Wow. Trump. What a Villain, and What a Shame for the USA.

(May 05, 2018.)   

The other day, President Trump withdrew the United States from the Iran nuclear agreement.  And now I read that Israel has launched strikes on the Iranian military installations in ruined, embattled Syria - something just short of an out-and-out attack on Iran itself.  Both actions are assaults on international peace and security, on Western credibility, and on human decency.  Both events are scurrilous blows to all the diplomats, leaders and activists who toiled for years to forge an anti-nuclear agreement with Iran, one that mitigated a great international threat without the firing of a single shot.  Both events simply hasten World War III, in my opinion, accelerating the current world-wide descent into barbarism, resulting in the suffering of further millions.

No statesman would have done this, in effect putting Iran back on the road to a nuclear confrontation and certainly setting back Iran's entrance into the civilized world of diplomacy; no decent individual would have gone back on America's word, backed out of our own promise, unilaterally tore up the contract; only an arrogant, giddy villain like Trump, dastardly, violent, and provocative, would have done this.  It is easier to understand Netanyahu's policy of endless violence - Israel lives under a shadow of Muslim and Arabic race and religious hatred - but Trump has no excuse.

But then, he didn't need one.  Because the Republican Party's answer to everything is always war and more war.  He and his adherents already despised the Deal, ignoring that it had succeeded in restraining Iran from direct development of nuclear weapons. They and Trump all harbor a primary contempt for diplomacy and a primary hunger for war.  And - of course - their obsession with destroying any of President Obama's substantial accomplishments.

This decision will alienate European allies; it will morally empower Iran to begin once more to develop nuclear weapons.  And, plainly, it served as a red flag to Netanyahu's Israel, signalling them to go ahead and begin undeclared war in Syria.  And so the USA joins not only the company of backward warlord-states like Russia, but also joins Al-Qaeda and such supra-national terrorist bands, all dedicated to a future of barbarism and carnage.

Feet Slipping on the Rocks

Salvete, qui legant -

How many of us recall being in water up to our necks and trying to find toe-purchase atop slimy, mossy lake stones?  That seems an apt metaphor for my mental and moral state just now.  Trying to get a grip, as it were. 

My life is not that of a gung-ho hot-shot nor even that of a giddy, myopic gas-bag.  My firmament in life is a slippery rock of absurdity - being myself too-much-that and not-enough-this, and so on.  The world of youthful competition and 24/7 performance-merit passed me by long ago, and it is one part of human nature with which I've never identified, except in fantasy. I've worked in my life - mostly for attorneys and their ilk, piddly stuff, but for people who DO live in the 24/7 giddiness - and seen them from a distance, occasionally felt the breeze of accomplishment myself.

But it's not me; that stuff is not forthcoming.  I remain out-of-it, strange, aside, "oddly conventional", and so on.  I balance atop the rock, liquid mossy, but that's as much as I can manage, it seems. 

So it is from this perpetual perspective of anomy that I face society's daily push-and-shove, and in particular these days the lightning and thunder spectacle of a Presidential election.  A decade ago I stopped asking "Why?" and accepted that people have their bestial norms and must act according to them:  a need to find enemies, a need to blame others, an inability to understand strangers, and (for oh-so-many) those very plain internal maps to winning, exploitation, and abuse of the "other".  This is nature; this is sadness for me, gaiety for them. 

There are a few lights in the dreariness: the Symbolic Sun (Invictus so far, if not truly immortal), friends, material fortune (to have a job, income, a home), and especially the boon of simple love, of wife and kids at home. 

So I'm still here.  Still trying to breathe and balance near the banks of Chaos River. 

Valete. 

P.S.  Yeah, post-commute-blues, feeling sorry for myself.  But this did help re-center me, and - as Jackie Gleason used to say - "Awaaay we go!" 

Metaphysics from Iohannes

Salve, si aliquis has legit !

I am, as affiliations go, a Stoic -- at least, these days.  Have been since 2006, a decade or so.  I'm currently taking a course from the College of Stoic Philosophers (not accredited, I don't believe) whose classes are done over the Internet, are affordable, and are not bound up in the toils of professional academia.  Professional philosophers may sniff at this College (collection of colleagues) but it fulfills a purpose that the unaffordable and scholarly-professional schools do not address -- common people living their lives. 

Enough about the College. I'm grateful they've been around.  But I'm currently finishing up a quarter in which we've read on Stoic Physics, which -- for the Stoics -- was also Stoic Theology.  We're at the last section, and the subject is Piety. 

Looking over Erik the Scholarch's summation for this quarter, I find myself agreeing with most everything.  The one area where I can't agree with Erik and my mentor, Chris, is that of the Stoic God's Providence.  The Stoics had an interesting idea of God and of Providence:  They argued that while most of the universe is a system of causes (not a chain, not a domino effect), men are set apart, a section in them reserved for a minor sort of divine intelligence (all the universe being infused to greater or lesser degrees with a Cosmic Intelligence that orders things and creates movement and animation and consciousness).  What this does is set men (ie, people, humans, of both genders) apart as having a say-so in their own fates.  Fate rules all, and yet not finally, because men generally have the power to think and choose.  (Rather like Christianity, isn't it?  I'm sure there are endless parallels in other religions, too.) 

Where I part with Erik's and Chris's theistic notions is largely in this notion of Providence.  What does it mean?  I agree that God (as Universal Nature and as the divine Pneuma that pervades it) has provided for men and their survival as a species.  But I argue that that is about as far as it goes.  Erik and Chris might agree, but we part on the definition of Providence.  If the Stoic God (the divine Intelligence innate in the cosmos) were fully provident, we humans would have had a better nature to begin with; we would not be such a miserable, splintered, hostile, dissatisfied and ape-like species.  Erik's Providence goes only so far -- which is fine, actually, for Stoicism quite properly looks askance at most notions of Absolute Purity and Infinite this-and-that.  We have no Types, no Perfect God, no Perfect Other World; there is only what was, what is, and what comes to be. 

But then Erik quotes this, from our old drill instructor, Epictetus:

"For if we had any understanding, ought we not, both in public and in private, incessantly to sing and praise the Deity, and rehearse his benefits?" 

Well, yes and no.  We might, because we are small and insignificant, and incapable of the kind and degree of creation that Epictetus would have us thank God for.  But a question arises:  What's the purpose of this incessant praise?  Wasn't God doing what he is supposed to, that is, providing?  Moreover, isn't that Providence limited?  Yes, he's given us a bit for each, in terms of Intelligence, with which to affect Fate on our own; he's sort of 'deputized' us as Junior Gods, you might say.  But again, isn't that now our job, to be intelligent, to be good, to be so at the same time that we're being the particular kind of beasts that we (quite demonstrably) are?  God does his bit, and we do ours -- and that's the ticket.  God deserves praise only insofar as the entire World deserves praise, and most of the world is, to the Stoic, necessarily a thing Indifferent -- a world "not up to us" to control.  Moreover, indifference is the Stoic God's personal relation with us -- he's absent, except (again) as Universal Nature and as Our Individual Natures. 

Is this a big deal?  No, except that I can't join the Chorus of Theistic Stoics singing, "Praise God for this wonderful life!" when, no, it's not wonderful, but mixed and problematic.  Men and Women, Democrats and Republicans, Christians and Muslims?  War, serial killers, torture, disease, tooth-and-claw?  This may be a providence, a gift of animation, but it cannot be called "a wonderful life". 

"Thank you for the loan, God; I'll try to take care of it as I ought to, this Life, before you get it back from me."  I think that sums up the relationship quite well, "incessant praise" aside.   If you want God, read Thomas Paine and Camus and you will have a good beginning.  Stoicism is to be praised, I think, for putting all that -- earthly experience -- into perspective without resorting to either inflation of the Human Ego past its proper degree, or erecting Idols and demanding sacrificial victims, or simply sugar-coating the whole mess and ignoring evil.  Tie your shoelaces and save the drowning, as Thoreau advised; there's no need to get absurd in response to reality's absurdities. 

Vale, et aude sapere. 

Some Movement (re prior blog entry, 'Stereotypes')

Salvete, qui legentes --

Just after I'd posted the blog entry 'Stereotypes' the other day, the news came out that the attack in San Bernardino was indeed politically and religiously motivated -- although strangely targeted.  It's apparently the same old Wahhabist anti-Western violence, this time on a more modest suburban scale.  (Guns furnished, gladly, by the membership of the NRA. That's another and potentially salutary group, apparently currently composed of nincompoops, that needs to wake up -- but that'll be a different story.) 

The news-worthier part of the story is this:  that American Muslims are raising money to give help the families of the victims of that attack.  Here's a link to the article:  http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-muslim-fundraise-20151208-story.html , and to the organization:  http://www.celebratemercy.com/ .  The fund itself is called "Muslims United for San Bernardino"; they acknowledge that donations of money will not correct the evil done or ameliorate the suffering of the survivors, "but we do hope to lessen their burden in some way."  God knows, there will be funeral expenses and more such petty miseries.  But what is news-worthy is this:  American Muslims are human, and despite their particulars many of them have simple human sympathy for the victims and their devastated friends and families. 

“Since 9/11, we’ve felt we need to come out of our cocoons,” said Shaykh Mohammed Faqih of the Islamic Institute of Orange County [ https://www.facebook.com/m.ibnfaqih/info/?tab=page_info ]. “We’re as American as anyone else … but if society is not feeling it, it means I’m not doing enough.”  Again, Sheik Faqih is of a younger and American-grown generation of Muslims, but by God! he's got the right attitude.  He is connected with a religious organization called the AlMaghrib Institute [ http://almaghrib.org/ ]. 
Dr. Faisal Qazi, the Southern Californian neurosurgeon who initiated the fund for the families, has several interesting things to say.  "The American Muslim community has had extensive and intense conversations in the last decade about our role in society.  What you’re seeing is the coming of a new generation of American Muslims being emotionally and physically invested in whatever transpires in society.” 

Some Muslims do speak out against the violence, despite those voices sounding weak.  But they are there, nonetheless.  For example, see www.m-a-t.org/ , a Canadian Muslim organization that speaks against it, albeit with a conservatively religious voice.  Across the pond in the UK, there is a yearly "UK Arbaeen Procession" which is a Muslim-organized multi-faith march for "unity and friendship between people of all ages and cultures" [ http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/hundreds-muslims-marching-against-terrorism-6977099 ]. 
 
Better still, to me, is www.freemuslims.org , a group proud to be an American-Muslim organization "willing to attack extremism and terrorism unambiguously."  They acknowledge that too many Muslim-American authority figures are not so willing and some are indeed sympathetic to terrorist aims.  This adds a note of realism to their stance, that they admit that people in Muslim-American communities have divergent opinions on the crisis.  "Free Muslims will challenge these beliefs and target the sympathetic support given to terrorists by Muslims", says their 'About Us' blurb on their website (above).  

All in all, this gives me hope.  American Muslims may finally be waking up, especially the younger of them.  Now, could some of these sympathetic organizations actually be concealing terrorist supporters?  Sure, it's possible.  But in what part of human history has there not been angry people?  The Republican Party is made of little else, it sometimes seems.  There have been more peaceful times, certainly.  But think about it:  the USA and her republic have survived the Depression, World War II's Nazi Bund, urban riots in the 60's, and (of course) the September 11 attack.  Even if -- okay, when -- there is more terrorist bloodshed here at home, still the republic, the American way of life, will survive.  It's too good to be thrown away.  And I think a lot of American Muslims would say the same.

Bene valete.

Stereotypes

Salvete, qui legentes --

The stereotype of the Muslim Terrorist is omnipresent, and, of course, all the more so now after the November attacks in Paris. 

But I myself would like to know more about the people who de facto share the supposed traits of such a Terrorist and yet are NOT themselves supporters of terrorism.  This is because of my desire to answer a question: Why is there no appreciable voice coming out of the more-or-less Islamic world generally that repudiates or better yet denounces Muslim absolutism?  Are there people of a Mid-Eastern background, a Muslim background, an Arab background, and so on, who can or will solidly denounce Islamic Terror?  If there are, they appear to be invisible or at best, timid. 

I see multiple possible reasons for the silence.
(a)  News is made by violence and extremism, and not by being reasonable. Tales of terrorism and its horrors sell more commercial spots than reason or decency would. 
(b)  The voices might be there, but have simply been ignored by the media as not news-worthy! 
(c)  The voices might be there, but the speakers lacking mutual knowledge, organization or motivation by which to amplify their arguments.
(d)  People who are not maniacs are often absorbed by living their lives, rather than debating foreign policy or inviting trouble. 
(e)  Where poverty and testosterone are prevalent, they strongly inform popular opinion.  This leads to manias and brutally simplistic -- even "Final" -- solutions.  This "legitimizes" violence for a lot of people. 
(f)  In popular opinion in all cultures, blame is assigned first to foreigners (e.g., "Mexicans are thieves", etc.) or to fellow-citizens of an opposite political bent (e.g., "Liberals are traitors", etc.).  Detachment and reason are not to be expected in popular culture, and blame will automatically be assigned to "the usual suspects", "THOSE people".  Many people, in other words, don't know any better. 
(g)  In the modern cultural environment of the Middle East and quite probably in the world diaspora of Middle-Easterners, the anti-Western terrorists are often seen as heroes: to decry them would invite not only verbal retribution against the speaker but also physical assault and murder.  In a word, popular repression silences those who might speak up.
(h)  As in most cultures, "If you're not with us, then you're against us!" is very likely the political rule-of-thumb of many in Middle Eastern and Islamic communities.  This amplifies (e), (f) and (g) above; see also (i), following.
(i)  Any criticism of Arab or Muslim extremism will, following the fallacy in (h) above, be received popularly as support for Israel, and as disloyalty to the Palestinian cause.  This could be a problem not only of outward coercion, but of inward conscience as well. 
(j)  In Islamic culture generally, there has perhaps never been much of a dividing line between God, religion and the state.  As a basic and popular idea, then, law may mean religion more than society, and when push-comes-to-shove in debate, religion becomes (mentally, automatically) the constitutional foundation.  As a result, absolutism lies ever-ready in the mind, and God is already installed as the ultimate magistrate of things earthly.  This is a strait-jacket on the mind and not limited to Islamic culture, by any means.
(k)  Tit-for-tat:  It is believed that foreign soldiers and American drones are routinely killing the innocent along with the guilty all over the Middle East, and therefore that every massacre of Westerners (or even other Middle-Easterners) may be seen as justified on a kind of eye-for-an-eye basis. 

Given that some or all of this is accurate -- I do NOT know that it is, I hasten to say, but some of it seems most likely to an outsider like myself -- then it would be no wonder to me if Muslims tended to fall in line in silent support of terror, and to ignore their own consciences in favor of their over-zealous "heroes" out on the prowl, who have bagged yet more infidel victims. 

Vobis voluntatis bonae omnibus, bene valete.  To you of goodwill, all, be ye well. 

Ah, Give Me the Cold War ...

In the 1960s, poised beneath the uncertain nuclear stalemate between the USA and USSR, there continued to be hope for universal peace -- the hoped-for product of World War II.  The First World War's "never again!" notion had gone to hell with the rise of Bolshevism, the world-wide Depression, and the subsequent rise of Fascism in various formats the world over.  World War II made a monstrous desert of much of the earth and a pause ensued -- a hostile one, which began to be amended in the 60s and 70s.

At my age, I long for the age of nuclear standoff, when there was still a hope in Hell that Russians and Americans might figure out how to get along.  I have to remind myself that to be fond of such a time is to be unfair to those who had suffered in the Gulag and otherwise behind the Iron Curtain. Still, what fond hopes.

But this is life, and friction governs.  Universally, the molecules and animals are all itchy and will not be patient, fair or just.  Reason goes far to make weapons, only a small way to create peace.  Mao Tse-Tung (the fat old spider) ran China into the ground; Pol Pot arose in Cambodia to patriotically murder and destroy his own people; old Russian fascism (Bolshevism, Stalinism, etc.) got its comeuppance in Afghanistan (little did Americans supporting Muslim resistance realize who they were abetting in their covert operations).  No, not freedom but new fascisms reveal themselves everywhere, and nowhere so well as in their various forms in the Middle East.  Even Israel, child of Jews, a whole people homeless and abused for centuries, succumbed to the Rule of Brutality, and in defending itself became a conqueror and colonizer of others' lands, aping the success of their own Nazi persecutors and the bile and xenophobia of their racist Arab opponents.

What a world.

Couple of Quotes

A couple of quotes from browsing today: 

This quote is one that we should all bear in mind - especially 'believers' who have not yet gone hardcore.  This is what we're seeing (along with a bloody sort of political theatre) with ISIS/ISIL in Iraq:

"... religious violence seldom limits itself to one target and expands to reach the maximum number of available victims."

(from 'The First Victims of the First Crusade', Feb 13, 2015 - by Susan Jacoby (New York Times)   http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/15/opinion/sunday/the-first-victims-of-the-first-crusade.html


On other topics, from Orson Welles:

"We're born alone, we live alone, we die alone. Only through our love and friendship can we create the illusion for the moment that we're not alone."
 
And another:

"If you want a happy ending, that depends, of course, on where you stop your story." 

Valete. 

Lawsuit over Support of Terrorism

Terrorism Trial, NY Times, 2015-Feb-24
　
NY Times: "The Palestinian Authority and the Palestine Liberation Organization were found liable on Monday by a jury in Manhattan for their role in knowingly supporting six terrorist attacks in Israel between 2002 and 2004 in which Americans were killed and injured.
"The damages are to be $655.5 million, under a special terrorism law that provides for tripling the $218.5 million awarded by the jury in Federal District Court.
"The verdict ended a decade-long legal battle to hold the Palestinian organizations responsible for the terrorist acts, an effort that encompassed fights over jurisdiction, merit and even practicality: History has shown that it is difficult for victims of international terrorism to bring their civil cases to trial, let alone to recover damages."
"Money is oxygen for terrorism," said plaintiffs' attorney Kent A. Yalowitz.  Can't disagree there.  And the deservedly bitter hatred arising from the endless carnage of Israeli retaliations and the popular Arab Fascist bigotry towards Israel and the West both together provide endless fuel for the terrorist engines.  
"... citing testimony, payroll records and other documents, the plaintiffs showed that many of those involved in the planning and carrying out of the attacks had been employees of the Palestinian Authority [had been, at the time of their terror work?], and that the Authority had paid salaries to terrorists imprisoned in Israel [ooops] and had made martyr payments to the families of suicide bombers."  Ooops again. But perhaps these politically expedient gestures were necessary for the Authority to survive, since it has to try to maintain some kind of "good image" amid the hate-filled Arab & Palestinian mainstream.
Dr. Mahmoud Khalifa, the Palestinian Authority’s deputy minister of information, reportedly said:
"This case is just the latest attempt by hardline anti-peace factions in Israel to use and abuse the U.S. legal system to advance their narrow political and ideological agenda."

Disagree with the characterization; he's trying to shift blame.  Such Israelis may well be behind these suits, but don't these suits stand on their merits?  Were not violent crimes committed?  (Sadly, there is no one to prosecute the United States or the Russian Federation or Israel for their criminal acts.)  That the Palestinians supported and fostered Hamas and its ilk to begin with is simply criminal.  

Moreover, if you want to talk about a "narrow political and ideological agenda", then let's talk about Hamas and Islamic Fascism generally.
Khalifa also called the decision "a tragic disservice to the millions of Palestinians who have invested in the democratic process and the rule of law in order to seek justice and redress their grievances."

Agree. As the Palestinian state struggles to realize itself, badgered by Israel and entirely infiltrated by Hamas and so on, it is a damned sad thing to find US Courts kicking it while it's down.
But this brings us to another point:   Logically, Israel should be SUPPORTING a Palestinian state, as Israel's only hope of any sort of peace.   As Khalifa points out, only the Palestinian Authority represents the rule of law, at least in principle; plainly the PLO and Hamas never have. 
Moreover, since the Israeli people and governments had in years gone by utterly failed to even TRY to integrate the Palestinians into what is now Israel, that avenue has lapsed.  They will have to make peace (if peace is even on Netanyahu's Putin-esque agenda) in some other way.  But this way, and without realizing what they're doing, intransigent retaliatory Israel is actually bowing to the will of Hamas, forging ahead with endless war - adding yet more fuel to the well-oxygenated flame of Mid-Eastern Fasicsm. 
 

Dancing with Tragedy

Salvete, qui legant -

I don't read much fiction. What fiction I do read is usually something I missed a long time back but want to experience, or further stories by authors I relish.

But a while back I came into possession of a relatively new (& relatively immense) little pocketbook titled, "A Game of Thrones" by Geo. R. R. Martin. We're treated here to a fantastical realm, very concretely laid out but still very much a fantasy world: Westeros. And the narrative's master arch is of two widely-separated but converging story lines - of the Stark family of Winterfell (think medieval Europe) and of princess Daenerys Targaryen (think of a child of the Mediterranean betrothed to the kha-khan of the Steppes). Martin is a very capable writer, his characters were interesting and three-dimensional, and pretty soon I was hooked.

I marveled at Martin's gift for concluding every chapter with a twist, usually sad and retrograde, never letting his reader relax in his or her pursuit of the resolution of the characters' troubles. Finished with the first book, "A Game", I snapped up the whole series (as it stood at that point in time) and eagerly started the second book, "A Clash of Kings". The first book had seen the collapse of an inwardly troubled regime, and the outbreak of general hostilities between the various nominally feudal powers of Westeros, and instead of Tolkien's Battle of Five Armies, it was now the Armed Politics of Five Kingdoms.

The chaos becoming deeper and grimmer with every chapter, and the characters never getting an even break except that it was followed by two or three or four chapters of misfortune, slavery, mutilation or death of loved ones, I found myself tiring. Martin's "gift" for twists and unwelcome turns became less and less engaging, and more and more dismaying. Finally (for me) comes the moment when the - well, no spoilers; but suffice it to say that we receive a HEAPING helping of fictional tragedy mid-book in the third one, "Storm of Swords", so much so, and of such an undeserved sort, that I just folded up the bloated little paperback and filed it away. I was through.

Some have called him "the American Tolkien". I differ. While it's true that J. R. R. Tolkien's books had their own grim insistence on evil, it's also true that those elements were balanced with moments of sensual pleasure, comedic interludes, and heroic fights. Boromir is tragic and doomed, but goes very far towards redeeming himself at the the end of his life. Frodo struggles and suffers and suffers and struggles, and in the end, but for chance, succumbs to the evil of the Ring, yet he survives wounded and tired, and goes his way, still accompanied by Sam, even unto the Grey Havens, the final resting place for the Elven.

But in Martin's universe, most everyone seems to be Orcish - not literally, but morally and in terms of their luck. His heroes soldier on, suffering disfigurement and abuse, but - like God above - Martin has no particular love for them, and strives to defeat our expectations that have naturally arisen from the story-telling - expectations that order will return, that a good decision will be made by somebody somewhere, that people will finally choose life instead of foolishness and infamy and suicide. But, in the post-Night of the Living Dead pop-ethos that this age prefers, Martin keeps the bad guys winning, as fish after fish eats or mutilates or betrays the other fish around him or her. Breaking with sword & sorcery tradition and formula, Martin leads us through a hopeless Inferno of political and personal crime, without any hint of reprieve, and brings forth a truly Jacobean pot-boiler of a series. But his Sadism quotient is simply too high, and any appellations of "American Tolkien" are sadly off target, as well.

Bene valete.