Are We Driven?

    I was half watching a documentary the other day concerning the idea of ancient extraterrestrial contact. Judging by the presenter's haircut,  I would say it was made in the late '90s or early 2000s.  Erich Von Daniken made a brief appearance.  He seemed to be about 70 so, that timing seems right. The presenter seemed to be about 25. The hair.

    The documentary was funny.  It was built on the same misunderstandings of physical artifacts and unwarranted assumptions and assertions Von Daniken is known for. Those things aren't unusual in the UFO cottage industry and its subsets such as Ancient Astronauts.

    As an almost throwaway thought, this guy tried to portray the pantheon of Greek Gods as a group of space-faring genetic engineers. His idea was, they manipulated the DNA of ancient hominids to create the Human Race, to be used as servants and slaves. He thought, one feature such genetic engineers would incorporate was the drive to worship. 

    Yes, yes they would. What better way to incorporate subservience?

    There are several lists of the drives or instincts ranging in number from 3 to 18. They really boil down to fuck, fight or footrace. The innate will to anthropomorphize and then worship what we don't understand is very rarely mentioned. Is it really a universal drive such as 'fight or flight' or procreation?  I happen to think it is. In an almost perverse way, I think it explains the drive of archeologists to ascribe religious significance to almost any example of monumental architecture but there are better examples just about everywhere. 

    'Just about everywhere'.  That seems to make my point. The drive to experience transcendence and divinity is everywhere. As we grow in knowledge of our surrounding environment, so too do our gods. It stands to reason our gods would be as well-informed as we are. That's if, you believe that man creates our gods. If each person creates their own gods, it's little surprise so many gods are found wanting. 

    This guy believes the pantheon created urges and a narrative to spread a desired feature in those created. There's a thought. Not just genetic engineers but social engineers as well.  If you've read much mythology, that seems like a stretch. Given 13.7 billion years and hundreds of millions of generations, Darwin starts to look like more of a sure thing than a bet made tens of thousands of years ago. Remember, evolution doesn't predict any outcome.  Evolution observes concrete outcomes already extant. Darwin asks: What must have happened to produce what we can observe? Darwin doesn't ask, "What comes next?"  Darwin  does not even ask, "How come?" Does the sheer weight of time and mathematics allow for anything else short of supernatural intervention? Dispassionately, you have to believe something very like evolution is what must have occurred. Yet, we still don't want to.

    Why not?  Why the drive to have been contrived by something, anything greater than ourselves? We insist we are created in our god's image and then endow that image with a list of qualities no mortal could possibly share.  Why?

    Why this constant driving and striving for divinity? If there is something essential about it that makes it so ubiquitous and evolutionarily necessary,  what could that possibly be? Unanswered questions that remain unanswered because not much thought has been devoted to them.  

    Oh, is that all?

    

For This Day

I want to go the bar

but not how you would think.

I really want to go to the bar,

Ten years ago.

I don't want to go for the first time

or the second time

but for the umpteenth time.

I want to slide on to my stool and

have my drink in front of me

with that familiar smile

or even scowl

from the bartender's day.

Events I would know all about,

except for the very latest.

I don't want to make friends.... 

today.

I want the comfort of easy,

long acquaintance.

I miss that old habit.

November 9th

    I don't like predictions committed to print. We have a problem looming that we should be prepared to meet. It's a problem for all of us, no matter our political persuasion. To be prepared, some small prediction is necessary.

    We can safely ignore what the chattering class is saying about the coming elections.  Without some sort of horse race,  there is really noting to write about and these people have regular deadlines. There are very few actual contests this time around.  The republicans are about to do something they haven't done since, 1998, when they paid the price for impeachment. They, as the opposition, are about to lose seats, in both houses of Congress, in a midterm election, without even a kiss.  Unlike ,1998, they will lose seats in the first set of midterms of a new presidency. That's completely unheard of.

    There are two ways they have accomplished this. First: They personalized and motivated the opposition by allowing Trump to shoulder himself on to every ballot in the country. Trump may generate a lot of cash and attract vocal support but it has never been more than a shrill minority and he generates coherent opposition just by speaking out. Secondly:  The Dobbs decision is a millstone around their waists that will pin them to the bottom and hold them there. Those things have left them incapable of generating any coherent initiative. 

    Here's the problem we all share.  The losers, no matter how much they lose by, are prepared to scream bloody murder in a coordinated, cookie cutter, nationwide attack on the integrity of the vote itself.  That is an attack on our country by witting and unwitting enemies that has to be met and roundly defeated. The people leading it need to be confronted immediately and dealt with severely. They are not prepared to abandon the assault on our society, even if this year is a setback. They will need firm correction. 

    This is what i think will happen.  The early and mail-in vote is outstripping 2020 and 2018, to this point.  That means the 'blue wave' is a crushing reality for our republican friends.  The political landscape is going to be grimmer than they can currently imagine.  I, personally, think the republican establishment will deal with their 'Trump' problem by the Ides of November.  It will be interesting to see how all that money will be dealt with. Women's empowerment will take a major stride forward and that's a good thing. It's all well and good for a liberal man such as myself to be alive to the positive things women bring to the table. It will be more useful to have republican men have to not just give a nod to women's concerns but be actually conversant.  That's how consensus is reached and progress made. 

    Now, we wait and now the fun part starts; where I get to see just how outré my politics really are. Well, fun to me.

    2006 was probably the most pivotal midterm of this century, at least.  GW was rendered totally irrelevant. Iraq was codified as the serious mistake it had been.  2010, in one way, marked the acceptance of the crypto-racist backlash that Trump and others have been riding ever since. 2018 merely reinforced the total rejection of Trump which had been underway since November 9th, 2016. This election gives the opportunity to cripple Trumpism and change the way things are viewed and quantified.  It's an opportunity for great progress. How we respond on the ninth and the following days is very important and an opportunity to see a very significant few days in real time and close up. That'll be fun too.

    How should we respond?   I'd like to see people spontaneously, in the streets in opposition to the attacks on our election systems. Just as the attacks on simple fairness and decency were met in response to the murder of George Floyd. We've done every reasoned and orderly thing possible to respond to the Big Lie. They keep coming in waves of coordinated attacks. It's time that was met forcefully and dealt with severely.

    Will that happen?  It's too soon to tell. 

    

In Russia

    There is no point in attempting to predict how things will work out with this invasion of Ukraine.  However, we can look at the existing dynamics without too much speculation.

    It is reasonable to observe that the Europeans and the world have had the better part of a century to think about what should have been done by the Democracies in the middle and late, 1930s. They are not reacting to the invasion of Ukraine as though it's the, 1939, invasion of Poland. In the last few years the Democracies have reacted much like they did in response to the partition of  Czechoslovakia and Anschluss. In, 1939, they declared ineffectual war.  They were unprepared.  This is not the case now.  We've armed NATO to the teeth in addition to direct aid to Ukraine.  It certainly appears as though the Russians are the least well equipped and the least cohesive force. We seem to be seeing a lot of Soviet Era rolling stock and hardware.  The Soviet Era was a very long time ago. The Russians seem to be falling victim to asymmetrical warfare. They certainly haven't won any hearts and minds. Morale has been reported to be a problem.

    Hearts and Minds. Russia is certainly suffering on the international stage for having no real engagement with the various Western media; social and traditional.  Sure, they have their bots and almost sleeper cells scattered around but that's nothing compared to a Zoom meeting with the U S Congress or appearances at the Oscars and Grammy Awards.  I can't remember anything like that before. It seems to be a new feature of that asymmetrical warfare. Zelensky is becoming a household name in the West. That adds to the unity of the Western Democracies. Hopefully, it makes him safer.

      By all accounts, the Russians have been decimated. At least, their initial committed forces.  That's interesting but Putin is kinda stuck now. 

   There doesn't seem to be any way to gauge sentiment among the Russians. In the ruling class and power elite, Putin really has no choice but to persevere.  Taken as individuals, the people surrounding Putin seem to be less than scrupulous, potentially violent people.  They make our malefactors of great wealth look like Boy Scouts. As these people's world shrinks and their fortunes are affected,  they well could reach the conclusion Putin has to go, in order to show a more benign face to the West and regain access to funds laundered in the West and the ability to travel beyond Russia.  Recently, there has been a wave of brutal murders of oligarchs. These murders do bear the brutish marks of Putin. There seem to be tensions there more significant than we might think. It could be that internal struggle will be more significant than Ukraine.  As for the average Russian?  Who knows?

    Russia will not invade a NATO country.  Russia is no match for NATO.  Putin has threatened nuclear war.  The truth is the Russians don't have the financial wherewithal or expertise to maintain a credible nuclear attack force. Even the Soviet arsenal was highly suspect.  It no longer exists.

    So, to this point, it's a series of unanswerable questions. It's reasonable to believe things will deteriorate. However, through the fog of war and bluster, we can see broad outlines. NATO will not attack but may well intervene just short of overt acts of war in Ukraine to tip the scales. In the long term, Russia has sustained lasting and severe damage. It's hard to see how any gain in Ukraine can be worth the consequences. That makes for a very weak negotiating position.

    

Cross Creek

     We were going to Pennsylvania for Christmas in just a day. They had built a new mall in Fayetteville, North Carolina, Cross Creek. It was very festive and very busy. I was filling our Christmas List as just one more chore before our planned departure. It must have been the 22nd but might have been the 21st. Nearly fifty years later I'm just not sure.

     That Christmas List was a thing of pride for my wife and myself.  It was the first year, in our young family, we could be generous, without worry, to those who had always been generous to us. We choose those gifts with care and pleasure. I don't remember what any of them might have been.

    I do remember, I was annoyed and impatient with the crowd and the long line I was in.

    My Dad bought the most wonderful Christmas gifts. He would watch and remember and then buy a, usually, simple thing, that you had needed, denied yourself and would use nearly every day. He was Greek Orthodox and born on January 6th. His Christmas Eve. As I get older, I've come to believe the accident of his birthdate had more to do with who he was than we ever realized. Love you Dad. 

    By example, as with most things I learned from him, he was a remarkably patient man. He was also very thoughtful, always with an inner dialogue that rarely left him without something apt to say in small matters and larger matters.  He would sit quietly with his coffee and then he would say, "Well." as he rose to do some small chore or go somewhere and you knew he had been in deep thought about some thing or other. 

    Like all boys, I loved snow and always rooted for a major snowfall. Looking out the window together  I would say, "I hope it keeps up." and he would say, " No you don't.  You want it to come down." It was his playful way of reminding me to be careful about what I was really wishing for. He is long gone and like most children, I sometimes regret I didn't make more plain to him how much I really noticed what he thought and said. I suppose we all do from time to time. 

    I was in my line with other adults and parents with children, all with purchases for the season. My schedule for the day was full and I was growing more impatient. Finally, among my 'humbug thoughts',  'I can't wait to be done here'. That triggered my Dad's voice in my mind.

    I can't wait. "I bet you can."  You're going to wait no matter what.  It's up to you how you do it. Who needs the negative energy of impatience?  Sure, there was a problem with the crowd, the delay, the growing lateness of the hour.  That problem was me. When I came into that moment of being, on the right foot, it all changed. The single shoppers, the parents, the children, the purchases waiting to be tallied, almost became parts of a Christmas display. My impatience started to become anticipation. I began to notice impatience and anticipation are really two sides of the same coin. That's a gift in and of itself.

    For years after, I would deliberately leave a gift or two unpurchased just to have an excuse to go to a mall or department store on Christmas Eve. Just to enjoy the crowds and atmosphere and remember a Christmas of long, long ago and my Dad.

    It's just one small thing, really.  When my eldest daughter was in college, I was single but I would hold a trim-a- tree party and decorate and really kinda make a big deal out of the whole thing. People to the house and so forth. She asked me, "Dad, why make such a fuss?"  I said that I had spent some Christmases alone in an unfamiliar city and the thing that comforted me was remembering Christmases Past. So, I decided that given the opportunity, we should make memories to sustain us when things couldn't be quite as we would hope.

    The years have gone by.  So many friends and loved ones are only still with us in our hearts, others are scattered.  It is time to be comforted and grateful for lessons well learned in the past so that these Christmases can be bright and cheerful as well.  I hope these little memories add to your joy.  Merry Christmas and Cheer to you and yours for the New Year! 

    

If I Should Die Before I Wake

    I was taught my Even Prayers by my beloved grandmother.  Now I lay me down to sleep.  I pray the Lord my soul to keep.  If I should die before I wake, I pray the Lord my soul to take…. Wait! What?  What was that middle thing again?

    It was right then I started looking for a way out.

    A way out. I’m going to draw a distinction between thought and belief. What we know intellectually is different from what comes to us as belief.  Intellectually, it becomes obvious that every system of belief that posits some continuation of an individual identity or soul is really just an effort at denial. Denial of the finite nature of our existence. No hell below us, above us only sky. 

    Well, that got outta hand pretty quick.  Did you follow that?  There may be a quiz later.

    All I’m trying to say is, I think when I die, I’ll be dead.  It’ll be just like before I was born but when I think of others,  I irresistibly imagine them in Heaven.  Not just any Heaven but Thorton Wilder’s Heaven from “Our Town”.  Having just rewatched “Our Town”,  I’m tempted to open another can of worms by saying, "White People’s Heaven"  but I won’t. 

    I think that the idea of coincidence plays a bigger role in life than we think.  I also think that the idea of synchronicity explains an awful lot but then the idea of ‘mystic cords’ begins to build a bridge from intellect to belief. Beyond even synchronicity, at times there seems to be an almost mystic connection between us one to the other.

    How do you explain this?  Out of the blue, I emailed my eldest daughter with an innocent question:  Were her grandmother, and two aunts sisters?  They were. It was an idle question on something I never really had clear. I was surprised to have an immediate, terse answer. “Yes”.  I was working on something and never expected my middle-of-the-night email to be answered until the next day. That caused me to respond with a recounting of these feminine familial connections even to my daughter’s great-grandmother.  I was just thinking out loud, kinda half connected to the thought I was working on about the one extraordinary aunt. 

    My daughter responded that the reason she was up in the middle of the night was her daughter, my granddaughter had just had a daughter of her own.  I was a great grandfather.  That’s way cool.  It’s something I would have discovered the following day in the normal course of things.  What was it that told me to insert myself in that moment? It was a feeling of presque vu.

    That whole thing is a bit much to be explained by coincidence or synchronicity, especially the recounting of the female lines in the family before knowing the lines had been extended.  Then, to top the whole thing off, I said, to a friend of mine, the first friend I told about the new arrival, that Penny and I were great-grandparents.  Penny and I certainly are my daughter’s parents but we haven’t been together in over 40 years.  Hell, the woman has been dead for 15 years,  apparently occupying a ladder-back chair in Thorton Wilder’s Heaven. Did she rise from that chair, break the quiet contemplation of eternity to whisper in my ear that something important was afoot?

    I don’t know what I think of that idea and I don’t know what I believe about that idea.

    That’s a selfish thought.  Is there something beyond my sphere that’s important about the arrival of that beautiful child? Something that warranted a general announcement thru the ether or is it just the way things work, if we can listen?

https://bit.ly/JimRetzerBook 

How Stupid Do You Want Me To Think You Think I am?

     Oh for God's sake!  Trump started the litany of "voter fraud" in the spring of 2020 because even the dumbest member of the republican elite had realized by then there was no chance he would ever be elected. What no one mentions is, it wasn't the Russians in 2016.  It was the voting machines that had been abused since 2004. The ones that hadn't been replaced in a nationwide initiative, had been repaired. That's what the Stein Audits were about, to force repair of the highly suspect machines.  Until those machines were replaced and repaired rural republican candidates had been spotted a 7 to 10 percentage point lead in any election, nationwide.  That included all statewide candidates. The idea of the perennial attempts at "Russian interference"  was tossed out as a fig leaf to help preserve faith in our elections.  Even I was surprised when the Russian "fig leaf" actually showed Trump really had committed treason. The Russians and others have always been knocking at the door.  Until Trump, no one had treasonously answered the knock. The FBI wasn't spying on Trump.  They were spying on the Russians like they always do.  They just caught Trump. Now, the machine advantage was gone and with it the swing states. Working with that advantage, if you count 3rd party votes, Trump failed at majority election, in '16, by 12 million votes. Even with Russian connivance there was never reason to believe he would fare any better in '20.

    The decision was taken that a coup would have to be staged to keep their collective snouts in the public trough and planning began in earnest. They doubled down on vote suppression tactics that had produced guys like Johnson, Cruz, DeSantis, Kemp. They cemented further, the Feral American/Duck Dynasty Base with the usual, baseless smear campaigns. They hoped that the Duck Dynasty boys would be adequate shock troops. Can you imagine what these jokers must have thought when the guy in the headdress showed up leading the Gravy Seals? The plan was to take several members of Congress hostage and the ensuing situation would give justification for declaring martial law. Then the confusion would allow a rejection of the election results. These guys actually thought the murder of Mike Pence (whom they all considered hapless) would really give punch to the impetus for overwhelming authority. One of the funniest things is Pence acting like he doesn't understand this.  Maybe he doesn't.  Either way, it's hilarious.

    Part of this "plan" that the Duck Dynasty troops kept referring to on January 6th, was the reconnoiter tours sedition friendly members of Congress had staged in the days leading up to the attack, to familiarize useful idiots with the layout of the Capitol. I don't think they realized how resilient building security really is.  No one was put in zip-ties, no one was assassinated. No "high value" target was even allowed to be approached. They were outmaneuvered at every turn because they just weren't very bright.

    Another part of the plan was to have local, useful idiots, abuse their campaign funds to charter buses to bring potential rioters to the Capitol. These boys bear watching. They're the same ones encouraging turning school board meetings into rathole radio zombie rallies.

    Oh dear!  This is a conspiracy!  No, no, it's not.  It's the usual confederacy of dunces. The way you can tell it was Trump's idea is: It didn't fuckin' work!  The guy's a train wreck.  I can't wait for him to screw up a one-car funeral.

    Seriously, try to keep your eye on the ball.  These people literally tried to steal our government and think they should be given a walk for no other reason than they failed.  

    I don't think I'm in the minority when I say, "I don't like having my intelligence insulted." That has been a major component of republican tactics since Reagan. As the passage of time has conclusively shown, Reagan didn't belong in the same room with Jimmy Carter.  Particularly thru rathole radio and then Fox News, there has been a concerted effort to make stupidity fashionable.  That's not new. It's always been a component of the various Nativist and Know Nothing movements. They always try to galvanize the feral elements of the population.  It's just never been this prolonged or sophisticated before.

    Here's something no one has commented on.  As a racist, "law and order" trope, republicans love citing the nationwide demonstrations for social justice triggered by the death of George Floyd. Republicans never mention the spontaneous, nationwide celebrations when it was confirmed Trump had lost. People realized they could unite and insist on common decency.  With a minimum of organization, we could easily meet in the streets and demonstrate who we really are as a people. Who we emphatically insist on being as a people.  Can you imagine what would have happened had Trump tried to remain in the White House for so much as a day longer than he had to be allowed to remain?  The obvious truth is, had they attempted to push it, there wouldn't be many voices left to come from the right.

    In other countries, the world over, supporters of failed coups are summarily executed, quietly murdered or simply disappear.  You can hear the panic in the voices and statements of the coup supporters who get that factoid. That's certainly what would have happened to these people in the country they would create. It just reinforces the fact, so-called "conservatives" would create a country,  not worth defending, where they couldn't survive. They would freeze in the winter, swelter in the summer and eventually would drown in puddles of their own shit.

https://bit.ly/JimRetzerBook

 

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