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Wednesday, December 13, 2023

"All I Have To Do Is Dream"

[Intro]
Dream, dream, dream, dream
Dream, dream, dream, dream


[Verse 1]
When I want you in my arms
When I want you and all your charms
Whenever I want you, all I have to do is
Dream, dream

[Verse 2]
When I feel blue in the night
And I ne\ed you to hold me tight
Whenever I want you, all I have to do is
Dream -----

[Chorus]
I  can  make  you  mine, taste your lips of wine
Anytime night or day

Only   trouble is, gee whiz
I'm dreamin' my life away
---

[Verse 3]
I need you so that I could die
I love you so,,, and that is why
Whenever I want you, all I have to do is
Dream, dream, dream, dream
Dre\\//am---


[Verse 3]
I need you so that I could die
I love you so,,, and that is why
Whenever I want you, all I have to do is
Dream, dream, dream, dream
Dream, dream, dream, dream
Dream, dream, dream, dream   dreeeeam




Well-Respected Man

 Well he gets up in the morning,

And he goes to work at nine,
Comes back home at five-thirty,
Gets the same train every time.
Cause his world is built round punctuality,
That never fails.
And he's oh, so good,
And he's oh, so fine,
And he's oh, so healthy,
In his body and his mind.
He's a well respected man about town,
Doing the best things so conservatively.
And his mother goes to meetings,
While his father pulls the maid,
And she stirs her tea with councilors,
While discussing foreign trade,
And she passes looks, as well as bills
At every suave young man
Cause he's oh, so good,
And he's oh, so fine,
And he's oh, so healthy,
In his body and his mind.
He's a well respected man about town,
Doing the best things so conservatively.

And he likes his own backyard,
And he likes his fags the best,
Cause he's better than the rest,
And his own sweat smells the best,
And he hopes to grab his father's loot,
When pater passes on.

Cause he's oh, so good,
And he's oh, so fine,
And he's oh, so healthy,
In his body and his mind.
He's a well respected man about town,
Doing the best things so conservatively.

And he plays at stocks and shares,
And he goes to the regatta,
And he adores the girl next door,
Cause he's dying to get at her,
But his mother knows the best about
The matrimmonial stakes.

Cause he's oh, so good,
And he's oh, so fine,
And he's oh, so healthy,
In his body and his mind.
He's a well respected man about town,
Doing the best things so conservatively.






Keeping this blog alive

 Alive

Monday, August 16, 2021

The Incipient Unraveling Of The Western World As Analyzed By Spanish Philosopher Ortega y Gasset In 1929

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I take Wells' words literally.

Without vigorous expansion of authentic educational process, humankind seems destined for another "Dark Age," replete with the primacy of opinion, the ascendancy of rumor/gossip, ubiquitous superstition, irrationality, and even the collapse of central government. 

This new "regime" will be a right-wing paradise: men will rule by upper body strength, women will "know their place," and the ungodly rich will rule the roost of their atomized fiefdoms.

"The incrementalists" (who always comprise political power structures), will see my apprehensions as wild-eyed alarmism. 

But it is a fact Rome fell, and that The Fall was followed by a 600 year-long Dark Age.

In our lifetime, the Soviet Union fell "overnight" (notably without a shot being fired).

And just yesterday - despite incrementalist predictions - Afghanistan fell to the Taliban.

It is not rocket science to see humankind's existential need for education... which begs the question, "What is education?"

Instruction And Education Aim At Antipodes

Compendium Of Best Pax-Barbaria Posts On Education (With A Failsafe Proposal For National Restoration)


Dear F

If you have not read the following blog post yet, it explains (to my satisfaction) the roots of our idiocracy.

Is Ortega Y Gasset The Most Important Modern Philosopher? The Most Discerning Prophet?


(An aside that will interest you... In the early seventies, Bob Dylan was impressed by Ortega's "The Revolt of the Masses." Dylan's fondness for the book was such that a 1970's Time magazine article referenced it.)

The Revolt of the Masses ... The Revolt of the Masses (Spanish: La rebelión de las masas, pronounced [la reβeˈljon de laz ˈmasas]) is a book by José Ortega y ...
The Revolt of the Masses ... The Revolt of the Masses is the English translation of José Ortega y Gasset's La rebelión de las masas. The Spanish original was ...

I consider "The Revolt of The Masses" a great work, not only for its insightful analysis of the ongoing collapse of Western Values (starting, arguably, around 1890), but for Ortega's courage to "go against the grain of progress" - essentially unbridled cowboy-capitalist-industrial progress, although on the spur of the moment I do not remember Ortega using the word "capitalism" in his critique of "the masses" and "mass man."

Here are two revealing quotations.

The (social) mass crushes beneath it everything that is different, everything that is excellent, individual, qualified and select. Anybody who is not like everybody, who does not think like everybody, runs the risk of being eliminated. And it is clear, of course, that this "everybody" is not "everybody." "Everybody" was normally the complex unity of the mass and the divergent, specialized minorities. Nowadays, "everybody" is the mass alone. Here we have the formidable fact of our times, described without any concealment of the brutality of its features.

— Chapter 1, "The Coming of the Masses"

The Fascist and Syndicalist species were characterized by the first appearance of a type of man who "did not care to give reasons or even to be right", but who was simply resolved to impose his opinions. That was the novelty: the right not to be right, not to be reasonable: "the reason of unreason."

— Chapter 8, "Why the Masses Intervene in Everything and Why They Always Intervene Violently"

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image.pngHope and Scorn: Eggheads, Experts, and Elites in American Politics

The Fascist and Syndicalist species were characterized by the first appearance of a type of man who "did not care to give reasons or even to be right", but who was simply resolved to impose his opinions. That was the novelty: the right not to be right, not to be reasonable: "the reason of unreason."

— Chapter 8, "Why the Masses Intervene in Everything and Why They Always Intervene Violently"
I think it is fair to interpret much of friend Michael Brown's new book as a perspicacious elaboration of Ortega's central observation that "mass man" frequently holds elites in contempt. 

Love

A
On Mon, Aug 16, 2021 at 10:10 AM FV wrote:

Very comprehensive and clear but who is listening to reason. The reasonable who are vaccinated. I feel the rest have deaf ears.

On Mon, Aug 16, 2021, 1:10 AM Alan Archibald <alanarchibaldo@gmail.com> wrote:

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"Christian" "conservatives" (who are neither) refer to "prudence" or "erring on the side of caution.
It's as if The Law and Order Party has become the Scofflaw and Chaos Party.

A Very Readable, Highly Informative Report On The Relationship Between The Delta Variant And The Protection Afforded to Vaccinated People


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"The Case For Liberalism: A Defense Of The Future Against The Past," By George McGovern

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The Deep State Is Real: Plutocratic, Oligarchic, Unbridled Capitalism

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The Original And Enduring Conspiracy: It's About Keeping The Filthy Rich, Filthy Rich

"The Rich Plunder The Poor, Then Pile The Blame On The Dispossessed"

https://newsfrombarbaria.blogspot.com/2020/08/the-rich-plunder-poor-then-pile-blame.html

Billionaire Nick Hanauer's TED Talk: "Capitalism's Dirty Little Secret"



 

Sunday, January 10, 2021

Bourgeoise Smarm And The Persistent Platitudinousness Of American Conservatives

Alan: Republicans are equally platitudinous about their two sets of scripture: the US Constitution and the Bible. 

Just as they proclaim Jesus Christ to be their personal Lord and Savior -- and assume this proclamation is all they need do to be "Saved!" -- they harbor the analogous belief that political salvation is guaranteed by waving a copy of the constitution (while holding a flag in the other hand) and - Voilà! - they're a patriot. 

Conservatism distills to bible-banging with one hand, and constitution-banging with the other. 

As for any real substance… F*ck that!

How Piety And Devotion-To-God Distract People From The Necessary Work Of Kindness

"To Kill A Mockingbird's" Harper Lee On The Bible As An Obstacle To Living

The Bible's Apparent Promise Of Armageddon Is Conservative Xtianity's Excuse To Do Nothing


And, behind the platitudes and smarm:

"Family Separation And The Satanic Cruelty Of Most Republicans"

 



Tuesday, December 22, 2020

"How A Female Catholic Priest Helped Calm Tension Over Daniel Prude's Police Custody Death In Rochester, New York"

 


"How A Female Catholic Priest Helped Calm Tension Over Daniel Prude's Police Custody Death In Rochester, New York" Washington Post, December 21, 2020

https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/daniel-prude-protests-rochester/2020/12/20/8e463eee-

0cbe-11eb-b1e8-16b59b92b36d_story.html

By 

Shayna Jacobs

Dec. 21, 2020 at 4:00 a.m. PST

ROCHESTER, N.Y. — The pop of pepper ball pellets echoed in the night as police converged on demonstrators

who gathered in front of a church to protest the death of Daniel Prude.

“Sanctuary!” an activist filming the protest shouted to his peers. “Go inside!”

Protesters streamed into Spiritus Christi Church, a congregation led by the Rev. Myra Brown, one of

Rochester’s most vocal advocates for racial justice. That night, she stepped into a new, unofficial role, trying to

bridge the divide between a growing group of Rochester residents fed up with city leadership and the officials

still struggling to handle a city in crisis.

Video of Prude’s March encounter with Rochester police shows him naked, handcuffed and hooded; he died a

week later. The images, which were not released until September, sparked days of protest. Prude’s name —

along with George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Rayshard Brooks and other Black Americans killed by police this year

— is now invoked in the nationwide racial justice movement.

It also galvanized Rochester, an industrial city on Lake Ontario where residents have, for decades, pushed for

police reform and fought against racism.

A respected community leader whose golden singing voice fills the church, Brown has the ear of both the city’s

leadership and its grass-roots advocates. A former nurse whose ministry is as tied to racial justice as it is to

God, she emerged as a key channel of reason and understanding as tensions between police and protesters

escalated, helping change the trajectory of the protests.

She was at home when she got the call that the church, home to a breakaway Catholic congregation, was

being hit by pepper balls and the injured were taking refuge inside.

“I need you to get your officers to stand down,” Brown told then-Police Chief La’Ron Singletary. After some

haggling with the top police official — who has since been fired amid revelations that he may have tried to

minimize the department’s role in Prude’s death — a line of officers surrounding the building receded and

those taking refuge inside began to leave.

The following day, Brown brokered a deal with Mayor Lovely Warren: the police would pull back and activists

could march freely. Brown and 100 “elders” from the community and area churches served as a buffer

between protesters and police that night.

The protests stayed peaceful. Brown was later thanked by city officials and painted as a partner in their efforts

— a role she said she did not play.

She said she felt “used” by the city. Brown believed she was “negotiating a better path and a better response

for the community” in her talks with Warren and Singletary, a goal she was easily behind.

The message, she said, should not have been, “Reverend Myra partnering to save the system.”

Brown believes Rochester has not recognized how that system, along with historical wrongs and

discriminatory policies that include putting Black children in substandard schools, have contributed to

systemic racism in a city that is 40 percent Black.


2

“We like to shift the narrative here,” Brown said. “We like to deny.”

Raised in Rochester by parents who were farmworkers in the South, Brown, 55, saw the difference up close

when she and other members of a racial justice convoy spent a week in 2017 touring six cities that have

significance to their mission. Stops included Selma and Montgomery, Ala. They went to Cleveland, where a

police officer in 2014 shot and killed Tamir Rice, a 12-year-old playing with a toy gun.

On the trip, the complicated nature of American racism revealed itself through a candid conversation with a

parole officer in Ohio who admitted to feeling like “every Black youth is equally dangerous,” Brown recalled.

The officer, who was Black, was worn down by the system and was repeatedly troubled by “the boys he was

working with,” Brown said.

Brown, in an essay about the trip, said the group learned that they “must work tirelessly to end racism where

we live.”

“To become our best selves,” she wrote, “we must humbly hold ourselves accountable and be open to being

held to account when we yield to our worst selves.”

For years, Brown has been working to change Rochester from the pulpit of Spiritus Christi. She spent years

worshiping and serving in various positions with the Rev. James Callan, a Catholic priest who violated strict

Vatican guidelines by blessing same-sex couples and allowing women to perform the functions of priests. The

Vatican forced Callan, who made civil rights the centerpiece of his ministry, from his church.

Callan’s ousting and final Mass was front-page news in the Rochester Democrat and Chronicle: “Huge goodbye

to Callan,” the headline read. The mayor at the time told Callan, “Wherever they send you, Jim, give ‘em hell.”

In 1999, Callan helped found Spiritus Christi, where he is now the associate pastor. Brown was ordained a

priest in 2017 and started leading the congregation two years ago. Women are not allowed to be Catholic

priests, but Spiritus Christi is not recognized by the Vatican.

Brown delivers sermons, wearing a stole with “Black Lives Matter” etched in gold, that highlight a moral

obligation to address racial injustices. At a Sunday this fall, a White congregant with a long gray beard showed

up to church in a “Black Lives Matter” T-shirt. Equality is Spiritus Christi’s mission.

The church is working on building an outdoor museum in Rochester’s Baden Park — a site of unrest in the

1960s — to raise awareness for the area’s history of housing and employment inequality, and what Brown said

was Black community’s mistreatment by police.

Brown tells congregants and community members that the political system was established generations ago

by the White, male, elite and was built to serve its creators. She says that modern-day policing is derived from

Southern slave patrols. The diversity we see now in government and the private sector is “because people

pushed their way in,” Brown said.

Brown, who greets both strangers and friends with her inviting smile, believes Rochester is no exception. Yet

she has faith she can help enlighten hearts and minds through education, kindness and respect. It will be no

easy task.

“We haven’t done anything to change the structure, we’ve simply moved the pieces around,” she said. “That is

why you have what happened to Daniel Prude.”

Brown finds herself working within the confines of what she believes is a broken system, and hoping for the

best. She spent four hours facilitating a discussion on race in September with 18 guests, mostly candidates for

local office.


3

The group covered, with her guidance, how the legacy of slavery and broader systems of racism in this country

applies to issues they face in their lives and work.

New York State Assemblyman Harry Bronson (D) said Brown is able to convey the history that informs

structural racism because she is willing to listen to others and treats all with respect.

“Even if they don’t agree with her, they’re open to having those conversations,” he said.

Bronson, who is White, said he left with a deeper understanding of White guilt and White fragility, as well as

how to recognize racism. Candidates also discussed structural, cultural and institutional racism in society.

“Those kind of thoughts and ideas are going to be beneficial as I continue to develop policy,” Bronson said.

Demond Meeks, a Rochester organizer recently elected to the state assembly, said Brown earns trust by

showing respect while facilitating judgment-free conversations about difficult issues.

“She’s someone that can speak to both sides and try to get people to come to a consensus of sorts,” Meeks

said.

Meeks said community relations with the police have been fractured for years. Many protesters are still

haunted by the 2002 fatal police shooting of 14-year-Craig Heard. The eighth-grader was allegedly driving a

stolen car. According to the Rochester Democrat and Chronicle, police alleged the boy was trying to run an

officer over.

“People are quick to speak about George Floyd and other situations that have happened throughout the

country,” Meeks said. “But we have a history of these things happening right here in Rochester.”

Warren said it is “no secret” that Rochester — along with every other city in the country — has issues with

systemic racism and police brutality.

“The problems of the past cannot be changed or erased, but we can learn from them,” she said in a statement.

Days after the video of Prude being detained by police was made public, Brown was among the throngs of

protesters gathered in front of Rochester’s Public Safety building — a facility that, to many, represented

systemic injustice. The group had been blocked from getting close to the building on previous nights, fueling

discontent.

Earlier in the day, Brown brokered a deal with Warren to get the police to pull back its roving detail and allow

the activists to march freely. She also pushed for the ability to intervene on site, giving her time to try to

diffuse a problem before police responded with force.

On the ground, she and about 100 other elders from the community and area churches were serving as a

buffer between the police and protesters. It was tense at times, but the tactic worked: That night was the first

of many relatively peaceful ones to come.

Throughout the night, Brown fielded calls from Singletary, who believed some in the crowd were getting out

of hand. She convinced Singletary and Warren to give her “at least five minutes” to diffuse situations before

officers “start to get trigger-happy and nervous,” she said. The officials agreed to work with Brown.

Brown said her goal was to create a “pathway forward to make sure the community was safe to grieve,” that

they “were not attacked by police and not re-traumatized.”

Elders, she reasoned, could provide the life experience and patience that some of the young people needed.

They should also be willing to listen.

That night, a young Black man she encountered was visibly hurting, his voice shrill and intense. As others fell

silent, he continued to chant by himself in a way that was “coming out sideways,” she said.


4

Hi sweetie, how you doing?” Brown asked the young man. She saw an opportunity to show him love and see

that his hurt did not get the best of him, leading to conflict. She said she asked him in her “softest and gentlest

voice” to please lower his volume so she could hear the speaker on the megaphone.

The young man said he was sorry.

“You don’t need to apologize,” Brown said. “I hear the pain in your voice, and I know its real for you, and I’m

sorry about whatever you have gone through.”

Ashley Gantt, one of the main organizers of the Black Lives Matter movement in Rochester, said Brown has a

reputation for doing good in the area.

“She’s like a mentor, slash activist, slash spiritual counselor,” she said. “And she can sing.”

Activists in Rochester have paused protest activity as coronavirus infection rates rise. They have turned their

attention to advocating for a law that would remove police officers from mental health crisis calls like Prude’s,

mirroring similar efforts around the country, Gantt said.

Brown’s negotiation with Singletary and Warren resulted in a news conference where she was thanked for her

role. In public statements after the meeting, she was painted as a “partner” of those in power, a role she did

not agree with. There was also confusion over Brown’s role in bringing elders to the protest; Gantt said others

deserve credit for organizing their presence.

“Myra just let the mayor know what was happening, and then the mayor co-opted it,” Gantt said.

Brown was also unhappy with the city’s portrayal of her role as one that denoted a community partnership,

which was not her intention.

“I felt used in that,” Brown said. “I never want to be framed as somebody working with the system that’s

oppressive for people.”

In a statement, Warren said those considered to be elders are the most trusted and respected voices in the

community and have been “instrumental in bringing together opposing sides.

“The presence of our city’s elders during recent protests and periods of unrest has been vital to the well-being

of the Rochester community,” Warren said.

Brown told a Rochester television station that she was ultimately happy to have helped secure “a pathway

forward” for the city, and acknowledged it would not have happened without Warren pushing Singletary to

stand down.

“I can establish relationships with people without being tied to the oppression,” Brown said.


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