Author Archives: rporath

The Future of Trumpism

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The MAGA rioters who stormed the Capitol and the Neo-Nazi Fascist Klansmen marching at a Trump rally in Charlottesville regarded themselves as patriotic revolutionaries acting under a romantic illusion that brute force was a realistic means to keep Donald Trump in the White House. The real insurrectionists today are the authors and proponents of Project 2025 who recognize that the true power in capitalist America is money, even more so since the Conservative majority on the Supreme Court ruled that it had unlimited “free speech” power. Project 2025 is structured around a Libertarian ethos of freedom from regulation, maximum profit, and concentrated wealth that will radically alter the historical arc of American democracy. It has deep pocket corporate and individual backers. Donald Trump aspires to personal autocratic power, able to hire and fire as he sees fit, but at the forefront of Project 2025, he is largely a storefront manikin and incoherent entry level drug to an authoritarian rule of wealth. J D Vance has had a few opening glitches, but with his manly White embrace of religious and family values, his roots in the Midwest, and time spent in the tech world of Silicon Valley, he stands as a reliably malleable successor to lead the Project 2025 revolution. In this election, America stands at a crossroads of its self-definition.

RP

God is on our side

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The God of Abraham, the patriarchal deity of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, militant factions of which are currently waging horrific war across the Middle East, each claiming to have his favor, is portrayed as being all-powerful and occasionally vengeful toward those not giving him due honor. To a degree, this explains the death and destruction raging in the region. We are fulfilling the wishes of our God. Christianity began as an alternative to old-world ethics. “Love thy neighbor, turn the other cheek, practice charity” were its directives, but with the weaker, darker elements of human nature, a thirst for power and wealth, and a strong tendency to larceny, these were cast aside in favor of militancy. Sadly, feeling powerful, in all its manifestations, has become “the human way of life”. All three religions do profess to have a gentler ethos. It simply has been buried.

– RP

Palantir

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It is hard to describe how thoroughly depressing is Maureen Dowd’s interview with Palantir CEO Alex Karp, and its revelation of the disconnect humanity is able to make from the reality of death and destruction in modern warfare. Herman Melville’s poem on the battle of the Monitor and Merrimack during the Civil War includes “War yet shall be, but warriors/ Are now but operatives”. The glory of individual valor has been usurped by armored machines. Dr. Karp finds his personal valor in Palantir’s ability to direct Israeli air strikes against Hamas and Hezbollah fighters all across the Middle East with no more moral attachment to the death of innocent Palestinian women and children, “an acceptable level of collateral damage”, than to a “kill” on a video game computer screen. A target shooting enthusiast, Dr. Karp declares himself “an artist with a gun” who does not kill things. His information algorithms, however, do with great efficiency. For those who regard the existence of Israel (and its boundaries) as Biblical destiny, any and all opposition is the enemy. Palestinians have been in the way since day one, and they pay for it day after day. Dr. Karp and his business partner Peter Thiel are making millions with Palantir information-gathering technology being used in Israel’s war of vengeance against Hamas for challenging this hegemony and bringing the realities of war to Israeli soil. Information is a high-value commodity in today’s world, be it in war, business enterprise, or law and order (to use or to abuse). Such is capitalism’s “law” of supply and demand, privacy and conscience be damned.

-RP

Double Think

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The true official language of America today is George Orwell’s Double Speak, the ability to simultaneously believe and profess two diametrically opposed concepts. One might call it the “Yeah, but” syndrome. It was enshrined by the Founding Fathers with conflicting tenets and words in the Declaration of Independence and the United States Constitution, and, spilling across multiple sectors, has become the lingua terra of all American life. There is no escaping “double thinking” everything. The result is that truth no longer has solid substance, reality no steady footing. One can shape it into any convenience one wishes it to be. Whatever one chooses to believe is all that matters. This is steeped throughout political policy, conventional morality, religious doctrine, and commercial advertising. “The more you buy, the more you save” is a prime example. Both spending and saving are regarded as being true. The simple reality is that you are spending, not saving. The free market, money is free speech, and waging war for peace each amplify conflicting words working in opposition. Life is complicated but a universal truth is that feeling powerless is a frightening, all-powerful emotion, and all stops must be pulled out to feel being right and in control. Real power is not so easily attained.

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Religious and exploitive, white supremacy has been at the core of the American ethos since the first European colonists arrived. The New World was God’s gift to enterprising freedom seekers, and what a grand gift it has been. Waves of entrepreneurs, religious and economic, swept across the continent, pushing aside all standing in their way. Donald Trump, thus, is not an upstart anomaly in the American experience. He is the embodiment of a segment of its ethnic and cultural psyche and history. That he has millions of America First, true believers enthusiastically supporting his candidacy shows how deeply embedded bullying white supremacy remains in the hearts of much of the American public. He is their avatar, and it is he and his followers who are the true victims of injustice in today’s morally and technologically evolving world. “We represent all that is great in America and we are under attack spiritually, emotionally, and economically. We are its anchor”. If there is weakness in Trump’s drive to power it is his blatant need of acceptance and love, and that white supremacy no longer abides below the radar and now needs a heroic figurehead. A nationwide admittance of Truth and Reconciliation concerning the dark side of American history is possible but perhaps a bridge too far. Further, there is in Moby Dick, that most American of novels, the example of the sailors on the Pequod, open-eyed, casting their lot with the mad obsession of Ahab. America’s future awaits.

RP

On and on

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Cultural momentum, be Chinese and Russian authoritarian imperialism or Euro-American colonial white supremacy, remain primal driving forces in world political history. The same must be said of the religious institutions of Islam, Christianity, and Judaism, each claiming being the favorite of God, and equally so of the global consumption of the life and riches of the Earth for survival and power. War and violence, profit and larceny, have been part and parcel of human history from its onset. As for American democracy being “a shining city on a hill”, armaments and munitions sales are soaring, fossil fuel drilling and consumption are booming, Andrew Jackson, father of the Trail of Tears, remains the face of the $20 bill, and Donald Trump aspires to an autocratic Presidency and has an avid following. The trajectory of mankind, increasingly technologically accelerated, seems ever more virally spiraling out of control, trending toward an uncertain end. The meek may well be destined to inherit the Earth or at least what is left of it. A basic law of physics states that a body in motion remains in motion until meeting a countering force. The heart of humankind is divided, at best bipolar, in imagining the future. Where we eventually land is narrowing precipitously.

RP

Disorder

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Regarded honestly, our American (and now global) psycho-social political economic configuration and underpinnings have no capacity nor inclination to realistically address global warming, the concentration of wealth, economic and climate migration, drug addiction, homelessness, misogyny, gun violence, unending (and profitable) warfare, nor universal healthcare, yet capitalist enterprise continues to be held up as the human ideal and inevitable “way of the world”. The world of finance thrives in an ethos built on the use of all available resources, human and natural. This ecology, our relationship with the world around us, is uniquely adversarial, exploitive, and destructive. “The Market” is worshipped as an all-powerful god. Those benefiting from this state of affairs, corporate and individual, have no qualms about using all their privilege, power, and wealth to maintain the status quo. Maximum profit is the “Golden Rule” of modern corporate business. Throughout history, those drawn to the allure and trappings of power and wealth have dominated the distribution of community well-being. “Overlord” is an antique term, but it is the most accurate description of today’s sociopolitical economy. Whether this is human nature or a carefully crafted manipulation to enrich a small elite class is the question of the Ages.

-RP

With God on our side

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Judaism, Christianity, and Islam all came into being in the Middle East, and there was a time adherents lived there in relative peace. It is beyond tragic that the region has become the flash point of intense economic and religious conflict. Righteousness and favor in God’s eye (in all three religions) ideally would seem to lead to charity and peace, but concepts of superiority and the allure of dominance have muscled their way into the minds of religious and political leaders. At the root of the problem is that all three religions trace their origin to the God of Abraham, by all accounts a stern, watchful, autocratic, at times vengeful entity seemingly without joy and laughter. From this beginning, the Middle East today is inevitably destined to erupt in a violent confrontation of differing interpretations of what gains the favor of a God who decreed, “thou shall have no other god above me”. Monotheism here has thus evolved into a contentious, deadly state of affairs, and while we may well indeed have a God problem (the claim of being made in his image speaks not particularly well of that God), what we actually have is a humanity problem, from which we have created a God from our own tendencies, one prone to violence, misogyny, male supremacy, a thirst for power, and penchant for war. At this core is the belief that power comes from an ability to dominate and destroy rather than one based on creativity and nurture. By definition, politics deals with the distribution of power within a society, economics on the distribution of wealth, and religion on leading a life that gains the favor of a supreme power. In today’s world, the combination of these three has become a Gordian’s Knot that intrinsically defies solution. The beliefs that Jews are God’s Chosen People, that martyrdom for Islam will be rewarded in the afterlife by Allah, and that possessing economic and military power, wealth and dominion, is God’s design for mankind are all addled misconceptions. Throughout history, civilizations and gods have come and gone. Until we truthfully acknowledge and resolve our darkest human tendencies, the future of all life on Earth remains in great peril.

RP

Disappointment

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It is disappointing that the editorial boards of both the Daily Camera and the Boulder Weekly have ignored the reality of global warming and climate change and chosen to believe in the competence of the City’s flood plan and that there are benevolent intentions in the University’s South Boulder expansion. It has long been an American ethic that the Earth exists for man to use and abuse for profit. The proposed “South Campus” site thus is seen as a wasteland awaiting development which will result in a net gain for the people of Boulder, despite the resulting increase of neighborhood traffic, during and after construction, and the loss of free access to a truly unique and irreplaceable piece of the natural world.

The truth that the proposed flood plan, paid for by all of Boulder, protects only a fraction of the homes impacted by the 2013 flood and that the real beneficiary is the University’s corporate business model, a massive rental empire allowed to operate largely tax-free, goes unnoted.

The net loss is heartbreaking for anyone truly caring for both the environment and the soul of mankind.

Vote Yes on 2F. For photos from the area, please visit notesfromtheprovinces.com/photography/ 

Town and Gown

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To the Editor:

Boulder has been a college town since first landing the University of Colorado. As the University grew, the city benefited and grew around it as a symbiotic partner. Under Bruce Benson and a Republican Board of Regents, tired of having to go hat-in-hand to an increasingly tight-fisted State Legislature for funding, CU adopted a pro-growth corporate real estate business model–bigger is better and more is more money. The University is run as a business operation, with generous tax benefits. Similarly, the City Council has joined the growth and development bandwagon and, for some unknown reason, so has the local Indian Peaks Chapter of the Sierra Club. How this has fared for Boulder residents is where problems arise. Housing has not kept pace with business development and thousands of cars commute into and drive around town every day, resulting in constantly increasing traffic congestion and ozone pollution. It is impossible to find practical benefit for residents and neighborhoods from the Google invitation, the University’s Limelight (hogging) Hotel on the Hill, or the proposed South Campus expansion on a site that is a natural open wonder as it stands “as is”. CU, the City Council, and the Sierra Club have each chosen to ignore the impact of the project on its carbon footprint and utilities use despite the reality of climate change, global warming, and the West’s continuing drought. In the coming election, the people of Boulder have an opportunity to make a clear statement for the environment and for themselves. Vote Yes to Repeal.

RP