By all the evidence that has come out in the past week, primarily as a result of reporting by the New Yorker, Brett Kavanaugh belonged to societies, a fraternity, and even a secret club when he was at Yale as an undergraduate. The fraternity in particular was notorious for heavy drinking. A close friend of Kavanaugh, Mark Judge, wrote in a book that he and his friends got blind drunk almost every weekend when they were in high school as juniors and seniors. More importantly, he has no recall of events that occurred when he was that drunk. This makes his denials of sexual assault tenuous at best.
Absent a public statement that he is a recovering alcoholic, it is hard to reconcile Mr. Kavanaugh’s other public statements. To be blind, staggering drunk repeatedly throughout one’s senior year in high school and freshman year in college implies that he had to somehow recover from this behavior in order to become a functioning adult individual. In fact, he became a conservative lawyer and worked for such far-right law firms as the one that investigated President Clinton and elicited all the gory details, recommending impeachment. President Bush has publicly detailed his heavy drinking as a youth and his religious conversion after a drink-driving car accident. Why has not Kavanaugh made a similar statement– or have I just missed it?
Now it can be said plainly in words of two syllables or less: Donald J. Trump is a cancer on our country. Projection is a classic example of the irrational things that a delusional, narcissistic sociopath would do: claim that his adversaries are guilty of the very crimes he has committed. He has enriched himself at the expense of everyone he has met and that is a cancerous, sociopathic personality. In a word of two syllables: a cancer.
His claims about the revelations to be found in documents he has ordered declassified can be dismissed out of hand. Even if documentary evidence of a conspiracy against him within the FBI is found, it can be excused purely on the basis of self-defense against a malignant entity: radical conservatives as represented most clearly by Donald J. Trump himself.
It is a little-known fact that Anita Hill actually had more than a dozen (15) women lined up behind her ready to testify, but the Democratic Senate leader wouldn’t let them be heard because he didn’t want Ms. Hill’s testimony to completely derail the nomination of Clarence Thomas– he had already made a deal with the President to let Thomas’ nomination squeak by with the barest minimum of votes. Further, it is a little-known fact that Justice Thomas had a verified history of heavy use of pornographic films from a local establishment… don’t ask me how I know these things because I just know.
At the current writing, the accuser is unwilling to testify until the FBI has completed an investigation. The Republicans, however, intend to hold a hearing next Monday come hell or high water because Donald J. Trump has claimed that the FBI “doesn’t want to” investigate. So we will find out the mood of the country in the next couple of days and we’ll see if there is a hearing with an empty chair next Monday. I don’t think the Republicans could be that tone-deaf, but I’ve been surprised before.
Actually, according to this blog (which looks authoritative), posted by Richard M. Langworth in 2011, Churchill didn’t say that; there are no references available, or no attribution for that statement was found. Neither is the statement pictured authentic (according to Mr. Langworth), although it is frequently attributed to Churchill as well as Lincoln. Churchill did, however, say, “…do not be carried away by success into demanding more than is right or prudent.” (He was speaking before the House of Commons in March of 1919, shortly after the Allies had won the First World War.) Which is not nearly as inspiring although it may be much more practical.
I heartily recommend, despite the error of attribution (the quote titling this post) that occurs at the end, the movie “Darkest Hour”, a dramatization of Churchill’s election as prime minister and the British strategic miracle of Dunkirk– the rescue of nearly 300,000 men from the beaches at Dunkirk was only made possible by the sacrifice of a much-better equipped pocket of 4,000 soldiers at the nearby port of Calais, who provoked the wrath of Hitler’s panzer tank army. The movie covers Churchill’s speeches to the Commons, including his famous, “We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds… we shall fight in the fields; we shall fight on the streets… we shall never surrender.” Much of the latter part of the movie concerns Churchill’s decision not to negotiate with Hitler (although a channel was opened through Mussolini, Neville Chamberlain decided to go along with Churchill and Lord Halifax, the other powerful pacifist, was exiled to Washington after Churchill’s defiant speech.)
This speech is re-enacted at the end of the movie; the quote attributed to him (mistakenly: “Success is not final; failure is not fatal; it is the courage to continue that counts”) appears at the very end after a few sentences describing the evacuation of Dunkirk after May 28 1940, and, five years later on May 8 1945, the victory over Germany. Then the text states, “a few months later he was defeated for re-election.” So that quote fits in that place well in the movie, although it is disappointing to find out a few minutes later through Google that the statement is apocryphal. The statement actually fits his life quite well too, since he was in the War Cabinet in the First World War and spent the entire peacetime interval between wars as a back-bencher, a lonely bellicose voice.
I am beginning to think that the main category of economic’s and the difference between major macro economic plans isn’t between Keynes, Hayek, Robinson, and others. Rather what drives one’s theoretical choice is really a question of how we sublimate , in Nietzsche’s terms , the natural human need to punish. Liberals generally rationalise taking from those who have surplus and redistribute it . And they use things like data and evidence and concepts like the public good to justify this. They also note how many, many rich are born on third base thinking they hit a triple and work to accumulate more , often producing great amounts of negative externalities for the wider society. Conservative/ libertarians want to punish the weak, the sick, women , and other traditionally oppressed groups, because hey, the winners proved there worth by hitting triples. I invite readers to look closely at the smug satisfaction of the hard core right wing Republican Party when they throw people off of medicaid, or make food stamp recipients take drug tests, while blowing up the deficit so they can write off their private jets. It’s not enough that they line their pockets with gold snatched from the public purse, they need to villainize and crush the poor, single mothers, hungry kids as somehow deserving their lot. Look at the faces in the rose garden reception after the house voted to kill Obamacare. Tell me beyond all the social science and numbers that Nietzsche isn’t onto something.
(Why they insist on punishing people who are poor through no fault of their own is a mystery, but if Nietzsche said we have a need to punish people for being weak, that’s good enough for me. )
Quoted from the Cult Education Institute’s Web Site:
By Rick Ross, Expert Consultant and Intervention Specialist
Ten warning signs of a potentially unsafe group/leader.
- Absolute authoritarianism without meaningful accountability.
- No tolerance for questions or critical inquiry.
- No meaningful financial disclosure regarding budget, expenses such as an independently audited financial statement.
- Unreasonable fear about the outside world, such as impending catastrophe, evil conspiracies and persecutions.
- There is no legitimate reason to leave, former followers are always wrong in leaving, negative or even evil.
- Former members often relate the same stories of abuse and reflect a similar pattern of grievances.
- There are records, books, news articles, or television programs that document the abuses of the group/leader.
- Followers feel they can never be “good enough”.
- The group/leader is always right.
- The group/leader is the exclusive means of knowing “truth” or receiving validation, no other process of discovery is really acceptable or credible.
Ten warning signs regarding people involved in/with a potentially unsafe group/leader.
- Extreme obsessiveness regarding the group/leader resulting in the exclusion of almost every practical consideration.
- Individual identity, the group, the leader and/or God as distinct and separate categories of existence become increasingly blurred. Instead, in the follower’s mind these identities become substantially and increasingly fused–as that person’s involvement with the group/leader continues and deepens.
- Whenever the group/leader is criticized or questioned it is characterized as “persecution”.
- Uncharacteristically stilted and seemingly programmed conversation and mannerisms, cloning of the group/leader in personal behavior.
- Dependency upon the group/leader for problem solving, solutions, and definitions without meaningful reflective thought. A seeming inability to think independently or analyze situations without group/leader involvement.
- Hyperactivity centered on the group/leader agenda, which seems to supercede any personal goals or individual interests.
- A dramatic loss of spontaneity and sense of humor.
- Increasing isolation from family and old friends unless they demonstrate an interest in the group/leader.
- Anything the group/leader does can be justified no matter how harsh or harmful.
- Former followers are at best-considered negative or worse evil and under bad influences. They can not be trusted and personal contact is avoided.
(image courtesy of pixabay.com)
Some scientists predict that wildfires will increase in size to three times the current burned area by 2100 due to climate change… drought and beetle infestations have reduced good trees to dried-up husks ready for a spark– to grow into a fire-storm that creates its own weather, with 300-foot tall flames and pyrocumulus clouds. This morning a free-running fire crossed interstate highway 5 in northern California and forced drivers to flee on foot as trapped vehicles burst into flames
(photo courtesy of pixabay.com and skeeze)
Quoted in the Washington Post today. When Donald was speaking to a crowd of his supporters (aired on CNN today), he said that a man came up to him and said, “Thank you, Mr. President for saving our country.” In case you need some guidance about what is really going on, I’ll just tell you that man is delusional and so is Donald.
(photo courtesy of pixabay.com and YamaBSM)
The Very Latest in Conspiracy Theories
A post on today’s New York Times online says that the purpose of Christopher Steele and Bruce Ohr’s meetings before Donald’s campaign was in furtherance of an attempt to “turn” Oleg Deripaska, known as “Putin’s oligarch” (as if Vladimir wasn’t oligarch enough all by himself… oh, wait, then he’d be an autarch, wouldn’t he?)
The FBI must have kept that secret because it was embarrassing. There’s no further point in hiding it from the Russians, because Oleg turned around and told Vladimir all about the FBI’s feeble attempts to make use of him. I’m sure Oleg and Vlad had a good laugh about all the lies that Oleg told to those poor FBI men.
They are only declassifying that now because the connections between Steele and Ohr are coming out and the conspiracy theorists on the right were making a big deal out of it– as if two spies, working for countries that are the closest of allies and both specializing in Russian organized crime (which is indistinguishable from the Kremlin nowadays), couldn’t compare notes without it being a conspiracy against the worst president in US history (according to a strong plurality in a recent survey of the American electorate.)
“The ideas of economists and political philosophers, both when they are right and when they are wrong, are more powerful than is commonly understood. Indeed the world is ruled by little else. Practical men, who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influence, are usually the slaves of some defunct economist. Madmen in authority, who hear voices in the air, are distilling their frenzy from some academic scribbler of a few years back. I am sure that the power of vested interests is vastly exaggerated compared with the gradual encroachment of ideas. Not, indeed, immediately, but after a certain interval; for in the field of economic and political philosophy there are not many who are influenced by new theories after they are twenty-five or thirty years of age, so that the ideas which civil servants and politicians and even agitators apply to current events are not likely to be the newest. But, soon or late, it is ideas, not vested interests, which are dangerous for good or evil.” John Maynard Keynes (1936)
Conrad Theodore Seitz 