Any Guesses?

One aspect of the human condition is its ability to recognize beauty – however fleeting – and wanting to possess it. Some feel inadequate in the presence of beauty and want to destroy it. America was beautiful – a rare and wildly successful experiment in governance. As such, she became a target.

Beauty must be capable of protecting herself. She must act to appear haughty. There will always be people plotting either to possess her or destroy her. Barack Hussein Obama, in his two years in office, has succeeded in turning America into a whore. [Ref.: "Melina" ('00) Italian]

Some say that a Caliphate is beautiful as well; that sharia must and will rule over all. I find it incredible that our president will not come clean about his origins. He could easily put the matter to rest simply by producing his birth certificate. (We all must do so on any number of occasions; now, along side with our genitalia.) He won’t do it because he can’t.

The people of the Middle East know the truth. They know who and what he is. If we had know when we elected him, would he have been elected? Doubtful. Most of us understand that Islam has declared war on us. Would it make sense to install the enemy to lead?

Now we have a situation. We have become the enemy in the eyes of our own leader. Any guesses as to how that will turn out?

Taking First Aim

China is in the process of consolidating its power in its part of the world just like Iran is doing in the Middle East. China is confident it can get away with this now because it no longer views the U.S. as a credible roadblock. Obama’s foreign policy is seen to be aimless and lacking any and all conviction. Additionally, China feels it holds the trump move (two queens acting simultaneously) in what we regard as this, our interminable chess tournament of nations: the U.S. debt. The newest strategy for success holds that those who control the debt always win. China has situated herself so that she could wreck the U.S. economy with a single word. Obama is well aware of this.

Unappreciated by China, perhaps, is the likelihood that the present U.S. administration does not care in the least about the U.S. economy; that it is possible that it will at some point even goad China into pulling the plug and purposely send our economy into a tailspin, thus removing the debt threat weapon from the board entirely.

Still, for China, it would come out to one and the same: America voluntarily quitting the world stage and leaving China to do what it wants.

It has often been said that familiarity breeds contempt. China and Japan, both intensely nationalistic, will never see eye to eye. There are factions in the Middle East for which this is equally true. Even the European Union will not survive as the big players, Germany and France, will always plot to secure advantage. This truism is so deeply ingrained in the human condition, we even see it played out on the mean streets of American urban centers where black on black crime is rampant.

The tendency to see ourselves - or those who look most like us - as our primary enemy never fails. It comes to the fore particularly in times of social and economic stress. It is always those that most closely resemble us at whom we take first aim; not realizing, perhaps, that we are sticking our fingers into profoundly intimate wounds that have long since bled dry.

http://pkoelliker.blogspot.com/

The Unveiling of America

Some say that the only constant re the human condition is pain. Healthy bodies produce chemicals that shield us from pain. Yet the pain is always there. Strip away our organic defenses against it, and pain slips back out to torture us until we find another veil - usually one of a synthetic nature - that once again makes it bearable enough to ignore.

Then there’s hunger. The veil is nutrition. Some of us have woven it into an art form. The leaders of some African countries use food as a weapon, ripping the veil off their enemies - usually women and children, who are always the first in line to suffer the sins of war - subjecting their bodies to the painful pangs of hunger and eventual death.

Then there’s the ever insatiable sex drive. Muslim societies literally wrap their women in veils (burkahs) in an effort to keep (what they regard as) the wayward impulses of their male population at bay.

The daily struggle for security - to guarantee tomorrow’s meal; tomorrow’s distraction - makes use of money as a veil to ease this constant concern.

Finally, there’s our fear of death that produces acrid toxins in our systems. The veil is religion that promises the after-life - at considerable cost, however; tying us to ritual and overt displays cementing group solidarity, the currency of which being the protocol of exclusion, i.e. we abstain from this, we don’t do that, etc,

All such veils, when stripped away result in pain.

Our current administration is seeking to strip away of our veils - the comfort of our traditions - leaving us vulnerable, bitterly exposed and hurting. (Abu Ghraib, you ain’t seen nothing yet.) It’s an exercise in coercion aimed at getting us to submit unconditionally; to abandon our pearls (before swine) of fair-minded opposition, and feed on our energy; our talents; our wisdom to swell their flawed and undeserving elitist egos. They do it because they think they can.

Time will tell if this unveiling of America will serve to turn us into obedient lap dogs, or cause us to unleash our superior numbers against our tormentors.

http://pkoelliker.blogspot.com/

The Blunt Edge of Brutality

Religion, like language, is hard-wired into the human psyche. At their core, all religions are the same. Religion typically splits into two aspects: spiritual and political. The spiritual aspect of religion is straight forward. Its ‘signature’ is tolerance. It deals with questions regarding faith, God and eternity. The political aspect of religion currently draws most of our attention because it has the potential of affecting our immediate circumstances. The same is true for ‘isms’. We can say that man is in essence a religious animal. Or we can say man is in essence political. Both statements accurately reflect a singularity of the human condition.

While it is true that equating man’s spiritual nature with his political nature is paradoxical, the two are nevertheless inseparable. Mankind is most at ease when the political aspect of whatever his primary concern may be (as Alfred North Whitehead suggests) is benign. A wizened curmudgeon professing his belief in Marxism within the confines of an ivory tower suite is no threat to anyone. Man suffers when such concerns become militant as happened during the crusades and is happening now as militant Islam makes its moves.

The constant striving of religion is to reduce all the divergent aspects of life to one. People who may be several happy meals short of enlightenment do not recognize the essential oneness in what they see. They fail to make the connection that ties everything together. There are two ways to force the issue to its resolution. One is persuasion (proselytizing), militancy and violence; the other is tolerance.

Tolerance is the more difficult nut to crack. We have chosen the easy path. It is easier to lop off the heads of non-believers. It’s easier to ban conservatives from speaking at universities. It’s easier to call for jihad. It’s easier to cause havoc and break things, and then pick up the pieces of whatever is left and cobble these into a single atrocity based on the principle of exclusion. It is also easier getting people to submit.

We here in the West have chosen submission. Our enemies attack us and we submit. In order to rationalize our cowardice, we change the language. We blur the line between good and evil. We assume our enemy’s narrative and admit that we are at fault; that it is we who must adjust or even erase ourselves. Our mea culpas – and even our sacrifices - are flawed; it is only ego that speaks. We abandon our principles; our allies. We no longer tolerate ourselves.

This is the mindset of our current administration. It pays no mind to the violence, pain and dislocation that is certain to ensue. For them, all these comprise the necessary gateway through which we all must pass in order to achieve a more perfect union – the Utopia that is envisioned in James Hilton’s Shangri-La, in B.F Skinner’s “Walden Two”, in Pol Pot’s Cambodia, etc.

In today’s world the concept of tolerance has been all but abandoned. Political strife has taken its place. Unfortunately, just as religion cannot be exorcised from the human psyche, we cannot fight ‘isms’ with ‘isms’ and arrive at a good place. Religion has always been a double-edged sword. We have chosen the blunt edge of brutality.