Category Archives: Uncategorized

Without Rails

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The undercurrent of the Resistance to ICE in Minneapolis is the stipulation in the Constitution that law and order is built around maintaining human dignity and protecting human rights, not on brute force and power. In the ICE raids ordered by Tom Homan and Kristi Noem, due process in the court of law is replaced with Palantir algorithms identifying non-White immigrants targeted for arrest and deportation. This arises from Donald Trump’s promotion of White nationalism and embrace of the violence he pardoned in the January 6th attack on the Capitol. His Art of the Deal and The Apprentice are manuals of manipulation for personal gain, the skills with which he built his portfolio of wealth, privilege, and power. In his second Presidency, this wealth has ballooned “beyond anything ever seen before, never” in American politics, and his ambition has grown into disrupting the global political-economic order and forcing it into a megalomaniacal vision of himself orchestrating, god-like from on high. His deepest fear is being seen as a loser in any aspect of life. All opposition is met with vengeance. Psychoanalytically, this is certifiable sociopathy. The danger in America moving forward after Trump is the degree to which this fixation on holding and wielding power is ingrained in our cultural ethos, One sees it smoldering in the eyes of his enablers. The exploitation of human and natural resources has been here since the first immigrant arrivals, the establishment of slavery, and the “settling” of the continent. Donald Trump today need be seen as a breakthrough revelation of the extremes to which it can rise. Overall, this is a hard lesson for America and for all humanity. 

RP

A Lesson in Happiness

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After 20 plus years of walking dogs on the various Open Space and South Campus footpaths, and no longer having a faithful companion, I realized that I was not taking dogs on a walk, they were taking me, and just the other day, taking myself for a now more rare walk, I watched people interacting with their four-legged friends and saw just who was treating whom, and how much more in tune with life the dogs were than their purported guardians. “Come on, this is the way to be alive! Get off your butt and out of the house. Stretch your legs, catch the sights, breathe the open air.” Such happiness is a lesson for all of us. 

RP

Lazy in Language

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Abetting Donald Trump’s rise in popularity and power is a social media slackness of in-depth thought and discussion. Communication is limited to short outbursts. Acronymns replace understanding of what institutions actually delineate as their duties. ICE, DOJ, DOH, DEA, FBI, FDA, FCC and SCOTUS are being molded into a single law enforcement arm under the direction of Presidential order. Politically, laws are decreed, not enacted by legislative deliberation. All this requires laziness of language. DEI is an easy target for attack. Understanding what Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion mean requires real thinking, not a quick dismissal. Using the President’s fondness for capitalization, “WOKE” is his racial slur for anyone believing in the ideals of DEI, the antitheses of which are White supremacy, concentration of wealth, and antipathy to human empathy. Having recently spent a few hours in the cafeteria and surgery waiting room of a major hospital in Denver, I had a sudden realization that I was sitting in the middle of a DEI institution built around the declared ideals of the nation. “Wokeness” is America’s true Greatness.

– RP

Check the Kool-Aid

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If Iran had actually wanted to build an atom bomb, it could have done so years ago. They were using that threat as a bargaining chip in getting sanctions lifted against their economy imposed by Western powers. The existence of Israel has been an irritant to Islamic nations since it was forced on the region. The hidden issue, as in most things in the Middle East, is oil. Iran is a founding member of BRICS, a consortion of nations including China, Russia, India, and Brazil, challenging America’s dominance of the world economy, and has called for a Muslim embargo of crude oil into Israel. For those who remember when members of the Bush Administration were sharpening their knives to divide up the oil fields in Iraq, there are untapped oil reserves in Palestine. Meanwhile, the starvation and ethnic cleansing of Palestinians in Gaza rages on. Iran’s real threat to Israel was not nuclear; it is economic. Controlling the production and flow of oil is the reason behind Israel’s attack on Iran. For Donald Trump and the Art of the Deal, “having the cards”, in this instance overwhelming military intelligence and air power, made his choice easy, and we are now “all in” on climate change and global warming denial and the continuation of fossil fuel extraction and burning. Our modern world was built on its power. Mother Earth is now clearly casting doubt on the wisdom of that choice, but no one wants, as in “whistling past the graveyard”, to pay heed to those voices. Power over the flow of oil must be maintained at all costs.

RP

Christian Values vs. Political Power: A Critical Look

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It is becoming difficult not to feel cynical about the trajectory of the nation and the world as propelled by the “visionary” concepts of Donald Trump. A first concern is the environment. Climate change and global warming will not cease to exist because he claims it is a hoax, nor is it the inevitable cost of having a vibrant economy. Droughts, floods, and violent storms are the new everyday life on Earth. Denial of reality is an addict’s path. A second is the Conservative Right’s claim that America is a Christian nation. In my Sunday school education, I learned that the Beatitudes of the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus’ stress on compassion, forgiveness, empathy, and charity, were the core essence and distinguishing exception of Christianity over earlier religions. This is in sharp contrast with hard-right beliefs, be they evangelical or Catholic, which are more in line with the exercise of vengeance and power portrayed in the Old Testament, wherein humanity is a tooth-and-claw struggle for dominion. Care of the Earth and of those less fortunate are dismissed in today’s social and economic stratification. The power of wealth is valued above all. That this ethos thrives foremost with the President, in the halls of Congress and Justice, and in corner corporate offices leaves little optimism for the future of humanity in America, or, for that matter, life on planet Earth.

RP

Understanding the Capitalist Grift: Lessons from Trump and Musk

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The Art of the Deal in America began with the perhaps mythical exchange of a basket of beads for the island of Manhattan. As the First People of the Americas were to learn in the many treaties they signed, it was more truthfully the Art of the Steal, one side getting more than the other, which is the holy mantra of Donald Trump. Losing in a deal (or opinion) is worse than death. His predictable response is to swiftly unleash an army of lawyers to reclaim the high ground, “I dare anyone to oppose my thirst for power.” Elon Musk is equally a capitalist grifter operating at the highest level. His billions have risen from tapping into taxpayer dollars. Tesla got its start from government subsidies, and buying a Tesla still awards a tax break to those who can afford one. Newly from Trump, it has been given a contract to build future armored military vehicles. The company could not survive in a peaceful, global free market economy. The big rockets and dreams of space travel of Space X are federally funded by NASA. That these two egomaniacs, aided by media moguls destroying people’s right to privacy, are ruling over the governing of the United States, claiming it is their Constitutional right, frighteningly resembles the mind-numbing omniscient rule of Big Brother in George Orwell’s 1984, right down to the double speak and omnipresent face on television. What is lost in that world is the possibility of love and caring for others

RP

Clash of Titans: Trump and Musk’s Impact on America

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The Elon Musk/Donald Trump Alliance appears to be holding for now. Both are serving the other’s needs, such as they are. Elon dreams of colonizing Mars and being a messenger of the salvation of humankind, while Donald, oblivious to the suffering loss of Palestinian lives and homes, envisions a Trump Hotel and golf course rising from the rubble of the Gaza Strip. Both of these egocentric sociopaths, hungry for power and certain of their brilliance, are off the charts of psychiatric normalcy. Both have severely damaged psyches enthralled with wielding power. Thus far, they are working in tandem to lay a broad axe to the structures of American government, an act no less globally unsettling than that of the Trotsky/Lenin overthrow of the Russian Tsars. Some speculate that a Clash of the Titans is inevitable, perhaps an Alien Versus Predator scenario raging through the halls of the White House and Congress. Someone has to emerge as number one. In the meantime, confusion and anxiety over the ramifications of Trump 2.0 hang over everyone’s future.

Racing apace

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Everything everywhere all at once. The breakneck speed and urgency of Donald Trump’s first days of imposing his will on government and the American people is dizzying to anyone trying to analyze and comprehend what is emerging. Confusion is enervating and Trump is the master of manipulation, adept at bending anger and mass hysteria in his favor, and tweeting doublethink for and against nearly every issue. All the while, Congressional members are trembling in their suits in fear of stirring his anger. Welcome to 1984. George Orwell was eerily prescient in showing the overwhelming power of Doublespeak in propaganda messaging when it is omnipresent and unquestioned. With the rise of social media and data mining, personal privacy no longer exists, and Big Brother, aka Donald Trump, is ever watchful and demanding.

RP

Destiny in Question

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Donald Trump, his MAGA acolytes, and his millionaire/billionaire supporters are simply a continuation of America’s “Manifest Destiny”, the belief that this New World continent was God’s gift to White men. That the birth of the United States included the genocide of the America’s First People, slavery, women regarded as second class citizens, and the exploitation of the Earth and human labor is not important to these “true” American patriots. Everything was for the taking, a concept that has not left the country. With its belief that racial and cultural diversity leads to the undoing of American values, the Trump phenomenon has deep roots in our history and heritage, and can be seen as an heirloom fruit of the Founding Fathers. Countering that embedded cultural momentum and its resulting concentration of wealth and power, and addressing human-caused global warming will require a monumental shift of national and human ingenuity and identity. It is not just us, the entire world faces a daunting future. There will be no easy sailing for whoever is the next President.

Media Machine

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Between Elon Musk’s Twittersphere and the country-wide talk radio echo chamber Donald Trump’s Republican Party has a media propaganda machine equal to that of the Communist Party in China, Vladimir Putin’s autocracy in Russia, and Big Brother in George Orwell’s 1984. Information available to the public is to be tightly controlled and manipulated to favor the ruling regime. 1984 explores, in combining Orwell’s experience and insights expressed in two earlier novels, the callous oblivion of British capitalism in Burmese Days and Stalin’s betrayal in the Spanish Civil War of a truly populist people’s rebellion in Homage to Catalonia, the end of truth, love, and caring in power politics. Like Big Brother, Trump continually expresses an aura of absolute certainty of his correctness. More than ever Orwell should be required reading for everyone of voting age.