I want to jump in on the goodbye blog bandwagon. If TPM Cafe returns to at least a semblance of its original framework, I will be here with bells on. Until then, I don't plan on finding a different home. My plan is to go ahead and create my own home, with its own curious architecture, plumbing and interior design.

In 2004, I completed my first novel. Since then, I have lost my electronic copies and now only have one hard copy in my possession, along with the ISBN number proving my copywright. I have spent the last few months typing the whole work back in, revising and editing the work as I go along. This has been an acutely painful process. I should be completely done with this drafting process by the end of this month.

Which leads to my new home.

I plan on purchasing a domain name and making "Maximum Technology" the centerpiece of the site. I will also publish my other written works, entirely for free. I will pimp a PayPal button for those who wish to contribute, but given these times and my own relative economic well-being as part of the military industrial complex, it isn't my intent to make a profit. My intent is to make any readers guinea pigs.

Allow me to explain.

The novel itself is only somewhat linear, and that linearity isn't crucial to the story. I've decided to slice apart the novel into a series of vignettes, nearly a thousand of them, and interconnect them via keyword hyperlinks. The next page function would put you in a random spot, so the only way to even attempt to read the story from "cover to cover" would be to try and piece it together based on the hyperlinks. There will also be photos and my own illustrations to accompany the work.

I've given myself a deadline of the Spring of 2011 to get the site up and running. I may open the site for traffic before then for my poetry, essays, rants, and plays. The heart of the site, however, will be the novel. The internet is an ideal environment to make real the structural concepts brought forward by writers like Burroughs, Borges, Woolfe, Joyce, and Faulkner among others. As long as the novels had to be packaged with a first page and last page between the binding, there was way to make (for example) Joyce's conceit about Finnegan's Wake be an authentic mode of reading. In this manner, my goal is to make my novel more like a scuplture, where I as the author have a relationship with the reader that is informal. The reader can choose more or less where to begin and how to explore the work, and will most likely at first give up unless I am able to sufficiently intrigue the reader by sheer craftmanship of the writing itself.

For those few of you that were curious about where I am going, I hope this answers your question. I may occasionally post at Dagblog, and I have a commenting home at Rump Roast, the meatiest blog on the internets. These writings will be few and far between as I spend more time in my workshop, trying (and probably failing) to introduce something novel into the novel. I know that the hyperlink novel has been discussed and probably explored elsewhere. There is nothing new under the sun. But I do intend to make the experience unique through my own personal imprint based upon Western and Eastern occult concepts of interconnectedness.

To those of you whom I am fond of and may likewise be fond of me, I am glad and grateful that our frequencies were of sufficient sympathy to make our relationship of supplementary colors. To those of you with whom I have quarreled (nearly always at my instigation and fault), I am equally glad and grateful that our antipathies and resentments were such that our relationship was complementary. And to everyone else in the inner and outer spheres of our inharmoniously beautiful community, I send you my love and gratitude for existing now during these most strange and uncertain times.

Whitney's Law, the most comprehensive free speech and privacy overhaul since the PATRIOT Act, was signed by President Obama less than 24 hours after a unanimous Senate vote. The law, named after Whitney Stevens, the 17 year old blonde whose feelings were hurt to death by paroled convict Abu Jamal Ali Mustafah Khan, takes effect immediately. The key portions of the bill include the creation of a five judge panel acting under the authority of the Homeland Security Department along with the establishment of the Hurt Feelings Task Force, a network of private and public citizens dedicated to protecting neighborhoods and small businesses from the danger of strange scary people.

"This law will help to prevent future unfortunate tragedies like what befell poor Whitney," President Obama stated after signing the bill into law.

The story of Whitney Stevens became a worldwide fascination after her feelings were abducted during a sleepover in Palomar, a small suburban community outside of San Diego, California. According to her testimony and those of witnesses at the event, Whitney checked her e-mail on her Apple iPhone 4, and shortly afterward reported an inability to feel emotion. Investigators on the scene concluded that an e-mail by convicted internet troll Abu Jamal Ali Mustafah Khan, wrote such hateful and abusive terms that her fragile privileged emotions were damaged beyond repair. A nationwide manhunt was conducted for Khan, leading first to the discovery of Whitney's murdered feelings behind a dumpster near Khan's residence. Doctors determined that there was no way to reattach Whitney's severed feelings, and she remains a shell of her former self to this day.

The outrage that was spawned in the wake of the event found its spokesperson in conservative talk show host Dr. Vicki, former model turned activist and founder of the Think Of The Children Foundation. Dr. Vicki's impassioned pleas led the State of California's adoption of its version of Whitney's Law which created a database of Registered Mean People and a new legal category of People Who Don't Belong Here. The ACLU filed suit against the state of California and lost after a contentious six month courtroom battle.

ACLU Spokeman Guy Gaylord had this to say after the failed suit: "Abu Khan sent an e-mail and posted a comment in his Facebook breaking up with Ms. Stevens over alleged infidelities. Was foul language used? Absolutely. Should that be a crime? Absolutely not." The ACLU has since filed over a dozen different lawsuits as states all over the country and finally the US Congress debated and passed their own versions of Whitney's Law.

Ultimately, the ACLU's arguments were struck down in an overwhelming 5-4 Supreme Court decision that made primacy of Real American Feelings a centerpiece of the First Amendment. Justice Alito wrote for the majority that "preservation of Real American Feelings is crucial to the founding father's definition of free speech."

"This is a victory for children, for God, and for our troops that fight and die for their children and God," said Dr. Vicki in an interview with the Tribune. Abu Jamal Ali Mustafah Khan was in solitary confinement and could not be reached for comment.

Love is reflected in the eye of a bird who paints its appetite on the dawn-soaked grass. Drops of dew relax from their crystalline sleep and run the length of the blades into the heart of the soil. In the Earth all is devouring mayhem. Spirals of worms, bone dust, rancid peat, a history of merciless death rumbles and boils over eons in a dance that stretches across epochs. A dance that embraces the lapping of deep oceans and the melody of winds, giving rise to new ways of saying ancient oaths. Our souls are like motes drifting in this concatenation of deep talking and dancing. Our souls stick to the surface for a moment only to scatter from the force of a passing breath or tremble. Light casts its appetite on the soul-drenched planet. Souls float and land like flies on the dancing planet. Stretch their wings, blink and weep, sing and pray, eat and fornicate, sin and fail, bless their children, pretend to know, praise their neighbors, question their flesh, doubt their minds, regret their past, and scatter against the force of the breath of tomorrow.

The mother of all songs
fed through a cord made
of iron
From our lips
we sing:
Om
Hallelujah

Intelligence reached
its repose
upon
glass skinned dinosaurs
munching upon
mathematics
shitting out
wave after wave
of worms
with big ideas
that travel no further than
the next clenched fist
Press your ear against the sky
and you'll hear the tom-tom
rhythm of the worms
they rise and fall
between the planes
they dance and sleep
through the boundless monad
(one morning)
they heard the mother of all songs
and believed the curious weight of gravity
they fell into mud
and set to work weaving
silk into glass
setting the glass against pipes of steel
wrapped their will into this beast
and waited

The glassy beast moaned
and shook hard logic into being
gravity production increased
by two percent
this was understood
to be no different than God
its first order of business
was weapons and laws
its second order
was teeth and currency
fields of deception
harvested by chewing
then spit into coins
and traded for nothing

This is an excerpt from a letter I wrote to my local Archdiocese:

"Man's social nature makes it evident that the progress of the human person and the advance of society itself hinge on one another. For the beginning, the subject and the goal of all social institutions is and must be the human person which for its part and by its very nature stands completely in need of social life."

I begin this letter with a quote from "Gaudium et Spes," a portion of the pastoral constiution from Vatican II. I want to first bring to your attention my weakness as a lamb of the Holy Church. I have attended mass infrequently, contributed some (but not much), and in other ways have lived (some days more closely than others) in the model of the prodigal son. But I have defended the honor of the Church because she is the Holy Mother and inspired by the ineffable Holy Spirit. In Her breath exudes the sacred message of brotherhood, peace, and liberation from sin.

Therefore, it is in great sadness that I repudiate the Church as unredeemably corrupt and I declare myself free from her obligations as described in Dignitatus Humanae:
"This Vatican Council declares that the human person has a right to religious freedom. This freedom means that all men are to be immune from coercion on the part of individuals or of social groups and of any human power, in such wise that no one is to be forced to act in a manner contrary to his own beliefs, whether privately or publicly, whether alone or in association with others, within due limits."

If I continue to be a part of the Church, I will consider myself forced to act in a manner contrary to my own beliefs. The Church Herself has lost its way and is behaving in a manner that is reprehensible to Christ. I further belief that the Church is engaging in coercive action and deceit in order to protect Her material assets from harm. I find this fact astounding considering that the Holy Church is beyond the needs of the Earth as she represents the guidance and intention of the Holy Spirit on Earth. Money and property should not be this guidance for they are the providence of sin. Modern civilization deafens our ears to God because it is engrossed in material affairs.

The future of the Church rests with the the Second Vatican Council. This Ecumenical Council decreed that the Church would promote freedom of religion and religious thought worldwide. The Council further decreed that the message of liberation and peace would be the central overriding messages of the Holy Church worldwide. Given the devastation of the two World Wars and the looming Cold War, the emphasis on peace was paramount to the survival of the human race. The message of religious tolerance was equally vital because it is ideological differences, spiritual and material, combined with the gross disparity between rich and poor within and without nations that tear this world apart.

In these times of corrupt principalities and vain warlord aristocrats, the world needs to hear the heartbeat of Christ and feel the love of Mother Mary. Instead, the Church has lost her moorings and has behaved in contradiction to its constitution, to its very Spirit. She rejected Liberation Theology and embraced the ideas of bishops who helped craft the governments of Mussolini and Franco. She involves Herself with the affairs of nations by threatening to deny Holy Communion to members of government who represent their people in democratic governments. She spends the money of Her lambs on pomp and property and on devious people who attack Her enemies.

And above all, She has allowed the violation of innocence to occur by her priesthood for decades in a manner that defies apologism. In a time when the message of lovingkindness, spiritual freedom, and moral growth is needed more than ever, She is sabotaged by those who are given the power to deliver Her sacraments. It appears to me that the Church is defending when it should be confessing. It appears to me that the Church is held hostage by heartless deviant men who are interested in their appetites and the furtherance of their power. Church doctors and saints have been faced by this challenge before. The nature of the vow of celibacy is such that it can invite the most dangerous vicissitudes. This is plainly what is happening today. Unfortunately, the highest office is held by a man who condones the practice of pederasty and the crystallisation of material power. Therefore, there is no defense and aid for the world's children who suffer from predation.

This is more than sexual predation. It is financial and material predation from unjust burdens on the world's poor by denying them sexual education, family planning and access to prophylactics. It is the predation of violence by failing to sound the trumpet for peace and also fanning the flames of ideological violence by quoting ancient prejudices against modern faiths.
In other words, you are condemning the future of our world's children to a life without the Gospel. All you are giving them is another crack of the whip, another boot on their neck, another violation of their innocence. Personally, I believe that until the corruption and evils being delivered upon the world by the Church are mitigated, the Holy Communion is being deprived to the entire planet. The priests have no sacramental power; it is all merely pantomime and decadence.

In honor of the senseless column by Austin Bramwell at The American Conservative titles "Judging Bloggers By Their Books," I offer my own blog about which ten books influenced me the most. Hopefully, I can be judged by Mr. Bramwell as to my erudition and sophistication because I simply live and die by his opinion.

1. Valis, by Philip K. Dick. This is the book I return to most often from Dick's canon. Dick's writing is tricky, mysterious and open-ended. You begin one of his stories not sure where you are and by the end you know even less. His best work can lead you to question your own cognitive map. I believe this is his best work. The author is describing his own descent into madness and learns in the end to love himself and yet still despair. Valis also best encapsulates Dick's forays into gnostic metaphysics. This work taught me that when it comes to human reality, we are all wrong and walk upon the shifting sands of impermanence.

2. Decline of The West Volume 1, by Oswald Spengler. I only say volume 1 because I couldn't finish volume 2. Whatever you do or don't know about this work, you should try reading it. I am not going to praise the book as prophetic, even though when it comes to Ceasarism and superstates, it is. I am not going to praise the book as profound, even though every page carries ideas that had not been discussed or even considered before it was written. I am going to praise this work as the greatest non-fiction work of imagination of the 20th century. Spengler manages to break down the whole of human history into epochs characterised by leitmotifs and ideological thrusts. You are never sure what he is actually saying about human nature other than it is predictable. I would believe this work is a put on, an extended satire of Hegelian dialectic, if it wasn't for the fact that it's tone is scholastic (with little or no bibliography or attributions) and serious. So serious, in fact, that Hitler wanted Spengler's approval as the New World Ceasar, the man who would guide Faustian western civilization to its ignominious end. In short, this work is Athena, borne from the head of a man who appeared to have no forebears. Eat your heart out, MacLuhan.

3. Fiasco, by Stanislaw Lem. One of Lem's major themes is the incomprehensibility of the alien mind. On one level, he is making an honest statement about the search for intelligent life in the universe. On another level, he is also describing man's inability to understand themselves. This book is his best achievement in exploring this theme. The human race has managed to find a planet that, by the time an envoy can manage to reach it, will have a level of technological sophistication comparitive to our own. The novel is more or less about the attempt the envoy, manned by the best and brightest humanity can offer, makes to contact this alien race on their homeworld. In so doing, Lem manages to skewer the cold war, militarism, science jargon, religion, and human nature itself. In the end, the envoy destroys the planet in order to save it...

4. The Complete Golden Dawn Handbook Second Edition, edited by Israel Regardie. The Order of the Golden Dawn was an esoteric secret society that managed to become popular in British and Irish parlor culture in the late 19th century. At one point, the society boasted the membership of Algernon Blackwood and W.B. Yeats. The society was founded by former Freemasons who took what they learned, plagiarised materials from the British Library, and added healthy doses of their own ideas. The resulting mixture is a lineage of heretical ideas that stretch as far back as the 13th century. Alchemy, Kabbalah, Astrology, Geomancy, Tarot, Enochian, ceremonial magick, and even ideas from the Far East like Tattwas. By the end of the work, the brothers and sisters who formed this order managed to stitch together from disparate cultures and histories an occult unified field theory, a vision of the entire universe that can be contemplated and adored in the name of spiritual evolution. A collaborative work of art and flawed genius.

5. The Complete Stories of Franz Kafka. The darkest of comics, his best work is in the short form. The story that had the deepest impact on me from this collection was 'In The Penal Colony." Not only is it funny, if you think a story about a rickety execution device and its loving manager is funny, but it encapsulates the patriarchy as a system. Other wonderful pieces that stand out to me are "The Cares of a Family Man," and "The Judgment." Kafka is another writer whose meaning can never be quite pinned down, but the effort of attempting to understand him yields insight into the world and one's self.

6. Journey To The End of The Night, by Louis-Ferdinand Celine. This novel is perpetually on fire. To read it is to be immolated. Although Celine's reputation has diminished thanks to his ugly anti-semitism, this work is unjustly ignored as one of the great novels of our time. The narrator's voice is either a scream or a belly laugh as we follow him from the trenches of the first world war to Africa to America and back to France as a mediocre family doctor. Pain, fear, corruption, sex and violence dance on the pages and lock your attention. The scene towards the end, where the steam from a sea-witches' brew rends the veil between the living and the dead for a few moments, is simply one of the best fiction passages ever written.

7. The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, by Haruki Murakami. I have only read this book once, but I read it in one sitting over nine hours. There was simply no way the author was going to let me put it down. I had read most of this author's output, and I love how he tells permutations of essentially the same story by the same narrator, yet reaches dramatically different narratives. Man gets divorced, loses cat. Searches for cat, finds adventures. In this novel, the man gets to hook up with psychic twins, a soldier cracking from the memories of atrocities committed during the Manchurian Occupation, and an incestuous King of All Japanese Media. Worth its weight in gold, which at 600+ pages would make G. Gordon Liddy swoon with envy.

8. How It is, by Samuel Beckett. This novel, which arrived after the mammoth trilogy, centers on an unnamed narrator who wallows in the mud. He meets another mud wallower, they co-exist for a time, and then they part. The narrator continues in solitude. The structure of the work appears to be that the efforts of the journey through the mud is exhausting, and while the narrator is struggling, the force of the struggle pares down his thoughts to the bare minimum possible for introspection. The diction in this novel is spare and repetitive like a drumbeat. A drumbeat of propulsive existentialism. There is no room for naught else but slime, exertion, and memory. I revisited it in Iraq after an abortive attempt to read it many years prior, and the novel felt like life during wartime. It is replete with hook after hook, each sentence rings dark poetic bells without any pretense of gilded language. Its simplicity is rugged and beautiful.

9. Year 501: The Conquest Continues, by Noam Chomsky. This is the most impactful because it was the first book I read by Mr. Chomsky. It hits all his political notes. He ruthlessly dissects American empire and deconstructs the mythology of exceptionalism. For me, the saddest part was hearing John Quincy Adams describe Haiti in the same terms as a Kennedy advisor described Viet Nam: low hanging fruit. Over and over again, America seeks out the low hanging fruit of weak nations with rich resources and exploits them. Exploits them with violence, intimidation, destabilization and murder. The same blueprint our ancestors applied to the indigenous peopls of the new world is ritually followed over centuries... from Ecuador to Iraq, from Cuba to Afghanistan. I can only imagine how frustrating it must be for Chomsky to see this pattern extend over the course of US history and see its citizens fall for the same lies every time. And then watches the American citizenry engorge themselves on the spoils of empire... we continually let ourselves be bribed by the aristocracy to do its bidding. Amazing stuff. It reads like a bolt of lightning.

10. Amers, by Saint-John Perse. The edition I own has it in French and well translated English side by side. The effect is marvelous. Perse's poetry is a string of jewels, each verb leads to the next and explores one essential idea. In this poem, it is a long ode to the sea and all of its symbolic connotations. For best effect, I read it aloud. To me, this is the best poem I have read, and it is overflowing with love and an intense audacity.

I hope other readers can contribute... and perhaps a few of you will read one of these works... or better yet, have read one or more of these works and can discuss them with me.

I am currently working on a longer blog, but I wanted to write a quick note to the Cafe members, specifically Kgb999.

 This note is an apology. Months ago I questioned the fund allocations of Accountability Now, a PAC to which I contributed. I performed an independent audit and brought my results to the attention of an individual within the Accountability Now organization. I did not receive a direct response. Instead, Jane Hamsher and Glenn Greenwald published a joint statement that contained their methodology along with a transparent list of fund allocations.

 Then something amazing happened: the challenge to Blanche Lincoln. Greenwald announced the challenge from his blog and claimed that it was due in part to the recruiting efforts of Accountability Now. I have absolutely no reason to doubt this: the speed and intensity of the fundraising and support network that has come in the aftermath of the announcement proves that it is coordinated in part or whole by Accountability Now.

 The primary challenge is sophisticated; there is coordination between grassrootes fundraising via ActBlue and the support of the unions. The challenge seems to hinge on Lincoln's failure to support the public's desire for a public option in health care reform.

 Now, I would be a hypocrite if I didn't point this out. I have repeatedly called out for exactly this kind of action. Perhaps it was karma that led me to take out a vendetta against Accountability Now because I thought they had misappropriated donor funds... my research led me to getting smacked in the face by the reality of getting what I wished for. This is a grassroots coordinated challenge to a corrupt Blue Dog that, even if unsuccessful, should push Lincoln to the left during this crucial legislative phase.

 So, to all: I am sorry. I can only hope that Accountability Now can set a blueprint for future action across the country. I urge everyone to pay attention to any fund drive for this PAC and contribute what you can.

Capitalism is the religion of the first world. The miracles of Christ are replicated and made mundane. Every trip to the grocery store is a reliving of loaves and fishes. Bottled waters and cola teach us the miracle of turning water into wine. Commercial medicine dispenses the cure and ignores the healing. The cure is the miracle while the recovery is incidental. And finally, the doctrine of surplus value reveals that the spiritual state of desire transmits value into a thing consumed.
Neoliberal priests of Capital teach us that the faith must be spread throughout the planet through the doctrine of globalism. Missionaries and courtesans travel the world and teach other nations that desire is not a theatre but a factory. You harness the yearnings of the masses and transubstantiate them, or in the parlance of Freud, sublimate them. In doing so you take the wish-fulfilling abstract dreams of your people and grant them material outcomes. Then they will work to achieve these material outcomes. This work is a pool of energy, and if you pool this energy into banks and financial instruments, then there is enough surplus that a few individuals can skim off the top and achieve wealth without toil.
The end result of religious practice is rugged individualism. Your life is known by the fruits of your labor. When you purchase a chair, the chair is not perceived as an object made by others, but as a thing you earned. Life becomes progressively isolated, progressively derived.
This isolation and derivation leads to a progressively simulated and emulated world. The reason is that these Capitalist doctrines do not abide thermodynamics. There is no such thing as surplus value. There is only a finite supply of energy and mass that is used for our limited purposes until it becomes inutile. There comes a point where consumption outstrips supply and quality diminishes or becomes virtual. The inflation of prices and the diminishment of quality is a spiritual condition. A family now requires two sources of income to buy goods that wear down faster. Therefore, this is an increase in derived and virtual reality. We as a people are becoming increasingly enamored of a simulated world. This is because the nearest approximation to our desires is no longer available to three out of the five senses. Now, only audiovisual sensations are offered that appeal to internal fantasies.
The end result is a society and culture disassociated from interpersonal ethics and the reality of consequence. This is where we stand today. The ongoing collapse of the world financial market is due to the creation of simulated wealth derived from the illusion of property. The bubble was an Elmer Fudd psychosocial disorder. The property values only lasted until individuals questioned that value. Economies should not hinge on belief and doubt. The reason is that doubt becomes a negative trait. The act of doubting is tantamount to betraying life. So belief must be cultivated and maintained at all costs. Critical thinking has become a threat to Capitalism... which shows that Capitalism is truly a faith whose dogma is maintained by a combination of irrational belief and regular worship.

I regret recently that I came off as a punk when I attacked the idea of revolt. I would like to revisit the idea of revolt. The word revolt, taken broadly, is necessary to upend the status quo and reform our unjust system. The question is what form this revolt should take. I will do my best to define what the core problems are that plague US civilization. I will also try to explain that a populist revolution would not solve these problems. In fact, I believe history bears out that hitherto successful and unsuccessful revolutions have "tightened the spiral" and increased the tempo of repression, disenfranchisement, and disassociation that serve as hallmarks of our modern empire.

 I will put this bluntly: the core problem of the western world is capitalism. Capitalism has managed to become the de facto religion and primary social engineering tool for our lives. The presevation of commodity value has overtaken ethical and cultural concerns. Society is bent towards this purpose above all others. This is because capitalism is founded on surplus value. A thing made has to be exchanged at greater value than the cost of manufacture. Therefore, capitalism is maintained by two separate but equally destructive impulses. The first is the creation of artificial demand through the manipulation of desire. The second is the reduction of cost through the manipulation of expectation. The bottom line is that the world increasingly demands more goods but expects less means. One can bear witness to this enantiodromia over all aspects of our lives. Just look at our nation's holidays and note that they are appropriated by capitalist intent. In my opinion, we have sublimated our cultural rituals and traditions to capitalism.

In order for modern corporations to run at a profit in the United States, the government must run at a deficit. That is because the gap of production is being filled by cheap consumption powered by our hegemonic control of petroleum. The bottom line is that we are borrowing from future generations to fill today's manufacturing gap. There is a second underlying problem that is even worse: derivatives and default swaps. This game of investments procured from a derived value and insurance against the derived default is an artificial financial construct that can only survive under conditions of perpetual value inflation. In my opinion, derivatives and swaps are a symptom of capitalism failing in its essential purpose. Our financial wizards are creating implied surplus value in order to magnify dwindling assets... like placing a piece of gold between two mirrors and calling yourself rich.

Given that our lives are devoted to capitalism from our birth to our funeral, I think it is safe to say that capitalism is our religion, or perhaps more correctly our spiritual state. Our calendar and clock are attuned to the needs of capitalism, so it is as natural for us to live by capitalism's intent than any other system. I believe it is safe to say that we can fantasize about a life apart from capitalism but have no concrete ideas about how to make the fantasy concrete.

And what is the signature creation of capitalism? The corporation. They are golems, beings created by words and numbers. I believe that corporations are artificial intelligence. They have rights of personhood magnified by the power of monetary speech to spread the gospel of capitalism. The wars in the Middle East are a new crusade that pays debts instead of indulging sins. We are imposing capitalist doctrine on a collectivist region through force of arms. I was personally trained to represent the MAAWS doctrine--Money As a Weapons System. This doctrine was central to the so-called Sunni Awakening in the Anbar province. This once more shows that the government is beholden to corporate entities that exist by legislative fiat.

Revolt poses a special problem due to the acceptance by the vast majority of citizens of the divine right of capital. For many, it is a full-throated acceptance, for many others it is like the caged tiger: there is no other way they know how to live. A violent or non-violent overthrow would not overcome the prejudices about capital and surplus value that are cultural norm. Every successful revolution has been due to a new form of government and ecoomics that replaces the old. But each of these revolutions has resulted in a calcified power structure that favors the exclusive party of the revolutionaries and power is handed down via nepotism. Our own revolution bears this out.

The assumptions that create the disparities of privilege and power persist in spite of the intent to remove them via revolt. Instead, we witness the rise of a new aristocracy that sustains their existence via the new philosophy. For all the best intentions of the enlightenment, the disparities between rich and power are even more vast and enforced by more advanced apparatuses of security and jurisprudence. My belief is that the suddenness of revolution does not allow for the time necessary to inculcate values commensurate to the reforms. Therefore, our revolutionary leaders are often the worst character types for change. They have the philosophy in hand, but their assumptions are entrenched in the culture they rebel from. All of the noble philsophy in the world can not overcome incidental value judgments.

The greatest and lasting positive changes to society stem from movements. The civil rights movements that dotted the landscape throughout the twentieth century, from women's suffrage to gay rights, has created the deepest and most lasting progressive impact. It is not a revolt, but the open practice of a belief system in public arena. This practice shifts the perception of the surrounding citizens and alters the culture without creating a vacuum in the existing power structure. When done long and enough and with patience. The practice of movements wears away at crystallised structures that foment inequality like water on rocks.

In conclusion, I would like to stress the importance of searching for arguments against capitalism. The commodification of life has created a world where individuals are beholden to commandments of the marketplace. The current rightwing Potemkin Revolt is based on furthering extreme neoliberal capitalism and solidifying the power of evangelical serf communities. The strongest argument against this debilitating movement is a philosophy without the trappings of capitalism whatsoever. Even modern progressives are promoting a system that is inherently autocratic/oligarchic in intent. It is more than emulating the European model and inching our way towards social democracy... it should be the complete philsophical break from a system that preaches the miracle of perpetual motion when our world is fast coming to terms with entropic breakdown.

I would invite the TPM Cafe community to have a discussion about what best to do and how to do it. I owe the bulk of this blog to the ideas of Adorno, Lacan, Foucault, Lukacs, and Fuller. I hope that I phrased a few of their incredible ideas in a manner that can spark a dialogue.

http://www.bfi.org/?q=node/406

I just wanted to post this link to one of my favorite works. It is available to read for free online, but I would also reccomend purchasing a print copy or making some contribution to the Buckminster Fuller Institute.

Over the next few months, I will occasionally post other online works of interest, from General Smedley Butler to Hakim Bey, from Albert Schweitzer to Aga Khan IV.

There are resources online that reveal the precise nature of the problems facing humanity and what we can do about them on a microcosmic and macrocosmic level.

Love,

Zip

Deep in my moderate heart (my whole wheat side) I want to believe that health reform is happening in the public interest.

My frosty side thinks otherwise.

In my opinion, the Baucus plan is the foundation of health reform. The beltway media knows it, Obama knows it, and informed citizens are growing to know it. The final bill will include landmark measures regarding pre-existing condition coverage and a mountain of regulation to control costs.

But (BUT) the final bill will likely be an unmitigated disaster. The seed is rotten.

The legislation has to be enforced by a combination of oversight and legal controls. I believe that neither of these august bodies will perform their function. Instead, I foresee the enforcement of mandates while any law that limits the "free market" will be undermined, overlooked, and overturned. Without a public option that has the funding and oversight necessary to force private industry to compete, industry will game the system. The cost of covering pre-existing conditions will raise all costs. Mandatory coverage places the onus of responsibility on citizens to insure themselves.

In my opinion, the final bill will transfer more wealth to the same financiers who engineered the current crisis. I believe that the banking tycoons are manufacturing another speculative bubble based on a mandated subsidy for increasingly shitty coverage.

And speaking of coverage:

The political implications are clear. The Dems will frame the failure of reform on big business. The Reps will frame the failure on government's inability to work on behalf of taxpayers. Both will be correct because both sides have created this coming debacle. And many voters will back Dems because the alternative will be a GOP typhoon of epic crazy.

We are being gamed. If the final bill is the Baucus Plan with sugar on top (as Obama's speech indicates) then this bill must die. Reconcile the bill and force a competitive public option or kill the final product.

Mark my words: if the Baucus plan with sugar reaches Obama's desk, it will be the biggest transfer of wealth upwards since the Iraq War.

Tell your Representative that you will not subsidize private care of your body. Demand a public option.

y name is Eric, and I am a truther. I have been a truther for eight years. The moment tye second plane made impact. I asked myself (what happened)? A harmless question. I think everyone asked it to themselves at some point that day. My initial guess was that it was domestic terrorists-- ex-soldiers like McVeigh. I turned out to be wrong. You see, I am a truther that believes the attacks were the work of Al Qaeda. Oddly, there is interesting backstory to Al Qaeda. In the travel diary of Marco Polo, the narrator recounts the legend of the Old Man of the Mountain. The mountain was called Alamut, and the Old Man was a descendent of Saladin. Now, the Old Man trained assassins, who were orphan boys brought to Alamut and brainwashed. They were given hashish (assassin being derived from hashishim). In their drugged state they were seduced by several women and given a night of pleasure barely imaginable. The next day, when the srugs wore off, the boys were convinced that they had gone to heaven... And Allag had revealed to them that if they fight and die for Him they would be rewarded with 72 cirgins. So Al Qaeda has a mythic heritage rooted in the Crusades. I have no problem believing the official story. We trained and armed a bunch of folklore-infested exfremists who planned, funded, and executed the attack. Cool. Clinton leaves office specifically warning about the threat of Al Qaeda. Dick Clark cites Al Qaeda and cyberterrorism as the two gravest threats to national security. A PEB specifically states that Bin Laden is determined to attack. The possibility of planes being used as missiles is actively theorized upon in war games. Yet it happened in a manner where our national defense's pants were completely down. Don't believe me. Look it up in the commission report. Now, I am only making points. I am not creating an alternative theory. That is the difference among truthers. I want the truth. I have no interest in creating truth wholecloth. I write fiction, but I live real. The fact that I am tied together with hologram kooks is insulting. It is red-baiting, pure and simple. The fact is that warnings were ignored and profits were made. The PATRIOT act passed with one dissenting Senate voice... And we went to war. Twice. With daisy cutters, shock and awe, and not a single fucking thing to show for it. Did the government let it happen? No. I think that's absurd. But what is more troublng is the threat was ignored but the attack was exploited. It is that through laziness and ideology a cabal of neoconservative theoreticians were allowed to lay down a welcome mat for world war three by actively courting risk. And that clear avenues of investigation have been cleared in favor of narrowing the guilt to Al Qaeda. Ignore the Saudi connection. Ignore the Egyptian connection. Overall to ignore the collusion between our oil interests abroad funding the terror threat and insurgency that plagues us today. That is what makes me a truther. Our oil and gas appetite has blinded us to the bedfellows we have made. But it is far better to believe a few fanatics hate us for our freedoms than to recognized the compromising situation we are placed in. So yes, the truth of 9/11 has been sanitized, in my humble opinion. I may be heading to Aghanistan in a year or so. The military theory is that my job can help bribe farmers into growing wheat instead of poppies. So after the agriculture lobbyists come the bankers. Once the drug money is stifled, the insurgency will weaken and make way for the Caspian pipeline. Oil wealth grows while governments around the worls grow ijcreasingly oppressive. Then the next attack will occur and (surprise!) no one will be looking. Because our eyes are stuck on the prize.

I have been frustrated for days by the discussion cum argument that took place in a blog by oleeb dealing with authoritarian personalities. I doubt anyone else really either paid much attention at the time or gave it thought afterwards, but this is a topic that appeals to me on a deep level.

I went ahead and I read Dr. Altemeyer's The Authoritarians over the weekend. I won't go into detailed criticism over the whole book, but I do want to address his premise. Dr. Altemeyer makes plain in his book that he is analyzing right wing authoritarian personality. He states that this personality is a risk factor in the corruption of democracy. He believes that left wing authoritarians exist, but in such small numbers as to be negligible. He stakes his ethos upon these claims, using his decades of research to bear as an authority on this subject.

In my opinion (with only a few years of authority to bear and lacking any clinical trials), I believe that Dr. Altemeyer is only identifying a small, albeit intensely visible piece of a puzzle. I think that the visibility of this reactionary and submissive subset of society blinds us from an overall perspective. The reason why Right Wing Authoritarians (henceforth referred to as RWA) can sway the direction of our democracy so well is because they are a catalyst. While their opinions and beliefs can be narrow, superstitious, wilfully ignorant, and submissive, they represent the majority of Americans. Their actions preserve the status quo.

If you can bear with me, I am going to address the first 10 questions in Dr. Altemeyer's RWA personality test. I will often rephrase the question with a noun substitution or a grammar shift to redistribute emphasis. My hope is by the end of the exercise, a few readers will continue on to my conclusion and enter into a fruitful discussion.

___ 1. The established authorities generally turn out to be right about things, while the radicals
and protestors are usually just "loud mouths" showing off their ignorance.

1. Experts generally turn out to be right about their conclusions, while the naysayers are usually contradictory without basis.

Dr. Altemeyers first question is specific to the right wing by the use of established and radical.

___ 2. Women should have to promise to obey their husbands when they get married.

2. Women should shave their legs and armpits when exposing these areas in public.

The issue of sexism and misogyny is conveniently ignored by Dr. Altemeyer in favor of isolating the "Promise-Keeper" contingent.

___ 3. Our country desperately needs a mighty leader who will do what has to be done to destroy
the radical new ways and sinfulness that are ruining us.

3. Our country desperately needs a charismatic leader who will expose and punish corruption and lay out a bold vision for the people to rally around.

___ 4. Gays and lesbians are just as healthy and moral as anybody else.

This one is genuinely good, imo.

___ 5. It is always better to trust the judgment of the proper authorities in government and
religion than to listen to the noisy rabble-rousers in our society who are trying to create
doubt in people's minds

5. It is always better to trust experts in government, churches, academia, and labratories than to listen to skeptics who doubt everything.

___ 6. Atheists and others who have rebelled against the established religions are no doubt every
bit as good and virtuous as those who attend church regularly.

6. Communists and Islamic fundamentalists are no doubt every bit as good and virtuous as American citizens.

___ 7. The only way our country can get through the crisis ahead is to get back to our traditional
values, put some tough leaders in power, and silence the troublemakers spreading bad ideas.

7. Substitute progressive for traditional. Substitute ignorance for bad ideas.

___ 8. There is absolutely nothing wrong with nudist camps.

8. There is absolutely nothing wrong with a local militia.

___ 9. Our country needs free thinkers who have the courage to defy traditional ways, even if this
upsets many people.

9. Our country needs individuals who will tell the truth, no matter what the cost.

___ 10. Our country will be destroyed someday if we do not smash the perversions eating away at
our moral fiber and traditional beliefs.

Substitute corruption for perversions and get rid of traditional beliefs.

I rephrased every question but numbers 4, 7, and 8 in order to replace right wing jargon with a less reflexive language. Numbers 7 and 8 I flipped because I have read number 7 at this site and other blogs, and number 8 brings in gun control vice sexuality. Question number 4 is a question everyone should ask themselves and then can replace with any group of people they see fit until they say NO. Replace gays and lesbians with pedophiles and murderers, and I believe everyone but the true antisocial or psychotic would strongly disagree.

Dr. Altemeyer has successfully narrowed his personality studies to a category of individuals who I describe as reactionary idealists. But what about the category of individuals who are apathetic observors? Those individuals who would never even get past the first question on the test without dismissing it as boring or a trap? These individuals are as submissive as the RWA, but do so because politics is "all lies," and cops are "just doing their job," and the President is "just as crooked as the next guy."

I commend Dr. Altemeyer's work inasmuch as it identifies paramaters of thought indicative of individual and group right wing authoritarianism. Is that the true threat to democracy? I don't think so.I believe the reactionary idealist is a symptom of an overall problem, and that is our general amnesia of and blindness to our actual national values. The RWA reactionary idealist may erect a singularly bizarre set of tropes, but nearly everyone else is just as guilty of creating egregores and distractions in order to avoid the obvious truth that the United States of America is a wholesale distributor of violence and exploitation. We have perpetrated countless atrocities directly or by proxy in order to benefit a few elite families. We live our lives under the constant scrutiny and advice of experts, work more hours for less pay, eat less nutritious food and accept an increasingly hostile body of laws and surveillance... it's not that RWAs are submissive, it's that they make a collective problem obvious by their shenanigans.

So the issue right now regarding health care goes beyond the mere question of right versus privilege, or individual versus universal. It is the fact that the cost of this health care is being borne on the backs of the third world. And every union we've helped bust, every coup we've funded and supported, every dictator who has been our friend before becoming our enemy, and every elected leader who fell by the hands of a soldier trained by our professionals underwrites the privilege/right of health care itself. Because our nation is fundamentally broken and we are doing almost nothing to fix it outside of demanding more benefits.

Because it is not about where we are going, it is where we are now. And I know that I am not afraid of a vocal contigent of deluded tea baggers. I am afraid of the next justified war against a comparitively defenseless nation. I am afraid that even if MLK himself were President he would be convinced to bomb Iran in order to secure the long term prestige of his party. And I am afraid that deep down we will tacitly allow the destruction to continue if it means that our families can maintain a safe and comfortable lifestyle.

The fuel that feeds terrorist violence has a spiritual dimension. That dimension is eschatology, or the belief in end times. This belief is pan-cultural and a natural outgrowth of manichean thinking aided by fear and despair. The belief in the imminent end of the world, especially as a capstone to a period of violent upheavals, corrodes ethical thinking and promotes narrow tribal solidarity. I would also posit that eschatology is the thread that holds cults together, because the foundation of militance and orthodoxy allows for the "outside threat" of evil to outweigh the "inside threat" of losing one's freedom and personality. I also believe that there is a host of end-times "dogwhistles" used by politicians and charismatic movement leaders that communicate certain notions directly to those versed in millenial jargon that also appeals to anyone who feels vaguely threatened by change. This may be a large part of the reason why a certain percentage of voters are reliably conservative, rally themselves around wedge issues, and are immune to positive ideas about the future.

I began thinking about this issue more than a decade ago after the Heaven's Gate mass suicide. The seed that was planted in my mind at that time is that most belief systems not only have a beginning, but also have an end. There are very few circular spiritual constructs, and even those (such as Hinduism or Teutonic mythology) are marked by violent destruction with a new age rising from the ashes (the Kali Yuga or Ragnarok, for example). I supposed at the time that there is a correlation between irrational violence and the immanence of the eschaton. The closer to the present an individual or a group believes the end of the world, the more marked the violence... and the violence will reflect their belief system. I supposed that these kinds of beliefs can only serve to dissociate an individual from their environment and create an outlet for the expression of misery, transmuting despair into euphoric zeal.

The Dead Sea Scrolls, for example, contain a "War Scroll" whereby an apocalypse is described, sides are declared, and tactics are outlined. This same mindset informs members of the racist Church of the Creator, that describes a holy race war of the pure Aryans versus the mud people with their corrupt and sinister values. Apply the same criterion to the NWO conspiracy theorists, who see a global conspiracy of Luciferian Illuminati who control the ebb and flow of society in order to implement a one-world government. Not only do each of these emphasis a band of true believers standing against the vanguard of evil, but they also emphasis the spiritual value of warfare and the impermanence of the physical body. What matters is one's spiritual ledger, where even the most violent and depraved of acts are done for the good of promoting their particular vision of the future.

Eschatology even informs certain domestic and foreign politics. The evangelical support of Israel, for example, is based on the belief that the second temple must be rebuilt as a precursor to the rapture. Michelle Bachmann stokes the fear of a one-world currency for a reason: it is a dogwhistle for evangelicals and America-firsters. While Islam believes in a day of judgment, Wahhabism pushes the envelope and believes that the end of the world is fast-approaching, and only the pure will survive Allah's judgment.

Belief in and hope for the end of the world is a natural consequence of fear, misery, despair, and helplessness. All of these factors are reinforced by the modern media, which transforms history into an observable phenomenon that operates on its own like theatre. When the phenomenon is observed with the filter of eschatology, a pattern emerges that lends credibility to your thinking. The murder of a spouse indicates the overall decline of family values. Terrorism is seen as the global struggle of good versus evil. President Obama is the antichrist foretold in the Book of Revelations.

I welcome any additional insight or criticism. I also pose this question: if so many believe, consciously or unconsciously, in the endtimes, what are the chances that humanity will manifest the end as a self-fulfilling prophecy?

http://www.templesanjose.org/JudaismInfo/faq/Qetoret.pdf

http://web.ccsu.edu/astronomy/tibetan_cosmological_models.htm

http://bahai-library.com/unpubl.articles/sufi.bahai.cosmology.html

I wanted to begin with these three links that deal with western and eastern cosmological models. They are strictly primers and have zero scientific relevance. I am posting them first and foremost for the sheer joy in contemplating such diverse and profound ideas. I believe they represent a poetry composed of symbol and serve a psychological purpose, in much the same manner that a reading of Dante's Divine Comedy can deliver.

I will try and not incorporate too much of the political into this post, although the purpose behind it is political in nature. This weekend's post by Stillidealistic was a claryon call for those of who who hold liberal and progressive political values to reclaim their religion and faith from the reactionaries who use religion as an authoritarian tool of control and prejudice. That thread descended into farce because certain individuals used the reactionary purpose of religion to paint the entirety of religion as something to be destroyed for the good of humanity.

I hold that the church of reason is dangerous too. The reason is simple: science is effective, but science is inductive and has an evolving nature. Newtonian physics has given way to Einstein, although the first must be understood before delving into the other. And... quite frankly very few people understand either, but that doesn't stop them from resting on their authority. They also don't understand that Einstein's general and special theories of relativity were controversial in their time. The reason was that Einstein reached his conclusions through mathematics and thought experiment in which he contemplated the outcome of his hypotheses on abstract extensions of mind. The tools had to be developed after the fact to prove his theories, and the proof took decades of hard and ongoing work. In other words, Einstein thought outside the box and relied on reason and intuition to derive conclusions where proof was not immediately observable.

So, initially, Einstein's theories were a cosmology (and when it comes to his stated goal of a unified field theory, remains a cosmology) rooted in mathematics in much the same manner that Lebiniz' theory of monads was derived from his application of infinitessimal calculus.

What informed Einstein's theories? Mystical pantheism:

http://www.spaceandmotion.com/albert-einstein-god-religion-theology.htm

In other words, Einstein reached his conclusions not just through hard math but a mystical appreciation of the universe that viewed the cosmos as an interconnected whole. While metaphysics without proof is no rational explanation, the metaphysics supplied the belief that aided Einstein in his scientific inquiry. Einstein found philosophical kinship in Baruch Spinoza, whose ideas challenged Einstein into a greater appreciation of the cosmos. I provide the first link because the strain of mystical Judaism (chadism) is very much present in both Spinoza and Einstein.

I believe that we are cutting off our nose to spite our face if we eschew faith and intuition as simply irrational. I do agree that believing in the unproveable isn't rational. That doesn't make the irrational an inherently bad thing. What makes irrationality a bad thing is to cling to an irrational belief in spite of sound evidence to the contrary. Thus, geocentric flat earth became irrational, outmoded, and dangerous when church authorities held to it and destroyed lives over the belief in spite of the evidence. What makes it worse is that there is nothing in the Bible outside of a command for the sun to stand still that provides backing for the assertion. In fact, a huge body of work existed thanks to Arab studies and mapmaking that put the lie to flat earth several centuries beforehand. A belief can not make a true thing untrue. But a belief can help discover the true, and in my opinion is essential to novel discoveries.

I would also like to add the psychological element to myth and cosmology:

http://www.sofiatopia.org/equiaeon/emerald.htm

When you discuss myth, it is impolite, ignorant, and rude to write it off as superstition. Myths serve a psychological purpose that is undeniable. The history of alchemy reveals, not only a pre-enlightenment approach to chemistry, but a systematic psychology rooted in self-determination and cognitive development. Their belief stemmed from the axiom, "As above, so below," which indicated that the behavior of base elements reflected the behavior of the human animal and the study of both would reveal the evolving nature of the soul. Thus, base dross elements such as evil and temptation could be removed through finding the symbolic correlation behind one's acts and chemical processes.

Much psychological theory reflects these original alchemical ideas. One need only look at Erickson's tension of opposites or Maslow's pyramid or Jung's collective archetypes to see ideas that were discussed and written about as early as the Egyptian Book of the Dead.

In conclusion, I want to defend faith, not only because I am a man of faith, but because faith is essential to human nature. Faith can be the cause of tremendous suffering. Hitler's faith in eugenics and antisemitic conspiracy theory fueled his violent monomania. The faith in the forgiveness of sin led to mass participation in the Holy Crusades. And, in my opinion, the faith in reason uber alles has led to unreasonable acts using spare and awful logical constructs. Bybee's torture memos are a case in point. The cold rationale of organ failure/death being the criterion for torture allowed a reasonable front for human rights abuses. The idea that "if it makes sense on paper, then it can be defended" has led to such acts as cost/benefit analytics which allow health insurers to deny converage because the cost of insuring is greater than the benefit of a potentially saved life. Plus, we are given the added and fun benefit of empathy being derided as a criterion for the dispensation of justice.

I am not saying that any of these things are remotely reasonable. They are irrational and dangerous acts using reason as a fig leaf. What others smarter than I have called the banality of evil. But... BUT... were we as a nation not so wedded to the belief in the divine power of reason, we would not be so easily suckered into clouding our judgment. We would instead (I hope), view reason and critical thinking as faculties to be developed along with other faculties like maturity into an individual (alchemically, perhaps)... we wouldn't belief off the cuff that we are inherently rational because we are part of a rational nation. And the religion of nationalism is a discussion for another day.

Thank you for reading this, and I hope to have a polite and enjoyable discussion!