What the eye sees when one actually sees what is there. How many times have I looked at the pictured trees and never seen the white-trunked tree? There is still some brown near the base of the tree trunk so this tree is probably diseased and dying. Even with all the snow on the branches of the surrounding trees, this tree’s stark whiteness stood out.
Must there always be atrocities before we humans seek a better? Must we mimic the day when the darkest hour is just before dawn? Seems like if we were truly intelligent, with approximately two thousand years of written records, we would have figured out how to avoid that darkest hour.
With AI ascendant, I wonder if novelists will be needed. In Japan, an AI, 5 percent generated(so says the author), novel has won a literary prize and the judges said it was a near perfect novel. So novelists, why bother when anyone can feed an idea into AI and request a near perfect novel? This may be the beginning of “perfect” mediocrity. Because if every novel is near perfect, then all will be mediocre as there will be nothing that makes them different. Perfect cannot be improved upon.
An author becomes less than an editor because AI will edit its own content to achieve the near-perfect status. One wouldn’t even need to generate an idea for a novel as one could request the AI to generate the idea and then write the novel. I suppose someone will come up with prizes for human generated novels, but AI generated novels will probably be preferred by the masses. The AI generated novels will always trigger the required emotional response inherent in a best seller.
Just like the preferred churches are the ones with pastors who can wring the most emotion from their congregants.
Just had a slick headed biscuit eater endorse the former president. Touted him as a law and order candidate. Wonder lightning didn’t strike him. Wonder how many times he bit his tongue? Someone who says he will suspend the Constitution–law and order? Someone who will pardon the January 6th insurrectionists–law and order? Someone who actively worked to overthrow the last presidential election–remember he personally called the Georgia official–law and order? Do the Republicans know the definition of law and order?
Yes, I know…law and order is something that applies to the “Other” and never to the Republicans.
I watched a video detailing Hitler’s life from birth to his rise to power. He was a mediocre human being. He was frequently beaten by his father. Why? Doesn’t say, but speculation: Hitler was a pedestrian artist. Did his father see Hitler’s artistic bent as a sign of homosexuality? Were the beatings to beat any homosexual tendencies from the young Hitler? And his mother couldn’t have stopped the beatings–not in a paternalistic society where the father basically owned the child. We’ll never know.
Also, technology was used to enhance his voice and therefore his messaging. Goes back to people want to feel empowered despite their current circumstances where they feel trapped in a downward spiral. When Hitler came into power, Germany was reeling from hyper-inflation, a lost war, a loss of status, among other negatives.
However, Hitler himself. He must have been filled with self-hatred. He did not look like the Aryans he promoted as the master race. I would think that his master race would have pushed him into the background once they came into power. They would have been embarrassed that one who did not look like them was the cause of their ascendance. Hitler would have been Aryanized in their propaganda if they had won and not even Eva Braun would have recognized him.
Every dictator must have an “Other” to rally his followers to his cause. I think the Europeans who called themselves Jews were a convenient target. They were an insular group who used their insularity to hoard wealth. Because, in the end, with Caucasians, money is the root of ninety-nine percent of their conflicts. Power is their route to more riches.
“In a statement for this article, Claremont said that it was “proud to be a leader in the fight against D.E.I., since the ideology from which it flows conflicts with America’s Founding principles, constitutional government and equality under the law. Those are the things we believe in. Without them there is no America. You cannot have those things with D.E.I.” Excerpt from below cited article. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2024/01/20/us/dei-woke-claremont-institute.html?unlocked_article_code=1.PU0.xbom.N0EIFd1BHg_O&smid=url-share
I take issue with “equality under the law”. The constitution was very plain…Slaves were considered three/fifths of a human being. The Dred Scott decision was very clear: a slave was not a citizen and had no rights. Jim Crow laws were very clear–Black citizens were to be subjugated by any means necessary. Social Security–not extended to classes of jobs mainly held by Blacks. Blacks were not eligible for land grants. Black neighborhoods were ineligible for government-backed mortgages–redlining. Black owned homes are appraised for less than a comparable white owned home. Blacks are denied mortgages even when earning the same as whites who are granted mortgages. Black history cannot be taught unless whitewashed. Cash bail laws have disproportionately impacted Blacks. The criminal justice system has never been a place for “justice” to Blacks. States have been gerrymandered with the sole purpose of diluting and/or negating the Black vote. Where is the equality under the law? Pretty words which have never had their dictionary meaning in the United States, purposely used by the white supremacists to further their goals of whites only–now, then, and forever.
The white supremacists are being very clear–the economic pie is for white people only and, as long as white supremacists are in power, they will continue to make laws to ensure that the economic pie will not be shared with the “Other”. Black citizens of this country are the “Other” to whom white supremacy is referring.
Further, as long as white supremacists are in power, only persons who will further and actively promote their agenda will be allowed in positions that would affect that agenda.
This was the white supremacists’ playbook that ended Reconstruction. If it worked before, it will work again. The white supremacists use their tried and true tactics and we should have a tried and true response, But we don’t.
Unity was a response, but we allowed the white supremacists to destroy our unity. Your nose is slimmer than your neighbor’s, therefore you get a pat on the head. You have to be anti-neighbor, virulently anti-neighbor, in order to continue to get your pat on the head… And we fell for it. We wanted the pat on the head so badly that we denied what our eyes saw…that our neighbor looked just like us. (I know. All about skin color in the United States.) No difference, a white supremacist’s lie. And look where we are today, all because of a lie.
the belief that “a healthy society requires patriarchy,”: excerpt from above cited NY Times article. This is the mindset of the mediocre white males that want to control what you think and do and how you live. The patriarchy has brought this Earth to the brink of non-being. Patriarchy has created no civilizations, only barbarianizations based in greed. Patriarchy has been the ruin of this Earth. Patriarchy is imbalance and imbalance is the path to destruction. Species decimated and extinct, rivers and seas emptied of water and life, the air unfit for life, (This is an aside–what is wrong with males? Water is necessary for life and crops. When the water is gone, do you think you can pack up and move to seize land and water elsewhere? Is it all about current wants…greed? What if after the water or whatever essential is gone, there is no figuring it out?) (End of rant.) Patriarchy is death in all its vicious forms being acted out in all its gruesome glories until there is nothing left for death to consume.
No, white supremacists–the attack on America, the ideal of America, comes from you and always has.
The governor of Florida has dropped his bid for the Republican nomination for president. Pity the Floridians who realize that their governor has chosen the wrong side and history will pillory him and his ilk. Because of this rejection, if he reacts like most white supremacists, he will double down on his fascist, anti-American tirades and laws/policies.
H.R. Bill 414 is the reparations bill introduced in the House in May 2023. Below is a link to the text. This bill contains an overview of Black history in the United States. Well worth the read.
https://legiscan.com/US/text/HR414/id/2811870
Last night, I listened to “The Oak” by Florence Price (April 9, 1887 – June 3, 1953), a Black composer, pianist, organist, and music teacher. I was half asleep and it was the next title on my playlist. Usually, I skip over the classical music, but I bought the album of her music to check it out. Sometimes, being half asleep is the best time to listen to classical music. I’m not a musician; I just know what I like. This was okay. I appreciated the artistry of the musicians–at one point, I thought I heard birds chirping, but I am not a fan of classical music. I’ll listen to it again when I am awake. I might have a different opinion.
Would you rather have a “nothing” permeated with the quality of benign indifference or a “nothing” permeated with the quality of evil interference? In the U.S., we have been subjected to both of these “nothings”. I know I’d rather have the “nothing” with the quality of benign indifference. I think in those short periods of benign indifference in discrete areas of this country we made the most progress. Don’t have any anecdotal evidence or facts because I don’t know if the people living through the “benign indifference nothing” would have agreed with that characterization. They navigated the time they lived in the best they could.
In my last post, I wrote about MLK and the butterfly effect. In his letter from a Birmingham jail, he mentioned that he prioritized the mayoral election because it was imperative that a new mayor be elected. They knew the racism of the current mayor and MLK knew that the person running against the current mayor was also a racist. However, when you know a person will gleefully set police dogs on you, spray you with high pressure water, beat you senseless, you turn out to vote for the other guy. The other guy won and that was a good thing for the movement.
I want to repeat–there is a two party system in the U.S. I won’t vote for the Republicans who have told me they do not have my best interests on their radar screen and will never, ever have my best interests as part of their agenda. As I’ve posted before, one doesn’t have to agree with every policy of the Democrats. I don’t. This country needs Social Security; Medicare/Medicaid; infrastructure investment; Unions; programs to feed the children, the elderly, and others in need; a middle class. You know that old saying–if you pretend long enough, you might become what you pretend? Politics is all about rhetoric, hyperbole, propaganda and maybe some of that will become truth in real policies and programs that will truly make the lives of we the people better.
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