"Now I believe that slavery was the original sin of the American colonies and the young American Republic, and that its impact persists in many ways to this day." DK
BOOMERBUSTER
OLD CELLO
Thursday, April 29, 2021
HERE IS DK ON THE SOUTH'S ORIGINAL SIN HE IS ON BOARD WITH BLM
Saturday, August 01, 2009
The South, the poor South
Slavery was America's original sin, one which four centuries of history have failed to extirpate. To be sure, the northern states secured its formal abolition in the bloodiest war in our history 150 years ago, and although the Civil War constitutional amendments failed to secure the rights of citizens for the freed slaves, the great civil rights acts finally corrected that problem. That did not, of course, end discrimination against black people, but it has allowed for enormous progress, culminating in Barack Obama's election. Yet it seems to me that slavery's most enduring effects, ironically, have fallen upon the descendants of those who owned the slaves, rather than the slaves themselves--and those effects still are a terrible burden to the American South.
One of my deepest beliefs--one which I cannot scientifically demonstrate--holds that human beings have an innate sense of equality--that they understand that the recognition we all crave depends upon extending that same recognition to others. That understanding, to be sure, eternally conflicts with other equally primal human feelings, such as the desire to rule; but it is there all the same. Although no other critic ever seems to have realized it, that belief, I argued in my undergraduate senior thesis, was the key to George Orwell's particular contribution to western thought, precisely because he had been denied that essential recognition throughout his childhood and understood its consequences. The Declaration of Independence, our founding document, specifically affirmed this in the enduring phrase that "all men are created equal"--and my blood boils at recent scholarship, by Gary Wills and others, that argues that the slaveholder Jefferson could not actually have meant what he said. The Founding Fathers were effective politicians, as well as theorists, because they could deal with contradictions between the real and the ideal. The American failure actually to implement that phrase, well known to Jefferson, did not, to him, invalidate it--it simply left us with more work to be done.
Jefferson's whole generation of slaveholders was in fact quite ambivalent about the practice, and many, like himself, freed their slaves in their wills. In the early 1800s Virginia came very close to passing a plan for gradual emancipation, but it narrowly failed. Then came two revolutionary developments: the cotton gin, and the rise of a generation of Southern Transcendentalists, who, like all Prophet generations (including Boomers) preferred to see life in absolute moral terms. They turned slavery, in their eyes, from a necessary evil to a positive good. The Southern Baptist and Southern Methodist churches split off so as to proclaim that slavery was an expression of God's law, and southern fire-eaters plotted the annexation of Cuba and the rest of Mexico to give slavery more scope. The Civil War resulted.
The South lost the war and the Emancipation Proclamation and the 13th Amendment abolished slavery, but white southerners, driven perhaps by a very bad conscience as well as by economic interest, held to their beliefs on race and re-established white supremacy through insurgency and terror. With agriculture at the beginning of a long-term decline, the South already led the nation in poverty and trailed in every basic public service by 1900. It was by then pursuing a new regional economic strategy, using cheap labor (including not only blacks, but poor white children) to build a textile industry. Meanwhile, Birmingham, Alabama became an industrial center and Atlanta a commercial center--but the United States remained two nations.
The years 1933-65 now seem to me to embody a second great southern tragedy. Roosevelt's New Deal aimed to helping the poorest Americans, and many of them lived in the South. The Agricultural Adjustment Act, federal relief, and public works projects literally saved millions from possible starvation. The Rural Electrification Administration (whose work is lovingly described in the first volume of Robert Caro's biography of Lyndon Johnson) brought electric light to the South; the TVA developed a whole region. Such enormous works inevitably created a liberal white Southern constituency. Politicians like Lister Hill and Hugo Black of Alabama, Claude Pepper of Florida, Sam Rayburn and Lyndon Johnson from Texas, and quite a few more, were New Deal stalwarts. They won a number of important victories over more traditional Democrats, who saw both the New Deal and the slowly emerging civil rights movement as Communist attempts to mongrelize and destroy America--and a second generation followed. By the mid-1950s the two Senators from Tennessee, Estes Kefauver and Al Gore, Sr., were both liberal Democrats. Alabama had a Governor, Jim Folsom, who publicly championed the interests of blacks, arguing that as long as they were held down, poor whites would be held down with them. And even some of the more conservative Southern politicians of the mid-century era, such as Richard Russell of Georgia and Sam Ervin of South Carolina, were men of formidable intellect, quite capable of making real contributions to other areas of national life despite their hostility to civil rights. All this, however, did not stop the steady migration of black (and some poor white) southerners into northern industrial eras, especially during the two world wars. And on one critical point the South remained aloof--it was resolutely, implacably hostile to organized labor. According to a contemporary source, the main point of the Landrum-Griffin Act of 1959 was to make it impossible for the AFL-CIO to organize the South. It succeeded.
The civil rights acts of 1964 and 1965, sadly, turned out to have tragic consequences for the South--perhaps because too much of the white South was still not ready for them. White southerners in border and middle south states had been slowly moving towards the Republican party during the 1950s, and the civil rights movement and the legislation it secured accelerated that process. Hubert Humphrey won only one former Confederate or border state, Texas, in 1968, beginning a trend that dominated the next forty years. More importantly, "government" and "government programs" apparently became hopelessly associated in white southern minds with help for black Americans. Essentially the Reagan years spread a trend that had already begun in the south--a trend towards smaller government a lower taxes--to the country as a whole. Meanwhile, cheap labor and pro-business practices moved more and more enterprise southward, until the whole American textile and clothing industry operated below the Mason-Dixon line. That, too, is where foreign automakers began building non-union auto plants. With the decline of the rust belt, the migration trend of 1914-65 was reversed, and the South (and the Southwest) gained population and political influence. The only Democrats elected to the White House between 1964 and 2008 were southerners who could carry southern states.
In the last ten years all this has culminated in a new catastrophe--the de-industrialization of the South, thanks to NAFTA and the general movement of industry overseas. Regions that live by cheap labor, it turns out, die by cheap labor, because there is always somewhere where labor will be cheaper still. The election of 2008 drew a clear line around the deep South. Virginia and North Carolina, both of whom include substantial new urban and educated areas, voted narrowly for Obama, as did Florida, which is only partly a southern state at all. But the rest of the old Confederacy voted overwhelmingly for McCain, based on the same sad resentments that have controlled much of the poor white vote for most of the last 150 years. Republicans control all the Senator seats and the majority of the House seats from those regions--and there are no Richard Russells or Sam Ervins in this crop. The Sotomayor hearings displayed several of them before the nation, and they were of appallingly limited intellectual ability. That the Deep South now lives largely in a different mental universe is confirmed by a new poll on the question of whether Barack Obama was born in the U.S.A.--broken down by region.
Where all this has led can be seen in a front page story in today's New York Times, on the financial crisis in Jefferson County, Alabama, which may have to lay off 2/3 of its work force in the next few days. I did not recognize "Jefferson County" (as I would have recognized Fulton County, Georgia, or Plaquemines Parish, Louisiana) when I saw the headline and expected it to be depopulated and rural--but no, it includes Birmingham, and ranks as the wealthiest county in the state!. Several factors have contributed to its unprecedented crisis. The recession, of course, has hit every area of the country, but Jefferson County also lost enormous sums on a complicated financial deal designed to finance a sewer project--one that sounds a bit like Harvard's notorious interest-rate swap. In addition, the county has lost the right to levy a kind of income tax, upon which it relied beginning in the 1990s. The reporter's comments on that tax must be quoted:
"The tax that was ruled illegal, known as the occupational tax, is essentially a 0.5 percent tax on income, but the phrase “income tax” does not sit well with Alabamians. One of its peculiarities is that it exempts a long list of professionals like doctors and lawyers, as well as phrenologists, circus managers and crystal gazers. In 1999, state lawmakers from Jefferson County, who are allowed by legislative tradition to control the county’s ability to levy taxes, tried to earmark part of the money for their own projects, and the county balked.
"In response, the lawmakers voted to repeal the tax. But the county, buoyed by court rulings in its favor, continued to collect it, bringing in about $75 million last year — more than 25 percent of the county’s general fund."
Now the court has reversed itself and it is not clear that the legislature will restore it. The reporter discreetly left race out of her story almost completely, but I would assume that Jefferson County has a large black population which a Republican state legislature is not likely to want to help. What was once one of the most advanced economically (as well as the most bigoted racially) areas of the South has now been reduced, by long-standing southern political trends, to near anarchy. I suspect it will not be the last.
Crisis, in medical terms, leads either to death or to recovery, and this may be the last chance for the deep South to join the modern world. Parts seemed like they might do so during the New Deal, but sadly, racial prejudice wiped out that progress in much (though not all) of the region. Now, it seems to me, the old Confederacy faces another problem: most of its smarter folk, both black and white, have migrated away. There must somewhere be an opportunity in all this, however. If the Obama Administration can actually improve the lives of average white Southerners, it could deal a death blow to retrograde politics for a long time. If it can't, however, the possibility of a Republican resurgence remains--and that will mean that the rest of the country will move closer to the South once again, rather than the other way around.
One of my deepest beliefs--one which I cannot scientifically demonstrate--holds that human beings have an innate sense of equality--that they understand that the recognition we all crave depends upon extending that same recognition to others. That understanding, to be sure, eternally conflicts with other equally primal human feelings, such as the desire to rule; but it is there all the same. Although no other critic ever seems to have realized it, that belief, I argued in my undergraduate senior thesis, was the key to George Orwell's particular contribution to western thought, precisely because he had been denied that essential recognition throughout his childhood and understood its consequences. The Declaration of Independence, our founding document, specifically affirmed this in the enduring phrase that "all men are created equal"--and my blood boils at recent scholarship, by Gary Wills and others, that argues that the slaveholder Jefferson could not actually have meant what he said. The Founding Fathers were effective politicians, as well as theorists, because they could deal with contradictions between the real and the ideal. The American failure actually to implement that phrase, well known to Jefferson, did not, to him, invalidate it--it simply left us with more work to be done.
Jefferson's whole generation of slaveholders was in fact quite ambivalent about the practice, and many, like himself, freed their slaves in their wills. In the early 1800s Virginia came very close to passing a plan for gradual emancipation, but it narrowly failed. Then came two revolutionary developments: the cotton gin, and the rise of a generation of Southern Transcendentalists, who, like all Prophet generations (including Boomers) preferred to see life in absolute moral terms. They turned slavery, in their eyes, from a necessary evil to a positive good. The Southern Baptist and Southern Methodist churches split off so as to proclaim that slavery was an expression of God's law, and southern fire-eaters plotted the annexation of Cuba and the rest of Mexico to give slavery more scope. The Civil War resulted.
The South lost the war and the Emancipation Proclamation and the 13th Amendment abolished slavery, but white southerners, driven perhaps by a very bad conscience as well as by economic interest, held to their beliefs on race and re-established white supremacy through insurgency and terror. With agriculture at the beginning of a long-term decline, the South already led the nation in poverty and trailed in every basic public service by 1900. It was by then pursuing a new regional economic strategy, using cheap labor (including not only blacks, but poor white children) to build a textile industry. Meanwhile, Birmingham, Alabama became an industrial center and Atlanta a commercial center--but the United States remained two nations.
The years 1933-65 now seem to me to embody a second great southern tragedy. Roosevelt's New Deal aimed to helping the poorest Americans, and many of them lived in the South. The Agricultural Adjustment Act, federal relief, and public works projects literally saved millions from possible starvation. The Rural Electrification Administration (whose work is lovingly described in the first volume of Robert Caro's biography of Lyndon Johnson) brought electric light to the South; the TVA developed a whole region. Such enormous works inevitably created a liberal white Southern constituency. Politicians like Lister Hill and Hugo Black of Alabama, Claude Pepper of Florida, Sam Rayburn and Lyndon Johnson from Texas, and quite a few more, were New Deal stalwarts. They won a number of important victories over more traditional Democrats, who saw both the New Deal and the slowly emerging civil rights movement as Communist attempts to mongrelize and destroy America--and a second generation followed. By the mid-1950s the two Senators from Tennessee, Estes Kefauver and Al Gore, Sr., were both liberal Democrats. Alabama had a Governor, Jim Folsom, who publicly championed the interests of blacks, arguing that as long as they were held down, poor whites would be held down with them. And even some of the more conservative Southern politicians of the mid-century era, such as Richard Russell of Georgia and Sam Ervin of South Carolina, were men of formidable intellect, quite capable of making real contributions to other areas of national life despite their hostility to civil rights. All this, however, did not stop the steady migration of black (and some poor white) southerners into northern industrial eras, especially during the two world wars. And on one critical point the South remained aloof--it was resolutely, implacably hostile to organized labor. According to a contemporary source, the main point of the Landrum-Griffin Act of 1959 was to make it impossible for the AFL-CIO to organize the South. It succeeded.
The civil rights acts of 1964 and 1965, sadly, turned out to have tragic consequences for the South--perhaps because too much of the white South was still not ready for them. White southerners in border and middle south states had been slowly moving towards the Republican party during the 1950s, and the civil rights movement and the legislation it secured accelerated that process. Hubert Humphrey won only one former Confederate or border state, Texas, in 1968, beginning a trend that dominated the next forty years. More importantly, "government" and "government programs" apparently became hopelessly associated in white southern minds with help for black Americans. Essentially the Reagan years spread a trend that had already begun in the south--a trend towards smaller government a lower taxes--to the country as a whole. Meanwhile, cheap labor and pro-business practices moved more and more enterprise southward, until the whole American textile and clothing industry operated below the Mason-Dixon line. That, too, is where foreign automakers began building non-union auto plants. With the decline of the rust belt, the migration trend of 1914-65 was reversed, and the South (and the Southwest) gained population and political influence. The only Democrats elected to the White House between 1964 and 2008 were southerners who could carry southern states.
In the last ten years all this has culminated in a new catastrophe--the de-industrialization of the South, thanks to NAFTA and the general movement of industry overseas. Regions that live by cheap labor, it turns out, die by cheap labor, because there is always somewhere where labor will be cheaper still. The election of 2008 drew a clear line around the deep South. Virginia and North Carolina, both of whom include substantial new urban and educated areas, voted narrowly for Obama, as did Florida, which is only partly a southern state at all. But the rest of the old Confederacy voted overwhelmingly for McCain, based on the same sad resentments that have controlled much of the poor white vote for most of the last 150 years. Republicans control all the Senator seats and the majority of the House seats from those regions--and there are no Richard Russells or Sam Ervins in this crop. The Sotomayor hearings displayed several of them before the nation, and they were of appallingly limited intellectual ability. That the Deep South now lives largely in a different mental universe is confirmed by a new poll on the question of whether Barack Obama was born in the U.S.A.--broken down by region.
Where all this has led can be seen in a front page story in today's New York Times, on the financial crisis in Jefferson County, Alabama, which may have to lay off 2/3 of its work force in the next few days. I did not recognize "Jefferson County" (as I would have recognized Fulton County, Georgia, or Plaquemines Parish, Louisiana) when I saw the headline and expected it to be depopulated and rural--but no, it includes Birmingham, and ranks as the wealthiest county in the state!. Several factors have contributed to its unprecedented crisis. The recession, of course, has hit every area of the country, but Jefferson County also lost enormous sums on a complicated financial deal designed to finance a sewer project--one that sounds a bit like Harvard's notorious interest-rate swap. In addition, the county has lost the right to levy a kind of income tax, upon which it relied beginning in the 1990s. The reporter's comments on that tax must be quoted:
"The tax that was ruled illegal, known as the occupational tax, is essentially a 0.5 percent tax on income, but the phrase “income tax” does not sit well with Alabamians. One of its peculiarities is that it exempts a long list of professionals like doctors and lawyers, as well as phrenologists, circus managers and crystal gazers. In 1999, state lawmakers from Jefferson County, who are allowed by legislative tradition to control the county’s ability to levy taxes, tried to earmark part of the money for their own projects, and the county balked.
"In response, the lawmakers voted to repeal the tax. But the county, buoyed by court rulings in its favor, continued to collect it, bringing in about $75 million last year — more than 25 percent of the county’s general fund."
Now the court has reversed itself and it is not clear that the legislature will restore it. The reporter discreetly left race out of her story almost completely, but I would assume that Jefferson County has a large black population which a Republican state legislature is not likely to want to help. What was once one of the most advanced economically (as well as the most bigoted racially) areas of the South has now been reduced, by long-standing southern political trends, to near anarchy. I suspect it will not be the last.
Crisis, in medical terms, leads either to death or to recovery, and this may be the last chance for the deep South to join the modern world. Parts seemed like they might do so during the New Deal, but sadly, racial prejudice wiped out that progress in much (though not all) of the region. Now, it seems to me, the old Confederacy faces another problem: most of its smarter folk, both black and white, have migrated away. There must somewhere be an opportunity in all this, however. If the Obama Administration can actually improve the lives of average white Southerners, it could deal a death blow to retrograde politics for a long time. If it can't, however, the possibility of a Republican resurgence remains--and that will mean that the rest of the country will move closer to the South once again, rather than the other way around.
EINSTEIN INFELD VECTORS INTRO
he goes on to claim that parallel vectors are equal.
he claims that vectors are directional, but that the starting point or points do not matter.
This seems to beg the question of a vector even having a direction, if its starting point, presumptively a component of a directional calculation, does not itself matter.
The concept of direction itself has now been begged.
NO FREE LUNCH
Wednesday, November 11, 2020
MUSLIMS HAVE BEEN SOWELL'S MIDDLEMAN MINORITY IN AFRICA PAR EXCELLENCE MAYBE MORE THAN THE HINDUS OR CHINESE
Don't you wonder why he has no chapter in Migrations and Cultures on Muslims?
Or what about the Christian middleman minorities, who collaborated with the Muslim middleman minorities already predominant in Africa, re the slave trade? He covers the Muslims, but less so the Christians although they are discussed, at least in Migrations.
Many think of them as a middleman minority in countries around the Northern mediteranean, even in Spain before the crusade to expel them and Jews from Ibereia, although their role and history in the Balkans usually has caused Westerners later to think of them more as an encroaching hostile Civilization than as a middleman minority.
His chapters only include: Germans, Japanese, Chinese, Italians, and Indians.
Many of these beneficial so called middleman minorities did not start out as conquerors either, but they also often ended up that way, as did the Moslems, one way or another, here or there, some time or some place.
In my judgment, and one cannot over generalize, middleman minorities are often a necessary evil, a symptom of political, religious, ethnic, or racial problems, or a problem of development or an economic technological or commercial vacuum otherwise left problematically open and/or unsolved without them. Further, middleman minorities have operated as a thin wedge for encroachment by their home state or civilization on the host state or civilization.
Not only is there no free lunch in multiculturalism, and the exaltation if you will of multiple simultaneous middleman minorities in single societies, but it has long now shown itself to have been not mainly and merely a zero sum game, but in fact, going forward, a negative sum game.
WHAT SOWELL LEAVES OUT HERE
Tuesday, November 17, 2020
SOWELL CONQUESTS AND CULTURES CHAPTERS BRITISH AFRICANS SLAVS SIBERIAN AMERICAN INDIANS
These are his fricking chapters.
He leaves out Macedonia and Alexander.
He leaves out various ancient Middle East civilizations which were conquerors.
He leaves out Rome.
He leaves out the Mongols!
He leaves out Islam!
He talks about them here or there throughout,
but they have no chapter devoted to them.
He leaves out most of the conquests of history.
Wednesday, April 28, 2021
ONE HINDU WAS ALREADY ONE FRICKING HINDU TOO MANY NAGRA BABY!
Parminder Nagra: TV show turned me down for being of Indian descent
THEY LOVE THIS STUFF
Tuesday, March 26, 2019
DK POSTS THE NUNES MEMO AND ALTERNATIVE REALITY
Sunday, January 28, 2018
Alternative Reality
The real political constellation surrounding that bright star Donald Trump is emerging from the mists. Michael Wolff's book, Fire and Fury, which I have dipped into (focusing on the latter parts), makes it clear that Trump does not have an organized cadre around him in the White House, but rather a relatively unorganized gaggle of individuals and factions, of whom John Kelly, his Chief of Staff, and his daughter and son-in-law Ivanka Trump (who was careful not to discard the family brand!) and Jared Kushner seem to be the most important. Trump, the books clear, will always be erratic and unpredictable because he can't bear having anyone outshine him, he always wants to respond to attacks,and he loves surprises. Thus those around him--including his lawyers--will always be struggling to keep up.
Meanwhile, as I have written before, Trump has struck up an alliance the Koch brothers' network, which in turn dominates the Republicans in Congress and particularly in the House. The fruits of that alliance are the tax cut, the rollback of EPA regulations, and, most recently, the tariff on solar panels, which will make it harder for our growing domestic solar industry to compete with fuels. The tax cuts have probably brought a good deal of corporate America on board as well, because they will allow corporations to bring so much money back into the United States. And the economic boom, as long as it lasts, sill significantly strengthen Trump's position in much of the country.
The threat to the Administration, of course, is Robert Mueller's investigation and what it might reveal about Russian influence on the election and on Trump. And Trump's new allies in Congress are not taking a hands-off attitude towards tose proceedings. Led by Devin Nunes of the House Intelligence Committee--who showed himself to be a Trump lackey in a much-publicized incident last summer--they are standing this investigation on its head. Increasingly they and their allies in the media--especially Fox News--are arguing that the whole Russia imbroglio is an FBI conspiracy hatched out of hostility to Trump.
Devin Nunes, apparently, has written a four-page memo, still classified, alleging that rogue FBI agents abused the FISA program to put taps on Trump aids during the campaign. The details of the accusation have not yet emerged, but this may refer to taps on Carter Page, Paul Manafort, or both of them that the Bureau might have undertaken to uncover Russian connections even before those men became involved in the Trump campaign. Nunes and others are also arguing that pro-Clinton, anti-Trump FBI agents--whose biases, they claim, are revealed in their text messages--fixed the investigation of Clinton's emails to exonerate her and started the investigation of the Trump campaign to discredit him. I doubt that Nunez or any of the others in Congress or at Fox really know much about the career of Joe McCarthy, but this technique is very reminiscent of his own. McCarthy tended to make irresponsible accusations of Communist influence, and then dismiss anyone who complained about them as a witting or unwitting dupe of the Communist conspiracy. Nunez and Trump are trying to turn any evidence of Russian connections to hm or his campaign as evidence of an FBI conspiracy against him.
A new and very important aspect of the story emerged this week. In 2016, the Dallas Morning News reports, "Donald Trump and the political action committees for Mitch McConnell, Marco Rubio, Scott Walker, Lindsey Graham, John Kasich and John McCain accepted $7.35 million in contributions from a Ukrainian-born oligarch who is the business partner of two of Russian president Vladimir Putin's favorite oligarchs and a Russian government bank." In a notorious mid-2016 meeting of Congressional bigwigs that leaked to the public, Republican House whip Kevin McCarthy commented that there were only two people whom he thought Vladimir Putin "owned:" Donald Trump and Representative Dana Rohrabacher. But with so much at stake for the Russian government in the lifting of American sanctions, an organized effort to buy more influence in the Congress would not be in the least surprising. Mueller may almost singlehandedly be contenting with a very broad and successful foreign campaign to build up influence in two branches of the government--as well as with those like the Kochs who find themselves allied with Trump for other reasons.
The economy is definitely playing as a winning issue for Trump at this point, and a deal on DACA would fwork powerfully in his favor as well. Mueller's investigation will however remain a serious threat. For that reason, Republican cries of an FBI conspiracy will get louder. This will be a very difficult problem to deal with, since we do not, as we did during Watergate, have any media outlets that a clear majority of the public trusts. Nor do we have a readily available mechanism to rid ourselves of foreign influence. It has emerged as a real threat to our democracy.
Friday, February 02, 2018
The real political constellation surrounding that bright star Donald Trump is emerging from the mists. Michael Wolff's book, Fire and Fury, which I have dipped into (focusing on the latter parts), makes it clear that Trump does not have an organized cadre around him in the White House, but rather a relatively unorganized gaggle of individuals and factions, of whom John Kelly, his Chief of Staff, and his daughter and son-in-law Ivanka Trump (who was careful not to discard the family brand!) and Jared Kushner seem to be the most important. Trump, the books clear, will always be erratic and unpredictable because he can't bear having anyone outshine him, he always wants to respond to attacks,and he loves surprises. Thus those around him--including his lawyers--will always be struggling to keep up.
Meanwhile, as I have written before, Trump has struck up an alliance the Koch brothers' network, which in turn dominates the Republicans in Congress and particularly in the House. The fruits of that alliance are the tax cut, the rollback of EPA regulations, and, most recently, the tariff on solar panels, which will make it harder for our growing domestic solar industry to compete with fuels. The tax cuts have probably brought a good deal of corporate America on board as well, because they will allow corporations to bring so much money back into the United States. And the economic boom, as long as it lasts, sill significantly strengthen Trump's position in much of the country.
The threat to the Administration, of course, is Robert Mueller's investigation and what it might reveal about Russian influence on the election and on Trump. And Trump's new allies in Congress are not taking a hands-off attitude towards tose proceedings. Led by Devin Nunes of the House Intelligence Committee--who showed himself to be a Trump lackey in a much-publicized incident last summer--they are standing this investigation on its head. Increasingly they and their allies in the media--especially Fox News--are arguing that the whole Russia imbroglio is an FBI conspiracy hatched out of hostility to Trump.
Devin Nunes, apparently, has written a four-page memo, still classified, alleging that rogue FBI agents abused the FISA program to put taps on Trump aids during the campaign. The details of the accusation have not yet emerged, but this may refer to taps on Carter Page, Paul Manafort, or both of them that the Bureau might have undertaken to uncover Russian connections even before those men became involved in the Trump campaign. Nunes and others are also arguing that pro-Clinton, anti-Trump FBI agents--whose biases, they claim, are revealed in their text messages--fixed the investigation of Clinton's emails to exonerate her and started the investigation of the Trump campaign to discredit him. I doubt that Nunez or any of the others in Congress or at Fox really know much about the career of Joe McCarthy, but this technique is very reminiscent of his own. McCarthy tended to make irresponsible accusations of Communist influence, and then dismiss anyone who complained about them as a witting or unwitting dupe of the Communist conspiracy. Nunez and Trump are trying to turn any evidence of Russian connections to hm or his campaign as evidence of an FBI conspiracy against him.
A new and very important aspect of the story emerged this week. In 2016, the Dallas Morning News reports, "Donald Trump and the political action committees for Mitch McConnell, Marco Rubio, Scott Walker, Lindsey Graham, John Kasich and John McCain accepted $7.35 million in contributions from a Ukrainian-born oligarch who is the business partner of two of Russian president Vladimir Putin's favorite oligarchs and a Russian government bank." In a notorious mid-2016 meeting of Congressional bigwigs that leaked to the public, Republican House whip Kevin McCarthy commented that there were only two people whom he thought Vladimir Putin "owned:" Donald Trump and Representative Dana Rohrabacher. But with so much at stake for the Russian government in the lifting of American sanctions, an organized effort to buy more influence in the Congress would not be in the least surprising. Mueller may almost singlehandedly be contenting with a very broad and successful foreign campaign to build up influence in two branches of the government--as well as with those like the Kochs who find themselves allied with Trump for other reasons.
The economy is definitely playing as a winning issue for Trump at this point, and a deal on DACA would fwork powerfully in his favor as well. Mueller's investigation will however remain a serious threat. For that reason, Republican cries of an FBI conspiracy will get louder. This will be a very difficult problem to deal with, since we do not, as we did during Watergate, have any media outlets that a clear majority of the public trusts. Nor do we have a readily available mechanism to rid ourselves of foreign influence. It has emerged as a real threat to our democracy.
Meanwhile, as I have written before, Trump has struck up an alliance the Koch brothers' network, which in turn dominates the Republicans in Congress and particularly in the House. The fruits of that alliance are the tax cut, the rollback of EPA regulations, and, most recently, the tariff on solar panels, which will make it harder for our growing domestic solar industry to compete with fuels. The tax cuts have probably brought a good deal of corporate America on board as well, because they will allow corporations to bring so much money back into the United States. And the economic boom, as long as it lasts, sill significantly strengthen Trump's position in much of the country.
The threat to the Administration, of course, is Robert Mueller's investigation and what it might reveal about Russian influence on the election and on Trump. And Trump's new allies in Congress are not taking a hands-off attitude towards tose proceedings. Led by Devin Nunes of the House Intelligence Committee--who showed himself to be a Trump lackey in a much-publicized incident last summer--they are standing this investigation on its head. Increasingly they and their allies in the media--especially Fox News--are arguing that the whole Russia imbroglio is an FBI conspiracy hatched out of hostility to Trump.
Devin Nunes, apparently, has written a four-page memo, still classified, alleging that rogue FBI agents abused the FISA program to put taps on Trump aids during the campaign. The details of the accusation have not yet emerged, but this may refer to taps on Carter Page, Paul Manafort, or both of them that the Bureau might have undertaken to uncover Russian connections even before those men became involved in the Trump campaign. Nunes and others are also arguing that pro-Clinton, anti-Trump FBI agents--whose biases, they claim, are revealed in their text messages--fixed the investigation of Clinton's emails to exonerate her and started the investigation of the Trump campaign to discredit him. I doubt that Nunez or any of the others in Congress or at Fox really know much about the career of Joe McCarthy, but this technique is very reminiscent of his own. McCarthy tended to make irresponsible accusations of Communist influence, and then dismiss anyone who complained about them as a witting or unwitting dupe of the Communist conspiracy. Nunez and Trump are trying to turn any evidence of Russian connections to hm or his campaign as evidence of an FBI conspiracy against him.
A new and very important aspect of the story emerged this week. In 2016, the Dallas Morning News reports, "Donald Trump and the political action committees for Mitch McConnell, Marco Rubio, Scott Walker, Lindsey Graham, John Kasich and John McCain accepted $7.35 million in contributions from a Ukrainian-born oligarch who is the business partner of two of Russian president Vladimir Putin's favorite oligarchs and a Russian government bank." In a notorious mid-2016 meeting of Congressional bigwigs that leaked to the public, Republican House whip Kevin McCarthy commented that there were only two people whom he thought Vladimir Putin "owned:" Donald Trump and Representative Dana Rohrabacher. But with so much at stake for the Russian government in the lifting of American sanctions, an organized effort to buy more influence in the Congress would not be in the least surprising. Mueller may almost singlehandedly be contenting with a very broad and successful foreign campaign to build up influence in two branches of the government--as well as with those like the Kochs who find themselves allied with Trump for other reasons.
The economy is definitely playing as a winning issue for Trump at this point, and a deal on DACA would fwork powerfully in his favor as well. Mueller's investigation will however remain a serious threat. For that reason, Republican cries of an FBI conspiracy will get louder. This will be a very difficult problem to deal with, since we do not, as we did during Watergate, have any media outlets that a clear majority of the public trusts. Nor do we have a readily available mechanism to rid ourselves of foreign influence. It has emerged as a real threat to our democracy.
The Nunes memo
Devin Nunes's memo has been released today with the approval of the White House. Here are my thoughts about the memo as a document and its significance. I predict that it will inaugurate a constitutional crisis that may well leave us with an Administration immune from investigation into its ties with a foreign power.
The premise of the memorandum is that the FBI obstained a series of FISA warrants to listen in on the communications of Carter Page, a somewhat mysterious figure who became part of the Trump campaign during 2016, in late 2016. The memo asserts that the FBI should have told the FISA court that it's request was based on the "Steele dossier" compiled by Christopher Steele (originally at the behest of other Republican candidates, although Nunes naturally leaves that out, but later for the Clinton campaign). It says that Steele confessed his "bias" against Donald Trump during the campaign, and claims that the FBI paid him for his information as well. It also says that the FBI terminated its relationship with Steele, whom it had regarded as a trusted source, because of his statements to media outlets during the campaign.
The problem--which is undoubtedly what has enraged the Democratic minority of the House Intelligence Committee, the FBI, and the Justice Department--is that the memo presents no evidence for any of this at all. It does not tell us what exactly from the Steele dossier was used to craft the FISA application. It does not make clear how such information (if there really was any) was corroborated by other information known to the FBI from other sources. It is entirely possible, based on the memo, that the Bureau wasn't relying on information from the Steele dossier at all. I suspect that will emerge in leaks from the Democratic minority and the FBI in the next few days, but it will never catch up with the original story.
The whole theory of evidence that the memo is relying on, however, belongs on Fox News or in a speech by the late Senator Joseph McCarthy, not in a document issued by a House committee. The premise seems to be that since Michael Steele was being paid by the Clinton campaign and did not want Donald Trump to become President of the United States, the FBI had an obligation to disregard anything he said, rather than to act on it. It does not occur to the authors of the memo (on which more later) that a person might become very concerned about the election of a certain person as President because one had received credible information to the effect that that person and his campaign were closely connected to a hostile foreign power. The memo, in short, is presuming that President Trump and his campaign must be innocent, and that therefore anyone who claims otherwise must be guilty of partisan opposition to him. And that is why I believe, although I cannot prove it, that the ultimate source of the memo is Donald Trump and people very close to him.
There is another layer to the way in which the memo is presented. Because it omits any specific information at all about the warrant or its content, it does not include any classified information. But if Adam Schiff, the ranking Democrat on the Committee, were to release information refuting the claims and logic of the memo, he probably would be guilty of releasing classified information. By relying on asserting, rather than demonstrating, its key argument--that the application for the warrant was based on the Steele dossier--the memo makes it harder for anyone to disprove it.
The memo has to be seen in the context of an incident ten months ago involving Nunes, the White House, and the very same investigation, which was described again this week in the New York Times.
The premise of the memorandum is that the FBI obstained a series of FISA warrants to listen in on the communications of Carter Page, a somewhat mysterious figure who became part of the Trump campaign during 2016, in late 2016. The memo asserts that the FBI should have told the FISA court that it's request was based on the "Steele dossier" compiled by Christopher Steele (originally at the behest of other Republican candidates, although Nunes naturally leaves that out, but later for the Clinton campaign). It says that Steele confessed his "bias" against Donald Trump during the campaign, and claims that the FBI paid him for his information as well. It also says that the FBI terminated its relationship with Steele, whom it had regarded as a trusted source, because of his statements to media outlets during the campaign.
The problem--which is undoubtedly what has enraged the Democratic minority of the House Intelligence Committee, the FBI, and the Justice Department--is that the memo presents no evidence for any of this at all. It does not tell us what exactly from the Steele dossier was used to craft the FISA application. It does not make clear how such information (if there really was any) was corroborated by other information known to the FBI from other sources. It is entirely possible, based on the memo, that the Bureau wasn't relying on information from the Steele dossier at all. I suspect that will emerge in leaks from the Democratic minority and the FBI in the next few days, but it will never catch up with the original story.
The whole theory of evidence that the memo is relying on, however, belongs on Fox News or in a speech by the late Senator Joseph McCarthy, not in a document issued by a House committee. The premise seems to be that since Michael Steele was being paid by the Clinton campaign and did not want Donald Trump to become President of the United States, the FBI had an obligation to disregard anything he said, rather than to act on it. It does not occur to the authors of the memo (on which more later) that a person might become very concerned about the election of a certain person as President because one had received credible information to the effect that that person and his campaign were closely connected to a hostile foreign power. The memo, in short, is presuming that President Trump and his campaign must be innocent, and that therefore anyone who claims otherwise must be guilty of partisan opposition to him. And that is why I believe, although I cannot prove it, that the ultimate source of the memo is Donald Trump and people very close to him.
There is another layer to the way in which the memo is presented. Because it omits any specific information at all about the warrant or its content, it does not include any classified information. But if Adam Schiff, the ranking Democrat on the Committee, were to release information refuting the claims and logic of the memo, he probably would be guilty of releasing classified information. By relying on asserting, rather than demonstrating, its key argument--that the application for the warrant was based on the Steele dossier--the memo makes it harder for anyone to disprove it.
The memo has to be seen in the context of an incident ten months ago involving Nunes, the White House, and the very same investigation, which was described again this week in the New York Times.
"Then, in March, as the investigations into Russian meddling in the 2016 election appeared to be picking up momentum, Mr. Nunes set off a bizarre Washington drama when he made a late-night dash to the White House, and followed up with a morning news conference in which he claimed that he had been given intelligence reports that Mr. Trump and his associates were incidentally swept up in foreign surveillance by American spy agencies during the campaign.
"Furthermore, Mr. Nunes charged, the identities of the Mr. Trump and his associates swept up by the surveillance, which are supposed to be “masked” in intelligence reports, had been unlawfully revealed in classified reports at the order of senior Obama administration officials.
"It turned out that the intelligence cited by Mr. Nunes was given to him by a pair of senior officials at the Trump White House, and that it had selectively cited certain incidents to show wrongdoing where none may have existed. Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina, declared that Mr. Nunes was running an “Inspector Clouseau investigation.”
"The incident prompted an ethics investigation and forced Mr. Nunes to recuse himself from the committee’s Russia investigation, a move that Representative Peter T. King, Republican of New York and a committee member, said almost certainly left Mr. Nunes feeling disappointed."
Rather than doing his job of indepedently overseeing the intelligence community and its relationship with the White House, Nunes was acting as the mouthpiece and shill of the Trump Administration in its efforts to undermine the FBI--efforts which then led to the firing of James Comey. As it turned out, the ethics investigation cleared Nunes and he witdrew his recusal. He has now taken a new and bigger step along the same lines. I do not know, but I would not be at all surprised if the "Nunes memo," like the intelligence he claimed to have discovered last March, had come from the Trump White House in the first place.
President Trump, I think, will now use the memo to argue that the investigation of the Russian connection is fundamentally and irrevocably tainted because it began as a partisan withhunt undertaken by the Clinton campaign through Steele. Indeed, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, his press secretary, has already been saying this for some time. I think the odds are better than 50-50 that the President will fire Robert Mueller, shut down the independent investigation, and fire Deputy Attorney General Ron Rosenstein, who is rather pointedly dragged into the Nunes memo as well. That, I suspect, is why leading Republicans in the last week have been saying that there is no need for legislation to protect Robert Mueller: they know he'll be fired soon. Buoyed by the tax cut, the booming stock market, and continued economic growth, the Republicans, like the President, have talked themselves into the idea that they are on the way to a new era and a great political triumph, and that only an unfair, partisan investigation stands in their way. In addition, it now develops that a great many Republican legislators, including Mitch McConnell,. have received large campaign contributions from Russia-lined interests as well. They too may have a personal interest in shutting down the investigation of Russian influence.
Outrage will break out among the mainstream media and the Democrats if Trump fires Mueller, but the Administration won't care. Will such outrage move large numbers of swing voters to vote Democratic next fall and give the Democrats control of at least one house of Congress? I don't know, but I'm skeptical. The Republicans are betting that the mass of our people are sick of Washington scandals, and they may be right. Having endured Whitewater, Monicagate, Benghazi, birtherism, the WMD controversy, and so much more, our people may just be tired of it all. Once again, the Republicans in Washington are trying to even the score. In 1999 some of them admitted they were impeaching Clinton as revenge for Watergate. But Clinton was acquitted, and now they may be determined to see that Trump gets away with it too.
The President, I suspect, simply has to stop the investigation because it's bound to reveal damaging information about himself and many of those closest to him. That is why he, like Nixon, had to begin trying to stop the investigation right away. Nixon's attempts culminated in the Saturday Night Massacre, after which bipartisan outrage forced him to back down. Trump won't face bipartisan outrage. In our era of all-out partisanship--the fourth great crisis of American national life--he may prevail.
HOBSON'S CHOICE OR MORTON'S FORK
Tuesday, August 17, 2010
A 'HOBSON'S CHOICE': PRIVATE VERSUS PUBLIC ENTERPRISE
Actually a 'Morton's Fork', but who understands the fine distinctions? (See the famous Tarzan, Edgar Rice Burroughs litigation, for a judicial example.)
Americans have often been told, usually by politicians, who need to pay back private corporate political supporters, that a good way to handle such and such a problem is to return it to the private sector, or to give a tax break, incentive, or credit, etc., to the private sector, which is more efficient and virtuous than government.
On the other hand, Americans have been told by other politicians, who are catering to a different but equally deluded patronage, that a certain initiative needs to be undertaken by government, that a new government agency, department, or blue ribbon committee, is necessary or merely very beneficial in this case.
Americans need to be advised that American, federal, state, and local, publicly administered programs are generally matched in ineffeciency, ineptitude, and corruption, by American private sector business enterprises, small, medium, and MNC sized, regardless of the private industry or sector. There are well founded reasons for this, based on the history of the structures and relations between the public and private sectors. Aug 17, 2010."
fn May 1, 2019 "A Hobson's Choice versus a Morton's Fork".......
Rumpole, an Old Bailey trial lawyer barrister hack, would disparage such a distinction, and the erudite judges who make them, as a "fine point of law".
Tuesday, April 27, 2021
EINSTEIN'S INITIAL ACCOUNT OF VECTORS
Page 14, he unpacks the distinction between speed and velocity with an example of spheres moving in different directions on a smooth table, and describes them moving in perpendicular paths at the same speed, asserting that their velocities are different although their respective speeds each read the same number. At this point in his account, he seems to have begged the question of direction itself, and of the idea of identity.
Say that the same two spheres are each moving at the same uniform speeds along a smooth table, but are in parallel paths, or at least as far as is practical to measure, parallel paths.
Can they be said, according to his distinctions so far, to have the same velocity or velocities or not?
Does it make any sense to say that the velocity of spheres moving in parallel paths at the same speed and over the same time interval is identical?
Or would his account of these be the same as that of the perpendicular spheres, that their velocities also are different? They are, after all, in different positions. Say two parallel cars, adjacent lanes, along a one way street.
Einstein has said he prefers to begin with the simplest examples.
Isn't the idea of direction itself bound up also with those of identity, position, uniqueness, etc?
Thus, doesn't the law of inertia itself imply or entail, if not express, them somehow?
Or is it merely premature, and impertinent, to challenge the rectitude of his order of exposition of these ideas?
GREAT PLACE FOR SMART EUROPEANS AND AMERICANS SHOPPING BARGAINS
Burkina Faso is facing a deepening security crisis, like many of its neighbours, as Islamist armed groups carry out raids and kidnappings across much of the region.
Monday, April 26, 2021
WHITE DEMOCRATS AFTER GETTING SCREWED BY LINCOLN
A majority of the white men of the country, both North and South, (the only legitimate voters) favored the Democratic Party, not the Republican Party, in 1868.
Much of the South couldn't vote, so Grant easily won the electoral college decision.
Grant's popular majority would have evaporated without the 450,000 freed negro slaves marched by his Radical Republican troops around Southern polling stations to vote multiple times.
J G Randall, The Civil War and Reconstruction, p. 798, citing C H Coleman, The Election of 1868.
In effect, the federals imposed a Haitian Revolution on the white South, putting negroes in charge. The only thing they did differently from the Haitian Slave Revolution was that the federals kept the freed negroes from slaughtering the defeated Southern whites.
This post is dedicated to VOX and its editorial staff, who are real clear on this kind of thing from the past.
Sunday, April 25, 2021
BERLIN EISENHOWER JFK
'...(Patton) again urged Eisenhower to take Berlin. It could be done, argued Patton, in forty-eight hours. "Well, who would want it?" Eisenhower asked.
"Ich bin ein Berliner", "I am a Berliner") is a speech by United States President John F. Kennedy given on June 26, 1963, in West Berlin.
Saturday, April 24, 2021
NYT JEWISH ISRAELOPHILE MUCKRAKER LISA LERER JAMMING BIDEN'S RACE RECORD UP HIS ASS STOCK IN TRADE
THE FRICKING NYT LET'S POLITICIANS KNOW WHO IS THE FRICKIN BOSS.
Friday, April 23, 2021
SEETHING MASSES
Thursday, December 6, 2018
SEETHING MASSES IN THE REST BLAME THE WHITE WEST FOR THEIR POVERTY
Technically, this is a fallacy, call it The Western Imperialist
Fallacy, but ask yourself whether any of them, people of any color, even white, would believe it, even if they could understand it......See eg, Paul Bairoch
"...(because our security problems do not arise from a competition among the great powers, but rather out of the seething underclass, domestically and in the Third World, that has been seduced by the cult of consumption at a time when the future dictated by its demographics moves this class ever farther from realizing its fantasies)..." The Shield of Achilles, p. 258.
Maybe, if the White West had not so dominated the Rest, the overwhelming majority of them might now have three bowls of rice a day, instead of two, and now live in a somewhat larger thatched roof dirt floor hut.
Convergolescence is closing in on billions.
Re Bobbitt's passage, I would just note in passing that it is not merely demographics, or even that and the cult of consumption together, that is moving this so called class farther from reaching its fantasies. It is also other processes, some working for centuries now, others only very recently, as well.
Maybe, if the White West had not so dominated the Rest, the overwhelming majority of them might now have three bowls of rice a day, instead of two, and now live in a somewhat larger thatched roof dirt floor hut.
Convergolescence is closing in on billions.
Re Bobbitt's passage, I would just note in passing that it is not merely demographics, or even that and the cult of consumption together, that is moving this so called class farther from reaching its fantasies. It is also other processes, some working for centuries now, others only very recently, as well.
Thursday, April 22, 2021
THE LINCOLN STRATEGY WHY NOT GIVE NIGERIA AND LIBERIA STATEHOOD
You can get a whole lot of negro votes there, real quick, like, in the time it takes to declare a Civil War.
Certain states of India are candidates under Kamala.
Plenty of negro Hindu votes there.
Wednesday, April 21, 2021
CAN A COUNTRY RENEGE ON REALLY BIG CHINA IRAN SYRIA DEALS WITHOUT WAR
I SAY THEY SHOULD TREAT THIS AS AN ACT OF WAR.
I AM FINE WITH THAT.
Australia provokes China anger over scrapped deals
CLASSIC ASS ROAST PHYSICS BRANDY MELVILLE BIG AHD HOT
Wednesday, August 2, 2017
ASS ROAST PHYSICS PHENOMENOLOGY QUESTION FOR THE GIFTED
Many Americans have been getting bigger, not just hotter; or at least it seems to some that way.....
To others, on the other hand, it does not seem that way at all....they see no change.
To Brandy Melville, for example, it seems so, and they actively discriminate against some, who are seen by others, and by BM, as bigger than those.
The question is: are they bigger, really, or do they only seem so, either to themselves or to others?
The more important metaphysical question: What may be causing this perceptual phenomenon?
The Republicans are liable soon to argue that it is not an agribusiness sponsored growth phenomenon at all. (But, what is, after all, an agribusiness sponsored growth phenomenon, anyway, ass roast physically?)
No, it is something entirely different!
It is rather that the universe and everything in it is expanding, and that, as a result, some of us seem larger to some of us, not just hotter, than others seem!
Hypothetically, then, we may all be getting bigger, but some of us seem to be getting bigger than others of us, to some of us, and not to others of us, or not.
The take away: big girls, who seem bigger, and also hotter, than other girls, to each other, are or may be bigger and hotter than other girls, to them.
In memory of Protagoras.
To others, on the other hand, it does not seem that way at all....they see no change.
To Brandy Melville, for example, it seems so, and they actively discriminate against some, who are seen by others, and by BM, as bigger than those.
The question is: are they bigger, really, or do they only seem so, either to themselves or to others?
The more important metaphysical question: What may be causing this perceptual phenomenon?
The Republicans are liable soon to argue that it is not an agribusiness sponsored growth phenomenon at all. (But, what is, after all, an agribusiness sponsored growth phenomenon, anyway, ass roast physically?)
No, it is something entirely different!
It is rather that the universe and everything in it is expanding, and that, as a result, some of us seem larger to some of us, not just hotter, than others seem!
Hypothetically, then, we may all be getting bigger, but some of us seem to be getting bigger than others of us, to some of us, and not to others of us, or not.
The take away: big girls, who seem bigger, and also hotter, than other girls, to each other, are or may be bigger and hotter than other girls, to them.
In memory of Protagoras.
Tuesday, April 20, 2021
THOUGHT EXPERIMENT POLITICS
Had Europe been guided by its royals, rather than by their politicians, Europe would not have seen a WWI or a WWII.
This post is dedicated to Dylan Matthews. He is all over stuff like this.
THE MENU FUSION BOWLS
If you eat these, you are culturally already living naked in the jungles of South Asia and Africa.
Monday, April 19, 2021
YOUTUBE SHOULD HAVE THEIR FUCKING ASS SUED OFF THEY CANNOT DEMONETIZE SOMEONE WHO SHOULD BE
PROSECUTED BY CRIMINAL AUTHORITIES.
YOUTUBE IS NOT A FUCKING COP.
James Charles: YouTube temporarily demonetises beauty influencer
AMERICAN NEGROES AREN'T BLACKS THEY'RE MULATTOES UNLESS THEY CAN PROVE OTHERWISE
Then, they might be full blood Africans, but still not fucking blacks.
Blacks don't exist, baby!
There also are no whites, but rather either Europeans, Middle Easterners (mulattoes), or Subcontinentals (mulattoes).
Sicilians are genetically tested known 5% negroid mulattoes.
See N. Wade, A Troublesome Iinheritance, Ch. 2, for a discussion of racial terminology.
bin Laden looked, acted, and probably smelled to other Africans, Swahili.
CHURCHILL HAD BEEN SPOT ON RE GANDHI AND KEEPING COLONIES
If his advice had been followed, we wouldn't have to deal with it as an independent piece of total shit, it would be a colony piece of utter shit instead!
Peckeerhead Hindu British lawyer Gandhi won, the West lost.
Sunday, April 18, 2021
EINSTEIN INFELD EVOLUTION
Einstein Infeld, The Evolution of Physics
"...This (Newton's, Galileo's) law of inertia cannot be derived directly from experiment. but only by speculative thinking consistent with observation...." p. 8,9.
One, among many, question then emerges.
How can speculative thinking either be, or not be, consistent with a given observation?
The question of the meaning of consistency is begged ab initio.
What they are actually talking about here, but do not mention it in these terms, is a thought experiment.
I am not challenging the validity of the law of inertia itself, as articulated at that point in history.
Rather, I am talking about the relationship between this narrative interpretation of the development of such a law, first by Galileo and then Newton, and the received narrative of what was thought of and discussed as scientific method at that time.
One could hardly get from Bacon's, or Locke's, or most especially Hume's, enlightenment empiricism to anything whatsoever like this.
Thus, to blindly identify, in Whig hindsight, such scientific discoveries with what is called the enlightenment is a grotesque mockery.
One way to put it might be that the enlightenment rolled out in the very teeth of the "scientific revolution", and then also in the very teeth of the so called "industrial revolution" as well. That is the huge intellectual point.
Here's another way to put it: It had already required, although they themselves did not comprehend this, that the senses be considered as perceptual systems to even get to the point of conceiving of such things as Galileo's and Newton's development of a law of inertia.
"How, in speaking of men whom he calls null, brutish, stupid, imbecile, can he exalt with enthusiasm their antique simplicity, their original goodness, their primitive innocence?"
"Has anyone ever said of an orang-outang that it was naturally good and happy wise and simple? or spoken of its antique simplicity, primitive innocence, and original goodness?""No, Jean-Jacques, I shall not treat you as a bad man for having dared to maintain that man is born good. Everyone knows that man comes from his creator good, happy, wise, and perfect; no one disputes this truth. What you are blamed for is your making man come from his creator in a state of stupidity, and yet maintain that in this state men are good, happy, wise, and simple. What you are blamed for is making their goodness depend on their imbecility, their happiness on their stupidity. What you are blamed for is your having been guilty in all your writings of an enormous abuse of language, and having offered us, as the true road to happiness, the ignorance, imbecility, and stupidity that you have not blushed to attribute to our first parents."
Le Gros, Examen des ouvrages de J.-J. Rousseau et de Court de Gobelin (Geneve, 1786), pp 62 -66.
The Enlightenment state of nature, Krugman's, that of Locke, Diderot, and Rousseau, and of course Adam Smith, etc, was really a state of benign Godless anarchy, where isolated individuals, basically good but stupid by nature dwelt mostly in peace, plenty, and accidental harmony, pursuing their natural appetites.
See eg: Catholics and Unbelievers in 18th Century France, Index Locke, Diderot, Rousseau.
See especially p 133:
"Paradoxically, the men who trusted so highly in the powers of intelligence regarded the mind as essentially vacant and inert; the idea of the passive mind was indispensable to their system. it was the guarantee that the truths of nature might be perceived without distortion. It was the basis for the distinction, then so important and so clear, between enlightenment and prejudice. It was the metaphysical groundwork for the belief that men were equal, and that they possessed the quality of perfectibility, that is, susceptibility to progress. Minimizing the effects of will, denying original predisposition, refusing to see any inevitability in human nature, the doctrine was flatly contrary to the Christian idea of sin; and by representing man as a passive child of circumstances, easily abused by his environment, it slipped sometimes into a notion that human nature, when crude, is good; and that order, restraint, discipline, and suppression are affronts to man's dignity and freedom." Palmer, p 133, 134
"Paradoxically, the men who trusted so highly in the powers of intelligence regarded the mind as essentially vacant and inert; the idea of the passive mind was indispensable to their system. it was the guarantee that the truths of nature might be perceived without distortion. It was the basis for the distinction, then so important and so clear, between enlightenment and prejudice. It was the metaphysical groundwork for the belief that men were equal, and that they possessed the quality of perfectibility, that is, susceptibility to progress. Minimizing the effects of will, denying original predisposition, refusing to see any inevitability in human nature, the doctrine was flatly contrary to the Christian idea of sin; and by representing man as a passive child of circumstances, easily abused by his environment, it slipped sometimes into a notion that human nature, when crude, is good; and that order, restraint, discipline, and suppression are affronts to man's dignity and freedom." Palmer, p 133, 134
This post is dedicated to J C D Clark.
Saturday, April 17, 2021
Friday, April 16, 2021
Wednesday, April 14, 2021
WILLIAM L VAN DE BURG IS A CLASSIC WHITE STOKELY COMMUNIST WISCONSIN ACADEMIC
He writes about American black nationalism, but he dedicates at least one of his bad works to three Pan-African practitioners of the historian's activist art.
So he is merely a pop culture negro loving white global socialist.
Get a load of his Hoodlums.
What a peckerhead.
Even someone like Thomas Sowell could think rings around this fawning dunce.
Any self respecting negro, even, should have shunned his lily white ass.
Tuesday, April 13, 2021
NYT FRAUDSTER BLUNDERBUTTS KRUGMAN WANTS UNIONS BACK
He and Mr World Is Flat TLF were among the left big globalists at NYT for decades.
China was good for you.
Sunday, April 11, 2021
STOOGES FOR LEFT VERSUS STOOGES FOR RIGHT JEWS THROUGH HISTORY
Postmodernism dominates both political parties of stooges.
Left globalization, promoted by NYT liberal Jews, confronted right capitalist globalization, promoted by orthodox and conservative Jews.
Note, they both promoted globalization: Think of that as the Vital Jewish Center of American politics.
Saturday, April 10, 2021
BRAZILIANS AND AFRO AMERICANS ARE NOT AFRICAN ENOUGH FOR ME EITHER!
Sunday, August 16, 2020
TRUST ME KAMALA IS NOT AFRICAN ENOUGH FOR ANGOLA
Angola orders Brazil evangelical churches to close
Negro on negro expulsion of mulatto Brazilian Christian Evangelical Church from Angola's ass.
East Africa had forcibly expelled its Hindu middleman minorities, after the US had forced the European Powers to divest their Empires everywhere at the end of WWII.
She is not African enough, and quite a too Hindu British colonial heritage, for Yeshitela, Joe Waller, either.
IF RIGHT SELL COKE DELTA MLB SHORT + LEFT STOKELYS SHORT OIL KOCHS MONSANTO PUBLIX CHINKS WILL BUY IT ALL ENSLAVE ALL YUR LILY WHITE ASSES
RIGHT + LEFT ZERO SUM CANCEL CULTURES =
CHINK WIN WIN BONANZE SUM GAME
WEST WHITES ARE GUILTY OF ORIGINAL SIN NEED TO BE AMHERST COMMON LANGUAGE GUIDE CORRECT
But these negroes, and their whiteface Stokely left liberal copycats, can say whatever they want, and it will lead to peace and unity.
Friday, April 9, 2021
Wednesday, April 7, 2021
SNOWDEN GREENWALD RUSSIA ASSETS MAKES YOU WONDER ABOUT THE PULITZER PRIZE!
or the Rodenhour Prize, for that matter.
TANZANIA'S PRESIDENT
SHE LOOKS LIKE THIS BECAUSE OF WHITE OPPRESSION.
OTHERWISE THE PRESIDENT MIGHT LOOK LIKE THIS, A HINDU MALE BRITISH TRAINED BARRISTER:
GANDHI, A HINDU RACIST,
PRACTISING IN SOUTH AFRICA
Tuesday, April 6, 2021
NO POINT IN GIVING A LOT OF COVID VACCINES TO AFRICA
They would just fuck it up anyway, and sell most of it to non Africa folks.
Monday, April 5, 2021
WHY DONATE TO LOST CAUSES?
Globally, about one billion people still live on less than $1.25 per day.
Let's reduce that to .75 per day!
Disinvest in these bitches.
PILLSBURY AMERICA AS A WARRING STATE
This is mostly a rehash of failed former so called strategies, competitiveness studies, encircling China by pivoting around and enriching its neighbors at US expense, nonsenses like that, all over again.
Sunday, April 4, 2021
Saturday, April 3, 2021
JESSICA KRUG SHAUN KING WHITE STOKELYS ABRAHAM LINCOLN
THESE ARE WESTERN CIVILIZATION MISANTHROPES.
THE FACT THAT THEY ARE RACIALLY WHITE IS, QUITE FRANKLY, SECONDARY.
Thursday, April 1, 2021
THIS IS ALL THE FAULT OF EUROPEAN COLONIALISM THESE TROOPS PROBABLY TRAINED IN WHITE BRITAIN!
OR THEY GOT WHITE TRAINED BRIT NEGRO TROOPS TO CORRUPT THESE GOOD BUT NAIVE ETHIOPIANS!
Evidence suggests Ethiopian military carried out massacre in Tigray
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