"DO NOT BRING SORROW TO THE HOLY SPIRIT OF GOD, BY WHOM YOU WERE SEALED FOR THE DAY OF REDEMPTION. RID YOURSELF OF ALL BITTERNESS, RAGE, AND ANGER, FIGHTING AND SLANDER, AND EVERY FORM OF SPITEFUL MALICIOUSNESS. BE KIND AND COMPASSIONATE TO ONE ANOTHER, FORGIVING EACH OTHER JUST AS GOD HAS FORGIVEN YOU. FOLLOW GOD'S EXAMPLE AS HIS CHERISHED CHILDREN, AND LIVE A LIFE OF LOVE, AS THE LORD HAS LOVED US, AND LAID DOWN HIS LIFE FOR YOU."
EPH 4:30-5:2
Sunday, August 19, 2018
Thomas Frank: Rendezvous With Oblivion - A Time of Cascading Collapse
From Jesse's cafe:
The title of this book by Thomas Frank is an obvious play on the prescient quote from Franklin D. Roosevelt's speech to the Democratic Convention in 1936:
This is what a society looks like when the glue that holds it together starts to dissolve. This is the way ordinary citizens react when they learn that the structure beneath them is crumbling. And this is the thrill that pulses through the veins of the well-to-do when they discover that there is no longer any limit on their power to accumulate."
Thomas Frank
The title of this book by Thomas Frank is an obvious play on the prescient quote from Franklin D. Roosevelt's speech to the Democratic Convention in 1936:
"There is a mysterious cycle in human events. To some generations much is given. Of other generations much is expected. This generation of Americans has a rendezvous with destiny."
In the past I often speculated that the US was extraordinarily fortunate, a high-toned way of saying damned lucky, that in the mix of leadership that came out of the Roaring Twenties and the Great Depression the US had its Roosevelt— while Italy had Mussolini, Germany had its Hitler, Russia was in the hands of Stalin, Japan with Tojo, and Span with Franco.
This time around the American voters were shortchanged when they thought they had chosen their new FDR, the great reformer and bringer of Hope and Change in Obama.
And having failed in that, they next turned to an alternative choice, a new breed of populist, similar to Huey Long in rhetoric and common appeal, but without Huey's long years of practical experience in government.
The failure to make the necessary changes and reforms that follows on these political hoaxes reverberates, with the adherents of either 'great reformer' clinging to their dashed hopes and expectation like survivors stubbornly clinging to their favorite wreckage of a ship of fools, shutting their eyes in determined denial, drifting towards some yet to be realized rendezvous with oblivion.
This time around the American voters were shortchanged when they thought they had chosen their new FDR, the great reformer and bringer of Hope and Change in Obama.
And having failed in that, they next turned to an alternative choice, a new breed of populist, similar to Huey Long in rhetoric and common appeal, but without Huey's long years of practical experience in government.
The failure to make the necessary changes and reforms that follows on these political hoaxes reverberates, with the adherents of either 'great reformer' clinging to their dashed hopes and expectation like survivors stubbornly clinging to their favorite wreckage of a ship of fools, shutting their eyes in determined denial, drifting towards some yet to be realized rendezvous with oblivion.
Thom Hartmann reads a short excerpt from Thomas Frank's new collection of essays, Rendezvous With Oblivion.
The digital dark age is here
From Zero Hedge:
The digital dark age is here, ushered in by an elite few tech giants.
The digital dark age is here, ushered in by an elite few tech giants.
For years I have warned about this, for years I have stated that these companies are not to be trusted, that they are listening to your every movement and tracking you in real time, selling your information to the highest bidder.
For years, people scoffed at this idea, they laughed it off, until recently.
People were outraged to hear that Facebook and other social media giants were indeed selling your information, they were gathering, collecting and packaging it to ad sponsors, but why were they shocked? Why couldn't they see the reality that was clearly in front of their eyes?
Because ignorance is bliss.
We live in interesting times indeed, times that are both exciting and precarious. We stand on a precipice of either great change, innovation and new levels of achievement, or we stand on the edge of complete and utter darkness.
Sadly, people are not standing up, they are not voting with their dollars and they are blissfully ignoring the ensnaring net that is slowly being drawn around them.
The digital dark age is here, and the elite few tech giants that are ushering it in are beginning their attack on anyone, anything that does not agree with their echo chamber of thought.
A small handful of companies, you know their names well, virtually control a massive part of our society now. They have near complete control over many aspects of your lives, and don't for a second think that they don't.
The vast majority of people in the West use some form of social media on a regular basis, whether it be Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Google plus or Youtube. Yet these companies all hail from one small, pocket of the world, resulting in an incredibly narrow train of thought, and diversity.
These companies executives know each other, they meet socially and undoubtedly they discuss the future of the internet and how they can best shape it moving forward in their vision.
This is an incredibly frightening occurrence of events, as we the people have literally handed them dominance over our virtual social lives, an aspect of society that can now dictate whether or not you get a job, are successful, or fail in a key aspect of our lives.
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-08-09/digital-dark-age-here
Sunday, August 5, 2018
Economic Theology - Obama and the Rise of the New International Elite
From Jesse's cafe:
Thurman Arnold wrote in The Folklore of Capitalism that 'Economic theology is the opiate of the middle class...Law, morals, and economics are always arrayed against new groups which are struggling to secure a place in an institutional hierarchy of prestige."
Arnold goes on to say in an essay in reply to a review of his book that "Philosophies, legal, ethical, and economic appear very different from the outside looking in than from the inside looking out. The inside point of view assumes that if reasoning men get their heads together, they can make the concept of a good life a workable tool. From the outside it is obvious that reasoning men never agree. Their conflicts only create more literature."
What Arnold is going after is the very notion of the meritocracy, and the mythology of philosopher-kings. In the abstract reality is not captured, and therfore cannot be made workable. There is no such thing as a perfect system, one that will solve all problems if you can only tweak it here and there.
A workable system requires practical and talented people, not necessarily the most credentialed and pedigreed, that are working with a genuine dedication and focus to a set of first principles and priorities.
It is a project doomed to failure to allow process to stand over priority, the realization of the perfectly designed system for its own sake, because such a system does not exist, and is almost always a canard to promote some powerful interests for their own sake.
He means ideologically based systems like 'supply side economics.'. It may have failed, miserably and spectacularly at every turn, but it still sounds pretty good on paper. And so here we go again.
Or globalization, free markets and free trade— these are all good examples of a misbegotten first principles, tenets of economic theology that form the foundation of a system designed for process, rather than results.
If you wish to understand Obama, Clinton and the modern Democratic and Republican parties, which are both parties representing different segments of the affluent and the powerful, I urge you to spend the time to watch the latter half of the second video. The Democrats may speak the cause of the dispossessed and the weak, but tend to treat and view them not as constituents but as charges, with the kind of condescension and utility of neo-colonialism and 'the meritocracy's burden.'
Obama is every bit the narcissist as is Trump. The difference is that Obama is more articulate in his expressions of it, in his appeals to those things that will provide him more of what he thinks that he deserves.
It is an analysis of our current situation by Thomas Frank. You may have seen it before, but I urge you to watch it through in light of everything that has occurred. Watch the entire video with the Q&A if you have the time. There are some practical solutions discussed therein. Basically the system is going to be changed from the bottom up, or not at all.
Arnold goes on to say in an essay in reply to a review of his book that "Philosophies, legal, ethical, and economic appear very different from the outside looking in than from the inside looking out. The inside point of view assumes that if reasoning men get their heads together, they can make the concept of a good life a workable tool. From the outside it is obvious that reasoning men never agree. Their conflicts only create more literature."
What Arnold is going after is the very notion of the meritocracy, and the mythology of philosopher-kings. In the abstract reality is not captured, and therfore cannot be made workable. There is no such thing as a perfect system, one that will solve all problems if you can only tweak it here and there.
A workable system requires practical and talented people, not necessarily the most credentialed and pedigreed, that are working with a genuine dedication and focus to a set of first principles and priorities.
It is a project doomed to failure to allow process to stand over priority, the realization of the perfectly designed system for its own sake, because such a system does not exist, and is almost always a canard to promote some powerful interests for their own sake.
He means ideologically based systems like 'supply side economics.'. It may have failed, miserably and spectacularly at every turn, but it still sounds pretty good on paper. And so here we go again.
Or globalization, free markets and free trade— these are all good examples of a misbegotten first principles, tenets of economic theology that form the foundation of a system designed for process, rather than results.
If you wish to understand Obama, Clinton and the modern Democratic and Republican parties, which are both parties representing different segments of the affluent and the powerful, I urge you to spend the time to watch the latter half of the second video. The Democrats may speak the cause of the dispossessed and the weak, but tend to treat and view them not as constituents but as charges, with the kind of condescension and utility of neo-colonialism and 'the meritocracy's burden.'
Obama is every bit the narcissist as is Trump. The difference is that Obama is more articulate in his expressions of it, in his appeals to those things that will provide him more of what he thinks that he deserves.
It is an analysis of our current situation by Thomas Frank. You may have seen it before, but I urge you to watch it through in light of everything that has occurred. Watch the entire video with the Q&A if you have the time. There are some practical solutions discussed therein. Basically the system is going to be changed from the bottom up, or not at all.
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