Hello again, Boomers, Jonesers, and Non-Boomers alike.
Nothing to talk about lately?
What do we Americans do when the temperature starts climbing above 80, and the lawn needs mowing?
Well, for the last couple of centuries, there was this thing called Our National Pastime. Notice the word "pastime" suggests an activity unabashedly and unequivocally meant to be an acceptable and civil way to pass time. I would even go so far to say, pre-Internet distraction, there was a tapestry. a weaving of the fabric of your cultural character in sport, a mythos, conjured and nurtured for the benefit of inter-generational respect and civility. Heck, even affection. Love you, dad.
Alas, locusts and honey will have to suffice anymore
"Oh, there you go again 15, being literal, and trying to find out what words mean."
I suppose so. Unfortunately, in my blogging experience, if you are a fan of scholarly etymology and reasonable contextual usage, with a dash of tropism, you are now generally considered to be A REAL ASSHOLE in cyberspace.
I humbly accept your unjustified aspersions, if it means I can "pass time" peacefully, and scribble away this "old man rant" verbiage in a constructive manner, and fully exploit the legal training for which I so sadly (perhaps foolishly) overpaid.
Well, it is indeed the middle of beisból season, and my team is awesome.
Having relocated to the capital of the third world, Los Angeles, in 1987, I eventually became a Dodger fan. It was like Saul on the Road to Damascus. Do as the Romans do. I suddenly recalled my Little League team was called the "Dodgers." The circle was complete. I had left (one of) my childhood homes (San Diego, inter alia), to live under the bright lights of Hollywood, and presto!
Assimilation happens.
Back to baseball. In lower level and recreational leagues, you may know there is a rule called "the Mercy Rule." If a team was leading by more than ten runs after three (or 4?) innings, the game is over. The team leading the game wins, even though you have not played every inning of a regulation game. Simple concept, designed more than likely to save the kids from embarrassment, as well as save the parents' time.
You may ask yourself, as I do, is there a real world equivalent of the Mercy Rule?
Have you ever seen a contest, or conflict, that reached the point where everyone thinks:
"OMG, this is just not a fair fight. It's almost laughable to continue. We really should \just end it here. We know who will win this thing."
Oh, by the way,
Someone in the halls of the Supreme Court of the United States is in BIG trouble. Unless they abort the prosecution.
Congress has indicted itself by sending taxpayer money to their Ukrainian subsidiaries. That should resonate well in minority communities.
John Durham has obtained voluminous discovery documents pointing to a conviction of a top Democrat lawyer, who did NOT act on behalf of the Clinton campaign. Right.
Trump-endorsed candidates are 58-1 (as of this post) in their primary contests. But Biden got 81 million votes.
Middle Eastern governments are reportedly refusing to take calls from the POTUS. But at least we are energy indepen -- never mind.
The stock market has tanked, along with everyone's (hello, Boomers) 401k retirement assets. Capitalism sucks, except when you need a cup of coffee.
Inflation is approaching double digits, eating into retiree savings plans. What COVID hasn't killed, the Federal Reserve can.
Interest rates are projected to rise +/- 50 basis points in 2022. But I repeat myself.
Our Southern Border is worse than a sieve. It is a port of entry for scofflaws. I'm being nice here.
The newest SCOTUS nominee cannot even attempt to define a "woman." Sheee-iiit.
Parents who disagree with sexual indoctrination in public schools were labeled FBI "terrorists." Poking mama bear, eh?
No one seriously believes anymore the information broadcast from mainstream sources. QED.
What happened to the "pandemic?" I guess we are all sick of the lies.
There is no mercy rule in real life. Only zombies and zombie companies.
I'll stop here for brevity's sake.
If you don't know by now, the REPUBLIC of the United States was ATTACKED on Nov. 3, 2020.
From where I sit, we are now in counter-attack mode.
As you and I keep calm and cope with corporate media dialectics, staying the Babylonian money magic stream of lies pitting:
left against right,
conservatives versus liberals
male versus female
black versus white
and of course, the currently popular diametric Russia versus Ukraine,
that old imperial strategy seems destined for failure. It is time for the causes of our national malaise to fail, and to fail in catastrophic ways.
"Choose a side," they implored us.
"Don't worry," they assured us. "We can fix this. Yes, we can."
Well, sorry, Your Highnesses, but that divide and conquer strategy is old and worn. It is dead. It started to die at Runnymeade. It got worse for you in Trenton. Your destiny was sealed in the fields of Normandy and the streets of Moscow. The kids watched you from the living room TV, as you lied and killed your way through the jungles of Vietnam and Nicaragua, sacrificing youth and energy in the deserts and mountains of Iraq and Afghanistan. But you are done. We have devolved, and our constitution is being restored.
Sure, you have made futile attempts, temporarily derailing humanity's quest. Your litany of falsehoods includeds last-gasp efforts over the millennia -- sinking the Lusitania, followed by the Titanic and more.
But we have long since connected the dots . . . between FDR's foreknowledge of Pearl Harbor ... JFK's monetary agenda ... the fake news from the Gulf of Tonkin ... the dark history of Bush family ... 9-11 truthers ... and now ... the plandemic Covid-19 (better known as the Biden election strategy.)
Many youthful researchers doubt the seriousness of your Georgia "Guidestones," dismissing them as an obscure art project by some wealthy nut job. The kids may be right, but try asking the people of Hiroshima or Nagasaki whether there exists a certain faction of world powers and principalities having an express, and very clear, depopulation agenda.
With eyes wide open, to them it's no joke.
But it just won't work. They are destined to fail.
Sure, ordo ab chaowas a nice, catchy motto back in the days of Manifest Destiny, when you could opiate the masses and conjure hellscape visions with technological spell-casting, hypnotic images of horror broadcast to make us afraid. You have harvested natural Caution to exploit irrational Fear. Your lust for the blood of innocence inflamed your hatred for Truth and the Beauty.
Little Lambs became Terrible Tigers, burning bright in the forests of flyover America. And our people perish for lack of knowledge. But now, we know. We know your methods, we know your goals and we have learned your ways. Your time has come, you pinkie-sucking, narcissistic, silk-tie wearing monsters. Your days are numbered.
This week I commend to you an article from The City Journal, a literary organ of the Manhattan Institute.
The piece was written in 2014 by Eugene Kontorovich. At the time, Kontorovich was Professor of International Law and Constitutional Law at Northwestern University Law School.
I had no idea that this symbol, used by Mussolini's fascist regime in Italy, is now plastered all over the architecture of many Federal office buildings in Washington, D.C.
Fascinating.
The fasces symbol may be less notorious than the swastika, but I find it no less detestable. It's meaning and symbolism elicit, in my view, the precise opposite of American ideals, especially the Emersonian ideal of self-reliance, not to mention the concepts of inalienable rights and natural law.
Let me explain. As Professor Kontorovich put it:
"In republican Rome, the chief magistrates were protected in public by lictors: bodyguards who each carried a fasces, a bundle of 12 rods tied together and surrounding outward-facing axes. The lictors used this unwieldy-looking scepter to chastise wrongdoers, and it came to symbolize the coercive power of the consul."
The symbol of the fasces represented magisterial and priestly authority in ancient Rome, symbolizing "strength in unity," the way a bundle of sticks is harder to break than one single stick. The strong implication is that the state power is a derivative from corporal power, the power of physical punishment, and the authority is based in a collective, bound together to (unthinkingly) enforce the will of the ruling class, its media, and entertainment outlets. Essentially, the fasces is a weapon, in Latin, a "bundle," that represents the imposition of authority . . . just because . . . well . . . uh, let's see . . . because a large mob of people say so?
That coercive aspect offends me. Coercion, done by goons, hired by effete elitists. It is what makes fascism so repellant to American sensibilities, yet it is so similar to current events, namely, greater central bank control through militarization of local police.
And yes, the Founding Fathers did have admiration for the ancient Roman Republic. One of the first official acts of Congress was to adopt the fasces as the emblem of the Sergeant at Arms.
The Professor again:
"Fasces were part of the standard visual vocabulary of classicism. Like the lamp and the scales, they represented a particular attribute of the classical view of justice: physical power or the ability to impose order."
"When he came to power in Italy in 1922, Mussolini resurrected the symbol and employed it to represent the strength and unity of the Italian state. Political fascism made physical power and the ability to impose order central to its ideology, and so the term “fascism” quickly became synonymous with authoritarian regimes. Mussolini made the fasces symbol almost as common in Italy as the Nazi swastika became in Hitler’s Germany. If people associate the fasces with fascism less than they associate the swastika with Nazism, it may simply be because Il Duce’s historical infamy pales beside Hitler’s [and our WWII ally, Stalin].
Kontorovich's piece is titled "When Fasces Aren't Fascist. The Strange History of America's Federal Buildings." As I read it, he is rationalizing the existence of fasces in the halls of the U.S. Congress.
Kontorovich is attempting to render palatable the disturbing prevalence of that symbol as merely a cultural speed bump, an almost quirky artistic preference. He says the fasces symbol "had no nefarious connotation before Mussolini."
I beg to differ. The swastika had no nefarious connotation before Hitler either, but we don't see it emblazoned anywhere except those flags hanging on basement walls of shaven headed kook jobs.
Or Buddhist tombstones.
Symbols are powerful. Symbols will be their downfall.
Indeed, the Founding Fathers adopted elements of a republican form of government when they formed the United States of America. However, the idea that governmental power should be dispersed between three branches, and that man's utter depravity and corruptible greed necessitated a de-centralized form of government is a basic American precept that FLIES ON THE FACE of opposing ideals expressed by the symbolism of the fasces. The Sergeant at Arm's actual job is to enforce the rules of the House, so in a small way, the image of the fasces was an appropriate emblem in 1789.
However, the Office of the Sergeant at Arms is NOT the government of, by, or for the People.
The use of the fasces as a symbol in American public architecture did not become prevalent until Mussolini made it so in the 1920's. Fascism was seen as something "cool" in the period of time between the so-called World Wars. Mussolini was admired for getting Italy back on its feet, just as Hitler was admired and promoted by financial interests which included the Bush family, The New York Times, and yes, the Vatican. The fasces symbol, and the philosophy it represented, became so trendy during that period of history that architect Cass Gilbert, and his disciples, imported the "gospel of fasces" into American public life.
It is sad to see how far we have strayed from our Founders vision. That symbol of collective authoritarianism (OK, dictatorship through corporal punishment), expresses ideals antithetical to our foundational precepts. Do I need to repeat the first three words of the preamble again?
OK, Boomer. Let's leave it at that.
I have a medical appointment to deal with some knee pain.
