President
Trump speaking with Vladimir Putin at Helsinki recently about
building golf courses in Russia after he is exonerated from getting
348 electoral votes because of G.R.U. machinations, inadvertently
disclosed to the Russian President that he is actually part American
Indian- Cherokee, and 23 and Me had verified his ancestry.
President
Putin was quite impressed and said that he was agreeable to investing
in First nation projects in Amerigo Vespucci land if President Trump
would repay with interest certain debts John Paul Jones left unpaid
in Russia during his naval service there back in the day.
The
project President Putin mentioned was a new Coffee Shop franchise for
dogs with canned product too in order to allow New Yorkers to share a
morning Joe with their dogs (a special decaffinated brew with soy). As President Putin described it, the
Starbarks stores would sell human and canine coffee appropriately
packed with anti-worm and anti-coffee lake CPU viruses.
I believe President Trump would have agreed to relocate U.S. whiskey production to Moscow if he was ‘in Putin’s pocket’. President Putin would have required Donald Trump to wear a turtleneck sweater and a Tonto hat to Helsinki. Yet that would just be for openers.
Vladimir Putin would be made President of Harvard University if enough pressure was applied to POTUS. Through controlling Harvard President of Harvard Putin could control the United States and compel everyone to learn Russian to reach the elite levels of Wall Street.
It is terrible to consider. The U.S.A. would go back to the Gregorian calendar. School lunches at college would have mandatory vodka rations and a half potato. President Trump would dance the Cossack dance at Christmas festivities while singing Go Ye Volga Boatmen and Frosted Flakes boxes would appear with the President’s picture on it.
The
study of history for the purpose of comprehending what has gone
before and to abstract from it patterns of behavior that may be
repeated is an interesting avocation that one may purse for a
lifetime usefully as it fits reasonably well into a philosophy of
history and a philosophical consideration of human behavior at a
general social level as well as that of in an individual level.
Individual do comprise social history though one may view them
concatenated as a society or culture. Subjective psychology or
epistemological content of individuals within organizations from
intra-social micro scale such as dyadic relationships to a corporate
and state scale affect the behavior of the organization.
Organizations such as states at the national or empirical scale have
structures that recur over history into the future though they may be
and often are new synthetic forms comparable metaphorically to the
aggregations of bits of continents that formed the state of Alaska
over eons with tectonic drift.
Individuals learn institutionally within organizational agents of socialization
that indoctrinate and train youth. One found that in the NAZI youth
movement and the content of educational indoctrination for hate is
well expressed in certain Middle Eastern nations regarding Jews and
Israel. History is the iceberg below the surface and the present is
the tip of the burg above the surface that living people experience.
The past does not of course entirely pre-determine present behavior
of individuals or nations and civilization yet the inertial forces of
continuity that comprise the complete economic compresent elements do
have historical continuity that continues into the present.
Nations
and other large social organization have organizations within such
that the entirety might be comparable to a cell with its organelles
and other parts including D.N.A. Challenges and responses occurs from
within and without the nation-cell to the global existential state of
affairs.
An
example of historical continuity might be that of two allies from the
First World War; Germany and Turkey that were then the primary Axis
powers. Maybe they share historical periods of opposition to the
existence of Jews or of the Jewish state. Since each are in NATO and
have excellent military histories the future possible policies of
NATO without the United States being a member are interesting and
complex to consider, and I won’t do that here, instead, because of
limited time I wanted to write a little more about the value of
learning history well enough to develop one's own theories of history
and test them against those of others and actual history.
Writing
on a lunch break; There is concrete present contemporary history
and all of the things people think and national policies and history
that tensor them in particular directions forward in time, and there
is an abstract synthetic analysis of the contents of each of the
nations, civilizations and their history that one might develop and
interpret current affairs and directions with. If one has a good
purpose for learning existential historical analysis (I liked
Sartre’s books such as Being and Nothingness and the Critique of
Dialectical Reason as well as Toynbee’s Study of History”, such
as trying to configure relations among nations in a socially
beneficial direction if possible, it is useful to understand the role
f major historical institutions such as the Catholic Church, The
Muslim World and so forth to comprehend how they affect the formation
of a state and its policies within a heterodox international
political environment. It is useful to understand how economics,
education, and energy plus food productions have determined national
and international policies. T is useful to learn what effect elites
have on determining the structure of state establishment even if one
wants to reform capitalism or transition to ecological economics
nationally.
There
is more to history than just abstract documents of dubious accuracy
that recorded it for present readers; history is that which went
before (such as the history of the Universe of which the present
instant, relativistically framing it, occurs entirely because of the
exteriorities of relations and space-time presentation of the energy
field locked into a steady state through decoherence ( physics term).
Toynbee
noted that the Greek city-states were not able to politically adapt
to the challenge of the new ‘federalism’ or nation-state that
Rome presented, and so they were defeated. Rome too did not adapt to
many challenges not the least of which was the failure to equal the
Huns in the use of horse calvary to travel as much as 200 miles a
day. Today a challenge for the world is to adapt to new and reformed
egalitarian capitalism that coheres within ecospherically synergistic
economic procedures. Unfortunately human lifetime is limited thought
the institutions continue on. There is little time for real learning
much less to acquire the political knowledge of the way to reform
society so that it can adapt to the external Toynbeen challenges of
global warming, mass spices extinction, population and consumption
pressures and so forth.
Vladimir
Putin is, in a sense, the adopting father of his country. He took office after
Yeltsin's hand was placed on his shoulder, and has led the new Russia
almost ever since. even so he is more like Ulysses S. Grant running a
country recently in chaos with great transition and an unsettled
civil economic structure. Total control really wasn't possible for
Grant and neither is it for Putin. He just barely got a little income
tax in place to help pay for the cost of government.
Geraldo
Rivera on Fox didn't know the difference between the K.G.B. and the
G.R.U. One is the former state security apparatus of the former
Soviet Union and the other is Army intelligence. I will give you five
seconds to guess which is which.....ready? The answer is the G.R.U.
is Army intelligence.
President
Putin has had to be lax and strict at the same time in encouraging
development of a free market with the most strong from the former
Soviet Union taking over state enterprises and privatizing them. It
was a very wild economic transition done live and the process is far
from complete. Issues of taxation and redistribution of wealth,
creation of new businesses and legalizing private property and trying
to let people have some while not letting people freeze to death or
starve in a harsh environment would be challenges for anyone.
Then
Russia had the problems of the west seeking to wrest former
territories from Russia and a left-leaning corporatist media that
might really have preferred that a socialist government had followed
the end of communism instead of what may be some sort of market based
economy eventually.
The
former Soviet state had a three part government of KGB, Communist
Party and the Military. In the New Russia it is quite possible that
Vladimir Putin cannot or does not exercise complete control over
military intelligence, or at least it is not so totalitarian that
Edward Snows, Aldrich Aimes and Chelsea Mannings don't appear to work
free enterprise on-line hacking for fun and profit like the legions
of western hackers and governments have. Didn't President Obama have
the U.S.A. actually hack into Chancellor Merkel's private spaces and
record noises for intelligence, fun and profit? I don't think the
practice is rare. Maybe the Brits and French have hacked the White
House. France did sink the Rainbow Warrior, yet that wasn't too
subtle.
It is
better to normalize relations and not have the crass media Putin
bashing they are accustomed too. It is an excellent Orwellian daily
hate that is not good for the nation or the ecosystem that each can
be advanced with constructive engagement with Russia.
Working just to survive has a lot of people that don’t survive. People reasonably aspire to more than being tethered like an ox to a water wheel being fed enough to survive to trudge around for life in a circle going nowhere. For a productive society laws should support patents for actual inventors at low cost or free of charge to stimulate invention and progress allowing quick social adaptation to challenges rather than the inertial resistance of concentrated wealth dominating the way things are. Unreformed capitalism encourage luxury purchases. It reinforces wrong social choices and values counterproductive to actual human interests. Advertising and wealth reinforce luxury and senselessness. Presently there is a young women that people have started a fund for so she might achieve being the youngest female billionaire (she only has 900 million apparently). Reforming capitalism, Christian church structure toward a priesthood of believers, and economics to environmental economics are important yet the former example highlights the detached from more than excess consumerism way of life people are compelled by circumstance to be. One might ask; with interest for savings so low, and banks even unreliable storehouses; won’t people spend their earnings on luxuries rather than save the money as they did in former times? President Franklin D. Roosevelt wanted to tax the rich at a 100% rate but settled for 90%. After World War Two the national tax rate remained high and an egalitarian spirit prevailed across the nation. Twenty million Americans had been in uniform during the war. The difference between rich and poor wasn’t nearly as great as today. I Suggest reading Capital in the 21st Century by Thomas Piketty for a good trove of data. https://www.amazon.com/Capital-Twenty-First-Century-Thomas-Piketty/dp/0674979850 Thorstein Veblen’s Theory of the Leisure Class was published long ago. Leisure in that day was something the Vanderbilts expressed in the Breakers mansion. Conspicuous consumption was a device of the most rich. The idea of progress and the egalitarian nature of democracy with elected governments supported the concept that the ordinary man (and women) should be well off too. Capitalism entailed competition and people had the ethic of self-help, prosperity and a socially governed economy that supported an increase in the capital of the poor and middle classes. Today that has ended to a certain extent. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Theory_of_the_Leisure_Class https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wealth_inequality_in_the_United_States Wealth is being concentrated in the United States as never before in its history. Taxes on the most rich have been cut so far that their wealth increases orders of magnitude faster than the earnings of ordinary people, even if they just collect rents. The rich therefor can buy up whatsoever they like while the Federal Reserve issues trillions of zero or very low interest loans to big banks so they can mint five dollars in loans themselves for each free dollar the U.S. Federal Reserve issued them. And there is tremendous public debt and millions living in poverty. Fifty millions citizens share less than one-half of one percent of the national income. Federal elections basically go to millionaires and billionaires and rarely a sycophant of an establishment becoming plutocratic who is not yet a millionaire and needs to wait until elected. One percent of the people of the United States control about 40% of private income. US. and media leadership control the agencies of socialization with values that reinforce the way things are. It is difficult to change anything at all. Women and former minorities demand wealth or the opportunity to have it. Foreigners want wealth and will even illegally invade the USA. to try to earn more dollars than they could at home in their own nation. The social forces for keeping the inertia of unreformed capitalism going are strong and met only by a weak and theoretically defeated socialist political rivals. A mixed capitalist-socialist economy in a form called Corporatism under the power of Plutocrats seems to be the prevailing government philosophy. Bread and circuses, soma- dope and entertainment are what the masses require to be held in thrall and without any sort of brainwave that would challenge or even think to challenge the governing philosophy. It is possible to reform capitalism to direct it toward a greater egalitarianism and natural selection of ecospheric synergistic business yet surprisingly to me people seem to be clueless of the opportunity or need to do so.
Using old political paradigms to describe currents states of affairs isn’t invariably a way to make accurate evaluations. Jean Paul Sartre’s Critique of Dialectical Reason described the way people phenomenally interact en mass. The power to totalize control over a geographic area and politically sovereign realm is something that most modern states aspire to. Reasons for that are many; to combat terrorism, infiltration by non-citizens and malevolence from empirical actors, assure citizens that crime isn’t prevalent and that equal protection of the law is being enforced. Human physical assault on environmental health globally could be regarded quite reasonably as a totalitarian imposition of sterility and ecocide. Totalization of political power by an unelected government in the modern realm could occur surreptitiously with one-per centers pulling the strings of elections but controlling all meaningful political and economic large scale decisions for the benefit of their class.
Numerous ways to totalize a nation or planet by ruling powers exist. So it isn’t as useful presently to ask if the United States is a totalitarian government of some form-perhaps because the left wanted to elect Hillary and move the nation toward national socialism and/or corporatism, as it would be to inquire into how far the United States has moved into the government pattern called Corporatism. The Canadian philosopher John Ralston Saul wrote a book titled
The limits to physical growth impose constraints on freedom. One sees that in Japan. China has had z.p.g.. for decades and it is enforced with just a little less force since they transitioned to a mixed economy. The ubiquitous broadcast media is a totalizing agency that programs the populous in demotic speech and can purge about any individual citizen from prosperity if they target them with bad publicity, at least in the long run. In the U.S.A. the broadcast media is powerful and corrupt to a substantial degree, yet it’s still not comparable to official state control of media that the late Soviet Union exercised.
The United States will de facto lose more civil liberties as the population increases to such an extent that one cannot just move away from government to a wilderness. If one eventually defines totalitarianism as inescapable control by the social power of others over every aspect of an individual's life-any and every individual, then totalitarianism is out there in the future for everyone on Earth. That’s why people look to space as the new frontier with hope.
The Presidents of the U.S.A. and Russia met today in Helsinki Finland for hours of productive talks on mutual concerns. Unlike the Democrat Party that seeks enmity and hatred of all things Russian, President Trump as leader of the Republican Party had no problem working toward a resumption of post-Cold War social and economic progress with Russia. A salient point of the meeting was the idea that progress in numerous areas should continue even as there are some differences on select issues. Nations need not be policy homos in order to have economic relations. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jzs15z98P6A
It is somewhat paradoxical that Russia and China are historically allies when it counted in the Second World War. Americans make a sow’s ear out of a silk purse so far as Russia goes, yet both Chinese and Russian economic and geopolitical bilateral relations with the USA are phenomenalities with several ways of meaning and direction. I would guess that leadership in those nations regard the United States within paradigms of ambiguity. Britain was a traditional enemy of the United States with deep ambiguity as well since so many of the founders were from England and English paradigmata were implicitly built into the structure. Americans have never had a terribly good understanding of the bad aspects of British foreign policy insofar as it really is designed to serve Britain rather than the United States preponderantly, in the past couple of centuries. I believe Brits still tend to regard Americans as useful dupes easily corruptible to British machinations. Russian leaders know that Americans are largely ignorant of Russian history and have been conditioned to follow British political opinions about Russia. Russians know the United States doesn’t comprehend Orthodox religious history nor subtleties of Ottoman Empire impact of Russian-far western European and Balkan policy, and neither do they understand the history of Russia, Ukraine, the Crimea or traditional routes of mass invasion and loss of life in Russia from the East and West. China as the Middle Kingdom has an interesting place in the modern world. I suppose they seek moderation and stabilization and are concerned with the volatility at least in the media of the four year cycles of Presidential elections. The United States has several allies continuing from the Cold War and War on Terrorism. One; Israel, has had interesting points of view about the U.S.A. Iran too long ago was something of an ally- before the Mossadegh coup perfidy that ended democracy and restored the Peacock Throne, the Shah and SAVAK. They may wonder now and then how it is even possible to have a relationship with the United States since it doesn’t have very stable political polices and doesn’t actually support democracy (instead of royalty) on occasion. Australia is a traditional ally as is Poland in reasonably amicable relations although Australian leadership has been somewhat nippie recently. Japan is a candidate strong ally yet that is the problem as well as benefit; they are very inventive and skillful technologists and militarist with a Pearl Harbor history- they also were working on a nuclear bomb and had Nazi friends. Taiwan is a recent ally from the Cold War era and might wonder if the United States will sell them F-22s anytime soon. The Kurds might wonder why we haven’t really helped them get a piece of the Middle East they can call their own.
Some covet the GM title and fall into a realous jage nearing GM norms. Though people have acquitted world number one chess GM Magnus Carlsen of being autistic, chess GMs may have implicit autism and need corrective glasses. Some might speculate they are merely idiot savants while others could throw in a manic depressive or bipolar diagnosis as the games bring tremendous endorphin flows winning and sometimes the agony of defeat when a single opfor pawn converts to a Queen promoted suddenly, without warning as the player is consumed- some would say obsessed, with an attack of his or her own they believed was about to conquer the chess world in the glory of victory. None dare call it megalomania though the rook fetish of forward and sideways movement is a dark tower of fantasy subliminally occupying the subconscious mind of a GM living in effect, in a twilight zone beyond space and time. I believe California has made conversion therapy of chess GMs to meaningful non-addictive activity illegal. The majarity of first world people technically fall at some point of their lives into a psychological category of some sort worth headlines if they rise high enough. Table salt may be the cure (though it elevates blood pressure and may be indirectly linked to acrophobia, agoraphobia, aquaphobia, arachnophobia and more).
I visited Germany long ago and found some Germans that didn’t speak English- that made it tough. I traveled about and had to survive on pastry communicating with the natives saying things like bitte Bitte und danke and Wie geht's, before pointing at things with creamed cheese.
I never got a chance to work in Husserl’s phrase-title logische untersuchungen in a bakery though I was looking for the opportunity.
