The Tide of Economic Inequality Is No Longer Just Rising, It's Choking US

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A THOUGHT. Life as we have known it, or revered and aspired to. A dreamed about life of richness, abundance, and more specific products of humanity's cleverness and vanity such wine, women, song (but also the products of human stupidity such as class, caste, race and gender hierarchy), ...this dream of the 'good' life appears to have faded away or be available to an ever-diminishing fraction of humanity so that we now have a world of grossly asymmetric 'mis-sharing' of life's promises. We are now come to a dire need to deal with the reality has near irreversibly come to be a finite, zero-sum game, and perhaps life ever was a zero-sum proposition despite the dreams of the Ages of exploration and colonialization (global scale resource rape and pillage). This awakening to a post-surfeit reality appears to have occurred over the past 15 to 20 years and now shapes up as a bad, bad human-made nightmare in the wakened state. We face a crisis that is ripping apart our previous fantasy world of perpetual bonbons, colorful gumdrops, unending natural resources, clean air, good water...all provided by Mother Earth without requiring much effort, concern or husbandry from humanity, and delivered on a perpetual conveyor belt feeding directly into our mouths and bank accounts.

But we now sense this was all a dream and we must face the consequences from greed and willy-nilly over-exploiting earth's resources - a situation supported and made worse by our cleverness in inventing the 'corporate blind' whereby a paper (fictitious) concept is equal, or more, to a living being but with fewer and fewer controls over corporate behavior. Our 'esteemed' legal minds have even by writ given these false corporate entities the leeway to use their immense money reserves to influence politics with even less monitoring than for human citizens.

The result of this overall trend to ignore the nonsensicalness and excesses from our misled priorities has resulted in 'badness' on many fronts - extreme inequality (of human sharing of earth's resources and financial profits) on almost all categories, especially financially, and dangerous over-exploiting of our planet's resources and blindness to global pollution. Especially disheartening if not grossly puzzling, has been the loosening of industrial regulations to increase the leger's bottom line...as the major if not the sole priority of corporate behavior. All of these 'actions' and consequences threaten to end our existence! (Or at least substantially lessen a standard of living that we've giddily assumed would last forever.)

'We', the globe's 'haves', the rulers of humanity (and their subjects in tow), all are wakening it seems with a really bad hangover from having believed we live in a world of infinite resources - a belief set too often and too conveniently supported by made-to-order 'religious' permissiveness or our self-serving interpretations of such. We have come to see that humanity has been carelessly play-acting at life in Eden when in actuality we've squandered away a beautiful world of 'enough-for-all'... a world that was bountiful but needed careful attention to the consequences of humanity's actions ... a set of 'husbandry' rules (like the 'good shepherd'). We've woven the 'good shepherd' into our culture but not taken that meme seriously - it's often served to keep populations under control.

We've wakened to a living nightmare, a frighteningly bad video game become real where life is a finite sum matter that is now seen to be obscenely asymmetric where alien rules apply and it's near too late to learn them.

The 'rules' of good planet husbandry have been replaced in favor of the interests of fictitious entities (corporations) and false priorities of profit propped up by legal rationalizing. We've willfully turned away from humanity's role in climate change, giddily squandered Nature's resources, blindly erected 'laws' that protect non-human, fictitious instruments that wander the planet exploiting natural resources (and murdering whole populations as collateral damage in the sacred pursuit of such profits), and all too often supported by convenient religious praise of profitable effort as the ticket to Valhalla.

Umar Haque's views on the nightmare that we wakened to, in September 11, 2019, 'Medium'webzine ((How) Capitalism Turned Life, the Planet, and Civilization into Money — and Our Challenge is Turning it Back - Why the 21st Century Needs a Revolution (If We Don’t Want Civilization to Keep on Collapsing)), is that global economic inequality is the root of our nightmare because the degree of inequality is extreme and encompasses just about everything around us that can be purchased, exploited and monetized.

(Pericles21, blogged this view several years ago in wondering if 'real-product' economies were at the end because 'demand' has shifted from economically depleted customers (with no more money to purchase) to owners of capital (paper fiat) whose 'demands' continue and have multiplied...even if capital owners' actual needs in the Maslovian sense are satisfied...to sinful excess. Also, Pericles21 pointed out few if any economic theory includes, or even attempts to include, 'greed' as perhaps the major underlying shaper of cultural economics throughout history.

Mr. Haque employs Marx and Keynes in using their insights to describe our current emergency of gross resource-sharing asymmetry as a “crisis of overaccumulation.” Haque's insight is that if pressures on the globe's inequality-burdened populations (the 'have-nots' of 50 years ago) remain unanswered, this will lead to a perhaps terminally harmful social explosion..for all humanity.

A social explosion seems perhaps likely because there are few or no alternative (peaceful) options left to the 'unequal' (the 99% or more of humanity) whose interests are becoming increasingly marginal in importance relative to the big picture of replacement of real markets with financial manipulations, e.g., hedge funds and third-and-higher-order derivatives. The 'un-equals' receive little regard for education to maintain labor competitiveness, even less regard for their health with healthcare having been rationalized away as some kind of luxury to be juggled against a cable tv subscription or smartphone.

In this blogger's view, there is a basic observation that seems undeniable - humanity has about reached the end of the 'saving rope' and the rope's end looks to be little more than frayed threads.

Mr. Haque, on solid ground, suggests the resolution is to somehow convince the owners of over-accumulated resources into re-investing in restoring the planet's health.

But Pericles21 sees that just the recognition of economic inequality should also incorporate reconceptualizing of the meaning of 'living'. We've defined life, at least bio-life, satisfactorily but, typically, in techno terms - DNA, etc. But now, in this age of extreme economic inequality, it appears something of major importance has been missing from our self-congratulatory metrics of life... there is a missing cultural pillar, a moral gap whose ignorance of has impacted us like a meteor.

We sense that this gap is something so far intangible that we are grasping for can quite 'get'. We are in dire need of a new metric guiding us 'how' we might best live this precious 'life'.

But, just arriving at this realization seems, hopefully, just in time. To many, Capitalism seems to be at the heart of the problem of the missing gap.

Capitalism has been described as a working market system...sometimes, maybe increasingly, requiring too much effort to prop up and too much rationalizing to continue to be useful or beneficial to sustaining social stability and progress.

The 'Capitalism Game" relies on two major factors - first, our human species' left-over monkey trait of competing 'for it all' (even wanting 'yours' when our bellies and hands are full of our AND your stuff we can never use); and second, an open-end supply of resources that require minimal effort (cost) to bring to market.

Although dwindling resources have required more and more 'effort' to bring to them to market, Our never-satisfied 'wanting' has continued as capitalism's driving force... and this 'drive' to over-satisfying has been given 'modern' clothing as 'objectivist self-interest' (selfishness, Rand-ism), objective 'reality', so-called natural economic competitiveness (nothing personal, mind you, it's just business), etc.

This has led to our present state of extremum...our monkey acquisitiveness has gone berserk and is about to wreck global stability through absurd economic inequality.

Somehow, without global revolution of the bloody historical kind, Humanity must reconceptualize our priorities and redefine what 'life' is. 'Life is much more than just technological-scientific definitions. 'Life' must be seen as a process and system for living in full value, i.e., seeing 'life' in its whole as a symbiosis of peoples, needs and wants. This is the 'game of living' and we should see the game as a finite sum balance that requires careful attention.

One's impression is that we are finally coming to understand that our right to exist (yes, it's that dire) must be earned and depends on how smart we are to preserve our sanity, our physical being, and the planet…all three together.

This means to realize that 'life' results from HOW we live it and 'living life' should be a priority. Radically speaking, this ends up with the concept that life and living is not a race to satisfy primordial monkey urges to accumulate but a new 'game' (since we monkeys seem drawn to like games) based on realizing that humanity is precious, more so than gold, and that we live on a 'symbiotic plane' with each other, the planet and its resources. 'Sane and sensible' should be the mantra of the new concept of living, a game where every human has value and though not 'free' in a sybaritic way (!!!), deserves to have at least basic needs met - the 'needs' of surviving as a human.

A corollary has to be a recognition that above a certain threshold of accumulation, any one individual and class endangers the greater 'game' of sane living for all. Yes, here is proposed that 'Life' is living in and through the greater good (a concept Pericles21 pointed out 10 years ago was a conceptual pillar proposed by the founders of the American nation who inherited it from the line of Western and Asian thinkers the past 4000 years.

‘Not, Not, Who’s There?’ The ‘Report’ (Maybe, or Maybe Not)

‘Not, Not, Who’s (Not?) There ? The ‘Report’, maybe. Mr. Mueller exits leaving the public and Congress with the responsibility, rare in these days of infomercials and manufactured ‘news’, to read for ourselves his novel-length Report and to make our own conclusions. We don’t seem up to this task despite intricate, but precise, details. But Mr Mueller left crumbs for the mice to both nibble on and lead us. However, the Report’s deliberate and maybe over-cautious style, though probably required when authoring such a report under a dictatorship. And, like the political satirists of previous times (Voltaire, de Foe, not Mencken....) Mueller seems to have employed his own disguising style, the use of the double negative ‘Not, Not’ to present his conclusions. That subtlety appears to be beyond the interpretive skills for the American public and its Congress. Yet the answer is already there ... in the style of the Report’s conclusions: by logic rules, the double negative ‘Not, Not’ equates to an affirmative...which leads to this reader’s conclusion that ‘obstruction” did occur, is now occurring and Will continue unless stopped...by Congress. As for Collusion, conspiracy and treason, how can one Not come to the same affirmative conclusions in the face of so much associative detail (damming but “insufficient” evidence, again a seeming disguise of the affirmative, ...with so much foreign agent traffic in and out of the White House and so many private meetings with same agents hidden from the public and even from WH staff? A well-known 70s song aptly describes our dilemma - “...what’s puzzling you is the nature of the game.” As for the ‘Game’, we know what’s come into the White House.

Normalization of the Abnormal - Trump and Barr Discuss the Mueller 'Report' Before It Gets to Congress, Obstruction Again

How Stupid Does DTrump and Barr think the Voting Public are? How wierder can this get? Barr has taken off his mask of People's attorney and, 'Geez' Mr Barr what a big scaly tail you have! What a spectacle! A Carnival! Thursday, when the 'Barr' redacted Report is presented to Congress, will Dtrump simply flop his dedito's and walk away? "Walk him out, walk him out"!

Let's see, late today, April 17, 2019, Attorney General William Barr, in person, proffered to DTrump a first look at Barr's semi-redacted Mueller Report...presumably in the White House rooms, no less. Barr's action was apparently in violation of norms and perhaps actual law, but all consequences of Barr's, and Trump's collusion, depends on how successful the GOP can spin things. Why did Barr do this'? Did Barr really think his meeting with DTrump could be hidden, and remain hidden for more than 8 hours? Did Barr throw aside his own protective shield of remaining unbiased as he is supposed to behave? Is the Mueller Report that bad for Trump? The Mueller Report is to be "redacted", 'solo', by hizoner Wm Barr, US AG, for first perusal by the several House and Senate committees interested in this kind of thing. Contrary to those committees' expectations, maybe, the item Barr will present will probably not be something to bet on for untouched-by-biased-Trump veracity. Barr's tipping the lid of the can of worms to Trump is not something the House committees can ignore no matter how bent this whole Trump story has become. We are advised by the press that Barr committed a 'bad' equivalent to obstruction of justice. The redacted full 'report', or at least a stack of paper sheets, will be trotted around to the Congress tomorrow, Thursday.

See Palmer Report blog, "Donald Trump and William Barr just handed House Democrats a clear path to impeach them both"
BD Holly | 10:29 pm EDT April 17, 2019

AOC (Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Congresswoman and Evolving American Icon): And the Conservatives' Conundrum

The Conservatives' response to AOC seems a subject for serious socio-political study and crosses over from just normal, adolescent frat boy, GOP name calling into territory that often appears to be a psychological disorder, a barely hidden, twisted, nay unrequited worship (shudder)...an oedipal 'wanna-be-her' fixation. Debate this opinion if you must but it must be given time to think about.

This theme was recently elaborated about in Umair Haque's January 19, 2019, piece in the webzine, Medium.com, linked to his webblog 'Eudamonia'. Umair's article is titled, "Why AOC Short-Circuits the Conservative Mind, (Why) The Universal Mother is the Antidote to the Authoritarian Father". One of Umair's insightful analyses is:

Have you noticed how conservatives are helplessly attracted to AOC — utterly beguiled by her, unable to resist her magnetic pull, tumbling into her orbit like flaming meteors — but are also, at the very same time, hopelessly perplexed as to how to deal with her? A little bit like sixth grade boys? Should they insult her, mock her, taunt her, push her down into the sand — or learn from her, admire her, understand her? Why can’t they seem to stop thinking about her, anyways? ARRRGGH!

Pericles offers the following thoughts following along Umair's theme.
--------Pericles21 Post-------

Pericles21 is tempted to offer, in a mood of impatience with the GOP and their troglodyte membership, a terse comment:

Break yourself, Mr Conservative hater, no matter how many adolescent tears, interrupted sleep and unrequited, hidden feelings (the Conservative 'Way' is never to show human , err, humane emotions) ... you'll never impress Congresswoman Ocasio-Cortez in the way you dream about. Break yourself. Never happen. So sorry for you.

Earlier, on January 17, 2019, Pericles21 had posted an endorsement of a piece about AOC in the Dailykos webzine, 'Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Uses Wording Many [Conservatives and conservative-minded]are Upset with, but, I'm here to defend her" [mixed caps are actually present in the original piece but might be edited in updates]: AOC is the ‘now’, her detractors are not. The new Millenials, who AOC is a member of and politically represents, are a diverse, multilingual American generation reflecting in their language skills the communication requirements of a current, diverse world.  'Thank you' for an OAC able to use her Millenial word skills to tailor speech to any occasion and purpose. While the ‘Thuglicans’ are ripping off America, AOC voters and supporters do comprehend and appreciate her delicious humor because it speaks to them and sardonically confuses her detractors. The motto of the Millennial generation might be ‘You have to live it understand it’. Millenial gestalt. Keep that in mind. AOC often seems a 21st century Mencken.


Pericles21's post on the subject of 'AOC' as an evolving American icon (after all, AOC earned political success the American way, working to rise from the urban grass roots. How much more 'Now' can it be wanted to get respect.

aKudos, Mr Haque. AOC is a delight. And likewise a delight, though highly farcical, nay the ultimate choking guffaw, is the Conservatives' response to her, their frustrated confusion. But not often seen directly stated, but no doubt is subliminal and highly exciting in every male conservative’s mind is this conundrum - that although AOC and her ‘sisters’ are ideologically, gender wise and/or racially the ‘other’, and are hence forbidden to be regarded as equals because they live on the far side of the ‘lines’ Conservatives have programmed themselves not to cross.

Conservatives want AOC! And not in a healthy way and they secretly in-the-closet know it. They covet her and so want to disobey the twisted self-boundaries that rule their hate filled lives. ‘Oh lordy’, they want that freedom. But Conservatives can’t acknowledge ‘ALL THAT” barely to themselves and especially publicly. Not to friends, family, their Party (GOP), their pets (who laughingly, in pet intuition, already know their masters are mind-cuffed but wanting wanting AOC and her sister modern women in their clumsy neanderthal way. But Conservatives know, in their material-possessive custom, they can’t get near an AOC female, not in a million years while they are wearing their mental (sometimes real) ankle and wrist (and...?) horsehair bracelets and barbed-wire undershirts. Not ever, no how.

Worse than being emotionally self-lobotomized, Conservatives know why they can’t ever get next to an AOC sister: they have THE PROBLEMS — racism, genderism, can’t dance-ism, all that and more that 'they' have (they being everyone who can dance, etc); Conservatives live in just plain hate (‘why do you hate me, god’).

Plus, Conservatives can’t go anymore to the good ole 'cures' for THE PROBLEMS — you know, cures like rape of minority women (god forgives them of that brand of miscegenation), lynching in the public square, public insulting at one’s whim, capricious whipping to brighten a bad day, cross-burning … those good ole fun things.

In today’s diverse America of beautiful, sharp and capable women of whatever color even of whatever politics (even Thuglican women are ‘crossing over’), Conservatives are in danger of becoming the disadvantaged and socially inept, the left out, the embarrassing and excluded from polite, mutually respectful society. Conservatives are looking like a royally gored, truly f..d cult. Conservative women, as Bessie said, ‘better watch your man’, but generally women know, or ought to know, what's up ...having been given 'the short end of the stick' for so long, regardless of race or politics. So Conservatives, can’t get no satisfaction? Break yourself, Mr Conservative, there's no pity for you.

The Fate of Capitalist Nations: America and Britain Have Lost Important Battles but Maybe Losing the War IS Not Yet Clear

There are three 'logical' endpoints that are debatably inevitable for a capitalist nation. One, the logical endpoint of historical colonization is currently exampled by America, Britain, France and Germany who are experiencing the consequences of foreign population flow-back from colonized markets to the colonizer because the colonizer became dependent on cheap labor to 'man' the low wage, but essential, manual and service jobs at the bottom of the economic pyramid. (Rome saw this happen.)

All of these top-of-the-pyramid nations have discovered that it is difficult or impossible to control the back-flow of cheap labor from exploited, foreign labor markets to the homeland exploiter. Thus, despite the immediate historical profits from exploited foreign markets, eventually there have come high social and as well economic costs to the exploiting homelands -created by cultural-linguistic incompatibilities prolonged and strengthened by segregation, needed health services, and education and skills gaps in general.

The problems to the home country of adapting foreign market population back-flow, are exacerbated by a kind of problem-solving paralysis deriving from the homeland's need to 'obey' democratic-philosophic principles that dictate costly humane solutions when the directness of behavior as in the foreign exploited markets would be more efficient, i.e., less costly, less humane and quicker actions. This built in self-paralysis has made it impossible control foreign market population back-flow both legally through immigration laws or via natural blocks such oceans and artificial blocks like walls.

But mostly making it resistive to control foreign population back-flow are the strong pressures and rewards for illegal immigration by the needs to fill low paid domestic service jobs (in hotels, restaurants, private homes, health clinics, etc) and likewise in low wage roles in industries such as the agri-business sector.

The major former colonizers are now less 'whip and chain' masters but still exploitive colonizers!

Overall, the former colonial 'masters, have found it difficult or impossible to control (much less to block) back-flow of native populations for at least two reasons:

One, refusal of immigration from exploited markets violates the democratic principle of 'fairness and equality' that
is shared by these nations.

Two, and perhaps the most important problem for the homeland, the internalizing by foreign populations of the same
democratic self-identity badges that unify (and help to pacify) the home land populations.

Once foreign, cheap labor begin to internalize the same narrative used to keep domestic populations in check, 'whip and chain' controls become unsustainable in the same way as narrated and revered in the history of the homelands.

This self-contradiction of messaging constitutes a built-in self-destruction button at the breast of the colonizer and is the core reason for the historical and current fragility of the colonizer-colonized relationship. And, this fragility increases as countervailing forces develop against exploitative capitalism as international ethical standards evolve (to the dismay of the capitalist).

In a perfect capitalist world of free, unregulated and ethically unhindered markets, the logical endpoint is concentration of all wealth and assets at the upper stratum, the 1 percent. (This is the free-market, finite-sum game-theoretical model of successful business management that is the guide and goal for every hungry, aggressive capitalist.. no mater how strong a protest.

But in a real world, such total concentration of wealth and the efforts to achieve that goal, are guaranteed to create social resistance and eventually lead to a path ending in society's self-destruction.

We seem now arrived at the logical endpoints of free market capitalism with disruptive consequences of a perceived scarcity of 'Goods' at lower economic strata mainly exampled by a scarcity of employment income presumed by competition in a zero-sum economy from illegal immigration.

Our economy is not a zero-sum situation but where did this perception come from? That is a question to be secondarily answered perhaps, along the way to thinking up and planning for new industries and subsidizing new, spring-board technologies.

Never the less, our society's 'Hoi Polloi' have become disaffected as there is no longer a frame of reference where they are 'superior' to a social stratum below themselves thus removing the intangible but crucial ego support (a virtuality paycheck) that makes their own poverty palatable.

The capitalist knows this and through influencing government (lobbying) has constructed complex systems of social codes and strata-segregation rules and laws to appease the lower masses and thus imprison them in their own, ego sustained world of false, prejudicial rewards - artificial (intangible) wealth that 'buys' nothing and doesn't compete with the capitalist who is busy accumulating real wealth.

The third consequence of a free-market capitalist society is that the wealthiest capitalist is seen as the most eligible to govern; but this is a fallacy because the most successful capitalist is by definition the most focused on maximizing the bottom line, P&L, which requires the most effort to distance oneself from emotions linked to people and society (and even national loyalties).

Thus, the most successful capitalist, operating from the pure business model, is by definition the least suited for, and capable of, husbanding the 'Common Good'. G

Good historical examples of pure free market capitalists are current cultural heroes, Pirates of the Caribbean, Black Beard and kin. The most successful capitalist is the most vicious pirate, the most blood thirsty jungle predator desirous of a world of unregulated commerce and business operation where 'business' has the pure objective to make wealth without being weighed down by any societal considerations, even consumer safety and benefit except as unintended fall-out (eg, "Trickle Down"). The mindset of the capitalist must be the accumulation of ALL wealth, motivated by the anxiety of viewing the economic world as a finite, zero-sum game.

In this context, as examples, both Trump and Romney are 'successful' , or at least 'worthy' businessmen although they collectively accumulated wealth by treasonous and corporate-cannibalistic 'just business' behavior. In their business life, and certainly Trump in his personal life, both followed societally destructive paths that endangered jobs and national security.

One might say (certainly this commenter can say it) that any nation that calls itself a 'democracy' should exclude these gentlemen, and their brethren, as candidates for top governance positions.

But admittedly, such exclusion, which is beneficial to protecting the Common Good is by definition difficult,inadvisable or impossible in a democracy … especially once the capitalist has succeeded in legally redefining capitalist elements such as corporations from bloodless, paper-boundaried legal structures to personhood with the same rights as flesh and bone people, (viz,. Citizens United).

The result of such dilution of a nation's democratic principles will inevitably be, as it is now become in both the cases of Britain and America, a chaotic, dysfunctional, internally disturbed, directionless and self-destroying state (State)... even without the aid of an external enemy.

This vulnerability makes it easier for an intervention by an external enemy through bullet-less means (unconventional warfare). Both Britain and America are experiencing and losing, subtly-fought unconventional warfare with similar outcomes - social and political self-disruption without enemy boots setting foot. Such is the fate of former, and current colonizers who perfected empirical foot-ship-and-air armies.

In the cases of both America and Britain, the common unconventional 'weapon' used to invade and conquer them has been Russia's legal use of social media (capitalist uber-products) to 'capture-and-manipulate' the minds, i.e., voting preferences, of homeland populations. Russia's weapon of choice was through contracting services from Cambridge Analytical (an internet data corporation) to accumulate and exploit web-user data. These were successful projects as demonstrated by the election of Donald Trump (with his announced goal of possible exiting from NATO), and Britain's Prime Minister May's intent, at all costs, of exiting the European Union ('BREXIT'). Both objectives successes have brought along wild social and political tides and involved direct treason , through the Trump-Putin 'collaboration'. In both cases, these two colonizer homelands (Britain and America) were caught unprepared for unconventional, bullet-less warfare. More, they were blind to the fact they were even at 'war' involving Russia's 'soft' weans such as cyber data 'bullets' and treason hidden in the weeds of the global market and electronic banking systems.

July 14, 2017, Pericles21 labels Trump as a "traitor" in a DailyKos post

traitor guilty of 'treason on multiple counts'

July 21, 2017, Pericles21 posts under the title quoted in this post, "Nothing added".

January 12, 2019 (!). Dailykos's Jen Hayden lays out the FBI's ongoing investigation of Trump as a possible Russian agent since even before the GOP primaries to the 2016 election.
.

Trump's behavior as POTUS is much more serious than a funny quip, "I told you'. Trump is a bad realization that America really did wet its pants by electing Trump, and America must put down the soda and chips, and come away from the TV to take care of things before the Trump muck drowns us.

America has elected a straw entity, a falsehood, a 'Barnum and Bailey' circus side show starring a bizarreness
and about which America has lost its sense of reality. America needs someone to vomit up the right words to describe Trump. Hence America has fittingly , finally 'us' and her family, must grapple with the reality of Trump as President.
July 14, 2017, Pericles21 labels Trump as a "traitor" in a DailyKos post

traitor guilty of 'treason on multiple counts'

July 21, 2017, Pericles21 posts under the title quoted in this post, "Nothing added".

January 12, 2019 (!). Dailykos's Jen Hayden lays out the FBI's ongoing investigation of Trump as a possible Russian agent since even before the GOP primaries to the 2016 election.
.

Trump's behavior as POTUS is much more serious than a funny quip, "I told you'. Trump is a bad realization that America really did wet its pants by electing Trump, and America must put down the soda and chips, and come away from the TV to take care of things before the Trump muck drowns us.

America has elected a straw entity, a falsehood, a 'Barnum and Bailey' circus side show starring a bizarreness
and about which America has lost its sense of reality. America needs someone to vomit up the right words to describe Trump. Hence America has fitting inally 'us' and her family, must grapple with the reality of Trump as President.

America is seriously self-limited by a lack of critical awareness. Consequently, that 'lack' partly explains our inability to correctively address the Trump problem. Not possessing effective critical awareness also means we generally suffer from a lack of resistance to mis-education, we accept the ongoing and rampant merchandizing of our governance system and structures, and we are even selling our emotions to the social web world. In addition to those 'lackings', we, the collective American citizenry, have a tendency to uncritically accept runaway 'branding' especially of political subjects, both for good as well as for bad purposes. America's 'Trump reality' is our inability to see Trump as a serious problem because American are 'trained' to respond to colorful signs and clever packaging.

In Trump, America elected something sinister - it is emerging that America in its mercantile, commodified ethos, elected a traitor who apparently operated as a Russian agent before the 2916 election, during the primaries to the 2018 election and since the election. And America, collectively, has not see a 'way' out of the Trump mess that avoids America's sinking to the level and acts of a third world, Banana Republic dictatorship.

In a larger summary sense, this blogger does not feel flattered by appearing to have some kind of prescient sense, a political crystal ball so to speak. Instead, Pericles21's sentiments are those of fearfulness combined with an emerging pride that America's watchdogs and citizens have looked at Trump's antics in higher positions yet have retained their composure, integrity and faith in the rule of law. With these virtues, we have been able to 'stick to the task of getting Trump gone, but by the procedures and within the boundaries set by the Constitution. (Mueller's role and progress are testaments to this idea)). Since Trump's inauguration, we have witnessed much chicanery to defeat the Constitution with slippery words (Fox News and the GOP), aiding and abetting obstruction (Fox News and the GOP), acts bordering on treason or at least illegality (Donald Trump before and while POTUS, Fox News, the National Rifle Association and various GOP congresspersons in the House and Senate). "In an embarrassing short time ,America descended from the spirit of 'Rule by Law' (Lex Rex) back to the 'Ruler is Law' (Rex Lex). The Constitution was supposed to protect against this, but with Trump's election and behavior as POTUS, perhaps America has a new reason to examine it's Constitution, update its election process, educate our children to be better critical thinkers to resist entities with bad intentions for America and Americans, and move to understand a handle the 21st century concept of cyber war." Pericles21.
------------------------And so to the blog post ---------------------

July 21, 2017, under the above blog title, Pericles21 blogged just one sentence ... "Nothing to add".

That July 2017 'blog' came after Pericles21 had posted a one word commentary, 'Treason', in the DailyKos about Trump's closed, to Americans, White House May 10, 2017, 'meeting' with Russian Foreign Minister, Lavrov, and the Russian Ambassador, Kislyak.

That the press, like gawking sheep blandly watching their brethren being eaten by the coyote, has not made an ongoing screaming protest about that event represents to Pericles21 that American democracy has sunk from the Constitution's spirit of 'Rule by Law' (Lex Rex) to 'Rex Lex', the King is Law.

Pericles21 refers to that May 10, 2017, White House gathering eventwith punctuation marks because of the shady, stench emanating from that Oval Office room. 'Stench' because: 1) that gathering was and remains officially undocumented hence its agreements are open to change or are deniable in whole or in part according to Trump's personal whims and purposes;

with punctuation marks 2) Trump personally took possession of the translator's notes at the meeting's end, thus capturing for his personal thus it's purpose, contents and outcomes and agreements or "deals" are not known even though there were plenty of human eyes who saw all the persons who entered together and there were translators present; 2} even though the gathering was held on American soil, in America's most politically sacred space the White House, between the American President and America's number one state enemy, Russia, 'we' the Constitutionally entitled American world outside the personhood of Trump, 'we' the Constitutionally entitled officials (State Department, Intelligence Agencies, etc), were deliberately excluded and remain uninformed; 3) the exact nature of that 2017 gathering has never been 'disclosed'.. to the press, the public, to any private American citizen, White House staff nor conveyed to our own intelligence agencies.
Because the May 10, 2017, meeting's contents are undocumented (by official American sources or even American press) and to date are still unknown to any American other than Trump, that gathering never happened and Trump can therefore 'spin' it to his benefit as he please, at any date and without consistency, and as circumstances change, or even deny it happened ... and don't even laugh at such a possibility (Trump recently denied he ever said Mexico must pay for 'The Wall'.

It is only now, nearly two years later, January 12 (2019 !!), that we, the public and apparently every American person, government department or agency, are being informed that Trump physically grabbed and took personal possession of the interpreter's notes and papers at the end of that 2017 meeting. So much for the principle of transparency or even that discussions with an enemy state must be shared by some witness under secrecy oath if even for self protection.

Over the last week or so (!) America has learned how far we have sunk from what we as even school children were taught is our Constitution's most sacred pillar - shared power and decision making, through and by the Constitutionally guarantee (written mandate) of checks and balances. We were taught that from their own experience, the America's founders rejected royal omnipotence with written insistence through the Declaration of Independence and consequently through the Constitution, in favor of checked-and-balanced government. Such government was to exist for the benefit of the people who in finality were to be the ultimate 'deciders'.

Despite America's constitutional spirit of shared power, it appears with Trump as POTUS, America has become a fiefdom whose spirit is 'the King is Law'.

In an embarrassing short time, just two or three months after inauguration (and apparently even before the election (as we will shortly learn from the FBI and the House Intelligence and Oversight committees), Trump blew through or wrecked American political traditions while the press, the rest of government, and the majority of Americans gawked and cried while the rest of the world, especially the underdeveloped world, laughed.

Such is the effect of ignorance (Trump's) when it acknowledges no boundaries to expected good behavior... or even supposedly good behavior that was supposed to have been reassured by traditional vetting of presidential candidates - but Trump has yet to reveal his tax returns, so much for American political tradition.

To some few, Trump has performed a a kind of back-handed Dark Messenger service to America by revealing, in his being spuriously elected, some of the seams in the Founders' dream nation, 'us'.

Some of America's major procedural weaknesses revealed by the Trump election include: 'gerrymandering',the tinkering with and gaming of election district boundaries; the Electoral College which is an insidious governance mutantcy whose original purpose was to protect and sustain slavery. And we are also, in this modern age of computers and ubiquitous social cyber networking, also embarrassingly and seriously vulnerable as a people to psychological 'cyber influence' (read as manipulatable, easily hoodwinked, willing dupes, rubes, 'Marks', etc ..as Trump and Putin deeply understand).

Another Trump-election-revealed weakness that America must deal with is our national naivete and collective undereducated ignorance about cyber warfare. We spend almost a trillion dollars annually on military 'defense' but yet America's election system appears to have been so easily penetrated, gamed by and to the advantage of Russia our main enemy state.

Until Trump, America's presidents have shown some kind of inner threshold to chicanery, greed, ego and remorselessness - in other words they possessed 'integrity' which among other virtues, Trump's behavior suggests he lacks.

But, Trump is for the very few a kind of dark messenger whose positive service is to shake the house. Fortunately the 'watchdog' elements of American government are (have been) alert to Trump and are bringing the collar to drag Trump from the White house, a position of shared power Trump never studied, knows and understands very little about and personally never could merit.

Trump was apparently elected by fraud conducted by an enemy state, with his knowledge and support, and suspectedly leveraged by blackmail. We are gradually being given details of this and we are about to have the whole picture made clear.

Again, in an embarrassing short time America descended from the spirit of 'Rule by Law' (Lex Rex) back to the 'Ruler is Law' (Rex Lex). The Constitution was supposed to protect against this, but with Trump's election and behavior as POTUS, perhaps America has a new reason to examine it's Constitution, update its election process, educate our children to be better critical thinkers to resist entities with bad intentions for America and Americans, and move to understand a handle the 21st century concept of cyber war.

Although it appears on some level, to some few, that Trump has served, so far, as a Dark Messenger, that dark 'service' must not continue. Trump's brood and brethren currently around him must be quickly removed from government before it's too late. The clock is running.

American Absurdism. Is America in a Period of Kultural Nihilism Like Berlin in the '20s? If So, Where is the Companion Artistic Movement (Kolwitz, Brecht, Lenya, Dietrich, etc) . Is Miley Cyrus the 'Au Courant' 'Blaue Engel'?

Is any of this making sense, anything? Wait, hold on a sec. Reboot (current lexicon). How much of all this current cultural BS is real? Is any of this stuff going on right now important(?) because the beer is still in the supermarkets, chips are still crunchy, baseball drones on, basketball still unimportant until the finals. In other words American culture seems unchanged and 'goin on'? Perhaps most importantly about America today, what would Miley Cyrus have to say about things (a sincere, if sudden stroke-of-insight, reference to MC as an American cultural pulse-indicator, a spokesperson-artist)? (Miley actually has said a lot by her insistent, intruding, pervasive but original, whole-being absurdist messaging. Is Miley the cultural call-out that some claim for her and her 'art'? Pericles21 feels she is.)

Is it possible that a nation's culture experiences disassociation with itself and laxes, not only lapses, but goes to hell with attitude? Into what? Into a mid-world of unknowing drifting such as in this new absurd-seeming, American era of blurred boundaries between truth and lies (e.g, is or is not D Trump a Russian asset, pizzagate? Butina and the National Rifle Association?? NRA, 'WhaThF' you say? Yup!

And Russian intelligence walking around America loud as daylight, enjoying our Disney World and shooting craps in Vegas and staying at Trump Towers? ...

And much more. Weirdness is now commonplace.

Yet we seem to ride above it and not be really, deeply caring in the midst of the flood of uncertainty rushing around us. Caring a lot yet uncaring enough to go to work (what's left of work and how uncertain that's become)!

This is where America now stands but a bit confused because what we used to be proud of as being uniquely American institutions, circuses, persons, streets are being revealed as long ago sold off party favors to what we thought were enemy states and demonic, God-cursed dictators who all along were drinking pals of our leaders, or at least some of them. America, meaning us citizens, remain standing somewhat still tall but feeling the dizziness creeping in.

America is where Berlin was in the 1920s when up was down, or maybe sideways, and cabarets were voicing the 3-ring circus that life had become... with barrels of money needed to buy a couple of loaves of bread. We're not at that point yet; the PTB say the economy is roaring along full steam. And unemployment is historically low (but the new jobs pay shit so you have to work two or three to support a family, which no human can do for long, so well-intentioned alt-right white former factory workers have started to die off younger).

And so it goes in the land of the free. (Aren't we free? Of course! At least we can still stockpile our own private armories, in many red states. Oh' yesss, can't let our guard. Now we're previledged to worship new Uncle Vlad who we didn't know was related until a month ago. What a lucky time to be alive and a citizen.

But back to 1920s Berlin. Berlin, then, had its artists who painted, composed and wrote of the tumultuous social whirlpool that characterized that world at that time. Isherwood, Kolwitz, Brecht, Lenya, Cabaret society. America doesn't have those 'voices but we do have other expressions of the sister of Nihilism, the current American culture of Absurdism and posturing for no real reason except that our cultural expressionists don't possess artistic talents, skills and don't want to, or can't, take the time to learn real artistic skills like painting, writing, singing, playing instruments (violins and cellos not bass rhythm guitars) because we've become instant actors on a digitalized stage.

But Miley is 'imho' one exception to the ingestion into cultural falseness: Miley is the face of comedic-tragedy American kultur which seems to be characterized by a plentitude of hero-to-zero cultural icons. But Miley is a survivor, and a thriving one too, because she has apparently surfed the absurd to remain ahead of public boredom. How, by remaining two or three steps ahead in that world of absurdity.

Is Miley's secret her skill as a performer dressed in fake fur ('Not'! to be retro)? Or, is Miley a real-in-the-flesh child of virtual, American unreality and so is genuinely absurd as reflected by her life narrative, eclectic style, dress, 'partners', gender flexibility, etc?

Pericles21 thinks the latter - that Miley is a genuine absurdism, an iconic formula for survival and thriving in the new Absurdist America. In other words, 'MC' is a character right out of 'Alice in Wonderland'. Laughable, maybe, but indicative of dark currents under the seducing clownishness of Amerikan kultur.

Does Pericles21 like Miley's art? Yes! Enthusiastically! But not as the reader of this blog might think - Pericles21 likes, tremendously, Miley's in-your-face courage and apparent insistence on 'being'...real. Miley's art is a whole-being-in-it commitment!

American culture has had, in previous history, several such iconic self-artists. Predominantly, they have been artists and writers and especially in the marginalized segments of America's art world. Jazz artists stand out in this respect. One has to mention the 'whole-being' artists such as Charlie Parker, Miles, Gillespie, Coltrane, and even Blossom. And of course the original whole-immersion, American Faustian, the blues guitarist Robert Johnson.

Our Absurdism is prevalent in the crooked-smiling, alt right, media star utterances of patent lies about far-fetched conspiracy theories. Whole movements have grown up around those conspiracy themes... such as the mysterious, cultist, tribalist 'QAnon'movement.

The above is from Alternet zine, August 1, 2018. What? In just two years?

((More To Come!)