So maybe he was right all along.

It was a natural progression of events. Call it the sequel to the Economic Law of Motion of Modern Society. Over the past decades, wealth has become more and more entrenched. Capital has been consolidated and material money, securities, land and assets have been limited to an elite few. Call it the One Percent or call it the Ten Percent, the numbers don't lie.

It was a necessary end. It followed naturally. Once those with wealth were able to disassemble and dismantle the governmental and societal safeguards that kept the whole system in place, it was bound to do this. Over the past few decades, the ultra wealthy have succeeded in limiting the income of its labor class, so that the income of its labor class has stagnated. When stimulus checks were recently issued, it became obvious that the system was not sustainable. The money from the stimulus checks was more than the labor class members were making at work. That is, work, if they could find it. The fact of the matter is that the labor class in this country has been living on borrowed time and borrowed money now for decades, at the very least since the last economic crisis in 2008. Boy, I sure am glad we learned our lesson then.

So Labor and Capital are continuing to precipitate out as two poles in society. There is the class of those who were born to work; who have to work to live; and who have no time in their life where they can look to when they will not be looking. This is especially the case as the U.S. has been forced to compete with labor overseas. Overseas labor has been living on a lower standard of living, and based on the Iron Law of Wages, lower pay.

These are dumb Capitalists. Their greed has overcome their ability to see the big picture. The system has always been set up where all they had to do was sit back, live off of the nation's wealth and labor, and not fuck it up. But these are dumb Capitalists. They began undermining their labor class. They took away what it needed to be self-sustaining. They became greedy and sucked out just enough so that it could no longer just work to survive. You would think that no one could be that stupid, but you'd be wrong.

Archie Bunker would have been glad to keep slaving away. He would have sat on the lazy boy and watched television and bread and circuses his whole life. Then died and been forgotten. It was a great system (for them), but these are dumb Capitalists.

The system had worked for so long, you may ask, so what went wrong? Why couldn't they be smart Capitalists and continue the system in perpetuity? It's a great question. And the answer seems to be that the Capitalists may suffer from a certain type of inbreeding. Instead of a meritocracy, where the smartest and brightest rise through the ranks to earn and then manage capital, this group had its own progeny handle the task. They didn't earn it. And they don't know how to manage it. They never had to learn the value of things, and so they don't now.

And that is why they are ruining the one system that was given them and that was all that they would ever possibly need or want, and then some.

His Distaste for the Union

Well, Trump did what he needed to do last night.

I wasn't as overwhelmed as Van Jones, but his take on it is very valuable.  Trump needed to satisfy the Republicans that his poll numbers wouldn't sink any lower.  If they kept falling, then Ryan and McConnell would have had to allow the Russian espionage investigations to proceed.  Now, I think they're dead.  Maybe -- and this just occurred to me -- they told him to go out and put on a good show or they were going to allow the investigations to proceed, so they have, in effect, something to hold over his head (as the Intelligence Committee and FBI continue to investigate in secret).  But the larger problem is that pie piece of the electorate that he cannot seem to lose.

And something has changed.  The racism, Anti-Semitism and hate countenanced (if not implicitly) supported by Trump would have done him in.  The new chapter in America he talked about last night is this:  for a large swath, it is okay for the President of the U.S. to get supportive tweets from David Duke after the State of the Union speech.  And there are also the millions who have been swindled by Trump into thinking that he was going to make their wages rise, despite the inevitable calculus of globalization.  Alas, they slumber on.  Because some must sleep.

And some must watch.  In 1984, it wasn't Big Brother that was Winston Smith and the intelligentsia's greatest enemy.  It was the proles.  He even talks about this.  Nothing he could do would persuade them to get away from believing what was on the telescreens.  And how you get through to our modern day proles is something that everyone on the Left is struggling with.

The real time polling shows that the divide is still there.  And Trump still scored very low with independents.  I think that the main problem will be with attrition and fatigue.  But if the media and others continue to campaign for truth against Trump, hopefully, the support he receives will begin to erode again.  But make no mistake about it, last night he had at least a temporary victory, especially with the Republicans in showing that he still has the proles supporting him.

 Right now, the House is so hopelessly gerrymandered, that the Republicans will have a permanent majority.  The districting is done at the State level, and the Republicans and Rove have spent a decade and a half rigging it.  I think Obama, of all people, and others with his team are working on how to reverse that.  But it is a decades-long process.

The most important issue right now is the Constitutional challenge to gerrymandering.  (As an aside, notice that Sessions withdrew the DoJ's opposition to Texas' racist voter suppresion law now being litigated).  There is a case soon to be before the Supreme Court that would make it unconstitutional to hopelessly gerrymander districts so that the votes are distorted and no longer representative. But as a matter of jursprudence, some say the case is a long shot.  With a 5-4 Republican majority and Goresuch installed, it is a hopeless long shot.

Don't Call it a Comeback

We have been here before.  Nationalist movements in Europe have coalesced around Le Pen, Wilders, and others.  They seek a return to a past where the populations which one ruled them are again in power.  They seek to cast out those that have immigrated in the past half-century.  And that time frame is no accident.  It has spread across the Atlantic to America.  And its greatest benefactor and sponsor is Vladimir Putin.

Putin, and his ideological allies in Europe, operating under the pseudonym as "populist" movements, represent a throwback.  Theirs is a desire not just to oppose globalism, but to attack and undermine the underpinnings of globalism.  Their biggest benefactor and underworld patron is Vladimir Putin.

The attack on globalism is obscuring a more fundamental attack on this world view.  It is the world view and world order launched after World War II by President Harry S. Truman and ensconced in the United Nations and NATO.  That these two institutions are now under direct attack is no accident.

The formation of the UN and NATO was a reaction to two massively destructive world wars.  It was conceived and crafted, led by the United States, weary of being drawn into two European wars.  It allowed the U.S. a say in European relations before having to send its young men and women to die first.

However, it was much more than that.  It sought to spread the notions of the Enlightenment, human rights, universal recognition of suffrage, and international comity, to the rest of the world.  It provided in New York a venue to have representatives meet and address not just issues of war and peace, but of international disputes, and a world court.  It brought all of the nations of the world to the same table, and gave each a say in the course of world events.

The globalist/universalist attack seeks to undo all of that.  The anti-globalists/universalists seek to return to the era before the World Wars, when the most powerful nations were ruled largely by autocrats and worked among one another to divide up the economic spoils of the rest, the lesser, less powerful nations.  It is a movement away from ideological divisions of the world, for example, along the lines of the Cold War ideologies, and a movement towards the reign of powerful, autocratic states having near-free reign to do as they please.

This also means the undoing of human rights, universal recognition of suffrage, and international comity,  Concomitantly, it also means the lurch back to power by the racial stereotypes populating those of the original big powers.  Think the World War I powers of Russia, Great Britain, France, Austria, and Turkey.  It is an attempt to reverse the immigration of others over the last half-century and return power to the populations then in large majorities.

The creation of that now-80 year world order was no coincidence. It was a world order conceived and created in response to two massively destructive world wars. And it held the peace through the nuclear age. Now, however, it is under attack in Europe and, more recently, the U.S. It is clear that undoing that world order opens up the Pandora's box that it had kept tightly lidded. It runs the risk of creating chaos and wars of economic gain unchecked by the UN and the World Court.


It is a throwback to a much more divisive and dangerous time for the people of the world. The reign of autocrats has returned. The adage, "if you set out to kill the king, you better kill the king" has newfound meaning. And don't call it a comeback.

Reconstruction

Media elites and establishment blowhards are all out of panic buttons. Table-punding is all that remains. Never in the history of American politics, and perhaps world politics, have so many experts been so wrong for so long about a candidate. Yes, I'm speaking about Donald Trump. The racist, the buffoon, that horrible xenophobe, and whatever else the so-called experts have dubbed him. Initially, journalists and opponents scoffed at the idea of his candidacy. But after several stout interviews and controversial remarks that unexpectedly benefited Trump, the hit men were called in. From MSNBC, CNN, and even Fox. They brought in the likes of George Will, Charles Krauthammer, and Chris Matthews. When that failed to stem the tide, it was time for the elites to get serious. Bill Clinton took an ill-advised shot at The Donald. One simple twitter response from Trump was all it took. Like an overhead right from Iron Mike, we never heard from Bill again. As Scarborough so succinctly put it, "The Clintons laid down like lambs." That Trump managed to instantaneously quiet the man behind one the great political machines of modern times is remarkable enough. What is more remarkable is his threat sprung into action all the journalistic minions who've been on the Clinton gravy train since Glass Steagall was nicely tucked away in the China cabinet of Wall Street's despicable history. The media proved just as ineffectual as Bubba, and instead revealed all the journalists who, in reality, were merely guns for hire.

But Trump's pulverization of royalty was far from over. Far, far, from over. Sensing the desperation of the moment, elites decided the GOP, not Democrat luminaries, needed to reign Trump in. And going one step further, the anointed assassin was none other than the Bush Family. This made sense. After all, if Jeb really wanted the nomination, it was his $150 million mess to clean up. So in trotted the political equivalent of the 1927 Yankees. Murderers Row. Mama Bush. Papa Bush. And Brother Bush. Like the Canons of Fort Sumpter that heralded the start of the Civil War, the Bushes arrived to a clamorous Carolina contingent with hopes of silencing the North once again. But, alas, that failed too. Dubya was a couple of years late, and somehow a 90 year old woman in a walker just didn't have the oomph some had envisioned. And with that, Jeb went capooot!, and with a whimper, the Bush Dynasty was gone. All at the hands of political novice. And all within but a few days.

But Trump wasn't done. For ecclesiastical royalty would soon surround the House of Trump. Yet, the Pope of Rome had to issue a retraction just one day later, a retreat unlike any Rome has known since the Fall of Acre. Not to be outdone, South Carolina decided they too desired their very own form of royal martyrdom, in the name of Governess Nikki Haley. Her ringing endorsement of Ro-bio was earth-shattering news, at least for 4 seconds until the next Fox News Alert came streaming across the screen. Ultimately, that too failed, and again, within days.

What Donald Trump survived in South Carolina, over the course of just a few days, is nothing short of mind-boggling. He destroyed the Bush Dynasty on their own turf. Overcame a wildly popular South Carolina Governor. And turned the Pope from Lion to Lamb. And then, he blew out the field in convincing fashion. There are no parallels in political history for what happened down South. To partially borrow a phrase from famed sportscaster Brent Musberger, "You are looking live, at political history being made".

A Republic -- If You Can Keep It . . .

"Why, let the stricken deer go weep,

The hart ungalled play;

For some must watch, while some must sleep:

So runs the world away."

-Hamlet

So that this nation shall not perish from the Earth -- what is required today?

It is the same as it always has been, although now the stakes are ever higher.  The weapons can destroy worlds.  The emperor can scry your very innermost thoughts.  This nation determines the fate of all others.  Indeed, the stakes are ever more higher.

An awake citizenry.  It sounds so simple, yet it is the hardest task any philosopher has ever faced.  How to make a perfect society, the recipe is simple, perfect citizens.  Plato's Republic sought to do it with justice.  As the just man had the just city within his soul, so the Republic leaned ever towards perfection.

But, alas, it is not so easy.  Easily manipulated are hoi polloi.  And those most manipulated become most confrontational, most violent, most assured in their own folly.  Those who work evil against the just state use them easily.

And so forever the just man is in an unjust society.  So Machiavelli thought the only way was for one just man to become okay with being unjust in certain circumstances, so that there could be some justice somewhere.

But today something much, much more is needed:

1.  Critical Thinking Citizenry.  It is most critical that there be citizens able to think critically about those that seek to dominate them.  And this is far more subtle than you may think.  The millionaire pundits on AM radio and the whores on Fox News may mouth the words, but they are actually subverting true critical thinking.  They do this by an appeal to raw emotions like fear.  Pure fear, unabashed fear, primal fear.  The thought that if you don't do something, you and your family are in danger.  This is the talk about "security" and the now well-known appeal to "Terrorism," "security," and blatant xenophobia.  So not only must you think critically, but you must especially beware of those who want to appear as if they are thinking and acting critically, when in fact they are agents of the status quo and the current power structure.

2.  Liberal Arts Studies.  The best and most effective critical thinking has, at its basis, the liberal arts education.  By looking into different ways of thinking itself, and looking at historical and philosophical epistemologies, one can avoid being trapped by sophistry.  Recently, Conservatives such as the former governor, now under indictment, Rick Perry, who was a C-student and a member of a paramilitary organization, sought to undo the liberal arts education and higher learning by rooting it out in favor of results-based and monied interests wherein students would be educated simply to fill cogs in Big Corporate's machine.  These are not people who question power structures or modes of thought.  These are those people who have been lobotomized for easier manufactured consent.

3.  Power Structures and Money.  The greatest attack on democracy in the world today is not a small militia in the Middle East.  It is not the influx of immigrants from south of the border.  It is not a hare-brained conspiracy theory about the government taking individual liberties or the right to free exercise of religion.  The greatest attack on democracy is its transformation to a plutocracy.  When the U.S. Supreme Court overturned decades of jurisprudence and election campaign finance law, it ushered in the change from one person = one vote to one dollar = one vote.  Or, perhaps, many dollars = many votes.  This has allowed the last round of elections to be corrupted by massive expenditures in mass media (and even social media) to inveigh against candidates and measures that most benefit the common good -- the most people receiving the most benefit.

4.  Race and Religion.  These are the major pivot points that the overly empowered use to subjugate and divide the many.  It is critical to always notice how these fault lines fall across the political and societal landscape.  It is often a subtle and default means of creating a herd mentality.  It sometimes necessarily runs  counter and counteracts critical thinking, number one, above. 

These are four of the most critical means of preserving the Republic.

The Right's Cognitive Dissonance

The Right's Cognitive Dissonance:

1.  Talking about religious freedom but concomitantly establishing religious intolerance.  They want to blur the line between religion and State and continually attack the Founders who insisted on the First Amendment's separation of Church and State.  You cannot have religious freedom without a secular state. 

Otherwise, every religion competes for hegemony, attempting to establish a monopoly wherein it is institutionalized by the government and by the state.  All Western monotheistic religions contain this mission. 

The "Great Commission" of Christianity requires that the literal constructionists and Christian fundamentalists establish a "Christian nation" and to convert other peoples and nations of the world to their own faith, sometimes using violence, as history shows.  The same is true of Islam.


2.  Talking about free markets but concomitantly establishing ingrained and vested monopolies by extreme wealth.  They support massive corporate domination of government and necessary regulations, and allow the 1% of extreme wealth to take over government services for their own profit and aggrandizement, even when it is not feasible in cases such as the environment, and even when it is less efficient than that provided by the government.

3.  Talking about protecting liberty but concomitantly actively and illegally "detaining" over 200 individuals in Cuba in cages for over a decade, in some cases, without even a hearing, the barest notion of due process, all in the name of "security."

4.  Talking about government taking away liberties and concomitantly causing the extraordinary dispossession  of liberty by a small, massively capitalized elite.

 Behold, this is the Right's cognitive dissonance.

Quantum of Solace

British physicist Stephen Hawking once made a bet with another physicist that we would never discover the Higgs Boson, also known as the "God particle," because it was the one missing link in the Standard Model that would make everything else make sense.  It was assigned the task of giving all things mass.  So it was something of an all-or-nothing proposition:  Find the Higgs Boson and everything falls into place, or don't find it, and everything is still lacking in any singular sense of order.

Then Hawking theorized something else, and it was reported just yesterday.  He believes that the Higgs Boson and the field it occupies is set at, or contains, a set amount of energy.  This very specific setting has it perched between two opposing contingencies.  If it acquires more energy, then everything spins out of control.  If it loses energy, then everything spins out of control.  It may also somehow "tunnel" from one trough in the energy graph to a lower trough, thereby neither gaining or losing energy in the conventional sense, but everything spins out of control nevertheless.

This spinning out of control creates a super vacuum that begins expanding at the speed of light until it consumes the universe.  For you and me, sitting in our homes on a little insignificant rock, third one from an insignificant star, out on a spiral arm in an insignificant galaxy, which is also out on the fringe of an insignificant supercluster of galaxies, we would never see it coming.

We would be literally annihilated in a instant.  The expanding vacuum would have hit us at the speed of light, so there would be no warning.  In fact, no warning would be possible.  To make Hawking's theory even more tantalizing, this vacuum disturbance may have already occurred somewhere and is expanding -- it just hasn't hit us yet.

And what is striking about this entire expanding theory is not just its subject matter.  What is striking is the ability of theory to expand outside of known contingencies to explain (or create) another possibility.  There are possibilities that are not yet known, but that must be theorized and (if possible) tried.  Theory builds upon theory, and other realms of possibility can come into being to explain something that was limited before.  These are possibilities that are not yet immediately readily apparent.

Could the same be true for problems we face today as a people?  Could the same be true for problems we face today as a civilization?  Could the same be true for problems we face today as economists, politicians, social scientists?

In the 1970's and 80's, we saw the massive destruction of the Earth's ozone layer.  When scientists investigated the cause of the problem, it was discovered to be chlorofluorocarbons (CFC's).  These chemicals were used as a coolant in various applications by consumers and industry.  When they escaped into the environment, they destroyed the delicate layer of O3 that loomed in the upper reaches of the atmosphere and that reflected dangerous ultraviolet spectrum rays from the Sun.

So government regulators sprang into action.  This was a time before the Republican party was hellbent on killing anything that prevented the wholesale and free use of the environment as an externality by their donors, Big Energy and Big Mining.  They were able to pass actual bans on CFC's -- something that the Republican party as agent of Big Energy and Big Mining would never, ever allow -- and get other nations to join.  Many thought that, even though the bans were accomplished, there was still too much damage already done to the ozone layer.  At most, its destruction could be slowed, but never stopped.

A report that came out eviscerated those concerns.  The ozone layer, almost as a living, breathing, organic thing, has not just ceased being depleted.  It is slowly -- every slowly -- beginning to recover itself.  This shocked environmentalists and politicians alike.  And it shows, most importantly, that there is another realm of possibility outside that in which we currently operate.  Things may actually work.  There are some actions we can take, and they may be successful.  All is not necessarily lost.

These days, this, at least, can give us some quantum of solace.