Foto by tgw, "Morning After the Blizzard," New York City, December 2010--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Note, we lost Dr. Billy Taylor over the holidays. I knew Dr. Billy Taylor as founder of NYC radio station,WBLS, as a jazz FM station. He was also head of the Jazz Mobile program. Billy lived a good long life, 89, which is natural for jazz pianists--the coolest of jazz performers--I joke of course...though check it out: Hank Jones just died at 92; and Dave Brubeck's still alive in his 80s.
Billy Taylor, 89, American jazz pianist and composer, heart attack
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A Writer With Too Much to Write About
I was trying to write this morning. And I wrote all morning. Trying to understand the thinking of Leo Strauss and relating myself to Leo Strauss via the University of Chicago. Leo Strauss taught political philosophy at the University of Chicago. He was a native German. He was Jewish. He went to the University of Hamburg. He was a Sociologist of the antipositivist school--and I have discussed in a past post the big dilemma in Sociology is the one that says in order to be a respected science Sociology must have a system of measurements with which to keep its statistical gatherings as close to the actual reality of a society it is studying as it can honestly get. The dilemma derives from the two schools of Sociological Theory: Emil Durkheim, a Frenchman with direct connections to the Positivist founder of Sociology, Auguste Comte, who believed the empirical scientist must base his findings on observations and deductions gathered in an unbiased way--in other words, the opinions of the empirical observer must be factored out of the eventual conclusions. On the other side of the fence was Max Weber, the German Sociologist, whose viewpoint was that it doesn't matter if a Sociologist allows his or her own biases to color a gathering of unbiased "facts."
I wrote for a very long time on my own reverence to the work of German Neo-Kantian Sociologist Georg Simmel and I tried to give a clear indication of Simmel's "dyad" (two people in a relationship) and "triad" (three people in a relationship) theories--how in the dyad there can still be individualism but how if you add a third party to the dyad and make a triad, then individualism is out the window and the Sociologist must now deal with a variety of societal relationships, intricate relationships, entangled relationships, knotted relationships, mass movements, social psychologies, etc.
And I wrote all morning on Leo Strauss and Plato and Nietzsche and Heidegger and Weber and Simmel--and I really struck a vein of golden ideas when I in reading a criticism of Leo Strauss came across the concept of the "Noble Lie." Nietzsche talking about how great leaders, supermen, need noble myths to promote their leadership qualities. Leo Strauss agreeing with Nietzsche in the sense that he, too, believed in using the noble LIE in order to have a social democracy since the masses are afraid of change but change is of the natural order, so it is the noble lies (the noble myths) that allow our leaders to ready us for a major change.
And then...after all of this writing...I had a fully packed post racked up all the way down the lines to the sign-off line...I in a spur-of-the-moment decision trashed the whole thing.
That left me with these blank pages to fill up.
We the People of the USA are up to our necks in a broad range of noble lies.
Take the case of Ethel and Julius Rosenberg. Aha. You now see where this is leading? First clue: the Espionage Act of 1917. Truth out: at the time of the USA's being on the brink of getting involved in World War I (the war to end all wars--this in itself a noble lie), there was a huge block of opposition in the US against this involvement. Antiwar sentiment was thick as hops from coast to coast. Of course, our government at the time wanted to get in this war. Remember, this US war economy started after the Revolutionary War but really hit high gear after Thumping Teddy Roosevelt got out his Great White Fleet and on feet as silent as cat's paws prancing up a wet beach this Great White Fleet carried Teddy's Big Stick showboating around the world to pompously exhibit our military might and to introduce the oldest World Orders to this New World Order of Imperialist upstarts. Why, heck fire, that was the true beginning of the New World Order. Woody Wilson, that creepy history professor, decided it wasn't a time for dissent in this country. He had to get around that god-damn legalistic Constitution's Bill of Rights, stupid Jefferson, out of guilt for his White Plantation way of imperialistically thinking, adding on that Bill of Rights. What rights? Plus that god-damn First Amendment...the RIGHT of free speech. But that ain't RIGHT according to the right, and so Wilson decided, "Hey, White brothers, we need a way to get around that damn free speech amendment." And the boys spent many a long night in the backroom of the White Man's House over whiskeys and cigars secretly coming up with the Espionage Act of 1917.
From Wikipedia (they need money; hey, who doesn't?):
It [this Act] made it a crime:
- To convey information with intent to interfere with the operation or success of the armed forces of the United States or to promote the success of its enemies. This was punishable by death or by imprisonment for not more than 30 years or both.
- To convey false reports or false statements with intent to interfere with the operation or success of the military or naval forces of the United States or to promote the success of its enemies when the United States is at war, to cause or attempt to cause insubordination, disloyalty, mutiny, refusal of duty, in the military or naval forces of the United States, or to willfully obstruct the recruiting or enlistment service of the United States. This was punishable by a maximum fine of $10,000 fine or by imprisonment for not more than 20 years or both.
The Act also gave the Postmaster General authority to refuse to mail or to impound publications that he determined to be in violation of its prohibitions.[4]
The Act also forbids the transfer of any naval vessel equipped for combat to any nation engaged in a conflict in which the United States is neutral. Seemingly uncontroversial when the Act was passed, this later became a legal stumbling block for the administration of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, when he sought to provide military aid to Great Britain before the United States entered World War II.
Using this Act as grounds, We the People of the USA electrocuted Ethel and Julius Rosenberg, US citizens, Ethel more than probably totally innocent of any knowledge that her stupid husband was peddling atom bomb-making secrets (and the secrets he peddled weren't that important) to the Soviet Union, at that time, remember, just being changed from Ally status to enemy combatant status in a Cold War invented by John Foster Dulles, Dwight David "I Like Golf" Eisenhower's (he literally played golf nearly every day he was president; had a putting green built at We the People's expense on the White Man's House lawn--had a big heart attack while playing golf while staying out at his Denver retreat--rumors had it that the president's secret mountain bunker was in Denver) Sec'y of State. So Julian Assange get ready to be "whited" out--get ready to get the good ole patriotic juice applied to your terrorist ass. What you did didn't really reveal anything that most of the world already knows or certainly had suspicion of. Come on, anybody who lived through the Civil Rights and AntiVietnam War era knows the devious tricks of the FBI then still under J. Edgar Hoover, a true pervert, a sexual pervert, who kept huge dossiers on the sex life of prominent Americans, especially the politicians who he had by their balls. And the CIA and their tricks. Come on, who the hell doesn't know about how corrupt and devious and dunderheaded the CIA is? Assassinations are their specialty. Anybody care to know how many human beings the CIA has assassinated over the years. Patrice Lumumba, for instance. Salvadore Allende, for instance. And look at the innocents in Afghanistan and Pakistan CIA drone attacks and assassination team attacks have killed. One of the earliest Wikileaks leak was the leaked video of the Air Force goons blowing away a bus load of Afghans on their way to work or school--and our pilots under orders blew all these poor bastards to bits, women, children, grandparents, it doesn't matter to the CIA. Their job is the same as the U.S. Armed Forces: to Kill or Be Killed. You have to keep that in mind when you try and understand military logic. These boys are trained to kill or to be leaders and disciplinarians enough to order dumbass teenagers to KILL on command--shoving them into win-lose situations under the mantra of "You either kill 'em over here, or they're gonna be killing you and your family back in the Good Ole Never Wrong USA." And, yes, if Ethel and Julian Rosenberg deserved death under the octopus tentacles of the 1917 Espionage Act then so does Julian Assange deserve it--and read that Act carefully, from a legal perspective: hell yes all of We the People can be sentenced to death under the many tentacles of that unConstitutional law--and in the case of the secret-leaking evil Rosenbergs, ironically, look how many countries have tons of nuclear weapons these short half-a-century of years later--like how did Israel get ahold of their nuclear weapon secrets? For instance, check out how North Korea got ahold of their nuclear capabilities. Think Donald Rumsfeld and Unka Dick Cheney through a Swedish nuclear company they had stock in. So, hey, let's fry Unka Dick's ass in the same chair we're gonna fry Assange's ass in. And now North Korea is threatening nuclear annihilation if the USA through their South Korean stooges doesn't stop all this war taunting going on over there currently. All of this war taunting being fueled, equipped, engineered, and managed by the U.S. Military, the U.S. State Department, the President, and the U.S. Treasury.
Ah, but you must remember, I love irony. And irony leads to so many Noble Lies--golden bough myths that inevitably lead human-monkey civilizations to ruin. Nature, the Jungle, takes these once-great human-monkey achievements back over. Look at all those Mayan ruins still hidden by the Jungles of Guatamala and Honduras, the ruins of a very large city previously unknown recently uncovered in Guatamala. And we hold ruins up as collectibles. As antiques. As treasures. Yet, they are the sign of failure. Think of all those magnificent buildings that went to ruin after Rome fell to the Barbarians. Their ruins are impressive, but think of how impressive they were when they were new. When they still had their stuccos of so many different colors and designs plastered over their now decaying skeletons. Like Aztec and Mayan temples were plastered with colorful murals and emblazoned carvings--they papered their walls with gold leaf. Yet they were true civilizations carved out of thick jungles--escaping our true natures to follow a series of Noble Myths--myths based on the gigantic powers of the elevated to the divine chimpanzee who refers to himself in the masculine as MAN. And from MAN came...woman. According to ancient myths, woman came from the ribs of MAN. Woman inheriting the Woe of Man. Woman is condemned to be Mother Nature or Mother Earth. While MAN becomes God the Father. The Great White Father. The Rooster before the egg.
And now we are in the final chaotic moments of our crumbling and falling into ruin civilization.
The Great Blizzard of 2010 is now a thing of the past. Here in New York City, the piles of blackening once lusciously soft and inviting snow are now rot-melting in our gutters and curbs, leaving behind the trash, empty beer cans, Styrofoam containers, vomits, pisses, that are the remainders of a landscape that only a few days ago was engulfing and dominating and too much for our Billionaire Mayor and his REDUCED sanitation department (he had just fired 400 sanitation workers). Our little-man mayor has ever since been interrupting teevee programs madly to whine and duck and dodge the reasons why large portions of New York City are still snowbound--making fire and emergency vehicle getting around fast impossible. And this morning in front of my building, the garbage is piling up to mini-skyscraper heights. In fact, my building's garbage pile is now higher than the piles of rotting snow that still plug up our street's gutters and curbs. But, hey, all this snow didn't keep Hiz Little Man Honor from getting to all his teevee pulpits--even showing up at the big NYPD graduation ceremonies that went on in Madison Square Garden just a day or so ago--and the Mayor gave this speech in which he said the NYC police department was the finest known to all men and that under our Shanty Irish Police Commissioner, Little Man Ray Kelly (a man who was accused of a mishandling of finances when he was head of G.W. Bush's U.S. Customs Department), We the Citizens of NYC are just snug as little obedient bugs in a rug--why hell, you noticed though we've had attempted attack after attack from these weirdo homegrown Islamic jihadists, they've all been disrupted by the NYPD, who by the way, don't have a new contract yet under Hiz Bloomingidiot Honor; nor does the NYFire Department, who the Mayor has been honoring down at Ground Zero National Monument--it's all enough to make a correct-thinking chimp like myself commit suicide like my heroes Papa Hemingway and Dr. Hunter S. Thompson. I'm too old to have to go back to work in a war plant. Nor do I care to spend my final years in a concentration camp. Or hell, I hope I'm wrong in sensing ovens are being built at some dark secret place in this country as I type this--they are perhaps setting up a FINAL SOLUTION for those of us no matter our politics who begin to protest...to risk joining Julius and Ethel Rosenberg and Julian Assange in the electric chairs awaiting those of us who DISSENT in this country. Espionage. GUILTY.
I see where the bomb that blew up 20-or-so Egyptian Coptics (Christians) in their church yesterday is being attributed to, "perhaps," as the news sources are putting it, al-Queda. And oh what a NOBLE LIE al-Queda is.
thegrowlingwolffor The Daily Growler
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