Dear Fred,
To tie up a loose end...
Yes, I think Trump belongs to the western hemisphere's caudillo/cacique
I also think this tradition is a subset of humankind's persistent passion for Alpha Dogs who -- on our behalf -- promise to prevail in dominance-submission hierarchies.
Donald Trump, Alpha Dog
Homo sapiens partakes of "the supernatural" (literally "above nature") to the extent that we transcend (or otherwise set aside) chest-thumping dominance-submission hierarchies (social, economic, political and sexual) that confirm our simian animality.
Elsewhere...
I realize you no longer visit The Thinking Housewife much.
I still "check in" often enough to have observed an ominous pattern. Here is its latest manifestation and epitomization.
"Phony"
http://www.thinkinghousewife.
Note that when Laura comments on this "phony" photograph, she does not see shell-shocked people being shell-shocked people.
Nor does she see self-interested human beings refusing to play Good Samaritan just as humans have always done
Instead she sees a "posed photograph" even though any agency capable of posing propaganda photos would be expert at verisimilitude, paying unusually precise attention to hyperbolizing archetypal images of bloodshed and horror, not posing photos that are "so fake as to be laughable."
By my lights, the laughability resides in Laura's analysis of these photos -- and all the other photos she misrepresents... whether "the staged bloodshed at the Aurora movie theater," or "the staged bloodshed at Sandy Hook elementary school," or "the staged photos at the Paris rock concert."
Pax on both houses: "The Top Ten Reasons Sandy Hook Is ...
Dec 10, 2015 - The Thinking Housewife's source for this bilge asserts that Sandy Hook school had been "mothballed" years prior to the fatal shooting and that ...
Dec 10, 2015 - The Thinking Housewife's source for this bilge asserts that Sandy Hook school had been "mothballed" years prior to the fatal shooting and that ...
Pax on both houses: The Thinking Housewife: "Ten Ways to ...
Oct 4, 2015 - The Thinking Housewife: "Ten Ways to Spot a False Flag Shooting" ... that Homeland Security is shrewd enough to stage the Sandy Hook ...
Oct 4, 2015 - The Thinking Housewife: "Ten Ways to Spot a False Flag Shooting" ... that Homeland Security is shrewd enough to stage the Sandy Hook ...
Pax on both houses: Thinking Housewife: More "Proof" That ...
paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/.
paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/.
Dec 6, 2015 - Thinking Housewife: More "Proof" That The Paris Terror Attacks Were ... That's just a tip off, as it was in the Sandy Hook event, which was ...Pax on both houses: The Thinking Housewife Plunges Into ...
Sep 2, 2015 - The Thinking Housewife Plunges Into The Abyss Of Conspiratorial ... Beyond the bizarreness of denying Sandy Hook, Roanoke, Global ...
It seems that Laura is eager to submit to an overpowering need to "see" illusion instead of truth.
To the extent that "ilusión" is a Spanish synonym for "hope" I understand the urge to maintain illusion/hope and no doubt participate in it myself.
But there are always "thresholds" beyond which individual lives, social life and the life of The Body Politic become unworkable.
Beyond these thresholds, the illusions that sustain us become the illusions that destroy us.
"Those whom the gods would destroy they first make mad."
"Quos Deus vult perdere, prius dementat."
The profoundest truths are paradoxical.
Pax tecum
Alan
PS I wonder how Laura (and her cautious, conservative, fearful, unmerciful readers) would have reacted had they been at the Brussels airport the day the bombs went off. Would they have stopped to help the fallen? Or would the the survival instinct have pushed them down the easy road of ape-hood?
Are Highly Religious People Less Compassionate?
Conservative Christians Delight In The Punishment And Pain Of Others
Reply from Frog Hospital editor, Fred Owens:
On Tue, Mar 29, 2016 at 11:37 AM, Fred Owens <froghospital911@gmail.com> wrote:
Laura seems to be going somewhere strange -- unfortunately. I thought her core anti-feminist message was debatable. Her current efforts are not worth consideration. But I would not declare that the one inevitably leads to the other.
My reply to Fred:
Dear Fred,
Thanks for your email.
I too doubt that The Thinking Housewife's anti-feminism leads to her current swamp of conspiratorial delusion by any clearly demonstrable pathway.
However, I believe that harboring exclusionary animus toward people-of-conscience with views other than one's own is risky behavior.
More importantly, I think Laura's relatively recent immersion in conspiracy theories partakes of the bad epistemology which prompted Pilate to wash his hands of responsibility by asking the question repeated worldwide in last week's reading of John's Passion on Maundy Thursday: "Truth. What is truth?"
Although truth is elusive, good science really does determine a wide range of (admittedly limited) truths, most of them having utilitarian value.
Despite the incompleteness of such utilitarian truths, science is an incomparably splendid thing.
Just hours ago, I lunched with 93 year old Air Force general friend AWC who told the story of passing through India in WWII where so many people were dying of starvation that bodies went uncollected on the streets where packs of feral dogs gnawed them unabashedly.
Coupled with a small measure of political will -- and meaningful regulation of plutocrats and oligarchs -- Science can prevent such horror.
One of Carl Jung's most notable postulates was that we humans are responsible for our behavior even when we are unaware of its implications. He went on to say that it is our moral obligation to become informed.
Jung is demonstrably correct insofar as benighted behavior makes us reap what we sow even if we remain ignorant of the harm our stupidity unleashes.
If you defy the Law of Gravity and jump from the San Francisco Bay Bridge (as a hallucinating acquaintance did), you will pay for "breaking the law" over a lifetime of wheelchair confinement.
I will note in passing that Jung's view of moral responsibility contradicts that fundament of Catholic moral theology which says humans are not guilty of sin if their conscience is unaware of the wrong they do.
Although I understand this argument, I also understand that the sustained debacle of Uncle Sam's post-war belligerence -- responsible for a mini-holocaust of 4 million dead humans in Vietnam and Iraq -- is made possible by people's widespread refusal to learn enough history to realize that most wars are propelled by ruling class propaganda and egocentric (if not egomaniacal) leaders who "play at war" as a means of self-glorification.
Sep 2, 2015 - The Thinking Housewife Plunges Into The Abyss Of Conspiratorial ... Beyond the bizarreness of denying Sandy Hook, Roanoke, Global ...
Are Highly Religious People Less Compassionate?
Conservative Christians Delight In The Punishment And Pain Of Others
Reply from Frog Hospital editor, Fred Owens:
On Tue, Mar 29, 2016 at 11:37 AM, Fred Owens <froghospital911@gmail.com> wrote:
Laura seems to be going somewhere strange -- unfortunately. I thought her core anti-feminist message was debatable. Her current efforts are not worth consideration. But I would not declare that the one inevitably leads to the other.
My reply to Fred:
Dear Fred,
Thanks for your email.
I too doubt that The Thinking Housewife's anti-feminism leads to her current swamp of conspiratorial delusion by any clearly demonstrable pathway.
However, I believe that harboring exclusionary animus toward people-of-conscience with views other than one's own is risky behavior.
More importantly, I think Laura's relatively recent immersion in conspiracy theories partakes of the bad epistemology which prompted Pilate to wash his hands of responsibility by asking the question repeated worldwide in last week's reading of John's Passion on Maundy Thursday: "Truth. What is truth?"
Although truth is elusive, good science really does determine a wide range of (admittedly limited) truths, most of them having utilitarian value.
Despite the incompleteness of such utilitarian truths, science is an incomparably splendid thing.
Just hours ago, I lunched with 93 year old Air Force general friend AWC who told the story of passing through India in WWII where so many people were dying of starvation that bodies went uncollected on the streets where packs of feral dogs gnawed them unabashedly.
Coupled with a small measure of political will -- and meaningful regulation of plutocrats and oligarchs -- Science can prevent such horror.
One of Carl Jung's most notable postulates was that we humans are responsible for our behavior even when we are unaware of its implications. He went on to say that it is our moral obligation to become informed.
Jung is demonstrably correct insofar as benighted behavior makes us reap what we sow even if we remain ignorant of the harm our stupidity unleashes.
If you defy the Law of Gravity and jump from the San Francisco Bay Bridge (as a hallucinating acquaintance did), you will pay for "breaking the law" over a lifetime of wheelchair confinement.
I will note in passing that Jung's view of moral responsibility contradicts that fundament of Catholic moral theology which says humans are not guilty of sin if their conscience is unaware of the wrong they do.
Although I understand this argument, I also understand that the sustained debacle of Uncle Sam's post-war belligerence -- responsible for a mini-holocaust of 4 million dead humans in Vietnam and Iraq -- is made possible by people's widespread refusal to learn enough history to realize that most wars are propelled by ruling class propaganda and egocentric (if not egomaniacal) leaders who "play at war" as a means of self-glorification.
The Age-Old Normalization Of Warfare Through Stupidity, Ego And Religion
American conservatism -- and Christian conservatism in particular -- are bent on remaining "in the dark."
The two-part rationale for deliberate benightedness can be summarized thus:
1.) If people do not know the moral significance of what they do, then they commit no "sin." Yeshua himself addressed this kind of diminished responsibility when he called out from the cross: "Forgive them Father for they know not what they do."
2.) Do not undertake any research, fact-checking or psychological process that might reveal truths that contradict the visceral urge to feel good -- triumphant good... "exceptionally" good -- over emotionally gratifying prejudices.
It is also true that most people consider thinking/learning an odious undertaking, much preferring puerile sound-bite values randomly selected in Middle School.
These issues are beautifully and compasionately elucidated in a magnificent short story I've been reading with my Spanish class --- "Don Manuel, Bueno, Martir."
I have probably mentioned "Don Manuel" before and although the following English translation (by someone at the University of Toronto) barely crosses to the mediocre side of terrible, I consider it one of the greatest stories ever written. http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2016/03/san-manuel-bueno-martir-by-miguel-de.html
Check it out.
Pax tecum
Alan
American conservatism -- and Christian conservatism in particular -- are bent on remaining "in the dark."
The two-part rationale for deliberate benightedness can be summarized thus:
1.) If people do not know the moral significance of what they do, then they commit no "sin." Yeshua himself addressed this kind of diminished responsibility when he called out from the cross: "Forgive them Father for they know not what they do."
2.) Do not undertake any research, fact-checking or psychological process that might reveal truths that contradict the visceral urge to feel good -- triumphant good... "exceptionally" good -- over emotionally gratifying prejudices.
It is also true that most people consider thinking/learning an odious undertaking, much preferring puerile sound-bite values randomly selected in Middle School.
These issues are beautifully and compasionately elucidated in a magnificent short story I've been reading with my Spanish class --- "Don Manuel, Bueno, Martir."
I have probably mentioned "Don Manuel" before and although the following English translation (by someone at the University of Toronto) barely crosses to the mediocre side of terrible, I consider it one of the greatest stories ever written. http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2016/03/san-manuel-bueno-martir-by-miguel-de.html
Check it out.
Pax tecum
Alan
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