war against the Germans and Japanese.
I don't remember Korea, North Vietnam or Panama attacking us. No one else does, either.
I'll tell you the last time the U.S. military defended the U.S.: the War of 1812. And that was mostly caused by the U.S. trying to grab Canada while Britain was occupied with France. Sheesh! I mean, doesn't this guy have any room in his head at all for any facts?
Here's a list of the countries the US has bombed since the end of WWII:
China 1945–46
Korea 1950–53
China 1950–53
Guatemala 1954
Indonesia 1958
Cuba 1959-60
Guatemala 1960
Congo 1964
Peru 1965
Laos 1964–73
Vietnam 1961–73
Cambodia 1969–70
Guatemala 1967–69
Grenada 1983
Libya 1986
El Salvador 1980s
Nicaragua 1980s
Panama 1989
Iraq 1991–99
Sudan 1998
Afghanistan 1998
Yugoslavia 1999
How many of those countries attacked the US? Hello? Hello! Anybody there? I'm waiting for an answer!
"I really do question your estimation of our leadership, but our armed forces that will guarantee your right to be a Braveheart at your keyboard."
At least he recognizes my last name (heck, maybe he doesn't!). Speaking of William Wallace, he was fighting against foreign invaders. England invaded Scotland...not the other way around. It was England's "best-equipped, best-trained armed forces" that rampaged through Scotland, raping and murdering. They're weren't defending England; they were invading other countries.
"I hope you don't mind a little sarcasm on my part."
Not at all. He's just not very good at it. Okay, the truth is that his attempt is pretty darned painful!
"I hope you don't think I am questioning your motives."
Of course he is.
"Heaven forbid!"
If Heaven would forbid politicians from breaking its laws, I'd be a happier man.
This writer is spouting nothing but clichés. It's almost as if his brain has been removed and replaced with a tape recorder. "We-should-follow-our-leaders- and-never-criticize-them [click] our-best-trained-and-best-equipped-armed- forces-are-protecting us-[click]." Ack! -- he's been taken over by the Cliché Robot!
He is convinced he is right, and I am wrong. I understand his point of view, but he does not understand mine. I know why; he doesn't. Here's the reason: a friend of mind recently told me, "The smart understand the stupid a lot better than the stupid understand the smart."
What can actually penetrate the mind of a man like this? I don't think it's reason, unfortunately. I suspect it's what is called "the School of Hard Knocks." Sadly, when the inside of his head is nothing but cliches' rattling around, it is the only way he can learn.
I watch Robot Monster about once every two months. I find it oddly comforting. It took me a while to figure out why. The movie is nothing but one cliché after the other, from the beginning all the way to the end!
It requires no thought whatsoever to figure out the movie. That guy in the gorilla suit, wearing a diving helmet with the antenna on top? That must be the alien invader (named Ro-Man, of course). The cave he's in? That's his Alien Base of Operations to Wreak Havoc and Destruction on Earth. The Lawrence Welk bubble-machine? His communications, obviously. The couple making out in the field as Ro-Man comes shambling by? What do you think's going to happen to them? The same thing that happens to stupid teenagers in horror films who open closet doors when they know perfectly well there is a guy with a butcher knife and a hockey mask somewhere in the house!
Just as watching a movie full of clichés means you don't have to think about the movie, so does having a head full of clichés means you don't have to question anything. Here is an example, disguised as a letter I received.
"Dear Mr. Wallace,
"I read about this website in The Washington Times. There was an article I was looking for regarding school administrators. Instead, I am reading diatribes about our leadership. Let me guess. This is an online libertarian publication."
He got that one right. Ro-Man would be impressed...although I ain't.
"Isn't it comforting to live in a country where you are allowed to be so brave as to stand up for your point of view while gratuitously deriding your elected leaders?"
Whoa, let's wait just a minute here. Who allows me to "stand up" for my point of view? I wouldn't have the freedom if "someone" didn't give me permission? Who is that someone to which he is referring? The people in the government? They "allow" me? They give me the right? He doesn't exactly say, but to whom else could he be referring?
My elected leaders? Did I or anyone else vote for Richard Perle or Paul Wolfowitz? Or those faceless dweebs infesting all the bureacracies? And why does he use the word "your"? They're not my leaders. The people in the government are supposed to lead us? To where are they supposed to lead us? Over a cliff? To hell in a handbasket? I'm not supposed to control my own life? I'm supposed to play follow the leader? Even if they're wrong and don't know what they're doing?
"Calling them names, and looking into what motivates them could make you a modern day Sigmund Freud."
Maybe Freud did call people names. I really don't know. I doubt this writer does, either. Yes, I do look into what motivates people. Everyone does, including this writer. That's one of the reasons he wrote this letter to me.
"What is remarkable about living in America is that we have a constitution that allows us the right to plumb the depths of a politician's soul, call him a coward and say he is a middle-schooler who needs to spread chicken blood on himself, while the writer not fear any retribution, as opposed to Iraq under Saddam and his sons."
Here we go again! The Constitution "allows" us? The Constitution does not "allow" anything. The Constitution is an enumeration of our God-given rights. To say the Constitution "allows" this or that is suggesting that our rights are dependent only on what is written in it.
Considering the Constitution is interpreted by the State, it means only what the State wants it to mean. This is why every part of it has been violated. These days, for all practical purposes, the Constitution is dead. My correspondent does not know that.
And yes, my God-given rights do allow me to plumb the depths of politicians' souls (if they have one), call them cowards, and say they are middle-schoolers who need to spread chicken blood on themselves. And like all God-given rights, it's fun! It's even more fun to make fun of brainless sea squirts who write retarded letters!
As for Saddam & Sons, they were originally placed in power by the US. At first Hussein was the US's ally, which is why we armed him in his war with Iran. The US did not give a damn how many Iraqis or Iranians were killed. In fact, the administration encouraged the deaths of both. The booger-eating Henry Kissinger commented, "Too bad they both can't lose."
Why did the US wait 25 years to take out Hussein? Why hasn't the administration taken out worse people, like Robert "Let's See How Many I Can Murder Today" Mugabe? Why hasn't it taken out the Saudi "royal" family, backers of the Wahabis who flew planes into the WTC and the Pentagon?
Questions, questions...and no answers.
"Maybe you are proud of what you have written regarding our elected officials."
I'm not proud of being disgusted by them. Interesting: first he says "your" elected leaders, then he says "our." Does he think "your" and "our" (meaning "him") are equivalent? This guy doesn't have a clue as to what he's suggesting. It's fascism. A nation of sheeple, blinding following their "leaders," even if they go hurling over a cliff, hands clapped over their eyes?
Norman Mailer, who is now 80 years old and finally growing a brain, recently suggested the natural condition of humankind is fascism. He has a point. Freedom, liberty, are recent conditions – the last two hundred years out of several thousand. And if freedom can be defined in one sentence, it's being free from the State. It means not following our "leaders" when they're wrong, and yes, it means criticizing and making fun of them.
"Great! As Yakov Smirnoff would say, 'What a country.' By the way, he knows about not confronting your 'elected' leaders. They call it a gulag."
This guy couldn't tell you where Smirnoff does most of his entertaining if his life depended on it. So I will: Branson, Missouri. And as for the Soviet Union, the reason it was the Soviet Union, and Nazi Germany, Nazi Germany, and Red China, Red China, is because they were all fascist. The State everything, the individual just a cog. The nature of the State is always the same, whether over there...or over here.
"I'm certain that you can appreciate how fortunate you are."
I plan on staying that way, by opposing fascism everywhere I see it. Unlike some, who write letters supporting it when they are deluded into thinking they're supporting freedom.
"We have the best-trained, best-equipped armed forces to guarantee that you will have the right to disagree."
And that's why our soldiers in Iraq are buying their own armor, because they are so well-equipped!
The military protects my right to disagree? How does he figure that? The Founding Fathers were utterly opposed to standing armies, for the reason shown today: Empire. Does this writer know that the US has some 750 military bases in 140-odd countries – three-quarters of the world? If the US didn't have troops in Portugal, the Portuguese would prevent me from speaking?
When was the last time our "best-trained, best-equipped armed forces" actually defended this country? World War I? The U.S. administration purposely loaded the passenger liner Lusitania with munitions. That's why it went down so fast when the Germans torpedoed it. And by the way, the German government ran full-page ads in the Eastern newspapers telling people to stay off of passenger ships. There was no reason whatsoever for the US to get involved in that European -- not American -- war.
World War II? WWII was a direct result of WWI. World War II would have never happened if the U.S. hadn't gone along with the crushing reparations against Germany, allowing Hitler to rise to power. And the Great Depression – caused by State interference in the economy, not "capitalism" – also helped Hitler's rise. The Japanese wouldn't have attacked Pearl Harbor if the U.S. hadn't cut off their oil and other imports, and sent the Flying Tigers against them in China, egging them into a pre-emptive strike against us. And the evidence is overwhelming that FDR knew the Japanese were going to attack, and let it happen so Russia wouldn't have to fight a two-front war against the Germans and Japanese.
I don't remember Korea, North Vietnam or Panama attacking us. No one else does, either.
I'll tell you the last time the U.S. military defended the U.S.: the War of 1812. And that was mostly caused by the U.S. trying to grab Canada while Britain was occupied with France. Sheesh! I mean, doesn't this guy have any room in his head at all for any facts?
Here's a list of the countries the US has bombed since the end of WWII:
China 1945–46
Korea 1950–53
China 1950–53
Guatemala 1954
Indonesia 1958
Cuba 1959-60
Guatemala 1960
Congo 1964
Peru 1965
Laos 1964–73
Vietnam 1961–73
Cambodia 1969–70
Guatemala 1967–69
Grenada 1983
Libya 1986
El Salvador 1980s
Nicaragua 1980s
Panama 1989
Iraq 1991–99
Sudan 1998
Afghanistan 1998
Yugoslavia 1999
How many of those countries attacked the US? Hello? Hello! Anybody there? I'm waiting for an answer!
"I really do question your estimation of our leadership, but our armed forces that will guarantee your right to be a Braveheart at your keyboard."
At least he recognizes my last name (heck, maybe he doesn't!). Speaking of William Wallace, he was fighting against foreign invaders. England invaded Scotland...not the other way around. It was England's "best-equipped, best-trained armed forces" that rampaged through Scotland, raping and murdering. They're weren't defending England; they were invading other countries.
"I hope you don't mind a little sarcasm on my part."
Not at all. He's just not very good at it. Okay, the truth is that his attempt is pretty darned painful!
"I hope you don't think I am questioning your motives."
Of course he is.
"Heaven forbid!"
If Heaven would forbid politicians from breaking its laws, I'd be a happier man.
This writer is spouting nothing but clichés. It's almost as if his brain has been removed and replaced with a tape recorder. "We-should-follow-our-leaders- and-never-criticize-them [click] our-best-trained-and-best-equipped-armed- forces-are-protecting us-[click]." Ack! -- he's been taken over by the Cliché Robot!
He is convinced he is right, and I am wrong. I understand his point of view, but he does not understand mine. I know why; he doesn't. Here's the reason: a friend of mind recently told me, "The smart understand the stupid a lot better than the stupid understand the smart."
What can actually penetrate the mind of a man like this? I don't think it's reason, unfortunately. I suspect it's what is called "the School of Hard Knocks." Sadly, when the inside of his head is nothing but cliches' rattling around, it is the only way he can learn.
Sinister Leftist Libertarians
Some libertarians like to delude themselves that they beyond, or perhaps above, the categories of Right and Left. They aren't. No one is. There is no one who can escape Right and Left, no more than they can escape male and female.
In point of fact, Right and Left and male and female are are aspects of the same thing. That's why no one can escape them. It appears to be part of our brain structure, so how can anyone escape his own brain?
The brain has two hemispheres, a right one and a left one. They are, in my opinion, the main influences on Right and Left. That's what I mean about everyone being unable to transcend Right and Left: you can't do it anymore than you can escape your brain.
The left brain, which controls the right side of the body (including the right hand) is more of the "male" side. At least it is associated with "male," and has been for thousands of years (hence the Biblical expression, "the right hand of the Father").
The right side of the brain controls the left side, including the left hand. It has traditionally been associated with the "female."
Additionally, there are layers to the brain, like an onion. The "rational" part of the brain is but a thin layer on top of the enormous emotional part. It's why few people can follow a complicated chain of rational logic, but are easily swayed by appeals to their feelings.
And now we have the rub: emotion is associated with female, rationality with male. Combined with the right and left sides of the brain, we come to some interesting conclusions.
The "male" for obvious reasons has always been associated with the father, and also with rationality and the long-term view. The "female" has always been associated the mother, also for obvious reasons, and also with feelings and the short-term view (because feelings are instantanous judgments).
Politically, then, the Left is mother, feelings, and instantaneous judgments. The Right is Father, reason, and the long-term view.
This division is why liberal (leftists) consistently clobber conservatives (rightists) in debates. The Right deals in facts, the Left in feelings. Since most people aren't particularly rational, and are instead run by their feelings, the Left's appeal to emotion very simply trumps complicated rational argument.
Combined with the Left's "I'm Mommy and I'll take care of you," as opposed to the Right's "I'm Daddy and you should take care of yourself," is it any wonder the Left's Mommy State makes so many inroads into society?
Worse, since the emotional part of the brain is much more primitive than the rational part that sits on top of it (and is supposed to control it), it can be, at its worst, narcissistic, grandiose and self-centered.
Probably the simplest explanation of narcissism is that it means to split everything in either all good or all bad. It's why leftists, being ruled by their feelings and narcissism, sees rightists as being evil (and themselves as being good). Rightists, ruled by their reason, usually see leftists as being deluded, stupid, or just plain daft. But they don't see them as evil.
The grandiosity is why leftists think they are smarter and more moral than everyone else, and why they should rule as Mommy over a nation of what they consider to be eternal children.
All leftists have to do is appeal to the most primitive, emotional, narcissistic, scapegoating part of people. It's why the argument, "Those evil conservatives want to hurt you!" appeals to so many.
Unfortunately, and inescapably, there is even a Left in libertarianism. Of course, they are run by their feelings, are narcissistic and grandiose (which is why they believe in sex, drugs, rock 'n' roll, and want no one to have any authority over them or tell them what to do), and see right-libertarians as evil.
It's Freud's "pleasure principle" as opposed to his "reality principle.
A life-long expert on Leftism, Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn, in his magnum opus Leftism Revisited, pointed out one of the main characteristics of the Left is "the overthrow of the father."
He used 19th-Century Europe as an example. At that time the countries were ruled by mature monarchies, meaning kings and queens. Kings and queens, at their best, are perfect examples of both male and female, reason and emotion, being used to rule.
Unfortunately, the Left in Europe overthrew the monarchies (none of which would fight back), and the 20th-Century became the century of European Leftism, and with it up to 200 million people dead. And all of them at the hands of leftists such as Hitler and Stalin -- grandiose, narcissistic men who gained power by appealing to people's feelings and their desire to be taken care of by the Mommy State.
Today, the Left in libertarianism, being self-centered, grandiose and narcissistic, does not want to submit to any self-control or any voluntary authority other than their own desire for pleasure. It's why critics of libertarians refer to them as libertines or "loserdopertarians." They think all of them want nothing but the aforementioned sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll, and license instead of liberty. And they have a point.
The libertarian Left also wants to overthrow the libertarian Right, because it sees it as "the father," one who they believe is evil and wants to tell them you can't devote you life to physical pleasure and childishness, because you will only end up degraded. If you read any leftist-libertarian sites, you'll see a great many vicious attacks on the libertarian Right.
Not surprisingly, the word "left" throughout history has always meant "sinister." Always, everywhere, people have seen what the Left does when it gains ascendency.
Ideally, people need both Right and Left in balance, as in the aforementioned kings and queens, who are examples of reason and feelings, male and female. But when you go to extremes, especially with the hard Left, then you are inescapably looking at very bad trouble.
All of this is something Right libertarians should keep in mind about Left libertarians: they want to overthrow what the see as the father. They want to destroy. It's why they believe in open borders; they want to destroy nation, state, neighborhoods and families. It's why the see homosexuality as equal to heterosexuality, even though that two percent of the population that is homosexual is responsible for one-third of all sex crimes and two-thirds of all AIDS cases. It's why they believe so much in promiscuous casual sex and irresponsible drug use. It's why critics correctly call them "libertines."
The Left is quite good at redining terms to suit its agenda. The neocons, who are leftists, have redefined conservatism so they appear to be conservatives and not leftists. Modern "conservatism" today is just another name for leftism.
Left-libertarians are trying to do the same: define themselves as the true libertarians, and expell the Right. The first rule of all tribes is, "Do not disagree," and those who break the taboos and expelled and scapegoated. And all tribes, without fail, have taboos and scapegoats, even the libertarian ones. And we think we're so advanced. Har.
What will Right libertarians do? Will they ultimately give in and let the libertine Left win? Let them define the Right as evil? Claim that destruction of family and neighborhood is what libertarianism truly is?
As always, only time will tell. But forwarned, as always, if forearmed.
In point of fact, Right and Left and male and female are are aspects of the same thing. That's why no one can escape them. It appears to be part of our brain structure, so how can anyone escape his own brain?
The brain has two hemispheres, a right one and a left one. They are, in my opinion, the main influences on Right and Left. That's what I mean about everyone being unable to transcend Right and Left: you can't do it anymore than you can escape your brain.
The left brain, which controls the right side of the body (including the right hand) is more of the "male" side. At least it is associated with "male," and has been for thousands of years (hence the Biblical expression, "the right hand of the Father").
The right side of the brain controls the left side, including the left hand. It has traditionally been associated with the "female."
Additionally, there are layers to the brain, like an onion. The "rational" part of the brain is but a thin layer on top of the enormous emotional part. It's why few people can follow a complicated chain of rational logic, but are easily swayed by appeals to their feelings.
And now we have the rub: emotion is associated with female, rationality with male. Combined with the right and left sides of the brain, we come to some interesting conclusions.
The "male" for obvious reasons has always been associated with the father, and also with rationality and the long-term view. The "female" has always been associated the mother, also for obvious reasons, and also with feelings and the short-term view (because feelings are instantanous judgments).
Politically, then, the Left is mother, feelings, and instantaneous judgments. The Right is Father, reason, and the long-term view.
This division is why liberal (leftists) consistently clobber conservatives (rightists) in debates. The Right deals in facts, the Left in feelings. Since most people aren't particularly rational, and are instead run by their feelings, the Left's appeal to emotion very simply trumps complicated rational argument.
Combined with the Left's "I'm Mommy and I'll take care of you," as opposed to the Right's "I'm Daddy and you should take care of yourself," is it any wonder the Left's Mommy State makes so many inroads into society?
Worse, since the emotional part of the brain is much more primitive than the rational part that sits on top of it (and is supposed to control it), it can be, at its worst, narcissistic, grandiose and self-centered.
Probably the simplest explanation of narcissism is that it means to split everything in either all good or all bad. It's why leftists, being ruled by their feelings and narcissism, sees rightists as being evil (and themselves as being good). Rightists, ruled by their reason, usually see leftists as being deluded, stupid, or just plain daft. But they don't see them as evil.
The grandiosity is why leftists think they are smarter and more moral than everyone else, and why they should rule as Mommy over a nation of what they consider to be eternal children.
All leftists have to do is appeal to the most primitive, emotional, narcissistic, scapegoating part of people. It's why the argument, "Those evil conservatives want to hurt you!" appeals to so many.
Unfortunately, and inescapably, there is even a Left in libertarianism. Of course, they are run by their feelings, are narcissistic and grandiose (which is why they believe in sex, drugs, rock 'n' roll, and want no one to have any authority over them or tell them what to do), and see right-libertarians as evil.
It's Freud's "pleasure principle" as opposed to his "reality principle.
A life-long expert on Leftism, Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn, in his magnum opus Leftism Revisited, pointed out one of the main characteristics of the Left is "the overthrow of the father."
He used 19th-Century Europe as an example. At that time the countries were ruled by mature monarchies, meaning kings and queens. Kings and queens, at their best, are perfect examples of both male and female, reason and emotion, being used to rule.
Unfortunately, the Left in Europe overthrew the monarchies (none of which would fight back), and the 20th-Century became the century of European Leftism, and with it up to 200 million people dead. And all of them at the hands of leftists such as Hitler and Stalin -- grandiose, narcissistic men who gained power by appealing to people's feelings and their desire to be taken care of by the Mommy State.
Today, the Left in libertarianism, being self-centered, grandiose and narcissistic, does not want to submit to any self-control or any voluntary authority other than their own desire for pleasure. It's why critics of libertarians refer to them as libertines or "loserdopertarians." They think all of them want nothing but the aforementioned sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll, and license instead of liberty. And they have a point.
The libertarian Left also wants to overthrow the libertarian Right, because it sees it as "the father," one who they believe is evil and wants to tell them you can't devote you life to physical pleasure and childishness, because you will only end up degraded. If you read any leftist-libertarian sites, you'll see a great many vicious attacks on the libertarian Right.
Not surprisingly, the word "left" throughout history has always meant "sinister." Always, everywhere, people have seen what the Left does when it gains ascendency.
Ideally, people need both Right and Left in balance, as in the aforementioned kings and queens, who are examples of reason and feelings, male and female. But when you go to extremes, especially with the hard Left, then you are inescapably looking at very bad trouble.
All of this is something Right libertarians should keep in mind about Left libertarians: they want to overthrow what the see as the father. They want to destroy. It's why they believe in open borders; they want to destroy nation, state, neighborhoods and families. It's why the see homosexuality as equal to heterosexuality, even though that two percent of the population that is homosexual is responsible for one-third of all sex crimes and two-thirds of all AIDS cases. It's why they believe so much in promiscuous casual sex and irresponsible drug use. It's why critics correctly call them "libertines."
The Left is quite good at redining terms to suit its agenda. The neocons, who are leftists, have redefined conservatism so they appear to be conservatives and not leftists. Modern "conservatism" today is just another name for leftism.
Left-libertarians are trying to do the same: define themselves as the true libertarians, and expell the Right. The first rule of all tribes is, "Do not disagree," and those who break the taboos and expelled and scapegoated. And all tribes, without fail, have taboos and scapegoats, even the libertarian ones. And we think we're so advanced. Har.
What will Right libertarians do? Will they ultimately give in and let the libertine Left win? Let them define the Right as evil? Claim that destruction of family and neighborhood is what libertarianism truly is?
As always, only time will tell. But forwarned, as always, if forearmed.
Ares the Klutz
Since I don't have one of those Outer Limits/David McCallum/"Sixth Finger"–episode gigantic light-bulb-shaped heads full of AD 1,000,000 brains, I don't trust my opinion all that much. So, I look to traditional wisdom. Much of that wisdom is contained in mythology, which are universally true stories of human nature, with the dross burned away by hundred or thousands of years of refinement.
Let's take Ares, the Greek god of war. He's not some real god out there somewhere; he's a story about human nature, and like all stories about human nature embodied in myth, it's meant to educate by entertaining.
Ares was the son of Zeus and Hera, who didn't much like him. Small wonder, since he was a bully and a coward. Ares didn't hang out with any reputable people, either. His sister and constant companion was Eris, the goddess of strife. Also always tagging along with him were his sons Deimos ("fear") and Phobos ("terror"), and Enyo ("horror"), an old war-goddess.
All kinds of other unpleasant people followed Ares around – Pain, Panic, Famine, Oblivion. The only two animals associated with him are the vulture and the dog – both scavengers.
The Greeks in general didn't think much of Ares. He was only worshiped in Thracia, a region at that time known for its fierce people.
Not only was Ares a bully and a coward who delighted in war and slaughter, he was also a klutz. He kept getting wounded, after which he would run back to his father Zeus to get healed. He also lost all his battles; he never won.
He was such a klutz he was utterly incompetent. Heracles wounds Ares on two occasions, and once even stripped him of his weapons. On another occasion two giants chain him up and imprison him in a bronze vessel for 13 months. In the Iliad one of Odysseus's pals wounds him. The goddess Athena, which whom he was always at odds, whacks him in the head with a rock and knocks him cold.
What we have in this myth is some truly profound wisdom about wars. One thing it points out is that wars, contrary to the propaganda, are never truly won. If we look at just the 20th century, all the wars in it are not separate wars; they are chapters in the same war, with intermissions.
The U.S.'s unnecessary entrance into World War I led to World War II, which led to the Cold War. The Cold War led to Korea and Vietnam. World War II led to constant war in the Middle East. And the US's interference in the Middle East led to the attack on the WTC and the Pentagon. Now the US has "conquered" Afghanistan and Iraq and is involved in World War III. But...Ares loses all his battles; he never wins.
Ares' complete and utter incompetence is something which is not paid the attention it deserves. A friend once told me that wars are "won" by those who screw up the least. Those who are the least incompetent. All militaries are incompetent; some are just less incompetent than others.
We may cheer the way the US rolled over Iraq, but that's like me kicking a puppy. Now we're involved in a guerrilla war, which was predicted by everyone with half a brain. The U.S. doesn't have a clue how to handle the problem over there.
Then, of course, we have the propaganda about Saddam flying drones across the Atlantic, and the administration falling for forged documents about smuggled uranium, and the Weapons of Mass Destruction (boy, am I tired of that phrase) that never existed in the first place.
What we have here is incompetence piled upon incompetence. This, unfortunately, is the nature of the State, militaries and war.
What else does this myth tell us? Ares is a bully and a coward. Now who today fits these characteristics?
Well, for one, the neocons. Here we have people who are intellectual bullies and physical cowards. They are great at running their mouths, but every one of them avoided military service. David Frum, for a good example, is great at abusing Taki in print, but I'd bet a lot of money that Frum would never say anything to him in person – especially if there were no witnesses.
It turns out the neocons' carefully crafted plans for U.S. domination of the world are already falling apart. We're losing about one soldier every two days in Iraq. Oh, yeah, those are some incompetent plans by a gaggle of cowardly, incompetent pseudo-intellectuals.
Then we have Dubya, who has engaged in one of the most bizarre transformations I've seen in my life. When he was asked what he thought if he lost the election, he said, "Life goes on." Now he's turned into a megalomaniac with a messiah complex, one who thinks God talks to him. He deserted the military for over a year, and now he's strutting around in a flight suit on an aircraft carrier, telling guerillas in Iraq to "bring it on," which is a contemptible comment from a man who tried his darndest to get out of his National Guard service.
The Thracians were the only Greeks who truly worshipped Ares. They're not around anymore. What happens when a country worships Ares? The Nazis (National Socialists) worshipped him, as did their blood brothers the Russian Communists (International Socialists). What came out of their clash was their extinction, and a gruesome battle at Stalingrad, in which more soldiers were killed than the US has lost in all of its wars combined.
Obviously, Hitler and Stalin, both Ares worshippers, were military incompetents.
Saddam Hussein was an Ares worshipper, and like all of them, was an incompetent military leader. That's why I never believed a thing said about him being a threat to the U.S.. I also smile when I think of the gigantic U.S. stripping him of his weapons and chaining him up, not for 13 months, but 11 years.
What is going on currently is that the U.S. administration, which has always been somewhat of an Ares-worshipper, is now trying to turn itself into a full-fledged empire. This would turn it into a complete Ares-worshipper, because only an Ares-worshipper can run an empire.
This is another figure that reminds me of Ares. In the Christian tradition it's Satan, another incompetent empire-builder. The question is raised (and looked at in a certain way, it's a little bit amusing): Bush claims he is a born-again Christian. However, since he's starting World War III, he's actually worshipping Ares. Or, maybe, someone else, whose greatest sin was Hubris, which invariably is followed by Nemesis.
Let's take Ares, the Greek god of war. He's not some real god out there somewhere; he's a story about human nature, and like all stories about human nature embodied in myth, it's meant to educate by entertaining.
Ares was the son of Zeus and Hera, who didn't much like him. Small wonder, since he was a bully and a coward. Ares didn't hang out with any reputable people, either. His sister and constant companion was Eris, the goddess of strife. Also always tagging along with him were his sons Deimos ("fear") and Phobos ("terror"), and Enyo ("horror"), an old war-goddess.
All kinds of other unpleasant people followed Ares around – Pain, Panic, Famine, Oblivion. The only two animals associated with him are the vulture and the dog – both scavengers.
The Greeks in general didn't think much of Ares. He was only worshiped in Thracia, a region at that time known for its fierce people.
Not only was Ares a bully and a coward who delighted in war and slaughter, he was also a klutz. He kept getting wounded, after which he would run back to his father Zeus to get healed. He also lost all his battles; he never won.
He was such a klutz he was utterly incompetent. Heracles wounds Ares on two occasions, and once even stripped him of his weapons. On another occasion two giants chain him up and imprison him in a bronze vessel for 13 months. In the Iliad one of Odysseus's pals wounds him. The goddess Athena, which whom he was always at odds, whacks him in the head with a rock and knocks him cold.
What we have in this myth is some truly profound wisdom about wars. One thing it points out is that wars, contrary to the propaganda, are never truly won. If we look at just the 20th century, all the wars in it are not separate wars; they are chapters in the same war, with intermissions.
The U.S.'s unnecessary entrance into World War I led to World War II, which led to the Cold War. The Cold War led to Korea and Vietnam. World War II led to constant war in the Middle East. And the US's interference in the Middle East led to the attack on the WTC and the Pentagon. Now the US has "conquered" Afghanistan and Iraq and is involved in World War III. But...Ares loses all his battles; he never wins.
Ares' complete and utter incompetence is something which is not paid the attention it deserves. A friend once told me that wars are "won" by those who screw up the least. Those who are the least incompetent. All militaries are incompetent; some are just less incompetent than others.
We may cheer the way the US rolled over Iraq, but that's like me kicking a puppy. Now we're involved in a guerrilla war, which was predicted by everyone with half a brain. The U.S. doesn't have a clue how to handle the problem over there.
Then, of course, we have the propaganda about Saddam flying drones across the Atlantic, and the administration falling for forged documents about smuggled uranium, and the Weapons of Mass Destruction (boy, am I tired of that phrase) that never existed in the first place.
What we have here is incompetence piled upon incompetence. This, unfortunately, is the nature of the State, militaries and war.
What else does this myth tell us? Ares is a bully and a coward. Now who today fits these characteristics?
Well, for one, the neocons. Here we have people who are intellectual bullies and physical cowards. They are great at running their mouths, but every one of them avoided military service. David Frum, for a good example, is great at abusing Taki in print, but I'd bet a lot of money that Frum would never say anything to him in person – especially if there were no witnesses.
It turns out the neocons' carefully crafted plans for U.S. domination of the world are already falling apart. We're losing about one soldier every two days in Iraq. Oh, yeah, those are some incompetent plans by a gaggle of cowardly, incompetent pseudo-intellectuals.
Then we have Dubya, who has engaged in one of the most bizarre transformations I've seen in my life. When he was asked what he thought if he lost the election, he said, "Life goes on." Now he's turned into a megalomaniac with a messiah complex, one who thinks God talks to him. He deserted the military for over a year, and now he's strutting around in a flight suit on an aircraft carrier, telling guerillas in Iraq to "bring it on," which is a contemptible comment from a man who tried his darndest to get out of his National Guard service.
The Thracians were the only Greeks who truly worshipped Ares. They're not around anymore. What happens when a country worships Ares? The Nazis (National Socialists) worshipped him, as did their blood brothers the Russian Communists (International Socialists). What came out of their clash was their extinction, and a gruesome battle at Stalingrad, in which more soldiers were killed than the US has lost in all of its wars combined.
Obviously, Hitler and Stalin, both Ares worshippers, were military incompetents.
Saddam Hussein was an Ares worshipper, and like all of them, was an incompetent military leader. That's why I never believed a thing said about him being a threat to the U.S.. I also smile when I think of the gigantic U.S. stripping him of his weapons and chaining him up, not for 13 months, but 11 years.
What is going on currently is that the U.S. administration, which has always been somewhat of an Ares-worshipper, is now trying to turn itself into a full-fledged empire. This would turn it into a complete Ares-worshipper, because only an Ares-worshipper can run an empire.
This is another figure that reminds me of Ares. In the Christian tradition it's Satan, another incompetent empire-builder. The question is raised (and looked at in a certain way, it's a little bit amusing): Bush claims he is a born-again Christian. However, since he's starting World War III, he's actually worshipping Ares. Or, maybe, someone else, whose greatest sin was Hubris, which invariably is followed by Nemesis.
Some Read Black, Some Read White
Both read the Bible day and night
But thou read'st black where I read white
-- William Blake, "The Everlasting Gospel"
There are, as Richard Maybury has pointed out in such books as Whatever Happened to Justice? two simple laws that are the ethical bedrock for all societies: "Don't encroach on people and their property" and "Do all you have agreed to do."
All three are in the Ten Commandments as "Do not murder," "Do not steal" and "Don't tell lies against your neighbor." Any society that does not follow those two laws – which even the most enstupidated can memorize – won't survive.
It would be naive to expect all States to follow those two laws. They never have. In the 20th century, States ignoring those laws led to the murders to what historians estimate are 177 million people. I've seen estimates of up to 200 million dead.
The fact that violation of these two laws always leads to catastrophe means they are Natural Law. They are inherent in our nature, and they cannot be changed. They cannot be violated. As such, no one can violate them for any reason. To me, it's as simple as 2 + 2 = 4.
These laws cannot be violated even if well-known preachers say they can, or twist passages in the Bible, or take them out of context.
A good example? Jerry Falwell recently wrote an article defending the war in Iraq. Here is one thing he wrote: "President Bush declared war in Iraq to defend innocent people. This is a worthy pursuit. In fact, Proverbs 21:15 tells us: 'It is joy to the just to do judgment: but destruction shall be to the workers of iniquity.'"
First off, no war was declared. The United States hasn't declared war since World War II. Korea and Vietnam and every other "war" we have been in were not declared. They were "Presidential actions" that would better fit one of the later, more degraded Roman emperors.
Defend innocent people? Those are some weasel words. If the United States government is interested in defending innocent people, then why did it attack Iraq for ten years and contribute to the deaths of who knows how many innocent men, women, children and infants? How can you defend innocent people by murdering them? The US used that tactic in Vietnam when it killed one million to three million Vietnamese (who knows how many, really?) and 58,000 American soldiers, to "save" the Vietnamese from Communism.
Why no attacks on Zimbabwe and the mass murderer Robert Mugabe? The whole place could be taken with a platoon. Why no comments from Falwell about that? Or what about Burma, a truly gruesome place never mentioned in the news? I doubt Falwell even knows where Burma's located.
A worthy pursuit? Mass murder is a worthy pursuit? As for his quoting Proverbs – "It is joy to the just to do judgment: but destruction shall be to the workers of iniquity" – he is using this quote to support the State's wars, mass murder, mass theft, and mass lying.
When Falwell speaks about "destruction shall be to the workers of iniquity," he should pay attention to what "iniquity" means: "lack of righteousness or justice; wickedness, sin." In other words, workers of iniquity are those who murder, steal and lie against others. It is to them that destruction shall come, whether it is a person or a government. That law applies not only to other countries, but also to us.
Falwell later wrote this: "One of the primary purposes of the church is to stop the spread of evil, even at the cost of human lives. If we do not stop the spread of evil, many innocent lives will be lost and the kingdom of God suffers."
All I can say: wow. What's he's actually saying, in his hubris, is, "One of the primary purposes of the church is to stop the spread of evil, even if we have to murder people." He believes one of the purposes of the church is to stop evil by doing evil?
The Kingdom of God suffers? There is no Kingdom of God on earth. That's right in the Gospels. Here's a quote for Falwell to meditate upon: "Jesus answered, My kingdom is not of this world: if my kingdom were of this world, then would my servants fight...my kingdom [is] not from hence."
Since the world and people are inherently fallen and imperfect, there can be no "Kingdom of God" in this world. Falwell wrote as much in his article, but apparently doesn't understand the implications of what he is saying: "Today, America continues to face the horrible realities of our fallen world. Suicide bombings and terrorist actions are beamed live into our homes daily. This serves as a constant reminder of the frailty of our flesh."
You can't have a fallen world and the Kingdom of God in that fallen world simultaneously. You cannot have an imperfect world and a perfect world at the same time.
Ominously, Falwell apparently believes the United States is the defender of what he considers to be the Kingdom of God. I wonder if he has ever heard of the Commandment about not using God's name for vain purposes?
I have this fantasy that someday Jesus does come back. Then people like Falwell, convinced of their righteousness and salvation, suddenly find a finger pointed at them and this directed at them: "Not every one that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven; but he that doeth the will of my Father which is in heaven. Many will say to me in that day, Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in thy name? and in thy name have cast out devils? and in thy name done many wonderful works? And then will I profess unto them, I never knew you: depart from me, ye that work iniquity. Therefore whosoever heareth these sayings of mine, and doeth them, I will liken him unto a wise man, which built his house upon a rock."
I'd say that people like Falwell can't tell the difference between a foundation of sand and one of rock.
But thou read'st black where I read white
-- William Blake, "The Everlasting Gospel"
There are, as Richard Maybury has pointed out in such books as Whatever Happened to Justice? two simple laws that are the ethical bedrock for all societies: "Don't encroach on people and their property" and "Do all you have agreed to do."
All three are in the Ten Commandments as "Do not murder," "Do not steal" and "Don't tell lies against your neighbor." Any society that does not follow those two laws – which even the most enstupidated can memorize – won't survive.
It would be naive to expect all States to follow those two laws. They never have. In the 20th century, States ignoring those laws led to the murders to what historians estimate are 177 million people. I've seen estimates of up to 200 million dead.
The fact that violation of these two laws always leads to catastrophe means they are Natural Law. They are inherent in our nature, and they cannot be changed. They cannot be violated. As such, no one can violate them for any reason. To me, it's as simple as 2 + 2 = 4.
These laws cannot be violated even if well-known preachers say they can, or twist passages in the Bible, or take them out of context.
A good example? Jerry Falwell recently wrote an article defending the war in Iraq. Here is one thing he wrote: "President Bush declared war in Iraq to defend innocent people. This is a worthy pursuit. In fact, Proverbs 21:15 tells us: 'It is joy to the just to do judgment: but destruction shall be to the workers of iniquity.'"
First off, no war was declared. The United States hasn't declared war since World War II. Korea and Vietnam and every other "war" we have been in were not declared. They were "Presidential actions" that would better fit one of the later, more degraded Roman emperors.
Defend innocent people? Those are some weasel words. If the United States government is interested in defending innocent people, then why did it attack Iraq for ten years and contribute to the deaths of who knows how many innocent men, women, children and infants? How can you defend innocent people by murdering them? The US used that tactic in Vietnam when it killed one million to three million Vietnamese (who knows how many, really?) and 58,000 American soldiers, to "save" the Vietnamese from Communism.
Why no attacks on Zimbabwe and the mass murderer Robert Mugabe? The whole place could be taken with a platoon. Why no comments from Falwell about that? Or what about Burma, a truly gruesome place never mentioned in the news? I doubt Falwell even knows where Burma's located.
A worthy pursuit? Mass murder is a worthy pursuit? As for his quoting Proverbs – "It is joy to the just to do judgment: but destruction shall be to the workers of iniquity" – he is using this quote to support the State's wars, mass murder, mass theft, and mass lying.
When Falwell speaks about "destruction shall be to the workers of iniquity," he should pay attention to what "iniquity" means: "lack of righteousness or justice; wickedness, sin." In other words, workers of iniquity are those who murder, steal and lie against others. It is to them that destruction shall come, whether it is a person or a government. That law applies not only to other countries, but also to us.
Falwell later wrote this: "One of the primary purposes of the church is to stop the spread of evil, even at the cost of human lives. If we do not stop the spread of evil, many innocent lives will be lost and the kingdom of God suffers."
All I can say: wow. What's he's actually saying, in his hubris, is, "One of the primary purposes of the church is to stop the spread of evil, even if we have to murder people." He believes one of the purposes of the church is to stop evil by doing evil?
The Kingdom of God suffers? There is no Kingdom of God on earth. That's right in the Gospels. Here's a quote for Falwell to meditate upon: "Jesus answered, My kingdom is not of this world: if my kingdom were of this world, then would my servants fight...my kingdom [is] not from hence."
Since the world and people are inherently fallen and imperfect, there can be no "Kingdom of God" in this world. Falwell wrote as much in his article, but apparently doesn't understand the implications of what he is saying: "Today, America continues to face the horrible realities of our fallen world. Suicide bombings and terrorist actions are beamed live into our homes daily. This serves as a constant reminder of the frailty of our flesh."
You can't have a fallen world and the Kingdom of God in that fallen world simultaneously. You cannot have an imperfect world and a perfect world at the same time.
Ominously, Falwell apparently believes the United States is the defender of what he considers to be the Kingdom of God. I wonder if he has ever heard of the Commandment about not using God's name for vain purposes?
I have this fantasy that someday Jesus does come back. Then people like Falwell, convinced of their righteousness and salvation, suddenly find a finger pointed at them and this directed at them: "Not every one that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven; but he that doeth the will of my Father which is in heaven. Many will say to me in that day, Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in thy name? and in thy name have cast out devils? and in thy name done many wonderful works? And then will I profess unto them, I never knew you: depart from me, ye that work iniquity. Therefore whosoever heareth these sayings of mine, and doeth them, I will liken him unto a wise man, which built his house upon a rock."
I'd say that people like Falwell can't tell the difference between a foundation of sand and one of rock.
The Wisdom of Looney Toons
A little more than five years ago I turned off what the late, great offbeat genius (is there any other kind?) Arch Oboler called "the Twonky" (he was also the same guy who made the first 3-D movie, 1952's rousing Bwana Devil, which was about lions eating railroad workers. Hey, if some doofi try to build a railroad through my backyard, they'll find out what "Jose Greco de la Muerte" -- flamenco dancers of death -- really are.*
Okay, I didn't turn it off completely. I just turned off the bad stuff. Modern TV gives a distorted view of life, sort of like reading H.P. Lovecraft while you have a really bad fever. I mean, who in their right mind takes Cops seriously?
I found I didn't miss television. Who wants to put distorted views into their brains? What good can that possibly do? I'm still trying to get out all the gunk put in mine by the public schools. Distortions are lies. If the truth is supposed to set us free, what do distortions and lies do to us? Enslave us, maybe?
What little TV I do watch tends to be cartoons, especially the old Looney Toons I was raised on as a kid. The stuff today on Saturday morning is just horrible. Whatever happened to Tutor Turtle and Mr. Wizard? Mr. Peabody and his boy Sherman? Fractured Fairy Tales? No wonder Japanese anime is so popular, or cartoons like The Simpsons, Spongebob Squarepants and South Park. At least none of them tell me if I don't carpool the icecaps will melt.
Of all of the ones I watched as a kid, the Looney Toons of the late, great Chuck Jones were my favorite. I even liked them better than the proto-Hulk, Bullwinkle the Moose, and that miniature Rocketeer, Rocket Jet Squirrel.
Of all the Looney Toons characters, I hold the most fondness for Marvin the Martian. Mostly it's because, like him, I have short legs that move in a blur when I run, but, like him, I don't go anywhere. The only kids I could outrun in jr. high were the fat kids and the really doofy, pocket-protector-wearing, briefcase-toting ones that tripped over their own feet in the hallway. I actually saw one of these guys fall on his nose in the hall while looking at a sliderule. He's probably a billionaire today, I'll bet.
Besides the legs, I've always liked Marvin because he's a perfect example of what Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn wrote in Leftism Revisited "Madness is often a combination of cold reason and [imaginative] fantasy severed from all reality."
Marvin is perfectly rational, but he's also insane. He's a megalomaniac who wants to conquer the Earth, and like all megalomaniacs, he has no conscience. Anyone who gets in his way and makes him "very very angry" runs the risk of wafting away in the breeze after being returned to his original atomic elements, courtesy of Marvin's disintegrator raygun, which is almost as big as he is.
In modern psychological terms, Marvin suffers from a psychotic or schizoid disorder. Dr. George Burden, somewhat humorously but still totally seriously, claims Marvin has a delusional disorder of the grandiose type. In the psychiatrist's Bible, DSM-IV (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual), this would be diagnostic code 297.1.
I am a believer in what Alfred North Whitehead wrote: "Fundamental progress has to do with the reinterpretation of basic ideas." People in the past were as smart as we are. Maybe smarter. They just thought in a different context. They didn't have DSM-IV, but they knew a nut when they saw one.
Since Marvin is deluded, remorseless, grandiose and wants to conquer the world, what mythological archetypes does he fit? For one, he fits the Greek myth of Narcissus, from which came the modern disorder known as Narcissistic Personality Disorder. In a sentence, a narcissist is someone grandiose who sees others as things.
NPD, however, is just a mild version of the much, much worse Anti-Social Personality Disorder, commonly known today as a psychopath. Psychopaths have no conscience whatsoever and see everyone as things. Murderers and serial killers are psychopaths. To the Greeks, Ares, the cowardly and conscienceless God of War would probably fit the modern definition of a psychopath. Ares would fit Marvin, because Marvin, too, is a God of War.
The disorders, to the Greeks, would run from Narcissus to Ares. From the least to the worse. Since both suffer from grandiosity, they also suffer from what the Greeks called Hubris, which can be defined as an overwhelming lack of concern for the rights of others. All grandiose people lack concern for the rights of others.
The Greeks saw the sequence as Koros (stability) to Hubris (arrogance) to Ate (madness) to Nemesis (destruction). This sequence is why Narcissus stared at his reflection in a pool of water until he died, and why Ares is such a klutz --he never wins.
If we move to the Judeo-Christian tradition, what do we find? For one, the quote from the Bible, "Pride goes before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall." This is exactly the same observation the Greeks made. "Pride" and "haughty spirit" are best translated as "grandiosity."
The story of Satan is also a description of a psychopath. Grandiose, self-deluded, remorseless, and a complete screw-up. He really thinks he can be God? Now that's deluded! Like his protégé Marvin, he'll never win. Where are the modern-day Satans like Hitler, Pol Pot, Stalin and Mao Tse-Tung? Dead. The societies they ruled? Gone.
This Koros-Hubris-Ate-Nemesis sequence is why Marvin never wins. I find this funny. There is more wisdom in a child's cartoon than in a whole department of Ph.Ds from Yale and Harvard! People who try to conquer the world never win! Did Brain (of Pinky and the Brain) ever conquer the world? Ha! Simon bar Sinister from the old Underdogshow? Nope. Any of James Bond's villains? Uh uh. Dr. Evil? Fraid not (in a telling scene in one movie, a globe of the world whacks Dr. Evil right in his nuts).
How can the people who create children's cartoons, and write pop novels about secret agents (like Ian Fleming), know so much? And be so right? And why do the people with the Ph.Ds and the books -- the "best and the brightest" -- know so little and be so consistently wrong?
What's going on here? To whom am I supposed to listen? Bugs Bunny, or the shambling, twitchy nerds of the Political Science department at Yale? The way things are looking, I think the world would be better off paying attention to ol' Bugs! What is this -- an example of the Biblical saying about those who think they are first shall actually be the last? And those who are last will really be first? Ignore the intellectual Pharisees of our time and instead watch cartoons?
Now let's take ancient wisdom and its modern reinterpretations and apply it to today. One of the main threats to the US and the world today are the neocons. They think the US can conquer the world...like Marvin, like Brain, like Simon, like Hitler, like Stalin...uh oh. True wisdom tells us they are crackpots -- modern-day Satans hurtling toward the cliff. Bye bye! See ya! As long as you go by yourself, it'll be a much better world!
They suffer from grandiosity, self-deception, cowardice and lack of remorse. They fit perfectly the archetypes of Satan and Ares. Since they are clowns, they also are a bunch of Marvin the Martians, threatening the world with disintegrator rays. But they will lose. Ancient wisdom is against them, 100 percent.
Go up against the truth, and you'll lose every time.
So whenever you see babbling idiot of a politician or an "intellectual" on TV, see through the veneer to the truth of what these fools really are...buffoonish cartoon characters who are so dumb they can get outsmarted by a rabbit. A rabbit who knew a nut when he saw one. Unfortunately, a lot of people can't make the same claim.
*They're giant tsetse flies that in the film The In-Laws would carry children off into the sunset in their beaks.
Okay, I didn't turn it off completely. I just turned off the bad stuff. Modern TV gives a distorted view of life, sort of like reading H.P. Lovecraft while you have a really bad fever. I mean, who in their right mind takes Cops seriously?
I found I didn't miss television. Who wants to put distorted views into their brains? What good can that possibly do? I'm still trying to get out all the gunk put in mine by the public schools. Distortions are lies. If the truth is supposed to set us free, what do distortions and lies do to us? Enslave us, maybe?
What little TV I do watch tends to be cartoons, especially the old Looney Toons I was raised on as a kid. The stuff today on Saturday morning is just horrible. Whatever happened to Tutor Turtle and Mr. Wizard? Mr. Peabody and his boy Sherman? Fractured Fairy Tales? No wonder Japanese anime is so popular, or cartoons like The Simpsons, Spongebob Squarepants and South Park. At least none of them tell me if I don't carpool the icecaps will melt.
Of all of the ones I watched as a kid, the Looney Toons of the late, great Chuck Jones were my favorite. I even liked them better than the proto-Hulk, Bullwinkle the Moose, and that miniature Rocketeer, Rocket Jet Squirrel.
Of all the Looney Toons characters, I hold the most fondness for Marvin the Martian. Mostly it's because, like him, I have short legs that move in a blur when I run, but, like him, I don't go anywhere. The only kids I could outrun in jr. high were the fat kids and the really doofy, pocket-protector-wearing, briefcase-toting ones that tripped over their own feet in the hallway. I actually saw one of these guys fall on his nose in the hall while looking at a sliderule. He's probably a billionaire today, I'll bet.
Besides the legs, I've always liked Marvin because he's a perfect example of what Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn wrote in Leftism Revisited "Madness is often a combination of cold reason and [imaginative] fantasy severed from all reality."
Marvin is perfectly rational, but he's also insane. He's a megalomaniac who wants to conquer the Earth, and like all megalomaniacs, he has no conscience. Anyone who gets in his way and makes him "very very angry" runs the risk of wafting away in the breeze after being returned to his original atomic elements, courtesy of Marvin's disintegrator raygun, which is almost as big as he is.
In modern psychological terms, Marvin suffers from a psychotic or schizoid disorder. Dr. George Burden, somewhat humorously but still totally seriously, claims Marvin has a delusional disorder of the grandiose type. In the psychiatrist's Bible, DSM-IV (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual), this would be diagnostic code 297.1.
I am a believer in what Alfred North Whitehead wrote: "Fundamental progress has to do with the reinterpretation of basic ideas." People in the past were as smart as we are. Maybe smarter. They just thought in a different context. They didn't have DSM-IV, but they knew a nut when they saw one.
Since Marvin is deluded, remorseless, grandiose and wants to conquer the world, what mythological archetypes does he fit? For one, he fits the Greek myth of Narcissus, from which came the modern disorder known as Narcissistic Personality Disorder. In a sentence, a narcissist is someone grandiose who sees others as things.
NPD, however, is just a mild version of the much, much worse Anti-Social Personality Disorder, commonly known today as a psychopath. Psychopaths have no conscience whatsoever and see everyone as things. Murderers and serial killers are psychopaths. To the Greeks, Ares, the cowardly and conscienceless God of War would probably fit the modern definition of a psychopath. Ares would fit Marvin, because Marvin, too, is a God of War.
The disorders, to the Greeks, would run from Narcissus to Ares. From the least to the worse. Since both suffer from grandiosity, they also suffer from what the Greeks called Hubris, which can be defined as an overwhelming lack of concern for the rights of others. All grandiose people lack concern for the rights of others.
The Greeks saw the sequence as Koros (stability) to Hubris (arrogance) to Ate (madness) to Nemesis (destruction). This sequence is why Narcissus stared at his reflection in a pool of water until he died, and why Ares is such a klutz --he never wins.
If we move to the Judeo-Christian tradition, what do we find? For one, the quote from the Bible, "Pride goes before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall." This is exactly the same observation the Greeks made. "Pride" and "haughty spirit" are best translated as "grandiosity."
The story of Satan is also a description of a psychopath. Grandiose, self-deluded, remorseless, and a complete screw-up. He really thinks he can be God? Now that's deluded! Like his protégé Marvin, he'll never win. Where are the modern-day Satans like Hitler, Pol Pot, Stalin and Mao Tse-Tung? Dead. The societies they ruled? Gone.
This Koros-Hubris-Ate-Nemesis sequence is why Marvin never wins. I find this funny. There is more wisdom in a child's cartoon than in a whole department of Ph.Ds from Yale and Harvard! People who try to conquer the world never win! Did Brain (of Pinky and the Brain) ever conquer the world? Ha! Simon bar Sinister from the old Underdogshow? Nope. Any of James Bond's villains? Uh uh. Dr. Evil? Fraid not (in a telling scene in one movie, a globe of the world whacks Dr. Evil right in his nuts).
How can the people who create children's cartoons, and write pop novels about secret agents (like Ian Fleming), know so much? And be so right? And why do the people with the Ph.Ds and the books -- the "best and the brightest" -- know so little and be so consistently wrong?
What's going on here? To whom am I supposed to listen? Bugs Bunny, or the shambling, twitchy nerds of the Political Science department at Yale? The way things are looking, I think the world would be better off paying attention to ol' Bugs! What is this -- an example of the Biblical saying about those who think they are first shall actually be the last? And those who are last will really be first? Ignore the intellectual Pharisees of our time and instead watch cartoons?
Now let's take ancient wisdom and its modern reinterpretations and apply it to today. One of the main threats to the US and the world today are the neocons. They think the US can conquer the world...like Marvin, like Brain, like Simon, like Hitler, like Stalin...uh oh. True wisdom tells us they are crackpots -- modern-day Satans hurtling toward the cliff. Bye bye! See ya! As long as you go by yourself, it'll be a much better world!
They suffer from grandiosity, self-deception, cowardice and lack of remorse. They fit perfectly the archetypes of Satan and Ares. Since they are clowns, they also are a bunch of Marvin the Martians, threatening the world with disintegrator rays. But they will lose. Ancient wisdom is against them, 100 percent.
Go up against the truth, and you'll lose every time.
So whenever you see babbling idiot of a politician or an "intellectual" on TV, see through the veneer to the truth of what these fools really are...buffoonish cartoon characters who are so dumb they can get outsmarted by a rabbit. A rabbit who knew a nut when he saw one. Unfortunately, a lot of people can't make the same claim.
*They're giant tsetse flies that in the film The In-Laws would carry children off into the sunset in their beaks.
Bugs to the Rescue
Ha! I say. And also, Bah! And to whom do I direct such a double-barreled expectoration? How about all the people with worthless degrees like sociology and social psychology and psychology? For that matter, exactly how many degrees are actually worth anything? And what is the worth of people like (ack) Dr. Phil and (ack, gack) Oprah? Who really needs them to tell you how to run your life? You're better off watching the imitable, inestimable and probably ineffable Bugs Bunny! Cartoons over college!
You are confused? I will unconfuse your confusiment, after which things will be as crystalline-clear as a pool of water in a cave (and if you haven't seen how eerily clear a pool is in a cave, you are truly missing something. But I digress.).
Bugs belongs to the ancient archetype known as the Trickster. American culture has always been hesitant to embrace the Trickster because of his moral ambiguity. Most people today don't know much about him, courtesy of the public schools. Ah, shoot, most people don't know anything about mythology, also courtesy of the public schools (if I say "Luke, I am your father," everyone knows that quote. But how many know it is an example of the myth known as the Search for the Father?).
I find the Trickster the most interesting of the mythological archetypes, mostly because he is a snot. He's stupid and smart; creative and destructive, foolish and wise, good and evil. In a society like ours that likes to split things into either one or the other, and actually thinks there are solutions to all problems, it's hard for many to tolerate a character with such grey in him.
Throughout history several animals have symbolized the Trickster, but the most common one has been the rabbit. The best example generated by popular American culture over the last 60 years? Bugs, of course.
At the risk of simplifying things too much, I will also split the Trickster into a good one and a bad one. The biggest difference? The good Trickster uses persuasion; the bad Trickster uses force. This difference fits neatly into libertarian theory.
Bugs is an example of a good Trickster. He doesn't really use violence. He outsmarts his opponents, whether they are the psychopathic Marvin the Martian, the hyperactive obsessive-compulsive Tasmanian Devil, the paranoid and hysterical Daffy Duck, or the psychotic Yosemite Sam.
Because Bugs values brains over brawn, he is a libertarian hero! He fully understands some people are not only crazy, but can't be changed. This makes him a true conservative. He doesn't hate anyone, but instead actually seems to like everyone. He appears to understand that such feelings as hate, rage and envy hurt the ones who feel them just as much as those the feelings are directed at. A wise rabbit he is, one worthy of emulation.
Bugs is fearless. He is unflappable. He is always optimistic. He is never disturbed by anything. He is in the world, but not of it. Who needs Mickey Mouse when you have Bugs as a role model?
It is from Bugs that I understood what "turn the other cheek really means." It takes two to have a fight. Bugs never falls into anyone's trap. They want to fight; he doesn't. He outsmarts them. He "turns the other cheek." Yet, he always wins. He is the creative, wise, smart, good aspect of the Trickster.
Unfortunately, what is left is the destructive, foolish, stupid, not-so-good aspect of the Trickster. In Western culture, there are two Bad Guys who fit the worst aspects of the Trickster. The first is the serpent in the Garden of Eden; the second is Satan.
Both are motivated by envy and hate. Often, people motivated by such feelings show them indirectly. A perfect movie about this? Try Amadeus, in which the envious and hate-filled Salieri tricks Mozart to his death.
Want some more examples of the destructive Trickster? How about the Lincoln administration tricking Southerners into firing on Fort Sumter? Now that would have been a perfect time to turn the other cheek. "No, no, we're not going to fire on the fort...you're trying to start a fight...we're not going to fall into the trap."
More examples of the destructive Trickster? The Wilson administration loading the Lusitania with munitions. The Germans were dumb enough to fall into the trap and sink the ship. The end result? American troops in World War I. How about the Roosevelt administration continually baiting the Japanese into attacking the US, which happened at Pearl Harbor? The end result of that? American troops in World War II.
How about Hitler claiming Poland attacked Germany? The German people fell for the trick. How about the US claiming North Vietnam attacked American warships in the Gulf of Tonkin? Congress and the American people were tricked into a war that killed about 58,000 Americans and over a million Vietnamese, all for nothing.
How about the attack on the WTC and the Pentagon? It was a trick, a trap set for the US to fall into. And the administration fell right into it. It's a Bizarro World version of Bugs where the rabbit has turned evil and tricked Marvin into turning his disintegrator ray on himself.
Some more examples of destructive Tricksters? The neocons. They have tricked poor, dull-witted Dubya into starting World War III.
Bugs would see through all these traps, and not fall into them. He'd outsmart them. He'd see what they are up to: violence, death, destruction. He sees things clearly: when people are crazy, murderous, thieving and destructive, he says, "Nah, I'm not falling into your trap. You're not going to make me like you."
The creative and wise Trickster, who uses persuasion, is on the side of Good. The destructive and foolish Trickster, who uses unnecessary force and violence, is on the side of Evil.
We need more good Tricksters in the world, people who are "as wise as serpents and harmless as doves." We need more people who understand Bugs. If more did, the Marvin the Martians of the world wouldn't be able to cause as much trouble as they do.
You are confused? I will unconfuse your confusiment, after which things will be as crystalline-clear as a pool of water in a cave (and if you haven't seen how eerily clear a pool is in a cave, you are truly missing something. But I digress.).
Bugs belongs to the ancient archetype known as the Trickster. American culture has always been hesitant to embrace the Trickster because of his moral ambiguity. Most people today don't know much about him, courtesy of the public schools. Ah, shoot, most people don't know anything about mythology, also courtesy of the public schools (if I say "Luke, I am your father," everyone knows that quote. But how many know it is an example of the myth known as the Search for the Father?).
I find the Trickster the most interesting of the mythological archetypes, mostly because he is a snot. He's stupid and smart; creative and destructive, foolish and wise, good and evil. In a society like ours that likes to split things into either one or the other, and actually thinks there are solutions to all problems, it's hard for many to tolerate a character with such grey in him.
Throughout history several animals have symbolized the Trickster, but the most common one has been the rabbit. The best example generated by popular American culture over the last 60 years? Bugs, of course.
At the risk of simplifying things too much, I will also split the Trickster into a good one and a bad one. The biggest difference? The good Trickster uses persuasion; the bad Trickster uses force. This difference fits neatly into libertarian theory.
Bugs is an example of a good Trickster. He doesn't really use violence. He outsmarts his opponents, whether they are the psychopathic Marvin the Martian, the hyperactive obsessive-compulsive Tasmanian Devil, the paranoid and hysterical Daffy Duck, or the psychotic Yosemite Sam.
Because Bugs values brains over brawn, he is a libertarian hero! He fully understands some people are not only crazy, but can't be changed. This makes him a true conservative. He doesn't hate anyone, but instead actually seems to like everyone. He appears to understand that such feelings as hate, rage and envy hurt the ones who feel them just as much as those the feelings are directed at. A wise rabbit he is, one worthy of emulation.
Bugs is fearless. He is unflappable. He is always optimistic. He is never disturbed by anything. He is in the world, but not of it. Who needs Mickey Mouse when you have Bugs as a role model?
It is from Bugs that I understood what "turn the other cheek really means." It takes two to have a fight. Bugs never falls into anyone's trap. They want to fight; he doesn't. He outsmarts them. He "turns the other cheek." Yet, he always wins. He is the creative, wise, smart, good aspect of the Trickster.
Unfortunately, what is left is the destructive, foolish, stupid, not-so-good aspect of the Trickster. In Western culture, there are two Bad Guys who fit the worst aspects of the Trickster. The first is the serpent in the Garden of Eden; the second is Satan.
Both are motivated by envy and hate. Often, people motivated by such feelings show them indirectly. A perfect movie about this? Try Amadeus, in which the envious and hate-filled Salieri tricks Mozart to his death.
Want some more examples of the destructive Trickster? How about the Lincoln administration tricking Southerners into firing on Fort Sumter? Now that would have been a perfect time to turn the other cheek. "No, no, we're not going to fire on the fort...you're trying to start a fight...we're not going to fall into the trap."
More examples of the destructive Trickster? The Wilson administration loading the Lusitania with munitions. The Germans were dumb enough to fall into the trap and sink the ship. The end result? American troops in World War I. How about the Roosevelt administration continually baiting the Japanese into attacking the US, which happened at Pearl Harbor? The end result of that? American troops in World War II.
How about Hitler claiming Poland attacked Germany? The German people fell for the trick. How about the US claiming North Vietnam attacked American warships in the Gulf of Tonkin? Congress and the American people were tricked into a war that killed about 58,000 Americans and over a million Vietnamese, all for nothing.
How about the attack on the WTC and the Pentagon? It was a trick, a trap set for the US to fall into. And the administration fell right into it. It's a Bizarro World version of Bugs where the rabbit has turned evil and tricked Marvin into turning his disintegrator ray on himself.
Some more examples of destructive Tricksters? The neocons. They have tricked poor, dull-witted Dubya into starting World War III.
Bugs would see through all these traps, and not fall into them. He'd outsmart them. He'd see what they are up to: violence, death, destruction. He sees things clearly: when people are crazy, murderous, thieving and destructive, he says, "Nah, I'm not falling into your trap. You're not going to make me like you."
The creative and wise Trickster, who uses persuasion, is on the side of Good. The destructive and foolish Trickster, who uses unnecessary force and violence, is on the side of Evil.
We need more good Tricksters in the world, people who are "as wise as serpents and harmless as doves." We need more people who understand Bugs. If more did, the Marvin the Martians of the world wouldn't be able to cause as much trouble as they do.
The Jubilant Anarchy of Looney Toons
There is a part of me that is still 11 years old. Heck, there's a part of me that's still six years old.
The 11-year-old part is the one that ran across Edgar Rice Burrough's A Fighting Man of Mars and got lost in the wondrous Barsoomian world of Giant Man-Eating Apes and Death Rays and Mad Scientists and Invisibility Cloaks and Martian Babes Not Wearing Very Much At All and all the rest of that Way-Cool Stuff. Who the heck needs drugs when you've got this stuff, I thought. I am reminded of what Sir Thomas Browne said: "All the wonders you seek are within yourself."
The six-year-old part is the one that still watches cartoons. The modern ones, the ones I used to watch on Saturday morning, just plain stink, with the exception of Spongebob Squarepants. But I still watch those old Warner Brother's "Merrie Melodies" and "Looney Toons," those exuberant and wonderful ones created by that genius, Chuck Jones. Thank God for modern technology and DVDs. They're why I can tell modern cartoons to go away, get lost, I don't have any use for you.
My view is that all good artists are basically anarchists, or party-down conservatives (which is what conservatism is, in its true sense). It's the bad artists (if you can call them artists), like Karl Marx and Adolph Hitler, who are the socialists. I sometimes wonder if the fact they were frustrated artists wasn't part of their problems, and therefore ours. Marx wanted to be a poet, and Hitler an architect. Neither had enough talent.
These bad artists are the main reason Saturday morning cartoons are so crummy: they're socialist and boring, especially when they're about Evil Capitalists Polluting the Planet, for example. It's bad art in the service of bad political science. Children aren't being taught by this stuff; they're being traumatized ("Mommy! Daddy! Captain Retard told me the ice-caps are going to melt!").
One of the best cartoons I've ever seen is 1936's "I Love to Singa." I just can't see it being made today. A singing owl? Owl Jolson, of course ("I love to sing-a/About the moon-a and the June-a and the spring-a/I love to sing-a/About a sky of blue-a, or a tea for two-a"). I taped that one 15 years ago and still have it. After watching it, I decided some creative people are just born naturally high. The aforementioned Spongebob is an example of that.
But those Merrie Melodies and Looney Toons – now those are wild, jubilant, anarchistic stories! They're the best cartoons ever made. There's nothing in any of them about the wonders of the State and how it can take care of you from cradle to grave. Any of the characters who appear to have even a vague resemblance to a politician is treated as a buffoon, like Foghorn Leghorn, or insane, like Marvin the Martian.
One of the things, among many, that impresses me about these cartoons is that there really are no purely evil villains in them, be it Yosemite Sam or the Tasmanian Devil or Marvin. They might be more nuts than sane, even if they appear sane (like Marvin), they might even be frothing-at-the-mouth lunatics (like Sam or the Devil) but none of them are pure evil, which is how people are in real life, even if we like to comfort ourselves with such simplistic views.
There's no real heroes, either. Bugs Bunny is a perfect example of perhaps the oldest archetype of all, the Trickster, but he's no Superman or Batman. He's just a smart-aleck rabbit who has to outsmart those stronger or crazier than he is. He can't fly and he doesn't have a Rabbitmobile hidden in a cave.
I find his attitude in dealing with the State to be the best one: it's stronger than any one individual, so you have to outsmart it. Bugs may not exactly be a hero, but you could call him wise. He doesn't really seem to be afflicted with any of the Seven Deadly Sins: he doesn't hate, or rage, or envy, unlike Sam and Taz or Daffy, all of whom seem more than a tad angry, or Marvin, who's a walking example of hubris. As for Bugs, his Trickster archetype wouldn't have lasted for thousands of years if there wasn't wisdom in it.
A good story is a regaining of innocence, of remembering something we've always known but have forgotten. It's the reason why I consider cartoons to be modern-day myths. J.R.R. Tolkien called this characteristic "recovery," which is described as "regaining a clear view." It's realizing you have to have some innocence in a fallen world, that people are neither pure good nor pure evil, that good stories are absolutely necessary to living well (think of the movie, Big Fish, as an example), while bad stories, if you believe them, will damage you.
I essentially stopped watching TV almost five years ago. It's not because I'm some sort of snob. Television's just not any good anymore. It's full of bad stories. I don't watch the news, and I don't watch the regular programming. I don't even know what's on these days. I've never even seen Survivor, Fear Factor or Temptation Island. I don't think I've missed anything. I find I look at the world a little differently now. It's a better place than the warped view modern-day TV portrays.
I have a lot of tapes and DVDs, though, full of good stories. Fun ones.
I feel a bit sorry for kids today. It's got to the point where I think TV is snatching their innocence from them. There's no more Leave It to Beaver or Gilligan's Island or the utterly goofy Get Smart. And there's certainly no Merrie Melodies or Looney Tunes, with that poor, put-upon Daffy Duck or Henery Hawk trying to drag Leghorn to the broiler by his big toe.
TV, at its best, should be about having some of the magic in fiction rub off on the real world. It hasn't been that for a long time.
The 11-year-old part is the one that ran across Edgar Rice Burrough's A Fighting Man of Mars and got lost in the wondrous Barsoomian world of Giant Man-Eating Apes and Death Rays and Mad Scientists and Invisibility Cloaks and Martian Babes Not Wearing Very Much At All and all the rest of that Way-Cool Stuff. Who the heck needs drugs when you've got this stuff, I thought. I am reminded of what Sir Thomas Browne said: "All the wonders you seek are within yourself."
The six-year-old part is the one that still watches cartoons. The modern ones, the ones I used to watch on Saturday morning, just plain stink, with the exception of Spongebob Squarepants. But I still watch those old Warner Brother's "Merrie Melodies" and "Looney Toons," those exuberant and wonderful ones created by that genius, Chuck Jones. Thank God for modern technology and DVDs. They're why I can tell modern cartoons to go away, get lost, I don't have any use for you.
My view is that all good artists are basically anarchists, or party-down conservatives (which is what conservatism is, in its true sense). It's the bad artists (if you can call them artists), like Karl Marx and Adolph Hitler, who are the socialists. I sometimes wonder if the fact they were frustrated artists wasn't part of their problems, and therefore ours. Marx wanted to be a poet, and Hitler an architect. Neither had enough talent.
These bad artists are the main reason Saturday morning cartoons are so crummy: they're socialist and boring, especially when they're about Evil Capitalists Polluting the Planet, for example. It's bad art in the service of bad political science. Children aren't being taught by this stuff; they're being traumatized ("Mommy! Daddy! Captain Retard told me the ice-caps are going to melt!").
One of the best cartoons I've ever seen is 1936's "I Love to Singa." I just can't see it being made today. A singing owl? Owl Jolson, of course ("I love to sing-a/About the moon-a and the June-a and the spring-a/I love to sing-a/About a sky of blue-a, or a tea for two-a"). I taped that one 15 years ago and still have it. After watching it, I decided some creative people are just born naturally high. The aforementioned Spongebob is an example of that.
But those Merrie Melodies and Looney Toons – now those are wild, jubilant, anarchistic stories! They're the best cartoons ever made. There's nothing in any of them about the wonders of the State and how it can take care of you from cradle to grave. Any of the characters who appear to have even a vague resemblance to a politician is treated as a buffoon, like Foghorn Leghorn, or insane, like Marvin the Martian.
One of the things, among many, that impresses me about these cartoons is that there really are no purely evil villains in them, be it Yosemite Sam or the Tasmanian Devil or Marvin. They might be more nuts than sane, even if they appear sane (like Marvin), they might even be frothing-at-the-mouth lunatics (like Sam or the Devil) but none of them are pure evil, which is how people are in real life, even if we like to comfort ourselves with such simplistic views.
There's no real heroes, either. Bugs Bunny is a perfect example of perhaps the oldest archetype of all, the Trickster, but he's no Superman or Batman. He's just a smart-aleck rabbit who has to outsmart those stronger or crazier than he is. He can't fly and he doesn't have a Rabbitmobile hidden in a cave.
I find his attitude in dealing with the State to be the best one: it's stronger than any one individual, so you have to outsmart it. Bugs may not exactly be a hero, but you could call him wise. He doesn't really seem to be afflicted with any of the Seven Deadly Sins: he doesn't hate, or rage, or envy, unlike Sam and Taz or Daffy, all of whom seem more than a tad angry, or Marvin, who's a walking example of hubris. As for Bugs, his Trickster archetype wouldn't have lasted for thousands of years if there wasn't wisdom in it.
A good story is a regaining of innocence, of remembering something we've always known but have forgotten. It's the reason why I consider cartoons to be modern-day myths. J.R.R. Tolkien called this characteristic "recovery," which is described as "regaining a clear view." It's realizing you have to have some innocence in a fallen world, that people are neither pure good nor pure evil, that good stories are absolutely necessary to living well (think of the movie, Big Fish, as an example), while bad stories, if you believe them, will damage you.
I essentially stopped watching TV almost five years ago. It's not because I'm some sort of snob. Television's just not any good anymore. It's full of bad stories. I don't watch the news, and I don't watch the regular programming. I don't even know what's on these days. I've never even seen Survivor, Fear Factor or Temptation Island. I don't think I've missed anything. I find I look at the world a little differently now. It's a better place than the warped view modern-day TV portrays.
I have a lot of tapes and DVDs, though, full of good stories. Fun ones.
I feel a bit sorry for kids today. It's got to the point where I think TV is snatching their innocence from them. There's no more Leave It to Beaver or Gilligan's Island or the utterly goofy Get Smart. And there's certainly no Merrie Melodies or Looney Tunes, with that poor, put-upon Daffy Duck or Henery Hawk trying to drag Leghorn to the broiler by his big toe.
TV, at its best, should be about having some of the magic in fiction rub off on the real world. It hasn't been that for a long time.
The AMA Will Kill You
A few years ago JAMA (Journal of the American Medical Association) admitted that doctors are the third leading cause of death in the U.S. I wouldn't be surprised if the statistics are on the low side and doctors are the leading cause of death. Remember that old saying, "doctors bury their mistakes"? Those mistakes rarely make it into the records.
I blame this sad state of affairs on the fact the AMA is an arrogant government-backed guild dedicated to protecting doctors' incomes, status and professional and political power at the expense of peoples' health and lives. It doesn't get rid of bad doctors and attempts to prevent competition. Without competition, the status quo becomes frozen. This means protecting the status quo becomes more important than protecting people (years ago doctors use to make house calls. Guess what happened to that?). Protecting the status quo is one of those bad laws of human nature.
There are several rules I live my life by. One of them is "The State is always wrong." Because of this, if I had my way, I would close down the AMA, the ADA and the ABA in the next nano-second. All exist to protect its members at the expense of the public, although, all of course, each claims it's protecting the public. I'm sure they believe this, too.
A third rule I have is, "Materialism is a sham." When I say "materialism" I mean philosophical or scientific materialism, which is the belief mattter is ultimately all there is, and life, consciousness and self-consciousness are just by-products of matter. Most doctors operate under this assumption, even if they don't know it. That's why they consistently attempt to treat the "matter" of the body. Depression? Prozac or its clones. Anxiety? Buspar or Xanax. Whatever disease a person has, there is a drug (or drugs) to suppress the symptoms. What they all have is common is the attempt to treat the body alone. Since materialism is false, this is why (as the article above shows) that some people die from the drugs doctors prescribe.
For hundreds of years there has been a controversy in medicine between what have been called the "mechanists" (who are the materialists) and the "vitalists" (who think there is a "vital force" along with matter). This debate still goes on today, although you don't hear much about it. The reason why is because materialists gained political power and, of course, have attempted to not only stifle debate but completely destroy any notion of vitalism in medicine ("vitalism," these days, is generally referred to as "energy medicine").
Two years ago I decided to give up my two-pack-a-day habit. I was fine until the fourth day, when I developed insomnia. I was sleeping an hour-and-a-half a night. After two months I was up to three hours a night. I decided it was time to see a doctor.
Since I knew the typical doctor would do nothing except try to suppress my symptoms with sleeping pills, I looked around until I found someone who would seek the cause (I knew the cause: giving up cigarettes. But that still didn't explain why).
I finally decided on one M.D. (who I'll call Dr. Smith). When I was in his office I asked him what he thought of the AMA. "Too much regulation," he answered.
I knew then I was in good hands, as compared to a doctor to once said to me, "If the AMA doesn't approve it, it doesn't work." He probably could have made a lot of extra money raising daisies to put on his patients' graves.
Dr. Smith was an education. The first thing he did is look at my teeth. "You don't have metal fillings," he said. I told him they were falling out after 20 years, so I had them replaced. The dentist said plastic (or composite) fillings were cheaper, stronger, and would last longer.
When I asked him why he was so concerned about the fillings, he said, "A few reasons. One, they're full of mercury, which is a dangerous poison. The ADA says they're safe, but they're not. One of the first things I tell patients is that if they want to get well, they have to have their metal fillings replaced with composite.
"Another reason is that what most people think of as acupuncture meridians are actually minute DC electrical currents. Since DC current fades out with distance, acupuncture points are actually 'booster stations' that keep the current going. That's why acupuncturists use metal needles. It either increases or decreases the current. This electrical current is actually a healing force in the body. If you didn't have any electricity in your body, you'd be dead, wouldn't you?
"These currents all end on the hands and fingers, the feet and toes, and the teeth. Metal fillings can short-circuit these currents. Since metal fillings are made of several different metals, all bathed in saliva, do you know what they are?"
"Batteries," I said. I had known years that batteries were created by putting different metals together. It had never occured to me that dental fillings could be batteries.
"That's exactly what they are," he told me. I told him an interesting story which I had never been able to explain. Throughout my entire life my abdominal muscles have never tight, no matter how in shape I was. Yet the day I had my fillings replaced the muscles became tight. "One of your metal fillings was short-circuiting the current to your muscles," he said. "Once it was replaced, the current became normal and your muscles returned to normal. This is one of the reason why the overwhelming majority of the top athletes in the world don't have any fillings. Few have even one."
The next thing he did was test these electrical currents with a machine called an EAV (Electro-Acupuncture According to Voll). Dr. Voll was a German scientist who discovered in the '50s that the acupuncture meridians were electrical in nature. He invented a machine to test them. This was rediscovered by the American scientist Robert O. Becker.
This machine-which showed a rising or falling line on a computer screen-showed my pituitary gland was under-active and my liver was overactive. "What I think is happening," Dr. Smith told me, "is that all the heavy metals in cigarette smoke -- cadmium, aluminum, lead --are now being pulled out of your body since you've quit smoking. That might account for the pituitary and the liver, and the insomnia."
He had my blood drawn for testing --"I rarely find anything from these," he said -- and also ordered a hair analysis. When the hair analysis came back it showed extremely high levels of lead, aluminum, cadmium and nickel. "That's your problem," he told me. "When you quit smoking the heavy metals started coming out of your cells."
"How long can I expect this insomnia to last?" I asked.
"I don't know," he answered. "Could be months, even up to a year. It depends on how fast your body gets rid of the metals."
Oh, no. "What do you suggest, then?"
"There's two ways we can handle this," he said. "One is you change your diet to help eliminate the metals. This includes taking herbs that will help your body pull the metals out. The quickest way, however, is chelation therapy, which involves putting a IV in your arm. The chemical we use grabs the heavy metals so that you eliminate them quickly, mostly in your urine."
Okay, fine. I went into the chelation room and had a needle stuck in my arm. Two people were in there. One was a teacher in her 50's. "I went to different doctors for seven years because of heart palpitations," she told told. "The last one told me I was a mental case and wanted to put me on psychiatric medication. When I came to Dr. Smith I found out all the extensive dental work I had done -- right before the palpitations started -- was pouring mercury into my body. Since I've undergone the chelation, the palpitations have stopped."
She showed me the results of a current urine test. "Nine parts-per-million of mercury is high. Mine is 150 ppm, after my last chelation," she told me. Needless to say, I was impressed.
The other guy in the room was a dentist. "I was near suicide," he told me."I couldn't believe how depressed I was. It turned out is was from the two decades I spend putting mercury in people's mouths. It went into me."
I remembered reading several years ago that dentists have the highest suicide rate in the U.S. Now I knew why. "I'm fine now," the dentist told me."But for a while, after the chelation, my tests showed 170 ppm of mercury."
He told me something very interesting. The word "quack" comes from "quack-salver," which is German for "quicksilver," i.e., mercury. "In the 1800's, there were the dentists who used mercury --the quacks --and the ones who knew it was dangerous. The quacks got the government to back them. So guess who won?"
The chelation took one hour. I went home and promptly fell asleep. I underwent ten chelations. The last hair analysis showed a slightly high level of aluminum. The other heavy metals were gone completely. The cleansing herbs Dr. Smith prescribed gave me a metallic taste in my mouth. "It's the metals coming out," he told me.
I don't have insomnia anymore. Strangely, my mind is clearer. "Those metals also accumulate in your brain," Dr. Smith said.
Sometimes I wonder what health-care would be like in this country if the quacks in the AMA and the ADA hadn't won the political battle. One thing I do know: there would be many, many people who would not have died early.
One of the most dishonest and dangerous sites about medicine is the mis-named Quackwatch. While a very small amount of the criticisms are valid, it overwhelmingly supports that which has made doctors the third leading cause of death. Take special attention to the patronizing, totalitarian article, "Why Strong laws Are Needed to Protect Us" (it reminds me of the joke, "What's the difference between God and a doctor? God doesn't think He's a doctor.").
Can you imagine what would happen if we had national health care? How much say do you think you'd have in your treatment? Would it even matter is the treatment didn't work, or worse, killed you? I doubt it.
I blame this sad state of affairs on the fact the AMA is an arrogant government-backed guild dedicated to protecting doctors' incomes, status and professional and political power at the expense of peoples' health and lives. It doesn't get rid of bad doctors and attempts to prevent competition. Without competition, the status quo becomes frozen. This means protecting the status quo becomes more important than protecting people (years ago doctors use to make house calls. Guess what happened to that?). Protecting the status quo is one of those bad laws of human nature.
There are several rules I live my life by. One of them is "The State is always wrong." Because of this, if I had my way, I would close down the AMA, the ADA and the ABA in the next nano-second. All exist to protect its members at the expense of the public, although, all of course, each claims it's protecting the public. I'm sure they believe this, too.
A third rule I have is, "Materialism is a sham." When I say "materialism" I mean philosophical or scientific materialism, which is the belief mattter is ultimately all there is, and life, consciousness and self-consciousness are just by-products of matter. Most doctors operate under this assumption, even if they don't know it. That's why they consistently attempt to treat the "matter" of the body. Depression? Prozac or its clones. Anxiety? Buspar or Xanax. Whatever disease a person has, there is a drug (or drugs) to suppress the symptoms. What they all have is common is the attempt to treat the body alone. Since materialism is false, this is why (as the article above shows) that some people die from the drugs doctors prescribe.
For hundreds of years there has been a controversy in medicine between what have been called the "mechanists" (who are the materialists) and the "vitalists" (who think there is a "vital force" along with matter). This debate still goes on today, although you don't hear much about it. The reason why is because materialists gained political power and, of course, have attempted to not only stifle debate but completely destroy any notion of vitalism in medicine ("vitalism," these days, is generally referred to as "energy medicine").
Two years ago I decided to give up my two-pack-a-day habit. I was fine until the fourth day, when I developed insomnia. I was sleeping an hour-and-a-half a night. After two months I was up to three hours a night. I decided it was time to see a doctor.
Since I knew the typical doctor would do nothing except try to suppress my symptoms with sleeping pills, I looked around until I found someone who would seek the cause (I knew the cause: giving up cigarettes. But that still didn't explain why).
I finally decided on one M.D. (who I'll call Dr. Smith). When I was in his office I asked him what he thought of the AMA. "Too much regulation," he answered.
I knew then I was in good hands, as compared to a doctor to once said to me, "If the AMA doesn't approve it, it doesn't work." He probably could have made a lot of extra money raising daisies to put on his patients' graves.
Dr. Smith was an education. The first thing he did is look at my teeth. "You don't have metal fillings," he said. I told him they were falling out after 20 years, so I had them replaced. The dentist said plastic (or composite) fillings were cheaper, stronger, and would last longer.
When I asked him why he was so concerned about the fillings, he said, "A few reasons. One, they're full of mercury, which is a dangerous poison. The ADA says they're safe, but they're not. One of the first things I tell patients is that if they want to get well, they have to have their metal fillings replaced with composite.
"Another reason is that what most people think of as acupuncture meridians are actually minute DC electrical currents. Since DC current fades out with distance, acupuncture points are actually 'booster stations' that keep the current going. That's why acupuncturists use metal needles. It either increases or decreases the current. This electrical current is actually a healing force in the body. If you didn't have any electricity in your body, you'd be dead, wouldn't you?
"These currents all end on the hands and fingers, the feet and toes, and the teeth. Metal fillings can short-circuit these currents. Since metal fillings are made of several different metals, all bathed in saliva, do you know what they are?"
"Batteries," I said. I had known years that batteries were created by putting different metals together. It had never occured to me that dental fillings could be batteries.
"That's exactly what they are," he told me. I told him an interesting story which I had never been able to explain. Throughout my entire life my abdominal muscles have never tight, no matter how in shape I was. Yet the day I had my fillings replaced the muscles became tight. "One of your metal fillings was short-circuiting the current to your muscles," he said. "Once it was replaced, the current became normal and your muscles returned to normal. This is one of the reason why the overwhelming majority of the top athletes in the world don't have any fillings. Few have even one."
The next thing he did was test these electrical currents with a machine called an EAV (Electro-Acupuncture According to Voll). Dr. Voll was a German scientist who discovered in the '50s that the acupuncture meridians were electrical in nature. He invented a machine to test them. This was rediscovered by the American scientist Robert O. Becker.
This machine-which showed a rising or falling line on a computer screen-showed my pituitary gland was under-active and my liver was overactive. "What I think is happening," Dr. Smith told me, "is that all the heavy metals in cigarette smoke -- cadmium, aluminum, lead --are now being pulled out of your body since you've quit smoking. That might account for the pituitary and the liver, and the insomnia."
He had my blood drawn for testing --"I rarely find anything from these," he said -- and also ordered a hair analysis. When the hair analysis came back it showed extremely high levels of lead, aluminum, cadmium and nickel. "That's your problem," he told me. "When you quit smoking the heavy metals started coming out of your cells."
"How long can I expect this insomnia to last?" I asked.
"I don't know," he answered. "Could be months, even up to a year. It depends on how fast your body gets rid of the metals."
Oh, no. "What do you suggest, then?"
"There's two ways we can handle this," he said. "One is you change your diet to help eliminate the metals. This includes taking herbs that will help your body pull the metals out. The quickest way, however, is chelation therapy, which involves putting a IV in your arm. The chemical we use grabs the heavy metals so that you eliminate them quickly, mostly in your urine."
Okay, fine. I went into the chelation room and had a needle stuck in my arm. Two people were in there. One was a teacher in her 50's. "I went to different doctors for seven years because of heart palpitations," she told told. "The last one told me I was a mental case and wanted to put me on psychiatric medication. When I came to Dr. Smith I found out all the extensive dental work I had done -- right before the palpitations started -- was pouring mercury into my body. Since I've undergone the chelation, the palpitations have stopped."
She showed me the results of a current urine test. "Nine parts-per-million of mercury is high. Mine is 150 ppm, after my last chelation," she told me. Needless to say, I was impressed.
The other guy in the room was a dentist. "I was near suicide," he told me."I couldn't believe how depressed I was. It turned out is was from the two decades I spend putting mercury in people's mouths. It went into me."
I remembered reading several years ago that dentists have the highest suicide rate in the U.S. Now I knew why. "I'm fine now," the dentist told me."But for a while, after the chelation, my tests showed 170 ppm of mercury."
He told me something very interesting. The word "quack" comes from "quack-salver," which is German for "quicksilver," i.e., mercury. "In the 1800's, there were the dentists who used mercury --the quacks --and the ones who knew it was dangerous. The quacks got the government to back them. So guess who won?"
The chelation took one hour. I went home and promptly fell asleep. I underwent ten chelations. The last hair analysis showed a slightly high level of aluminum. The other heavy metals were gone completely. The cleansing herbs Dr. Smith prescribed gave me a metallic taste in my mouth. "It's the metals coming out," he told me.
I don't have insomnia anymore. Strangely, my mind is clearer. "Those metals also accumulate in your brain," Dr. Smith said.
Sometimes I wonder what health-care would be like in this country if the quacks in the AMA and the ADA hadn't won the political battle. One thing I do know: there would be many, many people who would not have died early.
One of the most dishonest and dangerous sites about medicine is the mis-named Quackwatch. While a very small amount of the criticisms are valid, it overwhelmingly supports that which has made doctors the third leading cause of death. Take special attention to the patronizing, totalitarian article, "Why Strong laws Are Needed to Protect Us" (it reminds me of the joke, "What's the difference between God and a doctor? God doesn't think He's a doctor.").
Can you imagine what would happen if we had national health care? How much say do you think you'd have in your treatment? Would it even matter is the treatment didn't work, or worse, killed you? I doubt it.
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