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Everyday religion (or socialism)

Obedience and rebellion

When you think of the long and gloomy history of man, you will find more hideous crimes have been committed in the name of obedience than have ever been committed in the name of rebellion.

==C.P. Snow

Every tyranny must necessarily be grounded upon general popular acceptance. In short, the bulk of the people themselves, for whatever reason, acquiesce in their own subjection….If we led our lives according to the ways intended by nature and the lessons taught by her, we should be intuitively obedient to our parents; later we should adopt reason as our guide and become slaves to nobody.

==Etienne de la Boetie

Civil disobedience is not our problem. Our problem is civil obedience. Our problem is that people all over the world have obeyed the dictates of the leaders of their government and have gone to war, and millions have been killed because of this obedience…Our problem is that people are obedient all over the world in the face of poverty and starvation and stupidity, and war, and cruelty. Our problem is that people are obedient while the jails are full of petty thieves, and all the while the grand thieves are running the country. That’s our problem.

==Howard Zinn

E. B. White on “the meaning of democracy”

E.B. White wrote the following in the Notes & Comments section of The New Yorker on July 3, 1943.

We received a letter from the Writers’ War Board the other day asking for a statement on “The Meaning of Democracy.”  It presumably is our duty to comply with such a request, and it is certainly our pleasure.

Surely the Board knows what democracy is.

It is the line that forms on the right. 

It is the don’t in don’t shove. 

It is the hole in the stuffed shirt through which the sawdust slowly trickles; it is the dent in the high hat. 

Democracy is the recurrent suspicion that more than half of the people are right more than half of the time. 

It is the feeling of privacy in the voting booths, the feeling of communion in the libraries, the feeling of vitality everywhere.

Democracy is a letter to the editor.

Democracy is the score at the beginning of the ninth.

It is an idea which hasn’t been disproved yet, a song the words of which have not gone bad.

It’s the mustard on the hot dog and the cream in the rationed coffee.

Democracy is a request from a War Board, in the middle of a morning in the middle of a war, wanting to know what democracy is.

Source: E. B. White in The New Yorker

D.H. Lawrence on showing your feelings

The feelings I don’t have, I don’t have.
The feelings I don’t have, I won’t say I have.
The feelings you say you have, you don’t have.
The feelings you would like both of us to have, we neither of us have.
The feelings people ought to have, they never have.
If people say they’ve got feelings, you may be pretty sure they haven’t got them.
So if you want either of us to feel anything at all, you’d better abandon all ideas of feelings altogether.
==D.H. Lawrence

Ben Carlson’s three rules to live by

There are 3 rules that I live by:

(1) Never play cards with a guy who has the same first name as a city.

(2) Never get behind a minivan in the drive-through lane.

(3) Never take personal finance advice from billionaires.

Source: A Wealth of Commom Sense

The violent George Floyd protests will backfire

Civilization is not so stable that it could not be easily broken up; and a condition of lawless violence is not one out of which any good thing is likely to emerge.  For this reason revolutionary violence in a democracy is infinitely dangerous.
  [==Bertrand Russell, in 1922]

A protest movement accompanied by vandalism, looting and mob violence will not persuade the public to de-fund the police or impose restrictions on them.

I believe the violence accompanying the George Floyd protests is worse than being generally reported.  The destruction caused in the name of George Floyd will not be balanced by any public good.

Instead it will make the re-election of Donald Trump and the Republicans more likely.

News reports say the protests are “mostly nonviolent.”  I am willing to believe that most of the protest demonstrations are non-violent and most people taking part in demonstrations are non-violent.  But this doesn’t matter.

If you have a crowd of 200 protesters, and 10 of them throw brickbats at the police and two of them throw gasoline bombs, it is not a non-violent protest—especially if the rest of the group refuses to disassociate themselves from the brick and bomb throwers.

This is why the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. exercised such tight control over the demonstrations he led.  He did not want anything to happen that interfered with his objective.  Malcolm X differed from Dr. King in many ways, but he, too, insisted on discipline among his followers.

I am an elderly tax-paying, law-abiding, middle-class homeowner.  I am not a revolutionary.  I do not condone vandalism, looting or mob violence.

But I know enough of history to know that violent and terrorist movements have sometimes brought about social change.  This requires a structured organization that is capable of taking power or of negotiating a set of demands and keeping its side of the bargain.  The BLM movement does not have such a structure.

Life is a mystery

For more like this, click on Zen Pencils.

The lives that don’t matter

In our time, political speech and writing are largely the defense of the indefensible.  (George Orwell, 1946)

The War Nerd: How Many Dead Yemeni Nobodies Does It Take to Equal One Washington Post Contributor?

A thought for our time

Edgar Allen Poe on procrastination

You can find more cartoons like this by clicking on Zen Pencils.

Michael Bloomberg as a presidential candidate

Michael Bloomberg

Michael Bloomberg’s emergence as a major Democratic presidential candidate reminds me of a saying attributed to Harry Truman.

If you run a Republican against a Republican, the [real] Republican will win every time.

LINKS

Michael Bloomberg Wikipedia page.

A Republican Plutocrat Tries to Buy the Democratic Nomination by Nathan J. Robinson for Current Affairs [Added 2/9/2020]  This says it all.

Michael Bloomberg’s Right-Wing Views on Foreign Policy by Mehdi Hasan for The Intercept.

Mike Bloomberg’s $ymbiotic Relationship With NY’s GOP: ‘We Agreed With Him on So Many Issues’ by Ross Barkan for Gothamist.

Bloomberg Has a History of Donating to Republicans—Including in 2018 by Bobby Cuza for Spectrum News NY1

‘…something in everyone that waits and listens’

The Rev. Howard Thurman (1899-1981) was a Christian theologian, an admirer of Gandhi and a mentor to the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.

The Ukrainegate situation summarized

We now have, in essence, the two sides investigating each other for the crime of having investigated each other

Source: Pete’s Politics and Variety

Update of the famous ‘they came for’ quote

There’s a famous quote attributed to a German pastor about the failure of respectable people to resist the Nazis.

• First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out— because I was not a socialist.
• Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out— because I was not a trade unionist.
• Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out— because I was not a Jew.
• Then they came for me— and there was no one left to speak for me.

Caitlin Johnstone, noting the silence of the mainstream press about the arrest of left-wing reporter Max Blumenthal, updated the quote for our time.

• First they came for Assange, and I did not speak out, because I was a mainstream western journalist with no intention of ever upsetting the powerful.
• Then they came for Blumenthal, and I did not speak out, because I was a mainstream western journalist with no intention of ever upsetting the powerful.
• Then they came for all the other dissident journalists, and I did not speak out, because I will never be a dissident journalist.
• They never came for me, because I have chosen to serve power.

LINK

Mainstream Journalists Who Refuse To Defend Dissident Journalists Are Worshippers Of Power by Caitlin Johnstone.

Max Blumenthal Arrest Exposes Hypocrisy of Western Media and Human Rights NGOs by Joe Emensberger for Fairness and Accuracy in Media (FAIR)  [Added 11/1/2019]

Trump, the Kurds and the forever wars

Kurds protest Trump troop withdrawal plan (Getty Images)

Getting into is easier than getting out of.

(Old saying)

If something cannot go on forever, someday it will stop.

 (Stein’s Law)

We can endure neither our disorders nor the cures for them.

(Livy, History of Rome)

One of the promises made by Donald Trump in the 2016 presidential campaign was to wind down U.S. military involvement in Afghanistan and the Middle East.

Every time he tries to keep this promise, he gets so much resistance from war hawks in Congress and inside his administration that he backs down.

Not that President Trump is a lover of peace.  His preferred method of waging war is to try to starve other nations into submission through economic sanctions, as with Venezuela and Iran.  Economic war is real war, and produces real suffering, and creates its own type of danger of blowback.

Nor is troop withdrawal without adverse consequences.  Pulling American troops out of Syria will leave U.S. allies in Kurdistan open to attacks by Turks and by the Assad government, not to mention a possibly revived Islamic State (ISIS).

Donald Trump, in his usual thoughtless way, forgot about the Kurds when he announced the Syrian troop withdrawal and tweeted a lot of silly things when he was reminded of them.  I have no idea what happens next.

I try to free myself of the habit of seeing foreign conflicts as a fight between good guys and bad guys.  But I can’t help rooting for the Kurds.  They practice religious tolerance.  They don’t massacre civilians.  The Kurdish community in Rojava is attempting a radical experiment in democracy.  If somebody smarter than me has a plan for guaranteeing safety for the Kurds, I would be all for it.

I think it was Daniel Ellsberg who said that the American goal in Vietnam after 1965 was to postpone defeat until after the next election.  I don’t see any purpose in keeping troops in the Middle East or Afghanistan other than postponing admission of defeat until after the next election.

As in Vietnam, withdrawal will result in death and misery for many, especially for those who supported U.S. forces.  But withdrawal at some point is inevitable.  The only question is how to minimize the harm.  It would take a wiser and braver statesman than Donald Trump to answer that question.

Update.  It appears that President Trump doesn’t intend to withdraw U.S. forces from Syria—only to move them out of the way of the Turkish forces moving into the Kurdish-held areas.

LINKS

Damned if we do.

Eight Times the U.S. Has Betrayed the Kurds by Jon Schwartz for The Intercept.

In which I try to make some sense of Donald Trump’s Middle East policy by Kevin Drum for Mother Jones.

Not Just Ethnicity: Turkey v. Kurds and the Great Divide Over Political Islam and the Secular Left by Juan Cole for Informed Comment [Added 10/10/2019]

The Annihilation of Rojava by Djene Bajalan and Michael Brooks for Jacobin.  [Added 10/10/2019]

Damned if we don’t.

Is Trump At Last Ending Our Endless Wars? by Patrick J. Buchanan.

Trump Pulling U.S. Forces Out of Syria? by Kit Knightly for Off-Guardian.

America Doesn’t Belong in Syria by Doug Bandow for The American Conservative.  [Added 10/10/2019]

Why the Syrian Kurds Aren’t Necessarily Out Friends by Scott Ritter for The American Conservative.  [Added 10/13/2019]

What Hillary Clinton actually said

These are remarks that Hillary Clinton made at an LGBT fund-raising event in New York City on Sept. 9, 2016

You know, to just be grossly generalistic, you could put half of Trump’s supporters into what I call the basket of deplorables. (Laughter/applause) Right?  (Laughter/applause) They’re racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic – Islamophobic – you name it.

Hillary Clinton

And unfortunately, there are people like that. And he has lifted them up.  He has given voice to their websites that used to only have 11,000 people – now have 11 million.  He tweets and retweets their offensive hateful mean-spirited rhetoric.  Now, some of those folks – they are irredeemable, but thankfully, they are not America.

But the “other” basket – the other basket – and I know because I look at this crowd I see friends from all over America here: I see friends from Florida and Georgia and South Carolina and Texas and — as well as, you know, New York and California — but that “other” basket of people are people who feel the government has let them down, the economy has let them down, nobody cares about them, nobody worries about what happens to their lives and their futures; and they’re just desperate for change.  It doesn’t really even matter where it comes from.

They don’t buy everything he says, but — he seems to hold out some hope that their lives will be different. They won’t wake up and see their jobs disappear, lose a kid to heroin, feel like they’re in a dead-end.  Those are people we have to understand and empathize with as well.

— Hillary Clinton, CBS News[9]

Source: Basket of deplorables – Wikipedia

Was she wrong?

Hat tip to Bill Elwell.

The widening target of ‘anti-racism’

Where once the targets of those concerned to fight injustice were “racism” and “sexism,” today the targets are “whiteness” and “masculinity.”  The underlying premise is plain: that there is no whiteness independent of the domination of nonwhites, and no masculinity independent of the domination of women.

==attributed to Wesley Yang, author of The Souls of Yellow Folk

I think it is great that black people to take pride in themselves and not think they have to be like whites in order to respect themselves.    I think it is great that women to take pride in themselves and not think they have to be like men in order to respect themselves.

I think discrimination against black people and against women are great evils, and I think it is great that these evils are being stigmatized and diminished.

I don’t see how racism and sexism are diminished telling white men they should be ashamed of themselves for being white and male.

My father taught me to live in a way that allows me to respect myself and to be willing to treat others with courtesy and respect, and that is what I believe in.

It is wrong to teach anyone that self-respect is impossible, or is possible only by adopting a certain creed or joining a certain group.

Jordan Peterson’s antidote to chaos

Click on this for a full review of Jordon Peterson’s 12 Rules for Life

Jordan Peterson is a clinical psychologist and a professor at the University of Toronto whom I never heard of until last week, but who evidently has millions of followers on YouTube.

Below are his 12 Rules for Living, the title of a book that will be published later this year.  Based on the video above and on a couple of articles I’ve read about him, he is a free spirit who says things that are important and true, things that are important if true and some other things that I can’t make head nor tail of.

1.  Stand up straight with your shoulders back.
2.  Treat yourself like you would treat someone you are responsible for helping.
3.  Make friends with people who want the best for you.
4.  Compare yourself with who you were yesterday, not with who somebody else is today.
5.  Do not let your children do anything that makes you dislike them.
6.  Set your house in perfect order before you criticize the world.
7.  Pursue what is meaningful (not what is expedient)
8.  Tell the truth—or at least don’t lie.
9.  Assume the person you are listening to might know something you don’t.
10.  Be precise in your speech.
11.  Do not bother children when they are skateboarding.
12.  Pet a cat when you encounter one on the street.

The 12 rules are true and important.  I remember, when I was a small boy, my mother telling me to stand with my shoulders back and my neck straight.   I think of this when I’m feeling down, and adopting good posture does change my attitude.  It makes me wiling to meet the challenges of the day.

He is right to object to silly rules about gendered pronouns, which regulate how you can refer to people who consider themselves neither men nor women.  I do believe in good manners—referring to people (within reason) as they would wish to be called.   But I wouldn’t try to enforce my idea of good manners through the criminal law.

Bertrand Russell on war and utopia

The following is from Bertrand Russell’s Principles of Social Reconstruction (1916)

A great many of the impulses which now lead nations to go to war are in themselves essential to any vigorous or progressive life.  Without imagination and love of adventure, a society soon becomes stagnant and begins to decay. Conflict, provided it is not destructive and brutal, is necessary in order to stimulate men’s activities, and to secure the victory of what is living over what is dead or merely traditional.  The wish for the triumph of one’s cause, the sense of solidarity with large bodies of men, are not things which a wise man will wish to destroy.  It is only the outcome in death and destruction and hatred that is evil.  The problem is, to keep these impulses, without making war the outlet for them.

All Utopias that have hitherto been constructed are intolerably dull….[Utopians] do not realize that much the greater part of a man’s happiness depends upon activity, and only a very small remnant consists in passive enjoyment.  Even the pleasures which do consist in enjoyment are only satisfactory, to most men, when they come in the intervals of activity.  Social reformers, like inventors of Utopias, are apt to forget this very obvious fact of human nature.  They aim rather at securing more leisure, and more opportunity for enjoying it, than at making work itself more satisfactory, more consonant with impulse, and a better outlet for creativeness and the desire to employ one’s faculties.

Hat tip to Marginal REVOLUTION

The joys of retirement

Some sayings of Epicurus

The blessed and important nature knows no trouble nor causes trouble to any other, so that it is never constrained by anger or favor. For all such things exist only in the mind.

Death is nothing to us: for that which is dissolved is without sensation; and that which lacks sensation is nothing to us.

Epicurus

It is not possible to live pleasantly without living prudently and honorably and justly, nor again to live a life of prudence, honor and justice without living pleasantly.  And the man who does not possess the pleasant life, is not living prudently and honorably and justify, and the man who does not possess the virtuous life cannot possibly live pleasantly.

No pleasure is a bad thing in itself, but the means which produce some pleasures bring with them disturbances many times greater than the pleasure.

Infinite time contains no greater pleasure than limited time, if one measures by reason the limits of pleasure.

He who has learned the limits of life knows that, that which removes the pain of want and makes the whole of life complete, is easy to obtain, so that there is no need for actions that involve competition.

Good advice from Penn Jillette

Say what you mean, even when talking to yourself.
==Penn Jillette, Ten Commandments for Atheists

Toni Morrison on her father

          Novelist Toni Morrison was asked why she had become a great writer, what books she had read, what method she had used to structure her practice.  She laughed and said, “Oh, no, that is not why I am a great writer.  I am a great writer because when I was a little girl and walked into a room where my father was sitting, his eyes would light up.”
                         ==Donald Miller, quoted in The Sun

Richard Rorty’s 1998 prophecy

This 1998 quote by the philosopher Richard Rorty, in his book Achieving Our Country, is being widely circulated on the Internet.   It seems prophetic.

[M]embers of labor unions, and unorganized unskilled workers, will sooner or later realize that their government is not even trying to prevent wages from sinking or to prevent jobs from being exported.

Richard Rorty

Around the same time, they will realize that suburban white-collar workers—themselves desperately afraid of being downsized—are not going to let themselves be taxed to provide social benefits for anyone else.

At that point, something will crack.  The non-suburban electorate will decide that the system has failed and start looking around for a strongman to vote for—someone willing to assure them that, once he is elected, the smug bureaucrats, tricky lawyers, overpaid bond salesmen, and postmodernist professors will no longer be calling the shots.

A scenario like that of Sinclair Lewis’ novel It Can’t Happen Here may then be played out.  For once a strongman takes office, nobody can predict what will happen.  In 1932, most of the predictions made about what would happen if Hindenburg named Hitler chancellor were wildly overoptimistic.

One thing that is very likely to happen is that the gains made in the past forty years by black and brown Americans, and by homosexuals, will be wiped out.  Jocular contempt for women will come back into fashion.  [snip] 

All the sadism which the academic Left has tried to make unacceptable to its students will come flooding back.   All the resentment which badly educated Americans feel about having their manners dictated to them by college graduates will find an outlet.

I was unable to find a copy of the book in my local library system nor a low-cost copy on the Internet.   Some articles about the Rorty quote also mention this—

After my imagined strongman takes power, he will quickly make his peace with the international super-rich.

That also seems prophetic.