A New New Beginning...?

Another year rolled by. Another symbolic opportunity to reflect, reassess, remember, rethink. OR do none of that.

I am pretty calm about there being no “meaning”, or rather “meaning” is the wrong perspective, the wrong question, the wrong word. There is still plenty to consider and think about in the world, but assigning meaning is essentially assigning worth. And figuring out “worth” of any thing or person requires adopting a host of preconceptions and premises, often without even knowing it.

Not that there aren’t preferences and opinions. I may be fooling myself and talking in circles to myself, in that, how can I think some ways of doing and thinking are better or worse but still think I am not applying value to that. As I write it, I guess we can debate ways of doing things, but any value is tentative or provisional, in that we are just doing the best we can since there is no galactic rule book we can follow..

Yeah, that is it…I am more at peace with the uncertainty of it all.

I am not a rigorous thinker but in trying to figure things out I feel my current world view is this accepting, I still can’t do embrace of, uncertainty. And part of that I credit to my late discovery of Erich Fromm in Escape From Freedom where he outlines how people having trouble dealing with uncertainty (which is a side effect, or maybe and inherent part of Freedom).

Fleeing freedom/uncertainty people dive into the arms of authoritarianism and anything that promises “certainty”. This is why our current melding of religion and authoritarianism meshes so easily. The theology is actually secondary to the certainy of the religion, like political philosophy is secondary to confidence of authoritarians.

Of course why the rich power brokers full of security and confidence go for all that is a whole 'nuther can of crazy worms.

Anyway, those of the kind of thoughts bouncing around my noggin this blog anniversary

And I finish with a quote from another one of my inspirations, Terry Prachett..

“But is all this true?” Said Brutha.
Didactylos shrugged. “Could be. Could be. We are here and it is now. The way I see it is, after that, everything tends toward guesswork.”
“You mean you don’t know it’s true?” Said Brutha
I think it might be,” said Didactylos. “I could be wrong. Not being certain is what being a philosopher is all about.” Pg 187

And another quote from another of my sources

Reporter: Professor Habito, what is the meaning of life?
Ruben Habito: …There is no “meaning of life” apart from living it, breath by breath, moment by moment, one day at a time, grateful for the mystery, the miracle, the wonder of it all.
Ruben Habito: By Excellence Reporter on July 16, 2015

https://excellencereporter.com/2015/07/16/ruben-habito-on-the-meaning-of-life/

Words to Remember

Came across these words in two differfent podcasts, Collective Effervescence and Absorption

On Straight White American Jesus they used Collective Effervescence to describe the unifying feeling people have in a church where people are swept up in the ecstasy of the moment.

And Absorption I heard on I Was a Teenage Fundamentalist in a discussion about why some people go all in for with the pentacostal features and others don't.

Google Definitions

Absorption is a disposition or personality trait in which a person becomes absorbed in their mental imagery, particularly fantasy.[1] This trait thus correlates highly with a fantasy prone personality. The original research on absorption was by American psychologist Auke Telleg

Collective effervescence (CE) is a sociological concept coined by Émile Durkheim. According to Durkheim, a community or society may at times come together and simultaneously communicate the same thought and participate in the same action.

The Time I Tried to Read a Mark Levin Book

I tried to read Mark Levin's The Democrat Party Hates America and made it maybe half way through before I switched over to hyper-drive reading speed. Not because it was so easy to go through, but because every page is overflowing with venom and hatred, hatred of the “the Democrat Party”, of Joe Biden, of Hunter Biden...pure, pulsating hatred. I just wanted get through it as fast as possible. But even then I had to quit before the end of the book. It was just too depressing.

I thought it would be a good exercise to get out of my comfort zone and see another point of view. I thought I would examine his logic and admit where I saw it as...well ,logical, and point out where there was poor reasoning (as I saw it). But really after getting into it, I don’t remember any actual arguments, just an avalanche of hateful rhetoric directed at “the Democrat Party”. And if you didn’t know, calling the Democratic Party “the Democrat Party” is meant to be an insult, or it is when you hear it spoken and that same tone comes across in this book.

I probably overvalue my own skill at analyzing arguments. But this was an exercise for me, and nobody else will likely read it my thoughts, so I plunge ahead with my own limited abilities.

Anyway, it wears you down putting your mind in the mind of somebody so very angry, so filled with the opposite of compassion. Page after page of saying the current state of the country is horrible, really horrible, but really he “tells” and doesn’t “show” us about that.

The upshot is IF you already think the Democrats are really bad I bet you are fine with believing they are all Marxist. Yet he never defines what he means so I assume he thinks social secruity, laws protecting minorities, any acknowledgment of prejudice..THAT is Marxist. I mean if Marxism means the state owns the means of production then none of that stuff is actually Marxist.

Assuming he equates Marxism with Communism, he never shows where Democrats are trying to obolish private property, much leess have the state take over the means of production (BTW, take over is not the same thing as to regulate)

So he goes on and on about how Democrats are Marxist. Then there are some really long sections where he repeatedly tells us "you know who really liked slavery in the 19th century??..DEMOCRATS...And you know what else, guess who was really racist after the Civil War...DEMOCRATS. So THERE. " I mean yeah, but the unstated conclusion is that all Democrats today therefore also believe in all that stuff. And that goes on and on for multiple chapters and he is really indignant about it. So really super disingenuous reasoning for page after page is simply draining, it is so disingenuous it is hard to even know where to start.

And YES I know Woodrow Wilson was super racist, EVERYBODY knows that. But it doesn’t dissuade me from voting for a stronger social safty net or anything that would make rich people pay more in taxes. Another unstated assumptions is that taxation is marxism.

And the Coup de grâce is the last chapter where he talks about the worst thing that has ever happened in America...attempts to save lives by implementing COVID lock downs. If you come to this book already thinking like him then no reasoning is required. If you think the lock downs were a tool people tried to make things better, and we should look at what worked and what didn’t for the next time, then Levin is of no help. Although I have to admit I skippped most of the last chapter for my mental health, but from the tone of the opening I am pretty sure he did not work out a nuance position.

Below are some highlights I saved from the library ebook I checked out. Remember he is saying the stuff below about Democrats. I guess during his schooling his dictionary had no entry for “irony”

And of course the biggest irony is that with half or more of the population voting for the Democratic Party he is the one who really, really, hates America. Or at least 1/2 of it

# #
The police state is growing—as is monitoring and spying
the police state is growing (elsewhere he says police budgets are slashed??)
Our borders are wide open
The Democrat Party is responsible
The Democrat Party is responsible
eviscerate the Constitution
Democrat Party apparatchiks
Biden’s radical agenda
American Marxism
the progressive left who hate America
the American Marxist agenda,
their “Marxist paradise.”
Democrat Party today is more Leninist than Jeffersonian
the horrendous story of the Democrat Party’s past
Wilson’s racism
American Marxism

No longer would states with smaller populations, rural areas, etc., have any effective say in the selection of presidents and vice presidents. Indeed, only nine states make up about 50 percent of the nation’s population. Thus, representative government, where all areas of the country have a say in the conduct of the national government, would end. Tens of millions of people would be without meaningful input in governmental affairs—most of whom just happen to be Republicans and Independents. Representative government would be over for tens of millions of American citizens.

Of course, slavery is unconscionable. There is no excusing it. But capitalism did not drive slavery. Slavery has existed, and exists today, throughout the world and in noncapitalist societies. As Peter W. Wood, president of the National Association of Scholars, explains: “Slavery… was not an American invention, or a European one. It has existed in human societies for thousands of years.

They have a totalitarian mind-set. This means the party must come before country

If It Quacks Like Evil, Maybe It Really Is Evil

The Conspiracy to End America: Five Ways My Old Party Is Driving Our Democracy to Autocracy by Stuart Stevens
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I admit that at the start I was not dazzled by this new Stuart Stevens book. It had a lot of references and names and stories from the many other scary books about trump. I had read or heard mentions of these sources in print or on many podcasts and opinion stories. And it is true much of this is a rehash of what we already know.

So what is new here?

The background info he brings is fine but like I said if you were looking in this direction already you probably knew much of it. HOWEVER once Stuart comes out swinging for real, he really keeps coming. With a directness and force you didn’t realize you were missing. And really the facts are clear for any that have eyes and ears and with much force Stuart Stevens is shouting to get your attention.

Trump and Trumpism are as pure evil as has existed in mainstream politics, and when I look around, I, too, often see the institutions of America failing the moment. It doesn’t come in the active embrace of Trumpism but in a failure aggressively and unequivocally to reject an authoritarian movement of hate. My fear is that America is learning to accommodate Trumpism, and history is clear that is a gateway drug to democratic collapse. - Location 2284-2287

“Pure Evil” ? Is that too much?
I used to complain in my imaginary political dialogs with people who demonized previous Republican administrations or politicians. I mean sure I thought they were wrong and probably jerks, but that was as far as I would take it, BUT I think with the current situation his comment is not hyperbole. Again for those who have the eyes and ears to look a the facts.

To rise in the Republican Party, it is essential to show solidarity with those who wish to end democracy. - Location 2181-2182

He does have an outline of why he has his vies and they make sense of the obvious (to me) craziness of modern Republicanism

Whenever a democracy slides into autocracy, there are five critical elements at work. All of these are active today in American politics.

The five autocratic building blocks are:
•Propagandists
•Support of a major party
•Financers
•Legal theories to legitimize actions
•Shock troops
- Location 94-98

And he uses known facts and stories to show this is the case.

I wish I could sit and talk with him for a while and ask what he would have said about some of his current opinions that were anathema to Republicans just a short while ago before he was on this track. Like was he also so reasonable about guns?

Walking into a Starbucks with a semiautomatic weapon isn’t proving you have the right to bear arms; it is an assertion that you do not trust society to protect you, that there is no civil bond between you and the next person in line ordering a latte. - Location 2206-2207

And what did he previously think of the Federalist society in the “before times”? Because his take down of them is throughout and SO spot on it is scary. In fact I would say it is one of the core takeaway of the book. I suspect he was previously fine with the Federalist Society before and probably all the never Trump Republicans were totally cool with them. Or maybe not, I never get and chance talk with them

Here it is even if it is a bit long for a Goodreads review.

Taken individually, none of these judicial actions is a death blow to democracy, but collectively, each builds on the previous one. It is a long game played with patience. A timeline tells the story:

1982: The Federalist Society is formed.
1986: Federalist Society superstar Antonin Scalia is nominated to the U.S. Supreme Court by President Reagan.
1991: Clarence Thomas, a Federalist Society member, is nominated by George H. W. Bush. 2000: George W. Bush loses the popular vote to Al Gore but is elected by the electoral college. The Supreme Court rules 5–4 in favor of Bush in the infamous Bush v. Gore case. 2004: George W. Bush is reelected.
2005: Leonard Leo of the Federalist Society creates the Judicial Confirmation Network (later to become Judicial Crisis Network). He raises $15 million from undisclosed donors to run confirmation campaigns supporting Bush Supreme Court nominees.
2005: John Roberts, a Federalist Society member, is nominated to the Supreme Court by George W. Bush.
2005: Samuel Alito, a Federalist Society member, is nominated to the Supreme Court by George W. Bush.
2006: The Federalist Society expands its public relations campaign. Leo comments that “I spend probably close to $800,000 annually on a PR team at the Federalist Society, and we generate press that has a publicity value of approximately $146 million each year.”
2010: The Supreme Court rules 5–4 in the Citizens United decision that corporations have the right to spend unlimited money in U.S. elections. Four of the five deciding votes are cast by Federalist Society members.
2010: redmap is formed by Republicans to focus on redistricting state legislatures to maximize Republican benefit.
2012: With the help of undisclosed “dark” money made possible by Citizens United, conservative Paul Newby is elected to the North Carolina Supreme Court.
2012: North Carolina ends public financing of judicial nominations.
2013: The Supreme Court nullifies key provisions of the Voting Rights Act, which John Roberts first opposed in 1981.
2016: Justice Scalia dies seven months before the presidential election. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell refuses to allow hearings or a vote on President Obama’s choice of Merrick Garland as Scalia’s replacement. McConnell says, “The American people should have a voice in the selection of their next Supreme Court justice. Therefore, this vacancy should not be filled until we have a new president.”
2016: Leonard Leo’s Judicial Crisis Network spends $7 million to support the Republican senators running for reelection who refuse to hold hearings on Merrick Garland.
2016–2017: Groups controlled by Leonard Leo raise over $250 million from undisclosed donors.
2016: Donald Trump loses the popular vote to Hillary Clinton by 2.8 million voters but wins the electoral college.
2017: Leonard Leo’s Judicial Crisis Network spends $10 million in support of Trump.
2017: Trump nominates Neil Gorsuch, a Federalist Society member, to replace Justice Scalia. 2017: Leonard Leo’s Judicial Crisis Network spends $10 million supporting the Gorsuch nomination.
2018: Justice Kennedy resigns. Trump appoints Brett Kavanaugh to replace him. Kavanaugh, a Federalist Society member, worked for the two George W. Bush campaigns and in the White House, married Bush’s long-time personal assistant, and was nominated by Bush to the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. Trump, a president who lost the popular vote, appoints the protégé of a president—Bush—who also lost the popular vote.
2018: The Leonard Leo organization “Freedom and Opportunity Group” donates $4 million to “Independent Women’s Voice,” which runs ads supporting Kavanaugh. Heather Higgins, the group’s president and chief executive, attacks the women who accuse Kavanaugh of sexual assault, saying, “If you have a weak standard of evidence, then what you are doing is guaranteeing that future nominations will all be last-minute character assassinations and circuses.” She is paid $311,000 annually as the leader of Independent Women’s Voice.
2019: The U.S. Supreme Court rules that states are free to gerrymander without review by the state’s Supreme Court. “We conclude that partisan gerrymandering claims present political questions beyond the reach of the federal courts.” Of the justices voting in support of the 5–4 ruling, three have been confirmed by a collection of senators who represented a minority of the country’s population. All are Federalist Society members.
2020: Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg dies thirty-eight days before the presidential election. Trump appoints Amy Comey Barrett to replace her. Majority Leader McConnell holds hearings and the Senate vote to confirm her after the presidential election voting has begun in many states. He denies this contradicts his previous refusal to hold hearings on the Merrick Garland nomination during an election year.
2020: Barrett is confirmed and becomes a justice of the Supreme Court. There have been five Supreme Court justices in U.S. history who were appointed by a president elected with a minority of the vote and confirmed by senators representing a minority of the country’s population. With Barrett’s confirmation, all five are currently on the Supreme Court.
2022: $1.6 billion is gifted to the Marble Freedom Trust, a Leonard Leo group.
2023: The North Carolina Supreme Court overturns a previous ruling and allows the Republican-controlled legislature to draw districts by any guidelines they choose.

The 2019 Supreme Court ruling on gerrymandering provides no pathway for appeal. Justice Paul Newby, who was elected post–Citizens United, is now chief justice. What began decades earlier continues to play out, changing the legal basis of American elections. It is the Long Game played patiently and relentlessly with no like effort in opposition. The Republican attack on the electoral system with combined efforts to challenge election results, restrict voting, and control the counting of votes is following the successful blueprint used by the Federalist Society to change the judicial system.
Location 1794-1848

Thanks to NetGalley for letting me get a head start of this important book

View all my reviews

One Life

I let the last birthday go by without comment. Less to say, or birthdays mean less each year.

On the drive home from work I listened to Lisa Ekdahl’s “One Life”. Where for all the different personalities and all the conflict, there is just one life we are all living. And that reminded me of some psychologists saying there is no “self”, no individual, and our individuality is a fiction brought about by all the different parts of our brain interacting.

And this interaction is not a collection of discrete parts pretending to be a whole, but what there is of a self is the relations between all the brain activity. So too society is not a collection of individuals, but the relationship between all the brain relationships going on. And it is all happening NOW, every moment, and we let it flow by without comment, like ignoring a birthday .

BUT this universe of connections is the very essence of existence and it binds us together even while we ignore it.

To quote from the movie “Brazil”..”We are all in this together”.

Boerne Bike Ride

Saturday June 24, 2023 : 7AM
START @ Don Strange Event Center
Boerne Texas
Coffee Hollow Rollers » 25 mile

Comfort » 39 mile

https://tourdeboerne.com/

ChromeBook Ubuntu

Googling Your way to Success

A while back my old-ish Chromebook kept telling me it was out of date, so I found on the internet how to wipe the Chrome OS and install some linux version on it.

Long story short, I had that for a while and it mostly worked but thinking I was smart I decided to try a different version (going from Lubuntu to Xubuntu)

Whoops...I found the install went well and fewer problems than before, until I discovered if listing to any audio for more than a few minutes it would be interupped by a minutes long monoton horn sound. You could not mute or stop it.

Much Googling I finally found one person who said to try thing

sudo nano /etc/modprobe.d/alsa-base.conf

And then add this one line...

options snd_sof sof_debug

Then the minutes long "horn" stopped, and all was well
I just didn't want to forget this