Category Archives: Sad

None are so Blind, as They Who Refuse to See: … a rant of sorts …

Posted on by
Reply

It seems like the “Mother” of all conspiracy theories, but Tucker Carlson’s article and television episode “The Deep State Removed Nixon, The Most Popular President Ever, to Cover up CIA’s Murder of JFK” smells accurate.

Conspiracy theories bloom like weeds when the information we’re provided lacks credibility and when information we ought to have is nowhere to be found.  Hiding facts is the hallmark of successful conspiracies, but loose ends seem to echo endlessly.  The argument that no definitive evidence has been judicially found to be accurate when the judiciary refuses to investigate, makes the echoes ring louder and louder and sometimes even frees bits of what would be evidence, but for the foregoing negative imprimatur, from the shadows.

Few events fit the foregoing description more than the assassination of President John Fitzgerald Kennedy, but strangely, those in the public arena who most claim to have loved him seem most willing to accept an official narrative reminiscent of Swiss cheese.  I lived through the event and played a role in a requiem mass for the assassinated president held in New York City’s Episcopal Cathedral, St. John the Divine, during that awful November in 1963.  I was also a young adult during the Watergate affair and, at the time, one of my law professors was former New York governor Mario Cuomo (Andrews’s father).  I recall being surprised at the time as the most ethical person I knew, then professor Cuomo, a Democrat, cast doubts in class on how the corporate media was handling the scandal.  I also recall how massively popular Richard Millhouse Nixon was before the corporate media and his political cronies orchestrated his destruction.   I recall that rather than being the right wing conservative that history, calcifying media accounts, has portrayed him to be, he was a real progressive in foreign affairs, attaining peace with both Russia and China, and that domestically, he championed progressive programs we have yet to attain, including universal health care, and a universal guaranteed income (which he referred to as a negative income tax), and that during his administration, cabinet level departments dealing with education and the environment were first introduced.  I also know, having lived through those times, that he was hated and feared by the Democratic Party, having politically “stolen the Deep South” and resented by members of his own party, the GOP, because he promoted people in his administration from outside the traditional channels of power.  Nixon certainly was not close to perfect and he was probably justifiably paranoid with racist and anti-Semitic residue, something from which most leading Democrats and Republicans at the time also suffered.  And he cursed and used bad language in private (as if that was unusual in politics).  But he was not close to the corrupt monster most people today are taught to despise, sort of a prequel to how a really unpleasant former president is treated today (perhaps more deservedly so).

I recall the foregoing today because Tucker Carlson, an extremely popular journalist in an age when most journalist are despised and mistrusted, has openly articulated in the above referenced article what many, many ordinary citizens have long suspected, both with respect to the assassination of JFK and the removal of RMN.  And based on my experience, something similar was involved in the failure of the Jimmy Carter presidency.  If true, if accurate, and those are big ifs, it would be devastating confirmation of what a fourth president, JFK’s predecessor, warned as he left office. 

Dwight David Eisenhower warned us to be beware of the military industrial complex, what we today know as the Deep State.  And if that’s true, and if the cancerous Deep State has metastasized onto the federal judiciary, as seems to be the case, then we find ourselves temporally entering portals that advise us to “Abandon All Hope”, as so many authors of dystopian literature have long warned.

All too soon, as many of us fear, the truth will not save us, nor will it set us free.  Not that it will have arrived too late, it’s always been there.  But, reminiscent of the curse suffered by the Trojan princess Cassandra many millennia ago, too many otherwise decent people just refused to listen.
_______

© Guillermo Calvo Mahé; Manizales, 2023; all rights reserved.  Please feel free to share with appropriate attribution.

Guillermo (“Bill”) Calvo Mahé (a sometime poet) is a writer, political commentator and academic currently residing in the Republic of Colombia (although he has primarily lived in the United States of America of which he is also a citizen).  Until 2017 he chaired the political science, government and international relations programs at the Universidad Autónoma de Manizales.  He has academic degrees in political science (the Citadel), law (St. John’s University), international legal studies (New York University) and translation and linguistic studies (the University of Florida’s Center for Latin American Studies).  He can be contacted at guillermo.calvo.mahe@gmail.com and much of his writing is available through his blog at https://guillermocalvo.com/.

A Political Reality Check as we Remember Martin Luther King, Jr., DD

Posted on by
Reply

The Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., DD, who we remember and honor today, would, I believe, be profoundly ashamed of us.  He believed in love and empathy, in equity and justice, and in peace.  Instead, we have polarization and perpetual war.  Instead of seeking to remove the chains that bind us, we proudly polish them, in the name of hypocrisy.  We revel in a non-existent democracy, and in non-existent liberty, our freedom of expression is censored so that opinions contrary to those necessary to maintain the hold of the few over the many will be silenced and reality distorted, as we are continuously bled of the little wealth the powerful still do not control.  And like good slaves, we are grateful that it isn’t worse, …  although it is much worse than we believe.

An example: We have become so used to fake scandals manufactured by the Deep State in order to tighten its grip on power that we are in a turmoil over the purported “privately held government records scandal” now impacting Deep State darling Joe Biden, reflexively, declining to think.  The reality is that some “government records”, including those classified as secret, top secret, etc., have always been retained by previous office holders and probably more so by members of the Deep State’s core, the intelligence community.  Of all the recent faux scandals, this may be the most stupid, and that applies to both its Trump and Biden aspects.  The Hillary Clinton aspect has been all but forgotten, as has that which dealt with Barak Obama. 

There are real scandals that should concern us rather than the continuous stream of invented scandals that keep deflecting us from realizing the real source of most of the world’s problems, the Deep State and its penchant for perpetual war in order to shift wealth to the worst among us, no matter what the price.  Those were scandals that mattered to Dr. King, who we purport to honor today as we destroy the legacy which he died to bequeath us.

The Deep State has us utterly polarized and consequently, paralyzed, as we are robbed, killed and maimed purportedly in the name of democracy, liberty and human rights.  Greater hypocrisy would seem impossible.  Wake up, but really, not like the somnambulant cancel culture puppets who do so much to divide us and to deflect us from resolving the issues that most harm us.

Without empathy we will never attain real equity, real equality, real justice, real peace, real democracy or real liberty.  Dr. King had a dream which the Deep State and its minions have turned into a nightmare.  Ridicule, calumny, destruction of historical monuments, hate and disrespect are not the tools that will lead us to the metaphorical mountain from which Dr. King saw the future we and our progeny deserve.

Something to ponder on this anniversary of Dr. King’s birth.
_______

© Guillermo Calvo Mahé; Manizales, 2023; all rights reserved.  Please feel free to share with appropriate attribution.

Guillermo (“Bill”) Calvo Mahé (a sometime poet) is a writer, political commentator and academic currently residing in the Republic of Colombia (although he has primarily lived in the United States of America of which he is also a citizen).  Until 2017 he chaired the political science, government and international relations programs at the Universidad Autónoma de Manizales.  He has academic degrees in political science (the Citadel), law (St. John’s University), international legal studies (New York University) and translation and linguistic studies (the University of Florida’s Center for Latin American Studies).  He can be contacted at guillermo.calvo.mahe@gmail.com and much of his writing is available through his blog at https://guillermocalvo.com/.

Of Birds, the Homeless and Me: Something to consider

Posted on by
Reply

My quandary with pigeons, with birds really, is that while they are, in some aspects, beautiful, especially in flight; they’re so damned dirty, albeit unavoidably so, at least in urban settings where, from time to time, they seem to weaponize their waste, occasionally against me, albeit more often against my car and most frequently on the tenth floor window sill of my apartment, a space near a tiny garden set in a ledge my wife and I have planted in a nook outside our kitchen window where it abuts another little window at the side of our dining room.  A place where pigeons enjoy nesting and giving birth, and to which they enjoy returning after they’ve hatched.  I wonder if it’s a form of passive aggression, passive aggression like that inherent in so many humans whose lives seem to have been wasted and who find themselves figuratively littering the streets of their more fortunate brethren.  Of people like my wife and I and our friends and acquaintances.

Litter, the weapon of choice of disenfranchised humans and birds alike.

Doesn’t our reaction to them say more about us then it does about them?  Doesn’t it reflect our all too comfortable hypocrisy?  Our inability to accurately reflect introspectively?

Many decades ago, in an amazing oxymoronic piece, oxymoronic because her voice was so beautiful and the theme so dark, Joan Baez planted the seeds for what I write today, she planted those seeds in my soul when I heard her ballad entitled, “Their but for Fortune”.  It helped me become a human being, a human in the positive sense of what we should be rather than what we are.

Something to consider on a beautiful day in a city in the sky, on the central range of the Colombian Andes.  

Something to consider anywhere, … really.
_______

© Guillermo Calvo Mahé; Manizales, 2023; all rights reserved.  Please feel free to share with appropriate attribution.

Guillermo (“Bill”) Calvo Mahé (a sometime poet) is a writer, political commentator and academic currently residing in the Republic of Colombia (although he has primarily lived in the United States of America of which he is also a citizen).  Until 2017 he chaired the political science, government and international relations programs at the Universidad Autónoma de Manizales.  He has academic degrees in political science (the Citadel), law (St. John’s University), international legal studies (New York University) and translation and linguistic studies (the University of Florida’s Center for Latin American Studies).  He can be contacted at guillermo.calvo.mahe@gmail.com and much of his writing is available through his blog at https://guillermocalvo.com/.

Reflections on the Genesis of a Nebulous New Year

Posted on by
Reply

The first day of 2023, a Sunday, dawned cloudy and foggy in a special city, one set high in the central range of the Colombian Andes, a city for some reason associated with the soul.  The word “nebulous” comes to mind, both for its climactic connotation and for the lack of clarity in which we find ourselves mired as a world.  The colonial “Western” empire formerly led by the United Kingdom and now by the United States has been in its “death throes” for a long time, kind of like a wealthy old relative on her deathbed, on her deathbed for several decades now, one who refuses to die and who seems insistent on wreaking as much havoc and chaos as possible before she leaves, if she ever leaves; one whose once beautiful body has been possessed by a selfish and bitterly jaded specter.  She just can’t help herself it seems, she has to own and control everything, and, except for a tiny few, to hold everyone in bondage.  Bondage which, in a more honest age, would be perceived as slavery.

Not exactly an optimistic perspective as one starts a New Year but the old one has been so utterly controlled by evil, as though Saul of Tarsus, that evil quack, had correctly perceived the coming of an antichrist (even if his timing was a few millennia off).  The Deep State’s own Democratic Party, after more than fifteen years, has finally succeeded in goading the Russian Federation into a war with the Ukraine, that bedeviled and utterly corrupt land haunted by its Nazi past and neo-Nazi present but now firmly under Deep State control, a Deep State prepared to sacrifice the Ukrainian People and to expend the hard earned taxes paid by people in the nebulous West to assure that the world never progresses beyond its hegemony. It’s just too profitable a state of things to permit change as populists from both the left and the right wings of the political spectrum in the United States have discovered (the real left I mean, not that simulacrum that passes for the left in the Deep State’s Democratic Party and corporate media).  Odd that the utterly obnoxious and self-centered leader of the populist right is more honest and trustworthy (not that he’s honest or trustworthy, it’s a relative comparison) than the leader of the populist left, but naivety reigns there, which may be why it is not perceived as a real threat by the Deep State.  At least not yet.

Things are bad but, to an extent, pure evil has been forced into the light.  It is now clear that “democracy”, as a political reality not only does not exist but, in all probability, has never really existed.  What has passed for democracy during millennia has only been its convoluted verisimilitude specifically designed to assure that real democracy is never attained.  Then again, democracy is not synonymous with justice, or with equity, and it is certainly antagonistic to liberty and pluralism.  Apparently no political system we humans have tried has even been truly benign, although a few individual rulers may have briefly, from time to time, evaded systemic trends and governed both wisely and fairly.  However, in the end, self-defined “elites” always attain control and once attained, do everything they can to perpetuate themselves in power, corrupting all efforts to effect positive change, or else, “eliminating them” by means camouflaged as fair or else, just blatantly foul.

It should be clear that the current political paradigm is premised on a meld of electoral fraud and electoral manipulation through withholding accurate information, in place of which, fiction disguised as news is offered as gruel for the masses, of course spiked with propaganda disguised as information, and even spectator sports, used as means of misdirection emotions that might otherwise lead to addressing uncomfortable realities.

In that context, “nebulosity” seems a downright positive concept. 

Thinking about it, an air of nebulosity seems, at least to me, to pervade the all too accurate dystopian literature of George Orwell, Aldous Huxley (his French teacher at Eton) and Kurt Vonnegut.  It pervades Tolkien’s Mordor, into which we seem to be morphing.  However, nebulosity would seem to imply the possibility of an escape and I don’t recall that being the case in any but Tolkien’s novels.

What a negative manner in which to start 2023, but then again, we have the results of the recent purported elections in the United States as a catalyst.  The phrase “two wrongs don’t make a right” comes to mind, but United States voters are at best mired in a system designed as a quest for lesser evils (which, by definition, are always evil), never considering that evading evil is an option.

On the other hand, the global south may be waking and at least attempting to cast off the neoliberal chains which, through neoconservative pressure, have shackled it, seemingly forever.  Many Latin American countries are doing their best to veer to the left, although the Deep State’s own intelligence communities, freed of any restraints by the Biden administration, are waging a frequently successful rear guard action, most recently in Peru and Argentina, with fifth columns artfully planted in legislatures and judiciaries everywhere else.  Hell, that’s even true in the United States.

Which all makes for a probably all too interesting 2023.  “Interesting” in terms of the Chinese curse which wishes on its enemies “interesting times” in which to live.

And speaking of China, …. 

Well that’s a similar topic best left for another day.

_______

© Guillermo Calvo Mahé; Manizales, 2023; all rights reserved.  Please feel free to share with appropriate attribution.

Guillermo (“Bill”) Calvo Mahé (a sometime poet) is a writer, political commentator and academic currently residing in the Republic of Colombia (although he has primarily lived in the United States of America of which he is also a citizen).  Until 2017 he chaired the political science, government and international relations programs at the Universidad Autónoma de Manizales.  He has academic degrees in political science (the Citadel), law (St. John’s University), international legal studies (New York University) and translation and linguistic studies (the University of Florida’s Center for Latin American Studies).  He can be contacted at guillermo.calvo.mahe@gmail.com and much of his writing is available through his blog at https://guillermocalvo.com/.

Pop, the Good Things

Posted on by
Reply

Leonidas (Leon) Theodore Kokkins (1916-1973), my stepfather.  I called him Pop.

Crumb buns, jelly doughnuts and Kaiser rolls on Sunday mornings along with the Sunday papers and perhaps a ride along the causeway in Miami Beach in our black Pontiac convertible, circa 1949, with the top down of course (1952 through 1954).  Then, on to Charlotte.  We had a different car, perhaps a 56 Chevy, but it was not memorable.  Charlotte, the city, on the other hand certainly was.  I became Billy Kokkins there, long story but it never stuck. We left all too soon, back to Miami Beach, briefly, then to Colombia where I was born (and my baby brother Teddy’s infamous famous hunger strike; … he missed Pop).

So, … on to New York City!  Pop’s home town.  Queens: first Ozone Park, then Hollis, then Queens Village, then Flushing, all in the space of four years.  In New York, the routine was similar but the car was a sky-blue 1959 Chevy with a sort of split trunk and a hard top.  I liked the Pontiac better.  Actually, I loved the Pontiac.

But childhood ended in New York.  In the fall of 61, boarding school, separation, college at the Citadel in Charleston, and suddenly, I was an adult on my own.

Way too soon, everything was gone and we were scattered, barely still a family.  Disfunctionality had fast become the norm and we were trend setters.

1973, Pop’s final year.  He passed away in the early spring, very young (57).  A beloved enigma, at least as far as I was concerned, but like all enigmas, a mystery.
_______

© Guillermo Calvo Mahé; Manizales, 2022; all rights reserved.  Please feel free to share with appropriate attribution.

Guillermo (“Bill”) Calvo Mahé (a sometime poet) is a writer, political commentator and academic currently residing in the Republic of Colombia (although he has primarily lived in the United States of America of which he is also a citizen).  Until 2017 he chaired the political science, government and international relations programs at the Universidad Autónoma de Manizales.  He has academic degrees in political science (the Citadel), law (St. John’s University), international legal studies (New York University) and translation and linguistic studies (the University of Florida’s Center for Latin American Studies).  He can be contacted at guillermo.calvo.mahe@gmail.com and much of his writing is available through his blog at https://guillermocalvo.com/.

Thanksgiving 2022

Posted on by
Reply

My reflections on the national holiday denominated Thanksgiving in the United States.

The concept seems beautiful.  A day on which to give thanks without asking for anything, just a general sense of gratitude directed at both our fellow men and women, and to a sense of the divine.  Unfortunately, it was a hypocritical concept since its inception set in stolen indigenous lands denominated New England by an intolerant and racist religious sect totally at odds with the humanitarian philosophy of the incarnate man, whom they judged divine and claimed to follow.  Of course, they were very much a reflection of the Romanized Jew, Saul of Tarsus, who changed his name to Paul, and who swiped the emergent innovative Hebrew religious variant right from under the noses of its progeny.

As a “Pauline” rather than “Nazarene” sect, the conduct of the Pilgrims was utterly predictable.  Orthodox hypocrisy followed by virtual genocide.  Still, the thought is beatific and noble even if its implementation by the Pilgrims and Puritans in general fell far from the mark.  But that does not, in any sense, mean we need to do the same.  Or, more accurately, to keep doing the same.  It would be awesome if on this day of thanksgiving we dedicated ourselves, not just to watching football games and stuffing ourselves, but to replacing polarization with empathy and to doing unto others as we would have them do to us; and to insisting on a peaceful world were swords are beaten into plowshares and equity and justice reign and truth is relevant; and if we did so, not tomorrow but today.

I wonder if resolutions need, for some reason, to be limited to the New Year.
_______

© Guillermo Calvo Mahé; Manizales, 2022; all rights reserved.  Please feel free to share with appropriate attribution.

Guillermo (“Bill”) Calvo Mahé (a sometime poet) is a writer, political commentator and academic currently residing in the Republic of Colombia (although he has primarily lived in the United States of America of which he is also a citizen).  Until 2017 he chaired the political science, government and international relations programs at the Universidad Autónoma de Manizales.  He has academic degrees in political science (the Citadel), law (St. John’s University), international legal studies (New York University) and translation and linguistic studies (the University of Florida’s Center for Latin American Studies).  He can be contacted at guillermo.calvo.mahe@gmail.com and much of his writing is available through his blog at https://guillermocalvo.com/.

Post-Election Hangover, 2022

Posted on by
Reply

It’s the morning of November 9, 2022.  I feel as though I have a hangover although I’ve not indulged in any intoxicants recently, I rarely do.  But I watched last night’s election returns and that is undoubtedly the cause.

I watched them primarily on CNN International, switching periodically to Fox News, both available where I currently reside, in the Republic of Colombia.  My email to the Marion County Florida Board of Elections advising that I had not received my promised mail in ballot, purportedly mailed to me on September 23, went unanswered so, like other United States citizens here who I know (and probably elsewhere), our duty to vote went unexercised, although the dearth of adequate candidates might well have made that right irrelevant, if not meaningless.  That adds to my suspicions about the efficacy and integrity of United States elections, at least as compared to elections elsewhere.  For example, Colombia and its neighbors have reliable electoral results available in hours, through a process that requires official voter identification and the collection of ballots only from voters, and in official polling places.  We still experience some electoral fraud, and vote selling and buying is still difficult to stamp out, but it is minimized.  In the United States, how can anyone know?  It’s somewhat of a mystery to us here. 

Post electoral exit polls indicated deep displeasure with the status quo and the Biden administration, but apparently, fear of Donald Trump, who was not a candidate, and a desperate need to protect the “right” of women to abort unwanted progeny proved more important than concerns about inflation, the economy or an impending nuclear holocaust.  While that may seem incoherent, United States voters have their priorities and are as gullible and short sighted as ever, although perhaps that criticism needs to be tampered with an acknowledgement that the corporate media fulfilled its duty to assure that almost no one was aware that third party and independent candidate options were available, except perhaps for voters in the States of Georgia and Oregon, where available options were beaten down.  Both major political parties have claimed victory, actual and symbolic, but for the electorate, at least from my perspective, all such victories are utterly Pyrrhic. 

I primarily watched the results on CNN because the analysis seemed better and more timely, albeit utterly lacking in objectivity, with insults and taunts pretty much the rule.  Fox news was more civil, but not any more objective.  I wonder what MSNBC was like?  I can’ get it here.  While pundits and purported journalists claim that the results are not yet clear, the reality is otherwise.  As is almost always the case in the modern era (post Second World War), the Deep State won and belligerency and lack of respect for international law will continue to be the rule, regardless of the consequences to common men, women and children in the United States and abroad, all in the name of generating profits for the very few.  Costs to others is no concern.  And of course, the Deep State’s most potent weapon, polarization was as effective as ever.  No empathy wanted here!!!!

I saw a very negative reaction to last night’s elections in a right-wing publication (ReTalk Newsletter, November 9, 2022, available at https://retalk.com/c/us-politics/election-4?utm_source=email&utm_campaign=topposts&utm_medium=email&rtmid=20c439ff35ac1637522d0d598c125137), a post from someone deeply offended by the results, who wrote “This should have been a blowout by republicans. We have experienced 2 years of disastrous policies and yet ugly pieces of shit like fetterman [sic] are elected. There is something terribly wrong with the democrats. Either they are truly insane and want to see this country destroyed or they are just plain ignorant morons. To all the fucking morons out there who voted for any democrat I hope enjoy your reduced standard of living you stupid bastards!!!”

I replied to that post noting that insults and ridicule rarely if ever change minds and hearts, and that that’s what was needed.  That a fundamental paradigm shift was essential towards respect and a quest for accuracy, with a willingness to change perspectives based on re-evaluating those that have proved ineffective; all seasoned with plenty of empathy, something apparently totally lacking.  I of course doubt that my reply will be taken into account, other than perhaps through some sort of ridicule.  Other perspectives, while diametrically opposed, were virtually identical in tenor if not in substance, indicating that somehow the election had saved United States democracy from traitorous “election deniers”, ignoring the reality that United States democracy exists only as a delusional illusion but that liberty gives everyone the right to opine on critical public issues, whether they are right or wrong in their observations.  Again, insults and ridicule were the preferred means of communication.  Which is exactly what the Deep State favors, “polarization and hate uber alles”, perhaps seasoned with a bit of violence which can then be manipulated, distorted and decried in a flood of crocodile tears.  In essence, it appears that traditional Republicans and all Democrats agree that the electoral results were shaped by former president Donald Trump somehow, and that the GOP needs to comply with Deep State demands to prevent him, not only from running for public office, but even from expressing himself, … for everyone’s good.  Such is the concept of civil rights and liberty now sweeping the airwaves, a message very likely to be endlessly repeated, at least during the following two years.  Hopefully (according to them), the “Biden Justice Department and attorneys general in New York and Georgia, will soon see to that.

As Yakov Smirnoff noted decades ago “America!  What a country!”

Is it any wonder that I woke feeling hung over?  I’m pretty sure that hangovers are a pandemic this morning, and one without any cure in sight.
_______

© Guillermo Calvo Mahé; Manizales, 2022; all rights reserved.  Please feel free to share with appropriate attribution.

Guillermo (“Bill”) Calvo Mahé (a sometime poet) is a writer, political commentator and academic currently residing in the Republic of Colombia (although he has primarily lived in the United States of America of which he is also a citizen).  Until 2017 he chaired the political science, government and international relations programs at the Universidad Autónoma de Manizales.  He has academic degrees in political science (the Citadel), law (St. John’s University), international legal studies (New York University) and translation and linguistic studies (the University of Florida’s Center for Latin American Studies).  He can be contacted at guillermo.calvo.mahe@gmail.com and much of his writing is available through his blog at https://guillermocalvo.com/.

Involuted Lacunae

Posted on by
Reply

“I actually liked Babel” he admitted, “I admired its audacity.”

“Then, why destroy it” asked his adversary, or perhaps his assistant, at least at one time, the Archangel Hêl él?

“I didn’t, not really, I just set events in motion so that those who dared consider the faintest possibility of challenging me turned, instead, on each other.  It was a reflex reaction, one I’ve long regretted.”

“But what of their language, and their knowledge; their music and their poetry” asked Hell-El, fully knowing the answer but perhaps wanting to add a bit of salt, perhaps black salt from the Himalayas, to the metaphorical wound?

“Fragmented, unfortunately, couldn’t be helped.  I hadn’t the time to consider consequences before I acted, and thus, unintentionally loosened Confusion; Misperception and Misunderstanding from their bonds, and they quickly mated and sired Disdain and Manipulation and Treachery, which in turn, bred politics and religion and journalism, and, if not the Law, unfortunately, the legal profession.”

“Pity that!  Unfortunate. Right.  The end of possibilities you once fancied.  ….  On another front, any news from Humpty Dumpty and his egg shell restoration project”?
_______

© Guillermo Calvo Mahé; Manizales, 2022; all rights reserved.  Please feel free to share with appropriate attribution.

Guillermo (“Bill”) Calvo Mahé (a sometime poet) is a writer, political commentator and academic currently residing in the Republic of Colombia (although he has primarily lived in the United States of America of which he is also a citizen).  Until 2017 he chaired the political science, government and international relations programs at the Universidad Autónoma de Manizales.  He has academic degrees in political science (the Citadel), law (St. John’s University), international legal studies (New York University) and translation and linguistic studies (the University of Florida’s Center for Latin American Studies).  He can be contacted at guillermo.calvo.mahe@gmail.com and much of his writing is available through his blog at https://guillermocalvo.com/.

A Call for a Real Liberal, a Real Progressive Political Movement in the United States

Posted on by
Reply

As usual, the United States is embroiled in an armed conflict.  Since war is supposedly illegal, we no longer have them, we have police actions and special military operations and clandestine interventions, etc.  The latest, that one involving the Ukraine, is a bit different, a bit more Machiavellian.  The United States orchestrated it (with help from its NATO allies) and is financing it but is maintaining that it is not actively participating in it, other than through assuring and facilitating its continuance in order to weaken both the Russian Federation and the People’s Republic of China, regardless of the cost in lives and infrastructure for the Ukrainians (the United States designated tools) and perhaps, in the near future, if its luck holds, the Taiwanese.  That nuclear holocaust is a risk is irrelevant.  The ends, apparently, justify the means, and narrative management will take care of all but the radioactive fallout.

Thank goodness Donald Trump was eliminated to make the foregoing possible, after all, it’s a project started during the Clinton administration and implemented by the good old troika of Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden (with an assist by Hunter).

So, how is the foregoing feasible, you know, with the United Nations Charter, the United States Constitution, etc.?  Well, well-orchestrated political dynamics in and through the United States certainly help.  There’s the purportedly defensive “North Atlantic Treaty Organization”, now morphed into a world-wide neoliberal enforcement organ predicated on “Mafian” principles; there’s the European Union, NATO’s echo chamber; and of course, there’s the  United States’ bipartisan dictatorship.

Let me explain the latter. 

There are two major political parties in the United States which, between them, split almost all political offices and posts at every level.  One, the Democratic Party, has under the leadership of a certain Nancy Pelosi, with the assistance of a certain Chuck Schumer, become monolithic in its voting patterns (except for two recalcitrant senators, one from West Virginia and one from Colorado, considered pariahs and traitors).  The other is a strange collection of feuding caucuses under divers, would be leaders, who find it difficult to govern.  Not a bad thing as Will Rogers, a noted political comedian from the first half of the twentieth century once noted when he explained that “no one’s life or property was safe while Congress was in session”.  Oddly, he was a Democrat and once described that political party in terms that now apply to its principle opponent.

Until fairly recently, interestingly enough, both parties were controlled by the same people, whose artfully planted moles in the federal bureaucracy shielded their interests from any populist threats.  Somehow that managed to briefly change in 2016, making formal and informal structural changes in the electoral system necessary in order to preserve democracy’s innocuousness.  After all, democracy’s supposed to be just for show.  The control by the unorganized but highly disciplined state within a state that some of us refer to as the Deep State was shaken, perhaps bent a bit but not broken, and it is now firmly back in place.  Thanks to an artfully crafted, controlled and managed “pandemic”.  A curse for many but a blessing for the privileged few who rule us.

But, what does the foregoing mean? 

Well, to all appearances, it means that ideology free monolithic autocracy and pragmatism have triumphed over principles, equity, democracy and liberty, nasty things the latter, every one.  Monolithic autocracy, is maintained, sustained and fueled by the hate, disdain and polarization which the Deep State, now a memeplex all its own, loves.  It sets us against each other domestically by gender, by race, by nationality, by sexual orientation, by religious beliefs and then does all it can to absolutely silence dissent through censorship, censorship directly by our government (all three branches) as well as through its allies in Internet technologies and platforms, and through abuse of the criminal justice system to attack political enemies, all while loudly accusing everyone else of doing exactly what it is it is in fact doing (the foregoing phrase kind of reminds us of the famous observation, “that depends on what the meaning of “is”, is).  There is a problem though.  Today, only the Democratic Party is sticking to the script, although a number of traditionalist Republicans keep trying to bring the good old GOP back into line.  But fortunately for the Deep State, at least right now, the Democratic Party controls all of the federal political branches (although how legitimate that control is and how it was attained is questioned by all too many potential voters; but that is irrelevant).

To the delight of the Deep State, that “Democratic” Party applies Deep State principles and tactics internationally, as well as domestically, seeking economic and political control by planting conflict everywhere which permits perpetual sowing of the profits of perpetual war, albeit in the name of peace, democracy and liberty.  And admittedly, those profits are not meant to be shared, at least not broadly.

To opponents of violence as a means of conflict resolution, to those to whom equity, truth and justice are somehow relevant, GOP traditionalists are not much better than Democrats, but at least the GOP is not monolithic, there is internal dissent expressed in actual congressional debates and non-uniformity of votes, with a wing led by Rand Paul that demands de-escalation of external conflicts and freedom of belief and speech at home, opposed to GOP traditionalists like the Cheneys and the Bushes.  And there are civic leaders like Tulsi Gabbard, an awesome statesperson, except for her Islamophobia, but she at least thinks for herself and is not owned by the billionaire class.  In truth, there are viable political leaders everywhere, in third parties and among those who refuse to be part of political parties (which have become the self-serving sectarians James Madison promised in the Federalist Papers would not evolve.  The anti-Federalists, unfortunately for us, were right on almost every point, as history has shown). 

Federal elections in the United States (now a dysfunctional mess as promoters of electoral fraud in the name of “democracy” obliterate traditional norms) are set to take place in a few weeks.  Elections that impact men, women and children everywhere, most of whom cannot participate as they are not United States citizens.  I wonder what would happen if they could?  How might all of the people in all of the countries that the United States has fragmented and looted, … purportedly for their own good (or at least that’s the story), usually under Democratic Party led administrations (think WWI, WWII, Korea, Vietnam, Yugoslavia, Libya, Syria, Yemen and now the Ukraine but that’s barely the tip of the iceberg) vote?  But they can’t, at least not unless they have managed to enter the United States and surreptitiously usurp the franchise, … and vote for the Democratic Party.

The foregoing makes United States voters committed to peace and equity morally responsible for selecting world leaders who really believe in peace and in sane environmental policies and in sustainable economics and in equity and in real justice.  A daunting task at which we too often fail because our choices are drastically limited to those of whom the Deep State approves.  As to those who do not come up to Deep Sate standards, well, not that he was great, or even decent, but look at what happened and is happening to Donald Trump, whose main crime is that he does not believe in perpetual war and dared to suggest dismantling NATO and bringing troops back from overseas.  Look at what happened to Tulsi Gabbard, the star of the Democratic Party’s presidential debates until the rules were changed to exclude her.  Look at what happened to Dennis Kucinich, gerrymandered out of a congressional district by his own party (the Democrats, who with crocodile tears now constantly scream against gerrymandering, at least any gerrymandering that is not their own).

All of this is possible only because, notwithstanding the famous “First Amendment”, the United States does not have (and really, never has had) a legitimate free press but rather, only purported journalists tasked with spewing mind-controlling narrative on a 24/7 basis.  There are, of course, miniscule exceptions, exceptions like the imprisoned Julian Assange and those who look up to him, but there are less and less of those as more and more realize on which side their bread is buttered, or how dangerous it is to actually investigate and honestly share findings.

So, … as elections once again approach, we, the electorate, find ourselves confused, bored, disillusioned and disinterested, anticipating results we feel are preordained.  Except of course, for dedicated and either well compensated or deluded Deep State activists, some of whom, like lemmings, vote in blocks regardless of how often they have been deceived.  But then, that’s what polarization is for.

Going into these imminent elections, we are once again unprepared for alternatives, either because they have been prevented from evolving or because the corporate press and social media moguls have obfuscated them.  At best, once more, we can vote against greater evils, although they are difficult to identify.  If only Tulsi Gabbard could run for everything, but alas, she’s not running for anything, although she has endorsed a few candidates.  Still, perhaps by recently resigning from the Democratic Party (but not joining the GOP), she has provided a sort of benchmark for our personal electoral decisions.

Too many of the most decent among us will refuse to participate in what they see as a charade but that may well perpetuate the Deep State’s hold on power, and that, in turn, may well accelerate the day on which our political decisions will no longer have any relevance, as the universe may at last find itself rid of the infection posed by our species, decisions which will no longer be relevant as our, and many innocent species, will no longer inhabit this sphere we call home.  Is that a depressing or hopeful thought?  I guess that depends on one’s attitude towards being rebooted.

Not that there isn’t hope for a peaceful world.  One where equity and justice prevail; where truth is relevant and where we are each not only free, but empowered to attain or full potential.  But that requires a great awakening and a rejection of those who currently enforce de facto, if not de jure slavery over so many, either in a pretty velvet casing or through brute force.  Rejection of those dedicated to ruling us through polarization and perpetual war.  Rejection of those who hoard the world’s resources forcing hundreds of millions to live in abject poverty and to die or be maimed in meaningless conflicts.

There is a saying that it is always darkest before the dawn and it is pretty dark right now.
_______

© Guillermo Calvo Mahé; Manizales, 2022; all rights reserved.  Please feel free to share with appropriate attribution.

Guillermo (“Bill”) Calvo Mahé (a sometime poet) is a writer, political commentator and academic currently residing in the Republic of Colombia (although he has primarily lived in the United States of America of which he is also a citizen).  Until 2017 he chaired the political science, government and international relations programs at the Universidad Autónoma de Manizales.  He has academic degrees in political science (the Citadel), law (St. John’s University), international legal studies (New York University) and translation and linguistic studies (the University of Florida’s Center for Latin American Studies).  He can be contacted at guillermo.calvo.mahe@gmail.com and much of his writing is available through his blog at https://guillermocalvo.com/.

A Message for Yankees Fans after the Latest Disaster

Posted on by
Reply

It’s October 24, 2022, and Einstein, wherever his soul lurks, is probably sort of chuckling, thinking, “I told them so”. Same-old-same-old all over again, as Yogi might have said. To the brink of success then run away, run away fast as though your lives depended on it (from Monty Python’s “Holy Grail”). The organized campaign to place the blame on Aaron Judge thus setting the stage for him to head elsewhere is in high gear, probably subsidized by the four pillars of the Yankees’ apocalypse: Hal Steinbrenner, Randy Levine, Brian Cashman and Aaron Boone. The limited partners are fine with the results. Profits preserved; money not wasted on fans too stupid to root elsewhere (but that’s the nature of fans).

As one of those “stupid” fans (there may be a redundancy in that phrase, sort of as in “stupid voters”), I have no joy in having been right in numerous postings on social media sites, those useless and frequently censored and manipulated vehicles designed to let us blow off steam while accomplishing nothing. And of course, I am very far from having been alone.

A once promising season is over, as has become traditional. “Postmortem”, sadly, is not a hyperbolic exaggeration for Yankees’ fans, now as polarized as the rest of our country, divided between cheerleaders who label those who criticize management as “haters”, and those who love their Yankees but refuse to accept ineptitude and disdain in our historically storied sports franchise. Ineptitude at every level is the impression that’s been left as “aspirations are swept away” to lie uncomfortably under the rugs in Hal Steinbrenner’s office. Ineptitude concentrated at the top and flowing down in concentric waves: A callous owner faithful to his investors while virtually ignoring the fans; a president of baseball operations missing in action and a bargain hunting general manager whose bargains rarely meet aspirations (as is the case with most bargains); and, a manager and coaching staff whose decisions varied from amateurish to jinxed. A show good enough to consistently make the stage but then flop. The sports version of the Not Ready for Prime Time Players, albeit perhaps less talented.

Odd that the Yankees minor leagues seem to do so well, and that while minor league players seem to start out well at the mother team level, they almost immediately succumb to the “swing for the fences-strike-out brigade”. Or that if they’re pitchers, they’re quickly burned out. Actually, odd only if one accepts the excuse that coaches and managers are not responsible for players’ failures. Our Yankees have become the obverse of what they once were. Instead of turning turnips into diamonds we now turn talented and eager young players into failures; that is, when we don’t just let them rot unused, as was the sad case with players such as Miguel Andujar, now “liberated” in the Pittsburg Pirate organization where he is probably sighing, “free at last; free at last, thank God almighty I’m free at last”.

Being a fan is a psychologically grueling vocation but one Cub’s fans, Red Sox fans and Jet’s fans have mastered through mainly bad times (albeit always with glimmers of hope, delusional though they might have been). True fans stay the course, but not quietly, not with “my country right or wrong attitudes”, and I guess there is a karmic curse to pay for all the awesome Yankees’ years. For the Babe and the Mick, and Mr. October and Mr. November. And for Donny Baseball. And for George.

The Piper, it seems, is collecting his due.

It’s a bit hard because most of us remember George but we despise his progeny and their decisions. Because we’re seemingly stuck in a ditch with little hope that, as occurred when George arrived to save us from CBS, a new, enlightened and dedicated ownership group will arrive to save the day.

It seems like more sad times await us. Jeter and Rodrigues and CC and other alums don’t have the funds, and the Steinbrenners and their partners would probably not sell anyway.

But we’ll stay the course, that’s what fans do. And make observations and suggestions that all too often, all too sadly, prove true. 
 _______

© Guillermo Calvo Mahé; Manizales, 2022; all rights reserved. Please feel free to share with appropriate attribution.

Guillermo (“Bill”) Calvo Mahé (a sometime poet) is a writer, political commentator and academic currently residing in the Republic of Colombia (although he has primarily lived in the United States of America of which he is also a citizen). Until 2017 he chaired the political science, government and international relations programs at the Universidad Autónoma de Manizales. He has academic degrees in political science (the Citadel), law (St. John’s University), international legal studies (New York University) and translation and linguistic studies (the University of Florida’s Center for Latin American Studies). He can be contacted at guillermo.calvo.mahe@gmail.com and much of his writing is available through his blog at https://guillermocalvo.com/.