A Tale of Canaan and Ur and Uruk, of Three Trees in Three Gardens and of Eggs and Omelets as Well, all as Overheard by an Angry South Wind: A sort of bridge over troubled waters

Posted on July 30, 2023 by Guillermo Calvo Mahé

Gilgamesh was not really fond of the little Canaanite wanabe storm deity, one of El’s seventy sons, one not all that important. The kid was Baal’s shadow, always following him around, mimicking his gestures behind his back, envious and enthralled concurrently, ambivalent, apparently without much of a future (although past, present and future as well as time in general were considered irrelevancies to deities, even very minor and insignificant deities). Anyway, in the little deity’s opinion, all of his siblings shared the ichor derived from El’s semen so, in a sense, they were all sort of avatars, a form of equality; at least that’s what the little deity kept telling himself, at least then.

Gilgamesh was a Kengirian from the city of Uruk who loved to wander, even though as Uruk’s king he had serious responsibilities. He had a decent, well trained staff though and they knew better than to disappoint him.

His wanderings not infrequently took him to the lands of the Canaanites, no big deal really, but also, given that he was at least a demigod, on occasion they also took him to the divine court of El, the elder and ruler of the El-ohim. The El-ohim were the Canaanite’s complex pantheon, in some ways, an incubator for other pantheons although certainly not for the much older pantheon of the Anunnaki to which Gilgamesh was sort of pledged.

Gilgamesh interacted with the members of the El-ohim, perhaps a bit too proudly, but with the exception of El and his spouse Athirat, they tended to defer to him. Sort of. Sort of fearfully. But with their dignity at least superficially sort of preserved. They’d heard stories. And it was, of course, at the court of El that he’d encountered the minor deity some referred to as “the pest” (as in pest-ilence). If he had a name, it was too much trouble to worry about remembering. Gigamesh just thought of him, when he thought of him (which was very infrequently), as “he-that-was-whatever-he-was”.

Gilgamesh was not a full, one hundred percent deity, that was true, although he was a son of Ninsun, a goddess, and of Lugalbanda, who although born a mortal was eventually deified. Lugalbanda had been a great king, albeit of a small city by today’s standards, but the largest and most powerful then existing (boasting of between 40,000 and 80,000 inhabitants, depending on how its boundaries were interpreted). Even so, Gilgamesh was and had always been (and would always be) unique. Like his father, he tended to be the best at everything he tried. Something the little Canaanite divinity, taken with him, unsuccessfully sought to emulate, … at the time.

The very minor divinity (at least then), had a very vivid imagination. While his principal role in the pantheon of the El-ohim merely involved smelting and metallurgy, not such a small thing as future events would indicate, it seemed just a craft to him, and he sometimes fantasized about eliminating his father and then his sixty-nine brothers, especially Baal, and perhaps even his mother and sisters, although perhaps the latter could serve in a divine harem. When he was in a more generous mood, his fantasy was a bit less bloodthirsty, perhaps he might just someday dethrone them all and rule over, but not merely as a primus inter pares. While time did not really exist for divinities, at least not as it did for mortals, he felt that someday, his time would come. “Just wait and see”.

Given his insignificance among the El-ohim, the little Canaanite deity tended to wander alone in lonely desserts in the mortal realms rather than sitting around, ignored at court. He loved basking in the heat, learning to wield lightning and thunder, and even assuming the form of fire as a burning shrub from time to time, frightening the inhabitants. He loved playing in the giant sandstorms that appeared out of nowhere but which did him no harm. Indeed, he considered himself a sort of storm god rather than merely a patron of metalworkers. Deism had its privileges, even for insignificant, minor deities. And of course, he experimented with melting rocks and extracting the metals they hoarded, especially the shiny yellow one that seemed to capture the essence of the sun and which was so easy to mold into interesting shapes.

Sometimes when visiting the El-ohim, Gilgamesh, unobserved, would watch the pompous little deity at play and laugh to himself, recalling his own infancy at court. And his own apparently bloated aspirations at the time as he fantasized about what kind of king he might be when his time came. Sometimes Gilgamesh even speculated on what might become of the young and obviously insecure deity. Insecure with good reason. But divine insecurity tended to breed unpredictability and ruthlessness, both of which interested Gilgamesh (he was prone to neither but fascinated by both). And sometimes, albeit not that often, Gilgamesh too fantasized, longing for the challenge of an equal, imagining that a real challenge might be fun.

Interestingly, after a time, a pretty long time for those forced to deal with that messy concept, the little deity (no longer quite so little, in fact, he’d be best referred to as a “young” deity), decided to find out more about Gilgamesh, a sort of reversal of roles, but stealthily, by following Gilgamesh to his own domain, Uruk.

And he did.

He was fascinated, not only by the cosmopolitan nature of the city and its people, but by all of the area that surrounded it, and he wished that rather than having been born among the El-ohim, he’d been born into the Anunnaki. Charmed by the area, a sort of league of cities, the young Canaanite deity took to wandering there instead of in the Canaanite dessert and eventually, after a millennium or so, he started spending more and more time in a Kengirian city not all that far from Uruk, one called Ur. And he sort of started hanging around there, but sort of incognito, especially careful to avoid being noticed by the local deities who might take it into their heads, as a sort of diplomatic courtesy, to suggest to El that he might want to have a sort of census of his progeny. And then El might take it into his head to have proud Baal come and collect him, which would be even more humiliating than usual. And so, while wondering around the land known to its inhabitants as Kengir (but by others as Sumer), and from time to time slipping into the abode of their local pantheon (after all, fair was fair, and if Gilgamesh, not even a full deity, could visit his pantheon, why shouldn’t he visit theirs), the young Canaanite deity learned a good deal more about his childhood hero, who, it seems, was everybody’s hero. Indeed, much later, he would be acknowledged by many as the first superhero of the human race, although, as we know, he was not fully human.

He learned many interesting things, but a few stood out.

It turned out that Gilgamesh had had two true friends, … well sort of. Maybe only one. And that one for only a time. The first and foremost had been Enkidu, called by most “the hairy man”, unkempt and uncouth, but very strong and very loyal. He’d passed on to the underworld, and Gilgamesh had tried to save him, battling and defeating both monsters and divinities along the way, but to no avail.

The other had been Inanna, a beautiful and all too amorous goddess with a terrible temper. She may have been a member of the Anunnaki that the young deity admired, the pantheon in which Gilgamesh played a much more direct role, but the issue seemed confusing, at least to him. Inanna had once unsuccessfully sought to seduce Gilgamesh, then, a while later, had begged a favor only he could perform and which he’d granted. Superficially it seemed a minor favor, one involving a beautiful but vexing tree which Inanna had found drifting in the great river Euphrates, one of the many that flowed into the nearby sea (really, just a gulf). It was not just any tree though, no indeed. For one thing, it was immensely thick, thicker than several houses combined, thicker even than it was tall. And its trunk seemed made of silver, which, as a metallurgist of sorts, was of interest to the young Canaanite deity; and its leaves seemed made of gold, his favorite metal. And rather than just one variety of fruit, it produced two, but only during alternating seasons, each large and juicy. One was yellow and the other red. Under the proper astral and atmospheric conditions and subject to appropriate invocations and incantations, the fruit could grant the person that consumed it either knowledge (the yellow fruit) or immortality (the red), or if, with patience, both were eventually consumed, then omniscience and immortality.

It was a tree with its own very special name, one it had given itself (it was capable of communing, at least with deities). It called itself Huluppu. After salvaging it, Inanna had replanted it in her own garden and had nursed it and cared for it as her own. For very personal reasons but not exactly altruistic reasons. She had definite plans for the tree but needed for it to attain a specific level of maturity before they could be implemented. Plans that required sacrifices, specifically, one sacrifice not at all to the tree’s liking. But then, what the hell could a tree do when a deity, or even a human had designs on it? Still, according to legend, it could not be forced to assume other shapes as long as it was inhabited. And rules were rules.

Fortunately for the tree (at least for a while), while it was both unique and special (the two things are not exactly synonymous), there were a few beings who had, over time, nested in its branches and in its roots and eventually, for brief period, even in its trunk. On the down side, unfortunately their cacophony robbed Inanna of the sleep which, while not something which, as a goddess, she required, was something she enjoyed, especially when accompanied. Like the tree, the three who called it home were special. The first, an incarnation of the South Wind, had originally uprooted the tree from where divine Enki, Inanna’s grandfather and the avatar of Wisdom, had planted it as a seedling in Dilmun, the Anunnaki’s garden by the shores of the great river. He’d planted it and endowed it with a “backup” copy of all his vast wisdom and knowledge deeming it prudent, as he planned a sojourn to the underworld to visit his granddaughter Ereshkigal. One never knew what awaited one there or how easy it would be to return with everything one had had when one arrived. He recalled all the fuss when Inanna had made that seven layered trip.

As told above, Inanna had found the tree floating near the juncture where the great river flowed into a nearby sea (actually, just a gulf) and with divine prescience, recognizing that it might someday prove essential for certain rites and rituals necessary for her to come fully into her attributes, she’d rescued it, re-planting it in her own garden. Unfortunately for Inanna, she’d done so somewhat carelessly, somehow not noticing that the South Wind had incarnated in avian form as the divine Anzu bird, and had nested along with its young in the tree’s branches. And the Anzu bird had not been alone. In the tree’s roots, long before it had been uprooted, resided a very special serpent, perhaps the very first serpent, one who could not be charmed and who called itself Nin-gish-zida. Somehow, when replanting the tree, Inanna had not noticed it either. But then again, the tree was huge!

Nin-gish-zida was not a slithering tube, as future serpents were to become, but rather, had the body of a well formed man but with chameleonic skin that blended with its surroundings making it virtually invisible. And it was endowed with both great wisdom and knowledge, both inadvertently obtained from Enki’s backup due to the serpent’s long association with the tree. In a sense, it was knowledge gained by physical proximity and osmosis, something lazy but creative students in the far future would unsuccessfully intend to duplicate by placing books they’d failed to read under their pillows prior to final exams.

The third and most recent denizen, she’d moved in after Inanna had transplanted it, was a beautiful virgin, at least then. One known to Inanna. After all, she was Inanna’s personal handmaiden. But, seeking a secret refuge of her own, one away from prying eyes (who knew why), Lilitu (that was her name) had had made a place of her own in the tree’s trunk, a trunk (as we’ve noted) so vast that the entrance to Lilitu’s hideaway was safely hidden from even a divinity’s inquisitive eyes.

Of course, after Huluppu had been safely replanted in Inanna’s garden, the noise from the three interlopers made their presence obvious to Inanna, but for some reason, perhaps the Anzu bird’s divinity, or Nin-gish-zida’s camouflage, or Lilitu’s stealth, Inanna was unable to dislodge them, nor did it seem essential, at least for a time. But, after many, many years (as reckoned by mortals), Inanna, determined that the time had come to harvest the tree and use its flesh for her existential, coming of age rites. She’d finally attained the level of maturity at which she needed to undertake special rituals involving vessels made from Huluppu’s flesh (a bed and a throne to be specific), but according to the rules of the rituals involved (who knows why), she could not dismember Huluppu unless it had first been vacated.

Unable to dislodge the tree’s tenants on her own, not yet having attained her full powers, she’d begged the assistance of her twin brother and sometimes paramour, Utu, the sun god, (as she was goddess of the moon, among other things) in ridding the tree of its “vermin (her word, not mine), something she felt would be relatively simple for him given the fact that as he circled the mortal realms, shining light on everything, everything was visible to him and the unwelcome guests would be unable to hide from him. But for reasons he did not disclose but which we can surmise, he’d declined.

So, surmising: as we’ve already suggested, Inanna needed the throne and bed made from the wood of the Huluppu tree in order to complete the ritual required before she could fully attain her divinity, making her Utu’s equal, and perhaps that was threatening to Utu. On the other hand, perhaps not. The three siblings in that particular branch of Enki’s progeny did not always get along. Ereshkigal, was the eldest and with her husband Nergal, ruled Kur (sometimes called Irkalla), the underworld and abode of those who’d passed beyond the veil. She was usually the most difficult, being envious of Inanna’s beauty and fearful of her ability to seduce most males, and jealous of Utu’s ability to dwell in the sky, at least during the day, while she was forced to dwell beneath the ground. On the other hand, Utu felt that while not the eldest of the three, as a male (he was a chauvinist among very feminist sisters) he should have primacy over Inanna as, in his opinion, the sun should always outshine the moon. So perhaps it was not surprising that Inanna had been unable to seduce Utu into assisting her, although seducing him was usually not all that difficult (incest among divinities was not universally proscribed).

Sibling rivalries often prove very problematic, even after the siblings have purportedly matured.

The young Canaanite deity had become privy to the foregoing and followed developments with interest, especially when Inanna, despite her prior history with Gilgamesh (as we’ve written, she’d been unsuccessful in attempts to seduce him), had turned to him for help after Utu had declined her request. Gilgamesh had been taken by Inanna’s beauty, but had refused to be seduced by her because his pride was greater than his lust. And he was all too aware of Inanna’s fickle nature and reputation of disdain for former lovers (including her husband Dumuzid, the timid shepherd divinity and perhaps, patron deity of cuckolds). To be eventually cast off by Inanna, as always occurred, would impact his reputation for invincibility in a very negative manner and his reputation meant a lot to him. In fact, he may have been the first person to have had his own biographer, one who was working on a series of clay tablets describing Gilgamesh’s epic exploits. There were no photographers then but Gilgamesh, somewhat vain about his appearance, also had a court sculptor who specialized in bass reliefs meant to assure Gilgamesh’s immortality, whether or not he managed to avoid eventual exile to Ereshkigal’s realm.

Anyway, notwithstanding the foregoing (as lawyers, even then, were wont to say) Gilgamesh was aware that a woman scorned was a dangerous thing and helping her in the matter of the Huluppu tree seemed just the thing to ameliorate her antagonism. Thus, eventually, perhaps with the help of his friend, Enkidu, or perhaps alone, Gilgamesh did as Inanna had requested and not only evicted the Huluppu tree’s sort of tenants but also personally crafted both her throne and her bed (which, as we noted, he declined to share), thereby assuaging her enmity, although, in doing so, he secured the everlasting antipathy of the Anzu bird, of Nin-gish-zida, and of Lilitu as well.

Oh well he’d thought, inventing a saying that would become famous in many different languages, “you can’t make omelets without breaking eggs”. The young Canaanite deity, who was busy taking all of the foregoing into account, especially liked that saying, and all too quickly appropriated it as his own. Somewhere, another divinity watched and snickered, he’s known by many names, one being Murphy, and he’s a legislator of sorts, even today. His two most famous legislative achievements are the Law of Unintended Consequences, and a more negative variant thereof which bears his name and provides that “whatever can go wrong, will. “Snicker, snicker, snicker” (and not the delicious future candy bar variant).

The prying young Canaanite deity, well, not quite as young by that time, more a sort of an elder adolescent, being aware of all the foregoing, had already made excellent albeit somewhat duplicitous use of that knowledge, all the while chuckling about the eggs and omelet metaphor. As we’ve discussed, he’d been very taken by the Anunnaki, and especially, by their garden, Dilmun, and saw an opportunity to start working on realizing his long held and now much more complex fantasies. For some reason, thinking of omelets and eggs breaking led him to think about starting his very own pantheon, and he had some clever ideas now on just how to begin, although it meant “borrowing”, not only ideas, but a few other things as well.

“Borrowing” appealed to him. He couldn’t help it; kleptomania was part of his nature, something of which his many siblings had constantly accused him. So he started his new project by stealing (in his mind, “salvaging”) two of the shadows cast by the Huluppu tree (the morning shadow and the afternoon shadow) just before it had been felled by Gilgamesh, and from those shadows, the young Canaanite deity crafted special trees of his own, but, unbeknown to him, shades of Nin-gish-zida inhabited them both, moving from one to the other in the darkest dark of night.

The formerly little Canaanite divinity also eventually sort of “borrowed” Lilitu. Some would claim he’d stolen her from Inanna (not all that hard as her eviction had caused hard feelings), and had eventually placed all of the foregoing in his own garden, modeled on the plans for Dilmun that he’d somehow “acquired”. But he’d been very careful to first carefully wipe Lilitu’s memory clean so that she’d not repent of her escape and confess. Inanna, her former mistress, was, after all, not only the patron goddess of carnal love (perhaps lust would be more accurate), but of war as well.

The no longer little (as we’ve made abundantly clear) Canaanite divinity had special plans for Lilitu, being a voyeur at that stage of his emotional and sexual development. Perhaps he’d devolved into voyeurism, as sometimes happens with males after a divorce or two, because his own prior direct experiences with female deities had not turned out well. He’d had more than a few unsuccessful relationships with, among others, Anat-Yahu, Aholah and Aholibah, Asherah, Anatha of the Lions and Ashima of the Doves (ones he’d married and then divorced, but, had used his best efforts to wipe away any records of the divine judicial proceedings involved). For some reason, he preferred to be thought of as sexually abstentious rather than as a cuckold. An aversion he perhaps shared with Gilgamesh.

It’s said that for a time, he’d gifted Lilitu to a fellow whose name was Adam who the once little deity claimed to have created from dust. Perhaps dust from one of the dessert storms he’d so loved. But the Anzu bird, once again in the form of the South Wind, had managed to escape his clutches, having been terrified when he kept snickering about omelets (the Anzu bird having an obvious aversion to broken eggs). Being able to shift forms between bird and wind, by the same means it had managed to escape the avaricious clutches of Inanna and Gilgamesh too. As would Lilitu, eventually. Unfortunately, Nin-gish-zida’s fate was not as positive.

But that’s another tale. A rather tall tale at that.

Anyway, the young Canaanite deity, now no longer all that young, in fact, sporting long hair and a luxuriantly full beard which he’d copied from Gilgamesh, decided to leave his garden and, like Gilgamesh, go exploring. Attaining his fantasies still required a good deal of work and even more luck, so he decided to return to Kengir, of course, avoiding at all costs, for the time being, until he could build up his strength, returning to the court of the El-ohim. He’d, in fact, renounced his allegiance to the El-ohim and no longer even considered himself a Canaanite. He was out on his own, an explorer, an innovator, a revolutionary, one with the wind (albeit not the South Wind), although he was not yet quite ready to make that public. He’d need to build up his following before his coming out party. He still needed a bit of patience, but time (which usually did not impact deities) was on his side.

So, smiling at the term, tempus fugit, he took his time and sort of loitered in Uruk and its environs for several centuries, perhaps even a millennium, learning everything he could about the Anunnaki and the Kengirites, their histories and rites and rituals. Carried away with his “research, the now former Canaanite divinity, still a divinity of sorts, just not a Canaanite divinity, at least in his mind (which was all that mattered to him), lost touch with his original objective, Gilgamesh, until, eventually, it became clear to him that his hero (or perhaps now, former hero), had permanently departed for parts unknown. Most people suspected that he’d become a denizen of Kur, although whether as a subject or ruler was unclear. Or that perhaps he’d retired to Dilmun joining the Anunnaki side of his family there, but again, whether as a subject or ruler was unclear. The fact though was that Gilgamesh was no longer in Kengir, other kings having replaced him in Uruk. Consequently, the now middle-aged Canaanite deity spent less and less time in the environs of Uruk and more and more in nearby Ur and, while stealthily wandering in Ur, sort of stumbled onto a pair of angry, petulant and very dissatisfied siblings.

He liked them at once, they reminded him of, … well, … of himself, .. way back when. One was a petulant young man whose name was Abram, and the other a very attractive young girl whose name was Sarai (or something like that). Anyway, they were very unhappy because their parents were very opposed to their aspirations for intimacy (given that they were brother and sister). And in fact, the priests of the religion of which they were a part were demanding that they, or at least Abram, be sacrificed as a form of atonement for their amorous aspirations. That was not something Abram was really interested in, at least not in a positive manner, nor, to be honest, was Sarai.

Up to that time, despite his success with his garden and Adam and Lilitu, perhaps because of the unwelcome intervention of that busybody, Nin-gish-zidam the wandering former Canaanite divinity had not really acquired many worshippers of his own, and worshippers were, as all deities knew, the key to increasing their power. He had Adam, and a replacement for the escaped Lilitu, a pleasant girl he’d convinced Adam that he’d made especially for him from one of Adam’s ribs (Adam tended to be somewhat gullible), and then, after he’d thrown Adam and Eve out of his garden (one he’d named Eden) in a temper tantrum over dietary transgressions (the now mature former Canaanite deity was strict on dietary rules and rituals, although even he didn’t fully understand why). they’d had children, all but one of whom had acknowledged him as a deity. But the one who got away had caused quite a bit of trouble (perhaps taking after the formerly Canaanite deity), as had his descendants. So he needed a new strategy with updated tactics, and he had what he felt was a brilliant idea.

He just needed a few new adherents to start the ball rolling (so to speak), and if he managed to talk Abram and Sarai into escaping from Kengir, hopefully collecting additional followers along the trip, hell, he might finally be able to attain the aspirations that had seemed so improbable way back when he’d been a kid (in case you’ve forgotten, supplanting his parents and siblings, perhaps even all the other deities in all the other pantheons as well). There’s probably a related psychological syndrome associated with the foregoing, with a fancy name, or there will be when Freud, Jung and company show up. Or perhaps Joseph Campbell, or Robert Graves.

Anyway …

Adding a touch of silver to his beard, hair and mustachios, in order to disguise himself and make himself appear more mature and more powerful, he appeared to Abram in his divine aspect (rather than in the disguised from in which he’d met first met him and Sarai), and, feeding on his dissatisfaction and fear (who really wants to be sacrificed), promised him that if he and Sarai would worship him, and only him, he’d give them and any of their family members they selected (and who’d agree with a few minor rules and conditions which the now former Canaanite deity might suggest) a land of their own. A place where they could fornicate or do whatever they wanted to their hearts content, although, as indicated above, they’d have to adhere to his commandments and rituals. He did warn Abram that it might take them a while to get to the land he’d promised them (and which he didn’t actually control, he was, interestingly enough, thinking of Canaan) and that they might encounter some problems along the way. But he also promised that he’d be with them always (and that part was true; you may remember that he had a penchant for voyeurism).

Well, neither Abram nor Sarai had ever, to their knowledge, met a deity before and thus, after Abram shared with Sarai his discussion with the former Canaanite deity, she was very impressed at the interest taken in Abram, making him even more special in her eyes, and she also felt that it was obvious that if a deity was willing to help them, then their parents’ prohibition against incest and the priests’ demand that Abram be sacrificed were just old-fashioned and incompatible with the changing mores of the time, and that neither their parents nor their priests understood anything concerning the exigencies of true love (especially when coupled with irresistible lust), and that this new deity was much more hip than the deities their parents and their priests worshipped so, after talking it over (as usual, Abram did most of the talking and Sarai the listening, plus all the real work), they both agreed to follow the former Canaanite deity and, in the dead of night, with the former Canaanite deity’s help, drugged their parents and escaped with most of their parent’s goods and flocks (not stealing they assured themselves, just an advance on their inheritances, as the former Canaanite deity had explained to them). And as the former Canaanite deity had hoped, they’d been joined by a number of their siblings, including Haran, Nahor and Abram and Sari’s nephew Lot. A great start to the former Canaanite deity’s plot.

And away they went, the formerly young Canaanite god snickering (sort of like Murphy), thinking, “man this is going to be fun”. And it wasn’t really stealing he thought, not for the first time. He didn’t steal! He just sometimes borrowed things other deities were not really using, and Abram and Sarai certainly fit that pattern, as had the shadows of the Huluppu tree (he’d actually saved them from becoming shadows of mere furniture) and Lilitu (who, as he saw it, Inanna had discarded). He just loved omelets! And he had already become very fond of gardening as well.

Of Nin-gish-zida he had nothing to say. That had proved awkward, but it involved a sort of collateral damage situation, or perhaps an “adoption”, certainly not a kidnapping. Anyone can make a mistake he thought. Admitting that he could err was, however, another matter.

Good thing that Gilgamesh had not been immortal though, he thought to himself. That might have proven awkward, at best. And that damned Lilitu, where the hell had she disappeared to?

Now to erase all those other pesky deities! And to remake Canaan in his image.

“Pest” was he?

They didn’t know the half of it.
_______

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 is currently the publisher of the Inannite Review, available at Substack.com, a commentator on Radio Guasca FM, and an occasional contributor to the regional magazine, el Observador. 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). However, he is also fascinated by mythology, religion, physics, astronomy and mathematics, especially with matters related to quanta and cosmogony. He can be contacted at guillermo.calvo.mahe@gmail.com and much of his writing is available through his blog at https://guillermocalvo.com/.

Musings on a Midsummer’s Eve

Posted on June 22, 2023 by Guillermo Calvo Mahé

Did the Magdalene and the Nazarene, either together or alone, ever touch the waters that bathe Northern Africa, Southern Europe and Southwestern Asia, the sea purportedly in the middle of the world, at least as perceived by them? Perhaps on a soft and balmy midsummer’s eve?

Probably not, but given the millennia that separate us from them, who can tell.

Immersion in that central sea would have been both pleasant and mystically sacred. Especially on such a day. At least it would seem so to me, notwithstanding that so many millions have been so privileged.

A wandering thought on a midsummer’s morning.
_______

The True Meaning of Life and all that Rot (Literally; or is it “figuratively”?)

Posted on June 22, 2023 by Guillermo Calvo Mahé

Philosophy is an interesting human concept, our very own innovation designed to concurrently enlighten and befuddle us. It both opens our minds and channels them into narrow calcified tunnels with light so distant as to become virtually invisible, and hence, rendering real knowledge ungraspable. At least that’s frequently the case. But not always. Take the “meaning of life as an example. Is it really as complicated and unfathomable as we´ve made it? Or, is it rather simple and basic? Based on the following hypothesis, you be the judge.

Sooo, about the “meaning of life” about which we[1] humans spend so much time wondering and, with regards to which, we spend so much time bemoaning the absence of answers. At least some of us. At least during certain stages of our lives (for example, during the onset of puberty at adolescence, then as we approach midlife crises, then as we approach what we refer to as our third or golden years, and finally, as we face transition beyond the veil).

I think I may have found it (it being “the” answer), at least as far as “we” humans are concerned, but, notwithstanding the conclusions of Douglas Adams (wherever he is now that he’s passed beyond the veil), it has nothing to do with the number forty-two.

I would warn readers that the answer’s a bit humbling and hardly grandiose. Rather, it’s quite utilitarian, although still rather important. And it applies narrowly and specifically to only one of life’s realms, thus other forms of life have other primal purposes since, when we ask what the purpose of life is, we are referring to the purpose of life and its meaning among we humans. Accordingly, the answer lies there.

But what are our premises? After all, every well thought out answer starts with premises.

Well, interestingly enough, there seem to be just three. First[2] we have to acknowledge that we humans are part of the animal kingdom, or at least evolved therefrom[3]; second, that the animal and plant kingdoms are both an innovation of our joint forefathers eukaryotes; and third, that those animals possessed of alimentary canals which process ingested nourishment into waste, are our direct ancestors. There! We’re set. Sort of.

Based on the foregoing, the reality with respect to the meaning of life, or perhaps, more accurately, our lives, is that the primary and perhaps sole purpose and function of the denizens of the branch of the animal kingdom of which we’re a part was supposed to be, according to nature (our progenitor), the proliferation of vegetable species, most importantly fruit, beyond their normal range. That was to be accomplished through the combination of our innovative freedom of movement, compared to the plants we were digesting, and our excretionary functions. Consequently, we were not “forbidden” to eat the fruit of life, but, as Eve would in no uncertain terms conform, impelled to do so, and to digest it, and having digested it into a compost that included seeds and the fertilizing agents necessary for propagation, excrete the residue to spread vegetable life far and wide.

The plant and animal kingdoms (all multicellular animals), of course, constitute only two of the five currently recognized living realms, the others being fungi (moulds, mushrooms and yeast), protists (amoeba, chlorella and plasmodium) and prokaryotes (bacteria and blue-green algae) but in the context of our foundational inquiry, we are only concerned with the first two, and with respect to those, original purposes soon became complicated and convoluted, perhaps resulting in our current confusion and despair.

While our original purpose for existing as part of the living realms was clear, the animal kingdom duchy (sort to speak, or perhaps principality) of which we are part soon deviated as carnivores insisted on intruding onto the alimentary premises which the vegetable kingdom found imperative, and rather than consuming plants and fruit, especially fruit, they insisted on a form of primordial cannibalism and expanding on that, we humans evolved into omnivores, consuming anything and everything that did not consume us first. But that was not enough for us, we then degraded the importance of our excretions. Indeed, we disdained and contained them through nonproductive (at least from the vegetable kingdom’s perspective) purportedly salutary practices, such deviation from our primary purpose having been erroneously premised on cultural misinterpretation of our role, our “prime directive” as Gene Roddenberry might have put it, and then, of course, misdirection. Since then, we’ve invented myriads of fields of reflection and introspection trying to rediscover the purpose we ourselves rendered, if not obsolete, at least anachronistic.

Following the hypothesis that no good deed goes unpunished, at least for long, the animal kingdom, duchy of which we are a part, through the intervention and innovations of we humans, has and continues to conquer and devastate our creators in the vegetable kingdom, indeed, in all five of life’s realms, which may be the source of the rumor spread by Friedrich Nietzsche to the effect that “God”, whoever or whatever that was (hint, it’s obviously nature) is dead, although Nietzsche was merely projecting nature’s future.

Interestingly, the foregoing also implies another epiphany, one that involves the identity of the “adversary, to whom some humans unfairly refer in their purportedly sacred writings as Lucifer, or Satan, or Shaitan, but which more accurately, was a certain Hêl él[4]. In fact, if the foregoing is accurate, the adversary was in fat not some deviant archangel but rather, a certain Robert Thom, the Scott[5] who initiated sewage treatment in the city of Paisley[6]; the clearest and most expansive example of the law of unintended consequences.

If only plants could speak what stories they could tell.

Sooo, … about artificial intelligence …!
_______

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 is currently the publisher of the Inannite Review, available at Substack.com, a commentator on Radio Guasca FM, and an occasional contributor to the regional magazine, el Observador. 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). However, he is also fascinated by mythology, religion, physics, astronomy and mathematics, especially with matters related to quanta and cosmogony. He can be contacted at guillermo.calvo.mahe@gmail.com and much of his writing is available through his blog at https://guillermocalvo.com/.

[1] I know, I know, it should be “us”, but I don’t really like the way “us” sounds in this context, and, … I am the author, with all rights to “poetic license”, sooo, “we” it is.

[2] I know, I know, … again. “Premises, premises”, but what can we do without them.

[3] The “derived therefrom” phrase preemptively addresses arguments insisting that we are qualitatively different than animals.

[4] Look him up, it’s worth it.

[5] I hate to admit that the English may have been correct when some postulated that the devil was most certainly a Scott. But evidently, at least in this one instance, it appears they were on to something. I guess the axiom that no one is always wrong may, in fact, be somewhat correct.

[6] Although the Minoan civilization of Crete and the Roman Empire used underground clay pipes for “sanitation” purposes. So perhaps the identity of the “adversary” is all too securely hidden.

Calcium: a very strange introspective rant

Posted on June 10, 2023 by Guillermo Calvo Mahé

Achilles, Zoroaster, Siddhartha Gautama of the Sakyas, Gaius Iulius Caesar, Yeshua the Nazarene, Karl I of the Carolingians (Charlemagne), Napoleon Bonaparte, Robert E. Lee, Mohandas Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Jr., Nelson Mandela, Pepe Mujica, Francis I (maximum pontiff among the Catholic): some of my “hysterically historical … sort of “friends”, or at least I’ve hope they would have been among my friends if I’d enjoyed the privilege of having known them. They are perhaps portrayed bit hyperbolically by their biographers, at least as initially depicted to me, but I really identify with them. On some level. Or, … well, … with how they were been presented to me by our weird communicative media complex (you know, teachers, journalists, historians and best of all, novelists), mainly since that’s how they seemed when I sort of first “met” them. Virtually of course. That changed in time. They changed when, through my own research, it seemed to me that I’d gotten to know them better, more accurately, more profoundly. When, as a historian of sorts, I’d somehow been able to grasp their more complex realities, but then, that’s only what I perceived and reality was (and probably is) different, perhaps much different.

Maybe. …. But even so, … first impressions tend to stick notwithstanding subsequent evidence, whether involving reactive affection or disdain.

We humans are like that. Well, except perhaps for my late and sainted mother. Once our minds are made up about just about anything; once we’ve decided what to believe our minds are very, very, very hard to change. That, to some extent, explains sports fans, and political perspectives, and, unfortunately, history as well. And long lost loves, and simmering enmities. And loyalties. All “for better or for worse”, as expressed in aspirational traditional marital vows; although, perhaps, more frequently, much more frequently, for the worse.

We tend to calcify our beliefs, although we prefer to refer to the process as crystallization. Crystals seem more attractive than calcium. We clearly have wonderful powers of self-aggrandizement through delusion and rationalization. The concept of American Exceptionalism, a variant of the Hebrew concept of the Chosen People and the Nazi concept of the superiority of the Aryan peoples are prime examples. As is the European concept of the “White Man’s Burden”. Or our democratic delusion that if enough of us are wrong, everything will turn out right.

It seems amazing that we ever accepted “reflections” as accurately portraying anything, preferring not to see ourselves as we are but as we wish we were. Which of course explains, to an extent, the popularity of plastic surgery and girdles, and well, clothing (as well as the nudity taboo), and, on an emotive sense, the popularity of psychotherapy and perhaps, although it would seem oxymoronic, of purportedly self-reflective psychoanalysis. It’s a wonder we have no taboo concerning mirrors.

All of the foregoing, during strangely lucid intervals (or at least intervals which, for some reason or other I perceive as lucid), makes me wonder what I’m really like, what I really look like, who I really am and just how close to accurate what I perceive of as reality really is. Then I wonder just how lucid I’ve been as a write this, and whether it’s something I’ll ever re-read, or, for that matter, whether anyone else will ever read it.

Then I picture alien anthropologists from deep in the future, perhaps just short of the instant when entropy finally wrestles gravity to a draw, finding and, after long and usually fruitless efforts, finally deciphering what I’ve written, and wondering, perplexed, just who and what we were.

Something we probably need to do ourselves, while we still can.
_______

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 is currently the publisher of the Inannite Review, available at Substack.com. 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). However, he is also fascinated by mythology, religion, physics, astronomy and mathematics, especially with matters related to quanta and cosmogony. He can be contacted at guillermo.calvo.mahe@gmail.com and much of his writing is available through his blog at https://guillermocalvo.com/.

Payment of Interest on the National Debt versus Social Security Payments

Posted on May 30, 2023 by Guillermo Calvo Mahé

There is a purportedly existential crisis under way involving the possibility that the United States of America, until recently the world’s hegemon, lacks enough funds to pay its current debts. Some wonder how, if that’s the case, the Biden administration can be so generous to the Ukrainian military and whether, such “generosity is not largely responsible for the current situation. Others would note that were this a down and out debtor looking to refinance his or her debt, no competent financial institution would step up to the plate. The International Monetary Fund most probably would not, nor the World Bank (at least if it involved any regular country whose currency did not currently, at least for now, dominate international trade).

The Biden administration is broke and its looking for a bailout, … again. But then again, the same has been true of other administrations, Republican as well as Democrat. This would be the 81^st or 82^nd such existential increase in the nation’s borrowing authority.

Public borrowing by the United States is never logical given that the funds it borrows are usually issued by that same government, at miniscule rates, to the banks that then lend them to it. If the government just had some responsible mechanism for issuing its own currency directly to pay its debts, it would avoid the related, crushing interest payments. But then, where’s the fun in that, or the profit.

Anyway, ….

The Biden administration will get its way, at least in part, increasing the already boated 31.5 trillion dollar national debt by another trillion and a half, but in doing so, several important points have slipped out that should have an impact on 2024 elections from dog catcher to president. The points have to do with priorities and where we stand in that respect, but also with the cynical decision to raise the debt limit so that its impact on the 2024 federal elections will be minimized. Are we really that stupid?

But, as outrageous at that first point is, there is one more outrageous, by an immense magnitude. The issue of priorities.

The Biden administration has made it clear that if there is insufficient cash to go around, first priority in payments will be to holders of United States debt securities, many of them banks and financial institutions which, as indicated above, leveraged the purchase of government securities using lower interest loans from the Federal Reserve.

At the end of the line, are Social Security recipients, although perhaps that “threat” was mainly suggested to generate massive fear among a vulnerable segment of the electorate, “encouraging” them to force their representatives in Congress to back down. The cynicism in that ploy should have serious, indeed, permanent political consequences. Social Security is not a welfare program, it is a compulsory investment program with penal sanctions for failure to comply, not all that different, when one considers it, from an organized crime protection racket enforced by hired goons, but an investment program in which one does not get to make the investment decisions. They’re made by the Federal Government, “for our own good”. Just like the phrase “I’m from the government and I’m here to help you” the former phrase generates well deserved ridicule.

Investors “deserve” their profits purportedly because they assume voluntary risks. When the “risk” is removed, they are no longer investors, they are instead an offshoot of organized criminals, like loan sharks. Social Security recipients did not have the “option” of not “investing” and thus, under no circumstance, in a democracy based on law, should they ever be placed in a lower priority than other creditors of the United States. That does not mean that Social Security is absolutely guaranteed. Were the United States, for reasons beyond its control, to find itself with no funds to pay anyone, then Social Security recipients would have to suffer along with everyone else. But to place purported investors at the head of the line is an outrage.

It’s an outrage that “investors” would be paid before military veterans or serving military personnel as well. In fact, it’s an outrage that purported “investors” would be paid ahead of any other class of creditors. In any other setting, holders of unsecured debt would find themselves at the end of the line, but not with the Biden administration in charge of the decision. It knows on which side its bread is buttered, it knows from whence its political “contributions” come, and it knows to whom its real loyalties are owed, and it’s clear that it’s not to “We the People”. All the old canards that the Democratic Party is the party of common men and women, of the downtrodden, of labor and of the retired went out with the sewage when the Clinton administration (of which the Biden administration is and the Obama administration was a continuation) assumed control of that political party in 1992.

Not that the GOP is much better, or at least the traditionalists in the GOP. Who can tell what its populist wing (now apparently that party’s largest segment) would do. That segment’s leaders talk a different game, but they were outmatched and outmaneuvered in 2020 by the state within a state many refer to as the Deep State, and which is the investment community’s enforcement arm. But if populists from both the left and the right opened their eyes and took a whiff at the odor emanating from the District of Colombia, if they ever joined forces (and the outrage currently being perpetrated might be a sufficient catalyst to break the bonds that keep then apart and at each other’s’ throats), then perhaps a whole new set of government representatives and functionaries would get their priorities straight.

Something to seriously consider every time you head to the ballot box in the future, assuming that votes are still actually taken into account.
_______

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 is currently the publisher of the Inannite Review, available at Substack.com. 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). However, he is also fascinated by mythology, religion, physics, astronomy and mathematics, especially with matters related to quanta and cosmogony. He can be contacted at guillermo.calvo.mahe@gmail.com and much of his writing is available through his blog at https://guillermocalvo.com/.

Windfall Profits, the Defense Industry and the American Tax Payer:

Posted on May 29, 2023 by Guillermo Calvo Mahé

Reflections during another Memorial Day

The fulcrum on which political decisions are leveraged and the world’s future mortgaged is inherently tied to the welfare of investors in “defense” industries, of their senior executives and directors, and secondarily, the welfare of ancillary industries and businesses that profit from war and the threat of war, and if war and the threat of war are constants, then investments in “defense” industries are predictably secure. Something the commander of allied forces in the Second World War and later, president of the United States, Dwight David Eisenhower begged us to avoid. To the extent related government expenditures are not carefully monitored and waste prevails, so much the better. That millions subsidize such profits with their lives in diverse parts of the world is merely “collateral damage”, at least to those not suffering such consequences, directly or indirectly. And of course, on this Memorial Day, we recognize that such casualties are not only innocent foreigners, but also the bravest Americans, those who, believing that their service is essential, volunteer to put their lives and welfare on the line.

The Athenians attitude towards those who provided the armaments for their military and naval forces was wise. They were required to serve on the front lines. Not so our own war profiteers, neither they nor their families, except in extremely rare cases, serve at all, being too busy enjoying the fruits of others’ labors. And most of those who do serve, Albert Gore and George W. Bush being prime examples, do so ensconced in protective cocoons, far from danger, surrounded by photographers so that their purported service can be documented for future use. The Clintons and the Obamas and the Bidens (Joe and Hunter and Jimmy) and the Trumps were excused from service through the labyrinth of useful loopholes available to those wealthy or influential enough to avoid service, something which needs to be differentiated from the refusal to serve by those opposed to war, and who would never send the children, spouses, siblings or relatives of others to tread where they refused to serve. Those who declined to serve but on attaining power of any sort, do not hesitate to send others to die or kill, and to suffer and cause mayhem, and to suffer and cause irreparable psychological trauma, are contemptuously referred to by those who served, as well as by conscientious objectors, as “chicken hawks”. Our country is led by chicken hawks. Chicken hawks in government, in the “defense” industries and in the corporate media as well. And the results are predictable. Profits for the few, massive profits. But famine and chaos and mayhem and death and destruction for far too many on the other side of the ledger. Some of them our own. Some of them the best among us.

This Memorial Day takes place at an interesting time. There has been hugely hyperbolic debate between the Republican led House of Representatives and the Biden administration concerning the need to raise the national debt limit, an increase once again required, for the 82^nd time, because rather than pay for federal expenditures through taxes, to which voters would object and, as a result, might seriously consider what their taxes were being used to fund, it is more palatable, at least for now, to just, well, … borrow the money. Federal debt financing is done through unsecured borrowing from third parties, largely banks and financial institutions but also investors, foreign and domestic. Interestingly, the interest paid to holders of United States debt securities is higher than that paid by financial institutions to the Federal Reserve for the money borrowed to acquire such securities, among other things. Many might wonder why the prohibitions against “ponzi” schemes which the Federal government prosecutes, are not applicable to the largest ponzi scheme of all.

The current direct national debt, that which is disclosed (it may well be substantially greater and does not include state, municipal or local debt), currently stands at almost thirty-two-trillion dollars [1], but the Biden administration insists that it must be increased immediately, if not sooner, and traditionalist members of the Republican Party are in agreement, although its populist branch is not. There is a current proposal on the table in Congress to acquiesce to the Biden administration’s demand to increase the national debt during the period preceding the next presidential election (so that it need not be revisited and become a political issue therein), by one-and-a-half-trillion dollars.

Sooo. Why?

Because the United States government wants to spend the Russian Federation and the People’s Republic of China into oblivion by funding wars involving the Ukraine, already under way, and Taiwan, even at the risk of a nuclear holocaust, and anyway, that addition to the national debt, like the accumulated debt before it, ends up in the pockets of, well, you may have already guessed the answer from the introductory material above, “investors in “defense” industries, their senior executives and directors, and secondarily, the welfare of ancillary industries and businesses that profit from war and the threat of war”.

And who, you may ask, will pay that accumulated debt?

The answer is interesting and reminiscent of the attitude of French King Louis XV, you know, the one who preceded Luis XVI, who, along with his family and many others, lost his head in the French Revolution of 1789 (which, to an extent, may explain the drastic reaction by the powers that be to the political protests of January 6, 2020). The answer is, … “who cares”! At worse, the United States could print the money necessary to pay off the debt, although that would create never before imagined hyperinflation, inflation that would make that suffered in Germany following the War to End All Wars (well, we now call it the first of the world wars) at the dawn of the twentieth century a trifle. One might recall that the inflation following the first of the world wars led to the rise of fascism in various countries, and threatened to do the same in most others. Of course, some consider that fascism is currently in vogue among those who most criticized it way back then.

This Memorial Day, as I mourn my many friends and my former classmates who’ve perished in combat during the past six decades (I’m a Citadel graduate), it occurred to me that the answer to our ludicrous national debt crisis is rather simple and does not require a reinvention of the wheel. It’s called a “windfall profits tax”. One that should be imposed on those who’ve so profited from the perpetual wars (what would Emanuel Kant think). You may have guessed the answer again, it’s the same as the answer to the former query: “investors in “defense” industries, their senior executives and directors, and secondarily, the welfare of ancillary industries and businesses that profit from war and the threat of war”. A tax of 90% on all profits derived from them, directly and indirectly, from whatever sources and wherever derived, until the national debt is paid off, with tax avoidance punishable by forfeiture of all assets and life imprisonment.

Simple, sort of. At least in a democracy where voters have some awareness of how things work, and why.

A suggestion as we remember those of our fellow men and woman who’ve sacrificed so much, unfortunately, all too often uselessly, on this Memorial Day.

Something on which not only to reflect, but perhaps on which to act.
_______

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 is currently the publisher of the Inannite Review, available at Substack.com. 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). However, he is also fascinated by mythology, religion, physics, astronomy and mathematics, especially with matters related to quanta and cosmogony. He can be contacted at guillermo.calvo.mahe@gmail.com and much of his writing is available through his blog at https://guillermocalvo.com/.

[1] Information based on the national debt clock as of this Memorial Day, available at https://www.usdebtclock.org/.

The “Woke” …?

Posted on May 24, 2023 by Guillermo Calvo Mahé

First of all, for context, I freely confess that I’m a confirmed, left wing democratic socialist in the style of Albert Einstein, Noam Chomsky, Nelson Mandela, Martin Luther King, Jr., etc., and thus an anti-interventionist pacifist, but not an isolationist. I’m a non-globalist, non-neoliberal, non-neoconservative internationalist. I’m an independent, disdaining both the GOP and the Democratic Party, but feel the Democratic Party is the greater evil. I do not vote for lesser evils though.

Another confession: many people that I’ve cared for over the years, some whom I’ve loved, and even some after whom I’ve lusted, are among the “woke” who are the subject of this reflection. I don’t like Donald Trump (who I’ve only met once). I find him a childish, egocentric buffoon, but that doesn’t prevent me from admitting that he’s been treated in an outlandishly unfair manner by the corporate press, the Justice Department, his own appointees, traditional Republican leaders, the bureaucracy, the judiciary, and, that, without a doubt, the presidential election of 2022 was manipulated, if perhaps not “technically stolen.

The foregoing is to contextualize the following perspectives concerning the controversial nature of the postmodern term “woke”, to which I frequently allude.

To me, the term “woke” is a sort of neologism in the sense that during the past decade it has acquired very different meanings depending on who’s using it, in what context and for what purpose. It no longer merely refers to the opposite of sleeping in a biological sense but has been given political overtones. It is a self-anointed appellation by those I describe below, who consider it a positive metaphor but, in my opinion and as I use it, the people who apply the term as a self-description instead engage in futile, hubris afflicted self-defeating distortion of progressive values. Because, as I indicated, I frequently use the term in my reflections, articles, reports and comments, I’m frequently asked what it means, albeit usually by people who clearly have their own opinions on the point and who are usually among those I describe as “woke”. In any case, this reflection involves an effort to describe the term for both those people (whose minds are already made up as to its meaning), and for those who are honestly curious concerning its use in my discourse. I note that, apparently, there exists a dictionary definition which identifies them in a manner which their adherents love, in essence, as selfless, well informed, well intentioned humanists. I assume it was devised by a “woke” lexicographer. I, find it misleading at best, hence this reflection.

From the foregoing it’s obvious that I’m at odds with those who describe themselves as the “woke”, a group that reminds me of Star Trek’s fictional “Borg” (because to the “woke”, resistance to them is futile). The irony is that we purport to share the same goals and similar values: a more enlightened world, a more equitable world, one free of racism, misogyny and xenophobia. A world where justice prevails and impunity and nepotism are minimized, an environmentally sustainable world where everyone is enabled to attain their highest potential. But we differ on bellicosity. Bellicosity in every sense (personal, domestic and international). We differ on tactics and strategies. And we differ on the essential need for mutual respect and for open minds and the importance of empathy. “Empathy”, that psychological state of mind which enables us to understand (in a non-judgmental fashion) the positions held by others and the reasons for their actions and reactions. Which enables us to maintain open minds and to listen at least as much as we preach, and to differ respectfully instead of with animosity. I believe that only through the use of empathy and respect can we all evolve, changing our hearts and souls as well as our minds in the manner necessary to attain our mutual goals. I derive great satisfaction from what I’ve learned from others, as well as from the shifts in attitude, especially concerning war and the military-industrial-intelligence complex, of many of the military personnel (both retired and active) with whom I’ve interacted.

In my opinion, politics, on a worldwide, not just United States basis, has not really been the realm of a liberal left versus a conservative right for a very long time. Those are cultivated delusional illusions. Rather, it involves a truly adversarial relationship between an alliance of deep states subservient to the primary Deep State (the one associated with the United States but with tentacles everywhere), versus diverse, divided and fragmented populists, “populists” being those who believe that traditional governmental institutions, self-described as “democratic”, are in fact, chokeholds to assure popular democracy is at best a dysfunctional illusion. The rise in populism is being addressed by deep states though coercive communication-censoring policies, abuse of prosecutorial and judicial systems, and, if all else fails, by facilitation of the development of a capitalist oriented, for-profit market in votes through relaxation of procedures safeguarding against electoral fraud (e.g., identity verification, direct voting, verified ballot collection, etc.), oxymoronically, in the name of “democracy”.

The purportedly “woke”, as I see them, are tools of the permanent government structure owned by the wealthiest among to which I alluded above as the “Deep State”, which is an informal but highly efficient structure comprised of ensconced bureaucrats unresponsive to democratic vagaries, the corporate media, the aforementioned military-industrial-intelligence complex and the newly empowered owners of the Internet’s technocracy, to which, during the past decade, has been added Big Pharma. The role of the “woke” in that scheme (albeit perhaps a role of which they are not aware) is to distract the attention of liberals and progressives from the goals described above through polarizing identity politics, keeping us divided through wedge issues such as abortion, gun control, immigration, revisionist history and exaggerated racism and divisive gender related issues (using gender in the broadest possible context), all of the foregoing never to be resolved, as resolution would minimize their political usefulness.

The “woke” are characterized by a blend of naivety and hubris, believing themselves morally and ethically superior, better informed, wiser, more erudite and, most of all, entitled. For some unfathomable reason, they’re convinced that the minds and hearts of those not yet “woke” can best be changed through ridicule and rhetoric, clever distortions, and ignoring past realities through creative fiction. In essence, they’re intolerant in the name of tolerance (freedom of opinion and of expression be damned!). Narrative replaces history (well, … okay, …it always has, but much more aggressively), in the belief that the past and even the present are irrelevant to the future, so long as both are presented in a manner that facilitates the belief that the future sought is inevitably preordained, a sort of five story mansion, but without a foundation or first story, just somehow floating closer to heaven.

It’s much easier to win arguments if truth is irrelevant, if it is “relative”, something flexible to be molded as best suits a particular occasion, and easily discarded when inconvenient, discarded to an abyss for those beliefs which, in an Orwellian sense, “never existed, … anymore”. The “woke” are firm practitioners of that verisimilitudinous art form in the firm belief that the means justify the ends, and thus, as so often happens in those cases, there’s a shift and the means become the ends, the former ends fading into oblivion.

“Merit” is, as I see it, a pejorative to the “woke”, a synonym for racism, and for misogyny, and for xenophobia. To them, quotas are essential in everything; something glaringly obvious in the entertainment industry where accurate reflections of society and history are irrelevant and every scene must now include non-existent racial and gender balances, with positive attributes concentrated among women and minorities, especially African Americans and those who adhere to sexually alternative lifestyles, and negative attributes are primarily ascribed to Caucasian males older than forty. Of course, “merit” has always been an elusive concept, especially where nepotism provides an alternative, and, of course, merit has never been all that relevant in the apparently eternal political-favors-based-favoritism-system in which we humans appear to have always lived.

So, the “woke”, to me, are a sad irony involving a diversion of energy and human resources that could really make a difference in the attainment of the values and the world to which they and I both aspire; to which most people aspire., but which, as economist Thomas Piketty’s ground breaking studies and analyses clearly demonstrate, is becoming more and more distant and more and more unlikely as we become more and more polarized, more and more embittered and more and more successfully manipulated by the cynics who joyfully rule as all.

Rule us all as surely as though we were ringwraiths and they possessed Sauron’s once and future ring.

Of course, the “woke” who’ve read my reflections and opinions probably reciprocate my perceptions, believing me to be as delusional as I perceive them. And that’s fine.

Paraphrasing the refrain used in adds concerning historically black colleges: “An open mind is a terrible thing to waste”.

_______

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 is currently the publisher of the Inannite Review, available at Substack.com. 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). However, he is also fascinated by mythology, religion, physics, astronomy and mathematics, especially with matters related to quanta and cosmogony. 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 Glance at an Ugly Image in an all too Accurate Mirror

Posted on May 20, 2023 by Guillermo Calvo Mahé

Mirrors can be useful things if used objectively, but the truth is frequently uglier than we care to bear. Who we’ve become politically, perhaps who we’ve always been, is an all too accurate example.

A reflection of sorts:

The voting dead used to be a reliable Democratic Party constituency. They won the presidency for young John Kennedy in 1960. In Illinois. In Chicago to be precise. Home town to another slick president almost half a century later. It’s a bit trickier nowadays to convince the deceased to continue to exercise their political rights, but the concept has morphed and we have voters who’ll vote as their told, no matter what. To vote as if they were zombies. Whole “blocks” of them, … Well almost, there are always those inexplicable few who insist on exercising their own judgment, but they’re pretty few.

A “motley bunch” is a misunderstood expression. It does not denigrate the nature of its members, rather, it makes clear their diversity and perhaps even, their diverse goals, backgrounds and aspirations. Today, the Democratic Party is a motley group comprised of one large ethnic group, African Americans; women desperate to preserve their ability to discard their would be progeny; those unhappy with their gender; feminists who have a flexible approach to misogyny depending on the political leanings of particular misogynists; the rebellious children of the very wealthy; artists of questionable talent other than their ability to self-promote; pseudo journalists much more talented in creative writing than in seeking the truth; creative academics and historians interested in molding the past as they wish it had been; and, government bureaucrats, especially of the quasi-permanent mole variety. But it is a “motley” which rather than generate synergy, is merely subservient to the billionaire classes who own the Deep State, the potentates who, like Sauron’s ring in Tolkien’s novels, ruthlessly rule us all.

The GOP is not a motley, it is much more homogenous than the Democratic Party, albeit now divided into two ideological groups: traditionalists like the Bushes, the McCains, etc., also owned by the Deep State, but now a majority seems to be comprised of right wing populist libertarians who in some, but unfortunately not all, aspects, oppose the Deep State. Too often all of the foregoing are supportive of the Deep State’s primary business, perpetual conflict and a quest for global hegemony similar to that once enjoyed by the Roman empire, not cognizant of the fact that the human cost is all too similar quantitatively to that paid by the victims of the Nazi’s own pursuit of hegemony. Unlike the Romans though, who cared not a whit about moral justification for their actions, the United States is compelled to justify itself through hypocrisy, deception and self-delusion, something it inherited from the British (from who it inherited its own hunger for hegemony).

Political independents, a heterogeneous group whose members purportedly form a larger block than either Democrats or Republicans, together with members of minor political parties like the Greens, the Libertarians, etc., could theoretically change the current United States cascade towards mutually assured oblivion but seem trapped in a quagmire, hypnotized and unable to move or act, as though charmed by a snake, the snake being the corporate media that convinces them, briefly but regularly (during electoral cycles), that the exercise of their better judgment would be anathema and would assuredly bring on an apocalypse. And that their efforts would, in any case, prove futile. The current apparent only choices, choices between a bombastic and childish lesser evil (Mr. Trump) and an utterly corrupt war monger (Mr. Biden, the clear Deep State designee), illustrate the foregoing.

Thus, we, as a People, become more and more polarized, more prone to violence and psychological and sociological anomalies (like mass murder both abroad and at home). We sit sort of idly watching and perhaps kvetching as the Deep State destroys more and more of everything around us, whether our environment or our fellow men and women, especially the aged and the very young. Destroys them sociopathically and amorally for the profit of the billionaire class, to the delight of the laughing and smirking hyenas (my apology to hyenas) who comprise our purported cultural leaders (i.e., massively overpaid albeit usually ignorant glitzy entertainers and athletes).

A conclusion:

That is by all appearances who we are today. Ugly is as ugly does. Perhaps it’s just the predictable evolutionary path of who we’ve always been as a group, although perhaps individually most of us seem very different. One wonders if nature’s purported natural selection of the fittest still applies, and just what that might imply.

A sort of Cassandric entropy seems to shout that we’ve already passed the point of no return, hence, our current epigram at birth would seem to be “abandon all hope ye who enter here”.

To which, unfortunately, no pithy rejoinder comes to mind.

_______

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 is currently the publisher of the Inannite Review, available at Substack.com. 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). However, he is also fascinated by mythology, religion, physics, astronomy and mathematics, especially with matters related to quanta and cosmogony. He can be contacted at guillermo.calvo.mahe@gmail.com and much of his writing is available through his blog at https://guillermocalvo.com/.

Damned Trump!!!

Posted on May 11, 2023 by Guillermo Calvo Mahé

The corporate media is in hyperbolic, hysterical meltdown. The thoroughly unpleasant Mr. Trump has rejected their narratives and continues to express his beliefs, whether all too accurate or deluded, on one of their own platforms, the very much discredited and disdained CNN. But, the corporate media, its supporters in the bureaucracy, the judiciary, prosecutorial authorities and the legal profession, as well as victims-on-demand, remain as dedicated as ever to assuring that he shan’t govern, no matter what the electors think about the choices being foisted upon them by the Clintons, the Bidens, or the slickly subtle Obamas.

Mr. Trump had a Town Hall meeting on CNN this week and he spoke his mind during a week in which those who not only disdain and dislike him (like me), but avidly hate him, attained a series of triumphs in the legal system, albeit perhaps transitory. Unfortunately, notwithstanding their machinations, he was not universally rejected. Indeed, polls show that the United States electorate prefers him to the inept and unscrupulous mad man the Deep State has imposed on us all, with, of course, the full-fledged support of the corporate media, Mr. Trump’s own intelligence agencies and the oxymoronic Department of Justice.

Perhaps, assassination is now the only option if the United States electorate continues to seem disinclined to yield and cooperate. Who knows, it’s happened before in the United States, at least according to rebel Democratic Party presidential contender, Robert F. Kennedy III, who, if his own prospects take off, may face the same hazard as Mr. Trump, in his case, a family tradition in the form of a curse.

What’s very sad is that the belligerent and unpleasant Mr. Trump and the utterly corrupt and apparently senile Mr. Biden are clearly not the only choices. Sure, most of the options presented to us by the Deep State (Republican and Democrat alike) are terrible, but, in addition to the apparently decent Mr. Kennedy, there’s Tulsi Gabbard, although she’s veering sharply to the right on moral issues, and the always decent Dennis Kucinich. There’s former Virginia Senator James Webb, and even recently fired sort of journalist (the closest thing to one we had within a major media organization, but no Assange), Tucker Carlson. And perhaps, promoting other alternatives, we have a real live version of Ben Bova’s fictional Sam Gunn, blended with Robert Heinlein’s Delos David Harriman, who seemingly likes to stir the pot hoping something interesting will pop up: Elon Musk (whose name my mind keeps confusing with Nikola Tesla).

The problem, of course, is us. The intellectually malleable electorate, which, if the Deep State shouts BOOOOO loudly enough, promptly return to the wolves’ fold to be slaughtered like the foolish sheep we are, actually more a hybrid between lemmings and sheep. All elections, according to the Deep State and its minions, are existential choices between evil and lesser evil. The good, ensconced in smaller political parties and independents, is never (heaven forbid, or maybe hell) an available option.

BOOOO!!! The evil Russians are coming again!!! BOOO!!! The evil Muslims who hate freedom are around every corner. BOOOO!!! The evil Chinese seek to take over the world. Vote for our choice, good old Joe, or else. And keep on earning all those dollars we need to extort from you in the form of taxes, essential to finance our liberty loving, sort of democratic aspirations. Peace is only viable through constant war; and freedom and liberty and respect are only possible through constant meddling and coups, hard and soft (and military interventions when sort of absolutely necessary). But don’t worry, we’ll finance a great deal of the costs through constant increases in the permissible ceiling for our national debt, already greater than our gross domestic product, but who cares, as long as we can keep printing dollars and force others around the world to accept them, or else. As Louis XV heartily extorted his People, shortly before the unfortunate Louis XVI and the French Revolution, “Après moi, le deluge” (After me, the flood).

But, … BOOO!!! The damned pesky BRICS countries (Brazil Russia, India, China and South Africa) seem to be expanding (Saudi Arabia, Iran, Algeria and who knows who else), and threatening to take away our printing presses.

Elections are once again around the corner, so BOOO, BOOO, BOOO and BOOO some more! Interestingly, from a small segment of the electorate, a seemingly responsive sound resounds in the form of a “raspberryish” booooooo!

That damned Trump just won’t let sleeping dogs lie!
_______

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 is currently the publisher of the Inannite Review, available at Substack.com. 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). However, he is also fascinated by mythology, religion, physics, astronomy and mathematics, especially with matters related to quanta and cosmogony. He can be contacted at guillermo.calvo.mahe@gmail.com and much of his writing is available through his blog at https://guillermocalvo.com/.

On the Coronation of Charles Philip Arthur George Mountbatten-Windsor (formerly Hanover)

Posted on May 6, 2023 by Guillermo Calvo Mahé

Charles and I are of an age, albeit with drastically different life experiences.

He has a warm spot in my heart, despite my leftist, democratic socialist political tendencies. He visited my alma mater in Charleston, the Citadel, the Military College of South Carolina, on two occasions a half century apart. Once as a young prince in 1970, and then again, as the inchoate king of the Britons, in 2020. On the latter occasion, my beloved alma mater granted him a degree honoris causa. I’ve followed his difficult life (despite all the wealth, privileges and trappings) closely, and have come to believe that in many ways, it is an allegorical reflection of our times.

He has been criticized, often, too often unfairly, for whatever he does and doesn’t do, in the “heads I win, tails you lose” manner now prevalent in the corporate media and among the faux leftists who for some reason or another, have decided that only they are conscious, and have consciences, that they are the repositories of virtue and morality despite their consistent failure to attain any of their supposed goals, and instead, have succeeded only in generating intolerance, hatred and polarization, while permitting the worst among us to continue to rule unabated.

That’s sort of weird, given that Charles’ background is exactly what the worst among us aspire to possess. Still, while Charles has the trappings, they have the power.

I am confessedly among the minority who find that his late, former-wife, Diana, was among the most egocentrically frivolous and devious among us, which of course, made her a media darling. That she used Charles to ascend the social ladder she so craved, and that once there, she sought to ensconce herself, at his expense, and even at the expense of her purportedly beloved children (who she primarily raised through self-serving photo ops). But she did it with such grace and style that the commons loved her, regardless of her obvious “indiscretions. She was an inverse Cinderella, … or was that Camila. And what does the adjective “inverse” do to the concept I seek to portray anyway?

Charles was the victim of duty every second of every minute of every hour of every day of his life. The “Duty” which prevented him, for a long time, from being the husband of perhaps the only woman he ever loved, and instead, being placed in a loveless and counterproductive marriage, which, like a plague, still refuses to set him free, even after the death of his “fairy tale” wife, “fairy tale”, but not in a good way. He was subservient to his mother, as he was duty bound to be, and it seemed as though he would never attain his own, independent destiny, and even as he was crowned “King”, perhaps he never will. He’ll be an afterthought, a cipher, an interregnum, and one tainted at that. At least among the “woke”.

To me he has been, is, and I think will continue to be a symbol of courage and duties honored under difficult circumstances, all too often in no win situations that refuse to grant him the status of “human” we all proudly claim as our own. But that’s the nature of monarchy, and of real monarchs, and of real men, at least as men were once defined. Not as selfish, self-centered misogynists, but as chivalrous defenders and providers for their families, their communities and their nations. Not perfect by any means, but compared to his brother Andy and his youngest son harry; compared to his late, former wife, Charles is a complex human being deserving of admiration, not because of but notwithstanding his royal standing.

I like the newly crowned King, I’ll confess it, but as a person, not as the crystallization of the purported aristocrats among whom he was born and who from now on, will surround and seek to suffocate him more than ever.

If I were a believer, which I may or may not be, I’ve never been sure (other than that I am not a believer in the religion “created” by the egregious Saul of Tarsus), I would end this, and perhaps I will, whispering “God Save the King”!
_______

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 is currently the publisher of the Inannite Review, available at Substack.com. 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). However, he is also fascinated by mythology, religion, physics, astronomy and mathematics, especially with matters related to quanta and cosmogony. He can be contacted at guillermo.calvo.mahe@gmail.com and much of his writing is available through his blog at https://guillermocalvo.com/.

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Guillermo Calvo Mahé

Author, Academic, Political Analyst, Political Commentator, Poet, Linguist

Category Archives: Historical

A Tale of Canaan and Ur and Uruk, of Three Trees in Three Gardens and of Eggs and Omelets as Well, all as Overheard by an Angry South Wind: A sort of bridge over troubled waters

Musings on a Midsummer’s Eve

The True Meaning of Life and all that Rot (Literally; or is it “figuratively”?)

Calcium: a very strange introspective rant

Payment of Interest on the National Debt versus Social Security Payments

Windfall Profits, the Defense Industry and the American Tax Payer:

The “Woke” …?

A Glance at an Ugly Image in an all too Accurate Mirror

Damned Trump!!!

On the Coronation of Charles Philip Arthur George Mountbatten-Windsor (formerly Hanover)

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