And We Have All These Questions to Make Us Go Roam..

And we’ve got all this distance to make us come home.
As the sun burns, a child learns, the tide churns, the world turns.


When I was in Chicago the week before last I was taught a new singer and a great new song by my two and half year old niece, Shunie: Antje Duvekot, Merry-Go-Round.

When we would be riding about the city in the Honda mini-van Shatay and Matt would always have groovy folk inflected kids music playing. No Wiggles like crap amongst us, thank God. That stuff is simply obnoxious. I firmly believe that music should be shared across generations. All this "generation gap" crap is mostly nonsense now anyhow, especially now that the great technological revolutions (in film, video and recorded sound) are essentially complete. We all own Elvis these days, and the interim is all in color. The past 40 years is more intimate to us now than the 50's where to me when I was ten (that's in 1981, 20 something years before). When you've lived through everything from Black Sabbath, the Clash to Nirvana, the power of music to shock and divide is pretty much null, anyway.

That's just to say that I have the same stance toward the Wiggles as I do Lady Gaga: they both suck because their aural and visual (and hence spiritual) aesthetics are ugly.

Anyhow, I was really pleased to hear the music that Matt and Shatay have been playing for the girls. A lot of old folk songs and children's classics, but done in a groovy modern folk style that really impressed me.


Shunie's a precocious 2 year old in that she's talking in full, complex sentences. One of the most loquacious two-year olds of my limited acquaintance. She also really likes music. She's like a little general, too, in that she's not afraid to tell you when she likes, dislikes, or wants something. When a song she likes ends, you'll immediately hear her pipe up from the back seat "Again!" And Shatay, Matt or I (if I was the only one there) would be expected to hit the repeat button, and play that particular song again.


This song is one of her particular favorites. I'd never heard it before, and when I heard it immediately fell in love with it. It has apparently been used as the soundtrack to a Bank of America commercial. The singer and composer, Antje Duvekot, needs cash on the barrel head just like the rest of us, and isn't above selling her poetry to scummy usurers, or performing on cruise ships to the delectation of the besotted petit bourgeois, as the video clip I'm posting here proves.

It's a great song, in any case, even if one or two of the lines are false. The truth is never worthless. No one should ever lie. Notice how she loses her breath at that very line in the performance here? Just so. That line's crap.

Those few quibbles aside, I have say that this song is great, and that like my very discerning niece Shunie, I can't get enough of it. I keep hitting play, over and over again.

Hope you like it, too:

Lyrics:

Someone is tossing petals in a stream,
Somewhere someone is standing at the foothills of their dreams.
Someone got a paintbrush, is painting over doubts,
Someone opened up his eyes and saw the sun coming out.
Someone was captive and found the courage to get off,
Throw a boulder in the well, somewhere the rain has stopped.
Someone is finding the place where they belong..

Well, everyday is summer somewhere in the world,
And the summer boys are headed for the falls to kiss the girls.
With their impatient hands groping honey breasts and curls,
They are filled with desire.
And high in the hills there's a baby being born,
As forgiveness and peace wash over bruises and sores,
People bridging the distance over nettles and thorns.

Everyone aboard on the merry-go-round,
Some things will rise up so that others come down.
If the devil don't dance, heaven won't shine.
It's a mighty thick haze and it's a pretty thin line.
If the facuet is tightened up the love won't flow,
If the love isn't bright enough the corn won't grow.
If the night isn't dark enough the moon won't glow..

A rich man counting money, a tired man counting sheep,
While the safe man counts his blessings, the hungry man has beans.
There's a million people praying, raising up their eyes,
To what turns out to be the same god, the same sky.
We are slightly scared of death, a little bit afraid,
So we celebrate everything we can think to celebrate.
We shall sing out loud to keep the hounds away..

Everyone aboard on the merry-go-round,
Some things will rise up so that others come down.
If the devil don't dance, heaven won't shine.
It's a mighty thick haze and it's a pretty thin line.
If the facuet is tightened up the love won't flow,
If the love isn't bright enough the corn won't grow.
If the night isn't dark enough the moon won't glow..

Prisons will crumble and governments will fall,
It's the order of freedom to be preceded by walls.
'Cause the truth would be worthless if no one ever lied,
So we carry our shame in the interest of pride.
And we have all these questions to make us go roam,
And we’ve got all this distance to make us come home.
As the sun burns, a child learns, the tide churns, the world turns..

Everyone aboard on the merry-go-round,
Some things will rise up so that others come down.
If the devil don't dance, heaven won't shine.
It's a mighty thick haze and it's a pretty thin line.
If the facuet is tightened up the love won't flow,
If the love isn't bright enough the corn won't grow.
If the night isn't dark enough the moon won't glow..


[As a note and aside,  Antje kinda looks like Shatay.  Similar personal vibe, too, like in this clip especially: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eji97jgOgFw  ]



---

This Past Month & a Half: Florida, Cleveland, Chicago, San Luis Potosi..

A few people have asked after my blog.  I've gone tramping again, as is my wont, and had promised I would write about it all for those who might care to keep tabs on my peregrinations.

First,  I did in fact finish my grand tour of Florida that I was blogging earlier here.  Because I am a veteran, the State of Florida issued me a free entrance pass to all state parks.  I decided that I wanted to see the state, and used the parks as waypoints along that way.  My parents visited all 120 parks in three years, and I decided that I would do the same feat in two months.  I actually made it to 119 parks in seven weeks.  I saved the last, Silver River SP in Ocala for last, because it is 45 minutes from Lady Lake, my home base.   I thought I would jump up the last week, and do a quick drive by.  But I never did..  Until week nine.    Two months and one week after I began, I finally garnered my last stamp in my nifty Florida State Park Passport, which I can now send of to Tallahassee to get a free Florida State Parks license plate for the front of my car.

Which I am selling.  Emma and I have had some good times together, but I've decided that I want to simplify my life, and that she has to go.  Anyone interested in buying a 2010 VW Jetta TDI Sportwagen can email me.

Anyhow, I was going to write a post on how much I've learnt about, and grown to like Florida (it's really a very interesting place)  but I never got the inspiration.  

I've felt rather listless, depressed this last month.  

Even before Geoff killed himself.  

An old Army friend of mine, who used to comment frequently on my old Swiss blog, committed suicide two weeks ago by overdosing on sleeping pills.  There's a story behind that act, one that belongs to him, and that I won't tell here.  Nothing lurid, just pain and a faithless woman.  

I was shocked and devastated by that news, and decided that I was going to alter my previous plan of heading to Chicago last week to visit my brother, so I could attend the wake and funeral of my friend and be with his family in Cleveland.  

Geoff's was an Irish wake.  Stories, jokes, a few beers, barbecue and a gluttonous repast of sushi.   I hadn't been able to eat for two days before I got there, I was so upset.  Being with them was catharsis.

This is a picture of Geoff's dad feeding beer to their dog.  

In true Brachvogel style.   Geoff always made me laugh.  


I then went to Chicago to spend the week with my brother's family.  These are my nieces, Shunie and Skaya:

I then left for Mexico.   I took the train to San Antonio, and then threw a metaphorical dart at the map of Mexico.   I needed out, no matter where.

That's how I serendipitously ended up here:

 

San Luis Potosi.  The very heart of Mexico.  Over one mile high in the Sierra Madres.   Settled by Franciscan missionaries in 1593, it has a storied history.

Lots of baroque churches and verdant plazas.  A very pretty place.  

I've been here a week, just being a gringo in Mexico.  My heart is becoming calm.  I like it here. 

That last image is what you see when you lean out the window of my (very cheap and quite fine) hotel

room.   La Plaza de Armas and the city's cathedral.   There is singing in the streets every afternoon and night, and the food is great.  

I accidentally left my camera's battery re-charger in my hotel back in San Antonio.  I have to buy a new one, and nobody sells Nikon accessories here.  This means I probably need to go to Guadalajara to replace it..

Pictures will likely be scarce until I resolve that issue..

There.  There's a lame post for you all.   I'll try to get back into the swing of this thing.  No promises, though.

--- 

Say I Can Say Words Only Simple, Say I Can Say Words Only Clear..

lyrics:

Sunlight fall down on the fields.

Sunlight fall down over me.

Work all day, be all that I can be..  yeah-heh.

Say I can say words only simple,
Say I can say words only clear.

But, oh, I can feel your heart is beating near..  yeah-heh.

Haunted love is all that I feel, when you're passing by,
Haunted love is all that I see, it's there in your eyes..

And I say..

No, no, no, don't pass me over, 

No, no, no, don't pass me by..

See I can see good things for you and I,

Yeah, good things for you..

Give I can give love and attention,
Give I can give all time away.

Only to one heart I can give today.

Be I can be man full of color,
Be I can be man black or white.

But only to one heart I can be tonight.

Haunted love is all that I feel, when you're passing by,
Haunted love is all that I see, it's there in your eyes.

And I say..

No, no, no, don't pass me over, 

No, no, no, don't pass me by..

See I can see good things for you and I,

Yeah, good things for you..

Haunted love is all that I see, it's there in your eyes.

And we see..

No, no, no, don't pass me over, 

No, no, no, don't pass me by..

See I can see good things for you and I,

Yeah, good things for you..

---

Glossarium: Thoughts On the Humility of Truth

As I'm driving about and finishing my grand tour of the peninsula, I've been thinking about this here blog, and all the things I've created it to say.   I've said virtually none of it yet, because of the overweening aspect of it all.    


Throw my thoughts upon the void impassive..  Strew my pearls..  


It needs to be said well, if at all.   


So far I've been coy.  I've been amusing myself that way, but also unsure of how - or even whether - to begin being explicit.   I want to start gently, and give my testimony in a way that the dozen or so people that  I want to hear it (and if they are so moved, respond somehow to it) to hear it well.  


Today, I realized that I feel ready to start saying it.   No time like the present, no moment like now.  So I will say what I've been holding to my heart all these years..  The secret work of my heart all this time, that has made my live the seared blessing that it has become.


First, I need to explain a few terms.  If you notice, I've been tagging my posts here.   I want to explain what I mean by a few of them, so that if you care to follow this blog and really understand what I am trying to say, you will. 


This afternoon I was listening to NPR and Neil Conan was interviewing this fellow about "apocalyptic" movies.   They were joking that the segment had nothing to do with the previous ones in which we learnt that London is burning, world markets collapsing, tanks are rolling the streets of Damascus, and the recession deepening.   They rattled on for a while, and talked about a bunch of movies in which the human race is almost or entirely annihilated by one thing or another, usually some combination of our own hubris and stupidity or alien invasion or natural holocaust.    


As listened I realized that they weren't going to talk about the origins of the term, about what the word "apocalypse" means.   Let me do it for you here.   This the etymology my dictionary gives the word:


ORIGIN Old English, via Old French andecclesiastical Latin from Greek apokalupsis, from apokaluptein ‘uncover, reveal,’ from apo- ‘un-’+ kaluptein ‘to cover.’


This word entered our lexicon by way of the Bible, of course.  It is used as a title of the last book of the New Testament, which is (if you did not know) written in Greek.   That book is the account of a prophetic dream attributed to the Apostle (Greek for "messenger") John, the only one of the 14 apostles (I include Judas, Matthais and Paul) to die a natural death.   Judas killed himself, and all the others were all martyred (Greek "to witness") for their faith in Christ.  


John, not incidentally, is the only one of the twelve who did not run away from the Crucifixion, and remained at the foot of the Cross.  


Wikipedia says that the name John derives via Latin Iōhannēs and Greek Ἰωάννης from the Hebrew name יוחנן (Yôḥanan, also transliterated Yochanan), a short form of the long name יְהוֹחָנָן Yehochanan, meaning "Yaweh is merciful".  


Now, why am I telling you all this?   If you notice, I've tagged a lot of the posts here with that word, apocalypse.   And when I do it, I am usually not (usually most often emphatically not) referring you to the end of the world, or to tribulations like those that Neil Conan and his guest were calling "apocalyptic" in those films.   Like I say, not normally..  


Instead, what I mean is that I think that whatever I am writing about is revelation of the hidden truth, the true nature of things, of veiled unappreciated goodness, veiled (often widely accepted) evil.  The way we, and things, truly are.  The beauty deep down things, or else the tricks that wicked bastards are doing in the shadows..  Things that people aren't noticing or being honest about, the subtle things that admit transcendence, the wickedness that we do to benefit ourselves and that harms others.


You know, all that which is "occult"  (from Latin occultare ‘secrete,’ frequentative of occulere‘conceal,’ based on celare ‘to hide’; the adjective and noun from occult- ‘covered over,’ from the verb occulere ).


Those things "seen through the glass darkly.."


These things are not usually "occult" in the sensational sense.  But evil things are always in the end diabolical, and the most evil people ultimately become satanic, in that they consciously revolt against the good and begin to worship their own wills which are evil.  And that is inevitably demonic and then spiritually uncouth in all the ways that people normally think "occult."


When I use "occult" as a tag on this here blog, I mean that I'm usually talking about something malevolent or diseased that is disguised, subtle or hidden.   Or, something beautiful that is gentle and unappreciated.


Which brings me to the issue of knowledge.  Gnosis, science, wisdom.   Love.   


Knowledge of good and evil.


Which is of course tantamount with knowing the truth.  The truth that shall set us free.


My ultimate message here, the thing that I want finally  to tell you, is that that truth exists.


Because what is is true, and that is inescapable.


We can either accept truth, witness and worship it, or else reject it and lie.  We either see that we serve the truth, and are subject to it, or else seek to escape it and deny it.


If we acknowledge our dependence upon the truth, our need for it.. If we see that we cannot control the truth or destroy it..


And that the truth will necessarily humiliate us, make us see ourselves and others as we really are..


That the truth is not in the end of the intellect, but rather of the heart..


That the truth, like everything good and real, is personal..  is indeed, a person.


This is my faith.  My testimony.   My heart knows it is so.




---

Pictures of the Day: Valdosta, Georgia

---

Ours is Not to Reason Why. Ours is But to Do and Die.

Studs Terkel: We're seated here, two old gaffers.  Me and Paul Tibbets, 89 years old, brigadier-general retired, in his hometown of Columbus, Ohio, where he has lived for many years.

Paul Tibbets: Hey, you've got to correct that. I'm only 87. You said 89.

ST: I know. See, I'm 90. So I got you beat by three years. Now we've had a nice lunch, you and I and your companion. I noticed as we sat in that restaurant, people passed by. They didn't know who you were. But once upon a time, you flew a plane called the Enola Gay over the city of Hiroshima, in Japan, on a Sunday morning - August 6 1945 - and a bomb fell. It was the atomic bomb, the first ever. And that particular moment changed the whole world around. You were the pilot of that plane.

PT: Yes, I was the pilot.

ST: And the Enola Gay was named after...

PT: My mother. She was Enola Gay Haggard before she married my dad, and my dad never supported me with the flying - he hated airplanes and motorcycles. When I told them I was going to leave college and go fly planes in the army air corps, my dad said, "Well, I've sent you through school, bought you automobiles, given you money to run around with the girls, but from here on, you're on your own. If you want to go kill yourself, go ahead, I don't give a damn." Then Mom just quietly said, "Paul, if you want to go fly airplanes, you're going to be all right." And that was that.

[ellipsis]

ST: One big question. Since September 11, what are your thoughts? People talk about nukes, the hydrogen bomb.

PT: Let's put it this way. I don't know any more about these terrorists than you do, I know nothing. When they bombed the Trade Center I couldn't believe what was going on. We've fought many enemies at different times. But we knew who they were and where they were. These people, we don't know who they are or where they are. That's the point that bothers me. Because they're gonna strike again, I'll put money on it. And it's going to be damned dramatic. But they're gonna do it in their own sweet time. We've got to get into a position where we can kill the bastards. None of this business of taking them to court, the hell with that. I wouldn't waste five seconds on them.

ST: What about the bomb? Einstein said the world has changed since the atom was split.

PT: That's right. It has changed.

ST: And Oppenheimer knew that.

PT: Oppenheimer is dead. He did something for the world and people don't understand. And it is a free world.

ST: One last thing, when you hear people say, "Let's nuke 'em," "Let's nuke these people," what do you think?

PT: Oh, I wouldn't hesitate if I had the choice. I'd wipe 'em out. You're gonna kill innocent people at the same time, but we've never fought a damn war anywhere in the world where they didn't kill innocent people. If the newspapers would just cut out the shit: "You've killed so many civilians." That's their tough luck for being there.

ST: By the way, I forgot to say Enola Gay was originally called number 82. How did your mother feel about having her name on it?

PT: Well, I can only tell you what my dad said. My mother never changed her expression very much about anything, whether it was serious or light, but when she'd get tickled, her stomach would jiggle. My dad said to me that when the telephone in Miami rang, my mother was quiet first. Then, when it was announced on the radio, he said: "You should have seen the old gal's belly jiggle on that one."

[source]

+++

Pictures of the Past Week: The Florida Panhandle

I took this with my crappy camera.  The Florida Caverns.

Happy Cows are from Florida..

Red Dirt Road.. Floridian Idyll.

Blackwater River:  Much, much more impressive in person than in this picture.. This river begs for an intertube or canoe.   I have a canvas chair that I planted in the middle of it (it's only about 6" deep in some of the middle parts) and read a couple chapters of Franscico de Osuna there.  Nothing like a little mystical recollection for a summer southern afternoon..

5 Turtles Sunning Themselves on a Log, Wukulla Spring

Alligator wallowing in reeds along Wukulla River

The Wukulla River

Crane, Image Taken From Boat on Wakulla River

And You're Welcome, Nikki. 

---

Enola Gay, Are You Proud of Your Little Boy Today?

This is from Daniel Larison at Caelum & Terra, posted today.  I quote it in full because I want to second everything he says there :

[ that post's address: http://caelumetterra.wordpress.com/2011/08/07/consequentialism-and-its-consequences/  ]

Every year around this time- the Feast of the Transfiguration and the commemoration of Hiroshima- I am again struck by the strange synchronicity of these things, and by the blasphemy that surrounded the atomic bomb.

They named the test site Trinity, and Oppenheimer famously quoted the Bhagavad Gita when he witnessed the first test bomb, “I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds”, managing double sacrilege, appropriating the Divine Name and divine power as well. And then they chose the Feast of the Transfiguration to destroy Hiroshima.

Did they do this knowingly? I don’t know, but the date could not be more appropriate: the first use of atomic weapons against humans became forever a sort of Satanic Transfiguration, with vast numbers of lives vaporized in the destructive blazing created light, a mockery of the life-giving uncreated Light that shone forth on the holy mountain.

I think, too, of the moral reasoning that went into the decision to bomb Hiroshima. It was nothing new; both sides had been waging war against civilians for a long while, all because they had adopted the principles of consequentialism, the idea that an act is measured by its effects for good or ill.

Such thinking comes natural to the natural man. To the spiritual man, though, this is an error that opens the door for every horror. One must begin with the objective order: there are some acts that are intrinsically evil, no matter what the circumstances. Christians can argue about the precise meaning of the commandment forbidding killing, but at the very least everyone should agree that if it means anything it means that it is always wrong to intentionally kill innocent human beings.

Of course, Americans, like everyone else, act like this is self-evident when they are the victims. After 9/11 Osama bin Ladin was called evil precisely because he violated this principle. However, when the situation is reversed, and it is Americans doing the killing, everything changes. We are justified because we had a good end in sight. Never mind that bin Ladin also considered his end- a godly world order- a good one. He even cited Hiroshima in justifying his own act. In the mind of bin Ladin, he and Harry Truman were morally equivalent. I agree, but note that bin Ladin killed a small fraction of those done in by Truman.

I am in Michigan this week, and by chance attended the Roman Mass at St Matthew’s in downtown Flint this morning. The priest, an elderly Augustinian friar, instead of commenting on the Gospel, offered some thoughts on the atomic bombings of Japan. He had been a missionary in Nagasaki a few years after the bomb was dropped there, in the most Catholic city in that nation.

He began by saying that he would not address the morality of the act, saying that it was “complex” and that there was a lot of disagreement about Truman’s decision. Instead he went on the tell heartbreaking stories of suffering among the Catholics he knew in Nagasaki.

True, he ended with a call for disarmament, but that a man who personally knew innocent Catholics who were victims of atomic weaponry could not say that this act- the deliberate killing of tens of thousands of civilians- was simply wrong made it clear in a new way to me just how deep the infection of consequentialism runs in American Catholics, who of all people should know better.

Amen.  Audrey Santo, pray for us. 

---

The Triumph of the Apes: All Bow Ye Before the Imminent Simian Singularity

The Rise of the Planet of the Apes, review.  B - , 3.5/5*  80% Tomato Meter. 

First, this is a good movie.

I've seen several big blockbusters this year, and haven't had the energy to give them the pannings they deserved here.   They - Fast Five, Thor, Captain America, so forth - have been mostly crap.  I've only bothered to review movies that really impressed me here.   I decided the other day that I'm going to try to review everything I see from now on, keeping the less interesting stuff to a paragraph long review..  I need material for the blog (I feel your ravenous need, my public.. )  and the writing exercise will be good for me..

Anyway, I liked Thor mildly, because there was enough of the Eddas there to make it interesting to me, but the rest - I say "rest" because there were more than those other two, but I can't remember them since they were all such innocuous crap that I've purged them - were just awful.  Captain America  I had hopes for, but it was just a blur of mindless and uninteresting violence.  There was never a second that the "good guys" seemed at all likely to be frustrated let alone defeated, and the "bad guys" were clownish, imitation Nazis that were totally uninteresting.

Captain America had certain salient thematic elements in common with Planet of the Apes though..  Very interesting ones, to my mind, these days..   I'll write about them soon.. I'll definitely get to drawing comparisons and all that in a later post.  

Here I need to praise this film a little more.  This movie was smart by Hollywood standards, and the computer effects were absolutely amazing.  I usually dislike CGI effects, but the quality of the apes' depiction was superb, I occasionally even briefly thought that I could actually be looking at film of real hyper intelligent apes.   The level of verisimilitude is becoming almost lifelike.  

"Virtual reality" is making great strides, folks.  The fantasy almost leaps off the screen into life..    

The actor who played Gollum in LOTR, Andy Serkis, also played the lead ape in this film, Ceasar, and this performance was just as good as that one, but even more impressive as the computer effects are even better.  

So, the story was above average for a blockbuster, it held my interest, and while there were few surprises in the story, but it was executed well, and did everything I came wanting it to do.  It had moments of tension where there was true suspense (albeit all while knowing what was going to happen ultimately) ..

About the theme, now:  

It's an old one in cinema.  Basically, it's a gnostic dystopia.  The main human character, played by 

is a scientist whose father has Alzheimers.  He is driven to find a cure.  He is working on a viral treatment that he expects to cure brain damage caused by dementia.  They test it on a dozen apes..

And discover that it works.  But better than expected, in that it increases intelligence. 

The only surprise here (I'm not going to tell you the rest of the plot, you can guess what happens) is that the only appealing human beings in the film are James Franco's character, his character's girlfriend, and his father (John Lithgow).   All the other humans are assholes.  

The apes - Ceasar, the main ape especially - seem at first to be all cruel.. But, as the plot unfolds, they are revealed to actually be quite noble, in that they only kill humans who are begging for it.  

The rest of the human race is taken out .. Do not read the next sentence - I've written it backwards - if you want to be "surprised" :

.suriv eht yB 

So, the stage is set for the triumph of the apes, and the arrival of Charleton Heston.  His character is actually in the film, too, but referred to only tangentially.  (There are a few media reports in the movie telling us that a Mars mission launches, but then disappears.. ) There are a whole slew of tribute lines and names to the earlier film series, of course.   They're going to treat us to a new franchise, which I can't say I mind, so long as they keep doing it this well.  

Now, the message here in philosophical terms is that nothing essentially separates apes and men but intelligence, that by attaining greater intelligence is essentially a technical problem itself "solved" by intelligence, and that the super intelligent product of that innovation benefits from the extermination of stupid humanity by means of a ..  (backwards agin, don't look if you don't want to learn..) 

suriv..

Yeah.  Prophecy of the Illuminati, or just the rehash of really stale plot line?

You decide.   One species of apes is done, long live the reign of the more evolved apes!  

Evolution is inexorable, and you who are stupid cannot escape.

But the singularity isn't happening this week, in the meantime you get to go to the moves.  Enjoy.

---

Thoughts on Luke 6:24

[concerning this blog's heading]


So, the big news is that Standard and Poor's has downgraded U.S. Federal debt from AAA to AA+ .

Two notes on this:  first these are the same cretins who gave a AAA rating to bundled subprime mortgage debt, at the behest of their Wall Street masters.   They served them then, and they serve them now.

Second, that lower debt rating means the government is now going to be expected to pay higher interest rates on the debt.  This is how these bastards work: they downgrade your credit worthiness, and then charge you higher interest.  The poor are thus inevitably screwed by high interest rates (because they have less money to repay loans, so banksters charge them more to cover all those poor people who fail to repay..)

Note, the lower credit rating will make those who hold the debt more money.


I guess I should try to explain my thinking about this in a bit broader fashion..


Ever since I've been to Mexico and Egypt I've been in reaction to the extreme poverty that I saw in those two places.   I lived and taught in Mexico for a year in the mid- 90's in the immediate aftermath of the Mexican debt crisis and U.S. engineered bailout that devastated that country in the early nineties.  They paid me 16k dollars, and gave me Mexican socialized health care benefits to work at one of the best (read wealthiest) prep school systems in the country.   They paid "North Americans" (U.S. and Canadian citizens, never mind that Mexico is in North America too, they still called us Norte Americanos to distinguish us from citizens of los Estados Unidos Mexicanos, which is the official name of Mexico) there twice what they paid their Mexican staff, which was an uncomfortable reality..

The people living in dirt floored shacks with livestock, the crowds of kids flocking intersections begging while giving cars unsolicited windshield wipings in the brief interval between lights..

 I didn't know how to process any of that - there were so many aspects of that experience that blew my mind's capacity to process sanely that the economic subtexts were left unanalyzed for a long while..

My year in Egypt five years ago brought these economic realities all to my mind's fore.  Poverty there is if anything more extreme, and the landscape - both geographic and spiritual is far starker and more barren.


That extremity scarred me.  I came home radicalized.


It suddenly became very clear to me that we in the United Sates (deliberate "misspelling" there) are at the center of a global network of wealth acquisition.   A very highly tuned one.

We (this "we" includes all American citizens, no matter how much money they have) are all the beneficiaries of this system due to the fact that our leadership - the men of money and power in places like New York, Los Angeles, Washington D.C., Chicago and Miami (and so forth) - are the architects of this system.   Further, our military is the "praetorian guard" (so to speak) of this class, who deploys American military force in such a way as to guarantee its integrity.


They will, and have, done anything necessary to maintain this flow of wealth toward themselves.


Now, I could say we will do anything necessary, because let's be perfectly clear here, anyone who supported either Iraq war, or the violent execution of the Cold War in places like Nicaragua or Vietnam (or any of the dozens of other places where that war became hot) is morally complicit in this system.


That's to say all of us, practically speaking, are guilty of advocating (which is tantamount to using) violence to maintain our bourgeois lifestyles.

To include myself.


Now, what we are witnessing - to put it clearly, in bald terms - in this global recession and all the "retrenchments" and "debt crises" - is the acceleration of the extent of debt servitude to the point that the masters of this system are now applying the same tactics of debt warfare that they have used against third world countries and their populations (so as to essentially enslave them with poverty, and then exploit their labor - and usually much more importantly - their natural resources ) to what until now we've called the First World.

Note that the "Second World" was the Communist Block.  Now that that threat and alternative to the Neo-Liberal Capitalist order has been removed, they are going for the jugular.   There is no socialist threat anymore to keep them in line.  It's been subverted.  They no longer have to share the wealth for fear that the masses will have them for lunch.

They are prescribing the same program for their First World populaces as they once did only for Third World satrapies.   The government will be reduced to the point that it exists to guarantee contracts, and protect the rights of the wealthy.  Courts, perhaps prisons.  Police, armies, maybe.  They can buy even those things, and privatize even the law.   And that's what they are doing, right in front of our bovine eyes.

Note I'm not bullshitting you or making this up.  I'm not babbling crazy.   They've come out and said it very clearly.  Google Milton Freedman, Grover Norquist, libertarian economics.  These people have said there should be no public sphere, or only a minimal one, meaning that everything should be owned by someone.  What they mean is that everything, and everyone that they deign to allow live will be owned (their time and services bought) by them.  And that "them" is a very small number of people.

They do not care about anyone except themselves.  They want to be rich, powerful - and ultimately transcendent - masters of the universe.  They will do whatever they need to to achieve this.  

I'm going to talk about this "transcendence" I think "they" hope for some more on the blog these coming weeks.


Now though, I'll conclude by saying this:

One of the main reasons I am a Catholic is that Catholicism is to my mind one of the very few coherent epistemologies and anthropologies that resoundingly rejects their worldview.

Islam is, incidentally, perhaps another one.

To be a Catholic is believe in the sacredness of every human person, even the poor, even the idiotic..

Even, note, the evil fascistic rich man.   Even he deserves a dignified trial before he is thrown in jail.


Justice, which is Mercy Himself, demands it.



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Picture of the Day: This is a Manatee.

Taken @ Wakulla Springs.

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