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THE ABSURD TIMES
Time for a break.
Let us sum it up. We should start where we are, in medias rea, and then go back a bit. How far back is a difficult choice, but we will make it, somehow.
So, right now, we have an adult with the attitude of a puberty-ridden teenager as President of the United States. Let us think of it this way: Remembrance of Things Past by Marcel Proust is 1,250,000 words long and consumes four to six volumes. No body that has ever read the entire thing has any real criticism of it. After all, if you sat down and read that many words of one work, you would look very foolish in saying it was bad. Well, I can confidently say one thing: it is a much more pleasant task than contemplating current events today, especially here in the United States, and we will return to Proust eventually. What has happened is similar to what would have happened if Barry Goldwater had been elected in 1964 instead of LBJ, and it should well known what happened with LBJ. At that time, Hillary Clinton was a "Goldwater Girl," complete with cheerleader's costume, coming as she did from a politically retarded area of Chicago (Park Ridge).
Many voted for LBJ because he said "I don't think American boys should be fighting a was that it is the job of Asian boys to do." After he had resigned, he said he did not lie. In an interview with Walter Cronkite he said "Now, Walter, I said SHOULD, not that they WOULDN'T". Goldwater, on the other had, promised to "Bomb North Vietnam into the stone age." Many people who voted for LBJ felt somehow responsible for the war in Viet Nam because it was turned into a wild slaughterhouse on the basis of a resolution that LBJ had in his coat pocket for 6 months before the Golf of Tonkin occurred. Never again.
The election of FDR was an easy choice after the Republican Herbert Hoover and the Great Depression. No promise was made concerning Europe and its war, predicted after the treaty Germany was forced to accept after WWI. Henry Wallace was his Vice President until FDR was sick and dying and big business put pressure on him and he did not have the energy to keep him as Vice President. Truman was chosen as more acceptable to business, used the A-Bomb on Japan, and allowed the creation of Israel. All of this led to Eisenhower who left with a warning about the "Military Industrial Complex."
The next election was Kennedy vs. Nixon. Nixon was perfectly hateful and hating, paranoid and vicious, sneaky and persistent. Since JFK was an Irish Catholic, had a sense of humor, a Democrat, and a wife who looked good, he was elected. A great deal was done in Chicago to keep the paranoid who saw communism under every leaf from every tree and Kennedy won. The illustration gives you an idea of what happened to him. John Foster Dulles, Secretary of State, and his brother Allan Dulles, Director of the CIA, set in motion many power plays around the world. To make things short, the so-called Warren Report should be called the "Dulles Report" as he was the panel, essentially, investigation the death of JFK about a year after he was fired by JFK. Our illustration explains why he had to be terminated.
At one time, during JFK''s Presidency, he held a dinner party with such people as Arthur Miller (Death of a Salesman), Tennessee Williams (Streetcar named Desire), Leonard Bernstein (New York Philharmonic, and others. He reportedly said "This is the greatest assemblage of minds to dine here since Thomas Jefferson dined here alone." Who would we find at a Trump dinner?
A major force behind Barry Goldwater was the John Birch Society, financed by Koch, the father of the founders of the "Tea Party." The Tea Party made Trump possible -- given Trump's manipulation of the mass media. The other choice in the last election was Hillary Clinton. Many women favored her because she was a female and that was all. Wall Street favored her because she cultivated relations with them. Furthermore, the only opposition, Bernie Sanders, was popular and threatened single-payer health insurance (surely a Communist plot to subvert Capitalism). Still, Trump and Sanders both appealed to most votesr who quite correctly thought they were getting screwed. Sanders had to go.
We were given an unacceptable situation. The choice once again, or this time, was Hillary or Trump. This time, many followed Thoreau's advice, and I paraphrase as closely as I can, "If you can not take direct action against a government's unjust activity, the very least you can do is to have nothing to do with it." In other words, we were not again going to choose between LBJ and Barry Goldwater. The decision not to endorse these two in no way means an endorsement of the winner. Vietnam was painful for many who voted for LBJ based on his promises, but they will not accept that responsibility again. That would be illogical.
Ignorance rules the press, as well as the oligarchy. We are now hearing a great deal of bellicosity and fear-mongering over nuclear weapons. Are the North Korean Weapons Fission or Fusion? Makes a big difference. Also, have they been using enriched Uranium or Plutonium? I would like to know, but then the question has never occurred to any of our media.
Domestic terrorism is rising. While the focus continues to be anywhere else, hate groups, some of them, and only a few, are members of the law enforcement community. More than likely, they will be called upon to contain such groups. Some of them call themselves American Nazis, the press calls them neo-Nazis, and the white house put out a statement for a short time calling them "nephew Nazis," apparently some clerical mistake, or at least one hopes so. President 45 has refused to label them as such as the neo-KKK is also involved, as well as some rather insane low-level-IQ anti-abortionists that seems to target white focused clinics and scream "save the babies," as if these guys cared. So as as the so-called Nazis are concerned, any comparison between them and the fascist party of mid-century Germany is certainly misplaced. Simply ask even one of them who their favorite Valkyrie is (daughter of Wotan, you know), or to distinguish between Teutonic and Frank and see how how you get. A dangerous voice is that of David Duke (who would be able to answer all of those questions and more. He is far too intelligent and knowledgeable to simply dismiss. He is able to manipulate people and one suspects that he influences 45 to some degree as well. One example is when he was interviewed by Wolf Blitzer and introduced as a FORMER GRAND WIZARD OF THE KKK. Duke asked why do that unless you point our that your are a former lobbyist for AIPAC? The problem is that most of these low lives feel liberated by 45 and will act accordingly.
Speaking of Proust, and attempting, woefully short of any hope of conveying the actual impact of his prolix and elliptical style, which has at best been described as both complex and periodic, so much so, in fact, that a favorite party game in French literary circles would, as the current situation is not established, be to attempt to diagram one of his involved sentences, it is necessary, perhaps that is not the proper word, appropriate might fit better at this point, to attempt to discuss his rather nebulous attitude towards sexual relations as there is a great deal of militancy today about LGBTQ issues, without any definite idea of what the "Q" stands for (although a usually reliable source tells me that it means "queer," thus making the word politically correct once more, and his reputed and, indeed avowed, sense of what is called homosexuality, although he never uses that term in his work, even in the section called Sodom and Gomorrah, with Sodom representing relations between men and men and Gomorrah between women, and since all of the sexual encounters he discusses are between himself and one of two women, in both cases attempting to recapture attitudes of feelings he had when he was much younger, although he does at one point describe observing secretly a sado-masochistic encounter between one man and another with several observers and one between two what he calls girls as they are youthful at the time, maintaining throughout an intense interest in painting or art without any real expression of overt sexuality, although one easily suspects that he is plagued by the thought of these two women having affairs with other women is a bit easier to understand in these terms, describing himself at one point as being an "invert," meaning having a woman's mind or soul, if you will, inside of a man's body, remembering all the while not disclosing this one bit to his mother or his beloved grandmother, for we should remember that he wrote at the beginning of the last century while attitudes are quite different at the beginning of this century.
Every other advanced society has universal health care, except the U.S. The people are overwhelmingly in favor of it if they are asked about the Affordable Care Act (ACA). However, the same people who benefit most, are opposed to Obamacare which is the name given by the rich to subvert it. Right now, Trump is subverting it as best he can. Many will now have much higher rates simply because of Trump's withholding of funds and many will die or face bankruptcy. Many Republican Representatives have gone home to face angry crowds, and many of them say those are outside agitators. Elections may make a difference for once. These other countries also have more than two established political parties. Short of armed rebellion, urged by Jefferson, we will always have only two. There will be no armed rebellion. So, it is all over.
On occasion, we may post an interview or article that seems important and of interest, but other than that, we need to pay attention to others things. Where's Proust?
Goodbye, and thanks for all the fish.
