1/18/24

Will Africa be the Pot of Gold for Illegal Migrants Seeking the American Dream?

It just an idea suggested by the recent actions of the U.K. to relocate illegal migrants to the U.K. to Africa. The United States has a backlog of more than three million souls claiming political asylum in the United States and the federal government has turned them loose in a catch and release policy. There are millions more migrants here illegally that haven’t claimed political asylum. Since the government cannot deal with the problem with competence perhaps it could consider relocating detainees to some safe neutral nation until their court date arrives in a few years.

https://www.foxnews.com/world/uk-will-ignore-international-law-deport-illegal-immigrants-sunak

Plainly the special asylum seeking quasi-legal-illegal category is challenging for Democrats to address with a measure of intellect and competence. Rather than make them temporary legal guest workers and hand a victory to hundreds of thousands or millions of bogus claims it might be better to relocate them to some nation that could use the income of sheltering a few million should in refugee camps with good security and facilities.

It is useful to have order in a nation and not undermine the efforts of legal residents to improve the quality f their lives by dumping millions of workers and resource users that had not the consent of the people of the United States through their elected representatives to arrive here. In the United States the economy is stratifying between the 1% and everyone else. Though a reasonable standard of living is common there are many that don’t own a home these days. Wealth is concentrating. Presently the distribution of wealth is beginning to resemble that of a caste system. Flooding the nation with badly educated foreign workers with dubious legal status is a way to break down traditional America and the Middle class so it is more like that of India or Mexico. Perhaps Wal-mart shifted its door entrances to the left from the traditional right in order to help condition American shoppers to political ineffectiveness and prole status as if they were living in an updated Orwellian society. Could Namibia or South Sudan be the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow for illegal aliens pursuing the American dream?

It is important that every human being on Earth has opportunity for a good life. That can only occur with order since the wild is no longer capable of providing a bountiful larder for eight billion people. The world political economy need change one an ecologically sustainable format, and civil stability need be the rule rather than exception.

A foreign diplomat was quoted recently in reply to a question asking him about the future of the United States. He said; “The U.S.A. is a fat buffalo trying to get a nap while a lot of hungry wolves are approaching.” Plainly he was trying to elicit military support for the European/N.A.T.O. was on Russia in Ukraine in the effort to exploit the west’s military advantage over Russia to benefit Western Europe. Europeans would like to seem like the victims of Russian aggression and expect the United States to be the military bully to provide advanced weapons to allow Ukraine to defrappe Russia’s efforts to recover some of the historically Russian land lost in the Bill Clinton era when Russia was basically helpless.

Yet the United States is largely divided between those seeking to make America a part of a global caste system ruled by the 1% with the masses being peons, serfs or communard proles living in a kind of open air prison/lunatic asylum happy with dope and slopped with jobs that allow payments on new cars and homes they don’t own until a new economic shock makes them lose everything they own to the 1% holding mortgages, and those that prefer a little civil order that isn’t ephemeral and disappears like morning dew.

https://youtu.be/-c6qmsL_Qto?feature=shared


On the Notion that Plato Influenced Christianity

 There were several philosophers before Socrates and Plato that wrote about the Logos and God. People like Thales, Heraclitus and Parmenides, Anaximander and Anaxemenes all presented fascinating ideas concerning being, change, nature, God and substance. Some Christians were influenced by Plato, yet one knows that people like the disciple Mark were unsophisticated in philosophy and that the Q document, or Quelle/source mostly just relates the life the Jesus Christ and His work as God in saving mankind, or at least those with faith, from the inevitable destination of eternal hell. Parmenides presents a paradigm almost as a precursor of Sartre, a loquacious Sartre unafraid explain a logic for his ontology, of being and the necessity of being and impossibility of nothingness. In that paradigm Jesus Christ being God himself, as one of the Trinity, delivers the faithful to a good place in being while the lost find their way to hell- a bad place. Interestingly physicists have speculated that below absolute zero the temperature may be infinitely hot. Some later theologians like Augustine were influenced by Plato, or properly Plotinus, for he was a Plotinian before becoming converted to Christianity.

The gospel is simply narratives by disciples and the Apostle/Doctor Luke from personal and first hand sources. The letters of Paul are by an author who was a Rabbi in training and a student of Gamaliel or Schlemeil and steeped in the torah yet not so much a reader of Plato or Peripatetic philosophers which he could have read as readily as those of the Academy if he were so disposed.

Nothing Cannot Exist- Parmenides

 It is something of a classification or categorical error when one says something like 'the Loch ness monster does not exist'. It does exist as a thought, yet not outside of thought or language. Whatever one says creates something at least as an idea including the Loch Ness monster. The question is how it exists or in what form- perhaps no more than as an idea.

The fallacy of equivocation concerning Parmenides' formulation of the impossibility of change is a valid objection. It should be noted though that if change has always existed then nothing changes because change is a constant. Observational physics seems to support the idea of constant change in a thermodynamic field. Being always exists, non-being doesn't and change is constant so nothing changes. God always exists, at least a seed of the Universe always exists, pre-determined in His thought and continues if emerged as a singularity and expansion.

Language is rarely the material that exists in-the-world. Instead, language refers or points to things/referent objects of the world of mass. Even fictional referent objects exist as fictional referent objects at least...that is what so much of television is about. Does Jason Bourne exist or not? Well there is no real Jason Bourne or Loch Ness Monster in the real world, yet those referent objects exist in language, in books and in thought. In that sense they do exist. One may say that there is no Loch Ness monster materially existing in Loch Ness except as a thought about Nessie swimming in Loch Ness rather than the 'real world'. Thus is the stickiness of language and linguistic philosophy in trying to exceed it's own limits in language. It cannot directly be the material objects it refers to for the time being. Maybe quantum computing and AI will change the reality of that to a limited degree.

Parmenides, Heraclitus and the Milesians saw nature as God or providing the substance for nature in various ways. Less than pantheistic, it was a useful way to understand being while eschewing non-being and atheism. They tended to believe in being as the sole possibility and non-being as impossible; the argument tended to be about how change occurs. Yet if change has existed from eternity then nature could be said not to change because the nature is change. All forms are embedded within precursor forms actualizing in time. Jesus directs those of faith to the right relationship with God and being while the lost discover a hot way to hell. Below absolute zero physicist speculate the temperature is infinitely high- another mystery for most of the faithless.

Christians believe in the eternity of soul- possibly in one direction starting with birth. Once a soul exists it will exist forever, even after physical death. The destination for the saved is different from the lost. Jesus is captain of the soul through eternity- God, rather than the satanic forces of chaos, evil and faithlessness. So if mankind brings a war to fruition that wipes out most of mankind that is a product of the original sin that affects all mankind. I would guess that it was corrected by the thermodynamic fields in which humans are embedded that drives to to input energy as food to exist. Thermodynamic drives in human nature are the cause of conflict as much as anything. People have insecurity in matter and want more than they require for staying alive, being productive and happy and generally don't have a clue about how to change to sustainable environmental economics. Christians have different eschatological hermenutics. I am a post-tribulationist and partial preterist with the belief that this is the age of the increase of the kingdom of God within the hearts of the elect rather than the edge of some kind of neo-theological apocalypse based on bad pre-tribulationism. Plainly human economics, political leadership and ignorant attacks on the faith communities are driving the world to a good chance for a bad end.

1/17/24

Steve Sarkisian might be the Seahawk's Best Bet

Univ of Texas football coach Steve Sarkisian is about the right age to take on an NFL head coaching job. With a good record for the Longhorns Sarkisian may be interested in returning to the NFL where he formerly was an offensive coordinator.

1/16/24

Sartre, Epictetus and Epicurus version 2.0

 I wanted to write something about the late first and early second century philosopher Epictetus's idea concerning death. The Roman was a well read individual who actual spent time as a slave during the reign of Nero. The Emperor Domitian banished philosophers from Italy so the freed slave move to Greece where he established a school. Because he wrote a lot; primarily his 'Discourses' history informs us of his way of thinking about many concerns. What is remarkable about his view of life is that it is similar in outlook to the 20th century French philosopher of Existentialism/aka French rationalism, Jean Paul Sartre.

Epicurus' thought about death is 'that it isn't anything to fear because one fears existing bad things rather than non-sense' (to paraphrase). Life is sense experience and death is the cessation of sensory input (Epictetus believes), hence there is nothing to fear because there is no sensation. Sensation is required to have anything to fear in Epicurus' experience.

The premise that one does not exist after death cannot be confirmed while alive. Non-existence after physical death is an assumption. One knows that information cannot be destroyed (Shannon Entropy) and that an omnipotent God could map or store all of the information comprising a human life (maybe even quantum computing will achieve that capability some time), and so restoration of a human life after death could occur whenever anyone with the information wanted to do so. Thus one could arrive at the premise about existing after death with something new to experience. That is nearly as plausible as existing now.

Epicurus was a hedonist. Epictetus was a stoic who believed in God in nature at least yet his viewpoint isn't too different concerning death than that of Epicurus. The main differentiator is that Epictetus might not go so far as to say about death; something that he hasn't experienced, that it is the absence of sensation, for that is an assumption- a logical yet unsupported inference. Instead Epictetus might say that he hasn't knowledge of it personally; there is no thought within his experience that knows it first-hand.

Epictetus and Sartre each regarded the human mind and its content as existing within the control of the individual. Some things are within our control and somethings aren't. Those things within our control are easy to think about and those without one's control are not to be too concerned about since the thought one uses about such things and relationships exists within the individual mind. One shouldn't allow one's own thought to act like a dog chasing its own tail around in a circle. That is an individual shouldn't create or generate thoughts to be fearful of or deceive oneself about the reality of one's thinking or necessity for thinking particular things; that existential viewpoint covers even death.

Epictetus believe there is nothing to fear of death because if there is, the fear is created within one's own thought. Dividing things within one's control and things that aren't, death is finally one of the things that aren't and so one should not spend much thought being troubled about it. Epictetus and Stoics believed God rules nature and the natural order. God's will and nature has its course and the things it has given to an individual, such as life or real estate it can recover and return to other purposes-even the lives of others.

Though Sartre believed that death is "the complete triumph of the other" he does not well describe what the heterodox otherness is, or who it is-perhaps nature or God or God through nature that is not the content of one's own thought. In that regard neither Sartre or Epictetus are solipsists.

There is an implicit valid logic regarding the Stoic outlook on death and the unknown. One should not invent troubling thoughts concerning things one hasn't muck knowledge of nor control over. Epictetus apparently knew little of Jesus Christ and the way to eternal life in the gospel; he believed in God or Zeus as an omnipotent ruler of nature. He has read Plato and Aristotle apparently being in agreement with the heterodox nature of the phenomenality of life.

Castes and Concentrated Wealth

 The Indian caste system is about 3000 years old and is still strong. Despite some liberation following independence in 1947 with the untouchable class being outlawed or abolished, the majority- 85% of the population remain in lower castes. The caste system affects the economy pervasively; is the development of the concentration of wealth in the United States the equivalent of developing a national caste system?

"In the third quarter of 2023, 66.6 percent of the total wealth in the United States was owned by the top 10 percent of earners. In comparison, the lowest 50 percent of earners only owned 2.6 percent of the total wealth"-quote from https://www.statista.com/statistics/203961/wealth-distribution-for-the-us/#:~:text=In%20the%20third%20quarter%20of,percent%20of%20the%20total%20wealth.

https://www.britannica.com/topic/caste-social-differentiation

Real discrimination follows economic lines. Caste systems of priests and warriors developed long ago for practical reasons, yet the value of those for protecting or advancing social development stopped long ago and instead, economic classes resembling castes became oppressive and a factor of economic retardation.

Intellectual liberation occurs when intellectuals of any social background are free to develop their interests with equal opportunity. Social and intellectual repression occurs when castes, classes and those supported by political power without intellectual merit rise to dominant intellectual culture. In a purely material culture the primary value of  positions of prestige are regarded as economic advantages and are desired for that reason by materialists.

The Biden administration has not done enough, if anything to outlaw the development of a caste system in the United States along economic lines. The increasing concentration of wealth in the United States has continued after the Obama administration strong armed congressional passage of a law to make the Bush II tax cuts permanent. Despite having control of the legislation branch of the federal government during the first two years of the Biden administration to tax increase on the most rich saw the light of day.

India is a great nation with a good future and a caste system that makes its international economic role a little suspect; that is the most rich may too easily emulate or otherwise soak up elements of a caste system that segregates society economically. In my opinion economic advantage is the primary reason for caste systems, slavery and oppression of various social classes. It is rare when individuals are economically segregated and not socially segregated too.

The U.S. Congress should pass a law or two banning caste systems or rescind most favored nation status to nations that have caste systems in order to encourage more egalitarian policies with equal economic opportunity and basic national income for all citizens as a more pragmatic application of the minimum wage ideals. Ad hoc caste systems assure that people will be poor or become poor through numerous means including forcing people out of work.

Record Global Warming on Von Biden's Watch

 Last year was one with record global warming. The administration's effort to slow or reverse atmospheric heating were plainly ineffective. The nation can look forward to another four years of ineffective or toxic leadership from Republicans and Democrats in the 2024 Presidential election if the Charybdis and Scylla pair of dinosaurs hold place as likely party nominees,

France just appointed a shiny new 34 year old queer Prime Minister. The west has such unusual political leadership that one may be confident that public affairs will be all f ' d up for the rest of the decade.

No one has good sense in politics...no not one.

https://climate.copernicus.eu/copernicus-2023-hottest-year-record#:~:text=2023%20is%20confirmed%20as%20the,highest%20annual%20value%20in%202016

Pantheism is Wrong

 God is not the Universe. He is not the moon or stars, a forcefield or particle and waves though responsible for making them.. Consider an arm. Is an individual his arm? If the arm is lost does the individual no longer exist? If someone manufactures an electric car, is she also the car? If the car is hijacked by rabid dogs is the manufacturer also the dogs because they are in the car? Everything in the Universe passes though God is none of that.

I would say that the universe is the sole individual being containing everything else. Within its monism there is pluralism.. The pluralism emerges as stars,, galaxies, hadrons, muons, people and everything else that sentient beings may distinguish as individuals. The Universe at the start was said to occur from one unified,, individual field.. In an instant probably just at the big bang or initial field instability caused perhaps by a word from God gravity separated, then the strong force followed by the electroweak force breaking down into electromagnetism, the weak force and the Higgs field that let massless particles acquire mass.. God was not subject to the fields he issued though His omniscience remained aware of what and where everything he planned was.. Universals and particulars in the Platonic sense are more applicable to the structures of particles, language categories and classes than to the set of all sets, Godel's idea of what might be compared to the Platonic realm of forms. It would be a logical categorical error to posit God as contained within something he created.

The Icon and Axe; A Billionaire and a Destroyer Concentrating Wealth

 Joe Biden is hard to classify. His platform is to enrich his family and promise anything to anyone that will get him elected. He is a globalist for open borders, dope, abortion, low tax on the rich, a concentrate wealth pragmatist delivering mediocrity on any plank including global warming. He continued the Democrat's start-lasting-wars tradition of the 20th century. His likely opponent is a a neo eco-Luddite billionaire for the concentration of wealth. The billionaire should have one the Nobel Peace prize during his term of office and would probably end the Ukraine conflict on terms Russians could live with and get the global economy back on track working together if Democrats let him- as doubtful as that is. Mr. Trump might let global warming increase by a full half percent in fours years while Mr. Biden's failure would be somewhat less.

NFL stars are in the 5 per cent of the 1 percent economic class serving as promoters of economics concentrating wealth while moving America toward being a second world country for the majority. The very rich need deflect public attention away from interest in anything that could move move policy toward economic egalitarianism with a moderate distribution of class wealth. The masses love bread and circuses now as in imperial Rome.

Ron DeSantis may be the last chance for the nation to conserve a little stability. People do prefer excitement, AI, illegal aliens labor and defenders known as MICE (or is it ice to illegals?) so long as deficit spending financing of government continues.

Israel's Effort to Remove Hamas /Nazis from the Gaza Continues

 A portion of the member states of the U.N. would like Israel to quit its war on Hamas leadership in the Gaza Strip. That in effect would be like a catch and release policy for terrorist that instead should be facing something like the Nuremberg Trials that followed the end of the Second World War. The murderous Hamas terror attack- a surprise attack on Israel 7 October 2023 was comparable to the 9-11 assault on New York and Washington D.C. Many Arab and other Muslim states support global jihad against the west through a variety of means and Israelis their first and foremost target.

When the Second World War concluded the allies sought to remove Nazis from Germany so far as possible. A dozen were hanged after being found guilty of various crimes against humanity. Some other higher ranking members were arrested and sentenced, yet the clear and present danger of Soviet Communism made the wholesale elimination of Nazis impractical although the society of Germany was ideologically cleansed. The state of Israel seeks to pacify the Gaza and Muslim militants vociferously oppose that; instead they regard the entire affair as simply a skirmish in the global war of expansion of Islam- something the Democrat party of the United States has indirectly and sometimes directly supported with its open borders policies and lax immigration enforcement.

 The Biden administration has tripled the number of immigration cases waiting to be heard in federal courts to reach a backlog of three million. It seems weak and unwilling to defend the United States’ sovereignty against the practical measure of slow invasion from illegal entry. U.S. culture is being erased and replaced by a new normal global culture increasingly influenced by those practicing the Muslim religion.

Hamas is a terror organization and like a gang its leadership is compelled to be aggressive. Some of the members of the U.N. would like Israel to quit its effort to remove HAMAS leadership that have the same attitude toward Jews as did Nazis, and let them rebuild their military power with copious donations by sympathetic Muslim states. In that regard the U.N. is comparable to those that sympathized with the Nazi Party following the Second World War, yet they are far worse than was Argentina in allowing safe haven for a few discreet Nazis. They are active propagandist and wicked perpetrators of an effort to obfuscate hatred and international conspiracy to eliminate the Jewish race in the black, unsaved, unrepentant hearts of many Dar al Harb supporting Muslims.

Raphael Lemkin invented the term “genocide” in reflecting on the Armenian Genocide of 1915. A Jewish-Polish attorney, he circulated a pamphlet to the forerunner of the U.N. named The League of nations in 1933. It was rejected. In 1944 he published a book named ‘Axis Rule in Occupied Europe’ . The term genocide was used at the Nuremberg trials and on 9 Dec. 1948 the U.N. made genocide officially a crime within international law. Jews in prosecuting removal of a terror organization spearhead supported by members of the U.N. presently charging Israel with attempted genocide are accomplishing a task the hypocritical, callous and disingenuous corrupt Muslim members of the U.N. supporting the action should be supporting rather than opposing.

Lemkin descried genocide as "a coordinated plan of different actions aiming at the destruction of essential foundations of the life of national groups, with the aim of annihilating the groups themselves". That is the Arab and Palestinian policy toward Israel. The Jewish state on the contrary is simply trying to eliminate the militant leadership that is hiding behind it's own people as if they were human shields. Israelis have already shown a willingness to live with Palestinian culture as neighbors- just not aggressive war like neighbors that invade and slaughter thousands in sneak attacks.

The world will not be a safer place if Nazi like organizations are enfeofed with Muslim support on Israel’s porch fattened annually like war pigs with the fruits of Islamic weaponry and finance.

Imperfect Character is Universal

The question of why anything exists rather than nothing was a question that Plotinus considered in The Enneads. Why would The One order anyt...