Another danger is lurking besides the current viral pandemic case load increases, and it is directly related to it.
The danger is that millions of people may not be able to vote because they will be homeless and/or out of work.
They may become so stressed that voting will be the last thing on their mind:
20 Million Renters Are at Risk of Eviction; Policymakers Must Act Now to Mitigate Widespread Hardship
"Across the country, renters and tenants advocates are sounding the alarm about the coming eviction crisis, referring to it as an avalanche or tsunami. Over the past five months, more than 44 million Americans have filed for unemployment amid the COVID-19 pandemic. As the recession continues, economic stimulus payments are spent, and expanded Unemployment Insurance expires, many of these displaced workers will be unable to make housing payments.
Mass evictions would be a disaster. For both individuals and families, evictions result in severe harm; when they become widespread, there are also significant consequences for entire communities and even the speed of economic recovery. Policymakers are actively seeking solutions, but it is difficult to prepare without knowing the size of the problem.
The COVID-19 Eviction Defense Project (CEDP) was formed to solve that problem. It is a coalition of economic researchers and legal experts who developed a model to estimate eviction risk nationally and at the state level. The disturbing result: 19 to 23 million, or one in five of the 110 million Americans who live in renter households, are at risk of eviction by September 30, 2020."
(The Aspen Institute). It may be bad for homeowners too in the sense of foreclosures, depending on the governments' (federal and state) response.
They are cruel enough to lock up children and rip them from the arms of their parents, cruel enough to weakly respond to the Covid-19 crisis, and cruel enough to encourage stress syndrome conditions then suppress the vote.
We all know, more or less, about why people come and go, psychologists come and go, historians come and go, good and bad politicians come and go, but we know less about why civilizations come and go.
Since the lifetime of civilizations tends to be outside our common senses and experiences, the subject of the life and death of civilizations does not tend to occur to us.
Only a few have pondered it like Arnold J. Toynbee has (see photo).
Actually, simply exploring this subject is an exercise that will likely cause us to receive different answers from different people if we ask them what 'civilization' means (What Do You Mean - World Civilization?).
Toynbee wrote volumes about two dozen or so civilizations that we only think about when we are in a history class or a library, however, unlike us he didn't just skim the surface, no, he followed ugly all the way to the bone:
"In other words, a society does not ever die 'from natural causes', but always dies from suicide or murder --- and nearly always from the former, as this chapter has shown."
(A Study of History, by Arnold J. Toynbee). What? Suicide? Murder? ... He was no ordinary historian was he?
That is just the tip of the iceberg, so to speak, as a world famous encyclopedia points out:
"In the Study Toynbee examined the rise and fall of 26 civilizations in the course of human history, and he concluded that they rose by responding successfully to challenges under the leadership of creative minorities composed of elite leaders. Civilizations declined when their leaders stopped responding creatively, and the civilizations then sank owing to the sins of nationalism, militarism, and the tyranny of a despotic minority.
(Encyclopedia Britannica, emphasis added). Previous posts in this series have zeroed in on the question of what "tyranny" and "despotic minority" meant to him.
III. Siggy's Microscope
Another famous person now practically relegated to the realm of mythology, Sigmund Freud, pointed out the necessity of developing a way of diagnosing the time when a civilization was entering into "suicide" mode:
"If the evolution of civilization has such a far reaching similarity with the development of an individual, and if the same methods are employed in both, would not the diagnosis be justified that many systems of civilization——or epochs of it——possibly even the whole of humanity——have become neurotic under the pressure of the civilizing trends? To analytic dissection of these neuroses, therapeutic recommendations might follow which could claim a great practical interest. I would not say that such an attempt to apply psychoanalysis to civilized society would be fanciful or doomed to fruitlessness. But it behooves us to be very careful, not to forget that after all we are dealing only with analogies, and that it is dangerous, not only with men but also with concepts, to drag them out of the region where they originated and have matured. The diagnosis of collective neuroses, moreover, will be confronted by a special difficulty. In the neurosis of an individual we can use as a starting point the contrast presented to us between the patient and his environment which we assume to be normal. No such background as this would be available for any society similarly affected; it would have to be supplied in some other way. And with regard to any therapeutic application of our knowledge, what would be the use of the most acute analysis of social neuroses, since no one possesses power to compel the community to adopt the therapy?In spite of all these difficulties, we may expect that one day someone will venture upon this research into the pathology of civilized communities. [p. 39]"
...
"Men have brought their powers of subduing the forces of nature
to such a pitch that by using them they could now very easily exterminate one another to the last man. They know this——hence arises a great part of their current unrest, their dejection, their mood of apprehension. [p. 40]"
One way to estimate a civilization's (or empire's) chances of pulling out of 'a' or 'the' nosedive is to identify its momentum:
"... we’ve now reached the point where our chances of ever exiting the nightmare are shrinking. There was a lot of vote-rigging, etc., under ..., but we’re now within striking range of becoming a de facto one-party autocracy — someplace we’ve been heading at least since ..."
In the annals of history and herstory, as the chances of pulling out shrink, the hope-and-don't-worry-be-happy trances increase.
This can be disastrous to personal reputation, country, etc.:
"The stock market crash of 1929 and the subsequent Great Depression cost Fisher much of his personal wealth and academic reputation. He [in]famously predicted, nine days before the crash, that stock prices had 'reached what looks like a permanently high plateau'."
That a civilization "does not ever die 'from natural causes', but always dies from suicide or murder" makes civilizations unlike humans, because the vast majority of humans die from natural causes rather than by suicide or murder.
Civilization, then, perhaps is not really human after all (The Machine Religion).
The the next post in this series is here, the previous post in this series is here.
Did I mention 'Everybody Knows'?
There is at least one thing common to both civilizations and sub-civilizations (they don't see it coming).
A conservative judge is overseeing a conservative senate hearing that has voted not to see or hear evidence (When Every Indictment Is A "Hoax") until they have already voted "up or down."
Quichotte is a member of the "Q" who wants to elevate himself way, way up into a better trance (Choose Your Trances Carefully, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8).
To do so he must please The Chosen One, the “wholly imaginary chief executive who was obsessed by cable news, who pandered to a white supremacist base” and then he must find his mystical mate (hiding somewhere inside Shape Shifter member The ConWay).
After that, the jig is up because doing nothing for anyone but yourself is facing extinction in the Swamp of swamps, home of The Banners galore.
He is sure that The Don will make him famous as he did "The Mooch," "The Lawgiver I (who lives in the Alabama struck down by Dorian)," and "The Lawtaker Willie Low Bar" who removed law from the Just Us Department.
Avoid the rush, get the book before the election.
The next post in this series is here, the previous post in this series is here.
Today, the U.S. Supreme Court, in Rucho v. Common Cause, No. 18-422 (U.S. Jun. 27, 2019), ruled that federal courts have no jurisdiction to decide gerrymandering issues.
It was a 5-4 decision.
One has to wonder why, after a couple of hundred years, this important issue has not been considered and dealt with by the federal government.
The states do not have final authority on the issue, because the U.S. Constitution has specific language to that effect (more on that later in this post).
In the previous post I wrote:
Why not simply make one or more counties the voting districts, and allow she or he who wins the most counties to become elected?
I say that because counties already hold elections and have the apparatus to do so, in both federal and state elections.
It will save the expense we now have in managing votes in far flung and outlandishly shaped gerrymandered voting districts.
Meanwhile the counties already exist and have the money to conduct elections.
"The times, places and manner of holding elections for Senators and Representatives, shall be prescribed in each state by the legislature thereof; but the Congress may at any time by law make or alter such regulations, except as to the places of choosing Senators."
(Article I, Section 4, emphasis added; cf. The Elections Clause). If they passed legislation to require that counties (or the equivalent) or combinations thereof must compose the districts for electing members of the House of Representatives, it would simplify elections.
But here we go again, almost starting over.
The only consolations to the dilemma is that the supreme courts of some states have outlawed partisan gerrymandering, while others have passed laws by referendum of the people to require bipartisan commissions to set the election district boundaries.
We now enter a contentious time due to one of the main practices of our government bodies: "kick the can down the road."
The next post in this series is here, previous post in this series is here.
The lowest bar is to call day night, to call love hate, to call left right, to call unAmerican patriotism, and to call lies truth.
Former FBI Director and Special Counsel Mueller pointed out that "The Russian government interfered in the 2016 presidential election in sweeping and systematic fashion. Evidence of Russian government operations began to surface in mid-2016" (Mueller Report, p. 1; p. 9 PDF).
The record is not foggy on this point as TIME points out in a recent article concerning events beyond trolling and advertisements on social media:
"... that Trump and at least 17 of his campaign officials and advisors had more than 100 contacts between Trump associates and Russians,
"I had nothing to do with
Russia helping me to get elected"
belying the campaign’s November 2016 claim that 'there was no communication between the campaign and any foreign entity during the campaign.' According to reporting, many others associated with Trump were told about contacts with Russian-linked individuals. Here is a list of all of the times that Trump associates interacted with Russia from the early days of the 2016 election cycle to Trump’s inauguration ..."
(TIME, "the twittah", emphasis added). Major league interaction between members of a U.S. presidential election campaign ("Tweeter") and a hostile foreign government ("Monkey Man") is in and of itself not a traditional American election practice (e.g. candidate Al Gore's campaign was once confronted that way and immediately informed the FBI).
Lying about those contacts and interactions repeatedly was the Trump Campaign's ("Tweeter") response during the campaign (TIME quote above), which is in and of itself either a suspicious wrong or a felony, depending on who is being lied to.
Lying over 10,000 times from that time until now, is grounds for an impeachment inquiry in and of itself in a normal country.
And when an administration's attorney general has the low barr fever, well, it is not normal shall we say.
Many of those lies were by underlings while under oath or talking to federal investigators ("Jan's brother") such that some were indicted for that by grand juries, some were convicted, some served jail time, and some are awaiting sentencing.
That an impeachment inquiry should begin to find out why all that major league lying was done to cover up the interaction with a hostile foreign power is a slam dunk, no-brainer reason for an impeachment inquiry.
On Morning Joe (MSNBC) yesterday Allan Lichtman, the Professor who has accurately predicted every US Presidential election since 1984, indicated that the 2020 presidential election will be lost to democrats if the impeachment inquiry is NOT commenced soon.
We shall see (“I have no final verdict yet because much could change during the next year” - Allan Lichtman).
On another front, if Israel is a normal country then its recent election can be an example of why.
"Tweeter and the Monkey Man
were hard up for [Russian] cash
They stayed up all night selling
[Russian] 'cocaine and hash'
To an 'undercover cop'
who had a sister named Jan
For reasons unexplained
she loved the Monkey Man"
Lyrics here.
The mule-stubborn senate bully Mitch McConnell likes to think that he is ultimately aware when it comes to the U.S. Constitution.
"He is woke" his collaborators (at destroying American Government) in the senate are wont to say.
Actually, he is only snoring while "woke":
"Every Bill which shall have passed the House of Representatives and the
Senate Jackass
Senate, shall, before it become a Law, be presented to the President of the United States: If he approve he shall sign it, but if not he shall return it, with his Objections to that House in which it shall have originated, who shall enter the Objections at large on their Journal, and proceed to reconsider it. If after such Reconsideration two thirds of that House shall agree to pass the Bill, it shall be sent, together with the Objections, to the other House, by which it shall likewise be reconsidered, and if approved by two thirds of that House, it shall become a Law. But in all such Cases the Votes of both Houses shall be determined by Yeas and Nays, and the Names of the Persons voting for and against the Bill shall be entered on the Journal of each House respectively. If any Bill shall not be returned by the President within ten Days (Sundays excepted) after it shall have been presented to him, the Same shall be a Law, in like Manner as if he had signed it, unless the Congress by their Adjournment prevent its Return, in which Case it shall not be a Law."
(U.S. Constitution, Article I, Section 7, emphasis added). Mitch is snoring while woke when he sez "I won't present any bill to the president that he says he won't sign."
He thereby robs the U.S. Senate and the U.S. House of Representatives of their right to do a veto override.
He robs the U.S. Constitution that requires all presidents to act on every bill within ten days.
He also likes to dictate which judges will be voted on, which violates the U.S. Constitution.
It also violates the rights of a president, other senators, and the American people.
Ah, the red-tinged realm of the rubber ducky comes to an end.
The Ayn Gang returned to The Hillfrom its recent long search for The Lost Stones of Gonad.
That search came on the 'heals' of their ritual bath following their shenanigans in the Feast of Ayn (which they had confused with a midterm election) (Ayn Rand: Patron Saint of The Plutocracy, 2, 3, 4).
Because the Feast of Ayn (Ayn is Russian) is another Russian thingy (which among other thingys seeks to eradicate the common good), they sought to sing away their confusion using the lyrics to "Alt-Lang-Sigh-On".
At the other end of confusion avenue, the Senate engineered a cathartic dynamic just as The Cathartic Feast festivities were getting under way.
Yes, the Senate did a very rare thingy, especially in these days daze.
In as much as The Cathartic Feast follows the Feast of Ayn and the rubber ducky bath, they tried not to jump the shark:
"The Senate unanimously approved the legislation Wednesday night to keep the government funded through Feb. 8."
(CNBC). "Those who stayed" (TWS) did not take the bath nor join the search for The Lost Stones of Gonad.
So ... they did a mind meld instead, which resulted in a unanimous thingy (a thingy required by the Tenets of Catharsis).
"Not to worry," TWS reminded the newbies, because The Cathartic Feast gives rise to one of the spiritual joys of Congress.
"Have we forgotten the congressional veto override?" TWS asked.
The tenets of the Cathartic Feast require a unanimous Senate vote (at the beginning of the feast), which must be followed by a preznidential veto (which can only take place when there is a clueless preznit in the Whut? House).
Preznit Yellow One The Last has promised a veto, so let the Cathartic Feast begin!
III. Nancy The Last
When Boy "Ayn" Ryan hands the now-tear-stained gavel to Nancy The Last, she will fulfill her vow to quickly send a clean bill of goods (BOG) over to TWS.
Because it will be as exemplary as the BOG that was unanimously voted for in the Old Senate, which Yellow One The Last vetoed, this BOG is the finger food for The Cathartic Feast (some call it the food of the BOGs).
IV. Conclusion
The Shape Shifters of Bullshitistan were not pleased with all the catharsis taking place, mainly because it promotes honesty, truth, and facts (The Shapeshifters of Bullshitistan, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16).
That in itself could be a death knell to The New World Odor, so they have vowed not to change their diapers for as long as Yellow One The Last whines about his yellow Awe Topsy tweet.
According to my research, these yellow rubber ducky countries block Dredd Blog: Cuba, Fiji, India, Iran, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Pakistan, People's Republic of China, Russian Federation, Syrian Arab Republic, Turkey, Vietnam, Yemen, and of course Bullshitistan.
The next post in this series is here, the previous post in this series is here.
the brightness bursts and bears the rose
and the ring of water contracts to a cluster
to one drop of azure brine that falls.
O magnolia radiance breaking in spume,
magnetic voyager whose death flowers
and returns, eternal, to being and nothingness:
shattered brine, dazzling leap of the ocean.
Merged, you and I, my love, seal the silence
while the sea destroys its continual forms,
collapses its turrets of wildness and whiteness,
because in the weft of those unseen garments
of headlong water, and perpetual sand,
we bear the sole, relentless tenderness.
In this series (began 5/10/10) we (regular readers and I) have been contemplating what some consider to be "over-the-top ideas" or "fringe notions" of past, current, and looming misuses of the military (Will The Military Become The Police?, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11).
Yet, in the previous post I answered the question this series posits ("Will The Military Become The Police?") as follows:
(Will The Military Become The Police? - 11). I answered "no" in terms of will the military become (future tense) the world police, because they already have (it is historical, not futuristic).
II. "Say It Ain't So"
Furthermore, in a limited sense it has already happened domestically to the degree that the literal military police, in the recent past, have even been used to give traffic tickets (Will The Military Become The Police? - 2).
But there is the larger domestic realm to consider, in terms of sniffing out "why are police forces all across the country being built up, by the Pentagon, with military hardware?"
For those who never "sniff the air" such a concept must be simply "halloweenish."
And it is "halloweenish" in the sense that Halloween keeps coming back every year, like tyranny does (On The Origin of Tyranny).
IV. Tyranny of The Despotic Minority
At a time when Americans are being gunned down and bombed, preznit Donnah Dump is sending in the military to police a place where nothing like that is happening.
The decent majority wonders why the leader of the despotic minority is sending the military to police a band of refugees who have fled authoritarian regimes to answer the call written on the Statue of Liberty:
“Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.”
The reason, IMO, is that preznit Donnah Dump, as leader of the despotic minority, needs despotic votes bigly in order to perpetuate the tyranny of his despotic minority:
"In the Study Toynbee examined the rise and fall of 26 civilizations in the course of human history, and he concluded that they rose by responding successfully to challenges under the leadership of creative minorities composed of elite leaders. Civilizations declined when their leaders stopped responding creatively, and the civilizations then sank owing to the sins of nationalism, militarism, and the tyranny of a despotic minority."
Concerning those now in the despotic minority who have been voted into power in the DC swamp, only if they are voted out of office by the American Majority will the nation progress as it has under duress in the past.
Make it so.
The next post in this series is here, the previous post in this series is here.
That can be analyzed from several perspectives within several academic disciplines.
Today, I want to revisit this phenomenon from the perspective of how it hovers always just below the covers in the United States (and nations like the United States).
It is the psychological or social perspective of groups that I am getting at.
According to expert observers, it is a surprisingly common understanding that liberals and conservatives alike are aware of and generally have agreement about:
The photo to the left is a photo of a family in the NAZI governed Germany of long ago.
Have you ever noticed how many "family" words are associated with the concept of "nation" in literature, politics, and government?
A quick check of a few relevant metaphors (forefathers, father of the constitution, Uncle Sam, motherland, fatherland, homeland, father of the nation, founding fathers, mother of the nation, family of nations, etc.) makes me want to look at perhaps the key source-metaphor for this notion:
... a common metaphor, shared by conservatives and liberals alike -- the Nation-as-Family metaphor, in which the nation is seen as a family, the government as a parent and the citizens as children ...
It’s no accident that our political beliefs are structured by our idealizations of the family. Our earliest experience with being governed is in our families. Our parents “govern” us: They protect us, tell us what we can and cannot do, make sure we have enough money and supplies, educate us, and have us do our part in running the house.
So it is not at all surprising that many nations are metaphorically seen in terms of families: Mother Russia, Mother India, the Fatherland. In America, we have founding fathers, Daughters of the American Revolution, Uncle Sam, and we send our collective sons and daughters to war. In George Orwell’s dystopian novel 1984, the voice of the totalitarian state was called Big Brother.
As George Lakoff discussed at length in his 1996 book, Moral Politics, this metaphorical understanding of the nation-as-family directly informs our political worldview. Directly, but not consciously. As with other aspects of framing, the use of this metaphor lies below the level of consciousness.
(The Nation As Family, PDF). It is important to remember the part of the concept indicating that "the use of this metaphor lies below the level of consciousness", because in this post today we are going to try to take a look at part of that iceberg we can see, which is not only conscious, but is also attached to the bulk that is not conscious.
"The answer came from a realization that we tend to understand the nation metaphorically in family terms: We have founding fathers. We send our sons and daughters to war. We have homeland security. The conservative and progressive worldviews dividing our country can most readily be understood in terms of moral worldviews that are encapsulated in two very different common forms of family life: The Nurturant Parent family (progressive) and the Strict Father family (conservative). What do social issues and the politics have to do with the family? We are first governed in our families, and so we grow up understanding governing institutions in terms of the governing systems of families. In the strict father family, father knows best. He knows right from wrong and has the ultimate authority to make sure his children and his spouse do what he says, which is taken to be what is right. Many conservative spouses accept this worldview, uphold the father’s authority, and are strict in those realms of family life that they are in charge of. When his children disobey, it is his moral duty to punish them painfully enough so that, to avoid punishment, they will obey him (do what is right) and not just do what feels good. Through physical discipline they are supposed to become disciplined, internally strong, and able to prosper in the external world. What if they don’t prosper? That means they are not disciplined, and therefore cannot be moral, and so deserve their poverty. This reasoning shows up in conservative politics in which the poor are seen as lazy and undeserving, and the rich as deserving their wealth. Responsibility is thus taken to be personal responsibility not social responsibility. What you become is only up to you; society has nothing to do with it. You are responsible for yourself, not for others — who are responsible for themselves."
(Understanding Trump, by Dr. Lakoff, Distinguished Professor of Cognitive Science and Linguistics Emeritus at the University of California at Berkeley, emphasis added).
When events are seen in ways that indicate "things are going bad," the reactionary members of the populace who hold this strict father world view become sycophants and/or authoritarian followers (Beware of the Sycophant Epidemic, 2).
History tells us that it solves nothing and in fact brings the house down on our heads:
For example, the Encyclopedia Britannica pointed out the ingredients of the DNA of that history, which incidentally, also applies to our current culture's genetic code:
"In the Study Toynbee examined the rise and fall of 26 civilizations in the course of human history, and he concluded that they rose by responding successfully to challenges under the leadership of creative minorities composed of elite leaders. Civilizations declined when their leaders stopped responding creatively, and the civilizations then sank owing to the sins of nationalism, militarism, and the tyranny of a despotic minority. Unlike Spengler in his The Decline of the West, Toynbee did not regard the death of a civilization as inevitable, for it may or may not continue to respond to successive challenges. Unlike Karl Marx, he saw history as shaped by spiritual, not economic forces."
(Previous Post). What remains to be seen is whether the strong man disease will infect enough despots to become "the new normal" (Follow The Immunity - 4).
Arnold Toynbee was the historian who, at one point in his career, was the most often quoted historian.
He lost favor, eventually, by speaking truth to power and by disturbing the "it can't happen here" mistaken belief or trance of way too many people.
Famously, he studied twenty-six civilizations which came and went down through time, and voiced his analysis as to why they were not perpetual:
"In other words, a society does not ever die 'from natural causes', but always dies from suicide or murder --- and nearly always from the former, as this chapter has shown."
"In the Study Toynbee examined the rise and fall of 26 civilizations in the course of human history, and he concluded that they rose by responding successfully to challenges under the leadership of creative minorities composed of elite leaders. Civilizations declined when their leaders stopped responding creatively, and the civilizations then sank owing to the sins of nationalism, militarism, and the tyranny of a despotic minority. Unlike Spengler in his The Decline of the West, Toynbee did not regard the death of a civilization as inevitable, for it may or may not continue to respond to successive challenges. Unlike Karl Marx, he saw history as shaped by spiritual, not economic forces" ...
The U.S. Culture was commenced by people who knew these things, because they used words that gave rise to the notions of both foreign and domestic enemies:
"I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter: So help me God."
(U.S. Senate Oath of Office, emphasis added). That oath has changed a few times over the centuries because of, among other things, the definition or meaning of "foreign and domestic enemies."
During the civil war one side thought that those who wanted to eradicate slavery in the U.S. were domestic enemies, then later those slaves became domestic enemies in their eyes.
To others who have been smitten by militarism, your health care provider is seen as a domestic enemy:
"The U.S. military keeps searching the horizon for a peer competitor, the challenger that must be taken seriously. Is it China? What about an oil rich and resurgent Russia?
But the threat that is most likely to hobble U.S. military capabilities is not a peer competitor, rather it is health care."
Arnold Toynbee was not the only one to see Militarism as a destructive disease to free nations.
One of our most venerated statesmen saw it that way too:
Of all the enemies to public liberty war is, perhaps, the most to be dreaded, because it comprises and develops the germ of every other. War is the parent of armies; from these proceed debts and taxes; and armies, and debts, and taxes are the known instruments for bringing the many under the domination of the few. In war, too, the discretionary power of the Executive is extended; its influence in dealing out offices, honors, and emoluments is multiplied: and all the means of seducing the minds, are added to those of subduing the force, of the people. The same malignant aspect in republicanism may be traced in the inequality of fortunes, and the opportunities of fraud, growing out of a state of war, and in the degeneracy of manners and of morals, engendered by both. No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare. Those truths are well established.
(A Tale of Coup Cities - 13, quoting Madison). The former commander of NATO, General Clark, indicated that there has been a plan by the real domestic enemies in the Epigovernment to take out seven nations (Epigovernment: The New Model, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11).
It is a plan to take out the nation of Iran (the only remaining country on the "list of seven" ?).
It is a plan which warmonger Bolton wants to complete (see the second video below featuring Gen. Clark, former Supreme Allied Commander of NATO).
The simple argument supporting that declaration is that he is only one person.
He is an individual who is a member of a group of about 62,984,825 people who, in varying degrees (0-100), have the same group dementia.
One thing that has happened to most civilizations is something that has been fatal to each and every one of them.
That something is the dementia that produces and ends up in 'suicide':
"In other words, a society does not ever die 'from natural causes', but always dies from suicide or murder --- and nearly always from the former, as this chapter has shown."
(A Study of History, by Arnold J. Toynbee). There is no cure for the final symptom of that group dementia (there is only prevention by way of avoiding it altogether in the first place).
The components of that group dementia were pointed out in an encyclopedia article concerning the historian quoted above:
"In the Study Toynbee examined the rise and fall of 26 civilizations in the course of human history, and he concluded that they rose by responding successfully to challenges under the leadership of creative minorities composed of elite leaders. Civilizations declined when their leaders stopped responding creatively, and the civilizations then sank owing to the sins of nationalism, militarism, and the tyranny of a despotic minority. Unlike Spengler in his The Decline of the West, Toynbee did not regard the death of a civilization as inevitable, for it may or may not continue to respond to successive challenges. Unlike Karl Marx, he saw history as shaped by spiritual, not economic forces" ...
(Encyclopedia Britannica, emphasis added). The show stopper (in terms of remedy, in this type of group dementia) is that it is a contagious dementia.
Group dynamics, in this context, are contagions to those who become ideological members of a demented group within a society.
Applying that to current society, we can easily recognize the rampant nationalism and militarism in our culture.
Focusing on the third factor ("tyranny of a despotic minority") tends to be much more difficult.
So here are the numbers concerning the minority we are talking about:
Clinton
65,853,516
48.18%
Trump
62,984,825
46.09%
(Federal Election Commission). A minority consisting of some 62,984,825 people voted for President Trump (but it was a smaller subgroup within that group who cast the 304 electoral votes that actually won the election for him).
The 62,984,825 voters are a minority, and the 65,853,516 are a majority by definition (a slim 2.09% majority).
Moving on to 'despotic,' we find that in that violent insurrection oriented group sense, it is associated with despotism:
... societies which limit respect and power to specific groups have also been called despotic.
(Wikipedia). There need not be a dictator or other autocratic individual in order to meet Toynbee's description set forth in his study, especially in the sense of the description "the tyranny of a despotic minority."
In this sense, a minority means a group composed of a population less than the majority of a society (but wielding substantial directional influence).
Note that this would not be possible in the United States if it was a democracy rather than a constitutional republic with an Electoral College that can elect presidents without a majority popular vote (as in the 2016 election of Donald Trump).
To fit into the Toynbee description, all that is needed is that the group be despotic in nature, which is to be 'authoritarian' (a synonym).
This type of authoritarian despotism requires two fundamental characteristics:
Authoritarianism is something authoritarian followers and authoritarian leaders cook up between themselves. It happens when the followers submit too much to the leaders, trust them too much, and give them too much leeway to do whatever they want -- which often is something undemocratic, tyrannical and brutal. In my day, authoritarian fascist and authoritarian communist dictatorships posed the biggest threats to democracies, and eventually lost to them in wars both hot and cold. But authoritarianism itself has not disappeared, and I'm going to present the case in this book that the greatest threat to American democracy today arises from a militant authoritarianism that has become a cancer upon the nation.
(The Authoritarians, book by Bob Altemeyer, Associate Professor, Department of Psychology, University of Manitoba, Winnipeg, Canada, PDF). Put those two together (leaders and followers) in a group with despotic ideology and we have a structure matching and composing a despotic group of the type that historian Toynbee wrote about.
But, in this case the despotism is "soft despotism" to wit:
"Soft despotism is a term coined by Alexis de Tocqueville describing the state into which a country overrun by "a network of small complicated rules" might degrade. Soft despotism is different from despotism (also called 'hard despotism') in the sense that it is not obvious to the people. Soft despotism gives people the illusion that they are in control, when in fact they have very little influence over their government. Soft despotism breeds fear, uncertainty, and doubt in the general populace. Alexis de Tocqueville observed that this trend was avoided in America only by the "habits of the heart" of its 19th-century populace."
(Soft Despotism, Wikipedia). The way the despotism is maintained by a minority has been explained by "the father of spin" (The Ways of Bernays).
III. The Current Soft Despotism
Is Hardening Into Tribalism
The concept of tribalism is probably easier for us to understand, because it has been engineered to fruition in our time:
"But then we don’t really have to wonder what it’s like to live in a tribal society anymore, do we? Because we already do. Over the past couple of decades in America, the enduring, complicated divides of ideology, geography, party, class, religion, and race have mutated into something deeper, simpler to map, and therefore much more ominous. I don’t just mean the rise of political polarization (although that’s how it often expresses itself), nor the rise of political violence (the domestic terrorism of the late 1960s and ’70s was far worse), nor even this country’s ancient black-white racial conflict (though its potency endures). I mean a new and compounding combination of all these differences into two coherent tribes, eerily balanced in political power, fighting not just to advance their own side but to provoke, condemn, and defeat the other."
(America Wasn’t Built for Humans). The group psychology at work forming our minds and thoughts when tribalism prevails is enmity towards "the other."
Recent scientific papers have pointed out that our culture, and in some cases our subculture, is "remodeling" our brains all the time:
"Beyond such internal mechanisms of variation, environment-driven plasticity lends yet another layer of complexity to the brain. The brain is capable of remarkable remodeling in response to experience. Signals originating from the environment can cause both widespread and localized adaptations. At the level of individual cells, structure and function are continually changing with the environment in a dance of lifelong brain plasticity, and some experiences, such as stress or physical exercise, affect the growth, survival, and fate of newborn neurons in neurogenic regions of the brain. ... Traditionally, cells are defined by the tissue to which they belong as well as their particular functional role or morphology. This classification represents a developmental trajectory that begins early in embryogenesis and is hardwired into each cell. But other differences among cells are more subtle. Multi-dimensional analyses of gene expression and other metrics have revealed remarkable heterogeneity among cells of the same traditional “type.” Cells exist in different degrees of maturation, activation,plasticity, and morphology. Once we begin to consider all of the subtle cell-to-cell variations, it becomes clear that the number of cell types is much greater than ever imagined. In fact, it may be more appropriate to place some cells along a continuum rather than into categories at all. ... Brain cells in particular may be as unique as the people to which they belong. This genetic, molecular, and morphological diversity of the brain leads to functional variation that is likely necessary for the higher-order cognitive processes that are unique to humans. Such mosaicism may have a dark side, however. Although neuronal diversification is normal, it is possible that there is an optimal extent of diversity for brain function and that anything outside those bounds—too low or too high—may be pathological. For example, if neurons fail to function optimally in their particular role or environment, deficits could arise. Similarly, if neurons diversify and become too specialized to a given role, they may lose the plasticity required to change and function normally within a larger circuit. As researchers continue to probe the enormous complexity of the brain at the single-cell level, they will likely begin to uncover the answers to these questions—as well as those we haven’t even thought to ask yet."
(Hypothesis: The Cultural Amygdala - 5). We know more about some of those dynamics than those previous civilizations did, civilizations that went down by "suicide" (self-destruction).
Will that superior scientific knowledge we have be sufficient to make us aware of ways to avoid the suicidal fate that engulfed previous groups (which we call "civilizations") recorded in our written history?
